NukeMarine

While I see (and agree with) your point, I must disagree when you say "integrated accounts". Since the foundation of the game is built strictly on wealth, giving a "new" account copious amounts of wealth would unbalance the game such that only incumbents would be suited to play best. There's also a point that the playerbase is "institutionalized" and wouldn't accept change easily. If RuneScape were to fundamentally change, the community wouldn't be able to take it. @Stonewall - I personally like the game's death system, although it's much too safe with little penalty outside of PvP. There's an easy fix by requiring something like a 30% "death tax" should your character die in high risk areas (boss dungeons and other high level areas). There are various ways to reduce grind, but it'll still be about doing Y number of hours for 1 to 99 in any skill. @Makoto - Sorry, but that mindset does not in any way mesh with the reality of a game where on the 200 million xp thread you have common cases of billions in donations. Why is it perfectly fine for a friend to give your new account a 2 billion gp bank, but for some reason it's unfair and unbalanced if you give another of your own accounts the same amount? Now, I'm not saying I disagree with the theory. However, it's a theory that's competing with a 10 year old game economy with unlimited trade. Unless you bring back trade restrictions on top of creating another closed economy (see Runescape Reboot thread), there's no way to stop a new account getting large amounts of cash from "friends". As for bringing in new players, I'm at a loss. My daughter has become interested in the game recently, so it's reasonable to guess some parents out there that played the game are introducing their kids to it. The open ended quest and skilling aspects will attract an older crowd. I just don't see it attracting highly competitive, intricate gameplay minded players. Jagex would be better off creating a new game to attract those types.

The resource article was interesting but I doubt Runescape will go in that direction only. If anything, the way they're doing Distractions and Diversions show that they will offer ways to get resources and skill xp without actually gathering the resources or training the skill. This happens with Penguin Points, Jack of all Trades, Troll Invasion, Tears of Guthix, Manage thy Kingdom, Sandman Bert, Del Monte, Ess, etc. Yeah, you put in a little effort playing the game every day and this really builds up. Now, it seems the new Player Owned Ports (a skill?) will turn into a super Manage Thy Kingdom where you essentially build up a macro economy. I'm only guessing, but I assume you use money, skill and resources to set up trade routes. I can see the benefits of this right now where the ability to level POP is tied closely to your various skill levels. So that the higher your mining skill is then the higher quality ore you can trade. It's not a RS Bot like the article suggests cause you don't need to have the account active any more than you need to do for MTK. Just take time out of your day to manage the POP to keep the resource routes moving. If such an idea can work where you've got NPC's gathering your resources on your offtime, why not something similar with training skills when you're logged off? Something like Player Owned Academies. In this area, you travel to a specific academy that'll train your character when you're not using it ie logged off. Similar to POP, you'd require gp, resources and certain skill levels to make the training more efficient. Just like Jack of all Trades, Penguin Points, Guthix, Troll Invasion, etc you get XP in a skill without actually training that skill. If these work, why not a Player Owned Delivery Network that work like area specific butlers? These are for those that do want to train XP and gather their own resources. Imagine being able to have your ess unnoted at the altars. Or have a runner at the Wilderness mithril and addy rocks. Just like POP and POA's, you're given higher quality delivery NPC's based on your management, skill level, resources, etc. Point being, if Jagex is looking to remove the grind, then I can see them employing these ideas that were being replicated by the bots. However, instead of it being an uncontrolled mess that bots brought, it's guided and becomes useful as people reach 70+ in levels.

Really [bleep]ing wish I'd seen that post by him sooner. I'd have a job at Jagex. Lol. Still have a couple of weeks if his offer was serious. Doubt you have to go to England if all you're doing is demonstrating proof of product.

Nice strawman. At no point did I say the play testing at RuneFest is 1:1 what happens with a Beta. At no point did I say the small amount of public testing found all the problems. At no point did I say it would always work. So, yes, those arguments are weak, but I was not the one that proferred them, you did. Comments about impact on the economy have been discussed already, in that any thing all a beta would do is shift the impact date. Now, have there been cases with major online games where an open beta had a negative impact? That would be the best evidence toward keeping beta closed. The case of Dominion Tower is also positive evidence to the benefit of an early beta because, as you pointed out, all problems discovered could not be immediately fixed given the small lead time.

