Sy_Accursed

There is no reason to switch any crew before getting to a new region- you wouldn't be able to train any of them to be worth it. In general, it is highly unlikely(or almost impossible) that oxheads will now be useful post pincers(as we have already seen loop crew be 1500 per). A tip to anyone in the same boat as most of us(gathering distance): success doesn't matter. You are better off doing a 700 steel mission at 0% than 140 steel mission at 100%. Though of course running a voyage at a worse percentage comes at a higher risk of death and killing off level 10 crew at such a late stage will only hinder your success ratings now and in the early stages of the next region; thereby slowing down your acquiring of the new resources and improving the ship and crew

I'm wondering how the new regions will pan out in terms of captain traits. Previously we settled on the +100 being best iirc as most voyages didn't not exceed 10k reqs thus rendering +1% < +100 But we were kind of skating the boundary and with these new regions there's a very real chance we are going to be mostly 10k+ now which would render the +1% better.

Well the jist of the units seem to be they dictate the make-up of the convoys and supply the ambushers for spider holes and random spawns. So I guess ambushers at 0 = no random attacks and no function for spider holes The others at 0 = empty spaces in convoys leaving them more vunerable

True the warehouses are not strictly 'needed' but they do alter gameplay just as much as the adventurer icons do - and those were deemed 'required' according to Mod Doctors reply. Not to mention warehouse upgrades probably use less graphics than even the icons do: All they gotta do is stick a couple of piles/boxes/barrels of the new resource in and maybe recolour the puffer fish again.

Except we're talking about content/scenery compared to the entire game, accessible to those with a stat 90+ or higher. With rewards that only affect those 85+ and up. Aka it affects about half a person's playtime assuming they get that high. Do you get the point yet? Ports are smaller than edgeville in space, with less unique NPCs than a grandmaster quest, less soundtracks than your typical city which is 2x as large as the PoP area usually, and and a tier of armor available from it that really is just meant to stem the gap until the smithing rework. It has a massive affect on the people from Tipit or reddit sure, we're relatively high level and all that matters in the end is the rewards and how it can be used outside of the minigame. But for actually making the content, for a frame of reference, it's not a big ticket update. It affects how they allot their budget whether we like it or not. Highly anticipated != big ticket, to use your phrase This isn't a good thing, but it is a cold reality. Apart from that is utter nonsense. Yes anticipation does not make a big ticket update. What does make a big ticket update is something being used daily by a large amount of players and something that has been one of the most popular and successful updates in years. Anything done to that is a big ticket update because it should hit that popularity. Yes by all means they thought they had a framework in place for expansions so they could easily make this big ticket update with a small dev budget for an easy win, but they found issues. When they found these issues for such a big ticket update to such a popular piece of content they shouldn't of just hashed up some work around that left the final update sort of lacking they should've re-evaluated and adjusted the dev budget. And no we are by no means talking about minor content and scenery we are in fact talking about fundamental features and mechanics that directly alter the gameplay of ports. We are talking about the lack of warehouse upgrades so we lack the gameplay features of % boosts to returns on the new resources. We are talking about the lowering of stats on existing crew which directly alters the success rates and gameplay of voyages. We are talking about the failure to address issues they said they would fix way back when it was original released: The imbalance between the three stats in the final tiers of upgrades and the shortfalling of seafaring due to the lack of ram/figurehead type item.

It might be a big ticket item to us, because of the previous importance the original Ports offered through tetsu/seasingers/death lotus, but in the grand scheme of things it's expansion really isn't a big ticket thing. It's a small area, no lore that impacts the main game's current storyline, no new songs, and just a few new characters introduced with some upgrades that were supposed to use existing code to build off of. It's not an entirely new piece of content, the bulk of the project is already in-game. It's important to us as players and we wanted it to match the grandeur of the first Ports update. Even if they didn't run into problems, it wasn't going to match that same impact. The only reason it was mentioned at runefest was to build hype during the con. The REWARDS have a big impact. The MINIGAME ITSELF does not. As the MINIGAME is the ONLY way to get the REWARDS that have a big impact it does meant the MINIGAME has an impact by proxy.

