thejollyroger

I don't see how that's at all relevant. Why isn't it relevant? I mean, it is true: some will attempt to get around filters any way they can. We've probably got dozens upon hundreds of screenshots somewhere of censor evasion-- I know there's been a few sigs here as testament to that. Granted, I guess that's not sufficient proof to abandon filtering/censoring, but it does state that determined individuals will try to get around it. Sure, I like to have a few tools handy to me as a parent, but I don't rely on them too heavily. I had a paragraph here explaining the technical details of what I do, but I decided to gloss over that in interest of space, for now. I'll say "blacklisting by .hosts file" and leave it at that. So my baseline argument remains the same: I will take some basic tools, but otherwise I'm going to work hard to discuss things with my kids. I should come clean about my bias. I really did a double-take when Mark Gerhard came on board, because he was under 25. I freely admit that I have a lot of trouble taking anyone under 30 too seriously (opposite of my parents' generational mantra- don't trust anyone over 30). How many Jagex staff are parents? Some of this filter business really reeks of miltiant helicopter-parenting moms to me. I had a very short stint on the Tip Crew sorting incoming messages and I really hated the ones that read something like "Dear Jagex, unban my son's account." (Some could have been forged, but... I doubt that was often the case.) I know Jagex has written up a few articles addressed to parents, but I have difficulty taking any of it very seriously. They could use a major PR overhaul in that department, with clear boundary lines of where they stand, what they do... and what they will NOT do. They've been half-hearted about this for rather too long, IMO. I've revised all this numerous times for length... if y'all decide you gotta ignore it all because it's not bite-sized, well... I tried. I wish some of the other parents (if they are still around) would say something.

^This, that is, I would that Jagex kept separate filters. They already do, or did have a separate filter for usernames that was stronger than the chat one. The basic chat filter as I've seen it is pretty limited. It seems to be based on string values, i.e. it parses for strings of letters. I found that very frustrating if I happened to use a certain letter combination that Jagex was filtering. It'd be within perfectly clean and legitimate words, but because that letter combination came up, the filter would engage. So understand, I'm concerned about Jagex's track record on the filter. I really do think that swearing and such should be left to the community to regulate as they desire-- I know some fc/cc's already do.

I'm surprised no one picked up the ball and ran on this point alone, but so many are still splitting hairs on the example I did not include here, up to the replies before me. Cliff's Notes version for those whose eyes glazed over on my earlier lengthy reply: if I find out this ChatWatch filter applied to PMs was on account of uptight parents who aren't doing a very good job teaching their kids about swears... I'm going to be seriously pissed off. I already said I give my 11-yr old daughter (not my son just yet, but then he's 6 and has autism) a lot more credit than that. I could be wrong and it may have been done mostly to combat RWT'ers (if Blyaunte's indications are valid), but even then, swatting a fly with a sledgehammer approach. Only serves to push things further underground.

Sorry to break the flow of your convo, guys... proceed but I'll be on a slightly different tangent. I'm a parent, and my bet is that militant helicopter-parenting style moms squealed like piggies to Jagex again. Some people have just got to ruin it for others. I had the swear talk with my daughter-- she chooses not to swear although I wouldn't have a problem with her using certain words as their meaning implies, not gratuitously for interjection's sake... by gratuitously, I mean, uses them like four-color Golden Age comic books uses exclamation points for every sentence without a period in site. Or someone that's like REALLY HAPPY!!!!! on FACEBOOK!!!! Anyways, I know she encounters plenty of words that are considered profane or offensive, and I choose to have her deal with it appropriately instead of trying to shield her. Better, I think, to empower her now than to try to suppress and see some sort of rebellious backlash. (She is fascinated with Runescape and will watch me play, but she's 11 and I'd like her to wait at least until she's 13 before she creates an account, to at least be covered by COPA on principle.) I have the filter off, personally, but I think the only person it applies for is a player moderator already and he knows I'm not going to have convulsions about a swear word here and there, mostly because I'd be a damned hypocrite if I did (because I use colorful words now and then, too). But, I'm also horridly anti-social and I choose to have most of my Chat filters set to Friends. I'm really not interested in the blather of random players, and I generally don't talk to anyone I haven't been introduced to by someone I know, or isn't part of a community I am currently interacting with. And if I am to believe the others... I am just generally not interested in talking about RWT or gambling anyways. Doesn't mean I don't have an opinion on RWT, or that I don't play games of chance, but... I don't know. I don't expect that this will effect me but I will be pretty pissed off if it does for some bizarre reason.

