Tip.It Times: 1 Mar 2009 - NEW ARTICLE ADDED

[P_E_N_N_Y]

Wow, chaosfox just saved me about 10 minutes of typing =P

 

 

 

Although multiplayer content is nice, it should always be strictly optional, i'm sure everyone has heard more people complaining about those parts of heroes and shield of arrav than praising them,

 

 

 

I've played since classic also, but the limit of 200 friends has always been enough for me as i would imagine it would be for the majority of players, although asking for an increase after all these years isn't unreasonable but 700? seriously? unless you're part of a clan or something no average person would ever have anything close to that many acquaintances in the game

 

 

 

The main point i wanted to expand on though was about being discouraged from taking a friendship outside RS... i know first-hand how dangerous it can be, it's so easy to be deceived online no matter how much you think yourself as a great judge of character - i went to america to meet a family who i met via RS and they were some of the most wonderful people i've ever met, i also met someone not so great and ended up in a LOT of trouble... since it's easy enough to give out some of your details the message i believe jagex is trying to give is that it's nothing whatsoever to do with them, which is quite right

[bighairyball]

To the Going Solo article: I will admit that of all the friends I have made over the years on Runescape, NONE of them still play. So when I play Runescape, I'm playing it because I feel like playing it, not because one of my friends needs me to help them. I am not bashing on those that do that but I am just saying. So if Runescape became group oriented I would most likely quit (which is sad because I have played since August of 2001). And just to show how solo oriented I have become let me say that I have never been to GWD or Dag Kings. Greatly written though.

[Randox]

Group questing is only good as an option. Shield of Arrav was the last f2p quest I completed. Altimately, I did the quest solo. I had helped a friend do the quest yet could never claim the reward, so I finaly found a work around allowing me to do the entire quest. This was all back in the day when a f2p'er could have a bank space account, in other words long before the RWT updates.

 

 

 

When I got members, I was eligible to do Heroes in about a month. It took 4 months before multiple friends and a competiton cajoled me to even try. Why? Because by now I had unhealthy disdain for the average player, and all my friends had done the quest already (except one whom I competed against who is also black arm like me). 4 months later I decided to try, so without a friend I did all teh quest that I could. I then logged into a questing world and was lucky enough to meet a pheonix member who had already done the quest to help me out. Heoros was a more dreaded quest than Legends. What does that say on my opinion of group questing?

 

 

 

I do like going to ape atoll on w100, and for my own purposes of questing vicariously through others, have helped several people complete that quest. I normally avoid doing tunnel escorts, I just act as a city guide.

[Witherslick]

I liked It and I agree

[Nytestryke24]

The group thing is an interesting phenomenon, but I do believe that if you want to do stuff with your friends then there are plenty of ways : Also, I think that the amount of cutscenes is a good thing :D

 

 

 

ForsakenMage- Awesome story, a bit sad that it's finished now :( Write more NAO PL0X! :D

[mister_moocky]

The first article was pointless. He never explained why player interaction is apparently going down hill. Bounty hunter is gone TEMPORARILY. The 'interaction' of trades was nothing more then a generic "ty/np". There are plently of quests you can do with friends... hell, we even have a dedicated group questing world. If you want to do something with a friend, ask them. I don't see what the problem is.

[mervinator_9]

Not sure I agree with the going solo article, while group questing is no doubt fun, I think that the the shift in game play to segragate players from each other during quests is to designed to build suspense and increase how involved you are in the story.

 

 

 

Personal I would have ruined it for me if as I completed WGS there was some random guy standing next to me. The idea was that you where the first person to see the stone in years and if anither person (even a friend) was standing next to me it would have ruined the moment imo, but I guess im one of the type of people to get deeply involved in questlines which I understand doesnt interest everyone.

 

The quests such as The sheild of arrav and the heroes quests make sense to have other players involved. Its a good way of doing things and gets players to make friendships (regardless of how short term) as there put into the context of being told you need help during the quest.

 

 

 

When i still had a large group of friends in game the best ways I found to interact where the minigames and just general hanging around. Most of my friends thought questing was an inconvenice and only group quested when they were stuck.

[Kidd_Varrow]

 

 

 

Edit: That was a great DYK tip and I can't believe I didn't know that! Thanks!

 

 

 

i think it was part of the last update =P~

 

 

 

Yep. You can also now store a scarecrow with the tool leprechauns.

