HistoriK

Hey, I have no problem in admitting I was wrong. Jagex did the right thing by not toying with BH, because I'm sure a lot of people are already fed up with the new PVP loot system.

I hope you realize that this will never be the case. After all, what's stoping a rwt to wear a saradomin set, stay at some little spot in the sticks of runescape like rimmington, and just letting the paying customer kill them for a 4m drop? If anything, i'm expecting the drop to be randomized on a bell curve set of random, with a 400k drop 62.5% of the time and the 4m drop 2.5% of the time.* It will never match a pure loot, so BH is secured in it's place for that purpose. While changes will probably be made to it, probably a wait room that you need a group of people to join like in FOG.** --------------------------------------------------------- *before everyone starts asking, nothing i say is set in stone, and that will probably not be the probabilities for the drop tables, or the lowest amount, or anything that would state that i know anything. I don't even remember if the precentages in the bell curve are correct, or even the correct spelling of precentages is precentages. and if anyone wants to correct me, go ahead, because my attention is long since gone from the topic and i will give you a suitable amount of attention based on this fact **again, if BH already has something like this, correct me if you want. Such is the internet Agreed, there is absolutely no way to make loots anywhere near what is actually being killed. Which means for every kill in PVP, one player gains let's say 50% of the other's value (probably will be much lower than this), while the other player loses 100% of his stuff. That means you have a net loss of 50% between the two players. This is unlike any of the other loot systems, because the net loss has previously ALWAYS been 0 (or close to it, since you use some consumables like arrows / potions / runes). So the average player in PVP will end up losing a lot of their money. Most people do agree that PVP worlds do not replace the BH style of looting / PVP. You can say what you want about Bounty Hunter, but the fact is that at any given point there are 1000's of players using the minigame. It is one of the most entertaining things to do on Runescape.

This is true. BH should just be removed, and that will fix it. Yeah, that's the spirit. Just remove it. What's the big deal about PVP anyways, why don't we all just shake hands and hug? Come on now man, are you seriously saying Jagex should let go of the best PVP area in the game atm? You guys are banking a lot on the new PVP worlds to be an amazing update. You should realize that there is a serious chance the PVP update will be a major disappointment. This is not going to be a wilderness replacement. Looting was the MOST important aspect of the wildy, how do I know that? What's the only thing that caused the Wildy to be removed? Looting. Jagex could have kept the old Wild without Looting, BUT THEY DIDN'T. Why not? Because PK-ing without looting is POINTLESS! They knew that, you should know that. So have fun looting non-tradeable computer generated drops that are PVP-world only.

I think you made a really good assumption and if they will change anything to bh it will only be the amount of worlds, nothing else. Absolutely false. The amount of worlds is not going to make any difference. I mean look at P2P BH High Crater for example. There is only 1 world that ever really has a game going (18), so that change doesn't affect high crater P2P at all. Same goes for F2P pretty much; later at night there is only 1 active high crater (17). So reducing the amount of worlds will not change anything. Jagex is going to change the loot system. They obviously aren't going to REMOVE the BH, I NEVER said that. I said they were going to mess around with the looting in the BH, and thereby destroy the minigame. They would not completely remove the content, because that makes them look terrible. Instead they will act as if the nerfing of the loot system was a genius idea, and makes the BH much better. Just as they said with the GE, it was a marvellous idea! Now we don't need those awful unbalanced trades! Of course everyone knows that once the BH loot system gets destroyed, combined with new PVP worlds, the BH arena will be virtually abandoned. Now, one thing to note is that the BH loot system could not be IDENTICAL to the new PVP loot. That's certain because Jagex has specifically stated that PVP loot will consist of PVP-world-specific gear. They will not mix BH worlds with PVP worlds because that would be forcing people onto PVP worlds. However, they have boasted about a new drop table. This drop table could likely easily be changed around to disclude PVP-specific gear, and instead sub in items usable on regular worlds. A few tweaks to the drop table and voila, you have a computer generated drop inside the BH. Sounds absolutely horrendous to me, imagine PK-ing someone wearing AGS / Bandos Chestplate, and getting only 15,000 coins in return! Or even worse, some garbage non-tradeable decorative armor piece? It's a real shame that Jagex is so paranoid with RWT that they engineer what would otherwise be great updates around preventing it. PVP worlds are being so hyped up, but how could they possibly be anywhere near as entertaining as the old wilderness? Players are going to be very disappointed with the loot system on PVP, and even worse is that this loot system is there to essentially replace that of the BH. It's going to be completely bittersweet, like always.

