Behind the Scenes - November 2013

[Ambler]

A 6 man seismic wand split is currently around 380m, and it could easily be a 5 man split if your team is good enough. I don't see how it's unreasonable to gain 10b or more from that over a long period of time. If you have decent enough luck and don't get trolled, you'll be averaging a drop every day or two. There are people who have recieved 20+ wands AND orbs, with splits varying from 150m to 500m. That's around 4 months of Vorago.

If you want to average that out, it comes to 13b. That doesn't include the energy/regular drops, which probably add another 1-2b overall if you know how to dps and can guarantee yourself a regular drop or two per kill. Yes, it takes some time, but Vorago is the best money maker in the game if you put the time into learning it and getting a team together that won't scam you a drop, which isn't all that difficult, Jmods do look into people scamming wands/orbs, and contacting one isn't exactly difficult.

If you say getting into teams is difficult, it isn't. There are plenty of people who will teach people who are willing to learn, me included. If you don't have the gear, learn how to kill a lower levelled boss first, or even better, learn how to bomb tank, as there is nowhere near enough people willing to do it. :lol:

[Quyneax]

Seismic wand and orb: 1/40?

So, calling it about 4b/40 kills (incl. energy)?

Which is some 100m per kill, split across 5-6 people. A kill is what, 15 minutes?

So we're talking 70-80m/h per person.

 

Not only is that ridiculously unbalanced compared to the rest of the game, it's also the main reason t90 magic is so expensive. According to that reasoning, there is essentially one moneymaking method in the game, and everything else is completely useless.

 

And anyway, if Vorago is not so hard and 80m/h, then that's all the more reason you can reduce seismic prices by a factor 10, it'd still be a good moneymaker and prices would be reasonable.

[Ambler]

Jagex just needs to make range a viable dps method (Hello rapid fire = asphixiate, snap shot = wild magic, bombardment = detonate, and the main one: Fragmentation shot hitting 6 times. Also give melee some better Ults for dual wield. Frenzy is kind of bad. :lol:

You then get the ability to barricade -> heal other your team if you remember a shield/runes, and be on par with seismic dps.

[Quest_Cape_K]

Seismic wand and orb: 1/40?

So, calling it about 4b/40 kills (incl. energy)?

Which is some 100m per kill, split across 5-6 people. A kill is what, 15 minutes?

So we're talking 70-80m/h per person.

 

Not only is that ridiculously unbalanced compared to the rest of the game, it's also the main reason t90 magic is so expensive. According to that reasoning, there is essentially one moneymaking method in the game, and everything else is completely useless.

 

And anyway, if Vorago is not so hard and 80m/h, then that's all the more reason you can reduce seismic prices by a factor 10, it'd still be a good moneymaker and prices would be reasonable.

It's 1/40 for orb or wand and more like 3.5b/80kills so 43.75m/kill., 29m/hour. Reducing the price of seismics by a factor of 10 would bring it down to 2.9m/hour, less than Frost dragons, Glacors, Nex, QBD, KK and even some herblore.

The price is only that high anyway due to the price people are willing to pay, this is the community's decision not Jagex's, they should not interfere with the market. Look at what happened with climbing boots, the nex update, it all screwed a lot of people over.

Vorago isn't hard, its just finding a team who can boss with you for a decent period of time. 

[Wkw]

All Range needs an ultimate that is similar to berserker and metamorphis. Death's swiftness is good, but if ANYONE else uses a swiftness or sunshine you can't use it.

[helring]

 

Seismic wand and orb: 1/40?

So, calling it about 4b/40 kills (incl. energy)?

Which is some 100m per kill, split across 5-6 people. A kill is what, 15 minutes?

So we're talking 70-80m/h per person.

 

Not only is that ridiculously unbalanced compared to the rest of the game, it's also the main reason t90 magic is so expensive. According to that reasoning, there is essentially one moneymaking method in the game, and everything else is completely useless.

 

And anyway, if Vorago is not so hard and 80m/h, then that's all the more reason you can reduce seismic prices by a factor 10, it'd still be a good moneymaker and prices would be reasonable.

It's 1/40 for orb or wand and more like 3.5b/80kills so 43.75m/kill., 29m/hour. Reducing the price of seismics by a factor of 10 would bring it down to 2.9m/hour, less than Frost dragons, Glacors, Nex, QBD, KK and even some herblore.

