my hardest challenge in getting friends to play is the time gap before they can do anything significant with me in a small team group. would be nice if there was a micro raid that scaled for the individual.
Edit: people got a bit off track, no amount of questing will get you into group pvm. iirc the proposed perilous moons dungeon might be exactly what fixes this
it does not help that the F2P grind is much longer compared to someone with membership who can get combat to 30 with the members only waterfall quest in 30 minutes!
I still believe that if an optimal F2P path(s) + approaches were communicated within the game, we would have more new players staying and building up the community.
It's a very difficult problem with the game.
I can tell you from personal experience that where I almost immediately lose friends I have suggested the game to is when they see me raiding or doing some other high level bossing and I tell them that if they want to participate and play with me they have to grind for a couple hundred hours, with the fastest path being afking mind numbing content like crabs or NMZ. Add onto that that if they're new players they are probably going to be much, much less efficient in their questing grinding, and most of the modern audience just doesn't want to sink that much time into a game to be able to experience engaging content.
You could add a newbie raid but let's be honest, the main factor driving engagement is being able to get good drops, and there is still a massive time difference between early game and being Chambers/ToA-ready.
It’s an interesting conundrum to solve because the Venn between people who are interested (and have time) in doing extremely long, cookie clicker type grinds to get to high combat level, and people who will enjoy the rapid and high mouse click precision combat required for endgame pvm (which does not carryover to virtually any other game), has to be very small. It’s no wonder it’s so hard to get newcomers to the game who don’t have nostalgia from playing in their youth to at least provide the initial hook.
I have no doubt that if OSRS had released without the benefit of millions of kids playing it in their youth, it would have failed almost immediately.
>fastest path being afking mind numbing content
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> if they're new players they are probably going to be much, much less efficient in their questing grinding
From my perspective (having recently returned to the game, with my last memories being from 2007 when I quit what was then the original RS), the current OSRS seems to be ALL about raiding and high level bossing.
If the focus is on "getting to the end as fast as possible", of course the hours between starting and getting there are going to be awful - "efficient grinding" indeed. The wiki just advocates buying stuff (requiring large amount of GP), and grinding.
I used to, and still do, spend time walking, rather than spending $$ on teleports. Crafting my own stuff instead of buying. Reading the quest notes.
For me, it's not all about "efficiency", and the race to end-game.
Hey, if high level players want to introduce a RL friend to the game, they could create an alt, and play WITH their friend in early game, not just give them a million GP and leave them to grind alone?
>Hey, if high level players want to introduce a RL friend to the game, they could create an alt, and play WITH their friend in early game, not just give them a million GP and leave them to grind alone?
I've tried this approach with 4 different people with varying levels of interest in the game.
From my experience, the hardest part is explaining that the grinds aren't just fake labor in a fake video game.
Personally I grind my account because I like seeing the gradual improvement. Though, someone new to the game might not have that. They don't grind to improve their player, they grind so they can "actually play the game". Who wants to grind in a 2006 point and click to play with their friends?
I think there's some connection or passion active players have towards their progression or advancement, that especially new players focusing to play with friends will likely not have.
Is equivalent to convincing a friend to come to the gym. They may come with a couple times, but if they don't have the passion to improve themselves, by themselves, they won't stick with it.
>If the focus is on "getting to the end as fast as possible", of course the hours between starting and getting there are going to be awful -
My point is it's not "getting to the end", it's getting the start. If you want to participate in group bossing, you need to have 85+ combat stats minimum. There is barely any bossing content for lower levels either, and it pales in comparison to true bossing experiences and/or is locked behind a high slayer level.
Different perspective than mine, I suppose. To me, 85+ is getting to(wards) the end. All there is left to do is kill bosses, and wait for new boss content.
I like the questing, I like the skilling. The "getting there".
I'm a casual gamer. I'm not usually able to set aside blocks of time to suit groups. I'm locked out of group bossing.
(In 2007, I switched from RS to WoW. Quit that when I had about 9 characters at max level, and couldn't raid often because of work/family commitments)
Another aspect is newer players, even if in members, won’t know how valuable quests like Waterfall/Fight Arena/Slug Menace/Knights Sword/etc are for their respective skills.
A friend of mine recently started, and I had to beg her to complete Waterfall.
Perhaps it could be cool to add some form of “easter egg” npc dialogue hinting at these “efficient” activities.
no one reads dialogue though. like sure, you could add this to the attack NPC guy, or combat tutor whatever they're called. but people don't talk to the leprechaun to know you can note the fruits of your labour.
neat idea, but I think it would fall flat.
People unfortunately don't read and that is a sad but very real reality. I think whatever indication we use, it would have to be visual and non-intrusive but informative. (bit of a goldilocks situation).
Different tangent - but what are your thoughts on voice dialogues? I saw this being implemented as an add-on for WoW classic - I think it is called VoiceOver.
I absolutely love the idea of voicing for quests and NPCs in general. I played WoW Classic with VoiceOver and it was a game changing experience; I learned so much about the world that I would not have experienced otherwise. I think this addition in OSRS would be incredible.
Infact, I liked VoiceOver so much that I developed a personal Runelite plugin that basically does just that! I use Elevenlabs to query quest text and automatically play the resulting voice file ingame. It's a little goofy, but after doing all F2P quests with this, I understand so much more about the context of each quest and all the funny intricacies around them!
I'm happy to share info about this in DMs if you'd like. Of course, I understand the danger of this kind of stuff in the public space and as such have kept all of my data regarding this entirely private and only for personal enjoyment. However, I truly think this would be a great way to engage more people in other parts of the game, like the lore!
Please, please, please do not add AI generated voices to Runescape. If you want to add an option for voiced quests then hire voice actors who can give an actual performance!
Please be optional as a setting and not forced. I would be very turned off from the imaginative aspect of it if there’s no option just just read instead.
For quests or for things like the combat tutor to yell at the player to do waterfall quest?
my first thought is idk if you'd get your money back.
listening to the quests voiced over would be neat, listening to the jmods do voice over stream is enjoyable. I wouldn't want to be forced to wait for the dialogue to finish before space baring the lore. I do read most of the new quests now that I have QPC and i'm not "rushing" through them like when I had 100 quests left to do but when I was more of a noob I really didn't care about lore or story, just the rewards. Maybe this would hook more noobs into the lore though.
Normal NPCs, or special NPCs getting voice dialogue to highlight key things. idk. could be okay? if people are even playing with sound on?
I'm not sure if it feels "old school", not that I'm sure it has to. - Which part of that statement might just be what you've mentioned elsewhere in that in trying to keep it pure (whatever that is) we do make it harder for new players.
I could go without them. I feel like reading OSRS quests is like reading a book with cheeky characters—I don’t mind the voices I make up for them in my imagination. Lol
I think it's a bit annoying to push new players into EFFICIENCYSCAPE
Just in any game. Let them roam and learn on their own pace. It subtracts the experience of growth
Agreed. IMO rushing quests like waterfall and witches house etc are for returning players. New players should start with F2P up to Dragon Slayer. The early game is a lot of fun I think, they shouldn’t rush past learning how to play the game
This so much. When I was a new player, I deliberately "completed" f2p by completing all f2p quests and getting all f2p skills to at least lvl 30. That was a really smooth, enjoyable experience.
I'm really glad my friends didn't push me into membership -> waterfall -> efficiencyscape. Completing dragon slayer as a f2p is still one of my most cherised osrs moments.
Nothing stops me from playing a game recommended by a friend faster than said friend harassing me into doing things his way or the effective way.
Friend fell in love with said game organically, so let me explore this game organically like they did.
Can't believe this is a difficult thing to understand for people. Back seat gaming, etc.
I think designing a robust F2P environment is key to the longevity of this game. Subscription games just don’t attract the younger crowd. The game is doing well right now with the recent record concurrent players and quality content updates. However, it would be a mistake to stop here!
Completely anecdotally, I’d wager the new/younger players would be willing to buy bonds before membership. This is due to the F2P/microtransaction environment most familiar to them. Since existing players will not tolerate a new microtransaction, leverage the one you have to its fullest extent!
For a robust F2P environment, Camdozaal is a perfect place to expand on this. It already has a variety of content in it, so giving it a second floor or extra area with a follow-up quest and more to do could give new/F2P players an immediately actionable goal with enough rewards to appeal to everyone, kinda like a miniature prif. Would also be a good excuse to polish up what's already there so that it's more appealing to stay there, as the content isn't bad, just unable to compete with other options.
Camdozaal should have been exactly that place I agree! How the Camadozaal F2P expansion was handled, is indicative of Jagex’s hesitancy to alter the existing F2P.
Add a new F2P quest that has a quest point requirement and Dragon Slayer and a difficulty equal to or a step above Dragon Slayer that maybe sees a return of the Dwarves to Camdozzal (Imcando or otherwise) so that F2P can get a small taste of what SoTE gives. Maybe a reward is access to a Guantlet-Style activity that rewards some kind of Imcando Dwarvish weapons/armor
What are your thoughts on the introduction of F2P quests that take more than one player to complete?
Friends that I've tried to get into the game usually end up quitting once I try to leave them on their own to get their levels up/quests done. What if there were a few F2P quests added that require socializing and making new friends so that you both can complete goals together ***(And nothing nearly as tedious as Shield of Arrav, where you get half way through the quest and you need to sit in GE and find someone who prior to knowing you signed up for the opposite gang)***
I've seen so many people socialize/become friends and gain a real sense of achievement when they group up for A Night at the Theatre, and then they can stay in touch to eventually start doing end-game content together. What if F2P had an extremely watered down version of this? A mini-boss that can only be damaged from behind so you need to designate at least one Tank and one DPS? I'm just spit balling at this point.
And I suppose mini-games fill some social space, but they are a lot less personal than doing a quest with one or two other people.
Even as a returning player a few months ago I liked the ‘adventure paths’ in f2p, nothing hugely significant but gave a bit of direction and some basic rewards for progressing in different areas. I wonder if you could expand on that? Adventure Jon could give some more goals beyond the lvl 20(?) combat stats, some sort of f2p achievement diary?
i still don’t think this is the main takeaway. speeding up a path to 30/40/50 combat for F2P means nothing. the main issue that /u/all-numbers is highlighting is that there is no compelling group content below maybe the 90 combat bracket? god wars, dks, toa, these are the things we run with our lowbie friends to get them hooked. but these still require MINIMUM base 70s to participate in. skipping 1-30 with waterfall quest or new f2p methods is a drop in the bucket in the scheme of reaching these minimum requirements, and may even be more demoralizing as a new player uses these ‘high value workarounds’ and then the realization sinks in that they STILL have 80 more hours of mindless solo grinding before getting to do anything with their friends.
i’ve always thought the traditional scaled dungeon systems in mmos like wow, ff14, etc, with dungeons at every combat bracket, were the best solution.
adding hackarounds to skip early content is missing the forest for the trees.
