My Quincunx

[Gpguy]

 

Then what the hell do you want?

 

 

 

I state what I want in my original post.

 

 

 

 

 

There is NO skill in clicking a mouse. My 3 year old nephew can do that. However, all it takes if a few [hundred] thousand clicks to get 99s in RuneScape, or max your level out in any major MMO out there. What you're proposing is changing the very foundation of MMOGs the world over, and I don't think you have the skill or knowhow to begin tackling that problem.

 

 

 

Well, here is where I disagree. There is CURRENTLY no skill in clicking a mouse. But, I'm sure there are many things that could be done to change this. If clicks are the foundation of every MMO out there, so be it. I'm not proposing to change that, I'm simply trying to make the incessant clicks more enjoyable and less like a chore.

 

 

 

 

 

Well that's the way it is. It isn't like you can show skill online anyway, unless you were designing something to solve the 88th derivative of (449127x^919-1221x^912)/(sin^3x).

 

 

 

No, clicking does not equate skill. But how the HELL else are skills going to be represented in a fantasy game? Do you want us to draw our weapons and armor from now on? Do you want us to cook the real fish we catch in this game to prove that we are master chefs? You're not being clear about this!

 

 

 

Well, There is a large degree of skill in many mini-games like FoG, and those don't involve coding math problems.

 

 

 

Refer back to my original post.

[Dalcyte]

In Runescape, people equate tedium with skill. THIS MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL.

 

 

 

 

Why is patience not a skill? Patience, I believe, is one of the hardest things to possess. And to be able to have the patience to get 99 mining for instance, is difficult.

 

 

 

But your problem here is with these skills, I believe.

 

-Fishing

 

-Fletching

 

-Herblore

 

-Cooking

 

-Smithing

 

-Mining

 

-Firemaking

 

-Prayer

 

-Woodcutting

 

 

 

All the other skills have ways to get 99 through minigames or don't require mass amounts of clicking. Thieving has pyramid plunder, crafting has a bunch of ways of leveling up, etc. What you're asking for is in over half of the skills, and all that remains are some of the original RSC skills that have been basic the whole way through. I think this already is a compromise. You don't treat patience like its a skill. Clicking isn't hard, anyone can do it. But staying and clicking is a HARD task. "oddly" enough, woodcutting, cooking, fishing, mining and fletching all happen to be excellent money makers. It should require time, dedication and EFFORT to level and make money off of them. If it's a chore to do them, DON'T DO THEM and go do another skill or minigame or one of the other things runescape has to offer. And 13 Million experience points is going to be a chore no matter what you do, whether it's "less of a chore", or not. I know that you're going to take this small bit of text, quote me, and say "Well of course it's going to be a chore to get level 99. But i'd just like to make it less of a chore and more enjoyable to click". If you have a mining minigame that provides the exact same exp/hr as granite mining does on average, people who are working to get 99 aren't going to be thinking "Wow, this is just so much less of a chore and easier for me to do.". They're going to be thinking "Well I pretty much hate this minigame at this point".

 

 

 

Most skills do have fun ways to effectively level them up. All the combat skills, summoning, crafting, thieving, hunter, farming, slayer, construction, etc have ways to level them up in fun minigame-esque ways or a wide enough variety that you don't get too bored too easily unless you're going for 99, in which case it will be a chore no matter which route you take.

[Gpguy]

Why is patience not a skill?

 

 

 

It is a virtue. Patience is not a skill in any definition of the word "skill"(That's my opinion, though you may disagree)

 

 

 

All the other skills have ways to get 99 through minigames or don't require mass amounts of clicking. Thieving has pyramid plunder, crafting has a bunch of ways of leveling up, etc.

 

 

 

None of them meet all of the following: Fun, Not repetitive, Promoting healthy competition, and among the best ways of getting experience in that skill.

 

 

 

PP is repetitive, Crafting is repetitive, FoG/CW/SW is a very slow way of getting xp.

[Dalcyte]

Yes...this is true, it is a virtue. But please don't limit your definition of "patience" to aesop's fables.

 

I will disagree, in fact. I do think patience is a skill. Patience is the ability to endure things that would get annoying in most circumstances. I would say an ability is a skill. You have to have the ability, the skill to train yourself to not be annoyed by repetative tasks in this case.

 

 

 

 

 

*sigh*

 

Any minigame you create is going to be repetative if you're going after a 99.

 

All attempts at 99 are repetative. Even if you make the GREATEST minigame ever (that's fair), you're still going to be bored to death with it when you're going after a 99. Crafting isn't repetative if you do it the fun way...if you buy your skills, yes it is repetative. I think if you want to buy your way to a 99, you deserve to have to endure some repetative-ness. If you want to be 100,000 lobsters, that's fine, but you have to tough it out and click a lot.