Only problem is that they'll have to reflect those skills in the combat formula, which will also rile up a whole bunch of people, haha. (Who really wants to train to 99 agility to max combat? :P) Oh jeez, why are people still stuck on that stupid combat system that was only useful when there was nothing above mithril (even then, you didn't want to level mage). Yes, it would be cool if there was a rational system that fairly determined one's chances of killing another player then allowing a leveled way to introduce more people able to fight you. It's the main reason I like the idea of the Wilderness and sort of how they did PK Worlds. However, a system should not be centered only on BASE STATS that don't take into account any of the weaponry, ammo and armor. That's akin to saying two kids that are 18 have both been driving for two years so are evenly pitted in a race, when one's in Geo and the other is in a Lamborghini. Put it this way, what combat skill level will a player need to have with NO ARMOR OR WEAPONS to win 50% of the matches against a guy with level 80 in all combat skills decked out in chaotic rapier and full torva. That rant aside, I do like the idea of other skills unlocking better combat abilities. The skills are just sort of a means to unlock better enjoyment of the game anyway. And given my antipathy toward the current combat level system, I could care less about arguments that a certain skill doesn't raise the combat level (overloads).

Agreed. This is one of those things that would be great to go back in time and make it always the case with slayer skill specific monsters.

That's exactly why people started buying up resources as soon as the bot nuke was announced, because they're going to go up in price. Maybe not for several weeks or even months, but it will go up. The same thing would happen if only a small, select group of players were allowed previews of quests/skills/ect.. before the general population. A bit of patience could potentially triple (or more) their gp for no more effort than leaving a couple of select items in the bank. Interesting TooOldForRS quotes the D. Square part with the days but didn't quote the part that says they might remove the D. Square requirement altogether. In addition, a "small, select group" this won't be. -Everyone will know what's being tested since there's no reason for Jagex to keep it secret if 1000+ people are beta testing. So yeah, not everyone will be testing but everyone will know what's being tested. -Players (even those doing beta) won't know what month or day the item under test will be released -Players won't know if items being important in beta will make it into the real game. -Players won't know if an update will even make it into a game at all (wilderness tag anybody?). So, if a public announcement is made that everyone can view and act upon, it's pointless to complain that a few will act upon it. Yes, some people last week hoarded commonly botted items. Yes, those people made a profit. However, everyone had the opportunity, not a select few with inside knowledge which happens with every update. Plus, we know you don't have to have the actual update for players to start planning for it. This happens with behind the scenes and announced double XP weekends. All that said, if Jagex wants to try a secret beta with players "double dog pinky swearing" not to talk about the testing, then I'd complain real loud. It's hard enough to hold stuff secret within their own company. It'd be impossible to expect the same with unpaid beta testers and their friends/families.

How I view it: Economic impact - it's impossible to gauge the full economic impact of any update. Jagex shouldn't second guess on this and just let the free market decide Closed beta - I think it's reasonable that what's being tested be made very public, even though not everyone will be testing out the beta servers. Players taking early advantage - there's little to worry about this as Jagex does not need to tell players when this particular item will be released. It could be the following week or in two months. Say a "Dragon Kite" beta test rolls out that requires a Dragon Square as part of the ingrediant to make. Do you hoard dragon squares for something that may take two days to two months before it's in the real game? What if Jagex does an non-beta change to the ingrediant so that it's entirely a drop instead. Basically, the benefits of a Beta far outway any economic impact. The economic impact itself won't be that large. In addition, what's in beta will not necessarily be what's soon released. Also, what's released may not have been tested in beta.

Added a poll

Suprised this hasn't been brought up again. There were lots of future content discussed, tested and played at RuneFest. This even led to a delay in Dominion Tower so that necessary updates BASED ON THE PLAYER TESTING could be implemented. Tides did not reverse, the moon did not fall, kittens were not launched in the air. Yeah, there was likely a bigger price raise on the high level combat material, but that will happen regardless so when the shift occurs is arbitrary. Jagex has said time and again its debug team in month cannot match the very first hour of an update. Usually hundreds of thousands of player hours happen in a day on that update alone. They usually find a majority of problems then which could have been completely avoided with simple Beta. Isn't it finally time catastrophic bugs stop getting introduced into the game and likely mucking up the economy or even a player's hard earned bank? Yeah, I get it should not be an Open beta except for major changes. However, I'd assume Jagex is smart enough to have compiled a list of players that take part in specific areas of RS. Dependable accounts on that list can be invited for testing in that specific area being updated. It's only 6 years overdue.

