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This thread is meant to be a place to discuss all things Evolution of Combat. There have been many outstanding discussions of the EoC within various weekly update threads, and I would like to see those brought to one place.

 

I will start off with the single largest problem I have with the EoC, which is something that is causing me to shy away from engaging in combat.

Combat in any video game, without exception, involves the risk of death. If you can’t die you are not playing a combat game. Keeping your players health above a certain number is how you stay alive, and runescape is obviously no exception. From pickpocketing to failing agility obstacles to general combat; all cause your life points to be moved closer toward zero and thus death.

 

As health gets lower, the risk of death increases. We have all probably spammed a teleport tablet with just a couple lp left to only die safely in our player owned houses. In Runescape, we eat food or drink certain potions to restore health while in combat. Health goes down, we eat to regain it. This also comes at the cost of a game tick and thus damage output. If we look at the most dangerous battles we engage in (this could be a level 20 taking on a green dragon or a maxed player taking on Nex) success is not a guarantee. Our food has to outlast our opponent’s total health before she dies and leaves her loot. If you come with an inventory full of food but take so much damage you do nothing but eat, you will deal no damage and either die or flee without killing your opponent.

 

We also have prayer in runescape, which is a bit different than health in that it goes down regardless of our opponents actions (unless they have a special prayer draining effect, but that isn’t the normal way it works). Prayer used to grant 100% protection from a single combat style. Jagex made this work by having the restoration of prayer be fairly costly. Also, bosses have used multiple attack styles for most of runescape’s history. So if you are at dks and you aren’t praying mage when Prime gets on you, you're dead.

 

Combat before the EoC was a sort of mathematical battle between the player and his opponent. You had a limit to the amount of health and prayer restoring resources that could be brought to battle, and it was your job to deal damage while keeping your lp above 0.

 

Ok so I am guessing you knew all that already, so why did I spell that out in such painful detail? Well, because the nature of the health and death system in video games is nearly universal because it has a fundamental aspect to it the average player must have. It lets the player control their own risk and thus the amount of stress they place themselves under when entering combat. If I don’t want to have any stress at all, I will go kill something that has no chance of dealing damage against me quickly enough to kill me. When engaging in high risk combat, I can chose when it’s time to eat and when it’s time to flee. I can trade defense for offense at will.

 

Additionally, stress due to increased risk that happens in the middle of a battle can be instantly relieved for a while by eating food or drinking a prayer pot or whatever. For example, when fighting the KQ under the old combat system, she would hit fairly high and often with her ranged attacks while I prayed mage. A big hit would substantially increase the risk of dying with her next attack, thus it increased my stress. This was solved by eating a shark and moving my health back towards a lower risk state.

That takes us to the inherent flaw with the adrenalin bar. Now on top of our health and prayer numbers, we have this new thing that is demanding a great deal of our attention. This bar however likes to be at 0% instead of 100%. It is our job to move it toward 50% or 100% by using abilities in a constant and unending rotation. The cost for choosing not to do this is being virtually useless in combat. I know about momentum, but that’s the old combat system embedded in the EoC and is not useful in many cases.

 

Now we have a new source of stress besides our health and prayer bars. Unlike those however, it is constant and cannot be relieved in any way. It constantly has to be moving up. If you use an ability that reduces adrenalin, than you are right back to using abilities that increase it.

 

This stress doesn’t come from the risk of death, so it’s more subtle, but it builds up and wares on the player over time. I have played enough EoC combat now to where the idea of rotating abilities and building adrenalin makes me want to go watch paint dry instead. I once did a 500 kc saradomin trip in the GWD and when I got off, I got vertigo. No joke. The constant staring at those little cool down clocks on the ability squares made the room spin.

 

I have been playing video games for the past 15+ years and I have never played a game with something like the adrenalin bar (if I did I didn’t play long enough to remember it). I believe jagex did very little research into the effect this would have on its players.

 

The solutions to this are many, and I won’t pretend that I know the best way. What I do know is that the adrenalin bar is too demanding and too repetitive for me, and I don’t think I can keep playing runescape the way it is right now.

I know most of you will completely disagree, so discuss! That’s why I come to tip.it these days :)

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interesting. I think the adrenaline par pushes the focus-count of things players need to focus on at once during combat above the average level of things they can focus on without dropping any. (usually that is about 6 or 7 things) and that can cause issues.

 

I know I didn't like spamming abilities properly like that...