Hmm I musta misremembered on that one. Coulda sworn that was the one they talked about being as guys first big project. They expected the ports thing to be an "easy" win because the framework for everything was already there. Likely the programming aspect of its budget was very small compared to voiceacting and modelling. That's how "it's a thing". Do you just sit and take a bath on a project you can't release for months while you pour money into a minigame that has a very small impact on the game? Or do you do a cheaper work-around and get it out now, so you can recoup your losses faster? That's what the real "Year of the Player" voting system is about. More issues like this are bound to happen with the smaller voted on contents that make up the bulk of the update schedule. Call me fearmongerer, but customers should be very concerned. Yes they hit issues and yes they expected it to be an easy win. But that does not change the fact it is a big ticket item and if they hit these issues they should have re-evaluated and expanded the budget to deal with it. This is ports one of the most successful items put in game in the past 2 or 3 years, its big enough to warrant being touted at runefest as a big item for 2014 it deserves to be done right even if that means delaying it and expanding the budget. Its not like they discovered this issue yesterday it'd of cropped up fairly early on in the development process giving them months to re-evaluate and we didn't even have a timeframe for release beyond 2014 they could've bumped it from january and we wouldn't be any the wiser. Plus the did do a work around to do the icons, so it's not like they are going in blind they've got an idea of how to get around it that would've sped up the later buildings being dealt with. Even with the hiccup there it does not justify part of the reason being graphical budget not having space for more stuff either. Besides claiming ports only has a small impact on the game is a bit silly - the rewards account for a good portion of the high end market for skillers. Many of the scrimshaws offer BIS and highly useful things to combat and skilling. The armour sets are the BIS tank items in-game and though niche do have a use. Even more so now with new t85 weapons that plug a whole between t80 and t90 for the poorer if they wanna invest. Ports is much more than a little minigame with little impact; it's probably one of the most used pieces of content we've seen in recent years and makes a big part of many peoples daily routine, income and combat potential.

It seems like it will, and won't at the same time. This is already going to be an expensive set of resources put aside that they'll either choose to put on Inventor or Elf City. (I still don't think Elf City will win, either...) Ports on the other hand was more limited in that it had a tighter budget that allowed for very little to go wrong while working with this existing framework. In ports, fixing a problem could have been such an expensive endeavor that they wouldn't have any "time" alloted to do ALL the building upgrades and instead could only do the smallest one they had planned, for example. Building the city from the ground up though lowers the chance of those sorts of problems, but it doesn't mean they can't hit snaffoos either. Hence the will and won't. What I think doesnt bode well for the city (or the skill) is the very short dev time. With the polls running til end of jan and etas of july/august thats a sixth month turn around. Updates of that size have typically been in dev for 1 year+ before we actually see them; not to mention the city is being touted as including new crystal equipment and new stories so it's not like the budget is going to be all pumped in to the city itself. Plus of course they need to make a whole host of npcs to fill it on and they might decide they want more 'works of art' like the trappers face that leave other areas budget short. In terms of the skill it's probably even worse since to make such a skill well probably needs more time to balance etc. I know they turned divination around fairly quick but gathering skills are rather simple as skills go. Plus they kinda cut the budget down nicely with the cut and paste job where all the wisps, springs, craters and animations are near identical and they all just get plonked into existing enviroments new creating new spaces like was needed for summ or dg or farm or hunt.

I don't even get why 'we decided to not do this because of the dev budget' on something like ports is a thing. This is a big ticket, highly anticipated update if you think there's more to be done to make it good you don't just skim on it you raise it with your superiors until they see that it needs move dev budget so that it can launch later. I mean whats the point of bringing up how it's got all this framework in place for expansions if you are not gonna use any of it in the expansion to ports? It just kinda feels like management have decided they need to get SOMETHING from runefest out and force it to be ready way before its really ready. That and the factor of seeming to give relatively noob jmods these big ticket projects; birthright of the dwarves was the guys first quest outting and I don't hugely recall mod doctor being a lead on anything to date. Please let these guys make the stand alone 'fun' quests like let them eat bacon or the self contained little ideas like the nexus and work their way up; don't just throw them on to big ticket items that much more experienced people developed and that is just asking for this kind of mess where you ruin something good with a subpar release.