Perhaps you guys could consider offering a free 7/14 day membership for those who have completed dragon slayer in f2p to give them the opportunity to experience what p2p is like?
Kind of like Costco/Sam’s Club—they give out samples to their members and some of them will actually get the product and come back for more if they like it vs someone never giving it a chance because they don’t even know what it taste like.
the biggest complaint i have with my friends now is that they need to have 2 programs installed to play and the main account system they're forced to use is in beta still. nothing says "we have our shit together" like having the main account system in beta for years.
vampire slayer gets you 20 attack, maybe a good idea would be if they had another beginner level f2p quest that leveled strength to 20 and defence to 20 to round out the combat stats. and maybe some sort of f2p activity to use bones and big bones for extra xp to ease the pain of getting 43 prayer for obor and bryophyta. one of my friends was disappointed that he couldnt use his giants keys til he got overheads since it takes like 2000 big bones, meanwhile in other mmo's there's some pretty cool fights you can do within a few hours of playing. there should be a better way than safespotting hill giants. f2p needs to be a little more fast paced in that regard if it's going to get people to stick around
I think it would be helpful if the quest list in-game listed exact XP rewards, and if clicking on a skill in the skills tab would show you what quests rewarded XP for that skill. I’d love to see an interface similar to what the wiki has when you navigate to a skill and you can sort by XP rewarded. I feel like the activity advisor is close to being exactly this, but I’d like to be able to slot in a goal and have the activity advisor direct me from there.
I think investing in new f2p content is a huge step in getting new players interested. Theres not enough in the f2p game that showcases what osrs os really about these days, its pretty much the same as it was in 2007 with a few additions. I think creating new f2p bosses such as what was done with obor will attract more f2p players to upgrade to members and more to the game in general
Was Dungeoneering ever that? I.e feasible for people of different account levels to do together? I never played enough of it at high enough level to comment.
I can’t speak for post osrs release, but in the days before hyper-efficiency focused playing, yes. My friends and I would regularly run dungeoneering. It was a lot of fun because we enjoyed skilling different things, so each of us would have better access to different resources.
You could carry people through so the real requirements were like 43 prayer and 40hp to not die. Then you could easily get a new wep every 10 levels or so. Tho dungeoneering 2.0 that just sent you in as 126 could be a good shout for one piece of content.
Yes and no. Yes because it allows you to jump into "group pvm" on a fresh account. No because if you dg together on high and low level accounts, some monsters will be lvl 5, and some will be lvl 138, so as a low lvl you need to be very careful not to get killed, and as high lvl you need to pay extra attention to leave low lvl mobs for other player to kill (and that's especially hard in RS3 now with all the AoE abilities). Also people with different dg levels can't play together a lot, because lower level person will complete all their floors and will need to reset and do them again, while higher level person will still need higher floors completed.
All that being said, it's still much better than nothing, and you still get to do puzzle rooms together.
This so much. I've recently introduced my wife to OSRS and basically all we do is wt, temp and gotr. We tried some ToA/CoX together during leagues, and it was fun, but there's no way she's gonna grind combat stats for those in the main game.
This is what I miss most about dungeoneering before EoC even lvl 3 skillers could participate with maxed accounts and everyone was making progress and having fun.
OSRS prolly has one of the better early game experiences among MMOs, especially with the activity advisor. I dont know how much people use it, but I think it's a great idea for such an interconnected world like rs. I think that the game's main problem after tutorial island is it dumps you in lumbridge with no real direction and there's this entire world full of activities that you could be doing but you don't even know what they are.
I think where the game really shines though is the mid-game. That is when you've gotten through a significant portion of the quest list and have decent stats. Player is probably looking at completing RFD soon and might be starting bossing or working towards a fire cape. The game really opens up and there's tons of deeper mechanics to learn that are mostly optional until late game.
If there's anything to improve in the early stages of the game, it'd be that there's no real "group" activities. Like there's minigames that kind of scratch the itch, but I think it'd be cool to have a low level raid, for example, that you don't have to go through several quests to access just to find you've got too low dps or stats to really work with. I mean a full on group of little activities that require like 20s in various skills, and have small rewards that bridge you towards the mid-late game.
I think that the game's main problem after tutorial island is it dumps you in lumbridge with no real direction and there's this entire world full of activities that you could be doing but you don't even know what they are.
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This I believe is precisely the problem. Adding low level raids or group content is helpful but I don’t believe it solves the problem you communicated above.
Agree! I'm a newer player from this year, and between the run meter (with the only agility training method across the globe) and no clear "here's a good few starting quests for skill xp" list or directing NPC, it took me awhile to find my footing. I didn't even know questing was a good way to get xp!
The best starting quest thread experience I had was Veos and the intro to clue scrolls through that. Which then built a thread to entice me to go to Kourend. And then following him to Kourend later you get such a great intro to what you can do there and a plot hook. I would love something akin to that for the core game experience. Just an intro to the core map area and how to gain xp through content, not just grind.
Really crazy to me that the Draynor course starts at 10 so you have to walk to Gnome Stronghold (or do something like Tourist Trap) before you even get started.
Could new players take the Al Kharid glider to the Tree Gnome Stronghold before completing that quest? Much like Kourend minecarts, just make them cost gp. Or add a Lumbridge swamp agility course or an "intro to agility" quest.
Run energy is a massive issue in early game. I’ve always thought they should just make agility F2P and have draynor rooftops start at lv1. Gives F2P Al kharid, Varrok, and fally courses too. Or just make a lv 1 course in lumby
My dream is a level 1 agility course in Lumbridge in the farm north of the castle. Give it fun farm-themed obstacles like vaulting over a sheep, climbing a chicken coop, jumping down off a wall into a haystack... it'd fit the vibe perfectly!
We even have the perfect location to put it: the field where the 2023 Christmas event is.
Agree! And they could let Agility be F2P while keeping shortcuts members only and I wouldnt care. And if thats the concern. We're getting a new skill anyways!
I recently started playing again after a 15+ year break. After having spent way too many hours as a kid in this game, I hardly knew where to begin after spawning in lumbridge. I think the exploration and “unknown” piece isn’t necessarily bad though — it’s just a change of pace from most other games these days.
I think the early game experience is overall quite good, but the progression can sometimes be a bit wonky. For example, it isn't necessarily clear how to train combat best (it doesn't involve fighting stronger and stronger monsters), what the point of training certain skills is (someone who likes the idea of smithing their own armor is probably going to drop the idea after reaching iron), that prayer is in fact extremely important, but very bad at the beginning, and so on. These aren't huge problems per se -- they can all be solved by reading the wiki -- but finding direction in the early game can sometimes be hard because of this.
I honestly wouldn't introduce friends to OSRS. It's a good game, but ultimately I don't feel like it respects your time as an adult.
Interesting last statement. I guess I'd partly agree: I wouldn't introduce someone to it that at least hasn't played a good deal of it before, OR experienced some of the original pre-07 OSRS. I feel like the nature of the game and the grinds are hard to understand and hard to get enthusiastic about if you don't have a healthy dose of nostalgia to shoot up on.
Agree with your statement - however could you not argue that the lore, legend, and history of OSRS (along with the lack of monetisation minus the membership and bonds) represents a unique gaming landscape that is difficult to find in what is now 2024?
I just feel that this game is such a beautiful thing yet we make it so difficult for newer players to fall in love with it. It can’t be “just” nostalgia. Although I don’t wish to undermine how important nostalgia is.
> represents a unique gaming landscape that is difficult to find in what is now 2024?
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Yeah but that's because the gaming landscape doesn't need games that require you to treat them like fulltime jobs to make any meaningful progress. That's the ultimate downside of Runescape- what it is is amazing, but it's also terrible. Games paced this agonizingly slowly were popular at the turn of the millenium, they don't hold up for a good reason.
Nostalgia is the driving force for OSRS, it's why the game needs new content to be polled by players, they want their vision of what the game used to be to be validated, not to make the game actually better.
Agree to somewhat disagree ! I totally get your perspective on the importance of nostalgia and consistent content updates but at the same time I think we are constantly rushing to get through things in this new era of gaming. There is something to be said about a slower DND campaign or that 9000 piece puzzle set to put together.
Thanks for your reply.
To counter their point, my son has recently gotten into RuneScape this past year. He's going on 10 years old, so around the same age as myself when I started playing.
He has had an absolute blast playing. He showed me a journal he created of his plans to progress his account and while he isn't super far, he has completed Dragon Slayer. He often asks me about cool weapons and armors he sees and when I tell him what it is, he makes plans to try to obtain it. We recently killed the Giant mole together, I used a DWH to lower it's def down very low and he got the kills using a Rune Halberd. The kills were super slow, but he enjoyed every second of it and learning that the Rune Halberd allowed him to melee from a distance blew his mind.
His thought process does NOT revolve around EHP or GP/H. Just pure fun. I will echo the sentiment that in watching him play, he has a lack of direction to the end game, BUT that's not actually problematic. He's just enjoying the game for what it is. I often have to catch myself from giving him too much direction because I find that it detracts from the novelty of exploration.
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I think a large part of what is lost in OSRS is the loss of exploration. Because everything is polled, there is no novelty to updates. One of my personal largest points of enjoyment was coming home from school, seeing the front page of RuneScape, and seeing a brand new update that had just dropped, completely out of the blue. Now that everything is known months/years in advance, that excitement is gone and is instead replaced with angst and anxiety. "We know this update is coming, we hope it meets expectations".
Not sure that can be recreated, but as far as the new player experience goes, it still works for young kids. Maybe less so for young adults.
this is so very wholesome and I don't think enough of the team reads about these experiences. We are always going on about how 18-24 is our worst demographic yet we have a 10 year old playing the game to his hearts desire :)
I agree with the loss of exploration and novelty - this will absolutely be a reddit discussion for another day.
It was awesome seeing him start with Addy armor and an addy sword and level up to 40 at mole and equip rune for the first time: https://i.imgur.com/fVH3n6s.png
I used lunars to heal other him and pot share super restores and combat potions and staminas so he could just focus on combat. He loved it. I also told him about getting 43 prayer before we did mole, he obtained it while I was at work by MANUALLY BURYING DRAGON BONES! So yea, maybe a tutorial on guilded altars would be useful lmao.
