Runescape – Page 34 – MMO Fallout

Beta Perspective: RuneScape Death Mechanics

Now that Jagex has joined the rest of the MMO industry with the launch of a test server for major updates, I figured I’d use the opportunity to take a quick look at the upcoming new death mechanic as it currently stands. RuneScape’s death system has been a hot topic for years, as it started out with the player dropping everything except for their three most valuable items before moving on to a gravestone system that would eventually expire and make the player’s loot available for everyone.

It strikes of casual-izing, but it has more to do with the player base itself. Those who play RuneScape likely are aware that death for most has become a trivial affair, it’s rare to actually lose something when you have a half hour to get your stuff. Jagex realized that the only people who are losing things are people dying unfairly, whether it be from bugs, shoddy servers, or if someone hits your car backing out of the apartment parking lot while you’re fighting a boss and you have to go take down the license plate number before they drive off. But I digress.

RuneScape’s death changes have been a long time coming, and I say this as someone who never dies in the game.

For the purpose of seeing the new death interface, I made an exception.

I immediately grabbed my better gear and threw myself at the fires of one of RuneScape’s bosses. Death now teleports you to Death himself, who keeps hold of your items for 24 hours or until you can pay him off. My set of Bandos armor (the three cheapest pieces) plus an amulet of fury wound up costing me just over a hundred grand to replace, with my food and grand potions cutting a rather small fraction of the cost.

You can sacrifice some of the stuff you don’t want to cut a bit of the cost off, but by my figures it won’t do much. The addition of the 24 hour timer gives you the chance to hit the bank in case you don’t have any cash on you, or to go farm some stuff to sell if you don’t have the cash at all. The timer also allows players ample time to get their goods back, god forbid either your internet go down or the servers are unstable for multiple hours at a time.

The actual economic impact will have to be seen when the update goes live, but the goal is to introduce an item and gold sink through the cost of retaining items and the loss of those sacrificed or unable to retain. As someone who rarely dies, I don’t expect to see much of an impact from this update, but the knowledge that server disconnections are easier to deal with goes a long way to changing attitude while playing.

Old School Resizable Mode Passes With 95%

Old School RuneScape’s latest poll doesn’t finish for another couple of days, but the figures are pretty much locked in. Chief among the long list of questions is whether or not players would like to see a resizable mode added. 95% of respondents (over 45 thousand) said yes, with a toggle to turn the feature on and off.

Also currently on the approval list are shared slayer tasks, Zulrah drops, new spell animations, achievement diary rewards, buffs to certain equipment, changes to teleports, left-click smith option on anvils, and more. A couple of questions did not pass community approval, including changes to the Fountain of Rune, an Armadyl male helmet, the ability to gain multiple bear heads, and changes to npcs in low level wilderness.

Over on RuneScape 3’s side, players voted on larger but less frequent updates, with weekly bug fixes and “ninja fix” micro-updates in between. Abyssal Demons won the poll on which slayer monster should receive rare, elite spawns, and the Seren and the Elves quest was the most popular suggestion from the Runelabs March poll.

(Source: Old School)

RuneScape Players Vote Larger, Less Frequent Updates

The poll will be finished by the time most of you see it, but players have once again spoken on RuneScape’s updates. In a recent in-game poll, players were asked whether they want the weekly update schedule to stay the same, or for less frequent, more significant updates with weekly patch notes and tweaks. With 54% of the vote (as of this writing), the majority of poll responders voiced their support for less frequent updates.

When this change to development schedules will take effect will have to be seen. Power to the Players allows the community to vote on updates with Jagex taking the majority opinion’s decision and implementing it.

(Source: RuneScape)

Reminder: Chrome Users Losing RuneScape Support

Chrome users will need to change browsers or download the official client if they wish to continue playing RuneScape after this month. As part of April’s updates, Google has announced that they are dropping support for the Netscape Plugin API, and Java support is going down with it. As a result, games likes RuneScape will cease functioning on the browser.

Players will need to download the official client or play on Internet Explorer or Firefox. Mozilla is expected to drop NPAPI support as well.

