58 replies to this topic

[Jonanananas]

Still, why should they get Skilling xp for killing monsters? Can you give my any vald reason?

Also, they may have already gotten their skill up to 91+, but what difference does it make? I don't deserve free xp on my way to 99 just because I'm already 93 or w/e...>.>

Besides that, have you forgotten about the dragonkin lamp?

That's a lot of free xp you get too, at worst for nothing more than for posting in some stupid thread "93 con assistance needed pl0x!"


But I ask you again: Why should these effigies have been added to Runescape? Can you see any other purpose than making skills easier?

[langer]

I will repeat what I said last week because for Jagex to implement a feature like this, they need to gauge the playerbase moods and feelings, so here is my opinion: Yes please remove the level cap and raise it to 120. But please fill up the current skills before doing so and please lift the cap gradually so that people have a chance to keep up with the new maximums.

Controversial article like Requiem'S are important for Jagex in their decision making process because you can be sure they have people monitoring threads from all major fansites, unless they are totally phased out from their players like some people claim.

I have seen multiple posts by people saying they would quit if Jagex lifted the cap. If I was at Jagex and felt enough players wanted the cap removed, I'd question myself how I could prevent these players from quitting. A gradual lifting of the cap would certainly make the players that compete a lot (pkers, pvpers...) recalculate their commitment to the game and most of them would stay as long as they could keep up with the current maximums, making them at least competitive and not at a disadvantage.

For the common player that absolutely wants to max out all skills at 99 and can't bear to see the end of the line at 120 for each skills, I'd make new ways to train skills with greater xp rates. Yeah, I'd devaluate the achievement of 99 for a new goal.

[Jifaru]

<snip>
But I am, honestly spoken, outraged at something like the Effigies, which don't add any content at all but just offer free XP.

And to make it even worse, to players who DON'T even deserve it!

I DO NOT DESERVE skilling xp for killing monsters!


Shattered heart is almost the same, however, there is at least the goal of the statue, apart from that it's impractical because of two reasons:
1.A lot of the methods which yield Stones are actually the ones giving lower xp than others.
2.You need to get stones in all skills before you can get new stones again.

So shattered heart isn't that bad.

But Effigies...tbh, I hate them, and I hate it that there are so many players who like them, just because they can't be bothered to train skills the normal way. I hate this kind of attitude where it's only about the levels and not HOW you get there. I don't want a 99 without any work - but sadly, there are a lot of others who do. I personally find this pathetic.

Oh please. Players who can take full advantage of the effigies HAVE invested in skills. They ARE skillers, because they've already gotten AT LEAST 91+ in the needed skills. Do you honestly think that people who got to 91+ in a skill are going to rely on effigies "because they can't be bothered" to train the skill normally? News flash: they already have invested in those skills. Investigating an effigy at level 97 gives 30k xp... at level 97, it also takes over a million xp to get to the next level. 30k xp is nothing more than a bonus in that scope, but not a viable training method! The final lamp gives similar xp tied to your level, so it's nothing more than a bonus either.

Effigies are definitely an update for skillers. They're great for all-round players: skillers who do combat, or fighters who skill. It's the people who haven't got the levels and who rely on assist that lose out on most of the xp. I can't see how anyone could argue effigies are unbalanced. And yes, Jagex is providing players with alternative methods to train skills (penguins, circus, effigies,...). Nobody's ever going to like all the skills, but seeing how important they are to dungeoneering, it doesn't seem so unintelligent from Jagex's part to provide alternative, yet slower/limited ways to gain xp.

I'm sorry, but the logic of the article is flawed/exaggerated. Effigies are rare drops and you'll never get 135k xp from them in one single skill. And even if you could, you would already need 10.6 million xp in that skill.

Honestly, beautifully written.

