Sir_Squab

Well, once your defense is semi-high, fighting monks is a great way to train. Eh, AFK-able anyways. With low offense, which a real def pure will have, those things just don't die. On the other hand, with high enough def, you won't either.

And that's where you're wrong. Skilling is useless compared to combat, it's not an alternative at all. Combat gives you several times the money that any skill might, so I'm not seeing what "alternative" they could be. Ontopic: I do believe that more untradeable rewards should be made available. Both for combat and non-combat skills. Ex: For mining/smithing, an untradeable ore to create better armors/weapons/TOOLS, a tier higher than dragon tools/armor/weapons. Agility already has some, weight reducing gear and shortcuts. Not combat related at all, so combat-unrelated rewards are possible. You can't say "I don't like that skill, therefore nobody should reap profit from it". Herblore has been combat related since attack potions were around, so if you choose not to train herblore to gain extreme potions, you're on par with a pure that says "I don't like training def, therefore you should lower the attack of the monsters I want to kill". In an MMO, in order to be competitive you need to train every skill, like it or not. Remember, there are lots of skills, and they all should be treated the same. Before extremes, you could BUY said potions. Personally, I think the best (and most unrealistic) solution is to not only make extremes tradeable, but remove skillcapes. Skillcapes is imho at least half the reason extremes were needed - with skilcapes, many skills like herblore became a money sink, with people dumping money into it just to get 99, rather then stop at the most useful level. (Which at the time was 81 for the highest potion.) IF the mentality of RS was to only make the highest end potions for their own personal use or for profit, herblore would be in a much better scenario - people with herblore save money on potions or make money selling them, whereas people without herblore buy them. The real issue is that people make potions more or less for the SAKE of making potions.

This. Kinda dumb that you need members to change your shoe colour. And it's relatively hard to do imo.

Why would you have to stay for an hour? That seems like a terrible idea - RS activated the wildy to encourage pkers and you want to discourage them? Odd... Even so, this is more of a global problem. You never keep your dragon boots/claw/etc. So if you happen to hit an unfortunate lag spike when bossing - gf you. You lose all your items and in some cases - you can't get back to the boss that you were at in 15 minutes. My favorite is when the screen white/blacks out. Wtf are you supposed to do about that? Restart your browser? Yeah, but you still can't log in if somebody is attacking you. If you're in an aggressive zone - you won't be able to log out but just being plummed to death :( My favorite Pk ever was years ago, attempting to die in the wilde without anything on me, ended up killing a person who for whatever reason just stood there and got punched and kicked to death.... Many of the items on the Grand Exchange are priced as they are because you lose them on death. Take the Guthan's set for example. Helmet: High alch = 61k GE Price = 1.2mil Platebody: High alch = 168k GE Price = 666k Both items are rare drops that can only be brought into the economy through Barrows mini-game. When a player's drop pile disappears, the helm is removed from the economy. The platebody, however, is more likely to remain on the player when they respawn. Less helmets in the economy, mixed with more players replacing helmets, equates to more demand and less supply, ergo higher price. By placing the Grand Exchange price as the basis for drop on death, you would end up with a system where prices fluctuate even worse than they do now. The helmet would be kept, meaning its price would drop and the platebody would rise, until a point where the prices intersect and the helmet begins to drop, and the platebody is kept, starting the whole process over again. Keeping the system stable keeps the economy stable. Aaaacccckkk. When you put it that way, I really DON'T want the GE to determine items kept on death o_o

