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And that has anything to do with what he is posting how? I had to edit that post quite a few times because the [bleep]ing copy paste function seems to take entire chunks out of websites now, not just the text. You caught my post at a bad time, and I've elaborated since then. Goddammit I'm really angry at Jagex for not explaining how momentum works. It would help at least 90% of the cases in which players are bummed about the new combat system. You didn't read my whole post, because I talked about momentum.

Fixed the spelling thanks.

This thread is meant to be a place to discuss all things Evolution of Combat. There have been many outstanding discussions of the EoC within various weekly update threads, and I would like to see those brought to one place. I will start off with the single largest problem I have with the EoC, which is something that is causing me to shy away from engaging in combat. Combat in any video game, without exception, involves the risk of death. If you can’t die you are not playing a combat game. Keeping your players health above a certain number is how you stay alive, and runescape is obviously no exception. From pickpocketing to failing agility obstacles to general combat; all cause your life points to be moved closer toward zero and thus death. As health gets lower, the risk of death increases. We have all probably spammed a teleport tablet with just a couple lp left to only die safely in our player owned houses. In Runescape, we eat food or drink certain potions to restore health while in combat. Health goes down, we eat to regain it. This also comes at the cost of a game tick and thus damage output. If we look at the most dangerous battles we engage in (this could be a level 20 taking on a green dragon or a maxed player taking on Nex) success is not a guarantee. Our food has to outlast our opponent’s total health before she dies and leaves her loot. If you come with an inventory full of food but take so much damage you do nothing but eat, you will deal no damage and either die or flee without killing your opponent. We also have prayer in runescape, which is a bit different than health in that it goes down regardless of our opponents actions (unless they have a special prayer draining effect, but that isn’t the normal way it works). Prayer used to grant 100% protection from a single combat style. Jagex made this work by having the restoration of prayer be fairly costly. Also, bosses have used multiple attack styles for most of runescape’s history. So if you are at dks and you aren’t praying mage when Prime gets on you, you're dead. Combat before the EoC was a sort of mathematical battle between the player and his opponent. You had a limit to the amount of health and prayer restoring resources that could be brought to battle, and it was your job to deal damage while keeping your lp above 0. Ok so I am guessing you knew all that already, so why did I spell that out in such painful detail? Well, because the nature of the health and death system in video games is nearly universal because it has a fundamental aspect to it the average player must have. It lets the player control their own risk and thus the amount of stress they place themselves under when entering combat. If I don’t want to have any stress at all, I will go kill something that has no chance of dealing damage against me quickly enough to kill me. When engaging in high risk combat, I can chose when it’s time to eat and when it’s time to flee. I can trade defense for offense at will. Additionally, stress due to increased risk that happens in the middle of a battle can be instantly relieved for a while by eating food or drinking a prayer pot or whatever. For example, when fighting the KQ under the old combat system, she would hit fairly high and often with her ranged attacks while I prayed mage. A big hit would substantially increase the risk of dying with her next attack, thus it increased my stress. This was solved by eating a shark and moving my health back towards a lower risk state. That takes us to the inherent flaw with the adrenalin bar. Now on top of our health and prayer numbers, we have this new thing that is demanding a great deal of our attention. This bar however likes to be at 0% instead of 100%. It is our job to move it toward 50% or 100% by using abilities in a constant and unending rotation. The cost for choosing not to do this is being virtually useless in combat. I know about momentum, but that’s the old combat system embedded in the EoC and is not useful in many cases. Now we have a new source of stress besides our health and prayer bars. Unlike those however, it is constant and cannot be relieved in any way. It constantly has to be moving up. If you use an ability that reduces adrenalin, than you are right back to using abilities that increase it. This stress doesn’t come from the risk of death, so it’s more subtle, but it builds up and wares on the player over time. I have played enough EoC combat now to where the idea of rotating abilities and building adrenalin makes me want to go watch paint dry instead. I once did a 500 kc saradomin trip in the GWD and when I got off, I got vertigo. No joke. The constant staring at those little cool down clocks on the ability squares made the room spin. I have been playing video games for the past 15+ years and I have never played a game with something like the adrenalin bar (if I did I didn’t play long enough to remember it). I believe jagex did very little research into the effect this would have on its players. The solutions to this are many, and I won’t pretend that I know the best way. What I do know is that the adrenalin bar is too demanding and too repetitive for me, and I don’t think I can keep playing runescape the way it is right now. I know most of you will completely disagree, so discuss! That’s why I come to tip.it these days :)

Scrolls don't get harder. End-game, they are 95%+ for m/c singles, 90% for s singles and duals. You probably aren't going to get those rates on early scrolls. My last scroll for ss bottom was sent out at 89% in the bowl yesturday. I don't think I have gotten one that high up to this point. It fail though...lol.

This has kind of been how ports has gone for me, but I didn't realize that merchant's were important, so I rerolled 4 jade merchants the first day I had unlocked the bowl, haven't seen another since.

Goodness, that's quite a pk.

Whenever a new skill is released it throws a monkey wrench into my current goals :) Does anyone know when we should expect the new customizable interface to be released?