 

 

 

So don't do FoG/CW/SW. Train combat by training combat, by fighting monsters. A task that isn't repetative.

 

Look. Get it straight. You say:

 

 

 

"FoG/CW/SW is a very slow way of getting xp."

 

And you have said in the past that FoG is fun.

 

 

 

If you put these two statements together, it can be inferred you want a minigame that's really fun, not-repetative and provides quick experience. You may not directly say that, but you're hinting at that.

[Gpguy]

If you put these two statements together, it can be inferred you want a minigame that's really fun, not-repetative and provides quick experience. You may not directly say that, but you're hinting at that.

 

 

 

Yes. I actually did directly say something like this somewhere.

 

 

 

 

Any minigame you create is going to be repetative if you're going after a 99.

 

 

 

Yes. That's why 99's won't be devalued through fun.

[Dalcyte]

I think you said the exact opposite?

 

 

 

No. Definitely NO. I don't want to alleviate how long it will take to level these skills. I want to alleviate the toil and repetition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You have said quite thorougly that you want to make really fun minigames that aren't repetative, but you've also thorougly denied that you want to make them give quick experience and fast levels..you don't want to make it too easy.

 

 

 

So...you want to make minigames that wouldn't be better than actual training for 99s, but still provide good experience, but not too good, and be fun and non-repetative?

[Gpguy]

Dalcyte, I want methods which give XP rates comparable to the "grinding" methods of today, maybe 5-10% less, but very close, and for them to be enjoyable.

 

 

 

So, assume skill X is trained at 50,000 exp per hour through hardcore grinding... Ideally, There would be a fun method which would give 47,000 XP per hour which wouldn't feel like a chore. Unless you wanted to do it to 99 without taking breaks or cycling or doing quests. In which case ANYTHING might feel like a chore.

[Gpguy]

bump

[hihihi727]

I sort of agree with Gpguy. I'm sure Jagex could come up with more original ways to level up then constant grinding. Thats why i stick with combat. Lots of different minigames and options to choose while leveling up unlike clicking on a granite rocks over and over again.

[Dalcyte]

I dunno. I feel like minigames should be for fun, not for training. I mean I can go with a few...i'd be really happy with a mining and woodcutting minigame. But I think that minigames should offer nice rewards, but not be comparable to grinding out levels. In all the skills that are in play here, when you grind out levels (except powermining) you gain money typically and experience. I think that pure fun and hard work/high levels should be separated. I do feel like you SHOULD have to hard work in a lot of these skills. In return, you get cash and levels. Your system, you put in 0 hard work, and get out fun and levels. It's kind of imbalanced. Like I love minigames like castle wars and such. But they aren't good for training but they do offer cool rewards. I'm a fan of that type of stuff. Pyramid Plunder's an exception i suppose, but that's pretty repetative as you say. I should know too.

 

 

 

And if all methods of raising levels were fun...well then I can get into the pleasure principle and Freud..

[Randox]

I am only going to comment on the precedents for now. I completly agree with gpguy. If you view Jagex's responses to bug abuse as a court ruleing, then it matters not whether a bug was harmful or not. By not punishing people for a harmless bug like the ape atoll one, you are telling everyone that its ok to abuse bugs. The full thought extention of 'its ok to abuse bugs' would be 'its ok to abuse all bugs. Its the way law works, and its also the way our brains work. We do not always make a distinction between good/bad (bug abuse). Its worse if they do this to a more serious bug yes, but doing it to the harmless stuff is not good. It means no one knows what Jagex is going to do because their descisions are all over the proverbial map.

[Gpguy]

Bump

[DragonSam]

Bump

 

 

 

Bump a quincunx? Isn't that illegal in some states?

 

 

 

First, your vocabulary is fairly impressive, but your usage is a little off at times; that is, your impression of the meaning of some words is slightly askew. Keep reading, very broadly, and this will improve.

 

 

 

Precedent: Who said "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds"? One Literary Kudos Point for the first correct response. The law does value precedent, but also values the standard that every case is a unique set of circumstances. Wisdom is willing to judge each breach of the rules individually. Yes, justice requires being able to say why an abuse is treated differently in case X to case Y, but it does not require that every abuse is treated the same.

 

 

 

Skills: Often as I go along playing, I find a new area where some new possibility to build a skill is opened. I usually find these fun for a day or two, then I start to find them tedious work for the rewards. eg Agility - Oh fantastic, Werewolf Skullball gives me 750 points every 4 minutes if I don't make any drastic mistakes. Two days later: Oh gawd, I know it's 750 points but if that supposed instructor gets in the way of my click one more time I'll ... Another day later: I know it's 750 points but it's just the same round and round and round and round and roundandroundandround and I think I'd like some nice soft walls please ... I am not alone. Everyone finds this with one thing or another, and it's part of the mechanics and psychology of the game.

