Tip.It Times - 30th May 2010

[yuriqiu]

No offense, the first article made me doubt highly about how much you actually play castle wars. Your analysis did not seem to account for anything other than the rewards given by Castle Wars. Was not a very satisfying article for me. Especially the part saying meleers dominate was just silly. Magers and Scorers run Castle wars. Melee pkers play a great role in defending but it is the mages and the scorers who truly runs a game. Meleers can brag about however many kills they recieved throughout a game all they want, but at the end of the day, the 2 reward tickets belong to the actual CW'ers who are scoring and defending the flags

 

To Extreme Manipulation: Bravo. If only you could have added some possible solutions it would have made the article even better. Touched on one of the deadliest form of manipulation in the GE. Was a great read and was extremely thought provoking. I look forward to seeing more articles like this that touches upon the real problems affecting RS at the moment.

[Racheya]

I disagree. While mage players may help, it's practically impossible for a mage or ranger to score because of the way that the combat triangle is imbalanced. A melee player with the top equipment can easily take out a mage or ranger with their top equipment. While weapons such as the Staff of Light (a frequently used staff in CW) make things a bit better for mages, the imbalance is still there and I think that the rewards are simply reinforcing this imbalance.

[yuriqiu]

I disagree. While mage players may help, it's practically impossible for a mage or ranger to score because of the way that the combat triangle is imbalanced. A melee player with the top equipment can easily take out a mage or ranger with their top equipment. While weapons such as the Staff of Light (a frequently used staff in CW) make things a bit better for mages, the imbalance is still there and I think that the rewards are simply reinforcing this imbalance.

Again, it is comments like this that makes me think you've played very little real CW. One of the best scorers in Castle Wars is not even closed to a maxxed player called Drr Blake (Formerly Snake Pit6). His setup for scoring is black dragonhide, jesters boots, fury, master wand, and zamorak book. I have def'd against him on occasions and trust me, you do not want to let him get loose a bit. In private 5 v 5 Castle war games, the setup is often 2 mages with 3 scorers. The mages is considered the most important part in those teams due to the fact that they are the main freezers of flags. Melee is mostly used as a support combat in Castle wars and is one of the part of reason why I like CW. If you try to score in full melee gear, my solution most of the time would be to let you out because I am confident that it would be easy to kill you before you have gotten anywhere at all. A scorer in full Dhide would be way more dangerous in my mind compared to someone in a divine and full bandos using chaotic rapier/longsword.

 

P.S. - If mage was so underpowered in CW, why does all the stackers go on the team with 5-10 mages?

[Nerd_Nolifer]

the eggstreme manipulation article is a very notable topic, as each rare is being bought out one by one.

 

this week was santa week, where the exact same thing happened to santas. dip (caused by hoarders) followed by w2 filled with the same hoarders buying the rares up.

 

did you know that santas have a 4h buy limit of 2 santas, but no selling limit, so the dump was ensured to be 100% successful? could easily have been the same conglomerate of hoarders.

 

 

Sadly, this article could have helped prevent that if it had been published earlier. Now it may be close to impossible to get your hands on a rare through the ge, for the foreseeable future. That is, unless you camp GE updates.

 

I don't see how this article could have prevented anything? It's been known for ages that rares are susceptible to manipulation. Thing is, when something is manipulated, it's hard to predict what's going to happen, unless you are on of the manipulators. That's the whole point of manipulation, lieing/making secret agreements/... in order to have information others don't and use this to your advantage. If manipulation became totally predictable, it wouldn't work anymore.

 

a lot of people read the tip.it times. a lot of people have rares, from way back, but little understanding of the rares market (being in a clan shows you that). a lot of people don't realize the difference between a dip and a dump, these are the ones panicking. With an article published at an earlier stage, more people would have held on to their santas at the last dip.