On Zaros, were you staying MD while ranging? I went to a mass to try and figure out the changes, and I found that staying at a distance and ranging while praying mage she still hit 1000-1700 basically every hit.

That makes me think of some general questions. -First, when do I do my story missions? I grinding 90 fishing (getting 85 in a few minutes) right now. -With a jade merchant on board, what's an acceptible success % to send mission out? I don't like sending normal resource missions with less than 70% chance. -Am I doing it wrong by sending all 3 of my ships on jade resouce missions each day? I usually start the day with my special voyages (1 or 2) which take about 11 hours each. I do those right before bed. Then the rest of the day I just run jade missions as they return. I'm kind of thinking that's stupid and I should be sending 2 ships for jade but rotating my third with shorter missions so I can get more missions done each day. -I guess this is the big question, am I supposed to be racing to finish the pincers before I really think about making the amour?

My line of thinking was that stamina/endurance or whatever would be like the physical conditioning aspect of fighting, and the combat skills would be like technique. I just think the continuity and consistency is important in a game, so having hp and prayer being based on skills but having this new bar (stamina) just kind of being different and on it's own would be inconsistent. Sure, I guess if jagex wanted to adopt the ideas of a random person who posted on a fansite forum..... they could keep the adrenaline bar, rename it, change how it works, and I guess people wouldn't be too suprised :P I think a complete overhaul is needed, and I am only offering what I think I would like because I find these thought experiments to be very fun. -- Let's say it's 2011 and jagex is in the early stages of overhauling combat. I think we all know what their motivations were, but that is neither here nor' there I suppose. I think it would have been much less intrusive and a lot more fun if they had done something like this: - overhaul magic and ranged gear to bring it's stats in line with melee. Roll out compriable weapons over the course of a year or whatever. There would have been many interesting ways to do this like adding items to existing monster's drop tables or creating new bosses or mini games or whatever. They could have done the overhaul to existing armour and weapons all at once (like adding a ranged str bonus to armadyl) and released new weapons compriable (not identical for the love of god) to their melee counterparts in a timely maner but not all at once. Just a outright buff to ranged an magic would have worked fine. If balance is what people actually want, then there wouldn't be anything to complain about. -Second, they could have introduced a new skill that would add a more interactive aspect to combat. They could have premised the addition by adding a really noobie basic quest like druidic ritual in which a vistor from a far away land rewards you for some chore by teaching you a very basic technique from his native land. This introduces your character to a new aspect of combat not previously known in runescape. Boom, now you have a logical reason for combat suddenly changing. Build the changes around a skill and ease people into it.

I definently need some guidance with my ports management. The only thing I didn't picture here was that I have 3 ships with the jade level rudder and all the cherrywood upgrades. My goal is full superior sea singer and tetsu.

The numbers could be adjusted for balance, what I think worked well was the simplicity of the system. Right now it is exceedingly difficult to know exactly what the effect of a given loadout will be. Equipping the comp cape lowers defense for example. The stab/slash/crush could just as well be collapsed to 'melee' and ranged and magic defense stats would be like they were.

