NukeMarine

Go for it. Though I could have described balancing weapons/armor across levels better though.

There are three different issues at play here with regards to balance: Cost in Training the skill, Balance of combat between types, Balance of combat between levels. Cost in Training I think that Melee is unbalanced. It's cheap to train melee compared to the other combat styles. Jagex seriously needs to consider adding a fair training cost to melee (food ain't it). Degrading weapons and armor seems the most fair, with no impact on stats till it's 0%. Best way is balance the degradation is compare in cost to a guy that trains with arrows. How much does it cost a guy training with rune arrows from a safe spot compare to a guy training in full rune against an enemy that doesn't damage him fast enough to need food. Compare this for other metal types to get a fair level of degradation. Also, mage is unbalanced as it can be trained with a non-combat spell such as alchemy. Seriously, that's like improving the attack skill because you train attacking a tree and an ore rock. Split magic into two skills - Combat magic or "Mage" and non-combat magic or "Wizard". Not sure how to fairly go about splitting the skill, but I think after an update a player is given the option of how much Magic XP goes to each skill after that it's set. Balance in Combat by Type This can be balanced with an over all philosophy that using gear of other combat styles lowers your bonuses in other styles. Sounds fair to me. Balance in Combat across levels. Here's where Jagex can begin smoothing the triangle. Start at level 10 gear and work it's way up. People with COMBAT LEVELS wearing opposing armor should win on average based on the triangle a certain percentage of the time. Of course, the higher the combat level wearing lower armor will have closer percentages than lower combat levels just by virtue of the armor/weapons having bigger impact.

All Jagex had to do was make weapons and armor decay/degrade over time. That puts a cost into melee on par with mage and range. Problem then becomes: How do weapons and armor decay/degrade in a way that's fair and easy on server memory? Point based (like crystal): Requires memory to store decay rate of each weapon type Time based (like barrows): Still requires memory to story time being used. Chance based (like hand cannon): No memory issue. Degrades based on weapon/armor quality and skill of the player. Might create doubt about fairness as it still is random. So, does a decayed weapon affect it's ability (like crystal) or not (like barrows). Next, can it be repaired by players (like barrows) or not (like crystal). Way back when, I suggested letting armor and weapons decay randomly. It'd decay in levels of 10 like crystal though. Players with the right smithing level could repair the items using "repair disks" which you get five disks per metal bar. The number of bars it took to originally make an item decided the number of disks to repair it. So a rune plate at 50% is 2.5 bars x 5 or 13 disks to repair. But then comes the next question: How does that apply to non-smithable items like all those quest, treasure trail and special monster drops?

battlestaves put 9300 gp back into the economy when they're alched though... Battlestaves alch for 4.2k GP. Put an air orb on one and try again.

Overall, that would be the main point. Would many players enjoy spending time with new characters on such a server? In my mind, the answer is yes so I think it'd be worth it to Jagex to give it a shot.

I think Jagex made an error in how they released the Dragon Body and Full Helm. The Dragon Body should have required a Dragon Chain as part of the ingredients to smith it. Likewise the Full Helm should have required the Med. Helm as part of the creation process. It would have at least kept or added value to those drops. Ergo, making a square shield be required to make a kite shield would again create value. Moot point, since others point out that there are better weapons and armor out there than the Dragon Kite could give. Dragon items, like Obsidian are level 60 weapons and armor. We now have level 65 (Ancients), 70 (Barrows, Crystal, Abyssal, Black d'hide) and 75 (Godswords, Divine). Jagex should just release the full complement of Dragon items and be done with it. I do wonder, since we have 65, 70 and 75 level weapons will it continue advancing that way? Personally I think we'll get 80, 85 and 90. After 90 you get 93, 96 then 99 level weapons and armor unless Jagex moves the skill cap up to 120.

The earlier discussion on the thread dealt with such a thing. However, the biggest problem would be that doing updates for two radically different game mechanics would become more and more burdensome meaning one would have to be dropped or we'd get less updates. So, I altered the first post and removed such suggestions on the feeling that a "clean slate" server that gets updated exactly like RS, just with a 2 to 4 week lag would be the best solution. Yeah, some of the mechanics of the game that are holdovers from problems introduced over the last 10 years still remain. However, Jagex gets a great look at if creating a RS3 with a blank slate and refined mechanics would be accepted by gamers at large. There's a lot of bonuses to trying something like this out both in enjoyment and a business standpoint.