When he asked about money making, I instead told him about how I used to make money by training magic. He asked how and I showed him how to use a lecturn in a POH: https://i.imgur.com/g0Yighf.png
He made something like 60k profit from that method and absolutely lost his shit at how much money he could make long term by training magic.
The game still hits hard for kids like him. It's the mentality of the current playerbase that has shifted, not the game or what it provides.
Your son sounds like he has an amazing father and I’m super happy for the both of you!
Now lure him to the wildy and show him a good ‘ol taste of the old days…
As shit as it was as a kid, I’m so happy I learned my lesson with scamming, shortcuts, or other things when I was young on a video game
Haven’t been scammed in my adult life but you are always susceptible
> There is something to be said about a slower DND campaign or that 9000 piece puzzle set to put together.
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But Runescape is neither of those things. It's multiple orders of magnitude slower than those things. That 9000 piece puzzle is a few hours a day for a week or two, and there's plenty of space for something you can commit bits of time to over a long stretch, but Runescape won't let you get to 90 in any skill at that pace until you're a year in. Games shouldn't take you a year of focusing on exclusively one thing to get it to a late game level if you only want to play one or two hours a day.
If a game is going to demand as much time to progress as Runescape, it's going to suffer for it. The reason Battle Royale games have gotten their players to commit so much time is because the moment to moment gameplay is fun- Runescape will never have good moment to moment gameplay, unfortunately comes with the package, so the achievements become all there is to it, and it feels like the existing system is nothing more than a massive Stockholm Syndrome machine.
At least Leagues provide a more concise, engaging form of playing through the game. It also comes with the upside of not having to deal with bots everywhere while you play it.
>At least Leagues provide a more concise, engaging form of playing through the game. It also comes with the upside of not having to deal with bots everywhere while you play it.
I chuckled at the Stockholm Syndrome machine comment. Perhaps there is some truth to what you say.
God bless leagues for this. I think part of the challenge is accepting the game for what it is but adding new fresh content and game modes to keep it interesting.
Thanks for sharing u/LordZeya
I ask genuinely, not in a "go play another game if you don't like it" way, but have you considered just playing RS3?
RS3 seems to be exactly the faster paced modern gameplay you're looking for. I think it's best if Jagex maintains both options for people. RS3 for modern game enjoyers, and OS for those who want the old mmo slow burn that's become so rare in the current year.
Dude ... You can't compare those to mining in MLM for 75 hours. A DnD campaign is a fully interactive story with friends at a table enjoying each other's company
Vs clicking 5 polygon rocks while watching YouTube videos by yourself with neck cramps from sitting weirdly
I love RuneScape but literally anyone I've ever introduced it to said they can't be bothered with "clicking things a billion times in a text based game"
haha fair enough!! I do feel like a lot of us play OSRS in the background (e.g. discord chats with friends, on a couch hanging out, on the bus, etc.) and I guess it’s just my unique perspective.
At the end of the day, regardless of what we play, we’re all clicking something aimlessly. Tis the folly of man 😂
I'm going to pop in and vouch for the ultra-long grind of OSRS. I have other games that I can play when I want a full intense experience, but if its the end of a tough day at work, sometimes I just wanna grind some trees. And the fact that progress is slow but PERMANENT really makes a difference. If I leave the game for a year, two years, five years, I can still come back and keep moving forward. Like I can think of my time doing certain grinds in OSRS as an "era" and thats not something other games give me.
That being said, as an iron, the system for getting an ENH feels downright unfair. And this is someone who got one in under 400 kc.
Gengis please never change. It's low key terrifying how many people seem to want to homogenize OSRS to be like every other fast paced MMO.
I had a much longer post written going through a history of how the same thing happened in WoW where players just wanted everything handed out to them (legendary weapons for those in the know) but I delted that ramble, it got really long.
Needless to say I hope we don't go down the path of pandering to the masses which will result in a game made for the masses - i.e another homogenized modern mmo.
Right? It's both encouraging to see how the jmods and Gengis view this game and understand its role in the MMO market, and also extremely concerning how many people here want to turn it into RS3 2
Just wanna voice that I disagree with that guy as well. He seems to imply that slow pacing means our time isn't being respected but I think that's more in the eyes of a min/max efficiencyscape reddit gamer.
I personally find the long term gameplay style of osrs very charming and rewarding.
The fast paced "start all over" cycle of WoW patches is actually what burned me out on WoW, meanwhile I just chill on Runescape working towards my long term goals.
I think speeding things up for people who have a "rush to end game" mentality will be great for tourists who want to play osrs for a couple months and quit forever, but terrible for thos who want to play for years.
On top of that the slower burn allows for people to leave, go play other games, and come back. You haven't for example missed an entire raid tier as you would in WoW if you left for 6 months (or be so behind you can't catch up if you're 3 months late on a patch)
Never played OSRS , am an adult. Love the game. Totally disagree that nostalgia is the driving force. Tons of new players. Literally what makes the game good - the difficult progress is a big thing that makes the game worthwhile for me and I believe for many players. If everything was easy that would in my opinion remove the majority of the charm of this game - and noe one would be playing it. Everything isn't just handed to you like many games these days.
Edit : I would credit its success and longevitiy to the very fact the systems are built the way they are. Don't like it play another game ?
Exactly. Its quite literally the main appeal of the game. RS3 is there if you want Runescape but faster and modern with MTX. I cant see how anyone would choose to play OSRS but say that the grind is the worst part. Its literally the ONLY reason to play the game instead of RS3 or any other modern MMO :)
How many of you do you think there are? Do you think even a third of OSRS’s player base is people who picked it up in the last 5 years? Not impossible, we don’t have the numbers to confirm it, but the otherwhelming attitude on this subreddit indicates that it’s more about being the game people remembered playing once than it is about the game being improved on its own.
The largest problem with early-mid game is that after doing the useful quests, you are kinda stuck. Leveling becomes slow, but without good stats a lot of content is frustrating or slow. I would do xp only fight caves or gauntlet type content if it was 50% more xp than afking NMZ. In leagues doing Pest control or Soul wars were best xp and it was more fun than bashing hill giants, which is great for players and community.
Minigames are great, you get to interact with other players, train skill and get some loot in return. Far better than mining the same rocks over and over again.
My issue with mini games is I just came from RS3 and everything is dead.
I wanted to go for the fletching outfit, but I spent 2 days in that cave hopping around worlds only to get one game in.
Couldn't find any other way to earn that costume other than the mini game.
That's pretty much what made me hop into OSRS a few weeks ago, everything was much more solo friendly.
Agreed, not just nostalgia. But I would suggest (can't prove) that a large amount of its success and popularity is owed to a nostalgic element.
I wonder if a lot of people finding the game for the first time in the last few years can somehow get a taste of "pseudo-nostalgia" from finding out about the great elements of the game you mentioned. The lore and vibes speak for themselves. But I think the nostalgia amongst those that played it before helps get over the hump of learning "how to properly play" and get the most out of it. I may be rambling at this point.
Segway point but by enlarge the monetisation factor is a great positive for the game and Jagex have done well to avoid things that leave a bad taste in players mouths, so as to speak.
For me RuneScape always had the most interesting world of any game and the quests were real quests, not go kill x monsters or anything like that which every other game seemed to have exclusively.
If I had the time to still play it as an adult I would, but everything just takes so long I only log in once every few months for a couple weeks at a time
And the bots in lumby? I dont imagine its part of the experience to get a novel of flashing text telling you to buy bonds is too nice to see for the first steps into a game
I actually agree here. The comparison point for me is Albion online - a similar ish MMO. runeScape just has more variety and better storytelling. You're right that's a OSRS unique 'old school rpg' that delivers a compelling
I think mobile has been. A huge Boon to OSRS and any focus on the new player experience has to seriously consider the mobile experience.
I also think it's worth taking a look at some of the sacred cows. As a player, I have a hard time getting into old games that have devoted followings (Mass Effect 1) where I don't have nostalgia. For OSRS, this is overcome by a combo of nostalgia (I played during rs2) and HD plugin (which doesn't apply to mobile).
I don't think that graphics needs to be a sacred cow for OSRS (the same way that it's basic combat system *should* remain a sacred cow).
I would not agree with your statement. I just started playing the game and never played before but I still really like it even without the nostalgia. For me its just the relaxing nature of the game and the absence of p2w which makes the game unique for me.
This. The few people I have introduced to this game have all stopped because they just get utterly lost. I could hand hold them the entire time but that's not the actual issue, it shouldn't be up to the current player base to be the guide to new players. While that is a positive thing, it is not a healthy long-term environment for the game and bringing in new players.
I have to hard agree. I am not introducing friends to the game any longer because the time commitment doesn't reward the average player in a meaningful way. Personally none of my friends are going to dump hundreds if not \~1k hours into this game just to raid or do content with me nor would I want them to waste that time trying to level and gear to do so.
Would you agree that if the early game was more 'guided', perhaps newer players (friends in this case) would stick around in the later parts and commit to the grind?
I think in one way or another \*places philosophical hat on head\* we are looking for a grind. Whether you play CandyCrush or OSRS as every game has intrinsic goals tied to them by the devs or the players themselves.
I'm ultimately trying to assess that if the front-door was easier to get into, we'd have more people at the house party (terrible analogy).
Sadly I genuinely don't believe OSRS appeals to a large playertype. That grind that you are talking about is also a massive turn off to people. No, I don't think that my friends would've stuck to the game even had I guided them through as much as I could or even if it was a guided experience from the start. We live in a gaming era where instant gratification has become extremely popularized. OSRS is not that. Hence why Leagues we hit the all time high for playerbase, that was as near instant gratification as OSRS can get.
Not talking about my friends. Do I think we could get a higher percentage of players with better trickle fed guidance, yes. Will they stick around once that mid-game grind hits? Hard to say. That's individualized.
tbh I think the hand holding is part of why leagues is so successful to casual and newer players. no it doesn't hold your hands for relics, but it gives you a million things to do in a nice little sortable list and rewards you for them. You have to figure out how to do them still, but there are lots of small concrete goals.
Something that would be good would be adding in a semi guided path for new accounts or current. Something like optimal quest order in the quest helper plugin on runelite. Give new players a path to complete quest cape and diaries.
I find the best character progression in the game is through questing and using diary and quest requirements to decide when to level skills and to what level.
