helring

The story line and characters in DA2 were pretty good. The repeated maps were crap, and it was obviously rushed though. The DLC's though were pretty good and they seemed to learn from some of the mistakes. The main issue was DA:O was in development for 5 or 6 years. It was pretty highly polished and worked really well on release. DA2 was given like a year of dev time.

The tracker kind of was the interesting patch note =)

D&D Tracker Today's update brings one of your most-requested features - the D&D Tracker - so you can stay up-to-date with your favourite activities in one handy interface. Distractions & Diversions (or D&Ds) - just in case you're new to them - are bite-sized bits of content which take a short time to play, but give hearty rewards on completion. Some of the most popular are the Circus, Troll Invasion, Tears of Guthix and Wilderness Warbands, and Gielinor's teeming with other D&Ds to enjoy. Most are limited to a certain number of attempts within a set time period, and it can be tricky to remember when it's time to go back for more. That's where the D&D Tracker comes in. In the Adventures interface, click the Minigames tab and select 'D&Ds' from the drop-down menu. There you'll find a list of every D&D in the game, including timers to show when you can next attempt each piece of content. Click on any entry and a description of the D&D will be displayed in the right-hand pane, including how often it can be attempted, any entry requirements and its rewards. There, you'll also find buttons to do the following: Set the selected D&D as a favourite, which adds it to a list found by selecting 'Favourites' in the Minigames tab's drop-down menu. Set the D&D as your current active task, displaying a breadcrumb trail to its start point. Home Teleport to the lodestone closest to the D&D's start point. Note that you must have unlocked the lodestone in question to do this. The tracker's the perfect way to keep up with your favourite D&Ds so you can complete them and enjoy their rewards as soon as possible. It's also a great way to find new D&Ds that you might not have tried. For example, fight your way through the Phoenix's Lair to earn summoning materials, XP in several skills, and a chance to adopt two phoenix hatchling pets; or brave the Pit to complete madcap agility challenges for extra XP. To celebrate the D&D Tracker's launch, Captain Haskell - the Imperial Guard Quartermaster for Challenges in Burthorpe - is offering complimentary D&D tokens every day for a week after its release. When used, these items allow extra attempts at D&Ds that you'd otherwise have to wait for. Each day for the next week, he'll give you a token for a daily D&D of your choice and a token for a randomly chosen D&D. Be sure to log in every day and visit him to pick up your free tokens! As always, thanks so much for your feedback. Keep it coming and we'll keep making the updates that you want to see. Enjoy some extra swings at an evil tree on us! Mod Hammers and the RuneScape Team How to find the D&D Tracker: Access the Adventures interface, click the Minigames tab and select 'D&Ds' from the drop-down menu. How to claim your free D&D tokens: Speak to the Imperial Guard Quartermaster for Challenges in Burthorpe. He's just south-east of the enclosure containing the bank chest. Behind the Scenes Video Take a look at Mod Mark's round-up of November's content in our latest Behind the Scenes video: In Other News Solomon's stocking some spooky new music boxes and a macabre mummy outfit in his General Store.

Incidentally, those stats were about this, not the high dragon. Ahhh, k. Thanks for letting me know. Been a while since I played and could only remember bone pit boss off the top of my head. Same idea though, its still a one time and done thing.

Why do pvmers want max skills when they don't like anything but pvm? Why do people who dislike questing still want comp cape? etc. People like to 'complete' the game - part of that is getting the best of everything. Plus just because it isn't your favourite thing doesn't mean you won't do it from time to time anyway, but there is a difference between doing it once in a while with friends and being forced to grind it for hours to have any hope of affording stuff when in all reality all aspects of the game ought to be giving similar profitability. Can agree with you that everyone wants the best stuff ofcourse - but part of what makes things the best is the 'grind' behind getting it... the easier it is to get, the more it gets devalued not just economically. If all aspects of this game were balanced, I assume your talking pvm wise here.. were would the fun be in that? Also do remember Vorago takes at least 5 people, if a wand was 200m or whatever you claim as a reasonable price it wouldn't really be worth the time/ effort at all. It wouldn't be worth the effort at current drop rate. But if they increased the drop rate it might still be worth your time and available to more players.

