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Tip.it Times 11 April 2010


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About Fun Comes Second?:

 

I myself play FunOrb way more than Runecape and have ever since FunOrb's lauch because it is more fun. However, I believe that some grinders must have fun seeing their stats slowly get closer to their goal.

Runescape Stats:

 

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Every stat on highscores!

 

 

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I must say i was surprised to see little mention of the clan leader boards, and maxed boards on RSOF in the first article. How much more representative can jagex manage to get? Just look at player mods: there is a clear imbalance in player moderators, and that selection. They also already have plenty of contact with fansite leadership, and access to the discussions there.

 

Polls are easy to institute, and quite frankly, jagex have laxed in the use of polls. They were better at using them earlier on as well. Even if they don't pay much attention to the result, it pacifies runescapians. They may also learn something from the polls that have results differing from what they expect.

 

Second article: if you compare yourselves to others for the sake of rankings, are you not a part of the community of those who aren't playing for fun? Highscores guage who plays the most, with the exception of the duelling tournament scores. should they even matter to most?

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First article: Excellently written and great points. I loved the comparison to the HCR debate, and especially "Joe Pack Yak" haha, great job on the article. :)

 

Second article: Grinding = no fun

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First article: bringing up old points to an old battlefield. If Jagex made every decision for the majority of its players, we would have quests with no requirements, free armor with no requirements, etc. Clearly we have at least a few mid-level quests (still waiting on a truly high level, difficult quest) already, so Jagex must make decisions for a subset of its players sooner or later. People that argue for elitism tend to be hypocritical at times, only wanting elite content for levels and requirements they already meet. In the end, I think, it all comes down to projects on an individual basis. Sometimes a particular developer wants to stick with a specific amount of content for a while, making it as good as possible (Ice Strykewyrms - though I do not agree with the changes). Other times a piece of content may have been evaluated behind the scenes and cannot be practically changed. The reasons for these changes may not be appropriate for the general RS population to learn, and Jagex loses a lot of face when they try to create fake reasons.

 

In all, this is more about perception of Jagex and content-specific debate over the exact requirements (Strykewyrms). I agree, their PR has been absolutely terrible and polls have been neglected, but at the same time, you cannot know the exact reason why Jagex makes the final decisions that they do. The solutions presented are also bad. Behind the Scenes were an absolute nightmare (and I have played from long before Behind the Scenes were created) and they weren't even used for some updates (Construction) while over-hyping others (Mobilising Armies, Summoning through diaries). Updates are much more exciting when you read about them for the first time; they have unlimited potential until you have checked that you have unlocked everything new. Behind the Scenes tried to put every update on a gold platter, meaning I wrote 10 out of 12 months off before I even played through the content. Think how much you could hype The Blood Pact, making it sound like a high-level, interesting quest, with tough monsters and new equipment; now compare that to the 2 minute, 10 second, useless quest we got. Creating any kind of forum where players talk about future updates would amount to the same thing. We can't even keep the relatively useless information on the Pmod forums private, and I regularly see content from the high level forum without being a part of it, so leaks would reduce it to a public forum. The inherent problem is that Jagex can reveal very little about future updates, and posting vague questions to the public is equivalent to asking the average American to write a 20-page composition on an issue in a small foreign country - they cannot possibly know enough to have an educated decision.

 

In the end it all comes back to Jagex, not the random ranting idiots comprising RuneScape's general population. Is it worth developer time to revisit content and implement potentially tricky and useless changes? It's why we have no changes to Trouble Brewing, Rat Pits, etc after all these years. The writer questions Jagex's inconsistency with content revisions, and rightfully so; who are we, the faceless, naive, and ignorant public?

 

 

Second article: something like this is in the Times annoyingly often. We get it, some players want others to stop being addicted and to chill out while playing RuneScape. Others are competitive and enjoy different things, and actually are addicted. Point taken, why not just put it at the top of the site in big bold letters?

2496 Completionist

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Time for a new release of the: >>>Tip.It Times!<<<

 

When replying please make sure to clarify the article you are replying to! Thanks!

