Quote from: HomeScape on May 10, 2014, 18:21:26

It was in some way, not everyone can grind 99 slayer the old way..

EVERYONE can grind 99 slayer the old way, RS isn't about skill, it's about how many hours you put in to it...

i agree

Although I am not big on competition, the competition that used to be in the game several years ago was one of the reasons I enjoyed playing continuously. Whenever I try to play now I see people maxed out or close to it like crazy compared to before. I used to get all nerd over seeing a max cape and now'a'days most people speed right past a max cape. The fact that there are so many new, faster methods to train skills is one of the reasons I have a hard time trying to play again. Not to mention as others have said, all you really need is to throw a bunch of IRL money at the game in order to have an unfair advantage over others who don't

This is sorta how I feel. I am in no way trying to be the best or a top player. I've played it pretty casually and later adapted the sense that I should max / etc. However, its just a shame to think about how I've put something like 400+ hrs onto my characters and now that could probably be done in 100 hrs. I mean, surely I enjoyed the time working on it then, but just comparing to what people can do now its just like, whats the point? I def enjoy the people I talk to, IE cts members, however the game itself is just meh to me now.

Has RuneScape ever been "hard"?

I don't think it has ever been "Hard", but I easy saying it is easy is just a descriptor of how it is compared to how it was. Gettings 99 untrim slayer was like a miracle back then, now you can do it AND get 2.1K total in just 26 days.
The power creep is way too large, not including the fact that TH is more updated than anything else in the game.

I've said it before, but I'm all for Solomon's Store. I played Maplestory and a few other MMOs and I've bought their cosmetics. Runescape is no different. It just adds a little bit of style to what generally was bad looking armor. However the fact that you can pretty much buy out skills though spins, have it be from RSGP (In a sense that you can't use it to help in the skill IE BXP on fishing), or real life money itself. It's far too much for me now, but I feel too attached to the game that I can't justify straight up leaving.

I've thought about Old School as an alternative, but I just don't see the point as most of the players are just either elites or PKers. I'm not looking to replay what I've already done before, but I'm just looking for something else that is not what Runescape is currently.

It can be disconcerting if you dwell on it, but of course RuneScape has gotten "easier". It's the nature of a game where the main focus is getting levels. In order to make new content relevant, it needs to compete with or beat current xp rates. When Jagex introduces an update that doesn't satisfy this, it quickly dies out.

A lot of people would say that my account taking 6 years to get to max skiller is an awful long time but I've always played casually and I started in 2008 so a lot of methods I did for training were based on old exp rates. Runescape was bound to get easier. Like Stephen said they need to make it quicker to make new updates more appealing or else why bother doing them at all?

I do think money is key now however. If you're competing against the new skiller highscores (based on total exp) someone who is loaded has the upper hand straight away - log on and buy 200M Herblore the fastest way gives them a 200M head start straight away.. Same with Construction or Dungeoneering and you're already quite far up. This isn't aimed at anyone btw lol..

But yeah overall I think it was obviously going to get easier as time goes on but then thats what the new cosmetic 120 capes are for.. Aiming for more exp with faster methods evens it out a little bit?

I think combat is hard to be honest which is why I chose to remain a skiller. 

I dislike how things are made quicker now,

I play less and less I admit, runescape holds no interest for me at all, Jgex has ruined the game 

I was never really bothered with updates that made skilling a bit faster/easier e.g. Bonfires and Runespan. If I'm honest, we needed another way to Runecraft that wasn't dead slow and boring.

However, once you could basically buy levels with irl money (spins) and when warbands were introduced that's when I got annoyed and was disappointed in Jagex. All of the skills that still retained some form of worth - all of those skills were suddenly free, easy and quick to get. Construction, Mining, Herblore, Smithing etc. were all skills where you either needed a lot of money to get them quickly or you had to do it the cheap way and get them slowly with the exception of Mining which is a non-buyable and therefore was one of the few skills left you had to get with hard work and dedication without the ability to buy the level ups. It's even worse when skills such as Slayer can now be bought based on your irl wealth and I'm pretty sure RuneScape once said your irl wealth would never impact the game in such a way it does now.

However, the skill I was most disappointed with was Farming. I didn't care about Livid Farm or faster ways of gaining xp in Farming such as spending a couple hundred million on palm and magic seeds. What I did care about was a few months after grinding and working hard on getting my 99 Farming (taking me 9-10 months of multiple farm runs per day) Warbands was introduced and 99 Farming was then easy, quick and free to get. I was proud of my untrimmed Farming cape, especially with being a skiller but now I felt like I couldn't wear my cape proudly anymore and would just be seen as a Warband prod who got the skill through Warbands - especially through me being a skiller and through it being untrimmed.