 

manipulating is VERY predictable. go to w2 after a ge update before selling your goods. look at the people buying items that are "crashing". if they're buying in bulk, it's manipulation. If noone's in w2, then check the forums. you're likely to find the same people selling in w2 selling on the forums; buying in w2 buying on the forums. you can then see if they've been selling just recently by checking their post history

 

 

While the artical may have a valid point, all discussion I have seen so far has overlooked a huge contribution factor to the egg dip. Easter eggs dipped in response to Jagex's alteration of the 'rogue trader'. Basically, if you had a lot of capital, one could continually buy up jewelry from the GE in a traditional buyout. However, rather than dumping the manipulated jewelry on others, (typically via a public Merch clan, AKA a scam) players could just sell their manipulated goods to the rogue, recieving the current GE minimum price. I have actually run the math on this, intending to use the rogue myself, and it became profitable after 3 days of strong GE updates, easily achievable with a buyout.

 

When Jagex changed the trader, he no longer bought for GE minimum but for the alch price; this left hugely rich merchants with staggering amounts of highly toxic junk, and no suckers in their scam clans to buy up the goods. The result? People sold off their eggs with the junk, in an attempt to cut their losses. Due to the high volume of junk being dumped at once, merchants competed with each other, offering to dump off less and less junk with each rare, until the panic occured.

 

Bearing this in mind, the author's point remains valid; manipulators may or may not have triggered the final panic sale of edibles, and those who rebought the rares quickly thereafter certainly did benefit. However, to claim that the entire dip of eggs that day was the brainchild of a few scheming merchants is I think a gross oversimplification of the situation, and I for one see no evidence of such a plot.

 

(Note that I am of the opinion that H'ween masks are doomed to crash shortly, as they update at 5% intervals rather than partyhats' 1%. Coupled with the massive amounts of these items relative to partyhats, and a crash is inevitable.)

 

For those who do not follow the rares market: Eggs have for some considerable time now been available in GE. While the cause for this is uncertain, I for one believe it is coorelated with the recent lower rares buyout. With many "smaller fish" trying to get their hands on partyhats with their newfound street wealth in small rares, partyhats' street has naturally increased. The result is that eggs, and other partyhat currencies, are worth less in comparison to these highly sought after partyhats.

[deskjethp]

The CW article is .... well.. "...." about sums it up.

 

"CW is melee based" - Wrong. Ice barrage. Enough said.

"The new armour looks better." - Pfft. The armour was meant to be flashy. Name oh.. 1 person who played cw for the armour to get it for its stats. Seriously.. people didn't get it for the stats. It was for looks and to show how much CW was played. If people got it for its looks, it must have looked good. The new stuff looks like everything else.

[AnneFrank]

i agree that the castle wars armor is bias to melee....

but the game isn't dominated by meleers

 

like many users above me,one barrage can domainte many

 

maybe you mean the cw's population is dominant by meleers.

on the other hand,

magers wreck,because of the many morons that use melee gear while fighting one..

[Kalafai]

Rangers also have their place in castle wars. Melees usually go solo, and rangers like to stick to teams, or on the walls defending the front, so someone charging at them might not reach or just get 1-2 swings.

[Obtaurian]

I disagree. While mage players may help, it's practically impossible for a mage or ranger to score because of the way that the combat triangle is imbalanced. A melee player with the top equipment can easily take out a mage or ranger with their top equipment. While weapons such as the Staff of Light (a frequently used staff in CW) make things a bit better for mages, the imbalance is still there and I think that the rewards are simply reinforcing this imbalance.

Again, it is comments like this that makes me think you've played very little real CW. One of the best scorers in Castle Wars is not even closed to a maxxed player called Drr Blake (Formerly Snake Pit6). His setup for scoring is black dragonhide, jesters boots, fury, master wand, and zamorak book. I have def'd against him on occasions and trust me, you do not want to let him get loose a bit. In private 5 v 5 Castle war games, the setup is often 2 mages with 3 scorers. The mages is considered the most important part in those teams due to the fact that they are the main freezers of flags. Melee is mostly used as a support combat in Castle wars and is one of the part of reason why I like CW. If you try to score in full melee gear, my solution most of the time would be to let you out because I am confident that it would be easy to kill you before you have gotten anywhere at all. A scorer in full Dhide would be way more dangerous in my mind compared to someone in a divine and full bandos using chaotic rapier/longsword.

 

P.S. - If mage was so underpowered in CW, why does all the stackers go on the team with 5-10 mages?