I know there are complaints about groups not taking time out to teach, however, with regards to DG it seems there's some pretty good FAQs and starting information on Tip.IT and XPW sites. I've been a professional instructor, and it annoyed me when students were sent my way without the minimum level of knowledge spelled out. You're given 13 weeks to churn out a satellite communication technician so taking even a day out of the schedule to brush up on basics screws up the lesson plan. Similarly, playing DG for fun and having to take two hours out of your time to bring up a guy that didn't do the basic homework gets to you. It might seem rude and dismissive in the mind of the student to hear "Read the FAQs and Starting Guide". However, he only hears it once, the instructor has likely had to say dozens of times. The FAQs benefit the group. It's like all those questions sent via private chat or message when it would have been better to ask on the open forum. It helps the group. Now, if a guy or gal did the basics and is earnest to learn, and you got people being jerks cause they're starting out, yeah, that's legit. Now you're talking about hypocrits that forgot they also started out knowing next to nothing. I know I try to remember my mindset when I was learning and apply that when I'm teaching the methods. It helps stop any pitfalls which don't help the learning experience. I sure as heck don't try to do to others what I didn't like done to me as a student. TL-DR: Some people don't do the minimum homework prior to starting DG class then expect extra help anyway. Some DG teachers forget what it was like to be a student.

Want to improve the combat triangle? Put cooldown on armor and weapon switching when in combat or the wilderness. Removal is instant, but something like 6 seconds for weapons and helm, 12 seconds for legs and chest to equip it. I know it's a fantasy game, but it should take longer to put on combat armor.

The first article did hit upon a personal pet peeve of mine. It's not just in these forums, but many places where a person asks a very specific questions with very specific criteria. Instead of answers based on that, you get pages of second guessing what the person intends or how there's better ways. Hell, I'd even be cool with "Here's the answer to your question.....That said, it might be better if you....". At least you answered what was asked then offer advice. JATFQ!!! (you can figure out the acronym).

I call BS that they can't split magic into combat (wizardry) and non-combat skills (mage). First, you offer the choice to existing players how they want to divide their current XP (ratios of 10:0; 9:1; all down to 1:9; 0:10). If players pick 5:5 they drop only 7 levels in both skills. Hell, you don't even need to change the spell books as there's combat and non-combat spell sorting anyway. It's not rocket science or even a new skill. There's no reason they can't do this and it's really way past time that they do it. Great call on life boosting armor. Works much better than damage soaking. Level 50 armor can be +100, level 60 can be +200 and level 70 can be +300 with the ratios per piece being the same as existing level 80 armor. I still like the damage soaking idea though and hope they implement negative bonuses to hamper hybriding.. As for F2P updates, every f2p update is usually a p2p update. The only exception is when they migrate a p2p aspect over to f2p. To be honest, things like low level potions, bone crusher, canoes and maybe even thieving or agility are good candidates to migrate.

Jack of all Trades is useless? That's like an extra set of Penguin Points a week if you use it daily. The sure footed aura with it's infinite energy and 20 minute zero fail has some benefits too. Not sure about the rest though. About the bug, you'd think people would learn after the Penguin Point exploit that caused lots of bans (no rollbacks were possible at that time IIRC) not to exploit bugs that give far too great in game advantage.

Because with penguins/effigies/whatever you have to actively do something, whereas your idea would mean you could literally stand in a bank and get free experience for it. Remember this is one idea, not even suggested to Jagex, and shouldn't be the only idea on top of that. Well, is it really free xp? A player played his account in game for a set amount of time. That he did it running races with his clan any less playing the game than the guy completing Livid Farms? I mentioned it in the Oct 23 Tip.it times thread, but people like to throw around "free" alot when it comes to getting something in game. I'm looking at it as "I don't care how you played the game, so long as you were there when it's being played" with this idea. Now, I'm offering goofy limitations: You must actually activate the off line XP training while in game (so logging off at LRC won't cut it). Your character literally gets XP per hour so if you log off for 2 hours you'll only see 2 hours of XP when you come back on as opposed to 16 hours of another player that logged out over night assuming he had the credits. The XP per hour will vary depending on skill but it'll always be less than normal ways of leveling in game. In addition to any other silly idea that helps balance problems. No matter what, you still have to earn credits by logging hours into the game. However, if it helps, the timer of "in game" could stop when your actions completely stop ie something starts a counter to log you out of the game.