The price is only that high anyway due to the price people are willing to pay, this is the community's decision not Jagex's, they should not interfere with the market. Look at what happened with climbing boots, the nex update, it all screwed a lot of people over.

Vorago isn't hard, its just finding a team who can boss with you for a decent period of time. 

 

 

Its never just the community's decision. There is a community aspect, but like all items supply and demand matters. Drop rates and boss mechanics will always have a huge part in determining what the overall price would be. If Jagex doubled the drop rate, the community would still be willing to pay the same amount but you'd have more on the market so the bossers would have to start selling to those unwilling to pay max cash once those willing to pay max cash had their wands. You act like the drop rate is pure and perfect and sent from god, that any change in it is unnatural tampering. Jagex created the drop rate and could fix this issue by changing it.

[Sy_Accursed]

 

 

Seismic wand and orb: 1/40?

So, calling it about 4b/40 kills (incl. energy)?

Which is some 100m per kill, split across 5-6 people. A kill is what, 15 minutes?

So we're talking 70-80m/h per person.

 

Not only is that ridiculously unbalanced compared to the rest of the game, it's also the main reason t90 magic is so expensive. According to that reasoning, there is essentially one moneymaking method in the game, and everything else is completely useless.

 

And anyway, if Vorago is not so hard and 80m/h, then that's all the more reason you can reduce seismic prices by a factor 10, it'd still be a good moneymaker and prices would be reasonable.

It's 1/40 for orb or wand and more like 3.5b/80kills so 43.75m/kill., 29m/hour. Reducing the price of seismics by a factor of 10 would bring it down to 2.9m/hour, less than Frost dragons, Glacors, Nex, QBD, KK and even some herblore.

The price is only that high anyway due to the price people are willing to pay, this is the community's decision not Jagex's, they should not interfere with the market. Look at what happened with climbing boots, the nex update, it all screwed a lot of people over.

Vorago isn't hard, its just finding a team who can boss with you for a decent period of time. 

 

 

Its never just the community's decision. There is a community aspect, but like all items supply and demand matters. Drop rates and boss mechanics will always have a huge part in determining what the overall price would be. If Jagex doubled the drop rate, the community would still be willing to pay the same amount but you'd have more on the market so the bossers would have to start selling to those unwilling to pay max cash once those willing to pay max cash had their wands. You act like the drop rate is pure and perfect and sent from god, that any change in it is unnatural tampering. Jagex created the drop rate and could fix this issue by changing it.

 

 

Yeah is its kinda foolish to say prices are 100% defined by the community.

They are defined equally by the community and by the game design combined into supply and demand

 

Supply is dictated both by how many players are creating the item and by how easy (or not) the item is to create.

Demand is dictated in equally parts by how many players want the item (and thus what the uber richies will pay dictates price for most high end things) and by how useful the item is.

 

Seismics would be nowhere near as high if the game design had not made the fairly rare to obtain AND highly useful thereby creating quite a limited supply against a rather large demand.

 

Of course after Jagex have released it to the market the community does take over, but the limitations of the item by game design still play a large factor. Plus I do not think it is fair to accuse Jagex of messing with the market with things like Nex alterations. Jagex has every right to alter items, bosses or any other content within reason - the fact this may have knock on effects to supply and demand combined with panic selling/buying to create market fluctuation isn't their fault. The community makes that happen. 

People who cry about top end changes costing them money because they didn't react fast enough to me are just annoying. Half the time the prices rebound anyway and, at the end of the day, its part of an MMORPG's nature. You can't expect things to stay stable and in place forever, your always one update away from your bank being rendered useless or made worth a whole lot more. Attempts to force this to happen just result in even messy updates eg power armour tank armour update that rendered most armours useless in a reactionary move to appease Nex owners when prices started to slide due to Pop gear because heaven forbid their armour becomes less valuable once it was no longer the best in-game.

[Quest_Cape_K]

I don't think you remember when nex armours got updated, before it happened Mod Mark pretty much told everyone to buy nex armours because the damage update would make them great, they spiked and hugely messed up the market.

Also, vorago's drop aren't that rare.

Nex 1/32 or 1/24 with ROW roughly.

Vorago 1/40, drops are worth more and ability for instances.

Problem isn't with vorago, its the CS/LS system.

[Sy_Accursed]

You'll note I said 'if the game design had not made them fairly rare' not drop rates specifically.

 

And I am perfectly aware of that update, it was the reactionary change that lead to power armour and tank armour in responce to the whining about nex armours losing value quite rapidly when they became out classed by ports armours.

