Runescape Dying? [Discussion/Observation]

[ilovecuttingyews]

Also I don't have a graph of player populations. If someone can post one of 2007-2013 that would be helpful to have real debates about EoC's impact on player populations.

That's the problem. As far as I know, no one has kept track of population over the long term. Therefore we can't find the background rate of decline, instant decline after bot nukes, and gradual decline after 'bad' updates.

EDIT: On this topic. I know Tipit had a member number counter on the beta website a while back. Is this still running? If so, can a website crew member recover past data (only showed like the past 7 days or something)?

[Quyneax]

EoC was a bad move simply because there was and is so much work left to do. For example, potions, combat styles, interfaces, combat familiars, equipment and abilities have been either unbalanced or broken since the beta^[1], and no fixes have really taken place yet. Sure, the pre-EoC system was unbalanced, most obviously heavily in favour of melee for pvm, but at least people understood the system, and it was easy to understand. The numbers in the interface were the numbers used in the calculations, and that's something you could depend on at least.

 

Basically, Jagex does not have the ability to fix things quickly. There is something in the organization of the company that prevents it, otherwise these things would have been picked up on straight away. Before you release an update like EoC, you need to be sure that you have a huge team doing nothing but scouring the forums for issues and fixing them immediately. You need to tell people what your reasoning is when you pick a system like the current one, with no differentiation in attack speed. Why do you think that will make the game more fun? Why do you think it would be best to give monsters no abilities? Why do you choose to change the equipment system, and why this system and not one that has damage reduction?

 

If you want people to help you find bugs, you need to tell them what you want to achieve, because otherwise people will think: "Oh, in this system, ability damage isn't boosted by prayers, well I guess that's for autoattacks only then" or similar (less exaggerated) thoughts.

 

---

1. As seen by the following:

- Potions provide less of a damage boost if you are using stronger weapons because of the additive system. They used to be broken entirely, boosting damage by only 17 (about 1%). Boosted levels have still not been made clearly useful. If you looked at the interface before and after levelling strength, you would never know that a strength potion could be useful.

- Melee still has a wider selection of abilities than other styles, with effects such as Smash, Kick and Sever. Ranged has the worst abilities overall.

- Autocast spells aren't saved in all situations, most obviously in Dungeoneering. Ability timers are often wrong. The action bar often doesn't respond.

- Steel titans are no longer worth using. They are level 99 weapons, and they are weak, because they die very quickly when attacked. Familiars other than the steel titan weren't really made useful with EoC either.

- Level 90 magic weapons cost over twenty times as much as level 90 melee weapons. Level 80 2h ranged is much cheaper than other level 80 weapons. Tank equipment is worse than power equipment 15 levels lower, whereas hybrid armour is universally not worth using.

- Nine out of ten ability descriptions are incorrect or incomplete. There are not enough special effects, and stuns are overused, perhaps as a result.

[brunokiller]

^and a ton of minigames weren't updated with eoc in mind, eg barbarian assault where you 1hit everything and tons of minigames whose rewards are completely useless.

[Guest Smelly Paws]

Also, if you call ruining, PVP based mini games and PVP its self, destroying players hard work on pures and special accounts, Degrading all weapons and armours unique abilities and reasons of use. Putting most quest rewards useless. And choosing to impliment a system where the best method is use the weakness and spam keys a good choice then if you ever have a game company, hire Mark.

 

 

So.....Somethings telling me you've got Mark issues?

[Yoko Kurama]

I agree with Quyneax: EoC was a fine idea in principle, but Jagex clearly does not have the determination and wherewithal to really realize it in any satisfactory sense.

 

As for the evidence, in addition to a correlation between EoC and players dropping, we have also have other non-quantitative factors: lots of outrage, complaints and dissatisfaction with the EoC (not in the sense that they want to improve it, but in the sense that they don't want it at all), and a lot of support for on obviously inferior version of the game (2007) - a lot of the people did not go to '07 because they actually wanted to play '07, they went there because they were anti-EoC and it was the only alternative available. All of this suggests to me that a lot of people didn't like EoC and Jagex has failed to integrate them into the new system, or replace them with new players and that's a very bad thing.

[God Of Lego]

 

Also, if you call ruining, PVP based mini games and PVP its self, destroying players hard work on pures and special accounts, Degrading all weapons and armours unique abilities and reasons of use. Putting most quest rewards useless. And choosing to impliment a system where the best method is use the weakness and spam keys a good choice then if you ever have a game company, hire Mark.

 

 

So.....Somethings telling me you've got Mark issues?