One thing that helps with grind is reduce amount of input. The more "make X" the better. Hell, with alchemy and various lunar spells they can add a "make X", just with the case of alchemy it must be a max of 30. Do the same with fletching. Another that helps with Grind is create tangible benefits for every level that's achieved. The more unique the benefit, the better. Likewise, with EVERY skill, do the equivalent of Pyramid Plunder where there's more efficient training methods at specific milestones. Yet another is, like Livid Farms sort of did, is create content that builds multiple skills. This might be unpopular with grinders, but why not create a virtual bot for people? Let's say for every hour of gameplay, your character builds credit, that credit can then be cashed in for offline skill building. So instead of things like effigies with it's random XP it's more in line with Penguins/JoaT with guarenteed but weekly/daily xp. However, different skills cost different credits. Actually, this could work: before logging out you take your character to an NPC based on the skill you want raised on your offtime. You pay the credits and it's raises your character's skills based on how much time you are offline upto your credit limits. Log back in, play the game doing whatever (merchanting, mini-games, roleplaying, quests, whatever) to build back up your credits. So you're playing the game as you see fit, using the good credit you build up to help on skills you personally think are a grind. Cost of xp can alter based on current skill level, methods to level that specific skill and maybe even popularity of that skill. This cost can be updated over time.

Pretty good info that's better than the usual posts he's been making. Quick find code: 15-16-447-63307160 RSOF - Bots claiming to return - Pg 40 Interesting that the update is occuring the next day, so I'm assuming this is not just fixing the bugs. That's cool, and I can see it being the excuse why some major bot programs won't be updated sooner. The line about gold farmers has to deal with slave shops and screen scraper bots. Those are harder to detect, especially sweat shops as it's actually a player, so I'm intriqued by how they're going to circumvent them besides manual detection and reporting. The last bit should bring a shout of joy from many players. The grind is the one thing most hate. I'm hoping it's not something as stupid as "set skill to level while logged off", though there's merit in the idea especially if it's earned in some manner. In fact, it's already done in a different way via penguin points, tears of guthix, lamps, etc.

Well, assuming they can keep a handle on this botting issue, sounds like a great time to convert some of those member servers into their own isolated group. I've suggested it before, but these servers will let you play your character with fresh stats and bank sort of like when you log onto RSC for the first time. It's still regular RS, but the economy is isolated to only those servers and updates with a two week lag. Might interest people to try their hand on new servers where they're not competing with legacy problems (botted supplies, rares, bugs). Barring things that actually draw in member players, Jagex might try some underhanded tactics to boost revenue. The extra XP for "member recommendation" was obvious though I don't know how it's working. I can imagine them allowing people to essential buy a mule account ie double bank space. Seeing that they have the ability to instance monster areas like Frost Dragons, it's likely they'll even sell higher level membership that grants access to instanced locations instead of competing with regular member accounts. We'll see what the future brings. They bought a lot of good will with recent high level updates and this initial nuke attack, time to see if they can keep it.

Wasn't it Sony that sued under the DMCA for piracy? Wired story. Another case in Canada had one corporation (I think it was RIAA related) had sued individuals for downloading music illegally yet were actually guilty of uploading songs they did not have the rights to. All of a sudden their idea of $20,000 per violation didn't sound so great when they basically violated the same law millions of times based on user access. Let's just say I'm not keen on the idea of corporations suing individuals for damages. Corporations have lots of protections under the law in most developed countries, in addition to resources and lobbyists pushing for laws that work only to their advantage. With that, I'd love the idea that there may be some part of the code in Jagex's program that might be a violation of some poorly worded part of the DMCA so that Jagex is liable for $2000 fine for every computer that downloaded their program. Main point is that Jagex did a good job with altering their code to hinder bots, they showed business sense in trying to encourage botters to play normally (hopefully after getting a heavy rollback), so they shouldn't sully it by threatening legal actions in some vague reference to a poorly thought out lobbyist backed US law.