Like others, I think many players don't like to pk nor be forced into the situation via skill or quest requirements. Player killing is a fun time for some people, and Jagex is accommodating them. However, aside from Brawler Gloves (that you must get from Pk'ing anyway), Jagex is not tempting skillers into a PK area anymore and that's good. Now if only Jagex will change the PK worlds to encourage everyone to keep killing each other more. Perhaps: 1. Let people that carry 76k, are in an area that lets you attack them, and have not been one of your last 30 victims appear as purple on your radar and their skull appears purple over their head. Killing these guys nets you 50k gp no matter your EP level. This encourages killing easy targets for quick cash. 2. You only earn EP in areas with people on your radar (the more and the more varied people on your radar, the faster you get EP). This discourages finding safe spots.

The lottery is still an idea, though it is kind of a inverse proportional tax. There is another gambling option: convert the Game Room into a more Las Vegas style gambling hall. Would be interesting to see wheel games, dice games and card games all around that place. However, such a place needs some sort of limits. Perhaps, like Manage thy Kingdom, one can buy 75k gp of "credits" per day that saves up over time (max of 15 mill credits for example). So, you can cash out all your credits in one day (max of 15 mill gp), but you can only buy 75k gp of them a day. So long as Jagex makes the various odds of winning lower than 1:1 then all is good as a money sink. And don't give me that BS that children play this game. Last I checked, players murder men, women, baby animals, demi-gods and even gods now and again. Characters drink beer and steal. There are even games of chance and competitive gambling occurring (duel arena, rat pits, etc.).

So is there an effigy clan chat yet? Seems like the most efficient way to pair people up. Better than ticking off the FFDN in their quest to help people get double nats.

It'd be interesting, but how long would it hold the average player's attention long enough to gain traction? Hard to invest a lot of time into something that will get removed in a short span of 3 months. That would depend if a PvP server for a rebooted RS world was released to benefit from such a character.

And that's a reasonable opinion. Seriously, the GE is a great service despite all it's flaws. Yeah, it got rid of almost all the real merchanters and increased the number of speculators, but man it made trading easy. Many would have paid a 5% fee for such a service when the GE was first released.

It already is that way since players can use skill assist on these items. However, the only compensation if something is agreed upon would be via trust trades. Jagex is providing a valuable commodity here (well, assuming 30k in Herblore or Construction is that valuable) so there's likely to be some market for it. If so, Jagex should provide a reasonably safe way for that market. Ergo, use the existing loan system with a little twist. That allows a monetary exchange at same time as loaning the effigy. Oh, and add a way to see what experience is being asked for (don't need another Unid Herblore fiasco).

Interesting, too bad there's not a guarantee for sharing skills in transfer of cash. Fairly sure there are guys who would share their skills and pay for it if the other guy is using a ancient effigy. Aside from trust trade, Jagex could allow these to be "loaned" where the other player can feed it once where by it returns back to the original owner.

There was a discussion about this on the general discussion page: Runescape Reboot which has a more official suggestion on the RSOF: New Servers for New Characters Only It's a great idea, and a financially sound idea for Jagex to implement. Players start new accounts ALL THE TIME to reach some goal, and here is a brand new way to be the top skiller without competing with guys that have access to extra resources thanks to 9 years of RS characters. Hope it gets implemented. Personally I think such servers (and the economy of it) should be members only. Makes playing RS much more difficult without all the workshop labor making leveling easy if you have the coin.

I think Jagex is more willing to do this thanks to splitting up the fast moving areas of the forums into all, members and 1800+. Yeah, the 1800+ still gets childish gibberish but at least it's moving a lot more slowly so one does not have to camp the forums to get an idea posted and responded to without falling off page 50. It's still such a pain to use to manage posts, and the 1 bump per 10 minutes is such a stupid idea. Seriously Jagex, allowing 10 bumps in a 10 minute period is reasonable as that's the number of replies a person could do. Just make it to where you can't bump a post that's not on page 3 or higher.

Actually, it was the tanglefoot that got me a bit of the idea, and the reason I included them in the farming portion of the suggestion. Plus, yeah, it would be great to get some unique skilling equipment from such "bosses". Don't get me wrong, there's nothing the matter with getting high level skilling items from combat just as there's nothing wrong with getting high level combat items from skills. Likewise, getting better skilling item from skills and combat items from combat is equally cool. A little balance in all that helps.