Ehh...this post wasn't meant to be as long as it is.

TL;DR - I'm disappointed in how irl wealth affects your in game levels and how warbands has devalued all the skills which still retained some form of worth. I think that is truly what has made RuneScape unbalanced and too easy.

Has RuneScape ever been "hard"?

All depends on how the person is defining "hard"

People define "hard" when talking about Runescape as been either more click intensive or time consuming etc

Firstly,

Quote from: Lukas on May 10, 2014, 17:48:54

Has RuneScape ever been "hard"?

All depends on how the person is defining "hard"

People define "hard" when talking about Runescape as been either more click intensive or time consuming etc

Effigy prod Tehe!! Was dieing for that one.

But I don't think you can always say "runescape is too easy", The grind has gone and yes everything is quicker but compared to other games it takes a very long time to get all max skills on Runescape than it does on any other game, which is why I liked Runescape in the first place.
It's something which IMO can never be completed like in my eyes you'd have to have everything, 200m skills ETC, then you have nothing else to do.

I play the game because it just takes my free time up, Yeah the MTX are very annoying to be popping in your eyes every 2 seconds but I guess you just get used to it.

 

I dislike how things are made quicker now,

I play less and less I admit, runescape holds no interest for me at all, Jgex has ruined the game 

same

People enjoy thinking that spins are a way that means people who have a lot of irl wealth can max, but realistically for that to be true you have to spend an absurd amount of money that the vast majority of people who play Runescape either don't have at all, or don't have to spend on a game. - Quite frankly, people who buy RSGP are far, far more detrimental to the game than those who buy larges amounts of spins.

The most famous spin buyer spent $4000 or so on spins, and still didn't beat Drumgun to #1 Div, which just goes to show how 'bad' they realistically are, of course it gives an advantage, but in the majority of skills/cases it's not even a big one, (the only thing I can think of that would be a big advantage is Slayer for skillers) people tend to use spins as an excuse and just a joke, simply look at any Runescape video on youtube that either has a lot of views, or is by a 'big' youtuber, (or both), and you'll see everyone bitching about spins and Mod Mark or EOC in some form.


Yes, training is getting faster, but it always has been, way before people started noticing there were updates that made training faster than it previously was, and this should always happen, whether wholly intentional or not.

A good example of the above was advanced agility courses in June 2009, they reduced the time it would take for 99/200m Agility but a long way on release, but I've never really seen anyone complain about them the way they do about more recent updates.

According to the #1 spin buyer, he wasn't trying for #1 div. Perhaps he would have been first if he had tried. In any case, I know a person who bought 1350 spins during the prismania promotion. That gained him 44m bonus XP + 11m XP from lamps. That's 55m XP for ~275 usd with Swedish prices (1800 SEK). Alternatively, it would have been a little over 1b gp to buy an equivalent amount via bonds, which equates to roughly 20gp/xp (although some reports of buying via bonds during the promotion were up to 30gp/xp). It's a lot of money, but it's not an absurd amount, especially not if you have an income irl. I don't know how much merit these rumours hold, but I have heard that lots of people bought 100m+ XP. While it can be argued that it was only a weekend promotion, I think it is safe to assume that we will see similar promotions in the future.

A good example of the above was advanced agility courses in June 2009, they reduced the time it would take for 99/200m Agility but a long way on release, but I've never really seen anyone complain about them the way they do about more recent updates.

The advanced courses did not add a major xp difference from the previous best method of training Agility, compared to updates such as bonfiring/runespan making them skills a lot less click intensive and much faster.

A good example of the above was advanced agility courses in June 2009, they reduced the time it would take for 99/200m Agility but a long way on release, but I've never really seen anyone complain about them the way they do about more recent updates.

I made an example like this with Runespan. I think a creep in exp is going to happen. I'm cool with that but things, warbands being the largest example, that do not even relate to the skill and give exp is kinda silly.

I log in on an average day and still gain 700K-1M ish exp a day depending on what I'm doing.. Straight away I have 360k~ for warbands if I get 3/3 and 178K from daily Dung challenge. Add this to Sinkholes which I usually get about 200K from (even a small lamp is 89K now) and a couple of hours actually training a skill means I can easily reach that amount daily with little or no effort.

I mean yesterday I must have spent around an hour or just under online and gained 626K exp:
370K Farming - Warbands 3/3 and divine spot.
178K Dungeoneering - Daily Challenge
15k Smithing - For May challenge
29K Slayer - Rewards from May challenges
30K Thieving - 2 runs hunting for Ibis at PP with bonus exp.. 10mins.

Once upon a time that was unheard of and thats a low gain compared to average I'd guess.

Yes.