I think Jagex is adopting a very important paradigm in the recent update trends of making xp gains slightly less tedious. May I note some points about experience multipliers - Barbarian Assault takes quite a long time to fill up a penance horn, even with an experienced team. Stealing Creations offers no experience while playing, and even if you are using a noncombat world, the average game time is about 10 minutes per game. But realistically, slackers and pkers often try to take advantage of the situation to slow down the game. Most activities come with a HIGH opportunity cost, but this usually balances out with the time commitment to directly training that skill through older means. If I spend 12 hours filling up my penance horn and collecting sacred clay tools, then using it all to reap a great amount of experience for mining, would we really consider that XP rate to be imbalanced?

We've already invested the time - just elsewhere, so that the training process is less tedious.

The same argument for opportunity cost applies for buyable skills. If you see yourself as making 3m+ an hour, then perhaps it is even less worthwhile to use alternative methods of training (using experience boosters) than to just buy that skill with raw cash and make the money back. There are multiple considerations in the balance of a skill, be it cost or accessibility. But don't forget, ladies and gentlemen, TIME is just as much of a resource on Runescape as, say, rune essence, magic logs, or rocktail.

On the same token, do effigies REALLY have as much of an impact as many people claim? Looking at the stats of many naysayers, I find it almost strange that they argue so vehemently against the effigies when in reality, the effigies are designed to be forgiving to those who don't have the skills to fully investigate. "I don't deserve to get skilling experience for killing monsters"...? If you're maxed out on all skills and complaining that Jagex made it too easy for people to earn experience, that'd actually be an understandable line of reasoning. But if you can't even investigate a single effigy, Jagex is HANDING you experience so that you can access more parts of the game. Please, is that really so bad?

This leads to my final (but also first) point - the paradigm behind these updates. When more of the game is accessible to more people, the game naturally becomes better and more attractive for MORE players. There will always be high leveled players who have leapt ahead of the crowd to attain their levels. Old-school players who had no choice but to chop yews and magic logs to 99 WC were rewarded handsomely for their time - moreso than players who powerleveled with SC hatchets and ivy. Players who leveled up Herblore before extremes and overloads came out were rewarded by missing out on the ridiculous jump in herb prices - and with the ability to be the first players to experience the domination of the new potions. With every update that Jagex introduces to help lower leveled players attain their goals, there's something there too for higher leveled players as well. A year ago, I would never have imagined being able to attain the levels I have today or purchase an AGS, let alone get the cash to buy ten or fifteen of them.

Without even discussing whether Jagex can or should raise the level cap to 120 for all skills, Jagex is (consciously or otherwise) creating a large high-leveled playerbase that will be ready for an endgame release. Content that requires teamwork, skill, and coordination. Dungeoneering offers a brief glimpse into the raid-like potential for such content. That would turn RS into much more than a sandbox game.

But at the end of the day, that's what RS has been all these years, hasn't it? No end, no goal. Just you, paving your own path to greatness or fun, whatever it is.

Why should THAT change?

~Jifaru

[Zygimantas]

Runescape, since its release has always gotten easier. Rarely do "nerfs" occur, in which the game is made harder. Making money is now easier, leveling skills is easier, killing monsters is easier, transportation is easier. With almost ever update the game gets easier in some way. Its really the only path that the game can follow. Two years from now we will be looking back and saying how much harder it was to level certain skills back in 2010.

[Jonanananas]

Honestly, beautifully written.

I think Jagex is adopting a very important paradigm in the recent update trends of making xp gains slightly less tedious. May I note some points about experience multipliers - Barbarian Assault takes quite a long time to fill up a penance horn, even with an experienced team. Stealing Creations offers no experience while playing, and even if you are using a noncombat world, the average game time is about 10 minutes per game. But realistically, slackers and pkers often try to take advantage of the situation to slow down the game. Most activities come with a HIGH opportunity cost, but this usually balances out with the time commitment to directly training that skill through older means. If I spend 12 hours filling up my penance horn and collecting sacred clay tools, then using it all to reap a great amount of experience for mining, would we really consider that XP rate to be imbalanced?