I don't agree with your choice of words. It may convey your emotional disgust and revulsion about how it was implemented, but I read nothing it in that conveys a more logical dissatisfaction, i.e., what you found wrong or incorrect about it. If you had said "It's a cluster****", I would have said, "Fair enough, they hastily crammed some leftovers from a failed project, and shoved it into the game at odd and awkward angles without any lube." To say "Dungeoneering is an abortion" says to me that you were going for shock and word bomb value. It's not terribly articulate or precise, IMO. No, I would reserve "abortion" for the Squeal of Fortune, or at least "dungpile". Jagex came up with a concept, squatted down, and expelled it out. The items aren't worthless, but I find that whole wheel interface lazy, half-baked, and a stinking example of sloppy development (yes, I think it's sloppy design, sloppy code, etc.). In some ways it replaced Random Events but at least that wasn't such a farted afterthought, and the cleanup was decent (NPCs and monsters were folded nicely into various spots in the game-- Sandwich Lady at one of the Ardougne Square bakery stalls is one of my faves). Personally, I wish they'd go back to that sort of instanced implementation and shove the cosmetic items over to Solomon's, where they really belong. 'cept for that stupid Yelps hat... last person I saw wearing it looked like Willy Wonka on crack... perfect matching suit and everything. Well, Player Owned Houses had been anticipated almost as long as the game had been out, i.e. this was an original Andrew Gower idea. I believe it was the extra houses in Falador were originally intended to be POHs, if I remember right... there should be some documentation of this in archives of the Rune Tips website, or something like that. Um, and from what I remember from old RS1/RSC screenshots, the skill was originally called "Carpentry" (it was gone, I think, by the time I started in 2003). By the time Construction did come out, well, that was a rare time, I guess, that Jagex more or less met expectations, however much they had been building all that while. I'd also say that we still had plenty of the organization-management players at that time that ate it up, which I believe EoC has largely scared off. I mean, really now, a majority of players, especially here, talk a lot more about combat than rating banks and that old-school organization stuff. Back on topic: Yes, I'm biased, but I rather liked "Abundant Pixelated Characters"... I agree that Meg is a sly parody of the newb player in RS.

There was an articulate post on the RSOF (surprise, surprise!) some time back that more or less suggested this very idea. My experience is that if an idea kicks around long enough, Jagex eventually implements it. Some take longer than others-- perhaps you remember the petition here about reorganizing the bank interface-- and with new promised updates just on that recently, I expect a few players may grumble "too little, too late". We know from the god emissaries lore that [spoiler=there's room for more Daemonheim resources to leak out]Moia meets Zamorak but I think for purposes of discouraging bot abuse, they are more likely to make it accessible as an extension of Sinkholes.

Fly fishing was a powertraining method for a long time since RS1/Classic, I think until Barbarian Rod fishing came along. It could be an alternate fly fishing method, but... have you ever cast a fly reel in real life? Simulating fly fishing a bit more, with timing the casts and releasing the fish each catch would not just be realistic, it'd also probably be the only practical way to keep it a viable powertraining method without encouraging bots. I doubt very much that could be done as AFK-able training, but probably something that would require steady input. Simply put: I like this idea, and Jagex has done plenty of ideas that Tip.It members scoffed hard at initially: a bank in the Cooking Guild, Sawmill training, craftable Mage robes, and others I'm probably forgetting.