[Quest_Cape_K]

I was in a rush, apologies for missing that bit.

And a large part of the reason for that update was Nex would become a boss which hardly anyone went to, the time put in would not be worth the small reward when frost dragons and QBD would be better cash.

[Lord Zophar]

I don't think you remember when nex armours got updated, before it happened Mod Mark pretty much told everyone to buy nex armours because the damage update would make them great, they spiked and hugely messed up the market.

Also, vorago's drop aren't that rare.

Nex 1/32 or 1/24 with ROW roughly.

Vorago 1/40, drops are worth more and ability for instances.

Problem isn't with vorago, its the CS/LS system.

Except that Vorago takes 4x as long to kill as Nex does. Thus, drops may as well be 4x rarer.

[Quest_Cape_K]

 

I don't think you remember when nex armours got updated, before it happened Mod Mark pretty much told everyone to buy nex armours because the damage update would make them great, they spiked and hugely messed up the market.

Also, vorago's drop aren't that rare.

Nex 1/32 or 1/24 with ROW roughly.

Vorago 1/40, drops are worth more and ability for instances.

Problem isn't with vorago, its the CS/LS system.

Except that Vorago takes 4x as long to kill as Nex does. Thus, drops may as well be 4x rarer.

 

Yet there can be multiple fights of vorago on 1 world.

[helring]

 

 

I don't think you remember when nex armours got updated, before it happened Mod Mark pretty much told everyone to buy nex armours because the damage update would make them great, they spiked and hugely messed up the market.

Also, vorago's drop aren't that rare.

Nex 1/32 or 1/24 with ROW roughly.

Vorago 1/40, drops are worth more and ability for instances.

Problem isn't with vorago, its the CS/LS system.

Except that Vorago takes 4x as long to kill as Nex does. Thus, drops may as well be 4x rarer.

 

Yet there can be multiple fights of vorago on 1 world.

 

 

But are there usually that many per world? I admit I don't really know but if few are going to vorago then it doesn't really matter how many can.

[Quest_Cape_K]

 

 

 

I don't think you remember when nex armours got updated, before it happened Mod Mark pretty much told everyone to buy nex armours because the damage update would make them great, they spiked and hugely messed up the market.

Also, vorago's drop aren't that rare.

Nex 1/32 or 1/24 with ROW roughly.

Vorago 1/40, drops are worth more and ability for instances.

Problem isn't with vorago, its the CS/LS system.

Except that Vorago takes 4x as long to kill as Nex does. Thus, drops may as well be 4x rarer.

 

Yet there can be multiple fights of vorago on 1 world.

 

 

But are there usually that many per world? I admit I don't really know but if few are going to vorago then it doesn't really matter how many can.

 

And the reason why people aren't going to vorago is the LS/CS system. If/when this gets sorted, a lot more people will go to vorago.

[helring]

 

 

 

 

I don't think you remember when nex armours got updated, before it happened Mod Mark pretty much told everyone to buy nex armours because the damage update would make them great, they spiked and hugely messed up the market.

Also, vorago's drop aren't that rare.

Nex 1/32 or 1/24 with ROW roughly.

Vorago 1/40, drops are worth more and ability for instances.

Problem isn't with vorago, its the CS/LS system.

Except that Vorago takes 4x as long to kill as Nex does. Thus, drops may as well be 4x rarer.

 

Yet there can be multiple fights of vorago on 1 world.

 

 

But are there usually that many per world? I admit I don't really know but if few are going to vorago then it doesn't really matter how many can.

 

And the reason why people aren't going to vorago is the LS/CS system. If/when this gets sorted, a lot more people will go to vorago.

 

 

We'll see how it works out when they fix it this month. If it does get fixed and still not enough people vorago then they need to adjust the drop rate because the prices really are ridiculous.

[Lord Zophar]

 

 

I don't think you remember when nex armours got updated, before it happened Mod Mark pretty much told everyone to buy nex armours because the damage update would make them great, they spiked and hugely messed up the market.

Also, vorago's drop aren't that rare.

Nex 1/32 or 1/24 with ROW roughly.

Vorago 1/40, drops are worth more and ability for instances.

Problem isn't with vorago, its the CS/LS system.

Except that Vorago takes 4x as long to kill as Nex does. Thus, drops may as well be 4x rarer.

 

Yet there can be multiple fights of vorago on 1 world.

