Tip.it Times 13 December 2009

[Aussietroopa]

I have to disagree the BTS made Jagex put out a certain number of things in a month, there been a clear drop in quality and quantity since that "pressure" was taken away. Now they drop hints when ever they like with no time line for when whatever there hinting at needs to be out.

There has been a drop in quantity and a RISE in quality if you ask me. There has been a significant drop in the number of bugs in updates. Although for the first few months of 2009 there wasn't, now it's actually quite rare to find a major bug in their updates.

 

Other sorts of quality like 'if you like it or not' is just opinion.

 

And while the Chaos Elemental is quite unpredictable (as you should expect ;)), as are the Dev Blogs, you can rely on the Twitter hints to keep you in the know about what will be out this week. I wouldn't say that there is just no time line.

 

I really question you saying that there has been a rise in quality? The single greatest updates ever done to the game include a few of the following:

 

~God Wars.

~Entire Tzhaar area.

~Slayer, and Summoning.

~Rs HD I suppose, I personally don't like it.

 

This is adhering to RS2 updates. Out of those four, only ONE has been this year, and as it was a graphical update, that is to be expected in the 'Year of Upgrades'. While I admit, there has been a few nice minor additions, such as the Mining cavern area( Forget the name; Can't stand Mining or Fishing), and Bounty world (I think it was this year?), overall, the year has been absolutely horrid in terms of quality, long term updates. Removal of bugs? What removal? The only bugs I can clearly recall are as follows:

 

~Knife bug in RSC

~Party Hat Dupe also in RSC

~POH Bug, where you could a) Chuck a Duriel321, and B) Kill people with venge/poison etc.

~That odd symbol bug that Dc'ed people.

~The bug with Familiars in pvp.

 

Out of all of those bugs, two out of five are from this year. Out of bugs clearly recalled in Rs2, 2 out of 3 are from this year. Not to mention, one of those bugs, the Symbol one, is quite possibly the WORST bug that has ever affected this game.

 

As for quality updates, there has also been a share of utter crap with this years updates. The font? I haven't logged in for a few days, but the font they had changed all of Rs to use, was total and utter crap, being brutally honest. I CRINGED at the font. Not a good thing now, is it?

 

The Prayer update, while interesting, was nothing that I wanted to run out and do. Thanks to the G.E running Rs, I knew I would pay 5000 gp for a Dragon Bone, something I refuse to do. Plus, the Prayers themselves are rather lacklustre. I don't PvP, nor monster hunt very often, thus I didn't need Leech or any of that stuff. The Herblore update, I will admit, was quite good. It did disappoint me however, that it was removed from minigames for so long, and only recently bought back. I do enjoy how Jagex are focusing on high level updates, as most of my skills are above 70, and all of my combat stats are over 80, most 90, yet I still haven't gotten an update that has just made me go "WOW!", and want to go back in, and live it up again. The best update of the year, to me anyway, was the RSC update.

 

So, while I admit this year hasn't been utter [cabbage], I must disagree that it has been a quality year. Most of the year has been devoted on fairly minor things. Where is the new amazing monster; dropping awesome loot that I just HAVE to get? What happened to the fun minigames, such as Fight Pits, Clan Wars? Hell, I'd even take a new Fight Caves.

 

Mobilising Armies? That wasn't a minigame. It was a chore. It was painful, and I couldn't stand to play it more then twice. Most people who got over 300 ranking, had to do it bit by bit, as they couldn't stand playing it for long periods of time. Jagex need to take a step back next year, and really consider the content in the game. Most people need something fun to stay in a game. I just don't feel the fun this year.

[Kaida23]

So, while I admit this year hasn't been utter [cabbage], I must disagree that it has been a quality year. Most of the year has been devoted on fairly minor things.