I was lost a long time ago, man. I suppose I'm biased. C'mon, y'all know the story, right? Short version: I started RS in 2003 after my undergrad studies and career plans went to shambles. I'm on disability, and I have a little bit of extra time on my hands, although I do need to make time for my kids with special needs, homesteading chores (IRLfarming, IRLconstruction) and otherwise being a parent who owns a home. Y'all know that my situation is not unusual but that I communicate with you a lot more than many others do. (Many of them, I found, save e-drama for a private "adult" community/clan.) Anyways, I've been fairly consistent with my membership since 2003 and I still am grandfathered for the 5US$/month rate still. I also like Solomon's very much and spent a little here and there for something amusing. I don't have as much disposable income as some my age due to fixed income, but I like using the Loyalty Programme myself. I would imagine others might agree. I met a few "honorable" PKers, but the vast majority of the ones I came in contact with were trash-talking hotheads. I'm not sorry PvP took a hit in the least little bit. Can't really have more than 2 goals in your life at a time. Otherwise you get very little accomplished due to lack of focus. Besides, 1-2 hours a day isn't really enough to keep up with the game and its community these days. I think since even casual gaming has changed and RS has grown enough that Jagex is competing with mainstream MMOs, the time investment has grown. I can't tease my WoW-playing friends as much as I used to, although I still think Runescape is easier to pick up and put down quickly-- and I must, given how my children are too smart for their own good and don't take much time to get into trouble. May I virtually shake your hand? It's always a pleasure to meet someone cheerful that's come to the game about the same time as I did. Well the RS version of chakram (Toktz-xil-ul) never really took off, and that's the closest equivalent, albeit it was set up as an expendable thrown weapon. Not sure how they'd do a ranged weapon that returned immediately to your hand-- it'd be like a halberd with a slightly farther reach. Nor how they'd justify it-- I would say they'd probably make it degradable, so it's like a crystal or Zaryte bow. Okay, actually, they could do it. They could. It might be more of a challenge to animate right, but I think they could. Let's see if they do. They might, because they've taken ideas here (bank in the Cooking Guild among many others) and implemented them.

At the risk of drifting oft-topic, to play devil's advocate on black salamanders: I used to avoid melee-- absolutely got burnt out on it. Used darts a lot, and then used black salamanders on almost everything. I eventually found melee weapons that amused me again, but then this was before the EoC. And I was pretty disappointed on how the salamander was changed. It used to be a close-quarter range weapon, which could be used for melee, ranged, or magic, depending on attack style. The melee option was comparatively weak, as you may remember, but it was indispensable at Barrows, as you could attack Brothers on the diagonal when bound or frozen. Now salamanders are basically generic bolt weapons. Still, I guess they are reasonable overall. The stats now are comparable to Karil's crossbow (original 2H). They don't deal as much damage as hand cannons, but still, harralander tar remains cheaper than hand cannon shot or bolt racks. Back on topic: If you don't detest the SoF completely and think you might have a shot at the Slayer masks, that'd be my only other thought/suggestion. Most of the corresponding monsters have an option to kill with melee effectively. I have one for crawling hands, and I use it whenever I've had a task I somewhat detested (more so if I spent points to cancel) or just want to melee some more. I usually head for Meyerditch Labs and smack zombie/skeletal hands. Sure, I could do a lot better back with Kuradal, but it's a decent diversion and as long as I talk to Chaldear, the task is sufficiently long.

I have said this over and over lately: Jagex has got too much Catholic on the brain. The "One Piercing Note" quest felt painfully Anglican to me in particular. Other elements of the game reminded me of what little I had learned concerning British neopaganism and current atheistic sentiments. Maybe this is a British thing, because I intend no disrespect to my Catholic, pagan, atheist and agnostic friends. I mean more to say that I wish Jagex would lighten it up a little, to allow the player community to interpret things, and not push boring political and religious stereotypes. back on immediate topic-- yes, I'm loving the exquisite spear and may well purchase a keepsake box to have it be a part of my islander look.

Not to mention it reopens the old "F2P needs more updates" discussion (e.g. threads as such) that drove many of us who used to moderate here batty. I was hoping that got put to bed, but it seems to be sleepwalking, now... As for Alg's article on emissaries-- well, I'm stoked, but I freely admit to being a quest freak, and I am excited purely on the additions to the RS lore.

I think that's intentional. Players who have completed certain levels of the Desert Achievement Tasks can already get several noted potato cacti from the Weird Old Man on a daily basis. To use another quick example: the pure rune essence rewards from Daily Challenges and Rune Memories (Archmage Sedrior's chest of rune ess, which is dependent on RC level) flooded the game, and I think that was to destroy any incentives to bot farm them, by decimating their market value. I think we might see more of this from Jagex, where they make it easier to get certain raw mats from gameplay than to buy as a bot-riddled commodity.

