Jump to content

[Not Clickbait] Jagex's Vision For PVP. What do you think??


Kim
 Share

Recommended Posts

Gielinor Gazette: March 2020

 

PvP Status Update: Here we'll go into some detail about our work on building a PvP vision.
 

Spoiler

 

Firstly, we understand your frustration at the lack of visible progress with PvP. We are working on it, and here we’ll go into some detail about what exactly we’ve been doing.

We acknowledge that up to now our approach to PvP has been piecemeal at best, and lacked a holistic view of what PvP is and how PvP fits within Old School.

We’re deep in the process of building a vision and whilst we’re not yet ready to share explicit details, we can talk about the problems we face and how we might solve them.

 


 

Fragmentation

Spoiler

 

We of course want to ‘fix PvP’, but actually it’s quite difficult to establish what exactly this means because different people have different ideas about what needs to be ‘fixed’.

The reality is that PvPers are fragmented across multiple different activities and styles. They make up roughly 5% of our playerbase (it’s worth noting that other ‘general’ MMOs have a PvPer representation of around 5-10%).

Some PvPers are Bounty Hunter players (or Last Man Standing) or they play Castle Wars, or Clan Wars. They might PK in the Wilderness, but they only terrorise multi-combat areas, or they exclusively operate in single-combat areas. They might only play on PvP worlds, or they might only play Deadman. Their accounts could be a general ‘main’ account, or it could be a pure, or another type of restricted build. Those player types are then further divided according to the timezone they live in, and the times they’re active in the game.

What we’ve found is that when we’ve tried to make changes to appease one of these groups, we might negatively impact another.

Considering this fragmentation, our main goal is to unite all players (not just PvPers) under a single vision which guides content updates, events, and manages their expectations.

 


 

The Golden Age

Spoiler

 

It’s not uncommon to hear gamers talk about a golden age of a game. This is true not just of RuneScape or Old School, but of any game that has existed for a long time. It’s also not uncommon for there to be disagreement of when this golden age is. You might prefer the experience of marauding deep in the Wilderness of 2005. Others might pine for Edgeville as it was in 2011, rife with Korasi’s and Curses. Some players might put the likes of Soul Wars and Stealing Creation on a pedestal, but other players might vehemently believe that these are just fun minigames and should not be considered PvP updates.

Rather than recreate these experiences as they were, we’re trying to identify what qualities made them special, and use them to guide future updates.

 


 

Welcoming New PvPers

Spoiler

 

One thing that can be widely agreed on is how difficult it is to introduce new players to PvP. We’ve identified three reasons for this difficulty.

Skill gap. The difference between an established PKer and somebody dipping their toes into PvP content for the first time is huge. Some activities, like Last Man Standing, have mechanics which try to bridge gulfs between accounts, like always-on Prayer to mitigate flicking or making equal account builds. But this isn’t enough. Any two players might have the same levels and equipment, but the ability to quickly switch gear and prayers and attack styles will reign supreme.

Complicated systems. Back in the day, PKing was far simpler, mechanically speaking, than it is now. You’d kill a player and you’d get their stuff. The introduction of new mechanics which are specific to certain worlds, or certain areas, can be hard for new players to grasp. If we look at the most recent iteration of Bounty Hunter, it represents one of the more extreme examples of overly complicated systems. A player had to visit an NPC to use their own GP to purchase an item to hold in their inventory. If they defeated an opponent who had the same item in their inventory, then that item would be upgraded, which would ultimately increase its value. The player could then go back to the NPC and sell the item for more GP. That’s without considering the separate existence of Bounty Hunter Points, tasks, and hotspots. It’s convoluted, and it’s a far cry from the kill-a-player-take-their-stuff age.

Toxicity. We’ve all seen the spade memes, but the reality is that the PvP scene can be daunting to new players because of the levels of toxicity associated with the community. Other games have seen great success in tackling toxicity in their PvP scene, and we must do the same.

 


 

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Removing pvp worlds basically kills any form of nhing besides main and max tanks at 44s

 

wests/easts cant be revived due to insane acc builds to focus those pures and zerks even at 10-13 wild

 

pj timer is autistic and kills single teams

 

not re-adjusting the new staff by now is absurd

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Moni said:

Removing pvp worlds basically kills any form of nhing besides main and max tanks at 44s

 

wests/easts cant be revived due to insane acc builds to focus those pures and zerks even at 10-13 wild

 

pj timer is autistic and kills single teams

 

not re-adjusting the new staff by now is absurd

I suggest for you also to express this concern on Twitter. It is the perfect opportunity as many others are currently jumping on that wagon. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Kim said:

For the sake of discussion, why do you think its dogshit? 

I'm definately a fan of the removal of PvP worlds and replace them by something like the crater we had back in the day without the minigame part. Add a safezone with bank n stuff (maybe ruins?) where to the west is single combat and the east multicombat. That way you still have some sort of a PvP world vibe but actually being in the wild. 

Removing wildy PvP from certain worlds is a hard no for me. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Moni said:

wests/easts cant be revived due to insane acc builds to focus those pures and zerks even at 10-13 wild

Some of the spoilers focus on welcoming new players. They may be very open this fact. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Moni said:

No point, I've tried in the past with no replies and no changes

 

jagex simply doesn't care about clans or small single teams and we shud 

I think, I recall some of the tweets.  I know it may seem, there is no point. But, I do heavily encourage with someone of your experience to continue tweeting. Especially during a time, where they claim 'we have no idea.' 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

44 minutes ago, NL_Ronald said:

bringing soul wars back would be fun, obv going to need some changes

im all for bringing cw back into the wildy with also this feature 

567f4916d8b0c39438310b15f05649c4.png

 

15 minutes ago, Lionel said:

Removing pvp worlds is sketchy. All in all im really hyped, clan systems brings forth many cool options.

Imagine a clan wars mode for more than 2 clans, like a 3v3 option. So cool.

Looking forward to see what Jagex has in store for us.

 

2 minutes ago, Edjez said:

Lets be honest, if one of those things would actually be implemented it would take a year for them to do so. 

 

I may be retired now. But, I still want to acknowledge the consistent interaction the three of you have displayed over the years with these topics. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

55 minutes ago, Kim said:

 

 

 

I may be retired now. But, I still want to acknowledge the consistent interaction the three of you have displayed over the years with these topics. 

Since were at it, cheers for the pro-bono work you and the sb rankteam have put into this community over the years. Both during periods of being active and inactive, ive enjoyed browsing the forum.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

lmao i tried discussing this patch in the official jagex discord.

a pmod replied "source?" to me saying "the majority of new pkers who aren't returning vets, are funneled in from youtubers" deleted all my messages then banned me

i guess jagex is waiting for a wall street journal or fox news article before they fix pvp! definitely can't be listening to the community, or people who spend thousands of hours a year talking to new pkers!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...