Respectfully, I have to disagree. Your assertion that the updates this year have been focused on "fairly minor things", while well presented, seems to indicate that updating the non-combat skills is a waste of time. A great number of players do not focus on combat skills, and these updates seemed aimed more towards them. Mining especially needed to be updated with more than simply another mining location with the same old rocks in it. The Living Rock Caverns has, finally, brought Mining to a comparable level with the other gathering skills, and the Dragon Pickaxe added a long overdue upgrade to the skill's available tools.

 

I've always felt that Jagex was focusing too much on combat related updates, and even though I'm not able to take advantage of this year's updates I think that it is an excellent step forward to show that non-combat skills make up an equally important role in the game.

[Racheya]

In all the considerable time I've played Runescape in its current format (ie post what is now known as RSC), this year has been by far the worst for gamebreaking bugs. Now it may well have dropped past the first 6 months, but frankly if it hadn't I wonder how many of the old diehards would've bothered to stay. NEVER in the four years previous to this one were there so many bugs created by Jagex that resulted in forum wars between jagex and the players or mass bannings for bug abuse with no acceptance of accountability by Jagex for their part in the shambles. I'm not saying that the removal of BTS was the cause of this but it's alarming how, when under allegedly less pressure to deliver, the developers have served up more massive bugs this year than have been seen since the bygone days of RSC.

 

Aside from which, judging the quality of an update by the number of bugs it does or does not contain seems a rather sad indictment of what we as players have had to expect from jagex...

 

N.B. I do actually quite like the new format even though I was vehemently opposed to the removal of BTS. Whilst I utterly despise twitter as the most pointless method of propagating egocentric comments on generally meaningless topics, I suppose I'm blessed with more tolerant friends who keep me updated on the most recent speculation.

 

It's not been the best year that they've ever had, but the people who work at Jagex are only human. They make mistakes, they screw up and it's just a part of how things are. It could just be that with the pressure of the BTS off, they took things a little too lax and QA slipped up a bit. I'm sure they've expanded their Quality Assurance section since the start of this year. Jagex have recognised that bugs were a problem, and now they've mostly rectified that problem. There is the problem that quality is subjective. I'm trying to make a sort of quantifiable way of measuring quality through the number of serious bugs that updates bring, because there really IS no other way to measure the quality of an update because the most vocal of the community are always those who have a problem with something.

 

 

I really question you saying that there has been a rise in quality? The single greatest updates ever done to the game include a few of the following:

 

~God Wars.

~Entire Tzhaar area.

~Slayer, and Summoning.

~Rs HD I suppose, I personally don't like it.

 

This is adhering to RS2 updates. Out of those four, only ONE has been this year, and as it was a graphical update, that is to be expected in the 'Year of Upgrades'. While I admit, there has been a few nice minor additions, such as the Mining cavern area( Forget the name; Can't stand Mining or Fishing), and Bounty world (I think it was this year?), overall, the year has been absolutely horrid in terms of quality, long term updates.

 

Sorry, but that is all just opinion. I'd only say that RS HD out of all of those could be seen as a greatest update ever - in my opinion. But that's the problem. Quality is all opinion. To me, the removal of Randoms (especially Ents), ZMI Runecrafting and the GE are some of the greatest updates ever. Not everyone thinks the same, this goes for players and Jagex too. I'd say that people who are going for 99 Mining or Fishing won't see the Living Rock Caverns as 'minor'. You only see it as minor because you don't like the skills. Quality long term updates don't need to be content. Changing the logout timer from 1:30 to 5 mins is a huge improvement that helps in the long term, every day, for example. I'd say that the introduction of the first Grandmaster quest, While Guthix Sleeps, is a pretty big update.

 

Removal of bugs? What removal? The only bugs I can clearly recall are as follows:

 

~Knife bug in RSC

~Party Hat Dupe also in RSC

~POH Bug, where you could a) Chuck a Duriel321, and Kill people with venge/poison etc.

~That odd symbol bug that Dc'ed people.

~The bug with Familiars in pvp.