He never said anything about dying. The OP's post is regarding whether or not RS has reached it's peak. in other words, now that RS has been updated so fiercely can the game continue to improve or will it stagnate or slowly decline. Nothing about dying buddy. and your post doesn't end this thread ROFL. This is a valid discussion among the people that understand the topic like me. For people like you it's just another doomsayer post on RS coming to an end. Ah, I get it. So the OP is saying that Runescape has reached its peak and will now begin its steady decline into stagnation and desertion. You're right. Definitely not a ROONSCAPE IS DYING OMFG thread. :rolleyes: The OP is not saying this. at all and neither am I. In your opinion the OP and I both believe that middle aged men of around fourty are DYING OMFG. The game has passed its peak and will start to decline slowly, just like you are dying the second you are born. Bladewing, what I mean by people like me understanding this thread is that this thread is not about how many people join/leave/return to the game but the quality of the game and the evolution of the game. Sure, more people can join everyday. Hell the population on Rs could double tomorrow and Jagex still jumped the shark because of the radical game changing updates that they have recently implemented. With the addition of the fact that there are no more skills that could fit into the game, the only remaining outlet for updates is quests but many people don't even give quests a second glance, and that questing is not a huge timetaker. In general what the OP and I are saying is that in terms of the quality of the game and the development of the game, The shark has been jumped. Here is a great example. The terminator movie series jumped the shark with T2 even though more revenue was made with the terrible sequal T3 (The decline after the shark jumping) That's why you people dont understand this thread. That pretty much sums it up. And bladewing how bout you start making arguments instead of quoting me and making one word statements. See, see, THIS is what I don't get. How can you claim that they've "jumped the shark" if the numbers go UP? The way I see it, they've jumped the shark when the ratio of players entering the game vs players leaving the game is about 1:1. It's declining if there are more players leaving the game then entering the game. The only other option is if you subjectively classify what counts as "jumping the shark" based off of what you think of the new updates, etc, in which case I could probably make a case for RS2 being jumping the shark because of the change to the PVP system. Classic RS was declining, ergo JaGex made RS2. Insert biased/sentimental/nostalgic rant/argument here. Oh and counter-argument to half the "jump the shark" stuff on this thread to prove it really depends on point of view: 10k give away. Obviously means Jagex can afford to throw that kind of money away, so they are. Free Trade/Wilderness. China disallowing gold selling or Jagex actually being able to back their claim on the whole bot catching thing. More events/Less actual content: This is Jagex actually taking more of an interest in their community, quite a positive thing. I will admit though, free trade/wilde coming back could be argued as a potential sign of "jumping the shark," but the most supportive I think a rational person can be of that claim is it's simply too early to tell. Personally, I blame the free trade/wilde coming back on gold farming being banned in China and the 10k give away just compliments that. Assume that RuneScape hasn't jumped the shark and has simply reached a state where, for whatever reason, they can safely bring back free trade and the wilderness. Why in the hell would they NOT milk it for every single penny and new/return customer you can get out of it?

You know, I'd like to point out that short of making RS quick-chat only, you can and always could (except one brief period I heard of where, I believe, RS basically WAS quickchat only...) make rascist and sexist remarks. [spoiler=Potential offensive vocabulary] Black people. Slaves. Kitchen. Pregnant. Suck. Bang. Knees. Open your legs. Bend over. Blow me. None of which are censored, and can be construed into someone extremely rascist and sexist if you try. And frankly, I don't have screenshots but less then a week ago, I heard two girls talking about this gross pervert on RS who asked one chick how big her vag was. Maybe two weeks ago, idk, but before the censor was removed. The OP has also made screenshots of sexual harrassment from before the filter was removed. So, the way I see it, this means the removal of the filter changes nothing. As for young, impressionable people seeing all this bad stuff on RS, all I can really say is RS isn't a freaking day-care.

Now I just have to ask what your last 3 posts were >_<

Frankly, I just stuck with the whole "switch between 99 and 90 action" with an emote between each one; use a different emote each time just to be safe.

I dunno, I use a familiar at ZMI. And I bank twice, because left clicking Fill on the pouch is a lot easier then right clicking the pouch then choosing the fill option.

Bad words can be used legitimately. Why should I turn on a filter which not only blocks "bad" words used in context but also regular dictionary words just because they or a part of it looks/sound like a possible swear? I stand by that the main 4 letter swear should still be blocked. then leave your filter on ain't hard, folks. The question isn't whether or not to leave the filter on/off -- the question is whether or not I should report someone for saying: "[Perform a sexually degrading act on me, you female individual product of inter-racial heritage] ..." <_< Why wouldn't you report them o_O Actually, my favorite part about that was how, during the time when the word "damn" was censored, they had the word "damn" in the monkey madness dialoque, in a cutscene between Awowogei and one of whathisfacebadgnomewhosummonsdemons minion. Oh and lol at the last post >.< Yes, I realize how bad it is in real life, but over the internet it just sounds funny, sorry >_< Anyhoo, I don't see why you shouldn't report them. I'm still quite happy with this though. Because really, no matter how hard we work on the censor, unless everyone is limited to QC people can still say offensive things. (Kill blacks. Heck, you can say that in game context talking about dragons.) And short of limiting people to QC, people can still find ways to swear around the censor. On the other hand, your going to run into many scenarios where regular conversation gets hindered by the censor. This doesn't mean you shouldn't report people for saying offensive things. You know, this is just optimism here, but with any luck you'll run into less of that, because if a person says [bleep] me you [racist term], they'll hopefully say it without trying to bypass the filter; whereas if you keep it on, you won't see it. Just like you didn't see what I actually typed here.

One day, someone really needs to explain to me why paying like 4m for +4 str and a set of armour for, what, at least 30m I think for +6 str is worth it.

