Lord Zophar

Status symbol. Well now I understand completely. People want this because of the intrinsic value it brings. That's all this argument is about but no one is saying it straight up. They want this item because it makes them feel good for some reason. I just wish people would shake this. Usefulness is not mutually exclusive with something being a status symbol. It is the best magic weapon in the game, thus demand is extremely high. Unfortunately, Jagex saw fit to make the supply extremely low thus the item is so valuable that it is a symbol of status.

The drop rate of Wands and Orbs is not unlike the drop rate of Nex items. What people want is a massive influx of these items or some other way which I detailed if you keep reading. Also love how people criticize one point in 2 lines and ignore the rest, seems typical of these forums really. And another thing that I don't get. If you are a fisher, why do you need a t90 wand? If you don't enjoy PvM, why do you need any weapons or armor? Hell, i don't even have one, not because I can't afford it but because I don't NEED it. In comes the answer about completing the game, wanting it for looks, wanting it because they want it, wanting it because they do slayer and apparently nothing lower is good enough, etc. If you release a fish that requires 99 fishing to catch and make it take a while to catch them, but make it heal the most, it gives fishers a way to make lots of money. That is part of what we are asking for-- to close the gap between PvM and skilling for money-making. And Wands/Orbs need to be at least twice as common drops as Nex items because it takes 4x as long to kill Vorago and requires 3x as many people to do it. Have you ever been to Vorago? I have. It takes a minimum of around 20-30 rocktails per kill and because several phases are time-based, it takes between 15-20 minutes per kill. Nex takes approx 3-4 minutes in a good trio. And you wonder why they cost that much. It is precisely BECAUSE it takes that many resources and time and effort that wand costs that much. You proved my point-- Jagex designed it like that, to encourage the market to make this item into a status symbol. If the drop rates were something like 2x or 3x the nex drop rates (or, roughly 1:10 instead of 1:40) then the wand would be significantly more difficult to merch and thus far less expensive. I'd also like to know why Vorago's non-energy drops are significantly worse than Nex's.

The drop rate of Wands and Orbs is not unlike the drop rate of Nex items. What people want is a massive influx of these items or some other way which I detailed if you keep reading. Also love how people criticize one point in 2 lines and ignore the rest, seems typical of these forums really. And another thing that I don't get. If you are a fisher, why do you need a t90 wand? If you don't enjoy PvM, why do you need any weapons or armor? Hell, i don't even have one, not because I can't afford it but because I don't NEED it. In comes the answer about completing the game, wanting it for looks, wanting it because they want it, wanting it because they do slayer and apparently nothing lower is good enough, etc. If you release a fish that requires 99 fishing to catch and make it take a while to catch them, but make it heal the most, it gives fishers a way to make lots of money. That is part of what we are asking for-- to close the gap between PvM and skilling for money-making. And Wands/Orbs need to be at least twice as common drops as Nex items because it takes 4x as long to kill Vorago and requires 3x as many people to do it. Have you ever been to Vorago? I have. It takes a minimum of around 20-30 rocktails per kill and because several phases are time-based, it takes between 15-20 minutes per kill. Nex takes approx 3-4 minutes in a good trio.

Well, I do think that having t85 weapons from Ports will help alleviate these problems somewhat. At least until they release t95.

With equipment becoming the primary goal in rs, they essentially turned RS into Cookie Clicker. You grind for upgrades simply in the name of getting more upgrades. As you get those upgrades, you become more efficient at getting future upgrades while the next upgrades (higher tiers of equipment) scale exponentially in price. Thus, the only winning move is not to play. Get cheap-but-adequate gear to do lower-level but still-profitable tasks like QBD or Frost Dragons and call it a day. It will still provide what's needed for skills and you don't have to worry about having the best shit because you don't hunt bosses where that kind of stuff is necessary. Or alternatively, just spend 50 bucks on Bonds here and there when you need to and forgo PVM altogether. Granted, you would be missing out on a large part of the game, but meh.

