A dying skill?

[constrictor]

Seeing as my most recent obsession to train in game is Construction, I thought I'd make a topic of it.

 

As I worked on the skill and spoke with friends I quickly learned that very few people care for the skill/do not see it fit to train very much.

 

What are you thoughts on why the skill is dying?

If applicable, what would you say could improve the skill and why?

 

Discuss. I will respond as I see fit.

 

[spoiler=Suggestions posted about already]

 

 

A lot of cool ideas here.

 

And yeah, Construction is not the best skill, it's cool, but it has no use, it's just a money sink.

 

Using some of the others idea's, here's a list.

• Bank Chest - Just a chest in the house; can't be used in building mode. (Idea from Platinum_Myr)
  

• Skilling Add-Ons - Wasn't sure what to name this but, as Platinum Myr has said, could have items that are for other skills (e.g herblore) that can only be made in a house that are untradeable, like.. fish, weapons & armour, special herbs / plants.
  

• Underground Shafts - A place under your house (not like the dungeons) that you can build which can store killable monsters which are for slayer taks, can create minecart systems, etc.
  

• House Communities (Credit: Constrictor) - A house which multiple people can build at once, possible ideas for this could be incorporating the Skilling Add-Ons idea, making it so you need friends to create the untradeable items.
  

So yeah, most of them are others, just a place to see 'em all.

 

They did mention creating streets with friends/clanmates.

 

Something like that would allow skill plots easier me thinks - eg theres certain skill type rooms you can only have 1 of so you have to work together with your houses to get everything on your street. Eg a room holding a mini-game direct entry portal so 1 person could have a dg doorway, another could have a pair tht go to the swars graveyards or a trio to cwars.

 

Plus have some buildings seperate from houses you need a buttload to build supplied by atleast 2+ players; heck could even require teamwork to set some stuff up.

Eg have dungeon rooms you can add say 10 of a monster to but to do that 4 of you need to craft special staves using rocks from the dungeon, enchanted with the monsters remains then perform a capturing spell around a monster (kinda like thunderous trap) in the main game world to make 1 spawn in the dungeon. And could make higher monsters need more people.

 

I don't think Construction is dying so much as it has never lived, because there's not much to do. Actual construction training is high-attention and it can only be done solo - there is absolutely no way to train together. Construction as a skill is about building something once and then use it - using it requires no construction.

 

I like the hidey-holes and rope racks and such, it'd be quite nice if you could build more things all over RS, more shortcuts, but also things like walls/doors/barricades (wall in a resource in an area with agressive monsters) and perhaps dig your own dungeons (mining) and make them safe (construction) to explore some more cavern systems. "The dwarves delved too greedily, and too deep"

 

Some overworld use would be nice for some more examples of what could be done:

One off Edgeville repair work

Mixture of one off and repeatable repair works around West Ardy to make it into a normal city repeatable ones being like patching up buildings otherwise shops shut etc.

Similar things could be done in the Varrock slums and Burgh De Rott

 

Oh that's brilliant.

 

And maybe as you repair cities you get rewards (new D&D I per chance?) or maybe new customizables for your house?

 

As you get higher levels you could repair cities more and retain more rewards thus maybe making Construction not wntirely a money sink?

Or maybe like if you repair a city, say Falador, you could access a special avility, weapon, or armor depending on the city.

 

Example: Falador 100% repairs (requrss 99 construction) unlocks your use of an ultimate ability called Righteous Wrath which maintains 100% prayer with 10% deflect of damage dealt against you for 5minutes. But as the city deteriates you have to keep it up to date to maintain the ability.

 

Or something like that.

 

Building your house should be more sandboxy. Think roller coaster tycoon, except more modern and less roller coaster related. Hotspots are bad design, let us put our objects where we want. Let us customize everything. Let us upgrade skill-based objects as we level in the respective skills. Let us make our houses look like actual houses, not an aggregate of cubicles.

 

 

 

[Vezon Dash]

The skill is dead content because it takes your money, and it give you essentially nothing in return except a nice place to teleport to in case you are about to die. Even then, that can be done at level 1 construction.

[constrictor]

The skill is dead content because it takes your money, and it give you essentially nothing in return except a nice place to teleport to in case you are about to die. Even then, that can be done at level 1 construction.

 

I may be old fashioned with this but are altars still best way to enhance prayer EXP?

 

Any ideas/suggestions as to what would be a way to improve it?

 

I thought one idea would be that destroying rooms atleast gave money back (from initial purchase i.e. fancy garden returned 75k upon removal). Even on a real-life logical basis that makes sense - tearing down a room you could sell the wood, etc., though it'd probably be worth less then the original purchase. So, maybe a 75% return?

[Vezon Dash]

You are better off training at someone else's altar than your own, and that only requires 75. In the grand scheme of things, training prayer, free summoning points, repairing barrows, and a teleport room. All of these require less than 75 in the skill.