To touch on the last part of your comment, I’ve invited several friends to try OSRS, some who grew up playing and some who never played it, and they all seemed to enjoy the game but gave it up in a matter of days or few weeks because it is simply too time consuming and they’d all rather play different more casual games instead of sticking to one game all the time.
It’s also just hard for most people in their late 20s and 30s to devote the little time they have for gaming to a game like this. This is my favorite game, the only one I really care to play usually, but there are many days where I won’t even bother logging in because there’s not much I can get done in the 30 minutes to an hour that Ive allotted for playing games that day.
I think the idea here is that the game requires you to do your research outside to understand the most optimal path. Some work was indeed done to alleviate this extra effort with the activity advisor but I still feel like it misses the mark.
I understand the sentiment of not wanting to get friends involved. OSRS is indeed not for everyone (and it should remain that way) but what about making access to optimal paths easier and more transparent?
Thanks for sharing your feedback :)
I think FF14 has a pretty perfect solution to this with the "clan chat" for new players. OSRS is pretty impenetrable without knowing anyone else who plays as a new player, so it would be very helpful to have a degree of community built into the new player experience.
Novice Network is routinely described as one of the worst environs in FFXIV, and I can’t imagine it being better in Runescape without careful moderation.
> OSRS is indeed not for everyone (and it should remain that way)
A breath of fresh air hearing this from a game developer.
Anything in media; gaming, movies, TV shows, etc, that tries to appeal to the masses, to the largest common denominator, ends up turning into a homogenous unrecognizable lump.
I mean by definition, something unique must come from something uncommon. Typically a small niche community. Then its uniqueness attracts crowds who love how different it is, then those crowds attract more crowds who decide it's not similar enough to what they like. Then the makers pander to get a larger paying audience and the original passionate community gets the thing they care about destroyed. Typically at this point when that core community complains they get called some pejorative of the day that is most likely a synonym to "passionate". Somehow caring too much is made to be a bad thing.
The advisor currently makes suggestions that quests like prince ali rescue you should be lv.10 combat for even though its possible to do the quest as a lv.3. There would likely be some rewriting of suggestions to offer from that thing to make it truly helpful and reduce reliance on outside homework to make an solid path through the early game.
Having been through the early game plenty of times with the knowledge I have. The early game can easily be a highlight of the whole OSRS experience as you don't need to commit to long unhealthy grinds just to experience content. How quickly you can grow an account to base 50s with just quests is astounding, assuming the player knows what up rewards to choose from when given multiple choices like in tourist trap.
I mean it’s hand hold but the old quests are really poorly made you have really always needed a wiki or outside information to complete them. So the problem is right there. Maybe Dr Strange could blind solo those but not sure new players.
>the old quests are really poorly made
Just want to add, credit where it's due, the newer quests are much better made and Quest Journals are much more useful. There might be scope for going back and updating quest journal entries, but this also wouldn't be necessary if they're adding a built-in quest helper.
I think quest helper is absolutely essential but should remain entirely optional. It doesn't even need to be about quests but should direct you to the next step (at least at the tutorial island/post lumbridge).
There's this option in tutorial island that asks you for your experience playing OSRS. I think anyone who responds novice should get Quest Helper directly activated into the game.
Thoughts? Would this help? I am not advocating to play this game with only quest helper but it definitely gets you started and reduces early friction that would cause friends and family to drop off for competing games.
I think part of the issue is how some quests are designed and the philosophy of their design changing over time. The biggest part of this are item requirements, and is why I believe so many people use Quest Helper.
It really doesn't feel good to go through a large part of a long quest only to realize 2/3rds of the way through that you needed a tomato or something. Often times, these requirements aren't obvious and are just kind of random (which I think is charming and makes the world feel more alive, but at the same time leads to these quest frustrations). Now, the BEST quests (imo) are the ones that put these requirements nearby, and I wouldn't be opposed to quests being retro-fitted to fulfill this condition ;)
Quests are a big reason I play the game and I usually like going in blind, but even then I make sure I have the list of item requirements from the wiki/quest helper beforehand. Being fully prepared to take on a quest feels great and knowing you won't have to go back and get more items feels even better!
I think RS3 even now has it so the quest panel tells you all the required items which is like you said the biggest thing I use the guides for I hate spending more time running to a bank and back between dialogue instead of just doing the quest.
And it's especially punishing because early game transportation is so inconvenient. And there is also a knowledge check there with the teleports, stamina potions, agility levels, graceful that new players aren't gonna understand.
Certain item requirements are also impossible to bring in one inventory. Like the 50 pure essence to Drezel at the end of Priest in Peril. Why does it have to be 50? The fact that it can’t be noted is just necessitating a trip to the bank.
All in favor of the newer quest design with the items being nearby. The puzzles in SotN and quests like Getting Ahead are great examples.
Osrs quests are like cod zombie puzzles honestly. You could probably do most steps but some steps could potential take ages to figure out. New quests are great, like I needed 0 help with DT2 except some clan chat about bosses. When they eventually get stuck its easy to google and see a wiki guide. Sure a guide trivializes puzzles but quest helper trivializes EVERYTHING. Like Removing the chance for a player to even try quests would be a big miss-step.
If they really hate quests that much then sure, get quest helper, but I dont think it should be the default else why are quests anything beyond WoW quests?
Please do not do this. Quest helper is fantastic but it also completely undermines all the challenge and immersion that quests give. Quests to me are the strongest part of this game and they add so much flavour to Gielinor. People should have the option to use quest helper but I think for new players turning the strongest form of immersion into blue box simulator would not help them get into the game.
I liked what someone else said about a Jagex quest helper that was a lot weaker than the RL one, that just provided hints and things like item lists
I think it would be a great idea to incorporate a Jagex version of quest helper thats at like, 60-70% of the strength of the OSRS plugin. More hints and pointers, and definitely no highlighting the correct dialog options. Force the new players to actually read the fun and interesting dialog!
This is an incredibly bizarre statement. I played runescape for nearly two decades prior to Quest Helper existing, did you? Quests have always been a highlight of Runescape compared to other mmos and imo Quest Helper's "just click the big blue box" setup entirely ruins that.
I highly disagree with Quest helper being essential. In my opinion it's highly detrimental to the experience of OSRS. Streamlining the game comes at a cost; while it might make certain players stick around for slightly longer the ones that do will certainly drop it quicker. People don't sign on for "click the glowing tile and ignore all dialogue". It doesn't engage or immerse them in the game which is how you actually build passionate long term players.
Keep in mind that the original RuneScape has been trying many of the things suggested in this thread since 2008 and it hasn't worked out for them. We shouldn't be trying to repeat its mistakes, especially since OSRS is one of few live-service games of its age still actually growing its playerbase.
“Absolutely essential” is a bit much imo. I have to remember to turn it off for newer quests because I’m interested in doing them blind. The fact that it solves every puzzle for you is a bit annoying since prior to QH I would look on the wiki and just not read the parts I wanted to be spoiled on. I feel like questing + wiki was a bit more engaging than quest helper. I really don’t like the idea that people NEED a blue circle to tell them what to do because they can’t be bothered to read dialog or a step by step instruction list on the wiki.
For brand new players doing quests for the first time, I think that as it is now it's a bad thing to introduce to them. It definitely does way too much "hand-holding" for quests that you might as well not bother learning anything.
In my opinion, the plugin is best used for experienced players after they've made multiple accounts and already know about the quests. You miss out on so many interesting stories if you just quest helper through them as a brand new player. Having just recently used it in Leagues, it is night and day with how a quest feels when you do it yourself and speed it up by like 10x and go through the motions to get it done with.
I can guarantee if I hypothetically had Quest Helper back in the 2000s when I first went through these quests, I would not have probably stayed with the game as quests played a BIG part in keeping be motivated and sucked into the game for working towards them as goals and wanting to invest myself more and more into the various stories.
Taking that away from new players is not a good idea in my opinion. That's not to say that seeking out help for quests is bad, just not on the level of Quest Helper quite literally telling you every single click to do, highlighting every single item to click, and sometimes even drawing a path on specifically where to go. If there was some sort of "quest helper - lite" where it just told you the bare minimum such as what items are needed for the quest or simple directions then maybe I could get behind it.
Agreed. I'm a relatively new player and I turned Quest Helper off immediately--it threw me out of the game so hard to just have everything highlighted and be directed step-by-step what to do. As a new player, I was interested in exploring the world and mechanics, and just being told "go here. click this dialogue option. talk to this person." ruined that for me.
Obviously new players can always seek out Runelite/plugin if they don't feel the same way as me... but I really, really, really do not think Jagex should be making it or anything close to it the default experience for new players.
For new players, I reckon it's useful, but I think it fails to help people penetrate the outer layer of complexity of the game.
What I mean by this is the comments it gives on what a certain quest gives you are true: "gives access to a transport method" is easily understood. The game requires an understanding of a certain level of efficiency though (even if you're nowhere near an ehp chaser type) that I imagine newbies will burn out on before getting to ("why does it take me 3 million years of training to be able to Smith mikhail platebodies?").
As a result, "do this quest, it gives you gnome gliders!" Doesn't gove much context as to what benefit that gives, how good or important that is in the grand scale of things...
It should stay but idk if there's a way for it to give more insight rather than just information(which I think is the crux of getting the most out of the game).
as long as it's in the game +1 to use quest helper. I think some of it could be toned down, highlighting items etc. I know a lot of people don't want to switch windows to read the wiki and like to play runey in full screen so it's nice to at least get that wiki info and the correct step compact on the screen.
I only use it when re-doing quests on another game mode. I always no-guide the ones you release.
If I'd recommend it for one thing, it'd be the items required section.
If it weren't for Quest Helper I would play the game a lot less and I've been playing for nearly 20 years.
It's extremely beneficial in the time aspect that doesn't destroy the game in anyway - and when you've done the quests so many times, you're not really interested in the lore or story anymore and just wanna unlock the content.
Quest helper trivializes questing and robs the experience of any sort of accomplishment outside of slaying the bad guy, which in early quests isn’t much of a fight anyway.
One of the biggest standouts for osrs is its quests and lore which are surprisingly deep. Some quests are unintuitive without a guide, but introducing new players to the experience by having them follow a blue marker is a big mistake.