I've been inspired by the great idea's posted in this thread so far to throw my hat into the ring. I will base my ideas on what I think made runescape such an addictive game for me between 2003-2011. Jagex wanted to make combat more interactive and balance the combat triangle. I would argue that each combat style had plenty of good uses, and there was plenty of reason to train each skill, but the community at large seems to think 'something must be done!'. Armour: The old point system for armour should be brought back. Stab/Slash/Crush defense stats as well as Prayer bonuses. There doesn't need to be armour for each tier in each combat style, but I think the damage has already been done there. For the purposes of balancing the 3 combat styles, each style should have the same amount of bonus. What I mean is (logging onto 07 scape just to be sure I am right here) there used to be: Attack bonus, defense bonus, and "other bonuses" which consisted of strength and prayer. Magic and ranged should have always had their own "other bonuses" as well. They could be called "accuracy" and "focus" or something. Jagex seems to (albeit just recently) be having a very hard time figuring out how to deal with armours that grant bonuses to damage dealt. Regardless of EoC or not, any armour that lets people deal more damage will always be favored over armour that has higher defense. Look no further than void sets. Until yesterday, they were heavily favored in pvm despite having low defense and lps (in eoc). I would simplify these problems by having armour dropped as loot to come in 1 flavor. That armour could then be modified by its owner through some game mechanism (a wide amount of fun ways to go about doing this) it could have either spikes or hardened plates added to it. This would make the armour tank or dps armour, but it would have no impact on the value of the base armour. Weapons: Everyone knows the weapon doesn't make the man. A weapon is merely a tool that must be wielded by a skilled person to deal death and destruction. Runescape in the EoC has become a weapon (and armour to some extent) dominated game. This is nonsense. In runescape’s hay day, the most popular weapons were good, but the person levels of the person wielding it was what mattered. Once a whip could be equipped at level 70, there was still a massive amount of improvement to be unlocked by leveling up. Weapons should be given their old stats back. I believe jagex did an excellent job of balancing the base stats of all melee weapons through chaotics. Ranged and magic weapons should would need to be rebalanced by adding in their new 'other bonus', and along with armour being reworked, the triangle would be balanced. Ranged and magic have an added cost (ammo) associated with them, but with the added benefit of being distance attacks. This is how it works in the real world, and the game should reflect that. Think of the Fallout games. The hand-to-hand skills main appeal is the 'unlimited ammo' side of using melee. Use the gun skill and you have ammo shortage to contend with. This is the stuff balance is made of. Interactive Combat: Jagex seems fixated on making combat more like every other game in existence. I guess 12 years of unmitigated success has them wondering where they went wrong. Anyway. The least obtrusive way to do this while still retaining what we liked about runescape combat would be to replace the special bar with a new combat skill called endurance. It would be like constitution in that you would gain xp while training any of the 3 combat styles. Xp would be granted when an ability is *successfully* used in combat. Abilities would need to be uniform across the 3 combat styles in their usefulness across the game. They wouldn't be abilities like in the EoC so get that out of your head right now. The fatigue bar would be like your health and prayer bars. It's natural state is full (amount based on level) and it is consumed when used (like prayer). To restore it would take potions or food or some new thing or combination thereof. It could be fully restored instantly by resting in a bed (like praying at an alter). These abilities could be like special moves. I don't need to do the footwork here, because that's not my job, that's jagex's. The more powerful the ability used, presumable the higher your endurance level would need to be to use (like prayers!), and it would also consume more or less of your fatigue. Armour and weapons could play a role in drain just like in prayer. Lighter armour uses less fatigue? Heavier weapons use more fatigue but deal more damage when using an ability? The concept is there, the hard work would be just figuring out all the numbers. This would leave plenty of decisions for the players to make. That's what makes pvm and pvp fun in runescape for a lot of people. What's your load out for a given situation? How many fatigue restoring items will you bring instead of food? Do you want to use that godsword with its high strength bonus but it completely drains your fatigue in like 2 abilities? NPC's. By year 12 of runescape, jagex is contending with players that can exploit the highest level content in larger and larger numbers. They have seen the old prayer system as a limitation to more difficult bosses or something like that. I find this completely ridiculous. DKS, KQ, the GWD bosses, and Nex were killing players up to the minute the EoC went live. Combat can be plenty difficult under the old system. Just make an area a no prayer area if need be. The KQ has been using protection prayers since September 2004. Nex is a perfect example of how to make a boss difficult. She has 5 phases, prayers, uses ancient magic. If jagex really wants to make bosses more difficult but doesn't want to release new ones, then they just need to buff her basic stats. Doing this is very unpopular after a certain period of time because people get used to something and get pissed when it's changed. General notes and things I forgot to mention: Max life points should be 990. The scales are all wacked out right now. Brews boosting life points over max works because potions boosting levels has been a part of the game and is logical. Putting on a piece of armour and suddenly having a higher life points max is a bit ridiculous. Nex armour doesn't need anything other than higher defense stats and "other bonuses" than normal gwd/barrows armour for people to want it a lot. In a normal game area, prayer should block 100% like it used to. This was balanced out by the fact that prayer drained and had to be replentished at inconvienent locations or with an expensive potion. Caps on things like soal split are stupid and frustraiting. They don't make the game more fun to play that's for sure. That's all I have for now. I will add things as I think of them. EDIT 1: Ok I forgot to mention that abilities should be used sparingly unlike today where you basically spam them in a rotation. They should also have a change to fail.

At this point I just want some consistency.

So I am wondering if void is any good for nex and KK.

You probably have one already. Ya I sure did. Must have been waiting for me to do for a couple months now.

How rare are random events? I got one the very first day I did ports, and dced in the middle of it (the barrel assassin one). Haven't gotten a single one since, and I need that reward boost for the triple story mission.

How can you possibly say that. They are ruining the game for me personally, because runecrafting has always been my favorite skill so long as I can sell my runes.

I am able to plant poison ivy seeds with a garden pie now, and so I looked up the prices on seeds and berries. Seeds are around 3-4k each and 1 berry is 4-5k each. The bushes never get diseased or die, so its a huge profit, but what I was wondering is if people typically keep planting new bushes or just pick the berries of bushes they planted? Easy question, but can't find anything online about it.

What part of this makes sense to you? I'm curious. I don't think it's moral, but jagex has shown they will do what is expedient enough times for me to know they would do such a thing.

I have already admitted I botted for a little while back in 2011 to get 3 chaotics, so I know a lot about how botting was at least back then. I imagine it is exceedingly easy to ban bots by the way they work. As long as jagex can compile the input from every player in the game and then analyze it for certain patterns, they can tag accounts with signature input. Then once they collect enough evidence (time that the behavior persists) they can ban the tagged players in groups. Jagex certainly has the power to control the bot population. With that established, jagex can also allow a certain amount of botting for certain raw materials to keep the economy from getting wacked out. I think that is probably what they do.

Never used clockwork mice, but who really cares. Highest rank I have been in anything ever.

There is at least 1 d chain in the game 8-)

200m Mining? You nailed it buddy.

add it up with fair prices, 5m bank :) can anyone guess what my goal is?