Personally I find them explanations rather weak. "Oh we didn't do any buildings because if we did one then people we be like why not them all? and if we did them all they'd be like only 1 for each?" Sure SOME people might be like that but most of us are quite reasonable, we only really asked why we didn't get new warehouses to give us the percent bonuses all other resources enjoy. The warehouse and its resource specific percent bonuses are just as 'required' when new resources exist as new totem are 'required' for new adventurers. I mean that reasoning kinda shot itself in the foot 'oh we included the totems because every previous adventurer had one and it provides a game function so it was required, yet it is not at all the same thing that each warehouse offers percent bonus for each new tier of resources which is a core function of the ports' Plus its typical they address the 'easy' points and generally ignore peoples concerns about the high costs of making death lotus darts particularly when they dont even offer a tradable form to make returns on, the failure to implement any of the fixes/rebalances discussed over a year ago (but then who are we kidding that birthright of dwarves post-quest stuff never materialised either), the needless nerfing of stats of some crew etc.

Is it just minimised? (As in you have the health, adren, energy and prayer bars still) May be a stupid question but in my experience to date the number of people who claim their ability bar is missing and no preset brings it back and the number of people unaware it minimises are closely related.

I keep hearing people say comp used to be mostly songs blah blah, but it always has had a bunch of other stuff in it besides songs, quests, tasks and skills. Like all spells, max kudos, all miniquests, fight kiln, stronghold of player safety and security finished; comp has never been 'just' the basics its always been about completing everything that is fairly easy to complete. Trim has been about the longer term, harder to achieve things. The only reason a lot of people feel it used to be so simple is with it being all easy run of the mill stuff that can come in day-to-day playing most people who could get it day 1 and many getting it later on completed a whole raft of reqs without ever knowing they were reqs. It's just now when new ones get added they realise other things exist for the cape.

Exactly. Ascension crossbows(or any t80 ranged items) degrade. Darts do not. Oh you meant the other items degrading, in that case I'd specifically refer you to the post where I look at degrade costs combined with ammo costs vs dart costs to come up with the less than 100 darts lost per 10 hours figure to not exceed the running costs of ccb. Yes I did not look at t90 degrade costs, but I fail to see the point since the line of discussion was whether making the move from t80 > t85 was worth it. Equally I did not consider rcb, but with the changes to it's repair putting the costs up in the air and the fact that ccb are superior anyway and this line of discussion was about using superior weaponry I again did not see the point I looking at it. The Comp cape still is BIS it has been given identical lp and def stats as the superior cape in addition the already superior crit stats.This change is the EXACT reason that 'silly' requirement has been added: In order to give you the stats of the new cape on comp you need to be able to access the new cape. I'll agree with above post perhaps it'd of made more sense as an add-on dealy like the spirit cape effect though; that or have those 4 scrolls for plain comp and req all scrolls for trim (it is afterall something to complete)

I did consider that if you read any of my post at all you'll see I specifically talked about darts lost, as with all ammo items you recover some and you lose some. I never remotely implied or spoke about degradation.

Browser on mac isn't really an option since java does not work nicely. Mac swiftkit can be set to use the client so there shouldn't be much difference between the two.

Fair enough on the other points, but with the upcoming Conservation ability it would probably become possible to reliably always be using abilities without getting accidental auto-attacks. It would be possible for people to be extra careful to make sure they never do auto-attacks (like pressing an ability key, then clicking a monster), but it would mostly be an annoyance since you would have to wait until the monster you just killed actually died before being able to do that. If they added targeting back in, it would be less of an issue, but still. I was under the impression that even with perfect timing it still periodically did an autoattack and that conservation would be much the same.

Not really: It now has the defence stats of the reefwalker cape therefore it requires it. The only reason it is allowed the teleports, affects and stats from all lesser capes is you have to have unlocked or owned them in order to get it. Be it through beating the content (fire and kiln) beating quests (bonesack tele and arrow collection) or beating tasks (ardy cape teles)

Not really a good place to start as those stories are just really extra flavour in prelude to quests or only explain very minor things or just reiterate things known from elsewhere. Best place to go for lore is probably runescape wiki as they have it woven in to a lot of pages; start with something big like the ages of runescape for a general overview and then just branch out from there as things grab your attention and you should hit most major topics/pages (eg gods, eider artefacts, mahjaratt etc.) After that I'd check out the lores linked above from some extra detailing and raid poh bookcase for past-quest books for some more details to read. Then moving forward just be sure to pay attention in quests and check out any podcast, ama etc that Mod Osbourne is in (the 'above the lore podcast series is again good to go back over) as being the sneior narrative designer he drops a bunch more lore nuggets.