I'd like to combine all these ideas. Go ahead, keep some Slayer monsters about where they are now, but I suggest that Jagex expand on more boss-type monsters for those categories. We have some examples now, as KBD, QBD, and Zamorak GWD bosses can correspond to slayer tasks, but it would be nice to see more, and not just higher level versions like at the smoky well in Pollinveach. It could be done somewhat like hard version GWD, where drop probability is better than the weaker versions. This way, players can either choose for greater risk, better drops, but slightly less slayer XP/hr, or vice versa, as it is about now. This was something I was discussing with a friend, to make skills have some value again. One of them was to allow raw mats to repair degradable items, and to have more of them. The challenge is to avoid bots getting a hold of them, so we may need instanced areas, more especially as minigames like Manage Thy Kingdom or Player Owned Ports. But I'm not terribly hopeful, either. Jagex seems to have abandoned their management, puzzle, RTS and other playing style efforts to pursue the traditional MMO crowd more aggressively, which I think means they'll still work EOC hard before even thinking about other modes of play. Yeah, Jagex took some game ideas, but didn't spread them very wide. Barrows armor, godswords, and upgradeable weapons/armor are generally confined to one minigame or boss area. I also seem to remember something about a set effect for all the Achievement Task gear... what happened to that? Yeah, there's no strong incentive to use skills against bosses. There's Troll Invasion, but that's single player. It's a great idea, but I worry about a concept like this at Barbarian Assault: already too many players struggle with the tasks right there now. I mastered all roles and grabbed a full Penance set, and I remember too many players that hosed me (especially when I was Defending) because they just wouldn't call on the horn consistently. They'd have to alter the pace or otherwise educate players on the gameplay better.

I appreciate the clarification. I should have made (and am making now) the disclaimer that I wasn't a member until after the RS2 beta. I'm just going by memory, mostly from material that was hosted at the website side of Tip.It. I specifically remember guides that said training Agility was rather frustrating, and if it was tied to XP gains, that makes much more sense. In fact, now that I think about it, the 100% fatigue error message was "You're too tired to do any more, you should rest!" or something like that. I looked things up again and I should have remembered that Fatigue and Sleep were specifically anti-botting measures that were later superceded (the captcha of sorts wasn't very effective). I also did see that specific formulas and rates for fatigue are still documented (http://runescapeclas...om/wiki/Fatigue) It was Gnome cuisine (by way of "Gnome cooking", of course) that reduced fatigue, from what I remember. Had to dig through the Internet Archives (Wayback Machine) for this one, back here at Tip.It: the restore was 2-4% (http://wayback.archi...?page=gnome.htm) So... again, my vote is leaning towards Energy.

This is what we had before Run Energy, or rather, this is what RS1/RSC still has. Fatigue was somehow tied to Agility; a higher Agility level meant Fatigue didn't build up to 100% as quickly. Yeah, it was a cumulative system, too. Maybe enough time has passed that most players have no memory of that, but for those that do... it could be slightly confusing. I'd be so amused if we got beds and sleeping bags back. Energy Transfer could return to the Lunar spellbook with this wording; it's straightforward. The potions, however, are trickier, because then we'd have to distinguish what replenished Run Energy (i.e. what's now Energy and Super Energy potions), and what replenished the Energy Bar (what's called Adrenaline potions now, but what used to be Recover special potions). Unless Run Energy and the Energy Bar were unified, we'd run into some confusion, I think.

It's certainly solve a loose end that Jagex has left flapping at Livid Farm, with the Pauline and Suqah event. Although Jagex removed Energy Transfer from the Lunar spellbook, the spell technically exists for that instance. Besides swapping out Special Attack energy for Adrenaline energy, the code remains more or less EXACTLY the same: you need 50% of the bar. That was easy enough when that bar was indeed 100% by default, but is now very difficult with the default at 0% now, and you have to interrupt a primarily non-combat minigame to do combat (Adrenaline potions alone are not enough). But how do you propose that Abilities be adjusted? With a default at 100%, it's not technically as much of a drain as it is an energy cost. How would it be modified so that players don't use what's now an Ultimate Ability straight off the bat? In PvP situations, that would surely be abused if that were the case. I also think that this would be treated somewhat more like the way Run Energy is now, although I recall some mention in an official vid that they want to move away from that. I think Herblore potions would come much more into play, for one. "Adrenaline" would cease to be a descriptive word for the bar... I'm thinking more like "Mana". (I say that even as I know that would draw more comparisons to WoW.)