The speculation of it happening, smartass. I think it will. PVP worlds come out, everyone uses them, BH will be stupid easy to transfer with. This is a misconception. The way the BH works, it doesn't really make it any easier if the crater has 30 people or 200 people. With small population (40ish people), there is a much higher chance that your target will tele to you, since they have less non-targs to fight.

This is exactly their reasoning. They speak of their new looting system very highly, and obviously see computer-generated drops as the wave of the future. It's very unfortunate, but it seems as if RWT will be taking another great piece of game content away. I whole-heartedly, 100% agree. RWT will never be completely removed from any game where there is a market for it. Jagex has taken steps that have greatly reduced the amount of RWT taking place in the game, and in hindsight, it has worked out. Macroing has cleared up, and there are virtually no incentives for players to pay for membership with stolen credit cards (these were 99% of the time macroers). Also, nearly any game company will agree that a small amount of RWT is healthy for an MMORPG. Jagex themselves have announced that they will be selling items in their next project, Mechscape. I am very worried, however, that Jagex is continuing their obsession of battling RWT. If they do mess with the looting system on BH, they are hurting a great part of the game that myself and many other players enjoy.

Well, everyone is all excited about the new PvP update (the new wildy), but one thing Jagex is not telling you people is that with the release of PVP worlds, they are also going to make Bounty Hunter a "safe" mini-game. That is, the loot system currently installed on BH, where when you kill a player you receive all their items, will be removed. So to be honest, this update will be completely bittersweet. This change to Bounty Hunter will make the minigame completely obsolete and pointless. The new PVP is no replacement to the true wilderness style of BH. The loot system on new PVP will be completely different from that in Bounty Hunter. Jagex is so paranoid about RWT that they are implementing this new PVP system to replace the BH looting, and thereby (in their minds) further thwart RWT. The fact is, RWT in this day and age is ruled by asian farmers. These players log into their customers' accounts and just play all day, earning them gold in the game. Any update you make to the Bounty Hunter will only stop the small guys. If you are still in a battle against RWT (which in my mind has nearly completely stopped since the trade updates), you'll need to figure out a way to stop the farmers. Messing around with Bounty Hunter is not going to fix anything.

Well, the new article on the Grand Exchange got me excited. I thought it might outline the transformation of the market on RS, where Animal Masks and Third Age are now being used as currency to buy all items whose real values are above/below the prices set by Jagex. For those of you who don't know, the only way to sell a Party Hat in this day and age is to include a Third Age item, or a variety of Animal Masks. This is because these items are valued at much higher prices than their market values. The Grand Exchange changes are still very recent. Things have begun to change, but there is likely much more change ahead. With the trade limits on GP, one must ask, could players eventually abandon GP as the main currency on Runescape? Initially, it sounds absurd. GP is widely accepted across the board, and has been since the beginning of Runescape. However, when you take a step back and realize that GP is really the only item that is completely restricted by the trade limitations, you must wonder whether players are moving towards an item-currency market. Already you can see on many Rares / junk items / undervalued items that players are beginning to use Animal Masks and other items as the main currency. This would not be unheard of in online play, for the Gold pieces (AKA the main currency) to be abandoned by the game's population. In Diablo2, people abandoned the gold, and instead began using Stone of Jordans (SOJ's) as currency. This item was just a random ring in the game, it was never intended to be used as the main currency, but players adopted it and it became the norm very quickly. Any item whose REAL value (player decided value) is worth much more than the trade restriction could offer a much more flexible currency. With these trade restrictions, it's really no surprise that players have created a new sub-economy, with completely different prices than those on the GE. It's a shame Jagex didn't realize that trying to go against the grain of economic forces is like trying to dam the Mississippi with a few bricks. Sure, it might work for a bit, but even if you maintain your composure and stay firm, the water will just find a new route around you. This is what's happening on the marketplace, players are finding a new path to use in order to trade items for the prices they want. Personally, I really preferred the days when you could sell a Purple Party Hat for whatever cash price you wanted, as opposed to having to add 10 Animal Masks or Third Age items. But maybe that's just me.

