Developers Blog 3-3-10

[Ezkaton]

Coming shortly from what I can gather. Please wait.

 

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, it’s 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 didn’t 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 opponent’s 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.

[Kalafai]

size to readable, please?

[Ezkaton]

Better? :)

[canadiansmurf]

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.

 

Does anyone else find it disturbing that they mention they player test the game with new players?

 

 

 

What about loyal veteren players? Why aren't their voices heard. Why aren't they asked to player test and give feedback for content?

 

HP should have been changed for the players already playing RS.

The main concern players had was that current weapons are overpowered, and HP and weapon damage needed to be tweaked to allow higher level weapons and armours.

 

 

I find it confusing that they are focussing so much on changing the gameplay mechanics of this game to favour new players and low level players.

When players have consistently been pointing out the lack of content for higher levels.

 

The game needs more balance as there is far too much lower level content already. Just look at the number of armour sets for someone with 40 defense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

Yeah because damaging someones constitution stat's but not linking it to lifepoints is such a great idea.

[jsboutin2]

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.

 

Does anyone else find it disturbing that they mention they player test the game with new players?

 

 

 

What about loyal veteren players? Why aren't their voices heard. Why aren't they asked to player test and give feedback for content?

 

HP should have been changed for the players already playing RS.

 

They simply mean it's not fun to hit 0s, I'm pretty sure you hate it when you do, at least I don't like that,

 

Now, when you're a noob, you hit more 0s.

 

The correlation between both shouldn't be too hard to make, eh?

[Mischlings]

I think they spent too much of the blog on the uninteresting aspects of the switch. Seriously, the aspect of it that appeals to new players is actually pretty low -- there's a hell of a lot more that they can do with it, which is only touched on at the end. Yes, they made the game better and easier for new players, but for the love of all things holy, don't think that's the only reason they made the update. Read the last paragraph. We can finally have more hitpoints (and I mean more relative to what you get hit, not the fact that it's 990 max now as opposed to 99.), meaning that it's possible for higher hitting weapons to be released without completely overpowering characters by allowing a KO from full health. It's opening up the game to more than just getting the lower levels to higher levels more easily -- it opens up the door for a ton of high level content.

[Oathkeeper]

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.

 

Yeah because damaging someones constitution stat's but not linking it to lifepoints is such a great idea.

 

I don't like how Jagex are catering to the newer players aswell but I can see some good items coming in the future. Such as a potion like they suggested that restricts your opponents to only a certain HP, ie you lower their constitution to 40 and they only have 40 HP to eat to, leaving for easier KO's, maybe soon we may have NPC's similar to Reverants which can eat food and interact exactly like a player, however better AI then the current stuff

[Kalafai]

Think of the pvp potential of damaging Constitution... their hitpoints remain for the moment, but they have to sip a restore before they could eat up effectively.

[la la la]

I find it confusing that they are focussing so much on changing the gameplay mechanics of this game to favour new players and low level players.

When players have consistently been pointing out the lack of content for higher levels.

Look at all the high-level updates that have been coming out recently. In addition, we aren't the ones they need to lure into members - that's for the new and low-leveled players. From a business perspective, they want the maximum amount of paying members for their game; it's not greed, it's business.

[A0z9]

I find it confusing that they are focussing so much on changing the gameplay mechanics of this game to favour new players and low level players.

When players have consistently been pointing out the lack of content for higher levels.

Look at all the high-level updates that have been coming out recently. In addition, we aren't the ones they need to lure into members - that's for the new and low-leveled players. From a business perspective, they want the maximum amount of paying members for their game; it's not greed, it's business.

 

Too right, you are.

[Socrates]

I find it confusing that they are focussing so much on changing the gameplay mechanics of this game to favour new players and low level players.

When players have consistently been pointing out the lack of content for higher levels.

Look at all the high-level updates that have been coming out recently. In addition, we aren't the ones they need to lure into members - that's for the new and low-leveled players. From a business perspective, they want the maximum amount of paying members for their game; it's not greed, it's business.

 

Too right, you are.

Exactly

[Turnpike]

The only thing I have to say on that entire update was bogus. Runescape is turning into every other major game. Only reason I played this was because it's different.