I'll admit, I never visited a bot site prior to this update announcement and mentioning about RS Buddy and RiD not only here but on RSOF by the JMods. However, it didn't take long to figure out most of the botters have built almost a religion around the programmers. Personally, MAD RESPECT to the programmers on both the botter and Jagex's side. Yeah, it's a head to head confrontation, but I think the skills and techniques developed will just continue to improve this and other game systems. Glad to know that things discussed on these forums in the bot thread seem to be close to what Jagex implemented (encrypted array for the call list and items or some such). However, I've zero respect for those on all these forums that think "oh, give it a few hours". They don't know the program, don't know how it works, they just plug and play and mouth off like they're hackers or something. Now I'm wondering, was Cluster Flutterer intended to be implemented much, much earlier to coincide with Free Trade? This method sounds exactly what MMG was claiming when he said RS could handle the rush of bots and RWT that'd occur when the gates were open. If that's the case, I'm disappointed they didn't hold off Wildy/Free Trade until this method was closer to being ready.

Ok -- I LOL'd IRL ... :lol: But, here's a question for you (or anyone else who wants to answer it) -- at what level will you accept Clusterflutterer to be a "success"? Only if it manages to eliminate 98% of all bots AND these accounts and all correlated accounts are permanently banned? Are you willing to accept less and just appreciate the effort? :unsure: Right now, Jagex says that the changes will stop 98% of the current bots. Now, assuming they're honest after the fact, that should mean around 100,000 bots active at any one time. Again, I assume that's the number of bots messed up after each update only this time they stay messed up. If it's not near 100k, then I'd consider it a failure. Now, how they treat those that they've identified is another tale. I don't mind rollbacks cause it does the same as banning and starting a new character for most. That's assuming they're just botting for levels and not gold farming for RWT. If 98% of bots are stopped and you expect 100k bots active at any one time, then you're saying that 50 x 100k = 5m bots are active at any one time. That makes no sense. Bots don't need to log off after long hours. That 100k could represent just the computers set up for botting with accounts rotating through them. There's no telling how many throw away accounts are on that. However, if the average number of active players at any one time is now about 50% of the average over the last year, I think it'd be safe to say that Jagex did its intended change. Right now 93k players are online, so what was that like over the last week at this time? Of course, I'm more interested in what happens in four weeks when what Jagex actually did is better understood. There'll still be bots, but new methods will need to be found to circumvent both Jagex auto detection and basic player tricks to mess up the bots.

Well, you have to assume many of those accounts had both magic and mining, so you can't just add the two numbers together. It's still a big number that points toward active action on Jagex's part. Banning of gold farmers and RWT is fine by me. Doing rollbacks on accounts that appear to be for actually playing the game is also fine by me. Real people react to getting spanked like that, gold farmers wouldn't blink at a ban much less a rollback.

Wow, I see this and wonder if Jagex is growing a serious pair. What Jagex is telling all the bot makers (nsfw).. Yeah, Jagex saying "Not only are we doubling and tripling all this experience, you can't do a damn thing to bot it." Now I want to see them pull it off in a real way. This week will tell all.

Not to be jerk (usually said by people about to be a jerk), but couldn't the first article have been summed up by linking to logical fallacies in wikipedia? Good article though. So, here are some other problems in "discussions" I see in RS forums: -Something has ALWAYS been that way (impossible as the game itself is only 10 years old). Associated with arguing with tradition, but more like ignoring anything that happened prior to the person getting involved. -X is against the law in real life, so it should not be allowed in RS. One, it ignores the very ideas of fantasy game, in addition it ignores that laws are not universal even in real life. -I can get X in Y days. Annoying tactic that ignores actual time used during the day. In a way, it's presenting false evidence. -No real Scotsman.... This is annoying in that they ignore your evidence by saying no real (pker, cw, pure, botter, etc) would actually do that. Kind of akin to moving the goal post. -All or nothing. These zero sum arguments such as "Jagex can't get rid of all the bots, so they should allow all of them". -Time is free. These guys don't associate effort and time put toward something as having an inherent cost involved. One example was saying guys were getting a dragon axe for free by doing all the beacons. Completely ignored the effort and time it would take just to have the levels for the chance to do that mini-game.