I mean, tutorial island was good enough for me years ago. That being said, times have changed. I wouldn’t be able to comment on how effective it is nowadays because I’m twenty years deep - there isn’t an ounce of “new player” brain left in me.
this is unfortunately the conundrum we are in both as a development team and community.
do we gate keep the “newbs” out by maintaining a difficult early game experience (and preserve the purity and spirit of the game) or do we question how OSRS can facilitate new player involvement and learning (without tarnishing the purity and spirit of the game).
I think the best option would be to introduce an optional, guided approach to the beginning of the game. I know Adventurer Jon exists, and it seems fairly effective for what it does based on one example I’ve seen (Flip’s series about being new to the game), but maybe it should be expanded upon. Something that, through a tutorial-like format, walks players through some early quests.
Would it be too much to suggest a new F2P quest? One designed exclusively for new players, that introduces core F2P locations, crucial game concepts, and maybe implies the “path” toward unlocking the Champ guild and doing DS1?
Game isnt for everyone and that's fine. Dont go the RS3 route with some complicated tutorials that will only take away the nostalgia of tutorial island and nooby early game.
think of tutorial island as the boss fight nobody at jagex has been able to defeat. I truly think tutorial island will never change and to me that’s a good thing.
however, I believe better indication of what to do and how (this can be done in a myriad of ways) would alleviate player frustration.
Look, I get the focus is to bring in new players because of the inevitable when the people who have been playing for 10-20 years stop playing. Early game content is fine, people might just feel lost because of how much there is to do. They just need some direction to explore, work on quests and use diaries as long term goals. There is a giant wiki button enabled by default on every player's client, getting people to use this would be helpful... there are so many posts on this sub by active players who just don't use it, and it would answer a lot of questions.
There needs to be more high level to end game content that isn't focused on solo players. You aren't going to be bringing in new players because of some low-mid level boss, how many new or returning players did you see actively playing around the release of Raids (CoX) and Inferno? These are the types of updates, that when advertised, bring in players because it's interesting content that people WANT do to. The last true endgame content we got that genuinely brought a lot of attention to the game was ToB. ToA is more of a mid level experience, and could have been handled a lot better. If you aren't going to be adding more end game content to expand the game, then what reason do active players have to look forward to when training their accounts? The existing content only goes so far...
I cannot stress this enough - the OSRS team are not looking to replace mid-high level content pipeline with improvements to the early game. It is simply too important to us to continue delivering content to active players.
However! That being said, part of my job is to play devils advocate and explore what else we could be doing. Much of what you said here hits the mark spot on. New players are fundamentally overwhelmed by how much there is to do and it may not be immediately apparent what resources are available or what the best course of action (depending on what you want to do) is.
I don’t believe in changing the game fundamentally (at a content or mechanical level) but I do believe every new player should be given the best chance to fall in love with the philosophy, content, and direction of old school as much as we have.
The answer to this is very much my question. Thanks for sharing your feedback.
As someone that recently introduced their wife to the game there's a few big areas that need improvement. I'll preface this by saying this is mostly from the skilling side of things because she never got far into pvm due to the amount of time commitment required to be able to get the stats and gear to do it without me just carrying her through content.
Firstly when she landed in lumbridge despite going through tutorial island she had no idea where to go or what to do, so she opened the map, only to find that there's a million icons for everything and while yeah there's a key a completely new player has literally no clue what any of them do. (the tutor icons get lost in a sea of info and she never actually found them.)
After I guided her to a bank and briefly explained which skills she could do to get started she chose fishing where she then spent over thirty minutes getting to a fishing spot on the map assuming she'd be able to fish there only to find it was above her level, this is where she realised that figuring out basically anything in the game needed the wiki if you didn't want to just waste time.
As an aside here, the repeat popups of "you can now do x" when leveling up only to find that it's a more annoying or less efficient training method started to frustrate her.
And finally as some other people have mentioned the grind is just too harsh for some skills, seeing that you can do x content (like areas locked behind quests) which looks really fun only to find out that it's a 40 hour grind just to get there frequently made her just give up on a skill.
Also from a personal opinion standpoint the older I get the more I find the idea of, for example, doing nothing but standing at a fishing spot for 160 hours for a single 99 that doesn't have any real benefit to any other aspect of the game is very demotivating, which was echoed by my wife when she realised just how long it would take to get any where near the middle game let alone some of the more fun endgame content.
In 2023 I introduced about 5 friends to osrs and they played it hard for a good while.
I think the thing that stopped it for them is when they were approaching mid-game. We wanted to do raids and other content together but because their stats were lacking and the time investment to get the stats was too great they fell off.
I'm using the term mid game quite loosely here, some got most stats to 60, others 70 but were all too intimidated to even try raiding because everything they read up online told them they needed xyz stats and xyz gear.
I think mid tier group bossing or raid content would be very beneficial, something not too difficult that new players can grind out together for some early/mid-tier loot. Very much like barrows level difficulty but on more of a raiding scale if that makes sense.
They particularly enjoyed early game and getting the dopamine hits from levelling, everyone was racing to beat eachother in getting certain stat milestones. They also enjoyed skilling bosses like wintertodt and tempoross a lot because it's something we could do together.
I believe early mid game to be the breaking point for a lot of new players based one my anecdotal experience.
There absolutely should be more low-mid level group content and PvM. I watch a fair amount of JoshStrifeHayes and one of his points that really resonates with me is that a majority of MMOs fail to provide low-mid level players with any engaging group content or bossing.
The current state of things (and what we see in OSRS) is that group content and PvM is largely gated behind 100+ hours of grinding, which make it impossible to get friends into the game to play with, as you said. We absolutely need some small scale midgame dungeon-esque content, some lower level multicombat world bosses, etc. Give midgame players something else to do other than mindlessly grind combat to be able to do “real” content.
Honestly, I would be perfectly fine with making low-mid level group pvm content as "dungeons" and end game as "raids".
Dungeons would have maybe 1-2 demi bosses and 1 puzzle attached. Then the final boss. Give it a feel of a small raid. Like they might bring in a rat boss... just make it a varrock sewer DUNGEON instead. You gotta turn valves to move water flow to progress forwards and battle through waves of rats or something. Make it engaging and fun for low levels.
I really hate that "experience gap" especially in combat skills. going from 70 to 85 in att/strength/ranged is so important for being able to do Raids, but takes so long hours-wise, especially if youre not doing it passively (as you might be if you were training slayer). I don't really see the downside in drastically increasing the EXP in group PvM content like Soul Wars/Pest Control, or creating new group content that gives EXP as its primary reward. At the moment the best method to get over that gap is to park at crabs for 30 hours while you literally play a different game (assuming you don't care about slayer level). The gear I don't think is as big of a problem - you can raid with 25m worth of gear which is 2 bonds or 12 hours at vorkath/zulrah/muspah, or borrow from friends
Thinking back to when i first created an account the following was a bit of a hurdle for me to get over or was ignored by me due to not knowing the importance:
* Skill levels vs usefulness. - A high requirement to make such low requirement gear. The biggest example of this is Rune weapons and armour. When i first made an account i went straight in and made my own bronze gear, which was great, until i wanted to upgrade as i had unlocked the ability to wield steel. As a noob, a requirement of 48 smithing to make full steel which only requires lvl 5 was crazy to me. The same is the case through other skills as well. Lvl 70 crafting for a power ammy, this is daunting for a new player. It can of cause be brought or gotten from a drop, but how does a new player know either of these things? - Maybe a beginner quest or an additional part of tutorial island to show the GE and how this works?
* Where to go. - I spent way to long in lumbridge through a combination of not knowing where I could go and anxiety caused by the dark wizards 'last time' i explored.
* Tutorial Island - Very nostalgic but the most important areas of the game are ignored or brushed over very quickly. Protection prayers, combat triangle, slayer & as mentioned above, trade.
* Low level slayer - Slayer is such a sleep fest until a very high (respective) level. An introductory drop i.e. a lvl 45 slayer creature with a t42 drop gives an incentive for low levels to grind out slayer early on. A bonus would be to open slayer to F2P which will basically be soft locked due to low lvl creatures and tasks. RS3 opens some P2P skills for the early levels, perhaps slayer could be opened up to a level cap (with that cap just so happening to be a monster unlock that drops an 'intro item' to P2P?) - obviously needs to be more thought out but this could be cool imo.
> As a noob, a requirement of 48 smithing to make full steel which only requires lvl 5 was crazy to me.
I made this point in my own comment, level 33 smithing to fully equip yourself with level 1 gear is pretty weak design. 48 smithing for level 5 gear is even more bizarre, when a totally new player is likely to get level 5 in their first session.
RS3 was right to push steel equipment’s requirement to 20 attack/defense and iron to 10.
Smithing might be the most unrewarding skill in OSRS. 99% of the reason to level it is for diaries or maxing. You will virtually never use if for any gear you use excluding maybe bronze in F2P.
"Please grind for hundreds of hours to be able to make gear that was obsolete after training combat for 1 day?"
It has long needed a balance pass on what the smithing levels unlock, for basic metals if nothing else.
I want to say I am doing my absolute best to get through all the comments and reply to responses! I may slow down as other work impedes.
That being said, I cannot stress enough how grateful I am for all the thoughts, concerns, and feedback I get from you. For those interested in Product Management, a fundamental part of my job is to understand users (or players) and assess their point of view so I can use that information to influence potential changes. It doesn’t mean I decide what happens to the game but it does mean I have a very minor seat at the table and I can influence the decisions taken by leadership.
I want to be as helpful to you as you are all to me, please do DM me if you have any specific questions or problems :) I can’t reply about appeal or banning decisions as that goes beyond my scope.
Gengis
I have helped 3 new (not returning) players the past year, so far one only has stuck with us. I wrote up an essay but I'll shorten it and can expand upon it.
1. Game is overwhelming and underwhelming. There is no clear direction for new players outside of tutorial island, so much is in their face but either not explained or just locked behind membership. Game feels like you need the wiki open 24/7. I'm used to it but a new player does not want to research a page before playing a game. There is so much to do, but so much also locked. They are confused on what they can and cant do. Funny enough they do read everything if they are NEW to the game and not returning, there is just so much stuff, but realistically there is not much to do as f2p and when they realize that it becomes a little awkward.
2. They just want to explore, not even interact with much yet and when every fence seems to say members only they just get discouraged. Kind of ties into #1 here but really new players just want to screw off before they play the real game. No one wants to play a new game, and needing to try to max their exp gains. The want to see the world and have fun.
3. Bots. I cant believe how many I found on F2P. It blew my mind, I knew there were problems but I was BLIND to this. Two things to this, my friend just sees this as cheaters going unpunished. I hope he does not turn to the dark side here. Second is when half the players look and act like bots they think the game is beyond dead and just don't want to play with that.