Google has been slowly deprecating NPAPI support over the past couple of years, owing to the platform’s 90’s era architecture being responsible for crashes, hangups, and security vulnerabilities. Google already blocks Java by default, and Apple instituted a policy of disabling outdated plugins to protect users.

(Source: RuneScape)

RuneScape Launches 200th Quest

This week marks a milestone in RuneScape history, with the launch of the game’s 200th quest: Dimension of Disaster. As voted on by the community, the latest quest asks a very simple question, what would life be like in Gielinor if the hero didn’t exist? Players step into an alternate timeline where necromancer Zemouregal has taken over Varrock, zombified its citizens, and now rules with an iron fist.

The player must go back and complete previous quests, albeit with a sinister twist, to free the alternate world.

“The parallel universe storyline of Dimension of Disaster is an opportunity for the RuneScape team to celebrate the extraordinary affect that the player’s hero has had on the world of Gielinor and its inhabitants. We’re thrilled to finally share this 200^th quest and hope the fans has as much fun with this as they have had with the previous 199!”
-Phil Mansell, Vice President of RuneScape.

You’ll need a RuneScape membership to take part in the Dimension of Disaster quest.

(Source: Jagex press release)

Top: Can’t Miss Old School Exclusive Content

Old School RuneScape, or Oldscape, or ’07Scape as some have taken to calling it, has become a lot more than just an imprint of RuneScape as it was in 2007. Since its launch two years ago, Old School has ventured off in its own direction, with content developed exclusively for this version.

So in no particular order, here is a list of the top exclusive content.

1. Exclusive Bosses/Drops

As development transitioned from simple bug fixes, tweaks, and interface updates, to larger content updates, Old School has seen the introduction of several exclusive bosses. Several of the bosses, like Scorpia, reside in the wilderness where other players are a threat. Others, like the Cave Kraken, require the player to be on a slayer task to kill. Some are just plain weird. Regardless, almost all of the bosses something worth killing them over, be it a powerful weapon or a modifier to existing items.

The most recent boss to be developed for Old School is Zulrah, a solo-only snake creature.

2. Motherlode Mine

The Motherlode Mine is a must visit for players seeking mining experience and easy cash. Located in the Falador mine, players go around mining pay-dirt which is processed in the center of the area. In return, the pay-dirt is converted randomly into coal (most common), gold (less common), as well as mithril, adamant, and rune at higher levels (least common). In addition to ore, the player also randomly receives gold nuggets.

The nuggets can be traded in for a prospector outfit which boosts mining experience by a small percentage. Gold nuggets can also be used to purchase a coal bag and a gem bag, which hold a substantial amount of their respective items.

3. Agility Rooftop Courses

Training agility in Old School RuneScape is necessary if you don’t want to be walking constantly, and the training process is dreadful. Thankfully Jagex implemented a user-created suggestion for new agility courses, located on the roofs of various cities. To keep the player semi-conscious as they grind through agility, marks of grace randomly drop on the play-field and can be picked up to buy the graceful outfit.

The graceful outfit decreases the player’s weight, and additional marks of grace can be used to buy reagents for stamina potions.

4. Looting Bag

One of the more interesting items in Old School. The Looting Bag is a sack offering 28 additional inventory spaces, with a few stipulations on when and where it can be used. Designed specifically for player vs player combat, items can only be put inside the bag while inside the wilderness, and can only be withdrawn at the bank interface. The looting bag does not contribute to player weight, however everything in it is dropped upon death.

5. PvP Worlds

An old relic from 2001-era RuneScape. PvP worlds allow player vs player combat virtually anywhere except for designated safe zones like banks. There are two servers designated as PvP on Old School, and if you only use specific worlds or always use the suggested server, you may not even know that they exist. They offer the opportunity for all out warfare of the highest honor.

Or you can stick around and loot the corpses, like your old Uncle Omali.

Jagex Surveying Buyable Levels For RuneScape

Jagex is polling users to determine interest in buyable levels, although denying that there are plans to introduce the feature in-game. The question popped up in an official survey, which quickly made the rounds on Reddit, prompting a response from Jagex Mod Balance. The purpose of the survey is apparently simply for data collection, with Mod Balance noting a heavily negative reaction to the idea of buying levels.