I made a thread similar to this back in January "The Godsword is the Highest Level Player Made Item" which did try to counter most of the thinking that combat should produce the best items in the game. It also talked about balancing skill based items to bring it on par with combat, even having a GWD equivalent for skillers. Time2quit pointed it out that resource gathering can have more rare items obtained if you have a high skill level(s) in addition a rare chance. Here's one (but not the only) solution: create slayer monsters that can only be killed with skills (and when "damaged" add to skill experience). With that, it's simple matter of "drops" that are unique to monster and related to that skill that can bring wealth back to that skill. For those that think it's silly to mix combat and skills, think about this: A runite rock is already like a slayer monster. It requires a skill of 85+ and a unique weapon (pick axe). It has an ENORMOUS defense, but just 1 hp (once you actually hit it, it dies) with only one unique drop. Changing it up a bit to make the runite rock have more "hitpoints" making it take longer to mine, and can "attack" back by lowering your mining skill, while reducing mining to zero to kill you adds "risk v reward" combatants moan about. Just making it mobile and adding a slayer requirement adds another twist.

Then kids would complain like they did about overloads or how they need to get skills to make it which will ultimately result in lower requirements and cheaper prices. Only if the end product was not tradeable. Then again, if it's untradeable, how would you make money anyway? Granted, the complaint about overloads were as pointless as complaining about the dozens (if not hundreds) of other items that require a minimum amount of non-combat skills to obtain. Besides that and back on point, there needs to be more skill made items requiring more than just a single skill to make.

Money making by skilling is not dead, it just hasn't caught up to skilling by combat is all. Combat requires multiple high level skills working in concert with difficulty and high chance. Combine that concept with skills, and you'll reintroduce skill based money making. There's nothing new here, and the idea has been out there over three to four years. Imagine a spirit bow that requires a spirit seed and you to dig up your spirit tree along with 4 skills 90+ to make spirit bow. Imagine an obsidian chest plate that requires ore that's a rare "drop" from coal rocks (like 1/500 or more chance) along with 4 other skills that are 98+ to make. Imagine slayer monsters killed with multiple high level non-combat skills that have unique drops including production ingredients. Etc, etc, etc. Again, money making by skilling isn't dead. It just hasn't been re-introduced to keep up with combat skills. Give an item that can only be obtained via skills that players want, and make that item difficult and/or rare to make, then you have a high priced item on your hand.

For the Love of Guthix!!! Yeah, I still chuckle at that one.

I don't like the negative reaction to all this, but what the hell are people expecting. Those with skills and items are likely to do better at individual aspects of RS. Any, what other mini-games/activities out there do you think can also get a competition/award going? Barrow brothers is obvious, but there might be others. PS: Anyone think that Jagex is going to WAY MORE than the 60 dollars it'll give away in the form of a year's membership? I can imagine more than twelve people purposely re-upping members just to try their hand at this competition.

I signed up and saw the 2000+ days since I last signed in from a defunct cable/internet provider. Anyway, is there a reason Jagex limits signing up to RSC to just twice a year? If they don't want "newbs" rushing into their old game, just limit it to member accounts with 6 months of membership or more. That will at least increase the number of people that'll check out the vintage game, ergo increase the community. Personally, I can't stand it. Didn't like it 6 years ago, still don't like now. However, I can appreciate that some find enjoyment where others find misery. How else can you explain country music.

A tax in Runescape is pointless (among many things in a virtual world programmed to give the illusion of reality), hence the name change as it is a service fee if implemented. Taxes in real life are not a bad thing. How taxes are collected (and used) can be considered a bad thing, but that's up to the society that empowers the government that collects and uses them. Unless you have friends that are putting out fires and building roads for you for free. So yeah, taxes is a loaded term that people associate with punishment. Never mind that many things that give life a bit of luxury and security comes from taxes.

Well, great point. I even removed the idea of a tax altogether from the first post. Instead of a tax, what the GE would do is charge a consignment fee. That's a 2% fee applied for it doing your selling and buying for you. If you don't wish to use it's services, then you can always advertise on the forums and try to trade in person. Granted, any change to the GE should be done in conjunction with other things to improve it.