I loved DA:O, I really enjoyed DA2 for all its faults. However, balancing a single player game and an MMO are completely different animals. Your party in DA:O didn't care what weapons or armour you have, they wouln't say "nope, you can't come because your gear is awful". They didn't care whether you had the best, you're in control. That boss, I'm assuming the bone pit dragon...if not plase correct me, wasn't even really that hard anyway, and you beat it its dead, you've got the drop and can move on. Thats not what happens here at all, you don't get to move on with your new wand once you've beaten vorago once. Vorago was annoying for me, but I didn't complain when it was required for my comp trim, because I only really had to do that once and I was done. If it was once and done for the drop then bossers would hate it because you'd get basically no cash from it, so the best thing they can do is increase the drop rate to put the wand back to a reasonable price. Not saying bossers shouldn't be paid something for their work, just not the more than max cash stack we currently have. Lastly, I couldn't find the stats for Dragon Age 2, but found the stats Bioware gave for Mass Effect 2, half the characters that started the game never finished it. I'm not really surprised that only 5% of accounts ever found the bone pit dragon when you consider people quitting the game, changing characters, rushing through for achievements, etc.

This gear isn't aspirational content. Aspirational content was Comp Cape, Comp Trim, the proposed prestige system. Things that legitimately probably wouldn't benefit you much but players would support anyway. Its level 90 gear thats going to be outclassed later and is currently worth over max cash to get even 1 item of it. Drygores aren't unreasonable. Ascension crossbows are getting there but still not terrible. Seismics are ridiculous. It unbalances the combat triangle when its like this where one type is so much harder to get ahold of. It also shows how broken actual skilling is as to gaining money.

They mentioned at Runefest that they could possibly have some non-competitive world events involving Seren. The first one being everyone working together to rebuild her from all the shards and the second one being her possible going psychotic because each shard of hers had its own consciousness so that many minds thrown together at once could cause her to go insane. I could see her possibly healing the lumbridge crater if either she didn't go insane or after we calmed her.

: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'm almost wondering if the increase in J mod activity has something to do with a change in company policy. Used to be hard to get ahold of them, now they regularly respond on twitter and a couple even ask if you have any questions. Mod Stu did that 14 hour livestream. It seems like they are trying to communicate a bit better within the past couple months. Just wish they could do better communicating in the future updates forum.

Laughable, not even remotely realistic. The biggest problem with Runescape is the big ticket items. You drop one and your set. You buy all your skills with one drop. you're right, 4m/hr isn't even remotely realistic. A maxed combat player can make 6-8m/hr at DKs, so it'll take 50-75% of the time of a SINGLE 99. It's completely realistic to make the money for seismics etc. off of non-luck based PvM. Thats part of the issue. Its still PvM. If PvM made a bit more, I'd say fine, there's some supplies you pay in and a bit of risk now, still not much risk since gravestones, but a bit. Seismics being so much more than any skiller can reasonably make is bs. Part of what we need is not just seismics being cheaper but also skills being more valuable. Skills are broken at the moment. They can either fix that by making methods to earn top end gear while skilling, tradeable or untradeable I don't really care, or they can take away the skilling item drops from bosses and PvM in general, or just make some skilling items that would be worth obtaining.

Not sure if this was posted. Vork, one of the issues with what you posted is that bossing shouldn't be the only real end-game content. Right now it seems to be their main go-to whenever they want to release new armour,weapons, etc. There really wasn't any reason they can't spread end-game gear out among a bunch of different activities.

Bogus. OSRS was made because people wanted a pre-EoC version of the game. The only reason it ended up being the August 2007 version is because it was the latest complete backup that they could get up and running in no time. The original outcry though was for a 2006 version. Bunch of people said they only needed a 2006 version with no updates. Jagex was like "best we can do is 2007, its the most complete near that time frame." People agreed to that, Jagex ran a poll, I voted yes so they could have their game and because I figured it would bring in more money to spend on the main game...they were never going to get the votes for it to be free or updated. Then Jagex decides to give them updates and no extra fees anyway. Wouldn't have voted yes knowing that but whatever. I feel like the original core that wanted 2006 either didn't remember quite how it was, or got drowned out by the people that realized they could try to make the game into pre-eoc as much as possible and left so now you don't have them.

Can save them but not really too much reason to, unless you expect to get a bunch of levels before it ends so you'd get more exp later.

Then you're obviously out of the loop or have no agreeable concept of 'realistic'. And it's of course completely false as well. In earlier times, aside from rares, everything else was accessible (gear) for some amount of dedicated effort. No gear required hundreds of hours of monotonous grinding or insane luck to obtain. Barrows, the armour that was undeniably the best for everything and had no equal was 15-20 million GP at MOST. Even Whips quickly (and I mean really quickly) dropped in value as the amount of people hitting 85 Slayer increased. Dude, really? Have you ever heard of building from a foundation? They want you to obtain things, go places, see things...Its moments like vorago and the elite barrows that are culminations of all that effort made. 'Dude really' yourself, please. If you have been following the argument that myself and have others have launched in this thread, it's quite simple to follow: the amount of effort and time needed for a lot of the items in the game is increasingly and pathologically becoming obsessive. I simply, and others in this thread as well, have a healthier and more reasonable conception of what amount of effort should be needed to access in-game content. They have a set a ridiculous and elitist standard, and we have called them out on it, that's all there is to it. There's no need to 'dude really' anyone. Your arguments are about "pathologically obsessive nature." You arguments are predictable and more so whether or not your response will be condescending or not. I would say that the issue is that bosses seem to be the only real culminations that Jagex provides. They don't have that cool stuff and decent money for skills, outside of ports which I'd say is a good start on how they can do cool stuff like that for skills.

