2013: What's Coming and What's Going

[Quest_Cape_K]

People would still bot agility for the skill capes.

 

Exactly. This is why keep saying that skill capes were one of the worst updates to RS ever. But do you think people would still bot to 99 if 99 was a fun byproduct of training agility, rather than the focus itself? What about if skill capes didn't exist?

 

Most bots you see are gold farming bots because it makes real cash.

 

And who spends real money on RS GP?

So many people buy RS GP, this gold buying also affects other things such as the fact that stolen credit cards are used etc.

This was one of the main reasons why free trade was implemented.

[muggiwhplar]

In all of those examples, people resort to buying GP because the alternative (earning it legitimately) is unappealing. Therefore, it makes sense to make "grinding" fun and appealing instead, and/or remove the necessity of grinding in the first place.

[muggiwhplar]

My point was that botting/RWT exist basically as a result of the grind.

Content that isn't the most efficient becomes instantly obsolete because of the grind.

Unhealthy amounts of necessary gameplay are considered normal and encouraged because of the grind.

The game is less social because of the grind.

The gap between the elite and the casual is huge because of the grind.

 

When RS was thriving, grinding was rare, optional, and almost even taboo. Now it's mandatory and strongly encouraged.

I think that final point is more nostalgia than anything else. Grinding has become more accessible as skills become easier (on the wrists and in time required to max), but grinding has been part of the game since the xp for 99 was set at ~13m. Grinding/skilling is still taboo in some parts of RS, and those people can be quite vocal about it. I think you're just in a community here on tip.it which is high-levelled and experienced, which it wasn't quite so much a few years ago.

 

This is another issue that's more or less too big for Jagex to fix right now. As the game lives on, and people refuse to quit, they feel obligated to make high-level updates to appease that group of players. But, the more high-level updates they make, the higher the bar gets raised and the more "normal" such extreme requirements become, which hurt the average player.

 

Out of curiosity, how many hours does it take to get a completionist cape? And how long would it take to obtain one, playing 1-2 hours a day?

[Quyneax]

In all of those examples, people resort to buying GP because the alternative (earning it legitimately) is unappealing. Therefore, it makes sense to make "grinding" fun and appealing instead, and/or remove the necessity of grinding in the first place.

1) Not everybody thinks the same thing is fun; people bot nearly every game, including single player games. Changing the game won't remove RWT unless you make everything free.

2) RWT should not determine what kind of game we play, the game should not be changed at the core because some people cheat.

 

Comp cape currently sits at about 2000-2500 hours of efficient gameplay, Alkan maxed in less iirc but not sure if that was 2475 or comp cape. It's roughly three, four years of casual play. The less you play per day, the more daily/weekly/monthly experience and high-overhead activities (GWD has killcount for example) starts affecting numbers, which makes the figure less accurate.

 

Note that people play other games for lots of time as well. RS is grind-based, and yes people play many hours a day, but it is not unique to RS or the MMORPG genre, and in the end it is part of the game. You like it or you don't. People average what, two-three hours of watching TV per day? It's not fair to say RS is a massive outlier unless you have some figures to back it up. And reliable figures, which means not your own observations.

[muggiwhplar]

In all of those examples, people resort to buying GP because the alternative (earning it legitimately) is unappealing. Therefore, it makes sense to make "grinding" fun and appealing instead, and/or remove the necessity of grinding in the first place.

1) Not everybody thinks the same thing is fun; people bot nearly every game, including single player games. Changing the game won't remove RWT unless you make everything free.

2) RWT should not determine what kind of game we play, the game should not be changed at the core because some people cheat.

 

Some of the things I used to consider fun are now dead content because everyone else considers them a waste of time.

 

The game should be changed at the core because it's going to be dead in a matter of years if Jagex keeps churning out updates without putting any thought into the long-term repercussions :P

[Alg]

Would people bot agility if you only needed level 70 to access pretty much everything related to agility? Would people bot agility if training it was a ton of fun? I doubt it.

Yes, for the same reasons that people cheat in any other game, including single player games where achievements don't mean anything. :razz:

[muggiwhplar]

Would people bot agility if you only needed level 70 to access pretty much everything related to agility? Would people bot agility if training it was a ton of fun? I doubt it.