This is really a problem people don't seem to realize, too. If you have to pay max cash for some of this t90 stuff, what happens when t95 comes out? First of all, what kind of utter madness will you have to subject yourself to in order to obtain the item? I mean, Barrows looks like it has extremely high KO potential, and Vorago kills take 15-20 minutes each. Are we soon to have legitimate raid bosses, that actually take an hour or longer per kill? Then, how much will it cost? Eventually, things will start being traded solely in terms of spirit shards because the values are so far over max cash that it's simply easier to just represent it all in spirit shards.

Except that Barrows will completely counteract the changes to CS. Seismic will be extremely helpful for Uber Barrows.

Stop whining, you loser. Don't you know that cool people can not only afford to throw hundreds of hours of their life for one in game item, but more over that they actually enjoy doing this? That feel when my RS game time is more than 378 DAYS, and I don't have a teenth of what some of these [wagon] have.

Stop whining, you loser. Don't you know that cool people can not only afford to throw hundreds of hours of their life for one in game item, but more over that they actually enjoy doing this? Absolutely. Because everybody totally cares about and respects people who have amassed tens of billions of imaginary gold in a video game that is more than 12 years old. At least, that's what moronic wealth hoarders tell themselves as they wade through their heaps of gold like Scrooge McDuck.

This is the most compelling argument against the best gear being "status symbols" that I've ever read. Kudos. And really, by continuously releasing extremely challenging bosses with lousy drop rates, they ensure that the drops are just that-- STATUS SYMBOLS. Rares and those silly Barrows pets that will apparently require FIVE HUNDRED energy to make are great status symbols. Anything useful should never be a status symbol. It shouldn't require 20 hours a week for six months just to get one item. That is a [bleep]ing part-time JOB, not a game. People seem to be blind to this fact.

Most people on my Vorago team simply range him with ascension bows. The biggest advantage that magic has is multiple people can gain the +50%, whereas only one at a time can gain it with ranged. Still a work in progress, as we only recently became able to kill him but thus far we have mastered Scorpulus phase and are improving on the others. Last night was the first time we tried Vitalis for the first time since becoming able to kill Vorago. We nearly succeeded on the first attempt, and did succeed on the 2nd attempt. Overall, we got 2 out of 4 kills. One thing that concerns me is that Vorago is pretty much a 1 team per world boss-- you can't crash it. So, once it becomes popular, finding a world is going to be difficult. Unfortunately, this means many people will have to resort to using the instance thing which is ridiculously expensive.

Dafuq? FIVE HUNDRED? When you get FOUR per completion, distributed across a team? That's a bit absurd, lol. As long as the armor isn't anywhere close to that, I guess I don't really care.

It is good game design. There was a boss fight in a DA2 dlc which was found by fewer than 5% of players, and was so difficult fewer than 10% of those who found it completed it and obtained the rewards. Did Bioware decide this meant they should stop making this kind of content? No, they conducted a feedback poll and found overwhelming support for the presence of that content, as even the players who did not experience it or could not complete it appreciated that it was there, and that there was aspirational content present. The issue with RS players is they have a sense of entitlement, that they should be able to get the best gear. Well, no, the majority of players shouldn't be able to. Incidentally, the same argument is what is holding us back from truly divergent storylines in game. Players and game developers need to move past the idea that content needs to be seen and played by all players. It doesn't. Thankfully most high quality developers are now doing so. So, because one developer decided to do it in one game (a game, by the way, which received far more negative reviews than its predecessor) that makes it a good idea? Also there's a difference between making content the majority can't do and making content that ONLY a statistically insignificant minority can do. I'd have no problem with the best gear being several hundred million. That's STILL out of reach for most players. But BILLIONS? For ONE ITEM? That's out of reach for ALMOST EVERYBODY. Ultimately, that says to me that they did not balance the rarity of the item correctly. If anything is worth more than the maximum amount of gold, it needs to be more common/easily obtainable.