 

Enjoy the articles!

this is for the article on fun

I recently brought my WC up to 56 so that I could do the fremmink isles. I cut willow and maple to reach my goal, although they are worth relativly nothing. And I somwhat injoyed the grind. I listened to music on YouTube and read a book. And yes I do think that with my helm of neztiot I will have more fun. Because most of the fun in RS is achiving a goal. Doing some minigames can be fun, but, sadly most are not. Not much about RS is fun. So why do so many people play. I think that it is because they want to show of to their friends. Don't have freinds? Then your looking for respect from other players because of your skillcape or combat lvl of 138. People play RS not to have fun but to acomplish something. If you are hanging out with a friend on RS then you might have one of you bow while the other headbangs behind them but what every person wh plays this game what's is to be reconized for what they have done.

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I found some loopholes in the "Fun comes Second article"

 

Sure grinding in some ways is not fun, but it's a must if you want to reach something fun and feel proud of it.

 

I know this by experience, I've always played games and I always get ticked off when I have to do some long tedious task to get to something fun. One time I cheated, and got to the fun part but something inside of me was missing. I went on a cheating frenzy and did all the fun stuff, and in a matter of minuets I found that all the fun stuff weren't fun anymore but rather boring.

 

The feeling of pride that I did it honestly wasn't there, so when the next game came I decided to do all those tedious boring things, the long witted things that take hours to do. You know what, once I reached my reward the feeling I had inside of me exceed than if I were to cheat to get there. It stayed fun for the longest of time until I continued the game.

 

Incase, people are wondering it wasn't an online game. It was a Valkyrie Profile game, and the cheat I used was to get the Angel Slayer, the ultimate weapon. Slaying with the cheated weapon wasn't fun but with the next game slaying with the hard earned weapon was extremely fun.

 

I wonder who wrote that article, I pretty sure they just need a break or something.

 

EDIT: oh shi-. It was Racheya.

Wongton is better than me in anyway~~

 

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First article:

The only thing that I agree with the author is that polls are underused. They used to be updated weekly, but now it takes up to a month(maybe more) for a new poll.

 

However, I hope the bronze crown idea is no more than a joke. The author suggested giving this rank to clan leaders, active forum posters, and other public figures. First, clan leaders are not elected by democractic process, pretty much all clan founders are leaders by default, how well they represent their clanmates opinions is doubtful. Yes, people can leave the clan if they don't agree with the leadership, but does Jagex has any means to find out the current size of a clan? Also, clans aren't created by people having the same ideology like political parties in real life. Most clans are based on the common interest in certain activities like pking, skilling or minigames...er I mean activities. If you ask the members of a pking clan about their opinions on say, Fish Flingers, the results will likely be as varied as when you ask a random group of people. Becasue of this, I'm not sure clan leaders are good representatives of the general player base, not to metion that many players(myself included) do not belong to any clans to begin with.

 

How about active forum posters then? They are already the most vocal people out of the entire player base, and I'm sure Jagex is more likely to check their forum threads for opinions, do they need even more posting privileges? We also need to remember post counts doesn't reflect on the quality of their posts, just their wilingness to post on the forums. Heck, even the total number of posts in the threads they create can't be used as a gauge of quality. I can make a thread called "pker sux,remove pking now" and get a few pages of "stfu" and "gtfo" in a matter of minutes, does this make it a good thread? Now that both post count and thread lengths fail to be good objective measures of good posters, it's all down to the quality of their posts, which can be highly subjective. If Jagex handpicks the forum posters based on "quality of posts", what's there to stop them picking all those THEY like to listen to instead of those representing reason and intelligence?

 

Other public figures, can the author give us a few examples? Just look at how stupid real life celebrities can be, I'm not sure their Runescape counterparts are any better.

 

Second article:

I don't have much time left before I need to go to work, so I have to keep it short: Don't compare yourself to others on the hiscores if you don't want to be competitive.

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The notion of a Bronze Crown player is noxious to me. Special forums, special access to Jagex, special display crown in the game, special influence on future updates.

 

And if I want to get Jagex' ear, I would have to find someone with a Bronze Crown and get them to forward my ideas. Perhaps by their merit, perhaps with a favorable loan of an item, perhaps in exchange for my support at some clan warring event.