@Arceus, "So I heard you liek eventz": Fascinating ideas. I'm fairly sure that many in the clans I was a part of would especially like this idea of an event notification system. This wouldn't replace reminders clans use on their own forums/sites outside the RSOF, but it would simplify the process of getting clan members together (someone ALWAYS asks questions before an event starts). I agree it would GREATLY help with time zone differences. Personally, I think this would be integrated more to Citadels than the message screen, but... it's a great idea and I do hope it will come in a future update.

@TheFloatingPen, "Fantasy vs. Reality, Part II" I did enjoy this series. I especially appreciated some hope that Jagex's plans would encourage more community imagination. I agree it's a tricky balance, however: if things get overdone, or Jagex's efforts get heavy-handed, the community seems to retreat more than embrace. Thank you also for integrating the feedback we had on Part I. @Dracae, "Stretch!" Hmmm. When I played the game, I took great pleasure in discovering every means of travel I could unlock. But I remember distinctly some attitudes with the idea that once the lodestones came along, there was little need for anything for anything else. Stretching the map is an interesting idea, but personally, I'd like to see more underwater content beyond Port Khazard, Harmony Island, Braindeath Island, and Dragontooth Island. It came to mind when V O R K said the following: No, we don't have anything that can let us run even 2X, but we do have one thing and that's the Karamja monkey greegree that multiplies speed 1.5X. Now, that's only on Ape Atoll, really but I wondered a long while back why that was the only thing that increased speed: why don't mudskipper flippers (from Mogre drops) increase your speed underwater? I realized at the time that underwater adventures were still an afterthought, and it seems more so post-EOC. Jagex would need something more impressive than the diving gear, the brine sabre, and the brackish blade (more so since the special attack structure was abandoned). I really do think this would be the way to go-- to take content off land and back into the sea. If they did it right, it could generate some real interest with players, I think. I would imagine it could go right along with new Pirate-themed content as it did before.

*applause* Good for you, sport! You figured it out. Here's a cookie. You see how the quick and seductive path can get people's attention pretty fast, and not in a good way. You really haven't been paying attention to the majority of my posts, however; you singled out one post. Perhaps your eyes were just glazed over at the length of most of them. I get that a lot.

What a clusterf***. I was really hoping to read some observations on how boosts from Herblore potions meant more again, but no, the EoC soap opera continues, with players continuing to [bleep] and whine and split hairs on how weapons and armors did or didn't get the all-mighty Nerf hammer. Glorious comments so far on realism... please. This right after the underwhelming response on the Times articles, but I don't expect anyone to get creative roleplaying either, especially as Alg called it a "punishment" assignment. Oh gee. Kudos if you can wade through my explanation-- I formatted it hard although I admit the gist can't be gleaned at a glance. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised; the arrogance of this community here continues although the intellect seems better than the RSOF typically has, maybe because fansites seem better at weeding out punkmouthed little brats. Still, I'm amazed at what can pass for arguments around here, and so much short-lived memory on its own player history, really. Would not be surprised at all if the non-combat skiller types went to "Old School" and are slowly fading away. Keep dissing Jagex, y'all, as I doubt most of you could ever do better to code it yourself. I appreciate some of you understand the technical specs and code but it gets precious little mention past talk of the HTML5 switchover. The only reason I keep hanging around is I think Tip still has potential, despite so many reminders seeming to the contrary. The world does not revolve around players aged 18-25... granted, most players my age don't say very much at all. (They [bleep] to themselves. Remember that.)

