They've done it. You know what I mean... Not entirely unexpected, but sooner then I thought for sure. I expected only taming Wilderness this month and restriction on player to player trades sometime early next year, but we got the whole package at once.
Is it good? Is it bad? No, let's put it this way: is it devastating and will Runescape live after that?
No, it is not devastating. Yes, Runescape will live. Some people will quit (I know, people are quiting right now). OK, many players will quit. But the vast majority will remain, adapt and keep playing. With all these trading limitations and with very limited pking support, but also without RWT and without gold farmers.
Are there issues? You bet. But, in my opinion, not as many as it seems. I personally see only three things that really needs to be addressed for all this to work smoothly:
1. Grand Exchange has to be more flexible with prices in order to serve as the main (and the only) price control mechanism in the game. It should also be able to account for new items, rapid changes in the price demands and, yes, ALL prices must be set correctly there to start with.
2. Gifts and, possibly, loans mechanisms should be added to the game, so honest players could fully interact with each other.
3. Loot share function has to be modified, so it would actually work and give the participants equal shares! There are several ways to do so (mentioned in the Qeltar's article below).
Speaking of which... Take a look at the Qeltar's article from TruthScape with assessment of the situation and valid suggestions.
I also would like to point you to a few other posts of fellow bloggers. Despite an overall angry mood of the Runescape community, I am glad to find somewhat positive thoughts there, which is encouraging. Not all is lost!
Steve's post.
Timoty Gold's post.
Merch Gwyar post (this one is a perfect example why gifts/loans system is important!)
And, finally, a few words about the Wilderness updates. Quite simple, I think they are all steps in the right direction, but new pking areas could have been done much better. I actually tried the Bounty Hunter arena. What can I say, as Steve mentioned, you just get piled up by a clan there. Not much fun in it. I wasn't even able to find my target before 'the piling' happened...
Monday, December 10, 2007
End of Runescape or the new Beginning?
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7 comments:
Often times I don't like Truthscape, but the comments are spot on this time.
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The is a watershed moment for the game. The future will be very, very different from the past. It is, of course, far to soon to know if membership in the game has peeked at this point and its down hill from here on out, or if things will stabilize in some new form. But it is not to soon to say that Jagex's actions today will cost it tens of thousands of subscribers in the next few months, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
But, hey, Andrew Gower and his brother have already earned their $100 million. What do they care what happens to the game now?
I am a relatively new user, and even when I do not understand lots of issues, I do not like what it's happening. I didn't like much the GE: the price control is completely artificial. But hey, what the heck, this is a game.
But I SERIOUSLY do not like the new restrictions, particularly the unbalanced trade thing.
One reason: I do not play the game alone: I play with my family. We share good moments playing the game together (we are subscribed) and we share the "work". For instance, my brother does the mining, I do the smithing.
Now... If my brother can't pass me any serious amount of ore for me to smith, there goes our arrangement... and our fun. Other member of my family, new to the game, has the mission to feed the other by fishing and cooking. How is she supposed to do that if she can't give use fish?
And don't tell me that we can give her something in exchange. This is messy, unnecessary, and I can do that with ANYBODY in the game, not just my family... What is the point???
I am also the "merchant". I find my way through the GE, or anything else before that, to sell what we produce to get our money to buy other stuff. We get little money compared to other players, we know.. but have had fun!
But then, If I can't give my brother a full armor set I just bought for him, there goes away the fun...
What is the point on playing a MMORPG if you can't interact with your own friends there?
Actually, support for playing in groups or "clans" as you call them is very limited on RS. There is only one quest in all the free ones that I know you can play with somebody else. I think this is ridiculous, and I was thinking in using the forums to ask for a more collaborative game. Now I really don't know!
About other changes to the game: I can only say that things are happening too fast since I entered the game, and I find changes to be contrived, unnatural and diffcult to understand.
My gut feeling is that RS is going to lose players. You can probably count me out at least.
Thank you for the comment.
I hope that some of you concerns may and will be addressed by introduction of a Gifts/Loans mechanism.
I know a lot of honest players are asking for it on fan site and forums (including the official RS forum). I personally don't see why Jagex wouldn't add this feature in the nearest future.
Vaskor, I think they finally hit it. Forums seem to be unusable, I can post my idesa there. Too much server load??
About gifts, loans, etc... I don't think piling up features is a good idea. It will only complicate hings. I think they should really *think* about this and fix things in an intelligent way.
Take a look at the real world: nobody comes out of nowhere and gives 1 million to you. If someone tries to do that, goverment halts the transaction and find out why someone would give you so much money. I am not an expert on money laundry, but I think the only reasonably easy way to do this only between families.
Back to RS: why they don't put an audit mechanism, so that when someone you have never done anything significant with (i. e. no comercial relationship at all) comes and gives you money, alarms are fired, transaction is put on hold and then the RS auditors charge in?
Another suggestion: why not improve on the so weak clan controls so you can *really* establish your clan, your family so to speak, where members of this clan can exchange goods and/or money freely? Of course membership to the clan should not be automatic, but negotiated, with monthly limits or so about how much people can come in or out. Now, that would be neat, because you could even think about being able to go to the bank and deposit a pair of boots on your brother's account, so when he's online he can retrieve them. One problem I have is I can only play at evenings, while my "fisher" fishes on the mornings only. I haven't seen too much fish as you might guess... lol
What I am talking about is that you can't expect to just hack away a quick solution and keep the game sound and players happy.
I think that if RWT is such a big deal for Jagex, they should address this problem seriously, WITHOUT passing the cost to the player.
And a quick disclaimer: I am totally against RWT, don't get me wrong... I just don't want to pay for it's combat
Jagex tried the audit approach for several years, it just didn't work out. I guess, mainly because of sheer number of transactions in Runescape and limited staff that could be allocated to do such audits. It was proven to be a dead end. In any case, the solution was selected and implemented and it is what we have now. I don't see a point in asking to undo it - it is not going to happen. Period.
As for the group of trusted accounts, it is a good idea, but I don't really see why would it be preferred against gifts/loans mechanism. Both approaches would be new features to RS and gifts/loans seem to me more flexible for players.
Runescape is loosing and will loose player because of these updates, but I don't see it dieing because of it. Majority stays, new players will come. But RWT is there no more. And speaking of which, take a look at Knifestorm article about RWT and legal issues it may pose (featured on Dec 7). It's not just a Jagex's holy war against bots and gold farmers - it's a survival war.
I'm another family and friends player. Not being able to perform a simple act of kindness or share the work load (especially of some of the more tedious of tasks) amongst friends and families is a big blow.
I do a lot of quests with my son - something as trivial as my holding some sharks for him while he collected 10 bananas for Monkey Madness couldn't be done anymore (I gave him the sharks right back). Under the new rules we would've run back to the bank and then came back, get knocked out, escape from jail, get the bananas, go back to the bank, back to Grand Tree, glider, Ape Atoll, get knocked out, etc. ad nauseum.
There's been a slew of recent updates that have made RS not harder just more tedious - the last thing it needs is an uber blast of tedium!
If they don't change the trade policy to allow fletching kits, shared skill leveling (I WC, he firemakes and vice-a-versa),random acts of common human kindness, etc. we'll be quitting in Jan.
Thank you for the comment. We'll see how it goes. There definitely will be some changes, it was even officially confirmed in the Runescape news. I am hopeful that some kind of gifts/loans mechanism will be added. It won't resolve the quest related situation you described, but joined skilling might be allowed through such mechanism.
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