 

 

Yes, you could say I dont like him. I admire the passion, thats all I like about him. Hes way too disconnected with the players and when he said trolling in the divination video a shiver went down my spine. I dont know how that guy smiles so much and acts happy. Its creepy

[PolarBearBlue]

 

 

Also, if you call ruining, PVP based mini games and PVP its self, destroying players hard work on pures and special accounts, Degrading all weapons and armours unique abilities and reasons of use. Putting most quest rewards useless. And choosing to impliment a system where the best method is use the weakness and spam keys a good choice then if you ever have a game company, hire Mark.

 

So.....Somethings telling me you've got Mark issues?

 

Yes, you could say I dont like him. I admire the passion, thats all I like about him. Hes way too disconnected with the players and when he said trolling in the divination video a shiver went down my spine. I dont know how that guy smiles so much and acts happy. Its creepy

 

This comment further support what OrTradeMe is saying. Most of what you are saying as facts is heavily bias. And I think you know this...

 

Also, I know EOC was a big update that had everyone flip [cabbage] and it is still very much incomplete...but why are we debating if EOC was the reason for the declines again, when not too many pages back, we established EOC was one of the many updates the has lead to the decline of the RS population. I thought we moved on to the point of discussing how the game can be improved. And no I'm not talking "Get rid of EOC" or "Fire Mod Mark" or "I don't think it can."

[God Of Lego]

 

 

 

Also, if you call ruining, PVP based mini games and PVP its self, destroying players hard work on pures and special accounts, Degrading all weapons and armours unique abilities and reasons of use. Putting most quest rewards useless. And choosing to impliment a system where the best method is use the weakness and spam keys a good choice then if you ever have a game company, hire Mark.

 

So.....Somethings telling me you've got Mark issues?

 

Yes, you could say I dont like him. I admire the passion, thats all I like about him. Hes way too disconnected with the players and when he said trolling in the divination video a shiver went down my spine. I dont know how that guy smiles so much and acts happy. Its creepy

 

This comment further support what OrTradeMe is saying. Most of what you are saying as facts is heavily bias. And I think you know this...

 

Also, I know EOC was a big update that had everyone flip [cabbage] and it is still very much incomplete...but why are we debating if EOC was the reason for the declines again, when not too many pages back, we established EOC was one of the many updates the has lead to the decline of the RS population. I thought we moved on to the point of discussing how the game can be improved. And no I'm not talking "Get rid of EOC" or "Fire Mod Mark" or "I don't think it can."

 

I dont know how it was brought up. I likely responded to someone.

[CookMePlox]

http://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/1mfk0d/some_interesting_graphs_of_hiscore_member_count/

 

This has some fairly long term data of hiscore member count. There's clearly an immediate drop after the Evolution of Combat but it's unclear what the actual cause was.

[ilovecuttingyews]

Thanks for all that info, CookMePlox. There are 2 graphs on that thread, one of players with 99 attack, and total number of players on the hiscores. The first graph isn't too useful for a large scale comparison but the second one is quite useful for this discussion (posted below for ease of access). I'll go through and add a few key points, but it's pretty clear where particular updates took place.

 

EDIT: Here is the graph with a few markers of important updates included. Smaller updates indicated by letters to interfere less with the graph itself. It's important to note that Jagex, more often than not, updates Botwatch in secret so it's difficult to tell exactly how many of the smaller declines are based on Botwatch updates. In addition, it takes time for peoples' memberships to lapse and for them to be removed from the HS after quitting. Therefore points indicated are rough estimates of the 'cause' of certain declines based on updates at or just before the decline.

 

Line 1 - Green - Bot nuke

Line 2 - Red - Hiscores become P2P only and graph starts

Line 3 - Yellow - 14 day trial memberships begin

Line 4 - Purple - EOC is released to the live game

Line 5 - Blue - OSRS is released

Line 6 - Yellow - 14 day trial memberships end

Line 7 - Maroon - RS3 goes live

 

Point A - Buyable spins

Point B - Botwatch improvements

Point C - SGS opens. 200M accounts reached (critics accused Jagex of holding off on anti-bot updates until after 200M for the sake of inflating numbers. This is completely unconfirmed rumours)

Point D - Can't find much around this time that would explain the drop. Perhaps hidden bot ban? Also decent amounts of SGS updates.

 

@ Quyneax below: I can't say for P2P, but I've noticed a massive decline (almost 100%) of resource bots since around that time in F2P. Whether that's goldfarmers moving to OSRS for a new market, or if there was significant Botwatch improvements around that time, my money is on goldfarmers making up the bulk of the drop. I find it hard to belive there would be ~1M skillers in RS, much less all move over to OSRS at the same time.

[Quyneax]

A huge number of people not ranked in attack but ranked in overall disappeared after OSRS. Did all the skillers leave EoC or what?

[brunokiller]

A huge number of people not ranked in attack but ranked in overall disappeared after OSRS. Did all the skillers leave EoC or what?

Bots I guess.