FLAME FLAME! DG IS THE BEST MOST FUN SKILL IN THE GAME! Ok. I'm done. Think it'd be great if there was a clan for it. I usually solo, because I'd rather NOT try 117 o.O

Staff, well, 5% more magic damage. That's all it does over SoL. Unless you plan to PVP or are obsessed with hitting the maximum possible damage with magic on ice strykewyrms, don't get it. Shields, um....pretty sure the spirit shields outclass them, if you can afford a divine. The Eagle Eye Shield and Farseer shield are more useful because there's nothing else that gives those bonuses. Pretty sure the shields are mostly useless though. Fairly sure...

Well Bladewing, there's one thing in that post that I think is the real thing the skillers have a problem with: "bots are here, whether you like it or not, and you must adapt" They evidently DO NOT want to adapt, they want skilling to be more profitable, which would happen in a RS sans bots. Fact. The question does remain on how much more profitable it is. Also, yes, boss hunting contrasted with skilling, most risks and it's harder, but your missing another factor: fun. In my experience, it seems that boring, mindless grinding without bots is fairly profitable, because people will pay a good amount of money to NOT need to do a boring, mindless grind. In fact, that's like, half the reason bots exist right there.... To Dracae: "Also, risk v reward does not determine all in the game. It applies to combat.. but if you want a game that is only about combat.. go play a FPS.. Time invested, patience, concentration, social skills, understanding of maths and English, etc etc all also determine ones 'success'" Tell me. When skilling, how useful is...time invested, ok, everything takes time. Patience, skilling takes time, doing things that take time require patience. Concentration? I'm sorry, when people skill they often try to find something else to occupy them so they DON'T have to concentrate. Social skills, if you count talking while fishing to ignore how grindy it is, sure... Understanding of math....um, be able to calculate how much your 2346 fish are at 643 each? Wait, the GE can do that for you.... Or, you know, a calculator. Not to mention how most skills are, in all honesty, mostly useless. I'll just stop here before I go into a huge tangent on how, in all honesty, many skills are mostly useless. I read a good quote though, something about skills will always be bad until cutting maples is more then just clicking a tree and waiting for your guy to chop it, repeat until full, bank. But, I guess both of you probably understand that, the real difference is the skillers, like Dracae, are saying "this isn't fair, life shouldn't be like this, skilling should be more useful/profitable" whereas Bladewing seems to be saying "deal with it," which, incidentally, does not translate into him thinking/saying "this IS fair, life SHOULD be like this."

Wait. That's gone now? Why in the hell did they remove it!? I mean, it was a tad annoying if someone modified the trade, but still.

And witches potion quest or whatever it is called should get you that. Also, what actually stops you from casting the same thing on the same monster for a certain period of time?

Yeah they dont need to hire chinese goldfarming slaves or have a massive botting operation to get their gold, they just give free bots and steal from the people looking to gain a quick buck/level. I think this is the best method, it punishes rule breakers and bots diminish after they get their gold, GF botters :thumbdown: Lol. I have an image of Jagex secretly making botting programs to catch botters, then steal the crap from their acc. Holy crap. A thought. That is actually bloody ingenious. Another thought. They wouldn't necessarily need to steal their items, but rather catch these people a lot. Hmm. Being caught too much might get suspicion. Maybe a combination of being caught and somehow leaking their password? 'o.O

too true. but personaly i would prefer some of that new nex armour. (after 99 prayer and overloads) Bahaha. ALL the nex armour, 99 prayer/overloads would probably cost more then maxed cash. More realistic: buy a torva helmet from a very generous person. Or hell, according to that guy...what the hell do I know about prices o.O I'd get two green masks, a blue and a red mask; keep the red, give the blue and one green away. After that, probably dump the rest into training either herb/summon/prayer. Or get full virtus if I could o_O

Lol, you'd get an F if one did. Kidding. Honestly, the thing about paying for one is, what if someone gets their hands on yours? Personally I think I'd buy one though... Honestly, despite all these security issues, etc, most people who get hacked did something stupid like bot, tell PW to a friend, download something, private server, etc. In most cases with computer security, a lot of stuff can be avoided by avoiding shady sites and not downloading stuff.

BS. I fought him twice within the space of an hour or two once. I'm fairly sure it resets at 00:00 on the Jagex clock.