 

Out of all of those bugs, two out of five are from this year. Out of bugs clearly recalled in Rs2, 2 out of 3 are from this year. Not to mention, one of those bugs, the Symbol one, is quite possibly the WORST bug that has ever affected this game.

Just because you can't remember more bugs from the older days doesn't mean that there were less. It's a psychological fact that people remember the first things, and the last things but not those in the middle. It's called the primacy and recency effect. You'll remember bugs from RSC, bugs from this year, but not the ones in most of the rest of the RS2 between.

 

 

As for quality updates, there has also been a share of utter crap with this years updates. The font? I haven't logged in for a few days, but the font they had changed all of Rs to use, was total and utter crap, being brutally honest. I CRINGED at the font. Not a good thing now, is it?

 

The Prayer update, while interesting, was nothing that I wanted to run out and do. Thanks to the G.E running Rs, I knew I would pay 5000 gp for a Dragon Bone, something I refuse to do. Plus, the Prayers themselves are rather lacklustre. I don't PvP, nor monster hunt very often, thus I didn't need Leech or any of that stuff. The Herblore update, I will admit, was quite good. It did disappoint me however, that it was removed from minigames for so long, and only recently bought back. I do enjoy how Jagex are focusing on high level updates, as most of my skills are above 70, and all of my combat stats are over 80, most 90, yet I still haven't gotten an update that has just made me go "WOW!", and want to go back in, and live it up again. The best update of the year, to me anyway, was the RSC update.

Again, it's all just opinion. I dislike the font too, but does a change in font somehow show that the entire year's updates have been bad?

 

Again, just because you don't use the prayers it doesn't mean other people won't see them as a Godsend (Geddit? Lol), many other people monster hunt or find these prayers very useful. The problem with the dragon bones issue is not just Jagex, but it's greedy players wanting a quick fix. If you went out and killed green dragons for bones and suddenly Jagex nerfed their drop rate - then yeah that's Jagex's fault. But because you - like lots of other people - don't want to do that and want to just have everything NOW, then you have to be able to accept that there will be a bigger price to pay. Of course the prices are getting a bit silly at the moment, but that wasn't Jagex's fault in the first place.

 

I did an article on the Herblore update, it looked like just what the game needed, only I agree that it was poor to keep it out of minigames for so long when they should have been able to be used. I like the focus on high level content too, even though I'm nowhere near high leveled, I can appreciate that it's good for other players and tbh I have plenty of other content to be playing without needing updates for me every week.

 

 

So, while I admit this year hasn't been utter [cabbage], I must disagree that it has been a quality year. Most of the year has been devoted on fairly minor things. Where is the new amazing monster; dropping awesome loot that I just HAVE to get? What happened to the fun minigames, such as Fight Pits, Clan Wars? Hell, I'd even take a new Fight Caves.

 

Mobilising Armies? That wasn't a minigame. It was a chore. It was painful, and I couldn't stand to play it more then twice. Most people who got over 300 ranking, had to do it bit by bit, as they couldn't stand playing it for long periods of time. Jagex need to take a step back next year, and really consider the content in the game. Most people need something fun to stay in a game. I just don't feel the fun this year.

Well as the year of updates, yeah it has been focused on fairly minor things. That's the whole point of it, making the game better little by little. Do you know how much I use the buttons to drop everything I'm wearing/holding in my bank? How Ents used to be the bane of my existence? How I can't imagine how people used to have to sacrifice bones at their altar one by one without the 'Offer X'?

 

Again, you just want things that are good for you. Not everyone feels that way, and not everyone wants a super high-level monster. Sometimes Jagex have to focus on things other than the supposedly 'most popular' things. As for Minigames, Stealing Creation and Soul Wars. Two epic minigames. There. Mobilising Armies is half decent. Jagex don't WANT YOU to be grinding, they want you to play it a bit at a time, playing a few games between skilling for example. I don't think it's completely amazing but I like it as an unconventional minigame that I'll play when the mood strikes me.

