PvP Status Update: Here we'll go into some detail about our work on building a PvP vision.
Fragmentation
The Golden Age
Welcoming New PvPers
Current Status
Our vision for PvP is still very much a work in progress, but we’d to share as much as we can.
Our current PvP mission statement
We will consolidate and unite the PvP scene to position it for future growth.
The Wilderness is where emergent dangerous PvP gameplay takes place.
Minigames and events exist to offer unique content changes or structured play which aren’t possible in the Wilderness.
Competitive gaming compliments and adheres to the PvP vision, but it doesn’t dictate the vision.
The act of killing players shouldn’t generate expected wealth gain in an abusable way.
Onboarding new players is crucial, but not at the expense of core gameplay.
Possible 'consolidation' content changes:
Return of Bounty Hunter. We removed the content because of the level of abuse it faced. It will return with the potential for abuse reduced as much as possible. We expect this to be the earliest content to arrive, hopefully around the end of this month or early April.
Removal of PvP worlds. With this change we’re trying to solve the fragmentation of PKers. We understand that PvP worlds offer hotspots with convenient fights and a desirable combat level bracket, and we’ll do our utmost to offset this by creating similar hotspots in the Wilderness.
Restrict Wilderness access to specific worlds. Again, we’re trying to solve the fragmentation of PKers. Hundreds of game worlds have been added since Old School’s release. Whilst we could reduce their number, that’d have adverse effects elsewhere in the game by exacerbating competition for things like bosses and resources.
Remove High Risk worlds, replaced by Very High Risk worlds. Dying on these worlds will result in the loss of all items to create risk-heavy and exciting opportunities.
Moving Clan Wars and Last Man Standing to the Wilderness. They’re currently quite out of the way in the desert. We’d like to move the lobbies for these minigames to the Wilderness, like when Clan Wars was introduced to RuneScape. The lobby would be a safe area, reachable via teleport, and likely positioned to the west/south west of the Graveyard of Shadows. Our intention is to create a new hotspot of activity in the low-level Wilderness.
Resolve Last Man Standing quality issues. We’d like to remove the buy-in fee for the competitive game mode. We don’t think it’s necessary now that we’ve added a permanent High Stakes variant. We’d also want to reduce the number of F2P Last Man Standing worlds. We’re also investigating content changes to prevent ‘boxing’ from occurring during games.
Redesigning Wilderness bosses. We’re not happy with the quality of Wilderness bosses such as Callisto, Vet’ion and Venenatis. We’d like to give them actual mechanics and relocate them to suitable areas. We envisage a winding series of tunnels and chambers connecting the bosses with various cave entrances in the Wilderness overworld. Increasing the challenge offered by the bosses would also pave the way for buffing the drops and rewards offered.
W45 Deadman. Honestly, we’re not sure what to do with the Permanent Deadman world. We’d like to run a poll on W45 to gauge player opinion on how best to proceed. We’re open to resetting the game world (either once, or on a regular basis) and exploring cosmetic incentives or additional XP increase for continued play across resets.
Wilderness PJ timer. We understand that lone PKers would likely want a Wilderness PJ timer added to single-way combat areas, whereas PKers in clans might prefer it to remain as it currently is. We’re open to implementing one, whether in the whole Wilderness or just certain areas.
Last Man Standing queueing. We’d like to investigate whether we can queue players for Last Man Standing games, so that they can wait to join games whilst going about their ‘Scaping elsewhere in the game world. It wouldn’t be possible to do cross-world queueing, so we’d only implement it for themed worlds.
Wilderness Safe Respawn Area. To make it more convenient to return to persisting fights we’d like to add an option to respawn in the Wilderness, likely in the Clan Wars lobby.
Possible 'growth' content changes:
Onboard new PvPers. We’d like to introduce a tutorial-type piece of content for players who are new to the Wilderness or minigames like Last Man Standing. We’d focus on introducing players to concepts like switching gear, attack styles, and prayers.
Temporary Deadman events. We’d like to run regular Deadman Permadeath (you might call this the Final Hour) events, which are based on the short Deadman betas we’d run prior to our live broadcasts. This would precede the full return of Deadman.
New Clan Wars features. We’d work with clan leaders to identify valuable features and changes to add to the minigame.
New Last Man Standing features. Adding new maps and new account load-outs to Last Man Standing to increase the appeal and variety of the gameplay it offers.
New Castle Wars changes. Exploring things like shortening the match length and implementing team size caps, among other content changes. We’d work with the competitive Castle Wars community to identify the right features, and after any release we’d still want to offer a ‘Classic’ Castle Wars experience on themed worlds.
Wilderness Clans features. With the release of the Clans system we’ll explore whether there are any features we could implement to incentivise clan versus clan gameplay.
Wilderness expansion. We know there are various parts of the map that players would like to see expanded, like the Desert, but we’re also very keen on expanding the Wilderness and increasing the amount of content offered.
Competitive PvP program. Establishing a competitive program will include any return of Deadman, as well as structured esports.
Community PvP program. Empowering the community to operate their own events with prizing and structure, like always-on Clan Wars ladders or bespoke tournaments.
What's Next
We’ve shared as much insight as we’re able, but it’s your feedback that will guide and finalise the changes we’ll make. Once decisions have been made, we’ll compile a backlog and development roadmap which we’ll share with you.
These changes won’t happen overnight. We’re going to prioritise the consolidation changes whilst designing the growth changes. In the interest of transparency, this is not going to be an instance where we divert every Old School resource to working on PvP. Some changes will arrive soon, whereas others, like the Wilderness expansion, will be much further in the future.
Rumors have roamed that this useless rage member @Travcried his way back into rage after getting caught leaking!
Rage will do anything to keep their useless members and use them as bodybags against their rivals
Ace Krave got a reaction from Deserie in "Take Notes" - [LY/NOX/UD/DIVINE/EV/SBA]Scims
Ace Krave got a reaction from ParaCommando in A closer look at Rage 2020
Ace Krave got a reaction from
Scims in Legacy Productions Presents The Zenith Experience: Episode 1
Ace Krave got a reaction from
Ace Krave got a reaction from FOE PURP in [COTM] Apex v.s. Rage: 3-0 35v35 F2P Prep
Ace Krave got a reaction from Mallu in P2P Big Mini vs Onslaught [3-0]