It also unbalances the game because magic has a significant advantage in pvm with Metamorphosis. Mages with seismic weapons are completely dominant wherever they go. Were they to give Ranged an equivalent ability to dish out damage at that rate as a group, things would be far more balanced and it would not really matter that t90 magic is out of reach for everyone but the 1% (and, in fact, it would probably bring the price of the wand down quite a bit as a result). And if you say "derrrr use Death Swiftness" I will smack you.

I am not aiming for a seismic wand. Because I know that I will never realistically obtain one. That doesn't mean I am not bitter about the fact that I will never obtain one, since it means I will never truly have the best gear.

Yeah, BoL wasn't bad but rebuildathon is outright abysmal. I celebrate whenever it calls for mortar because I don't have to move to do that so it isn't so bad. Collecting planks or beams takes forever because I pause to load every few seconds while trying to move anywhere in Lumby.

Nobody here is expecting to have the best things handed to them. They just want the amount of effort it takes to make sense. No. The best things in the game should be unobtainable to the vast majority of people, whether it be the rarest gear/items, ranks etc... The game shouldn't be the thing which imposes a hard cap on player achievement - it should provide all across the board and allow players to choose the level that is comfortable for them. The fact that we have hard coded limits at all is more the problem IMO. And why is that? So people like you, who are completionists, can stroke their e-peen to their precious exclusive pixels while mocking everybody who doesn't have 2500 hours to spend grinding? People, this is a bloody [bleep]ing game, it is not a job. Making "the best things" so ridiculously unobtainable is counterproductive to the goal of keeping people interested (and thus, paying you as the developer). Instead, it discourages them; I mean, most of us look at the 2.4 billion price tag Seismic Wand has and say "Why the hell should I even bother trying to get that? I'll never get there." In order for anybody to feel compelled to work towards a goal, they have to be able to visualize themselves eventually obtaining that goal. Many, if not most of us see how much some of that t90 gear costs and just can't imagine ever having that amount of wealth. People play video games to chase the sense of fulfillment that comes from eventually "winning" or beating them. If people aren't expected to ever come close to getting the "best things" in this game, why even bother?

On a separate note, one thing I really wish they would revamp is the death penalty. This system is antiquated and I don't think anybody really cares for it anymore. The way things are designed now, the only time you will ever lose something is when the circumstances are outside of your control-- such as a complete loss of connectivity or a server-wide outage -- in which case it is extremely unfair to lose what can amount to more than six months of work. Some clan mates and I were talking about this and we agreed the best solution is to make every item (sans jewelry) degrade and eventually need repairs. Obviously, repair costs for T60 and below would be tiny. On death, everything equipped would degrade by 15% but if you were wearing items that degrade to dust, they would not degrade at all. Think of it as an added incentive for using items that eventually degrade to nothingness through wear and tear. Gravestones would not exist anymore, and you would not drop anything when you died provided you were not in the Wilderness. The death rules in the Wild would remain the same.Item protection prayers and signs/portents would be changed to instead reduce the amount your items degrade upon death. The item protection prayer and portent/sign would each reduce the amount by 5%, such that if you combined both your equipped items would only lose 5% durability on death. The reason for these changes is that with the way the game is going, death in PVM is already enough of a penalty as it is without throwing in "OOPS, you just lost items worth several hundred mil, sorry about your luck!" Every end-game boss now is being designed with a lockout mechanism. If you die at Vorago, you're out for the remainder of that kill. At Barrows, you lose your Totem and either have to go earn or buy another one. At Legiones, you have to use another signet to get in. And there is also the time wasted re-gearing and running back to where-ever it was you were PvMing. And as everybody drills into each other's heads, time is efficiency in this game.

I hope they keep it isolated to Lumby because then it prevents the unplayable lag from spreading to other areas. Seriously, Lumby is laggy as balls. It's terrible.