 

No Thank You.

PvP is not for me

In the 3rd Year of the Boycott
Real-world money saved since FT/W: Hundreds of Dollars
Real-world time saved since FT/W: Thousands of Hours

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Is it me or are there a few 'then' 's in the first article where there should be 'than' 's?

 

and the con group became [the] vocal one and started petitioning, protesting, rallying and arguing.

 

It couldn't have overloaded the forums faster than any other DDoS attack

 

OT: I did find the first article interesting. I'd see a high-level forum to sensibly discuss updates work out pretty fine, seeing as the high leveled players often try to debate instead of hitting their keyboard with Caps Lock on.

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However, I hope the bronze crown idea is no more than a joke. The author suggested giving this rank to clan leaders, active forum posters, and other public figures. First, clan leaders are not elected by democractic process, pretty much all clan founders are leaders by default, how well they represent their clanmates opinions is doubtful. Yes, people can leave the clan if they don't agree with the leadership, but does Jagex has any means to find out the current size of a clan? Also, clans aren't created by people having the same ideology like political parties in real life. Most clans are based on the common interest in certain activities like pking, skilling or minigames...er I mean activities. If you ask the members of a pking clan about their opinions on say, Fish Flingers, the results will likely be as varied as when you ask a random group of people. Becasue of this, I'm not sure clan leaders are good representatives of the general player base, not to metion that many players(myself included) do not belong to any clans to begin with.

 

How about active forum posters then? They are already the most vocal people out of the entire player base, and I'm sure Jagex is more likely to check their forum threads for opinions, do they need even more posting privileges? We also need to remember post counts doesn't reflect on the quality of their posts, just their wilingness to post on the forums. Heck, even the total number of posts in the threads they create can't be used as a gauge of quality. I can make a thread called "pker sux,remove pking now" and get a few pages of "stfu" and "gtfo" in a matter of minutes, does this make it a good thread? Now that both post count and thread lengths fail to be good objective measures of good posters, it's all down to the quality of their posts, which can be highly subjective. If Jagex handpicks the forum posters based on "quality of posts", what's there to stop them picking all those THEY like to listen to instead of those representing reason and intelligence?

 

Other public figures, can the author give us a few examples? Just look at how stupid real life celebrities can be, I'm not sure their Runescape counterparts are any better.

 

I agree with this, the basis of selection for the "bronze crown" is just as meaningless as selecting a random group of people. Post count is just a counter of how many things someone says, and is not at all affected by how intelligent or unintelligent the posts are. All other opinions of the "quality" of someone' posts are just that, OPINIONS, as in subjective, as in not based in fact or any other measurable quality. I agree that the forums are flawed, and that they are not an efficient way of getting in touch with a representative portion of the community. I would say that the vast majority of players (even active players) don't post on the RSOFs, however, I also feel like this suggestion is more of a push for more ways to make a small group of people special and get some e-respect. If there is a certain group of players who are "in touch" with the feelings of the majority of the players, why do they need some sort of crown. Shouldn't they just know these things and not need any credit for it. (Though I feel the same way about PMODS that's a different story)

 

Over all very well written article, but I feel like the idea is not a good one.

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On the article about fun:

 

I think this is very true. A lot of times I find myself doing skills that I really don't want to do because of the grinding it involves.

I personally enjoy killing monsters and doing quests. I don't really strive to have a level 99 anytime soon other than my combats.

I just try to balance what I am doing and try not to grind for days without doing something else. Like for example, right now I am

grinding some mining levels so I can train Smithing and do the Lumbridge tasks. I am also farming the spots on Catherby and Canifis. This way I

can relieve the stress of mining while having fun taking care of my beautiful sweetcorn plants.

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One time I cheated, and got to the fun part but something inside of me was missing. I went on a cheating frenzy and did all the fun stuff, and in a matter of minuets I found that all the fun stuff weren't fun anymore but rather boring.

 

This is the same reason why I came back to Runescape. I was playing World of Warcraft for about a year before my deployment. I found that Blizzard doesn't really care that people want to cheat at their game. I found myself not being accepted much because I didn't have high enough levels. So I spent hundreds of dollars buying gold for the game. I got to max my levels that same week and after I was done I felt empty. I like that, while being so simple (simpler than WoW), Runescape keeps me from any temptation of cheating.