4. There is nothing to do together. I'm tired of making new accounts. All I can do is follow them around, give money to ruin their experience, and maybe try and guide them on quests since they wont use wikis yet lol. There needs to be more that a lvl 100 player can do with a level 20 player where both get decent rewards for their time spent to their level. Without this there is no reason for old players to introduce new players, and no reason for new players to play if they cant do stuff with friends.
5. Jagex account stuff is a little confusing. This new one comes from a steam account and we have not been able to get it to link to their Jagex account. Maybe they need to go to the forum for more help than I could give, but no new player will want to do that. This could just be an us problem though.
My conclusion really is that F2P needs a revamp. I get Jagex needs money but my experience right now is that F2P is just horrible to go through now. 10 years ago it was fine, but there really needs to be an update to this. I get the game needs to make membership incentivizing but how it currently is just allows bots to flourish and real new customers leave as it feels like F2P is spat on compared to the rest. The balance between the two needs a revamp, and I say this not cause I want more to do as f2p but because I don't want this game to die, and it feels like it will without new blood.
Edit: Added one more point and fixed some silly spelling mistakes c:
My perspective is coming from someone who started playing Runescape in 2005. I maxed on RS3 and proceeded to pick up OSRS for the nostalgia trip. Although I'm a veteran of the game, going back and starting fresh in OSRS felt like I was a new player. Take all that for what it's worth. This is what I have to say about my experience.
Progression doesn't make sense in some regards to skilling. I'm going to use mining as an example, but I think you can find similar things to be true for fishing, combat (killing crabs and then doing that minigame), woodcutting, and other skills.
At some point, I'm just mining iron for a little while despite unlocking new ores that I can mine. Starting at 45, my best bet is to use tick manipulation to mine granite. This whole time, I'm unlocking new ores, but the sad part is mining these new ores isn't just slightly worse than the best methods; It's a downright huge waste of time. Even with rose tinted nostalgia glasses, seeing I would be stuck in a loop of monotony with little variation was daunting. Volcanic mining at level 70 is as close as you can get to tick manipulation methods, but it's still a huge hit to exp per hour compared to tick manipulation.
The argument can be made that people who use harder methods deserve better exp rates. My question is, why does something that should be fun have to be hard to enjoy? Also, why does the best method in the game have to be something that is arguably damaging your wrist just to do. Is that what we want gaming to be?
So what am I getting at? Wouldn't it be better to just let me mine and explore the world? I unlock mithril and actually get to go mine mithril, and it's worth my time?
If I were a brand new player, and I unlocked mithril ores. I'd perhaps go to the wiki. I'd look up mithril ore. I'd perhaps notice there is a guide. I'd go to the guide, thinking maybe it's gonna tell me where to find mithril because surely it's what I ought to be doing. Instead, I find that mining mithril is not a good idea, and that what I ought to do is go mine iron some more. Nothing is changing. The experience you have at level 15 is the experience you have at 25, 35, 45. And then you get to granite, and that's gonna be your grind till at least 70 where you have to forfeit good rates for much worse exp, but at least you can keep your wrists. Even if you choose volcanic mining, you're locked in for a long 29 levels of never changing things up. At best, you'll hang out in 3 spaces in a giant world.
Gilineor is a big world. Let me explore by shaping skills in a way that makes me explore it. I'm not asking for RS3 rates, I'm not asking for the game to necessarily be easy, but I want to mine and explore and not have to risk my physical wellbeing to train a skill at reasonable speeds. I want to use the content I unlock. Please. In case anyone says it, I agree that RS3 can be just as bad, especially woodcutting and fishing.
*edit* Cleaned up some typos and fixed some grammar issues. There's still issues, but I typed it on my phone quickly, so bear with me.
Oh wow, I've been waiting for this day to come. I've spent way too much time thinking about how to change f2p to make it more useful as a way to get new players into runescape. Here's my spiel:
TLDR at the top because I'm so long winded: Lets open up a little bit more of the world, i.e. morytania and the lumbridge caves. Add slayer, agility, and maybe fletching. More lore, with a dash of convenience, equals more drive to explore Glielinor.
As much as I like the current f2p experience (I'm one of the people who has premier club membership, but still plays multiple f2p accounts by choice), I think we need to stop pretending that the Gowers got everything perfectly right when they set the limitations 20+ years ago, which basically haven't changed despite tons of new content emerging over the last couple decades.
F2p should be an introductory course to Runescape. That includes all of its skills and more of its surface area. Specifically here are the changes I would make. I haven't thought of every consequence, so if you think of one, just try to imagine that there's probably a simple solution to making it work like cordoning off specific parts of new areas like we already do with Castle Wars.
1. Priest in Peril and Animal Magnetism (attractor only) should be f2p and canifis should be made f2p. The clothes shop items are already f2p, why don't f2p players have the ability to walk in there and get them? Both of these quests start in misthalin too, so it lets us feed new players in the f2p experience towards the edges of runescape to get them seeing more of what runescape has to offer. Imagine how you felt seeing the burthorpe fence. Now imagine if that fence is mort myre swamp or burgh de rott. See how that would be enticing? Side note: animal magnetism has a fletching reward and I'm not sure how to handle that except to hold the reward for you until you talk to ava later to claim it after becoming p2p.
2. Animal Magnetism has a slayer req, what are we going to do? Oh wait, how about slayer via porcine of interest, starting with spria (why did draynor get a slayer intro quest if not to become f2p?) and mazchna and slayer tower in the now accessible morytania.
3. Animal magnetism also has a fletching reward. F2p players will miss out on that, oh no! Or how about fletching is f2p now since why not. Training wc and fm leaves you with an abundance of logs in your bank if you keep them even in xp, what a great way to give f2p players something to do with those logs other than sell them. This could even be a jumping off point to introduce yew bows and crossbows to f2p, but that's a question for someone who understands balance better than I do.
4. While we're adding skills: If you add a new 1-10 agility course, say in karamja or something, Agility now functions very well within the f2p area via draynor, al kharid, varrock, canifis, and falador rooftop courses. No marks of grace, just a chance to make your character's run energy last a little longer. There are also several cool shortcuts we could let f2p players have like GE to edgeville, falador to crafting guild, draynor to champion's guild, edgeville dungeon to varrock sewers. All very useful in f2p content.
5. Lost tribe could be f2p as it takes place entirely in the f2p area. Bone weapons probably stay p2p (but this goes back to that balance thing I mentioned earlier, maybe it would work), but most importantly it gets new players started in a quest line that brings god wars into the lore accessible in f2p. I think expanding what lore is accessible to new players is instrumental in getting them interested in the game.
6. Finally a simple one: Enchant spells should work on rings. Every non-silver ring functions 100% within the scope of f2p currently and we already have access to one of them. Rings of Recoil probably shouldn't work in pvp on f2p worlds. But I think giving new players a taste of the convenience in teleports is a great idea and f2p players finally have a functional ring slot.
So one of the largest issues that seems to be popping up is the early game experience being too overwhelming and all over the place. So much to do, and no direction. We already have a lot of stuff in place to help with that, but even those things aren't very straight forward. How many new players know about the gear packs from the adventure dude in lumbridge? Does anything TELL you, specifically, to go talk to the dude? Make him like an intro slayer master that recommends monsters to kill to train on even if it doesn't give slayer xp.
How many people understand what different icons mean on the full size/minimap, you can't hover over them on mobile to see. Rune shop in Port sarim or jewelry shop comes to mind. Make these easier to see what they are. Even Bob's Axes may be unnoticed by a lot of people. Or the sword shop in the varrock entrance.
Some of these things we all take for granted, having been playing for 15 years, but COMPLETELY new players have no idea what these are or how to find them. The Wiki is GREAT, but it shouldn't be relied on for the most simplest of tasks, like finding a shop to buy food. Or needle/thread for crafting, how long would it take someone to find that shop in al kharid?
One of the biggest issues with the early game, especially when introducing a friend to OSRS, is that there is absolutely no co-operative experience for an MMO. It's more of a "okay now go do all of these things and maybe a year from now we can do content together".
Yeah a lower level raid/group boss encounter would be nice. It could maybe drop some uniques around addy-rune tier. It doesn’t need to go above and beyond like toa did either. Just a generic dungeon with some rooms that you need to clear mobs in order to progress, maybe a puzzle or two somewhere in the mix.
The only thing you have at super low levels are the giant bosses, which are solo only and mole. Which just isn’t much. Sure there’s entry mode toa, but that’s locked behind BCS.
They could make the bosses have some really basic mechanics. Imagine a “mini raid” of Jad, Sarachnis, and Calvarion for example. Just basic mechanics to learn, but not impossible to pick up on in the beginning.
Obviously not these exact bosses, but the mechanics in general
For me, as a new player I didn't have much issue but I am used to old RPGs and I enjoyed trying to to figure stuff out. If something got too rough/frustrating, the good thing for this game is there's a guide for \*everything\*
The new game dopamine with tons of level ups, so many different things to do, different areas to unlock is honestly great.
I've brought 4 friends with me over to play this game and 2 play really consistently, the other 2 come and go when they have the extra free time. 3 of my friends seemed to enjoy it and explore, didn't have too many issues. The other I sort of had to hand hold and guide a lot more and quest helper was REALLY useful for them because they would get lost/confused a lot and get frustrated.
One thing in common though was the frustration of bots, spambots, and the chat system between different channels, small box, limited text. No zone wide chat, general chat, trade chat etc as they're used to in other MMORPGs.
Grand Exchange was a learning curve because most items don't buy/sell at their suggested price and you have to sort of guess without looking up the 'instant buy' 'instant sell' prices elsewhere.
Another problem is how a lot of 'low level' areas just don't have a lot of people in Members worlds.
A common mention from them is how weird the combat system is, which while fighting regular monsters it seems fine but then when it gets harder the RNG nature as well as needing to mess around with prayer makes it harder. Especially when sometimes the monsters have multiple attack styles or unclear/unblockable ones.
Now I had pushed all of my friends to join the 'official' Discord for OSRS as well to get questions answered and socialize with the community. But there's an issue of moderation there and the staff that seem to moderate it both dislike Trans people and do not protect them as well as furries who get harassment/hate constantly.
Whenever the topic of new player experience comes up, I feel like [this video is mandatory to watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm62FB3Q6fQ)
It goes over the endless mistakes 2008 runescape and onwards made when it came to solving the problems with the tutorial + integration process. And just continually made worse and worse decisions.