:wall: I came here to agree with Q, but point out that it feels like they're ruining a good idea by bringing it to an extreme, but this... You've somehow managed to get literally everything wrong. I am ranting about the low end of the game. That's literally all I've been doing for the last year or so. My entire stance is based on the fact that the game sucks before you max, when it doesn't have to. If I'm ranting about endgame bosses, it's because they're releasing those instead of looking at the sort of issues that would make it so unappealing for new players (In addition to the whole "lack of balance" thing). How much clearer do I have to be? You could clarify what low levels need. Besides reworks to entire skills/minigames (which are discussed pretty frequently on the HLF) and a new tutorial (also discussed a lot), I can't really think of any low level content that we need. All of the low level tiers are filled out, it's very easy to make enough money to support your buyable skills until you get into the 90s, xp rates are sufficiently fast, there are hundreds of low level quests. You're right in theory, but based on my experience that's not the case: http://forum.tip.it/topic/318853-observations-from-a-noob/?do=findComment&comment=5398214 (don't bump) I wrote that back in April so things could be different by now though (shrug) I think that's basically still true. The game is increasingly becoming polarizing, and the community is more and more a collection of veterans more than anything else. F2P has suffered a very drastic decline, as have the number of new players. So yes, I can see why it might be a ghost town for lower level players. That's certainly bad for the sustainability of the game and the community if the low level scene isn't vibrant. Being alone as a low level is even worse than being an alone high level. A lot of the game is deserted and previously fun things to do are deserted because of the efficiency craze, but at least, once you're a high level you know what to do, and you have your own routine and stuff, but for a low level it's much worse, particularly considering RS is such a HUGE game, and there's so much content -- having to start all of this alone must be rather overwhelming. I think the toxicity that exists within the community is a bigger reason for the decline than the updates. From the beginning of the game 13 years ago, the community has always been particularly nasty. People are extremely selfish, self-absorbed and generally hateful, and to many people "friends" are just a means to an end to be used however is most beneficial. Elitism is everywhere, and finding people who will answer honest questions about the game without mocking someone's inexperience are relatively rare. New players come in and see an overwhelming game, yes, but then they meet scores of players who not only are unhelpful but are actually belligerent to newcomers because they don't know what they're doing. Then they get taken advantage of by one of the thousands of scammers lurking out there and decide this game sucks. But that's been always true of the game and its community. Elitism, scammers, unhelpful condescension has always abundantly present. It doesn't explain why the rate of players has now started declining so rapidly. The explanation must lie elsewhere. A lot of MMO's are losing players recently. MMO's are no longer the BIG THING in online gaming with MOBAs and such often gaining more players. A decline in MMO players may have made it so that the game thinned out to the point where lower level players aren't running into eachother as much anymore. I'm not saying the problem isn't also something wrong with runescape but we might be mistaking a macro level problem for a micro level one. I think more and more people are seeing MMO's for what they really are-- traps to suck you in and get you into the habit of paying and playing for countless hours. Let's face it-- life is more fast-paced than it was ten years ago because of smartphones and endless connectivity. People are BOMBARDED by stimuli on a constant basis now, and the result is both less free time to absorb any one thing and less attention willpower to stay occupied with it. Hell, how many people do you know who buy a new game and then lose interest midway through? Do you really think people have the attention span or the free time to sit there for 3000 hours grinding away in an MMO? I don't. I do believe this is a macro problem. I recently came from a game called Dungeons and Dragons Online. When I started in 2011, the community was small as it was a niche game but there were groups for raiding and questing and whatnot pretty much throughout the day. Two years later, it's the complete opposite. Only during EST primetime are you likely to find any groups for anything. The rest of the time, it's completely dead. This is partially the result of poor developer decisions regarding updates (there is no endgame in that game anymore, so a large number of players quit because they were bored; the only real option was to "reincarnate" your character, which worked similarly to the prestige things Jagex suggested as it gave marginal benefits to you but doubled the exp needed to max again), but it also has to do with people just outgrowing MMOs.