 

The bottom line:

 

Even though I may grind to get to a certain level I feel completed when I do because I set my mind to do a task then complete the task.

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Article 1: Interesting, but I hate the idea of a bronze crown system. HLF already have a lot of influence on future updates and while some of those people may be complete berks with no concept of what is good for the game, they have all played through vast amounts of game content in order to be in the HLF. I don't want to see good suggestions vetoed simply because they didn't from a bronze crown.

 

Article 2: I like your point that fun should be of paramount importance in a game, yet I have to say I disagree with several of your key points. Can any of us honestly say that we know better than anyone else what is "fun"? Many people enjoy the journey to a new skill level, or defeating their first big boss monster, or earning their first fire cape etc, but to others the entire process smacks of stupidity and incredible boredom.

 

I have a pet hatred of Soul Wars ever since seeing a lvl 3 "skiller" with a slayer cape. I can accept that no cape actually requires any "skill" and thus all skill capes are something of a misnomer, but the fact that someone can get a skillcape without once training the skill seems ludicrous.

 

The final paragraph however illuminated a serious flaw in the article. When you refer to high levelled players and their ability to grind, positioning on hiscores etc you yourself have circumvented the concept of "fun". If you are only playing for recognition then perhaps you should give up the game and join a sports team instead. Your suggestion is that the higher level players are presenting an insurmountable challenge to new players, but I would query HOW? Zezima was maxed when I joined the game, but I didn't give a rat's arse about that because I was just enjoying the game. Similarly it did not stop hundreds, if not thousands of other players from joining and persisting with the game. If people regard others without 99s as noobs then they ought to go away and take a long, hard look at themselves - skill levels amount to nothing in real life, the people behind each character are much more interesting than that and it is possible to create a great environment just by getting along.

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The final paragraph however illuminated a serious flaw in the article. When you refer to high levelled players and their ability to grind, positioning on hiscores etc you yourself have circumvented the concept of "fun". If you are only playing for recognition then perhaps you should give up the game and join a sports team instead. Your suggestion is that the higher level players are presenting an insurmountable challenge to new players, but I would query HOW? Zezima was maxed when I joined the game, but I didn't give a rat's arse about that because I was just enjoying the game. Similarly it did not stop hundreds, if not thousands of other players from joining and persisting with the game. If people regard others without 99s as noobs then they ought to go away and take a long, hard look at themselves - skill levels amount to nothing in real life, the people behind each character are much more interesting than that and it is possible to create a great environment just by getting along.

 

What I got from it is that she's afraid it will snowball. Players today will spend more and more time grinding, while others are grinding even harder just to stay ahead, which forces new players to grind that much harder, and so forth. I don't think she meant it is dissuading people from even joining in the first place, at least that's how I was reading it.

 

I don't know if today's top players are grinding more, per say. Skills are so much easier to train then they were even when I started playing. Overall though, you'd have to admit that more people seem to be grinding, or power-leveling, their skills. I think there are other factors for this though: faster money-making methods, easier/afkable training methods, faster training methods, Distractions and Diversions, etc. Today, neither gp nor xp carries the same weight that it once did. As a result, more and more people are "grinding" because they see it more manageable.

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Some RuneScape updates may be like healthcare, but it's a mistake to say that all real life issues are. The government finally did something about our disastrous healthcare system because it was so expensive that major corporations were loosing money and moving out of the country, even to Canada. The insurance companies got pretty much what they wanted out of the "reform", but a lot of them still fought it because they didn't want a public option and they were afraid there might be a public option.

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The final paragraph however illuminated a serious flaw in the article. When you refer to high levelled players and their ability to grind, positioning on hiscores etc you yourself have circumvented the concept of "fun". If you are only playing for recognition then perhaps you should give up the game and join a sports team instead. Your suggestion is that the higher level players are presenting an insurmountable challenge to new players, but I would query HOW? Zezima was maxed when I joined the game, but I didn't give a rat's arse about that because I was just enjoying the game. Similarly it did not stop hundreds, if not thousands of other players from joining and persisting with the game. If people regard others without 99s as noobs then they ought to go away and take a long, hard look at themselves - skill levels amount to nothing in real life, the people behind each character are much more interesting than that and it is possible to create a great environment just by getting along.