Yes, for the same reasons that people cheat in any other game, including single player games where achievements don't mean anything. :razz:

 

That's a good point. Though there aren't any possible consequences for cheating in single player games

[muggiwhplar]

In all of those examples, people resort to buying GP because the alternative (earning it legitimately) is unappealing. Therefore, it makes sense to make "grinding" fun and appealing instead, and/or remove the necessity of grinding in the first place.

1) Not everybody thinks the same thing is fun; people bot nearly every game, including single player games. Changing the game won't remove RWT unless you make everything free.

 

Remove RWT altogether? Probably not. Heavily damage it? Probably. Right now RWT/botting is like a bee hive with a bunch of bees flying around stinging everybody. Jagex seems to think the best solution is to keep killing each bee one at a time or keep spraying everybody with bug repellant, rather than, you know, destroying the hive itself.

 

2) RWT should not determine what kind of game we play, the game should not be changed at the core because some people cheat.

 

The game shouldn't be changed because some people cheat; the game should be changed because it can't keep up like this forever unless it makes some major core changes. EoC was a good place to start, even though it's still full of flaws.

 

Comp cape currently sits at about 2000-2500 hours of efficient gameplay, Alkan maxed in less iirc but not sure if that was 2475 or comp cape. It's roughly three, four years of casual play. The less you play per day, the more daily/weekly/monthly experience and high-overhead activities (GWD has killcount for example) starts affecting numbers, which makes the figure less accurate.

 

In the past, 1 hour of playtime benefited you more than 1 hour of playtime now. If that makes sense. When Jagex keeps making updates along the same train of thought as they do now, then that hour of playtime continues to get devalued. But as you know, my other point is that the hours of playtime are irrelevant if they're spent having fun where you lose track of time spent playing. But the game's current core structure doesn't allow that.

 

Note that people play other games for lots of time as well. RS is grind-based, and yes people play many hours a day, but it is not unique to RS or the MMORPG genre, and in the end it is part of the game. You like it or you don't. People average what, two-three hours of watching TV per day? It's not fair to say RS is a massive outlier unless you have some figures to back it up. And reliable figures, which means not your own observations.

 

Not really sure what your point is here.

[Thus]

I didn't see them mention anything about shifting the game's focus from grinding to having fun.

We already know you don't like grind, you quit, fine. RS is a grinding-based game and if you don't like that you should find another. I have fun getting my levels, and the tougher the level the more fun it is to get. No matter how much people (including myself) may rage about how annoying some skills are, in the end we still like this game and that is in part because of the grind. Taking the grind away entirely is the last thing Jagex should do. Not that some things aren't too much (5k cw games) but in general it's fine.

 

My point was that botting/RWT exist basically as a result of the grind.

Content that isn't the most efficient becomes instantly obsolete because of the grind.

Unhealthy amounts of necessary gameplay are considered normal and encouraged because of the grind.

The game is less social because of the grind.

The gap between the elite and the casual is huge because of the grind.

 

When RS was thriving, grinding was rare, optional, and almost even taboo. Now it's mandatory and strongly encouraged.

 

The grinding was always there. It just led to nothing, because half the skills had nothing to do or no worth after a certain level. Some skills are still like that. Then skillcapes came, and max/comp capes. They still aren't mandatory or strongly encouraged, except combat. These are player made notions, not developer made.

[muggiwhplar]

They're both. They influence each other. If one refused to participate, the other would follow suit.

[Deletion]

Maybe I'm missing the point; but if you don't enjoy grind why would you want to play a grinding-based game?

 

I mean sure you could argue there are some end-game non-grind based activities. But really, at its core, Runescape is a grind-based game and I honestly can't see the point in playing it if you don't like grind.

[Thus]

The grinding was always there. It just led to nothing, because half the skills had nothing to do or no worth after a certain level. Some skills are still like that. Then skillcapes came, and max/comp capes. They still aren't mandatory or strongly encouraged, except combat. These are player made notions, not developer made.

So the players weren't grinding beforehand, the developers made skillcapes, and then players started grinding, by your own admission. Yet this was a player-made thing? It was such a player made notion, that they weren't doing it before skillcapes got released?

 

I'm not really on either side of this argument, but this is clearly an illogical position to take.

 

Jagex didn't make players think that not having a skillcape is inferior. That was not their goal. They wanted to give people who reached 99 something, because most of the skills had no real use at that level and they still don't. That is player made.

