03-Mar-10 Changes to HP Skill, Shattered Heart, RuneScape Lobby/Login Changes, Success at Smelting Iron

[The_Avatar]

I present to you, the last picture of the Hitpoints skill.

 

 

Farewell old friend.

[Jabawoki13]

03/03/10 - What Constitutes the Change? (Developers Blog)

 

Why have we made this change?

We have often felt that the early levels of RuneScape are quite tough to understand and learn, and have been consistently working on improvements to the initial part of the game for the last two years or so.

 

One of the things we realised from play-testing our game was that new players hit quite a lot of zeros while training combat, and zeros are boring. We wanted to give more excitement to the early parts of the game without making it easier.

 

Equally, when a new player was hit by a monster, they only had 10 hitpoints to absorb that hit. The minimum damage we can do to that player is 1, which was 10% of their total hitpoints - a hit too big for someone learning the game.

 

With this change, we can allow low-level player to take hits more appropriate for their level, and deal small amounts of damage instead of seeing so many zeros.

 

 

Why change the name of the skill?

The term 'hit points' is a term associated with typical pen-and-paper roleplaying games. Traditionally, its a mechanic that allows a player to track how many hits they can take before they die. When we realised that our hitpoints mechanic needed to be changed, we didnt want to confuse our players by using the same term to describe something else, so decided to remove the old term completely.

 

 

Are there any other benefits to the change?

We can start to use the skill itself in quests and skill updates. The problem we had with the skill being the same at the total hits a player could take was that we could never really affect the skill itself. This change allows us to add things like Constitution potions, which could increase your maximum life points but not actually heal you, or add a weapon that drains your opponents Constitution stat as well as doing damage to them. It really opens up lots of new design opportunities that were previously unavailable. If you have any ideas on how we can use the Constitution stat, please let us know on the Suggestions - Skill forums.

 

 

Is this the new skill you were talking about?

No! We are still working on the new skill; this is not it.

[rangeor]

The constitution update doesn't currently seem like it will make too large of an impact. +- .4 points of damage (well now 4 actually) really isn't that big of a deal. Though it is a step in the right direction, and I'm interested to see what plans they have for it once the blog is up.

 

edit: Seems useful enough, I won't complain.

 

I also love the In Other News... section :D

[pulli23]

uhm is the game already updated? - cause I can't see any changes

[Robert_R]

This change allows us to add things like Constitution potions, which could increase your maximum life points but not actually heal you, or add a weapon that drains your opponents Constitution stat as well as doing damage to them. It really opens up lots of new design opportunities that were previously unavailable.

:blink:

[bored321]

Some worlds have not gone down, im on w24 atm its still the same.

[Vansing]

uhm is the game already updated? - cause I can't see any changes

Nope, the system update timer isnt even there yet.

[Logdotzip]

I can't flippin logon to RS for some reason lol. every single world has an error connecting to server message.

[I_am_Geed]

The only problem i see is now we can hit between 1-800

would be very frustrating if we hit anything below 100 now

[Guthorm]

I don't suppose anybody want to play around with the RS cache and find out the final reward of shattered heart?

[Patr1ck]

uhm is the game already updated? - cause I can't see any changes

 

Me neither, this is really confusing...

[Ezkaton]

uhm is the game already updated? - cause I can't see any changes

 

Loads of the worlds are going offline to be updated, so I'd say wait till Quarter To..... Maybe 8pm At the max. (GMT)

[Numismaster]

So basically the double exp weekend is a giant scavenger hunt to find the shattered heart statue pieces.

 

This involves every skill . . . the new skill involves every skill . . . the completed statue is the gateway to the new skill? Or a teaser? :pray:

 

The only problem I have with this theory is that Shattered Hearts is mem :wall:

[Asmodeous4]

Can't login, but loving the Constitution update. Every little bit of detail will help ^^

[Amaranth_GTO]

Yeah, they said they needed the extra time after the update timer. Give them some time, there are a lot of updates they need to install.

[Robert_R]

Um so I'm starting with finding the two stones for construction first.... "Construction: Visiting your house for at least a minute while not in build mode."

[Vansing]

Um so I'm starting with finding the two stones for construction first.... "Construction: Visiting your house for at least a minute while not in build mode."

Wow that sounds hard :rolleyes:

I may as well start with agility since im already there.

[jonni]

I present to you, the last picture of the Hitpoints skill.

 

 

Farewell old friend.

i'm still logged on so it's not!

[Grimy_Bunyip]

[spoiler=random speculation]runescape's attack system works on a dice roll, during which case if the attacker and defender roll equal die, the defender wins

i wonder if the hitpoints 10x also indicates a 10x increase in attack/defense dice rolls

 

is so this should mean fewer incidents of attack = defence, and an overall increase in accuracy, particularly for lower level players

of course this might be hard to measure, because the "accuracy" will seem to increase on its own, due to 10x fewer 0 damage rolls

 

ignoring the strength implications, this could result in an overall accuracy increase on the order of 5-10% for near max players, with a much much more substantial increase to lower level players

 

 

anywhoo, less speculation

 

it looks like shattered hearts requires 2 of each stones before you can start a new statue

could be bad for players with max stats, having to train skills they have already maxed.

I personally do not look forward to having to spend extra money on herblore, just so I can get shattered hearts in other stats

 

PS max hitters are gonna have some fun with this update lol <3

10x less likely to hit your max =D

[Kalafai]

I suppose this makes desiese extra deadly as you can't eat back up from it's damage.

[Goldenjkered]

Some worlds are still online and are playing as if they havn't been updated. I just went online, and hp was still the same :S

[Drazhor]

Well...I want these updates to hurry up and be active!

I want to kill something with over 9000 Lifepoints :rolleyes:

 

But yeah; look like sound updates :thumbup:

[Me_Hate_Libs]

Shattered Heart: Not sure, well see.

 

Iron Ores: Making things easier for the low levels. Not too amazing, but nothing too bad.

 

Runescape Lobby: Dunno, we'll see, but nothing that amazes me.

 

Constitution: Dumb. Their blog doesn't change my opinion of it either. Being done to not discourage all the new players. Whatever.

 

Pretty much what I thought it would be.

 

Note, I'm not complaining. Just saying I'm underwhelmed.

[langer]

I have never been that excited for an upgrade update.

 

Nice skiling and slaying updates. Login lobby is definitely something I look forward to use.

[Patr1ck]

This update is pretty lame. If you compare the game now to back in 2004, almost everything has been revamped, and hitpoints were one of the last shreds of runescape in 2004 that we had left. The fact that Runescape only had a max of 99 hp, is what made the game unique to other mmo's because you'll find that hardly any other mmo has a max hp of under 100.