 

The point of the skill was originally to remove gp from the game, and it still serves that purpose. I think that the only way to make it better is to allow you to have a bank in your house, and inside the house, you gain more bonus exp. You get more bonus exp depending on your construction level.

[Tim]

There's supposedly a Construction skill overhaul early this year also, so watch out for that.

[Sy_Accursed]

There's supposedly a Construction skill overhaul early this year also, so watch out for that.

 

Slightly untrue.

 

All we have from jmods is that they want to do an overhaul of the skill, nothing about when.

They also have indicated mining, smithing and summoning are up for overhauls.

[constrictor]

You are better off training at someone else's altar than your own, and that only requires 75. In the grand scheme of things, training prayer, free summoning points, repairing barrows, and a teleport room. All of these require less than 75 in the skill.

 

The point of the skill was originally to remove gp from the game, and it still serves that purpose. I think that the only way to make it better is to allow you to have a bank in your house, and inside the house, you gain more bonus exp. You get more bonus exp depending on your construction level.

 

Ahhh that's a pretty brilliant idea, though the bank idea may be abit far fetched, then again training would be near impossible without it.

 

A random idea came to mind (that'd probably be a bad one but i'll say it anyways): housing communities?

 

Almost taking from the clan citadels idea but allowing players to build houses together (and if implementing your idea) ultimately training together.

 

[Thus]

No skill will ever die as long as there is a max/comp cape or high scores.

[constrictor]

There's supposedly a Construction skill overhaul early this year also, so watch out for that.

 

Slightly untrue.

 

All we have from jmods is that they want to do an overhaul of the skill, nothing about when.

They also have indicated mining, smithing and summoning are up for overhauls.

 

Problem with those being overhauled is for the most part they are still useful. Mining makes money, and summoning well summons. Smithing would be the only one that could be more useful, but i honestly am unsure as to what they could add to that.

 

Construction, as Vezon was implying, literally has little to no use.

[Sy_Accursed]

There's supposedly a Construction skill overhaul early this year also, so watch out for that.

 

Slightly untrue.

 

All we have from jmods is that they want to do an overhaul of the skill, nothing about when.

They also have indicated mining, smithing and summoning are up for overhauls.

 

Problem with those being overhauled is for the most part they are still useful. Mining makes money, and summoning well summons. Smithing would be the only one that could be more useful, but i honestly am unsure as to what they could add to that.

 

Construction, as Vezon was implying, literally has little to no use.

 

I wouldn't say they are problem free.

 

Summoning is rather clunky and awkward with many combat familiars never having truly worked correctly and since Eoc it feels very dated.

Mining and Smithing's issue is they are predominantly pointless due to 85+ being required for level 50 armours; their rework (from what jmods have hinted) won;t be a huge upheaval just a nice correction in that existing content will be squashed down to level appropriate region and we'll get a bunch of new things to do in the higher end. Many people suspect this is likely to come with the 'level-my-x' update Jagex have mentioned as being able to upgrade things would give easy content to add to fill out blank space in smithing and even mining if they add special ores and such for this process.

[Platinum_Myr]

Summoning doesn't really need a general overhaul (in that it should function roughly the same) but most invididual summons should be updated and the overall AI plus use in combat should be made a lot more streamlined and automatic. Now that we can use them anywhere, we shouldn't have to micromanage them to get any dps out of them. Also, the scrolls and other stuff need to be fixed.

[Alg]

No skill will ever die as long as there is a max/comp cape or high scores.

I'm as much a fan of character advancement as the next 'Scaper, but it'd be nice to be able to use those skills for something less tautological than training for the ability to train better. :razz:

[Barney.S]

Construction is definitely the skill is use the least. At the moment I only have enough rooms to facilitate my demon butler, a stairway going down to train with oak doors, and a gilded altar. I don't know what they should do to make it better tbh, but as it stands, I don't use it at all.

[Patr1ck]

Oh construction, the money sink of runescape.

[Birdd]

^ You really shouldn't post if you don't have anything to contribute, in my opinion.

 

On topic: I think Construction needs to see uses outside of the house. Now, I don't have any ideas for that but I think one of the huge flaws is that it only usable in a very small area - and that very small area is not accessed by many people at once.

[ACK]

But Jagex promised in re-work on Construction Skill.. maybe next month (they said early 2013)

[Platinum_Myr]

They did add the statues but those are just glorified free xp. I wouldn't mind seeing more ways especially in quests that could use it. And just more things to do in general that get stuck with crafting like those shortcuts/hidey hole things (did those require construction I can't remember?)

 

It could be pretty cool but it's used so few places. Maybe like a town which you can help reconstruct (they sort of had stuff like that but a lot of it never really stayed live content)

 

And ofcourse the house needs to be updated so that it's not crap and useless. Practically all the cool things construction brought to the table have been replaced except a very very few. Gilded alter is the most prominent one still remaining. Obviously storage for pets/items is nice...