Yeah but Rorarii are easy enough to kill, you even make a profit killing them. 200k upkeep cost = 40 darts. Even with ammo costs you're talking like 300-400k at worst in the 10 hours So if you lose more than 100 darts to breakage in less than 10 hours you're not gonna be better off - gonna be hard pushed to not waste more than that. Abilities also use zero ammo, not sure if you took that into consideration. There is a logic there of course, until you start using the darts long term. 50k darts = 250m afterall. And for 250m for the mh and using a ccb oh you can still increase your dps. Plus for the cost increase the dpds increase vs ccb or royal with royal bolts doesnt really stack up to that much. And how long would it take to make 50k darts?In order for that comparison to be relevant, you would have to be unable to use your darts until you reach 50k of them. However, as soon as you have a couple, you can instantly start using them and enjoying the Lv. 85 accuracy and damage. You can't just start using an Ascension crossbow for Lv. 90 accuracy/damage until you have the full 250m for one. Factoring in abilities is rather irrelevant imo - yes you use less ammo but the odds of not losing 100 darts within 10 hours even using abilities is rather slim. That's only 1 dart lost for every 6 minutes of combat. And yes on the price, like I said there is a logic there in using them but the point still stands if you use the darts long term you can quite easily exceed the value you'd of spent on ascension mh which begs the question of is the slight dps increase for 80 to 85 worth it when in the long term is simply delays/stops you getting the 80>90 jump that is more worthwhile. Especially when you consider the time involved in getting them - you're talking 5 bones per voyage (roughly speaking if you average out failures etc etc) so thats 50 darts for voyage. Not so bad..but mh and oh are separate things so that's 30 of one and 20 of the others and even with rerolling all your voyages and the totem things setup right you're gonna be rather lucky to average more than 2 bone voyages a day. So we'd be talking 50 of each a day made, so unless you have a few weeks to spare it's gonna be hard to stockpile a good supply of darts for any prolonged hunting.

There's two things that mess up layouts: 1) Loading the game on a smaller (or larger) size (or resolution) than it was when the layout was made. Eg if you play with it fullscreen and make your layout in fullscreen but log in with the window small it'll mess up. This is avoided by making sure you keep your play window size and screen resolution consistent; or just face the fact you'll be messed about each time. 2) Various boxes seem to exert a strange 'force' on each other (for want of a better term) and over time nudge each other slightly (eg map might get narrower than the rest of the sidebar) This should usually happen slowly over time, though on the odd occasion it can jump rather dramatically. There isn't really a fix for this other than reloading your layout, but as it should only happen in small increments most of the time it can be ignored a lot of the time until it gets bad.

Nex got a deflect magic phase, so maybe it's just a kneejerk to the expectation that it wouldn't be a sufficient weapon for (solo) Nexing now. I find it quite laughable the number of people on RSOF ranting about how she doesn't need it and it's unfair because now they can't solo it and wasted x mils on gear for soloing it. And I just kinda think : And? Nex, however old she may be, is still among the top 5 hardest monsters for boss hunting you shouldn't really be able to easily and lazily solo her with a singular set up and limited effort.

There is a logic there of course, until you start using the darts long term. 50k darts = 250m afterall. And for 250m for the mh and using a ccb oh you can still increase your dps. Plus for the cost increase the dpds increase vs ccb or royal with royal bolts doesnt really stack up to that much.

The lore factor of these darts annoy me as well: These scrolls are meant to be us learning the secrets of making things used for ages in the eastern lands made from materials they have over there...so why do the Death Lotus assassins use darts crafted from ascension fragments? A distinctly western resource from a distinctly new-ish group.

200k upkeep cost = 40 darts. Even with ammo costs you're talking like 300-400k at worst in the 10 hours So if you lose more than 100 darts to breakage in less than 10 hours you're not gonna be better off - gonna be hard pushed to not waste more than that.

I think I'm gonna give darts a skip for now. 4k per dart just seems excessive, especially when it's 100* the cost of lvl 90 ammo (and how things are setup lvl 90 ammo will always be 1/100th the cost)