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. So for one main hand weapon someone should basically be 200M dg? That system would only be if it was for a level 99 weapon. Considering the prices on some of the level 90's I would consider the effort of 200m dunge as reasonable for the best weapon in game. The level 90 would be considerably less.

Nobody here is expecting to have the best things handed to them. They just want the amount of effort it takes to make sense. That's the main thing here. This sort of thing is akin to telling someone to do a job, waiting for someone to finish working, and then telling them that none of it counts because they didn't do some other job instead. Except that it is realistic to get a few bil entirely without flipping, merchanting, or getting lucky. If your income is 4m gp/hour, it's 250 hours to get 1b. That's the same as 99 divination. Not to mention that when Whips were released, discounting the 50m pricetag for the first day or so that someone hit 85 slayer, the whips settled for around 25m per for a while. Income / hour wasn't even NEAR what it is today, I can't even think of any method back then that made 500k / hr, though it was a very long time ago. Yes, the effort is more now, but lets not just pretend that the best items were easily accessible by everyone back then, because they weren't. To put it in perspective, if it was 500k / hr then, and 4m / hr now (think frosts are around that when you are efficient), it took 50 hours to obtain a whip when it was the best in the game. That same 50 hours now gives you 200m, which coincidentally, is enough to buy any set of drygores with money left over, the current BiS melee weapon as well. Sure, Ascensions are more, and Seismic has underlying issues that desperately need to be addressed, but in the same time it takes to get a whip back in the day, you can buy any set of T90 armour now, prob close to the 2 most expensive sets (haven't checked prices lately). When whip came out, it was the highest value weapon in game. In order to compare it you'd have to compare it to seismics not drygores. Also, you're comparing it to the money per hour from combat, we're arguing that there should be a path through skilling not combat. I can't think of any skilling activity that makes near that 4m per hour. The issue isn't just that bossing is too much but skills are broken compared to the money from other methods.

Do you lose that energy on death or do you keep it but can't trade it and thus need to make the armour yourself?

My point is that it should be more balanced. Different ways to obtain similar items. Bossers use risk to get things quicker, merchants can use cash to get the best items, and skillers should also have a method that may take effort but ultimately reaches the same or similar goals. Dungeoneering was a way to reward effort even for those who weren't very rich. I'm not saying that it has to be fast to obtain the best gear, I just believe that there should be methods for each of the main playstyles to obtain equivalent gear.

I'm not sure why it was a bad idea. Chatic crossbows were introduced through Dunge and Zaryte bow still commands a decent price. It kind of makes sense to divide them out like the tier 80 bows. One can be obtained through effort (chaotics), One through a lot of money (Zaryte), and the other through a bit of both (royal, you can buy the parts for a bit of cash but still need to brandish it on QBD's 4th form). And likewise with magic, however, the only t80 melee weapons are dungeon ones. Yea, they could have done better with mellee weapons there. Overall I think its a decent idea though to give different player types different weapons of near-equal value to earn.

I'm not sure why it was a bad idea. Chatic crossbows were introduced through Dunge and Zaryte bow still commands a decent price. It kind of makes sense to divide them out like the tier 80 bows. One can be obtained through effort (chaotics), One through a lot of money (Zaryte), and the other through a bit of both (royal, you can buy the parts for a bit of cash but still need to brandish it on QBD's 4th form).

They failed to beat it when they played it at runefest, however apparently they did beat it back at the office.

If the odds are done right, I don't think you can ever truly mitigate the risk on games of chance.

Thats the only problem I really have with what was announced. I feel like they're rushing it too much. Throwing away some great characters too soon. I really feel like we should have gotten a few years of quests involving the gods before even thinking about killing another one off. The 6th age could have been a great themeatic playground but instead it seems they want to rush towards a conclusion. There's no real story arc because the characters just got here. I won't feel sorrry or victorious when one dies, just depressed at the wasted character.

Separate game does not mean that we couldn't use some of the good ideas that they have, or they can't use the good ideas that RS3 has. I would think that would be one of the cool parts about parallel design, sharing the best and discarding whats not wanted.