 

And all the teleports were cool till they added new ways to use it. And it also would be cool as a meeting place but... it has its own issues.

 

The interface to edit it is also crap can't fix mistakes or move items etc. It all feels very static. Would be cool to add rooms for like.. herblore could have a place to craft high lvl potions that you have to mix in your house and give just like the regular untrables but better..

 

Could have food that can't be cooked except in house, could have other bank-like skills be done in a hotspot in the house.

 

And.. really they could add a bank chest. It wouldn't' break the game anymore I don't think.. as long as you couldn't use it to build stuff (aka, don't allow flatpacking, but I don't know ideal way to prevent this and can't use it in build mode.

[SwreeTak]

In today's RS it is all about leveling the skills needed for efficiency. Once you have got your 99 in an unefficient skill, you don't train it anymore, unless you are serious about getting ranks in the hiscores. Unless we start to get A LOT more benefits from Construction training it will stay as dead and uninteresting for most players as it is today.

[Sir_Squab]

Personally, I like using the altar in my house since I don't need to track somebody else down to do it for me. I can do it when I want. I also find the teleports really useful; makes ancients a hell of a lot easier and I'd rather house tab then pick out the particular runes I need. Especially when I need half a dozen runes for spellswap + tele.

 

Although to be honest, I'm not sure how much I'd use them if I grew up in the era of lodestones.

 

What construction really needs to not be dead content is something useful that scales with level.

[Licert]

A lot of cool ideas here.

 

And yeah, Construction is not the best skill, it's cool, but it has no use, it's just a money sink.

 

Using some of the others idea's, here's a list.

• Bank Chest - Just a chest in the house; can't be used in building mode. (Idea from Platinum_Myr)
  

• Skilling Add-Ons - Wasn't sure what to name this but, as Platinum Myr has said, could have items that are for other skills (e.g herblore) that can only be made in a house that are untradeable, like.. fish, weapons & armour, special herbs / plants.
  

• Underground Shafts - A place under your house (not like the dungeons) that you can build which can store killable monsters which are for slayer taks, can create minecart systems, etc.
  

• House Communities (Credit: Constrictor) - A house which multiple people can build at once, possible ideas for this could be incorporating the Skilling Add-Ons idea, making it so you need friends to create the untradeable items.
  

So yeah, most of them are others, just a place to see 'em all.

[Ginger_Warrior]

I recall Jagex saying there would be a content update to Construction and also a graphical update some time this year, or at least that's the plan.

 

Fundamentally, in a game where you want soul split and extremes/overloads and good armour/weapons (etc.), construction comes way down the list of priorities for gold spending.

[vmser]

My POH hasn't changed a single bit since hitting 72 construction and building gilded altar.

It's been 'dead' for years - it's just a prestige skill / money sink.

 

It could have it's advantages in mutiple skills if it were to be exploited as a good training spot (combat in the dungeon, have a bank chest there and stuff like spining wheel, anvil, ...) but then again that'd be too easy for people to bot and go unnoticed. The greatest potential it could have is by far it's largest drawback too. As long as there's no foolproof bot detection in place - it'll remain 'dead'.

[IridiumBunny]

I would imagine Jagex would be hesitant to implement something like skill plots in your POH, as they want to encourage teamplay, whereas if the best fishing or combat plots were in your own house it would make the game essentially single player (unless a teamwork element is enforced such as in the suggestions of previous page).

 

I am hoping to see something like POPs, where you go back and check on something every once in a while. I suppose farming plots would fit into this, (and a house spirit tree would be awesome). I once read an idea of animal husbandry, where you could grow and train animals in a stable-type area of your POH. I think I would enjoy spending a few minutes a day upgrading my stable and teaching my pets new tricks, as long as they spent the rest of their time grazing and growing on their own.

[Sy_Accursed]

They did mention creating streets with friends/clanmates.

 

Something like that would allow skill plots easier me thinks - eg theres certain skill type rooms you can only have 1 of so you have to work together with your houses to get everything on your street. Eg a room holding a mini-game direct entry portal so 1 person could have a dg doorway, another could have a pair tht go to the swars graveyards or a trio to cwars.

 

Plus have some buildings seperate from houses you need a buttload to build supplied by atleast 2+ players; heck could even require teamwork to set some stuff up.

Eg have dungeon rooms you can add say 10 of a monster to but to do that 4 of you need to craft special staves using rocks from the dungeon, enchanted with the monsters remains then perform a capturing spell around a monster (kinda like thunderous trap) in the main game world to make 1 spawn in the dungeon. And could make higher monsters need more people.

[Arcley]

Wasn't construction always meant to be a gold sink anyway. Not sure why it suddenly must become the pinnacle of efficiency. Sure, it'd be cool if they can spice it up with more features to refresh interest, but the skill itself doesn't really seem broken.

 

Now, something like runecrafting, that's gotten much worse. You can use abilities to kill stuff without a single rune spent and get high levels without crafting a single rune. In the last year the point of this skill was completely lost.