He could just mention them in passing and not detail them, such as people mention using BH for rwt, and they don't get banned for that. Listen, the specific way RWT is done is irrelevant to this post. The fact is, it is still done, albeit nowhere near the same magnitude as before. Personally, I am a supporter of RWT, I don't think it has a direct negative effect on the game. I think Jagex has proved this by their implementation of lending items, because if they truly believed a player should personally earn every item they have, then they would not have created this system. It just seems ironic that they made a Development Diary which focused on devaluing of achievements, and then throw out an update where random players can lend each other any item without providing collateral or taking a risk.

First of all, there is still RWTing going on. It's more complicated, but trust me, it's still going on.

Yesterday, Jagex released the Item Lending update, which has drastically changed the way a player "owns" an item. In the old system, before the imbalanced trading updates came into play, you would only lend an item to someone you trusted 100%. You had to trust the person, because they could just as easily run away with what you lent them. This gave meaning to lending people items, it made things much more personal. Nowadays, you can lend any item to any random player without having any doubt of whether or not they'll get it back. People can borrow a God Sword without even having the requirements to wield one. People can borrow a Party Hat on a level 3 they created 2 minutes ago. No one around you can even tell if you've borrowed the item, or if it's simply been provided by another player. Players who have worked hard to get their Party Hats and other valuable items are obviously feeling as if their achievements have been devalued. It seems to be a massive contradiction on Jagex's part, who claimed that RWT devalued players' achievements of wealth, yet it is now possible to borrow any trade-able item in the game without providing collateral of any kind. When a player purchases an item on the Black Market, they at least suffer a real life loss of wealth, whereas random players who borrow items suffer no losses whatsoever. It just seems like Jagex is flopping back and forth through hypocrisy. On one hand, they say that all player wealth should remain attached to the player, and should not be sold / traded in any way. On the other hand, they have made a system that allows any player access to every item, for free, so long as the owner agrees to lend the item out. This has already created a market of people charging for their lent items. I see people lending Blue Party Hats for 2-3 bucks a day, people lending Godswords for 1-2 bucks a day. How could you ever catch the people doing this? The system facilitates a new form of RWT, one which is virtually indistinguishable from a free rental.

Could you kindly explain the alternative options? Yeah, there's a few alternatives that would have a major impact on macroing. Make harvesting resources more complex. Randoms are one thing, but to make a skill like Woodcutting / Mining more complex than simply clicking on an image would make writing macros much more complicated. The gameplay couldn't hurt from it either, these skills are outdated and tedious. Another option would be to invest more time and effort into detecting bots. At some points in time, Jagex has been extremely efficient in banning auto'ers. This is why there were seeming "waves" of autoing; when Jagex was on top of them, they were far less common. Heck, even having trade restrictions on characters which have been recently created (maybe characters under 1 month old / logged in for under 24 hours total time) could vastly reduce autoing. It would take a combination of things, but at least it would not decrease quality of gameplay as significantly. If anyone got the idea that I believe the updates were a good idea, that's not what I meant to say. I said they were the shortcut, and shortcuts bite you in the behind.

Jagex took the lazy route on this entire problem. RWT was not destroying Runescape, botting was, which tends to have a strong relationship with RWT. Due to the fact that GP has a real life value, Jagex faced a huge resistance when trying to stop people from autoing on Runescape. They had to take away the incentive from the botters for a quick and easy fix. There were many alternative options, but this was the easiest and cheapest way to combat the problem. The result from this was detrimental for gameplay. Nearly all complex areas of the game were harmed, areas that separated Runescape from other MMORPG's. This was an update that took away the free market of the game and gave complete price control to Jagex on all items. It was a step backwards as far as gaming goes, one which made Runescape seem a lot more like a single player game than an online multiplayer world. However, did Jagex really think RWTing was going to stop? There are people out there willing to dish out TONS of money for gold in Runescape. So long as there is wealth transfer between players (which now takes place at the BH, and to a much lesser extent, the GE), there will be people selling gold, period. Jagex probably knew this at the time though, and considering the company's achievements, I think it's their duty to see that some form of RWT is necessary for the success of the game. The fact is, some players will simply move onto another game if they aren't able to RWT. These players are 99% of the time members on AT LEAST one account, and collectively the loss of revenue from every RWT'er would be very significant. This update crippled most of the asian companies, but independent sellers are still able to transact with buyers. And just remember, not every RWT'er is a gold farmer / autoer / scammer. There are sellers out there who are simply providing a service to people, and buy their gold from legit players who simply need the money. The buyers tend to be working people who do not have the excessive amounts of free time required to accumulate the items they desire, but who are we to say they should be restricted from spending their hard earned money to make up for their lack of spare time? After all, time is money.