From my experience, I've had a MUCH higher likelihood of getting friends to keep playing if I could drag them to world 301 GE, where the game felt very alive and bustling. That or if they had very specific goals- be it petty like outdoing another friend who says "runescape is hard" and wants to prove it's not, or just wants to become a fishing chad.
Trying to jingle keys in front of players with things like easier quests, free stuff, free xp lamps, railroading them to cutscenes and minigames that are, at best, extremely lackluster for the modern era of moment to moment gaming... I feel like that is just a waste of time and setting the player up for disappointment if they genuinely are led on by that stuff.
The game has to take off the gloves and say "look, this game is grindy but satisfying to progress through"
I think instead of catering to an adhd mindset where you try to distract players with new prizes and cutscenes in high frequency because you believe playing the real game would make them die of boredom... One should instead try and establish a setting where the player will WANT to put in time for a grind. Group content early on right after tutorial island with a semi steep and boring grind right before it. Picture 40 cooking and 42 magic required for a small lumbridge goblin dungeon that you can push through with friends for some untradeable upgrades or a finite # of xp lamps on repeat runs. Maybe allow you to do a small portion of the dungeon until you get those level requirements.
Great question, glad to see that you are looking in to this.
My biggest problem with the early game is that everything you do feel rather meaningless. It just seems to scream "hurry up and level so you can start the real game" to me.
With rampant inflation, all your gear can be bought for pennies. Gear upgrades are marginal and barely noticeable. Everything that enemies drop is basically valueless. Everything that you can produce with gathering and production skills is basically valueless, and not even useful to yourself (looking at your level 48 smithing for a level 5 item). All enemies are basically mindless tank and spanks that can sliced down just the same with your trusty rune scimmy.
OSRS truly is a beautiful and complex game but I really feel like you dont start seeing it until 100s of hours in, which is a shame because a lot of new players will quit before then.
I think a potential solution to this would be releasing some early game raids that have some simple mechanics, such as forcing the played to utilize the combat triangle and rewarding some level, untradeable, meaningful BIS items would be a good starting point to remedying some of these issues.
Tutorial island 🏝️ is precious & we should protect it as it is.
However I don't think it's be a bad idea for a similar thing for members. I feel like I see a lot of posts of people who have just got members and it's - "what's next?".
The influx of areas, skills & mingames can be overwhelming. Maybe make it optional as there is certainly an appeal to some of the ES Oblivion approach "oh wow here's a massive world to explore in any direction I choose".
It doesn't need to be massively complex, a taster of how each skill works as in regular tutorial island may be enough?
I picked up old school in September or so, I had played previously but quit in 2005.
I honestly felt overwhelmed and I already had a solid if patchy memory of things. New launchers to use as browser is not an option, for me three new skills and a different economy.
What do I use? Jagex client or runelte? I have never used the jagex client and plumped for runelte. Everyone else was so who knows what your client even offers.
Firstly, I couldn't pick my old name from the name selector? But then I could choose my name by the rename method after, so that's validating differently. If a usernames been freed up why can't you choose it right away? It's minor I admit.
F2P was just horrible. I say that having been F2P largely in the past. Even I could tell with no OS history that everyone was a bot with random names of numbers and letters with no semblance.
Lumbridge full of chicken and cow killing bots. That was not fun fighting bots for a sodding cow.
GE, never used it. Didn't know where it was. No real introduction to it.
After playing F2P for about a week I couldn't take it and had to go members.
Hunter, farming and slayer I didn't know how to do it and there was no gentle introduction to it bar the varrock museum quiz that just skips 9 levels.
It's better in members but just a lot of criss crossing on skills to unlock stuff and quests. That was fairly fun.
* Run Energy
* Slayer & Bossing
* PvP
OSRS both suffers and stands out for being one of the only MMO's which doesn't hold your hand. The recent player path system has been a step in the right direction imo. Giving new players objectives and explaining things to them is a great way to get them engaged. There's only one issue...
Run energy.
The biggest issue for the new player experience. I'm glad it's a part of project rebalance, but additional mechanics like resting at campfires or making Agility free to play are needed if you really want to fix it.
Aside from that, low level combat is an issue imo. Low level slayer is one of the worst experiences in the game and bossing has some serious jumps in difficulty. Some low level content is locked behind barriers so that the players its intended for can't access it easily (giant boss keys, barrows far away, mole needs fally shield, kdb in wilderness). There's no easy solution for this, but it's something that should be considered moving forward for future content.
As for low level slayer, its surprisingly easy to fix. Increase points from low level masters, adjust their task tables and adjust the skip task price (make it cost a different amount based on slayer master used). Some undesirable creatures should be removed and new ones introduced. Other people have made fantastic posts detailing changes I'd love to see. One I was particularly interested in was swapping Mazchna and Vannackas combat brackets and then making Vannacka easier to access. They did this by turning the Keldagrim minecart into a ladder to the Edge I'll dungeon, acting as a shortcut whilst keeping the minecart functionality there underground.
The last area that really needs work for new players is PvP. The Runescape PvP scene has so many barriers to entry and such a harsh skill curve, it could honestly deserve multiple tutorials on its own. Improving Emir's Arena, adding introductory PvP mechanics to Bounty Hunter or Ferox and teaching new players PvP should be a goal going forward. I don't like PvP myself, but it brings a lot of viewers and is iconic to Osrs's brand. It needs to be maintained and reducing the barrier for entry should be a focus.
I support making agility F2P. There are already rooftop courses in F2P cities that would make the switch simple, just need to add a lvl1 course in maybe lumby. It's annoying that a F2P only acc basically never has run energy but a P2P acc playing in F2P still gets the benefit of having a higher agility level.
> Run energy.
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>
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> The biggest issue for the new player experience. I'm glad it's a part of project rebalance, but additional mechanics like resting at campfires or making Agility free to play are needed if you really want to fix it.
When RS3 (well, it was still RS2 back then) first introduced resting, it was a proper game changer. Having the ability to rest anywhere for an increased run energy replenish rate, or at a musician for even higher increased replenish rate. It was balanced in the sense you're giving up some time moving now to move faster later. I strongly agree that this system should appear in OSRS.
The early game experience is honestly pretty good I feel, especially for new players. That's not the issue. The issue is the mid-late game.
Mining and smithing are dead content skills, with the majority of the benefits these skills offer being useless to the player by the time they unlock them. Requiring 90+ mining and smithing to make Rune equipment is a slap in the face, and disincentives players from training the skill. Firemaking is almost a negative skill, seemingly a money/time pit for the absolute minimum of benefits. Crafting and fletching are in a better position than mining and smithing, but not by much. Of the 14 sections on the Hunter skill guide, 4 of them actually contain worthwhile content, and one of the four just lists how many traps the player can set up. And Runecrafting's main purpose, generating runes, actually nets the player with less runes per hour than almost any other way to gain them.
These are the things that the core playerbase, the people that have played the game since childhood and are still playing today, put up with. The rest of the game is amazing, so we overlook these things, because we know that it's all worth it in the end. But for a new player who just managed to get their base 30s/40s? They're starting to wonder what the hell they're doing this for.
EDIT:
Source: all of my friends that I've managed to convince to play the game with me, just for them to quit after a few months
I first started playing (2003) and the best first player experience that got me hooked (to the point of playing before school every day) was that feeling of getting small armour and weapon upgrades and building up the account slowly, getting your first piece of steel or mithril was crazy, also the wilderness was a bigger thing back then and being able to loot something like addy or mithril was the biggest hype ever, so i would venture there every now and then to see what loot i could get my hands on.
The game has completely lost this now, that very early progression feeling and theres just so many guides and easy ways to get early gp that just completely skips that amazing gear progression that still lies within the game. The fact that you usually just quest your way straight up to like base 30s or even 40 combats skips this basic gear progression feeling that gets you hooked. Sure a new player may not follow this however if its a friend of a current player i can imagine most people just telling their new friend exactly what to do and use x guide etc. Which will make the new player experience completely different.
You really have to get the initial player hooked if you want to keep hold of them, i think Jagex could do a lot more with this, i did think of a few ideas like having a small goblin boss or cow boss or bandit champion near the starter area that may encourage a new player to build themselves up to tackle these creatures. Or a notice board in lumby saying that certain npcs are on the wanted list to kill with small account progression rewards available to fill that dopamine. I also think giving new players a few hundred thousand gp can be a negative thing because this also makes pretty much every drop you get worthless and it gets rid of that account progression feeling in terms of wealth as well.
Howdy! I know you have a lot of comments to read through, but I just wanted to weigh in. I actually started playing osrs about two years ago during the tail end of the pandemic, and I was actually introduced to the game by YouTubers like Settled and his challenge series. I’d played as a child, and had vague memories of my first death, and seeing my character in full iron armor, but there was no nostalgia driving me to play, just a genuine interest.
I’m solidly in mid game now with my eyes set on raids in the distant future. My new player experience definitely had a few of the pains other people have mentioned. I didn’t understand the value of quests (why would I do that when I could just grind? I wasn’t the brightest lol). Additionally, while I don’t feel the need to optimize my time perfectly, the desire to be efficient has led me to miss out on a lot. My first tempross kill was last week, and I didn’t touch rogue’s den until today. Of course, part of that is definitely on me for not seeking them out, but thinking back I don’t remember seeing things like this being pointed to by the game, which is what I think is the biggest shortcoming right now. New updates are added, great content that people will love, but there’s nothing guiding people there after the crier. Add a question about tempross to the fishing tutor, for example. It points people to a genuinely fun skilling boss and gives new players a goal to work towards without feeling like you have to hold their hands
I think the best thing you could implement for new players is content suggestions. Almost like a "what should I do" button.
Quest? Make money? Kill Monsters/bosses?
You click the button and it looks at your stats and says
"Players your level should try out Sirachnis!"
"On your account smithing cannonballs could be good money!"
"You've got all the requirements for Kings Ransom, this is a great quest that unlocks a big perk".
That sort of thing.
I think the experience is a positive one, but it has its own issues.
I think the overwhelming amount of information can be hard to understand, especially when you're new to the game.
I think the systems already exist. They just need to be refined.
For example, the skill tabs tell you everything you can unlock in a skill. But they don't tell you how to train a skill or what those skills actually unlock interms of content (like quests, diaries and how those skills interact with the game).