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"Adrenaline is a hormone that is secreted by the adrenal medulla in response to stress, and increases heart rate, pulse rate and blood pressure."

 

That's perfectly natural.

 

If you really don't like it, use momentum. I swear, Jagex needs to put a gigantic banner in your face when you log in telling you to try out momentum if you don't like the new combat system.

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Adrenaline is a hormone that is secreted by the adrenal medulla in response to stress, and increases heart rate, pulse rate and blood pressure.

 

And that has anything to do with what he is posting how?

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Adrenaline is a hormone that is secreted by the adrenal medulla in response to stress, and increases heart rate, pulse rate and blood pressure.

 

And that has anything to do with what he is posting how?

 

I had to edit that post quite a few times because the [bleep]ing copy paste function seems to take entire chunks out of websites now, not just the text. You caught my post at a bad time, and I've elaborated since then.

 

Goddammit I'm really angry at Jagex for not explaining how momentum works. It would help at least 90% of the cases in which players are bummed about the new combat system.

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Adrenaline is a hormone that is secreted by the adrenal medulla in response to stress, and increases heart rate, pulse rate and blood pressure.

 

And that has anything to do with what he is posting how?

 

I had to edit that post quite a few times because the [bleep]ing copy paste function seems to take entire chunks out of websites now, not just the text. You caught my post at a bad time, and I've elaborated since then.

 

Goddammit I'm really angry at Jagex for not explaining how momentum works. It would help at least 90% of the cases in which players are bummed about the new combat system.

 

You didn't read my whole post, because I talked about momentum.

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Goddammit I'm really angry at Jagex for not explaining how momentum works. It would help at least 90% of the cases in which players are bummed about the new combat system.

A lot of their attempts at helping players along have fallen flat. Like the tutorial, for example...

I HATE how players need so much hand holding now. If they see something has been changed, they'll hate it INSTANTLY. You need to CONVINCE them to even TRY it. And once they try it (tons of free XP if I do the tutorial? dur okay) they probably won't even UNDERSTAND it. It requires at least one iota of critical thinking to get anything done in life, but I see so, so many people failing at that every day, and end up quitting (for maybe a month before they come back) over this "confusing new combat system" because they don't have the mental capacity to learn something significantly new.

 

Adrenaline is a hormone that is secreted by the adrenal medulla in response to stress, and increases heart rate, pulse rate and blood pressure.

 

And that has anything to do with what he is posting how?

 

I had to edit that post quite a few times because the [bleep]ing copy paste function seems to take entire chunks out of websites now, not just the text. You caught my post at a bad time, and I've elaborated since then.

 

Goddammit I'm really angry at Jagex for not explaining how momentum works. It would help at least 90% of the cases in which players are bummed about the new combat system.

 

You didn't read my whole post, because I talked about momentum.

 

You just hand waved it in one sentence, saying it's "just the old combat system". Well, isn't that what you liked? No? Then why did you ever play this game in the first place?

 

Trick question. It wasn't the combat. So why would it suddenly matter now? It's at least an improvement, at the very least.

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You are way too angry. I am presenting my concerns as an average player, and you just keep vilifying me. That's ad hominen. Momentum is there but its not sufficient for 99% of what I do. Would you use momentum at Next? KK? QBD? I am trying to pinpoint the major problems with the new combat system, so stop throwing momentum in my face like its existence makes me a whining [bleep].

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You are way too angry. I am presenting my concerns as an average player, and you just keep vilifying me. That's ad hominen. Momentum is there but its not sufficient for 99% of what I do. Would you use momentum at Next? KK? QBD? I am trying to pinpoint the major problems with the new combat system, so stop throwing momentum in my face like its existence makes me a whining [bleep].

 

I wasn't referring to you, specifically. I was talking about Jagex's difficulties teaching players.

 

If you can get the stats for KK/QBD/Nex you can definitely spend one millionth of that time on learning and getting used to the EoC. You're blowing this "stress" thing way out of proportion. You aren't going to die, losing adrenaline isn't going to kill you, you're going to be fine. And I'm surprised that in 15 years of gaming you have yet to see anything like this.

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I don't really see why people have problems using abilities, at least for things I use all the time (high dps melee, high dps mage) I know my ability rotation and can do it without paying attention. I know when I'll have enough adrenaline for a threshold, then I decide what threshold would be most useful at that time and use it. It's really not that hard.