 

This. Warriors are not vital to the success of a CW team. Also, Racheya, are you saying that a mage in maxed gear would lose to a warrior in maxed gear? That's incredibly far from the truth. The rewards for CW are undeniably geared towards warriors, but that's okay -- they're the underdogs in CW and can use all the help they can get.

[Ahm]

Nice articles, regarding Castle Wars maybe the rewards are biased towards melee and are dominated by it, but the game play is definitely not. :twisted: <- evil barrager smile

[Sir_Squab]

First article, about c-wars - love how the author says it's melee based...talk to other people who bring up how overpowered ice barrage is....

 

One thing I dislike about c wars is flag holding though...to my knowledge it wasn't fixed...

 

As for the rares article, I'm not interested. I'm not one of the uber rich people in the rares market. The only semi-encouraging thing is that stuff like godswords are going down.

 

Hmm. One of these days I ought to barrage there.

[Micromal]

I would like to point out that The Blood Pact is not necessarily the shortest quest. Doric's Quest - if the player is already prepared with necessary items in inventory - can be completed in 10ish SECONDS.

[stonewall337]

To the Eggstreme article:

 

He's quite right with the Goldman Sachs link. Players and especially merchanting clans are basically the Wall Street of Runescape (if you don't know, Wall Street is where the big stock trading goes on along with multiple loan giants and banks). As you might know, the economy CRASHED afterwards and took a long time to rebound. Of course, this is Runescape, not the richest country in the world, but still.

 

It angers me to see price manipulators screw with the RS economy for their own benefit. Just like the predatory lenders... :???:

 

Predatory lenders? How about putting some blame on the idiots who borrowed far more then they could afford to pay back? Ultimately, it was their fault.

 

The world is full of stupid people.

 

And kalafi, I don't remember the time a ranger took me down in RS, in C wars, in PvP, or anywhere. Range is so damn weak.

 

Oh wait, last time I died to range was about 9 months ago with a DM against a friend who had an ely, we killed each other at the same time.

[Danqazmlp]

I disagree. While mage players may help, it's practically impossible for a mage or ranger to score because of the way that the combat triangle is imbalanced. A melee player with the top equipment can easily take out a mage or ranger with their top equipment. While weapons such as the Staff of Light (a frequently used staff in CW) make things a bit better for mages, the imbalance is still there and I think that the rewards are simply reinforcing this imbalance.

Again, it is comments like this that makes me think you've played very little real CW. One of the best scorers in Castle Wars is not even closed to a maxxed player called Drr Blake (Formerly Snake Pit6). His setup for scoring is black dragonhide, jesters boots, fury, master wand, and zamorak book. I have def'd against him on occasions and trust me, you do not want to let him get loose a bit. In private 5 v 5 Castle war games, the setup is often 2 mages with 3 scorers. The mages is considered the most important part in those teams due to the fact that they are the main freezers of flags. Melee is mostly used as a support combat in Castle wars and is one of the part of reason why I like CW. If you try to score in full melee gear, my solution most of the time would be to let you out because I am confident that it would be easy to kill you before you have gotten anywhere at all. A scorer in full Dhide would be way more dangerous in my mind compared to someone in a divine and full bandos using chaotic rapier/longsword.

 

P.S. - If mage was so underpowered in CW, why does all the stackers go on the team with 5-10 mages?

 

 

The argument totally depends on what you expect when you say melee based. To me in CW it means somebody using a melee weapon, not melee armour. A new player with mage will not have much effect but a new player in half decent armour. Also couple with the fact that the majority of players will use melee, it does look to me as it is a very melee based minigame.

 

Stackers will go with mages because they 'think' that mages will win, but I could easily win against a team of your average mages in cw. It's also a viable tactic to burn and splash cades now in full melee armour which can be just as effective as a mage in holding the flag.

[atestarossa]

I would like to point out that The Blood Pact is not necessarily the shortest quest. Doric's Quest - if the player is already prepared with necessary items in inventory - can be completed in 10ish SECONDS.

 

Yes, but you would either have to buy those items (get help from others), or you would have to add the time taken to gather those items. If you do that, then doric's quest takes slightly longer than the blood pact.

[woutercross]

Great article, fun to read.

 

Altho i find it genius of what they did :P Own fault of others panic.