 

What I got from it is that she's afraid it will snowball. Players today will spend more and more time grinding, while others are grinding even harder just to stay ahead, which forces new players to grind that much harder, and so forth. I don't think she meant it is dissuading people from even joining in the first place, at least that's how I was reading it.

 

I don't know if today's top players are grinding more, per say. Skills are so much easier to train then they were even when I started playing. Overall though, you'd have to admit that more people seem to be grinding, or power-leveling, their skills. I think there are other factors for this though: faster money-making methods, easier/afkable training methods, faster training methods, Distractions and Diversions, etc. Today, neither gp nor xp carries the same weight that it once did. As a result, more and more people are "grinding" because they see it more manageable.

 

Ah well you may be right with that, my opinions have been tainted a bit recently by the amount of whining that is being done and I perhaps unfairly dismissed this as more of the same. That said, there is no reason that any individual must grind anything - the concept that we must always strive to be better than someone else on this game is a little flawed to my thinking.

 

I suspect that the reality, as you yourself said, is closer to the fact that most players now are at the stage where grinding is merely acceptance of the inescapable truth that levels take a very long time to obtain. Thus instead of necessarily picking the most entertaining route to xp, many now take the faster grind and look forward to the extended possibilities those levels will bring. That said, my personal slayer grind that I've been on for the last few months has been altogether a pleasant experience thanks to my clan and other friends, so it is still easily possible to have fun while grinding.

 

Also a little note, the forum link on the front page takes you to last week's article, might be worth a fix!

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Really liked the first article, although i disagree with it a bit and about the point of the firecape requirement. Partly because even without getting the cape you still need a gargantuan amount of slayer points AND you'll be doing a considerable amount of damage less every hit.

 

I think the need for high level requirements is pretty much proven fact now, but you need to the right KIND of requirements, namely skill requirements. Having to have completed a minigame like that might be great for some, but frustrating to others, and with the fight pits being arguably the most difficult minigame/boss they could have picked Jagex really didn't edge into this kind of shift gently. The requirement for something high level needs to be a high level in that skill, which is what its there for, OR something that directly relates to the skill, one of the great things about runescape/MMO's in my opinion is that you can simply go for your favoured aspect of a skill/activity or do multiple things that compliment each other - the moment i'm forced to play a minigame i hate or level/quest somewhere i truly don't enjoy to carry on with my favourite skill is the moment my interest in the game will start to wane.

 

EDIT: Oh, and perfect representation is near impossible, in real life not just runescape, gathering opinion through word of mouth is a step backward from just having a poll open to everyone on the front page.

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The second article is just like the post muggi made in general, and it has the same "solutions" even in real life you need to be able to do things you don't like to ultimately complete something, I know its a bit much to relate the game to real life but that's the way I see it, and you never see anyone with semi high levels complain about not having fun, only the ones with sub par levels... no offence to anyone :)

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Oh, and perfect representation is near impossible, in real life not just runescape, gathering opinion through word of mouth is a step backward from just having a poll open to everyone on the front page.

 

Yeah representation is impossible, that's one reason I prefer self management and direct and participatory democracy.

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I enjoyed the first article :)

 

About the second tho. You got your example backwards. Doing slayer assignments is fun, you get to break up combat training across many different monsters, with the chance at huge drops (visage, DFH etc.).

 

Playing soul wars with 1500 other people, all of them running around aimlessly screaming "FALLZ FOR 0BBY RU$H!!!!" and watching the avatars health steadily deplete from suiciders running in with repemption on is not fun. Doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again to amass your 8,300+ zeal, now thats grinding.

 

But fighting a variety of monsters across all types of combat, with several others who happen to be doing the same thing as you for the same reason, that is fun. And you get to take breaks to go harvest and replant your herbs, thus reaping huge profits, or supercheap herblore xp. 200k herblore xp cost me 450k worth of seeds, not 8mil worth of avantoe :)

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