 

 

 

All levels in MMORPGs depend on building points, AFAIK. The points per level is always an exponential progression, AFAIK (or similarly increasingly steep if not actually exponential). For those not familiar: exponential means that the distance from one level to the next gets bigger and bigger the higher you go. So from 10 to 11 might be 1,000 points, but 20 to 21 is 10,000 and 40 to 41 might be 100,000. Etc. This means 98 to 99 will end up being something astronomical like 100,000,000.

 

 

 

MMORPGs do this so that only a small proportion of players end up getting huge levels, because they know that their bread and butter is bragging rights. You can't brag about what everyone has, so the game must be structured in such a way that only through extraordinary efforts will players get those huge levels. Thus, every method for getting points should look good at first, but after a while it must become hard work or everyone will be doing it and there will be no achievement.

 

 

 

I don't think you're really unaware of this, but you aren't happy with the balance. You'd like it 20% less difficult and simultaneously 20% more fun. I'm sure this is a constant subject of debate within the corridors of power at Jagex. Make the game too difficult and no one can be bothered playing. Make it too easy and no one gets that feeling of pride that goes with achievement, so too easy means you'll lose players too. At the same time, the writers know that people will tolerate hard grind if there's enough fun along with the achievement, and are constantly trying to write new quests and mini-games to add fun for those who don't have the patience to grind. Jagex wants as many players as possible, so they're trying to include people like you, who've hit the patience limit but will stay on for fun stuff, as well as those who will stay to the bitter end to get that blasted 99 even if it means clicking a brick wall 500,000 times.

 

 

 

Time: It's not fair, there aren't enough hours in the day. But you have exactly the same number of hours in the day as me. If someone really wants to spend twelve hours a day sitting at a computer playing a game then that's between them and their psychiatrist. Whether that's unhealthy or not, it's certainly a sacrifice of a sort, and the reward for it is that they'll do better at Runescape than someone only willing to play for a couple of hours a day.

 

 

 

Think of it this way: research indicates that the difference between the most successful and the not so successful in any group of 18yr old high achievers is not genius or talent, but time. Yehudi Menuhin or Yo Yo Ma or Mozart or Einstein weren't that much better than their peers, but they did all spend over 10,000 hours on developing their skills over a ten year period.

 

 

 

When I was just starting I'd see some lvl130+ and think "How cool is that, they must be able to do just about everything in the game" but I didn't think "It's not fair that they can do just about everything in the game". They've spent thousands of hours, probably over at least a few years, to get there and I don't envy success, I admire it.

 

 

 

As for rudeness, yes it's immature and juvenile for lvl130s to go swaggering around calling everyone 'noob' etc. Happens everywhere. It's immature and juvenile and utterly beneath contempt and really rather feeble-minded. Hmm. Now I'm beginning to wonder if calling them on their immaturity isn't in a similar vein...

 

 

 

BTW, you're more Engels than Marx. Marx was more into the redistribution of wealth and power, Engels just wanted a world where everyone could have as much fun as the rich, which he was.

[Gpguy]

Lulz, apparently I'm a communist because I want Runescape to be more fun, less work, and pro social.

 

 

 

I'm inclined to continue playing runescape just because of the time I've spent in the game, but I feel I'm going to need to let go soon.

[Makoto_the_Phoenix]

Lulz, apparently I'm a communist because I want Runescape to be more fun, less work, and pro social.

 

You'll realize someday that your idea conflicts (polar opposites) your view for the game. There is no way that you can make the game less tedious AND more fun at the same time, not without that almighty infinite-exp lever in the Wilderness.

[Gpguy]

You'll realize someday that your idea conflicts (polar opposites) your view for the game. There is no way that you can make the game less tedious AND more fun at the same time, not without that almighty infinite-exp lever in the Wilderness.

 

 

 

Read my dialogue with Dalcyte, the two can be done. The grinding can be replaced without taking the achievement out of skills.

[Gpguy]

7th May 2009 - Tools for Games

 

 

 

Brilliant! if only they would make these games give xp at decent rates...

[strilmus]

Did you even read the article?

 

 

 

The tools are for PLAYER-RUN EVENTS. So.....no exp gain outside of the normal stuff you'd get from doing things.

[Gpguy]

I did read. That's why I said, "If Only". Because I know it would be difficult for Jagex to balance xp through all the creative things players can do with these things...