 

EDIT: You sure did mate. Way to jump down my throat.

Edited January 23, 2013 by Thus

[muggiwhplar]

Maybe I'm missing the point; but if you don't enjoy grind why would you want to play a grinding-based game?

 

I mean sure you could argue there are some end-game non-grind based activities. But really, at its core, Runescape is a grind-based game and I honestly can't see the point in playing it if you don't like grind.

 

Exactly. Which is why when I get on RS, if something sounds unpleasant or grindy, I simply don't do it because it's a waste of my time. And I also understand that by refusing to participate, I waive my right to complain about the things I'm unable to achieve as a lack of my unwillingness, which is why I also never complain about such things :P

 

My basic point, though, is that yes grinding was always part of RS. But prior to things like skillcapes, the grinding was under control because people never actually considered training beyond level 85 or so. Jagex released incentives to grind to 99, without really making the grind more tolerable/enjoyable. Things like Runespan were a good start; much better than the previous training methods. But at the end of the day, does anyone really say, "I'm bored. I kind of wanna go to the Runespan, that sounds like fun." Does anybody keep going back to the Runespan after they hit 99 runecrafting?

 

It's too late to remove the incentives for high-commitment accomplishments. But it's not too late to make the process much more fun and enjoyable.

 

Quick question: is anybody here actually against making the game more fun instead of grindy? And yes, I understand that fun and grind are subjective terms, but hopefully you understand what I'm trying to say.

[Ginger_Warrior]

The grinding was always there. It just led to nothing, because half the skills had nothing to do or no worth after a certain level. Some skills are still like that. Then skillcapes came, and max/comp capes. They still aren't mandatory or strongly encouraged, except combat. These are player made notions, not developer made.

So the players weren't grinding beforehand, the developers made skillcapes, and then players started grinding, by your own admission. Yet this was a player-made thing? It was such a player made notion, that they weren't doing it before skillcapes got released?

 

I'm not really on either side of this argument, but this is clearly an illogical position to take.

 

Jagex didn't make players think that not having a skillcape is inferior. That was not their goal. They wanted to give people who reached 99 something, because most of the skills had no real use at that level and they still don't. That is player made.

 

EDIT: You sure did mate. Way to jump down my throat.

I wasn't jumping down your throat "mate". Once again, you seem intent on making arguments personal rather than sticking to subject matters.

 

That much I can understand and can agree with, and you could argue this to the n^th degree and say hiscores probably created the desire in some players to generally be as high as possible because it puts their name up for everyone to see, and it's about having that kind of recognition amongst your own peers. In that sense, skillcapes did nothing that hadn't been done before. I read your post as saying players didn't grind before skillcapes, hence the confusion.

 

If we're both being honest, it wasn't a completely player-made notion though, was it? Skillcapes may not have started anything themselves, but they did take one sub-culture of the RuneScape community and translated it across the whole board. The emotes may not seem anything special now, but they definitely were something to be coveted back when they were released. As time has gone on, comp cape is to skillcapes what skillcapes were to the hiscores. They've built on, and continually attempted to perpetuate, a deep want in players to grind skills as high as possible.

 

In any event, the original spark was the idea that grinding isn't "fun". I think that argument has some merit to it, but it largely relies on semantics over how people define "fun". My point there would be that any measurement of how "fun" RuneScape is is as subjective as the highly personal experience of "fun" itself, and if we enter that territory again, we'd get bogged down in a dirty war very quickly.

[Leon S]

What MMO isn't a grind at high level, though?

[muggiwhplar]

What MMO isn't a grind at high level, though?

 

What's your point? :P Just because all other MMOs are grindy at high levels doesn't mean that's a good thing, or that RS should be that way too.

[Deletion]

My point was that if you don't like the core gameplay of a game, why not go play something else that you do enjoy?

 

You're welcome to disagree, and I would like to see a counter-argument, but Runescape is a grind-based game, it always has been.

 

I don't know, maybe it's just me - but I wouldn't play a game which always has been about grinding if I didn't like grinding. Why bother botting a game which you don't enjoy the premise behind?

 

There's so many games with better PvP, PvM and what ever else you can argue which the grind leads up to. So why play Runescape at all if you don't like grinding? It's stupid.