:wall: I came here to agree with Q, but point out that it feels like they're ruining a good idea by bringing it to an extreme, but this... You've somehow managed to get literally everything wrong. I am ranting about the low end of the game. That's literally all I've been doing for the last year or so. My entire stance is based on the fact that the game sucks before you max, when it doesn't have to. If I'm ranting about endgame bosses, it's because they're releasing those instead of looking at the sort of issues that would make it so unappealing for new players (In addition to the whole "lack of balance" thing). How much clearer do I have to be? You could clarify what low levels need. Besides reworks to entire skills/minigames (which are discussed pretty frequently on the HLF) and a new tutorial (also discussed a lot), I can't really think of any low level content that we need. All of the low level tiers are filled out, it's very easy to make enough money to support your buyable skills until you get into the 90s, xp rates are sufficiently fast, there are hundreds of low level quests. You're right in theory, but based on my experience that's not the case: http://forum.tip.it/topic/318853-observations-from-a-noob/?do=findComment&comment=5398214 (don't bump) I wrote that back in April so things could be different by now though (shrug) I think that's basically still true. The game is increasingly becoming polarizing, and the community is more and more a collection of veterans more than anything else. F2P has suffered a very drastic decline, as have the number of new players. So yes, I can see why it might be a ghost town for lower level players. That's certainly bad for the sustainability of the game and the community if the low level scene isn't vibrant. Being alone as a low level is even worse than being an alone high level. A lot of the game is deserted and previously fun things to do are deserted because of the efficiency craze, but at least, once you're a high level you know what to do, and you have your own routine and stuff, but for a low level it's much worse, particularly considering RS is such a HUGE game, and there's so much content -- having to start all of this alone must be rather overwhelming. I think the toxicity that exists within the community is a bigger reason for the decline than the updates. From the beginning of the game 13 years ago, the community has always been particularly nasty. People are extremely selfish, self-absorbed and generally hateful, and to many people "friends" are just a means to an end to be used however is most beneficial. Elitism is everywhere, and finding people who will answer honest questions about the game without mocking someone's inexperience are relatively rare. New players come in and see an overwhelming game, yes, but then they meet scores of players who not only are unhelpful but are actually belligerent to newcomers because they don't know what they're doing. Then they get taken advantage of by one of the thousands of scammers lurking out there and decide this game sucks.

So another tidbit I've heard is that to do Barrows Delux you need a special totem from regular barrows... No idea on drop rates, but apparently you lose it on death. Yet another silly mechanic designed solely to frustrate players by adding "fake difficulty" to this, thereby making the items that much more difficult to obtain and easier to manipulate. Get a [bleep]ing clue, Jagex.

Well you do already have to of at least visited all the bosses for the music reqs, killed a significant number of QBDs for the journals, beat the fight caves and fight kiln and not only beat Vorago but be the one to do the killing blow. So its not like the cape is lacking in pvm reqs thus far. Killing blow is a lot less difficult than you think it is. It has nothing to do with doing the most damage. Vorago can ONLY be killed by using the maul of omens (at various stages of the fight, when you complete the stage, he drops 1 of the 3 pieces of the maul) on him. The last part of the fight is a damage race-- you are on a long bridge and as he damages you, he knocks you backwards. As you damage him, you push him back. When you get him to the end of the bridge, the person with the maul of omens in their inv receives a "Finish him" left click option on Vorago which ends the battle. Your team just decides ahead of time who wants to do the maul, and you have that person collect the pieces throughout the fight and then assemble it at the end and kill him.

And with Dungeoneering in particular, they could easily work it in as a way to keep the skill relevant when it's possible that it'll take more time for you to earn chaotics than it will to get something better. You could have players upgrade their stuff with tokens. Hell, you could do that throughout the entire tier system - give players a level 1 staff, by the time they reach 120 it'll be a level 90+ staff. Balancing it might be tricky, considering how fast DG gets at higher levels. Well, it would be a considerable grind, but... 200k tokens for the lvl 80 as present, then you can upgrade it thusly: 100k tokens for lvl 81, 200k for 82, 300k for 83, 400k for 84, 500k for 85, and so on. Altogether, it would cost 5.7M tokens or 57m exp to get a single T90 weapon. So you would be just off 114 DG. I think that's pretty fair. Following the same pattern of 100k increments, a single item would would cost 192m total exp to upgrade from 80-99. Off-hand equivalents would be half that, so 96m.

How many energy does it take to make a set of armor? And does it require any skills?