 

Does anybody actually pay the ludicrous price for an instance?

[Ambler]

For Hardmode? Yes.

I've had teams that use instances a few times, but not recently.

[Yoko Kurama]

 

 

 

 

I don't think you remember when nex armours got updated, before it happened Mod Mark pretty much told everyone to buy nex armours because the damage update would make them great, they spiked and hugely messed up the market.

Also, vorago's drop aren't that rare.

Nex 1/32 or 1/24 with ROW roughly.

Vorago 1/40, drops are worth more and ability for instances.

Problem isn't with vorago, its the CS/LS system.

Except that Vorago takes 4x as long to kill as Nex does. Thus, drops may as well be 4x rarer.

 

Yet there can be multiple fights of vorago on 1 world.

 

 

But are there usually that many per world? I admit I don't really know but if few are going to vorago then it doesn't really matter how many can.

 

And the reason why people aren't going to vorago is the LS/CS system. If/when this gets sorted, a lot more people will go to vorago.

 

 

This is only partly true. There are plenty of people already at Vorago. Not as many as there could be, but plenty still. The ones that are there do LS+S or FFA+S or just LS or FFA. LS and FFA have always had players who would use them. If the CS/LS system was fixed, I am sure more players would go there, but that isn't to say that the place is entirely deserted at the moment.

 

Furthermore, the ONLY problem is NOT the LS/CS system as far as the price of the wands/orbs go. A lot of it does have to do with the effort involved, the difficulty of the fight, and the mechanics. Those directly influence the supply of the items, and their price as well. Particularly in today's experience-crazy culture (where, as opposed to the past where high level players were balanced players who tried everything, they are mostly skillers), a lot of high level players won't bother going because of the effort involved, and would much rather chase 200M's. The Vorago mechanics are rather annoying -- it has extremely high KO ability an yet if you die you can't rejoin the fight... You overstate the problematic nature of the LS/CS system with regards to pricing. YES, it is a problem, but it isn't the only problem.

 

Jagex has always had a fetish with luckscape and grinding and all with regards to bosses where you sometimes get ridiculous situations where you kill a boss hundreds of times and still don't get a good drop. Now that they are actually designing more and more complex, elite, top-level, and difficult bosses, their fetish with the drop mechanism is meshing with the difficulty of the bosses and making truly expensive gear. In the past, items were usually only super expensive for the first few days (for example, the first Drygore weapon sold for max cash instantly), but they would crash very soon as supply increased even a little bit because the bosses were reasonably designed. Now that bosses actually are super difficult, and we still have the ridiculous luckscape drop mechanisms the prices aren't budging as much. It's a combination of these two things that's a problem. It could easily be resolved by increasing the drop-rates, or a new drop-rate mechanism that isn't solely based on chance, or even distributing the avenues of high level gear (through methods such as skilling), all of those would keep prices very reasonable. 

 

In the past, bosses were relatively easy. So it made sense to give them drops through a luckscape mechanism. Because people could easily camp them for ages. I remember going through hundreds of kill that were dry at God Wars. Since the bosses weren't that hard, any competent teams could be there forever -- the mechanic of purely luck-based drops made sense (though it wasn't my preference). Now that bosses are genuinely difficult, can't be camped the same way as they could be in the past where with one inventory of food/supplies you could camp for hours or days -- it makes no sense to still have purely luck-based drops. In other words, do one or the other. Make luckbased drops with weak/manageable bosses, or make hard bosses and give them MUCH more generous drop rates. Combining the two just doesn't work. It messes prices, discourages people and has a lot of other nasty side effects.

[Quest_Cape_K]

It does have a decent drop rate and is not hard at all, it is people like you who are constantly saying its too difficult which puts people off trying.

[Sy_Accursed]

I don't think you can blame people on forums for it really. I mean just go look at the thing, there's a sign outside posting deaths and you only see like 15 or so a day and 99/100 if you go inside Vorago is there waiting quite happily to start a fight and you don't see no graves or anyone coming in geared up. That level of quietness is showing that a lot of serious pvmers aren't doing it, let alone 'joe bloggs.'

 

Compare that to any other top end boss where 9/10 it's busy with players on most servers at most any time of day.

 

It's not necessarily that Vorago is hard per say it's that your talking 15-20 minutes a kill with a 1/40ish drop rate on the 'good' stuff. The time just mounts up and makes it tricky to obtain and keep a decent team for several rounds of kills, outside of really serious do nothing but pvm types. Then when you weigh off that fact against the rarity of the drops it just doesn't seem worth the effort for the average scaper as you could be lucky to get a kill or 2 a day and then there's the utter potluck of the drop, even to the extent that the normal drops may not really compensate your effort.