We've already invested the time - just elsewhere, so that the training process is less tedious.

The same argument for opportunity cost applies for buyable skills. If you see yourself as making 3m+ an hour, then perhaps it is even less worthwhile to use alternative methods of training (using experience boosters) than to just buy that skill with raw cash and make the money back. There are multiple considerations in the balance of a skill, be it cost or accessibility. But don't forget, ladies and gentlemen, TIME is just as much of a resource on Runescape as, say, rune essence, magic logs, or rocktail.

On the same token, do effigies REALLY have as much of an impact as many people claim? Looking at the stats of many naysayers, I find it almost strange that they argue so vehemently against the effigies when in reality, the effigies are designed to be forgiving to those who don't have the skills to fully investigate. "I don't deserve to get skilling experience for killing monsters"...? If you're maxed out on all skills and complaining that Jagex made it too easy for people to earn experience, that'd actually be an understandable line of reasoning. But if you can't even investigate a single effigy, Jagex is HANDING you experience so that you can access more parts of the game. Please, is that really so bad?

This leads to my final (but also first) point - the paradigm behind these updates. When more of the game is accessible to more people, the game naturally becomes better and more attractive for MORE players. There will always be high leveled players who have leapt ahead of the crowd to attain their levels. Old-school players who had no choice but to chop yews and magic logs to 99 WC were rewarded handsomely for their time - moreso than players who powerleveled with SC hatchets and ivy. Players who leveled up Herblore before extremes and overloads came out were rewarded by missing out on the ridiculous jump in herb prices - and with the ability to be the first players to experience the domination of the new potions. With every update that Jagex introduces to help lower leveled players attain their goals, there's something there too for higher leveled players as well. A year ago, I would never have imagined being able to attain the levels I have today or purchase an AGS, let alone get the cash to buy ten or fifteen of them.

Without even discussing whether Jagex can or should raise the level cap to 120 for all skills, Jagex is (consciously or otherwise) creating a large high-leveled playerbase that will be ready for an endgame release. Content that requires teamwork, skill, and coordination. Dungeoneering offers a brief glimpse into the raid-like potential for such content. That would turn RS into much more than a sandbox game.

But at the end of the day, that's what RS has been all these years, hasn't it? No end, no goal. Just you, paving your own path to greatness or fun, whatever it is.

Why should THAT change?

~Jifaru

It is true that directly training the skill is most often faster than using multipliers. Even if that were not the case, it would still not hurt too much(unless it is MUCH faster) as it makes skilling more varied as you can decide if you want to train the normal way or play some minigame and train for less time.

I do not agree, however, that handing out levels is good because players get too access more content. Runescape is, in my opinion, about the way to your goals, whatever they are. Sure, the reward from the achievement may be nice and interesting, but that's not what keeps me playing, mostly.
Most often the reward for High-level players is only short-lived or is outdone by negative aspects (e.g crashing at godwars)
On the other hand, that's just my opinion and i don't think we'll reach a real conclusion here.


On the point of how bad the effigies really are, and about my levels:

Of course I know that it's practically handing xp out to me. But I'm not the type of runescape player that laughingly embraces any update which gives them free xp. I do know that it does in fact help me, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I'd rather get my goals by doing it myself and with work, any enjoy that work.
Apart from that, why should it always be the high-levels that care about the game getting easier? Why not the low-levels who still have the most of the work in front of them, and do enjoy that work as they should when they are playing runescape?

You are also right that the effigies influence isn't too great. They are too rare for that. My point still stands, there still is no reason to add them in the first place. They don't have a big negative influence, but what would be the positive side? Players getting just free xp for basically nothing? No thanks.