I'm going to guess unfamiliarity with the scene, yeah? The two articles, I think, are interconnected. I'll let Alg speak for himself, but the way I understand it, the second article is his report of observing RS users roleplaying, presumably on world 42 and at a specific location: The Blue Moon Inn at Varrock. I said the articles were "interconnected"; maybe the reports would have made better sense if they were fully written in that roleplaying style. But still, it's hard to understand what prose-based/freeform online play is about if you don't have an idea of the setup. This sort of gaming, I'm told, comes from writer's circles and contexts. It's considered "soft" roleplay-- as emphasis is put on telling a story (challenging a player-character concept)-- rather than playing the mechanics (challenge the player, or "hard" roleplay). This playing style comes from very different origins than the wargaming tradition. Wargaming? Yeah, wargaming. The tradition grew out of expansions on board games. Think Risk, battlefield diorama setups (Warhammer, with the figurines, is a modern example), and D&D with pen, paper, and funny-looking dice. I said writer's circles: so prose-based/freeform online includes fan fiction, slash, yaoi, and the like. The subset communities include anime/manga and furries, and roleplay is more often done over forums, blogs (LiveJournal especially), and such. To quote Alg, it's a "a metagame built around storytelling rather than experience". The players make up their stories to influence the game more than they rely on mechanics to determine the outcome. The give/take of interactions is much more free. I'm making a "quick and dirty" comparison, really: prose-based/freeform online tends to skew more female (fangirls), and wargaming tends to skew more male (fanboys). This is not cut and dried by any means as much of my IRL family does both. The comparisons are a little easier when they're presented in their older contexts, I mean tables, pieces, paper, etc. Gets more confusing in video games-- where the default is much more wargaming tradition, typically. And I say "graphical" video games: if you look at the forerunner of MMOs-- text-based MUD type games, you do sometimes see more writer's inputs (storytelling) with character backgrounds and the like. It also seemed to me that players tended to put in more storytelling when the game was more text than graphics. They hard to work harder to provide some fantasy flavor, I guess. Bored yet? Stay with me. See, The Floating Pen's article has another layer of depth if you ask, "How much do players create their fantasy, and how much do they stick to reality?" It's one thing if you just assume the game developers present all the fantasy. Such is relatively easy in single-player type games as more of the structure is fixed. Not so easy in MMORPGs, which are meant to be played over and over again. I'll cut it short here lest I go on and on. I'm actually surprised there's prose-based roleplay in Runescape, but I've said numerous times that Jagex is accomodating a lot of playing styles. I'd also say with the EoC that Jagex is trying harder to court the more traditional crowd that feeds from the wargaming tradition. I'd also say (AGAIN) that the persistence of these roleplayers shows some health for the RS community as a whole. Oh, and I still miss the Order of Cabbage. I consider the OoC to be a part of the "roleplayer" tradition: for players to take things, even if it's not for what would be considered a "story", and create their own experience that has fairly little to do with XP, quests, minigames, etc. I appreciate Alg for giving us a glimpse of how RS roleplayers do things, but I hope there will be more informative articles on that subject.

I remember when charm sprites were first introduced-- it was explained that they were designed to be a non-combat way to gain Summoning charms. So I'm completely bewildered when players say "this combat method is faster"... NO. This was a concession to those players that didn't want to engage in combat to get them. By the same token, it was never presented as a prime method of training hunter, so expecting such with an update doesn't really follow, either.

Thank you-- that explains a lot for me for what I can understand easily when watching Latin American media. I would be guessing they'll also use that if they do voice acting, yes? I haven't been able to check out the in-game content yet because my box is running Linux, and the Java browser plug-in is disabled (haven't tried getting around that-- Chrome doesn't seem to like the open source version). The client launcher for HikariKnight's implementation of the client doesn't load the homepage that has the drop down language menu, so it's currently impossible to access those servers unless I go in and change that part of the script manually (which is what we did for a time for the EoC beta). So for now I pestered my wife to have a look at it... I'll see how that goes.

Spanish is my second language, not first, but I fully expected odd, awkward translations. I've never really met any Brits in or out of the game that had any knowledge of Hispanic language or culture. I was thinking they'd go with Castillian at first, but then I noticed a RSOF thread measuring interest for this sort of server, and the responses were clearly from Latin Americans. That said, however, unless they've recruited more employees from the Americas (I say "Americas" because I'm referring to anyone speaking Spanish in North and South America), I say I'm not surprised they're still fumbling. The only other thing is that Spanish is not completely the same throughout the Americas, either. I don't exactly have a lot of faith in Jagex to choose what might be considered "standard" Latin American Spanish... or what the majority of their Spanish-speaking players will agree on. We'll see, right? Right now I'm looking at the website and the wiki in Spanish... my translation skills aren't that good by comparison, but it seems so clunky.

Oh yeah. I was wondering myself if it would affect clues that led to the Arena. Apparently, yes, it did. If you haven't already kegs, send a note to the Crew by way of the website. Much easier for them to get a direct message than for them to glean it from the forums.