[John Halo Chief]

Every so often people mention a console version of RuneScape. If the game was overhauled graphical wise, It wouldn't be so far fetched to picture mini-games as online content similar to a round of a shooter online like gears of war with random people. The majority of new quests force you into a single-player standpoint. Think of quests as your campaign and your mini-games as your online content. I mean in all honesty, no mini-game has ever came close to being as fun as the card game in Final Fantasy 8. I didn't have to go online for that. It's very plausible RuneScape could be ported to be single-player.

 

 

 

 

 

Correction: I believe u mean FF9, but i never played 8. 9 was the one with the monkey tail dude and the mage without a face.

[Kidd_Varrow]

Every so often people mention a console version of RuneScape. If the game was overhauled graphical wise, It wouldn't be so far fetched to picture mini-games as online content similar to a round of a shooter online like gears of war with random people. The majority of new quests force you into a single-player standpoint. Think of quests as your campaign and your mini-games as your online content. I mean in all honesty, no mini-game has ever came close to being as fun as the card game in Final Fantasy 8. I didn't have to go online for that. It's very plausible RuneScape could be ported to be single-player.

 

 

 

 

 

Correction: I believe u mean FF9, but i never played 8. 9 was the one with the monkey tail dude and the mage without a face.

 

 

 

FF8 had a card game too, which imo was a lot more fun than the card game in FF9.

[gronk53]

I wouldnt play rs if it was more group orientated of course i am an old curmudgeon and just like to tease but seriously the thought of even 100 friends gives me a headache I used to have a full friends list but couldnt play the game for all the people wanting this help that and the other thing My daughter has been trying to get me to come over to wow but one of the things i dont like is to many things require being in a guild I have tried a couple of clans but the rules drove me bonkers. Be here then wear this armor be at this pkn event even tho as an rcr i hated pkrs so solo I is and is gonna stay

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

old fat and bald wasnt on any of the lists of what i wanted to be when i grew up :o

[Zaaps1]

 

Correction: I believe u mean FF9, but i never played 8. 9 was the one with the monkey tail dude and the mage without a face.

 

 

 

That guy freaked me out.

 

 

 

What I don't think the author realized is that 20 people killing the Balance Elemental (and probably only 4 of which are smart enough to move out of the immediate area of the Stone of Jas) would be very...inconvenient. It's there for a reason. Sure you can't do kill it with a buddy, but does it matter? Quests are such a small fraction of the game. You can still skill with whomever you like, most minigames you can be with whomever you like (although maybe not necessarily on the same team), and you can do MOST quest with whomever you like. Not to mention all the little things in runescape like Clues.

[Necromagus]

I'd just like to apologize for the late inclusion of my article. This was entirely my fault and Nic is not to blame.

[Gandorf61]

I'd just like to apologize for the late inclusion of my article. This was entirely my fault and Nic is not to blame.

 

 

 

Ahah penguins! Great article. Reminds me of when I do my weekly penguin hunting.

[jonnybeeking]

THAT was a very nice issue of Tip.It Times =D> .

 

I appreciated the opinion of the writer of GOING SOLO; there is a time for everything under the sun, a time be with friends, and a time to be solo. I find RS to be full of both. Questing perhaps is geared toward going it solo, but when you spend any time skilling you see many making friends if not on a temporary case, they at time end up working in other areas too. It is nice to have a choice.

 

ForsakenMage :thumbup: thank you for the nice story and ending it in a positive way, had me scared :o there for a second. But what a great finish.

 

 

 

And who can resist a good ol' fashion codbreathed penguin hunt. :twisted: :twisted: whoop! whoop!

[Aslan]

Although I enjoy the company of people I sometimes just want to be alone.I enter the CC and just talk to the people there, I still "am solo" but in the same time I'm in a group of people.There is still interaction,doesn't matter if there are quests that require assistance from soneone.

[loqk]

one of the things runescape does well over other games is to be instantly discardable.

 

 

 

Other games such as world of warcraft require you by their nature to find a large group of people and quest with them. if you leave the group, they are a person down and it is close to a betrayal if you need to leave to eat, sleep or poop.

 

 

 

runescape is designed so that at almost any point, you can leave to do something else with no negative consequences. even quests that ask you to do something immediately really don't mind if you forget about them for a year. this is much better than many other games that give you 10 minutes to complete a quest, and if you lag out for 5 minutes, you fail the quest.

 

 

 

the game is good focussed on the single player experience, but i agree that having your friends able to join you in these single player activities is a great thing and the heart of mmogs.

 

 

 

the ability to drop out at a moments notice without negatively affecting your friends is one of the great strengths of runescape.

[loqk]

oh, and on the topic of memory space for player profiles:

 

 

 

i am an experienced programmer and have a good understanding of what exactly is required for each user account.