[Jifaru]

Well once again, experience is not "handed out" because a vast amount of time is required to collect effigies, to the point where it's really even worth it to camp for them. Furthermore, I love effigies because they're an additional reward when I'm on a slayer task. Even if the slayer monster doesn't drop anything worthwhile, the chance of an effigy really makes it exciting and keeps the anticipation alive. On the point of anticipation, it is the high-end content that kept me training - from Dragon Slayer, to Heroes, to Recipe for Disaster, to While Guthix Sleeps, and finally to my Quest Cape. I think the effigies really remind a lot of lower level players that there is light at the end of the tunnel - that one day soon to come, they will also be able to experience the full range of higher-end content. I don't think I really need to reiterate the positives of this update. If you really feel that effigies prevent you from enjoying the game you want to, please allow me to make a suggestion:

Don't use them. Nobody's forcing you to.

[Troacctid]

Old-school players who had no choice but to chop yews and magic logs to 99 WC were rewarded handsomely for their time - moreso than players who powerleveled with SC hatchets and ivy.

The rest of your post is spot-on, but I'll take issue with this bit. Speaking as one of these "old-school" lumberjacks, there never were any handsome rewards for woodcutting, and there still aren't. Well, okay, it's a pretty good-looking cape, but I mean aside from that.

[Range_This11]

The rest of your post is spot-on, but I'll take issue with this bit. Speaking as one of these "old-school" lumberjacks, there never were any handsome rewards for woodcutting, and there still aren't. Well, okay, it's a pretty good-looking cape, but I mean aside from that.

Rewarded handsomely compared to gaining zero GP via Ivy.

[Troacctid]

The rest of your post is spot-on, but I'll take issue with this bit. Speaking as one of these "old-school" lumberjacks, there never were any handsome rewards for woodcutting, and there still aren't. Well, okay, it's a pretty good-looking cape, but I mean aside from that.

Rewarded handsomely compared to gaining zero GP via Ivy.

...No, not really. The money is terrible.

[Bladewing]

The rest of your post is spot-on, but I'll take issue with this bit. Speaking as one of these "old-school" lumberjacks, there never were any handsome rewards for woodcutting, and there still aren't. Well, okay, it's a pretty good-looking cape, but I mean aside from that.

Rewarded handsomely compared to gaining zero GP via Ivy.

You save time doing ivies, which you can spend elsewhere for GP

[mario_sunny]

I hate to be the one to say it... but I think that tip.it times ran out of new and interesting perspectives about two years ago. I have to force myself to read the articles nowadays because they're just rehashing common understanding into articles for its own sake.

Maybe the frequency of releases should be lowered.

e: I'm not trying to be an ass, this is honestly how I feel.

Yes I have to force myself to read them too. I love the tip.it times and I appreciate how much work goes into each article, however the authors seem to have run out of ideas lately.

I would be happy with four articles a month.

[Range_This11]

The rest of your post is spot-on, but I'll take issue with this bit. Speaking as one of these "old-school" lumberjacks, there never were any handsome rewards for woodcutting, and there still aren't. Well, okay, it's a pretty good-looking cape, but I mean aside from that.

Rewarded handsomely compared to gaining zero GP via Ivy.

You save time doing ivies, which you can spend elsewhere for GP

I suppose we're dealing with you efficiency freaks. Well, I guess we know where this argument is going haha.

[tonguetamer3]

Are we sure about the DYK? I know for Tactician you have to be using accurate stance, but is the same true for Berserker and aggressive stance?

The RuneScape KB, the in-game description, and even Tip.it's guides all say nothing about having to use aggressive stance to get the bonus strength levels. I have not tested it to try to find out for myself, and although I did notice that I was hitting higher when using aggressive than accurate, this is also just a normal byproduct of aggressive stance.

Essentially, I'm not saying the DYK is wrong, I'm just wondering how it was discovered.

[stonewall337]

Another boring first article. Really, why do these articles keep on stating the obvious, and not even doing it particularly well? Oh ye, thats right... Requiem is a friend of Racheya's.

You will get ONE RC option at most per effigy, and then use the lamp. So there is no way you get 130k+ xp. The author could have checked that within 5 minutes. Not to mention, you already need over 6m to use on RC consistently, without have to stew. I've also had as many effigies from dusties as from ISW, so they aren't exactly hard to get.