 

This quote is what gets me:

 

In all of those examples, people resort to buying GP because the alternative (earning it legitimately) is unappealing. Therefore, it makes sense to make "grinding" fun and appealing instead, and/or remove the necessity of grinding in the first place.

 

Why do these people bother playing at all? I feel like I'm just repeating myself over and over (probably because I am). But if Runescape isn't a game based around grinding then what is it? And if you don't like grinding, why play it at all?

[muggiwhplar]

I've discussed the psychology behind that here and here in the past (don't bump).

 

TL;DR: They tolerate grinding (or they don't and bot instead) because they think it'll make them happier. But it usually doesn't.

 

 

If you're talking to me personally, I only grind on RS when I've got an audiobook to listen to/study because it ironically keeps me more focused. :P I've also still got a few close friends on RS who aren't on Facebook, so I'll chat/hang out with them for a bit.

[PumpkinPete112]

I sub to Runescape frequently because it's cheap and I know I will be entertained for a week or so at least. Its comforting to be back, its like coming home. I've played for 9 years and if you look at my stats you can tell I don't like the grind.

 

That said this was the final straw for me to resub. I am willing to give them another chance, much like you would your child. I still care for Jagex and Runescape quite a bit. HOWEVER, my goodwill is running out, and I PRAY they keep their promises. A world without official Runescape would be a slightly sadder would

[Deletion]

If you’re one of those people who truly doesn’t enjoy training skills or doing tasks to earn money, you probably shouldn’t be playing this game.

 

From your second linked article and the first article follows a similar train of thought - That's the entire point of my argument.

 

Your original point in this thread is that they aren't moving the game away from grinding towards "fun".

 

My counter-point, and one you agree with based on the articles you wrote and linked to, is that you shouldn't be playing this game if you don't enjoy grind. So hence; a) The game continuing to be a grind is not a problem as it is the premise the game was built on, and b) In a more general sense; If you don't like grind, stop playing a damn game which is based around grinding!

[muggiwhplar]

a) The game continuing to be a grind is not a problem as it is the premise the game was built on

 

I agree with everything except for this. Just because the game was built on the premise of grinding, does not mean that grinding is good for the game. Grinding might be alright in smaller doses, but as the game's expanded, so has the grinding.

 

 

---

 

 

Reposting an unanswered question from a previous post for everyone to answer: Is anybody here actually against making the game more fun instead of grindy? And yes, I understand that fun and grind are subjective terms, but hopefully you understand what I'm trying to say.

[Deletion]

That point was more to reiterate that the game isn't moving towards grinding, but has instead always been about grind and built from that. I agree that grinding isn't necessarily good for the game - but to complain about grinding in a game which has been built around, and continues to be about grinding is ridiculous.

 

As for your question; it depends and how you intend on reducing grind and increasing fun.

[muggiwhplar]

I could be misunderstanding you (correct me if that's the case), but you seem to be saying:

 

>Grinding has always been a core part of the game;

>Grinding isn't necessarily good for the game;

>>Therefore it's ridiculous to try and do something about the grind because it's always been that way.

 

If that's what you're saying, then I think that's ridiculous, and we'll have to agree to disagree. But I do think we're generally on the same page here.

[Yoko Kurama]

This isn't the first time MMG has made such "sincere" posts, often a times them being nothing but publicity stunts. I will be waiting for actual results before I actually proclaim him a Saviour.

 

Also, with regards to the grinding conversation, I'd like to emphatically reaffirm everything Muggi has said, as well as state that I find the justifications/normalizations for/of grinding to be pretty unacceptable and detrimental in a myriad of ways.

[Saradomin_Mage]

It'd be great for the game if you could have more training methods which are fun, engaging and have variety (such as DG) as opposed to flat-out face to the millstone grinds (agility lol), so we can agree on that point.

 

You also have to acknowledge that perhaps after playing through a grind for a while, it can sometimes become quite fun to you because you start to recognise ways to play it more efficiently (like you're competing with yourself). Surely you've had more fun getting through a Slayer task feeling like you're raining death on your foes as opposed to using momentum and then switching to another window.

 

Sadly, even if Jagex succeeded in producing methods that combatted grind heavily, you can bet that there'd still be people who would bot them anyway.

 

Trying not to be too skewed in this viewpoint.