 

Again comparatively you could quite easily find a team to go for many more kills at other bosses and with more kills coming in the odds of decent remuneration from normal drops are higher coupled with great chance of getting a big drop in a shorter time span.

 

Finding a reliable enough team to achieve good returns for your invested time can seem rather daunting and hopeless outside of pvm circles. I mean if I asked around my clan/friends I'd probably be hard pressed to get enough people together at the same time to even get in there let alone surviving long enough for multiple kills to get some drops where as I could get enough to slaughter gwd or nex or w/e quite easily.

 

A boss like Vorago relies on having those teams that sadly just don't work as well in Rs as they do in other games unless you are on the inside of some pvm communities or have a core of pvming friends, combine that with the luckscape factor weaker monsters rely on to avoid flooding the market and you end up with a boss that not enough people are killing with a drop that isn't being gotten enough allowing prices to go stupidly high; pushed higher still by the issues of the over inflated economy which are kind of ironically only worsened by people being able to get a nest egg of billions from such a drop.

[Quest_Cape_K]

 

Vorago isn't hard, its just finding a team who can boss with you for a decent period of time. 

 

If people actually bothered to read all of my points instead of seeing one and then focusing it, you would see that I have said the problem is with teams and LS/CS.

[Yoko Kurama]

 

 

Vorago isn't hard, its just finding a team who can boss with you for a decent period of time. 

 

If people actually bothered to read all of my points instead of seeing one and then focusing it, you would see that I have said the problem is with teams and LS/CS.

 

 

We have not only read your post, but also acknowledged it, and replied to that particular point. Perhaps you are the one that hasn't read everything. Particular Sly's post (as well as mine) where we discuss that point.

 

LS/CS IS a problem. It is however not the only problem. It's hard enough getting a decent, dedicated and competent team, but that fact that kills take so darn long, that you can't rejoin the kill upon death, that normal drops are far worse than Nex and you need a lot more people and the potluck version of the drop means that you could spend days or weeks there without much luck. A lot of people just don't have that kind of time for one activity in RS. 

 

Even when or if CS gets fixed, there will still be a lot of people who won't bother with it for those reasons, and the price will likely still be quite high.

 

Even when CS gets fixed, it's quite clear that the effort needed to obtain Seismic Wands/Orbs is disproportionately higher than the effort needed to obtain Drygores or Ascensions. That's something you haven't been quite able to acknowledge, and it's definitely related to the dis-balance of T90 gear prices/accessibility. 

 

 

It does have a decent drop rate and is not hard at all, it is people like you who are constantly saying its too difficult which puts people off trying.

 

I never said it was uber hard. I have done several Vorago kills in teams myself. I am simply saying the level of difficulty is incongruent with the drop rate and THAT is what results in such a high price tag.

[Golvellius]

Vorago is the second coming of the corp.
The seismic crap is the spirit shields all over again.

It will be at least 5 years before you can even consider them in circulation, not that the divine currently is cheap by any imagination.

I am just saying that an average player could probably earn the money in game to get it in several months.

 

I guess I'm the only one that sees a problem with this.

I think we all remember how corp/nex teams used to require divine or ely to get in or hell they probably still do.

Runescape does gear score just like WOW.

A-hole-erly knows no bounds and if you reward a small group of people with an extra bit of power they will run the rest of the playerbase out of town.

Jagex should care because it takes more than the hardcore "Kings of PVM" to finance their little company.

[Tansuo]

I guess I'm the only one that sees a problem with this.

 

Just ignore the last few pages of posts then.

 

 

 

I think we all remember how corp/nex teams used to require divine or ely to get in or hell they probably still do.

 

No they don't. Corp is weak to spears and always has been...?? Nex does not need spirit shields. You can do it in T70 comfortably. The only people using shields at Nex should be the tanks, for which Chaotics are a far better (and attainable) option.

[Ambler]

It's getting to the point where the sheer tankieness of shields is enough to make them better than spirit shields. Spirit blocks 30% of damage, and kills your prayer? Why not just use a t80(/90) shield, and block 100% of damage for most attacks.

 

The ONE situation where a spirit shield is always better is when bomb tanking Vorago, as his bombs have 100% accuracy.