[Blofeld]

I think while it's easy with that graph to focus on the big drops around the EOC etc, to me the most notable thing is the difference between the start of the graph just after the first bot nuke, and now now. The difference is what 100-120k over an 18 month period. Thats not that horrific and is reasonably stable. I think all the crazy stuff in the middle shows how big an issue bots have been in the game. I guess the free trial memberships they were doing at that time also contributed to its fluctuation.

 

Its the next 6 months of data that are the most important so we can see if RS3 can bring it back towards that Christmas 2011 value of 600-700k players.

[ixfd64]

I would say that RuneScape is past its prime. A long time ago, it was common to have more than 250,000 players online at once, and most of them weren't bots. Sadly, those days are long gone. There's a reason the game isn't billed as the "world's most popular free MMORPG" anymore.

[Sy_Accursed]

Its worth pointing out for that graph and the overall line: Hiscores ONLY run to 2million; the massive spike over 2million and subsequent fall are purely made up by the graph makers 'estimates.'

This estimation, to me, seems highly floored. He basically seems to of continued the exact same steepness of account numbers rising right up to the day of EoC (even though the rest of the graph cleary suggests it's never been so stable) and then plummeted it down for eoc.

That's over a million accounts fictionally invented by 'estimation' that may not actually exist, which means nearly 50% of the supposed eoc drop off shown may not even exist.

[HunterDexter]

I would say that RuneScape is past its prime. A long time ago, it was common to have more than 250,000 players online at once, and most of them weren't bots. Sadly, those days are long gone. There's a reason the game isn't billed as the "world's most popular free MMORPG" anymore.

 

I don't know when you played, but surely, most were bots.

In the past 9 years, I saw bots at every spot. Now, this is no longer the case, luckily. But we can't deny that most worlds are empty, too empty.

[ixfd64]

I was talking about the late stages of RuneScape Classic before RS2 was released. Bots weren't as big of an issue then. It's possible that I got the number wrong, but there were at least 150,000 players at the time.

[ilovecuttingyews]

I don't think RSC ever had near as many people as that. The max I remember ever seeing was 300k in 2006 but most of the time it was just a bit over 200k. From my own personal numbers, somewhere around 1/2 to 2/3 of F2P accounts online at any given time in 2006 were bots.

Lest we forget this:

[Yoko Kurama]

I am a supporter of the EoC, and even I don't need any concrete graphs or statistics to tell me what has happened. The few verified statistics we do have show that there has been a stark decline in the number of active players, and we have seen all the uproars, complaints, and upheavals over EoC. As long as you haven't been living under a rock for the past 1.5 years, you should be able to put two and two together and acknowledge that a lot of the older players didn't like EoC and left over it. That's just the price we had to pay for EoC. Own up to it. There is no need to extrapolate or conjure fancy graphs, it's happened right in front of our eyes, it's so obviously true.

[ilovecuttingyews]

No one is saying that people didn't leave because of EOC or NIS. What I'm saying is that the primary reason for the stark decline in online numbers (the one 'apocalyptic' piece of evidence people like to cite) is bot related. EOC quitters is secondary, or even tertiary (behind natural rate of decline).

 

As someone who is very active in the fight against bots, I can tell you that the number of bots today, at least in F2P, is near that of the weeks following the bot nuke. And since it's happening in front of my own eyes, "it's so obviously true." Looking at the graph figures, we have a start of ~625,000 members at the time of the bot nuke. Today we have ~500,000 members. That's a decline of 125,000 members, or 20% over 22 months. Quite significant, yes, but hardly the apocalyptic picture people paint comparing online figures of the past's 300k vs today's 50k.

[Yoko Kurama]

EoC quitters were definitely more important in the decline of RS (the recent one) than the natural decline. That much cannot be denied. You seem to be understating the case, not only as far as EoC quitters are concerned, but also the general decline. It's very simple to test it out. Server populations are at an all time low, as is the rate of new players joining, and the amount of people at spots and what not. Even if you account for bots, there was a time when there were a lot of chatty humans there who just aren't there now. There are spots, areas, and minigames that are completely deserted when this was never the case before.

 

It has been a very stark decline. Also, if the numbers of the past included bots, then so does today's 50k figure. It's not a good number no matter how one breaks it down.

[God Of Lego]

I've always seen the bots arguement as way overhyped (still a problem, just overhyped). Just a personal opinion. Its just an easy excuse.

[Lallanaboat]

I am currently in the tutorial, remember when you were on the tutorial island and there were 700 people going through it, I am currently all alone.

[HunterDexter]

Don't forget how messy the tutorial is, even for people who play this game. And with the NIS which is very hard to work with.

[Lallanaboat]

Don't forget how messy the tutorial is, even for people who play this game. And with the NIS which is very hard to work with.

 

I suppose you are right, although I am on world 7 which is one of the busier one (F2P) and there is nobody here at all, I haven't played in a little while hence I am starting a new account, so maybe I am a bit out.