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the main problem i have with the system (besides the apparent inability to level out the equipment choices) is that the skill effects seem to think of their descriptions as suggestions rather than fact

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It's not a question of using ability rotations being hard - it's just so bloody tedious. I've never seen an MMO/RPG with a combat system based on activated/sustained/passive abilities as shit as Jagex's attempt at it.

 

Also abilities are way better than using momentum - over 50% faster on most slayer tasks. You can't ask players to nerf themselves because of Jagex's flawed vision of what combat should be like.

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I completely agree, and it's actually not that hard to fix, if you make adrenaline default to 100%, add a base adrenaline gain, make basics drain a little adren and change adren drains overall to remove the whole basic/treshold/ult distinction... much smoother, much less annoying system.

 

Also note that the stress of dying is very very low almost anywhere, lower than it was. Pre-EoC, it was still possible to do semi-risky things slaying (tanking black dragons/mithril dragons/wyverns combined with overloads) but that's basically gone now too.

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problem 1: We are forced to use all 3 combat styles to be effective. I can't be a mage if I want to. Where is the 'freedom' they promised to give us? Why are classes not equal?

 

problem 2: Either let us be fully 'afk' as the old combat was or make it fully based on player's skill. (something like diablo perhaps? Hit at the direction we point to with our mouse combined with abilities). 'eoc' is something in between which sounds and well.. is.. retarded.

 

problem 3: You can't die and lose items even if you tried really hard.

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I wish I chould just stick to one combat style and be able to use that everywhere.

 

IMO, the combat triangle should only apply to PVP. NPCs should all have three different weaknesses, one for each combat style.

I wonder if Jagex is ever going to realize that a lot of people keep repeating that suggestion, then going "hey, that's actually a good idea!"

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I wish I chould just stick to one combat style and be able to use that everywhere.

 

IMO, the combat triangle should only apply to PVP. NPCs should all have three different weaknesses, one for each combat style.

I wonder if Jagex is ever going to realize that a lot of people keep repeating that suggestion, then going "hey, that's actually a good idea!"

 

Then you have a whole different group complaining about "rapierscape".

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I wish I chould just stick to one combat style and be able to use that everywhere.

 

IMO, the combat triangle should only apply to PVP. NPCs should all have three different weaknesses, one for each combat style.

I wonder if Jagex is ever going to realize that a lot of people keep repeating that suggestion, then going "hey, that's actually a good idea!"

 

Then you have a whole different group complaining about "rapierscape".

 

That's only a problem if one combat style is by far superior to the other two.

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I wish I chould just stick to one combat style and be able to use that everywhere.

 

IMO, the combat triangle should only apply to PVP. NPCs should all have three different weaknesses, one for each combat style.

I wonder if Jagex is ever going to realize that a lot of people keep repeating that suggestion, then going "hey, that's actually a good idea!"

 

Then you have a whole different group complaining about "rapierscape".

 

Not really, for example they could make a monster weak against crush/water spells/arrows but super strong against any other weapon styles.

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I think people like the idea of having a system where you don't use just one kind of weapon, but hate actually having to use anything other than their favorite weapon. This issue is compounded by asymmetric gear releases.

 

However...the way our combat system is designed now, instead of releasing a bunch of only one combat style, we should just pick one type of weapon from each style and release them in sets of three.

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The adrenaline bar and new interfaces for combat make me feel like the game is taking another turn towards becoming WoW. The game has gradually slid there over the years, and one reason RS stood out enough to not get passed an initial comparison was because of the "point and click" combat style.

 

I didn't necessarily enjoy the combat system back before EoC, but Jagex has thoroughly pushed me away. I have trained combat just enough to know I don't like it since EoC. I just don't understand why they continue down that road. Obviously, Jagex and Blizzard draw on a lot of the same crowd, but I would like to know, is Jagex trying to create the medieval equivalent of WoW to entice players leaving WoW? I can't think of any other reason to be honest. It's incredible that a dedicated group of people can't find a better, more innovative way to get people into there game. I just wish Jagex would listen, and ACTUALLY listen, to some things players want. The EoC update seems to be, to me, an overwhelming failure. Then just to top it all off, they make armory more strategic. It's no longer cut and dry, Dragon > Rune, type comparisons. It pushes away the casual player, like myself, from combat.

 

I never was a fan of combat, but, since EoC came out, I've trained my RSC and OSRS combat a great deal, solely because I miss the old mechanic.

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My only real issue with EoC at the moment is stuff that hasn't even been properly balanced for EoC, and as a result, ended up being way too easy.

I mean, taking out Nomad in less than one minute, eating only 4 Monkfish?

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