The benefit of running this survey is that we can now say “x% of players didn’t want this to happen”, instead of “players don’t want this to happen” if anyone was silly enough to seriously suggest this.

RuneScape, at least under current management, has no plans on introducing buyable levels.

(Source: Reddit)

RuneScape’s Bonus Exp Weekend Details

RuneScape’s bonus experience weekend runs from February 20th through the 23rd, and since the rules change slightly with each event, Jagex has posted details on just how this weekend’s event will work. If you plan on taking part in the bonus weekend, it is worth reading as the particulars are rather complicated.

Read the entire FAQ at the link below.

(Source: RuneScape)

Jagex Proposes Death Changes In RuneScape

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Jagex is soliciting feedback on proposed changes to RuneScape’s death mechanic. As part of the proposed changes, players will no longer be punished for losing items due to server disconnections, the corpse run will be removed, and death will introduce a gold sink to the game’s economy.

Under the new system, players who die in non-pvp areas will appear in Death’s office. In order to retrieve their items, the player will have to buy them back at a percentage of the item’s cost, or sacrifice other items in order to contribute to the pool. Degrade on death mechanics for items will be removed as part of this update.

By forcing payments for all deaths, Jagex hopes to bring a little punishment back to dying which had lately become a minor inconvenience for most players.

You can read the entire FAQ at the link below.

(Source: RuneScape)

Diaries From RuneScape: January In Review

January was a good month for RuneScape, even if you weren’t a fan of the heavy cash shop promotions. As I do each month, I’d like to give my thoughts on each week’s updates.

1. Boss Pets

Boss pets for me will fall under one of the more important updates of the year next to Jagex’s upcoming non-Java client launch and hopeful removal from the bloat that currently plagues this game, and it is an update that I haven’t even participated in yet. The idea of adding more cosmetics to collect is rather inconsequential when this update introduces a mechanic that hopefully will be expanded upon in future content, and one that I have personally been shouting from the rooftops for for the past several years: Thresholds for inconsequential, character-bound cosmetics.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, they basically work like this: Graardor has a 1 in 5,000 chance of dropping a pet, but should you manage to hit one thousand kills without a drop, the rate gets better. Now you have a 2 in 5,000 chance (1 in 2,500) until you either get the pet or the threshold caps at a generous 10 in 5,000 (1 in 500). You may still, by the wrath of the random number generator, never get that Graardor pet, but your odds do go up considerably and it doesn’t take away from the drop because you still need to kill this boss nine thousand times to hit that rate, after which I think we can all agree you deserve a break if you still haven’t received your fancy pet.

And it doesn’t devalue the achievement. As of January 29th, only two of the 26 pets have been unlocked by more than one thousand players, out of the tens of thousands who play every day.

2. Elemental Rare Drop Table Rework

I don’t have enough knowledge of the drop tables to comment on this update, but the most important parts can be found in the “other news” part of this update.

Clan citadel updates, reducing upkeep costs and removing the probation period on new members. You have to have played to know how sour clan chats could get each week when the citadel came due and not enough people spent the mandatory six hours of extremely heavy grind to grab the hundreds of thousands of resources required to keep the clan’s avatars for the next six days.

If I want someone breathing down my neck to maintain quotas, I’ll go back and work for Target selling credit cards, at least I’m the one getting paid there.

3. Hati & Skoll

Once again, not the important part of the update. Hati and Skoll are pretty insignificant, an annual update that takes five minutes to complete and awards a chunk of bonus exp and cosmetics that you won’t wear.

The update did, however, introduce RuneLabs to jump start players introducing their own ideas to the game. Most of them are godawful, but the community so far has been doing a great job of allowing the best ideas to filter to the top.

4. Ports – Guardians of the World

Update of the month.

I stopped using ports pretty much immediately after they came out, so I have a long way to go before I can catch up to the launch content let alone what this update brought in. As easy as travel is in RuneScape, it was still a pain to have to go to your port every single time your ships came in, in a mini-game that is already incredibly time-intensive not unlike your average Facebook waiting game.

Now you can manage your ships from just about anywhere, and the simple fact that this update made me engage in something I had previously dismissed makes it the top feature of the month.

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