 

 

 

each user account is a small database entry using 1 bit (1/8th of a byte for most of our recorded selections (most likely for most of our quest completions too)

 

 

 

it also has a reasonably large entry recording the number of items of each typy in our banks and inventories. each of these entries is probably 3 numbers, one records the bank space number, one records the item type, one records the number of items.

 

 

 

so far you have a record that you could probably print out in numbers on a single A4 sized page; a nothing compared to the space on your hard drive.

 

 

 

the problem is that each account is unique.

 

 

 

whereas each picture of each item and each landscape layout is sent to all players identically and uses up a fixed amount of space, each time you add a new player, you add to the space required for the player database.

 

 

 

each time you add a new feature, you have to add it for every person, so you multiply your storage requirements.

 

 

 

this means that once they know their storage requirements, and determine the player file size, adding new players isn't too much hassle, but adding a single yes/no selection can swamp their hard drives.

 

 

 

for example, if each player entry takes up one kilobite and we have 1 million players, that's 1 million kilobite , or 1 gigabyte. each new player takes up 1 new kilobyte, so a 20 gigabyte drive will hold 20 million players.

 

 

 

if we add 1 byte to the player file, that's 1 byte to every player file and thus potentially an extra 20 megabytes of storage. this means you can hold about 20,000 less potential players.

 

 

 

all because of a tiny change.

 

 

 

to add an extra bank space you are looking at about 12 bytes of space or 250,000 fewer players for your one bank space. since bank spaces are added in rows of 8, that's 2 million less players for one extra row of bank space.

 

 

 

these numbers are made up, but representative. if runescape adds a few extra switches to your menus, it is nice for you, but it has potentially cost them millions of players.

 

 

 

this is countered by getting bigger hard drives, but the hard drives cost more money.

 

 

 

so next time you think you must have an extra feature, or must have more bank space, remember that it costs them money to do so, and it is you who ultimately pay that money :-)

 

 

 

ps. some more bank space would be nice, i ran out again :-P

[P_E_N_N_Y]

oh, and on the topic of memory space for player profiles:

 

 

 

i am an experienced programmer and have a good understanding of what exactly is required for each user account.

 

 

 

each user account is a small database entry using 1 bit (1/8th of a byte for most of our recorded selections (most likely for most of our quest completions too)

 

 

 

it also has a reasonably large entry recording the number of items of each typy in our banks and inventories. each of these entries is probably 3 numbers, one records the bank space number, one records the item type, one records the number of items.

 

 

 

so far you have a record that you could probably print out in numbers on a single A4 sized page; a nothing compared to the space on your hard drive.

 

 

 

the problem is that each account is unique.

 

 

 

whereas each picture of each item and each landscape layout is sent to all players identically and uses up a fixed amount of space, each time you add a new player, you add to the space required for the player database.

 

 

 

each time you add a new feature, you have to add it for every person, so you multiply your storage requirements.

 

 

 

this means that once they know their storage requirements, and determine the player file size, adding new players isn't too much hassle, but adding a single yes/no selection can swamp their hard drives.

 

 

 

for example, if each player entry takes up one kilobite and we have 1 million players, that's 1 million kilobite , or 1 gigabyte. each new player takes up 1 new kilobyte, so a 20 gigabyte drive will hold 20 million players.

 

 

 

if we add 1 byte to the player file, that's 1 byte to every player file and thus potentially an extra 20 megabytes of storage. this means you can hold about 20,000 less potential players.

 

 

 

all because of a tiny change.

 

 

 

to add an extra bank space you are looking at about 12 bytes of space or 250,000 fewer players for your one bank space. since bank spaces are added in rows of 8, that's 2 million less players for one extra row of bank space.

 

 

 

these numbers are made up, but representative. if runescape adds a few extra switches to your menus, it is nice for you, but it has potentially cost them millions of players.

 

 

 

this is countered by getting bigger hard drives, but the hard drives cost more money.

 

 

 

so next time you think you must have an extra feature, or must have more bank space, remember that it costs them money to do so, and it is you who ultimately pay that money :-)

 

 

 

ps. some more bank space would be nice, i ran out again :-P

 

 

 

That's very interesting, i never thought of it like that - but a 20GB hard drive for a multi-million international company, even a Terabyte drive... that's really not that expensive is it? lol

[Killiecrankie]

Re: Going Solo

 

Sorry but I hold the opposite point of view. There are loads of mini-games where team (or friend) activity is vital, quests should be achievable for a solo player. That quest (was it "Shades Of Mort'ton"?) was easily within my compass yet I could *never* complete it as a solo player. It took the introduction of a dedicated world when I happily found a bunch of total strangers (not a single word spoken to me) to rebuild that darned temple.