Okay, you've adressed like every part of my post except the part where I explicitly ask you to explain your opinion on how the wilde affected skilling, specifically if you think there are/aren't more people PK'ing and less people skilling. I interpreted your most to mean you disagreed with the above concept, but that wasn't distinctly what you said, it was what your post implied to me. I realize that is my fault and not yours. Now could you please state your opinion on this or if you don't have an opinion? Also, to your above post, yes it is correct to think that the idea that there is a larger number of players PK'ing vs skilling is most likely a fairly flawed one. You could try being less litteral when interpreting his post. And this is also the reason why I'd like your opinion on if the how the wilde has affected skilling, specifically your opinion on the concept that there is an increase in people PK'ing and a decrease in people skilling, or if you even have an opinion on this matter. Also, your last post is part of this pointless discussion I'd like to avoid, it is more of an argument based on how one even interprets the posts. If I interpret "there are more players PK'ing then skilling" to mean the number of PK'ers has gone up and the number of skillers/skilling has gone down, that ruins all the arguments you have made against there specifically being more people pk'ing then skilling. Your arugments against his post are based on the idea that his post was being extremely litteral.

Like most people said, most people who get hacked did something stupid resulting in it. I'm not particularly scared of being hacked. Although, I will admit to doing a few unsafe things in the past....even so, I don't think anyone could know my password short of virus/keylogger getting on my computer, which I can't see happening. Plus, I have a pretty strong password :D

Heh. It's too bad that you can't set whatever level you want after you reach 99 to lower your combat. (And to raise it up again you have to pay a high amount of ingame cash. And being able to do any of this would obviously be a member's feature.) If only that were a perk of maximizing a skill. There wouldn't be much call to bot for a stat reset then. Hmm, I forgot the mention the most important part, he did drag slayer before he got reset, so he had a rune plate. You could get all of that legitly though :unsure:

There is probably some truth to what you're saying, I only wanted to point out that you had just as much proof as the guy before you did. Everything is speculative unless it is backed up by some evidence, no matter how feasible it may seem. Hence why in my initial post I wrote "no solid numbers but by just going around the world and having a basic grapse of logical numbers you can see theres no realistic way at all tht "most" are pking/staking." Touché. However, you also seemed to disagree with his more basic theory, that the return of the wilde has caused an increase in people PK'ing and a decrease in people PK'ing, hence skilling materials go down. Rather then have a pointless 20 page debate on what you did/didn't mean, I'd like your next post to simply state your opinion on if/how the return of PK'ing/staking affected how much people are skilling now.

This is because most people are wanting to pk/duel using the new update, not skilling... :| This is because people make random assumptions that have no grounding what so ever in realistic statement or fact. At peak times most worlds are hitting around 1,800 mark. Averaging out across all the worlds you have like 100 pkers per world and 100 stakers per world (generous estimate but still) The equates to 200 pkers/stakers vs 1,600 people playing other content PER WORLD. Of that 1,600 you can prob right off a further 100 to merching/doing nothing Then of the remaining 1,400 probably about 400 go to minigames. And 500 each to skilling and general combat. Yes pkers and stakers make a lot of noise and it is popular; but of overall player population they are one of the smallest segments. no solid numbers but by just going around the world and having a basic grapse of logical numbers you can see theres no realistic way at all tht "most" are pking/staking. Looks to me like you just made those up, too. Are you basing the amount of pkers in a world on only those who are actually fighting? Or does that number include pkers that are stopping at the ge to re-up on supplies? How about pkers that are taking a break in Edge? You can call it logical, but you pulled those numbers out of your ass, exactly like the guy you quoted. They are rough estimates yes but all you gotta do is compare numbers in different areas and its clearly there's atleast twice as many people not pking or staking or at ge. It's a well known fact pkers make up a vocal but small slice of the rs community. Always have done always will. Just people seem to confuse noise for numbers. Eg you get say 50 threads on RSOF whining about an update ... "everyone" hates it; but what about the MILLIONS of people/accounts who said nothing? Pkers make a big fuss about their update etc all of a sudden pkers are the majority despite there being yet again millions of accounts saying nothing. Um, tbh, the "small but vocal minority" is pissed off people. Again, I see no reason to think you haven't pulled these numbers out of your ass. Another thing. Supposing that for every PK'er in the wilderness, there ARE two people skilling. Well, what wast he ratio before the update? Perhaps there were THREE people skilling for every one person PK'ing. Ignoring the return of ex-PK'ers in that made-up scenario, we know have a situation where a significantly larger proportion of players are skilling; however, the amount of players skilling has gone down. Ergo, less demand for skilling. It's quite logical to assume that with the wilde back, less players will want to skill and more will want to PK. The number or ratio of people doing PK'ing vs skilling is meaningless; what has meaning is the DIFFERENCE between the ratio of skilling/PK'ing last week vs today. (Although if you want to get picky and detailed it's a lot more complicated then that, considering returning players, and slayer/boss monsters don't really count as skilling so much...)