[ForsakenMage]

Another boring first article. Really, why do these articles keep on stating the obvious, and not even doing it particularly well? Oh ye, thats right... Requiem is a friend of Racheya's.

If you think these are so obvious, you are more than welcome to write an article and send it in as a guest article. Writing is not as easy as some of you make it out to be, let alone choosing a topic to write on.

[Jonanananas]

Are we sure about the DYK? I know for Tactician you have to be using accurate stance, but is the same true for Berserker and aggressive stance?

The RuneScape KB, the in-game description, and even Tip.it's guides all say nothing about having to use aggressive stance to get the bonus strength levels. I have not tested it to try to find out for myself, and although I did notice that I was hitting higher when using aggressive than accurate, this is also just a normal byproduct of aggressive stance.

Essentially, I'm not saying the DYK is wrong, I'm just wondering how it was discovered.

It is definitely true. The fact you mention, that it's actually nowhere stated caused a lot of discussion as a lot of spear users thought they could still use berserker and wasted their tokens on it. That was even made worse as Mod Mark H "confirmed" it works without aggressive stance, he concluded that from the KB formulation.

However, JMods rolled back after that, said they made a mistake and cleared that it only works in aggressive stance.

[stonewall337]

Another boring first article. Really, why do these articles keep on stating the obvious, and not even doing it particularly well? Oh ye, thats right... Requiem is a friend of Racheya's.

If you think these are so obvious, you are more than welcome to write an article and send it in as a guest article. Writing is not as easy as some of you make it out to be, let alone choosing a topic to write on.

I'm in the process of doing so, I've already talked about it with several of the more intelligent forum members.

I know how hard writing is, but when the author is too lazy or else unwilling to check the "facts" that he basis his argument on, that doesn't show much for the author's intelligence or writing skills. And he will be called on it, as several forumers have done already.

[tonguetamer3]

Quote

Are we sure about the DYK? I know for Tactician you have to be using accurate stance, but is the same true for Berserker and aggressive stance?

The RuneScape KB, the in-game description, and even Tip.it's guides all say nothing about having to use aggressive stance to get the bonus strength levels. I have not tested it to try to find out for myself, and although I did notice that I was hitting higher when using aggressive than accurate, this is also just a normal byproduct of aggressive stance.

Essentially, I'm not saying the DYK is wrong, I'm just wondering how it was discovered.

It is definitely true. The fact you mention, that it's actually nowhere stated caused a lot of discussion as a lot of spear users thought they could still use berserker and wasted their tokens on it. That was even made worse as Mod Mark H "confirmed" it works without aggressive stance, he concluded that from the KB formulation.

However, JMods rolled back after that, said they made a mistake and cleared that it only works in aggressive stance.

Thank you =]

[Bladewing]

Another boring first article. Really, why do these articles keep on stating the obvious, and not even doing it particularly well? Oh ye, thats right... Requiem is a friend of Racheya's.

If you think these are so obvious, you are more than welcome to write an article and send it in as a guest article. Writing is not as easy as some of you make it out to be, let alone choosing a topic to write on.

Maybe the fact that there aren't any topics that are instantly apparent to be interesting and salient to the writers should be an indication that they should not write an article? Just sayin'.

[Vulxai]

Another boring first article. Really, why do these articles keep on stating the obvious, and not even doing it particularly well? Oh ye, thats right... Requiem is a friend of Racheya's.

If you think these are so obvious, you are more than welcome to write an article and send it in as a guest article. Writing is not as easy as some of you make it out to be, let alone choosing a topic to write on.

Maybe the fact that there aren't any topics that are instantly apparent to be interesting and salient to the writers should be an indication that they should not write an article? Just sayin'.

That's how the tip.it times works. They have release dates, and they make sure they have something written. If you don't find it interesting, don't read it and don't complain. It's as simple as that. Just sayin'.