 

Likewise with "Heroes" it was pure chance I was standing in a place where a forlorn voice (of the right clan) was seeking assistance. RS for me is not a social club, it is a pleasant distraction for someone who is (I would imagine) easily twice as old as the average player, possibly three times as old as some. I have no problem in helping out a new player with quests if politely asked, but it should not be IMHO a requirement. Nor should it be a requirement for myself to seek such assistance. I *pay* to play this game, not to seek out some 'social network.'

[SwreeTak]

My response is to the first article in the list; The one about RS being a Solo game.

 

I don't really agree with you that RS is becomming a more Single-player game than it was before. It's still a MMORPG and will most probably stay so until it's Game Over. The fact that this game is so big makes it possible to choose whatever you want to play it alone or not. It's not the content within the game that has made more players play it alone, I think, but their (The player's) own choices. They have choosen this by a lot of different reason. The most have however probably chosed to play the game this way because they want to concentrate on the skilling and the questing and don't want to adjust to a lot of other people all the time.

 

Even though I have got a lot of friends I'm mostly a Solo player. I'm this because I think that it is nice to concentrate on whatever I want to do, when I want to do it. Freedom, simply said.

 

The game is open for you to chose if you want to play alone or with a couple of friends, and that's also what makes it so good. This is according to me one of the best properties of RuneScape and one of the reasons to why I love it as much as I do.

 

Instead of ranting on this we should be happy that we're free to choose how we should play RuneScape!

[platinum1004]

one of the best did you knows i didnt know thanks Ddraiggoch06

 

 

 

farming has always been a pain - pick drop or if its worth something bank -ill start using allotment patches again now and my herby runs are much simpler

[loqk]

oh, and on the topic of memory space for player profiles:

 

 

 

i am an experienced programmer and have a good understanding of what exactly is required for each user account.

 

 

 

each user account is a small database entry using 1 bit (1/8th of a byte for most of our recorded selections (most likely for most of our quest completions too)

 

 

 

it also has a reasonably large entry recording the number of items of each typy in our banks and inventories. each of these entries is probably 3 numbers, one records the bank space number, one records the item type, one records the number of items.

 

 

 

so far you have a record that you could probably print out in numbers on a single A4 sized page; a nothing compared to the space on your hard drive.

 

 

 

the problem is that each account is unique.

 

 

 

whereas each picture of each item and each landscape layout is sent to all players identically and uses up a fixed amount of space, each time you add a new player, you add to the space required for the player database.

 

 

 

each time you add a new feature, you have to add it for every person, so you multiply your storage requirements.

 

 

 

this means that once they know their storage requirements, and determine the player file size, adding new players isn't too much hassle, but adding a single yes/no selection can swamp their hard drives.

 

 

 

for example, if each player entry takes up one kilobite and we have 1 million players, that's 1 million kilobite , or 1 gigabyte. each new player takes up 1 new kilobyte, so a 20 gigabyte drive will hold 20 million players.

 

 

 

if we add 1 byte to the player file, that's 1 byte to every player file and thus potentially an extra 20 megabytes of storage. this means you can hold about 20,000 less potential players.

 

 

 

all because of a tiny change.

 

 

 

to add an extra bank space you are looking at about 12 bytes of space or 250,000 fewer players for your one bank space. since bank spaces are added in rows of 8, that's 2 million less players for one extra row of bank space.

 

 

 

these numbers are made up, but representative. if runescape adds a few extra switches to your menus, it is nice for you, but it has potentially cost them millions of players.

 

 

 

this is countered by getting bigger hard drives, but the hard drives cost more money.

 

 

 

so next time you think you must have an extra feature, or must have more bank space, remember that it costs them money to do so, and it is you who ultimately pay that money :-)

 

 

 

ps. some more bank space would be nice, i ran out again :-P

 

 

 

That's very interesting, i never thought of it like that - but a 20GB hard drive for a multi-million international company, even a Terabyte drive... that's really not that expensive is it? lol

 

 

 

true, but like I said, I made up those numbers. They could be bigger or smaller than I guessed, but they scale the same way, so if the files are larger than I guessed, then the hard drives will need to be bigger. I suspect that each update in our character profiles has been accompanied by the addition several months before of new additional or updated hard drives.

 

 

 

the other possibility is that they simply rent space on central servers. this would incur a cost based on the database that would scale the same way for the changes I mentioned before. So adding new players would slowly increase their costs, but adding a new feature would multiply their costs for each player.

[r4ngewarlord]

hmm the article going solo sorta made me feel sad.

 

i liked the other 2 articles thou they made me feel :