 

So yes. The problem with so called 'quality' is that it's subjective. What might be rubbish to you is good for another person.

[Kaida23]

So yes. The problem with so called 'quality' is that it's subjective. What might be rubbish to you is good for another person.

Exactly my point. But you have, as usual, managed to state it in a much more eloquent way. <3:

[waheera1]

There is the problem that quality is subjective. I'm trying to make a sort of quantifiable way of measuring quality through the number of serious bugs that updates bring, because there really IS no other way to measure the quality of an update because the most vocal of the community are always those who have a problem with something.

 

Simply because I'm in a pedantic mood today I'll point out that quality itself is not subjective, it is the perception of quality that is subjective. :-P

 

But seriously, quality can be defined within certain parameters by assessing the extent to which an update achieves the purpose of the designers, generally with the aim of improving the quality of the system. Whilst I appreciate that the number of bugs recorded does make for a very convenient barometer of success, I would argue that the industry standard should be NO BUGS AT ALL.

 

Excuses about the fallibility of mankind do not cut it in a professional environment - I for example would be rapidly out of work if I made even one or two mistakes of a much lesser magnitude than those created by Jagex' teams in this year's bugs. Likewise I suspect that most multinational companies would take a very dim view of errors affecting thousands and thousands of their precious clients. I'm not saying the Jagex teams should all be sacked, since that would be counterproductive and do more to ruin the game than anything, but they should have the dignity and honesty to admit to their huge fan-base that they have committed catastrophic errors. Instead there have been no front-page apologies, no widespread accountability accepted by Jagex, and their moderators continue to dodge the probing questions that might imply guilt on Jagex' part.

 

So, mini-rant over, there is no way in which the presence, or lack thereof, of bugs in an update should ever be considered an acceptable measure of the quality of an update. A good update is one that brings value to the game to some people - I do not expect every update to please me, nor is it absolutely required that even the majority should be wowed by an update. Just because an update comes without bugs does not mean it is a good update. It just means that the QA team have done their job properly for a change.

 

Edit: Just read your responses to the other person in the above post. Sorry to contradict further but Jagex literally controls the economy with their drop rates and the like. Many people would argue the pvp tricking that went unchecked for so long is the greatest single cause of gratuitous wealth which is what has pushed the prices up.

 

Oh and I'm pretty much certain that WGS came out at the end of last year. So that cannot be counted as one of this year's triumphs.

[Pikmin_Warrior]

First Article: I feel the same way. I was originally a bit disappionted that BTS was being halted, since I did enjoy taking peeks at upcoming content. In the end though, I realised that the content quality did continue to climb, as it was promised. I also learn that its fun to log onto Rs each day and be shocked by a brand new quest, an update to a skill, or anything for that matter. The new system works fine, no matter what the RSOF says. :thumbup:

 

Second Article: Why do I play? For the purpose of having a good time, sharing some laughs with other Tip Iters, and to go as far as I can. Sure, I'm still pretty far to go, considering my highest skill is only in the 70s, but I'll keep playing to go as far as I can.

 

Did You Know: Honestly, something I did not know! Sure to be handy to me when I fletch all of those Maple Longbows soon.

[Omnitec]

The first article I found to be comparable to watching that last bowling pin, hoping and waiting for it to fall. I say this because I was looking for an author response to the situations discussed, but it never came. It was very informative, backed up with examples and facts; but I thought it was just a little too informative. It was more like a news piece everyone had already heard of 12 times that same day, and for me hinted at some sort of point, yet never got there.

 

The second article I enjoyed; cleverly thought provoking about your past-runescape life...especially with the author's examples of things that not only his self has done, but things we have all done early in our Runescape lives. Great piece of nostalgia and a time for thinking when read; just how an article should be.

[zlcoolboy]

I play this game because i have commitments, Some related to my faction but most aren't. Although i do have fun when there are people in my clan's chat to talk up a storm with, So i guess i just play for the community.

 

Both articles were great. :)