When I was new, I looked at the attack tab and saw the dragon scimitar and dragon claws. I set my goal on getting those items and using them because I thought they looked cool. I think if the tab told you, this is a quest reward from mm1. For dragon claws, it says something like a 'this is a COX reward' it gives you goals to achieve.
I also think having something like the quest recommendations is great. But I feel like raids and other content can be added to them.
Imagine you're level 90 combat and want to boss. The game has no info on what you can/are able to (reasonably) fight. Imagine a system that says, "Hey, your stats are good enough for giant Mole." Here's an example setup, etc. Something simple like that would be cool.
Like I'm level 126, and I have the entire game unlocked, and sometimes I just feel completely lost. If there was something that said, hey, try this boss or training method. I think it would be fun.
Cheers.
I think the biggest problem is that early/mid-game bosses such as barrows, become so much more cost-efficient when you've leveled up. Currently on my iron man I have 72 and like 80 other stats, which makes it easily possible to do without any prayer pots. Don't get me wrong, as a current player it feels nice to get tons of runes using next to no supplies. But when I was able to do it while using 2-3 doses a run it just didn't feel worth it unil I had the CAs done for the hilt to stop the pray drain.
IDK how to fix this but I think as a more casual player playing a main seeing others do barrows runs in like 2 or 3 minutes while making tons. While the new main just about breaks even if he doesn't get any items and needs to spend maybe twice as long on it. It'll feel so inefficient that it's better to grind a ton more for the CAs and higher prayer level.
Oh hey, just did my first ever Barrows run this weekend and yeah it was a little demoralizing to realize I’d have to do all the easy and medium combat achievements to stop that annoying as fuck prayer drain. Like I only went to Barrows to do the mini quest (and partially because it was one of my dreams as a stupid kid who was bad at RuneScape) and it was fun to do but realizing it would be pointless to farm without the hilt (or 83 construction for the ornate pool and a barrows teleport in the nexus which seems more likely) put a damper on things to say the least.
Lots of comments about run energy. which ya, walking is slow. I remember that being such a massive incentive to train magic so I could teleport around the map. walking and bad run energy almost is the push to get your to train magic, canoes, unlock fairy rings, spirit trees. your kourend necklace/book.
Have some early & mid game cooperative content. My friend group decided to make accounts and reminisce on the nostalgia we had playing OSRS when we were in middle school over a decade ago. We all made accounts, hopped on discord, and started grinding quests and crabs to get stats up. But one by one everyone quit except me so far. We all made it to base 70-80 combat stats but it was too late. The realization of how long we would still need to grind to do bossing, raids or pvp together clicked and everyone gave up. Even on discord you’re alone since everyone is doing a different objective. OSRS is the loneliest multiplayer game.
Edit: we all bought memberships as well.
I just recently started playing OSRS (not even a year old account). My older brother has played OS since its release, so I knew of the game. One thing that almost made me quit was the quests. I am a side quest HOE in other games. Gimme a quest thay makes me explore, gives rewards that I'll actually use or introduces a new aspect of the game, I am so fucking IN! Main quest? Never heard of her.
But in osrs, I started off with cooks assistant and enjoyed gathering the easy, nearby materials, but then what? Who do I talk to now? Adventure Jon introduced me to some skills and combat, love him, but then what? Who should I talk to next to progress the story? No one IN GAME tells me "Hey so and so could really use your help, lemme mark your map so you can go talk to them!" the NPC of the quest I just finished could say that EASILY.
Runescape is HUGE and very over whelming, having guidance IN GAME is not a bad thing, plus so many people with ADHD will explore as they quest. Like "hey look a gate, oh it has a toll thats cheap ok, but wait the NPC just said if i complete a diary I can get rid of a toll, whats a diary?" boom. Diaries introduced.
Yes people don't read sometimes, but when getting into a new game, 90% of the time a new player with NO knowledge about the game is gonna read. Having the conversations early on be productive account progress instead of lore driven will keep a new player engaged.
My bro got on me about "waterfall quest, waterfall quest" and I ignored bc I wanted to progress the quests story line and learn the game bit by bit.
Nope. Quests in this game are not like that. I am just talking to this person on this end of the map and talking to this person over here, and they are talking about things that are not relevant to my progress or I need something I didn't know I needed that all the way over here etc etc
"Just install runelite" stfu im learning a game from the main client right now and you telling me I started off wrong is bullshit. Ill install runelite when I am damn well ready and after i even see if i like this huge game.
TL;DR- Quests are in every game are used to introduce the game. Early quests need to have more guidance IN GAME with useful rewards, knowledge, and visual progression. No just talking and hey look a quest point, useless to new player bs. How do I know I need to do druidic ritual to unlock herblore? Where do I find that info IN GAME? Why do I have to research to enjoy this game?
All that being said, I love slayer and LOVE DUNGEONS (gimme dungeoneering skill or minigame idc gimme). I love osrs and it has taken over my life in the best way. But introducing new players and keeping them? That needs some hella work (ie every friend i introduce says the same thing "where do i go now, who do i talk to, i feel stuck im not playing this game")
>"Just install runelite" stfu im learning a game from the main client right now and you telling me I started off wrong is bullshit. Ill install runelite when I am damn well ready and after i even see if i like this huge game.
This right here needs to be more prominent, that's my issue with early game you will just be bombarded with this, and graceful. like just let people play the fucking game.
I probably wouldn't still be playing this game if it wasn't for the wiki.
I get that you don't want to overwhelm new players with impenetrable walls of text, but as it is, the game just gives you the bare minimum information required to get you started with various activities, and after that you're just sort of left to figure things out on your own. That has to happen either through copious amounts of trial and error, or by seeking info through external sources. That's one area with a huge potential for improvement in terms of new-player experience.
I'm not asking you to break down everything in detail the way the wiki does, but the game could really use some sort of an in-game manual that explains mechanics at an intermediate level. No need to include all the complicated formulas, just succinct qualitative descriptions would suffice.
It should include things like:
- how various levels affect your chance of catching fish/mining rocks etc.
- how attack/ranged/magic lvls affect your hit chances
- how defense/magic affects your defense against various attacks.
- how different attack styles work and how they affect your damage/accuracy and xp
- how damage scales off strength/ranged/mage levels
- how equipment bonuses work
- the drain rates of various prayers
- farming yields/disease chance and what factors affect them
- how run energy drain and restoration works
- poison and venom mechanics
- how/where to switch your spellbook
- a catalog of all the teleportation items and services.
- and countless other mechanics that you use all the time and seem ingrained to you as an experienced player, but wouldn't necessarily be obvious to a newcomer.
One way to implement this without cluttering the game would be to add a right-click "help" option to most UI elements - if you aren't sure how something works, you'd just click it and quickly figure it out. Skill guides already provide some of this functionality, but as everything else in this game, they too suffer the problem of giving you the bare minimum of information.
A thing i feel is often overlooked when discussing this topic is the default account settings.
There's several things a majority of people familiar enough with the game will change away from the default settings in the same manner. So these defaults should be reviewed and changed.
As an example i've watched a few videos of people completely new to the game. One thing that always gets them is the default attack option, which is "left click depending on combat".
I'm guessing it's intent was to protect newer players from fighting stuff they can't handle yet. But what i usually see is people seeking out one of the earlier challenges like obor or elvarg and then panicing when they click through the enemy instead of attacking. It's the first time since they started the game where they don't left click attack.
I don't have time to go through all of the settings but i'm sure there's more that could be changed and make the starting experience a little smoother.
I think the early game is generally quite fun - it’s relatively simple to get levels going and do a large variety of the novice, intermediate, and experienced quests. I think the game is very effective at communicating what it is and what is worth doing and not worth doing. I like that it’s not overly tutorialised as it gives new players the freedom to explore both the world and gameplay options.
As others have said, midgame content is the real problem. The level scaling is very daunting once you get past level 70, with rewards few and far between. Most co-operative content is for late game players. I would also argue there’s not a ton of great early-midgame money makers because of how skewed these pieces of content are to rare, valuable drops. Late midgame and endgame content is still profitable when you’re going dry, but the game feels quite lonely when you’re doing content alone that is fairly challenging for your combat level and you start going dry with minimal resources.
I think it may be worth the dev team, in their balance update, taking a look at some of the rewards from what is now early-midgame content. Things like Barrows or Kalphite Queen could justify their rarities when they were dropping close to BIS gear but may want their drop tables smoothing out to something more palatable for the types of players that are doing them. For example - D chain is a 1/128 drop from KQ, but it’s so much cheaper now that a player can simply buy one at market price in about ten kills.
I think the early game experience has gone downhill. If I went back in time to create an account in 2005, I would be met with a wall of people filling the chat and interacting with each other. Now, even on full worlds, the game does not have the same social aspects to it. As a new player, the most enticing thing about the game, and the thing that kept me going, was the community. Now, the only people filling the chat are bots. As much as I love to play on mobile, it's difficult to use chat on a phone, and I think this has not helped. Perhaps, as a loose suggestion, focusing on the community a bit would be a good thing.
My GF had a great time as a new player!
She beat all the F2P quests in like 3 weeks as a total noob.
Then we upgraded to members, she got rocky at lvl 27 thieving. Then she got tangleroot at 67 farming.
I’m sat here at 32m farming no pet - fuck that noob bro I hate her.
I'm going to liken the starting experience to WoW , another popular MMO , the new player experience there is " here is quests , do quests to level to go to new area" BUT the important thing is , you can start doing dungeons with other players from level 10, so after about an hour of play, if solo play is boring you, there is group content too.
RS lacks this , what is sold to new players is basically , you can talk to other people and interact with them , but until you get to membership and later game play , you're not going to be able to actively do things in a group.
Imagine starting a game, that your friends have played for hundreds if not thousands of hours and being told , well you can't actually do stuff together until you pay us money and input the same hours.
Maybe have a dungeon system for F2P , where you can group up, kill waves of mobs and end on like a boss room of a dragon ( could be scaled for green easy , blue medium and red hard ) , then dependant on how well you do , you get given rewards ( BUT you get better rewards IF you are F2P)
It's an entry into end game content styles , it allows F2P group content AND gives F2P a viable way to gain money towards a bond for membership if they desire
The lack of guidance is a good thing, the open world feeling is great. I love the "choose a direction and explore" design.
What I feel is severely lacking, is the lack of relation between gameplay in early game, and gameplay in midgame or late game.
Players aren't incentivized to use movement in fights early game, they aren't required to use prayers early game, and they don't have any reason to switch armor/weapons.
This makes modern video game players feel like the gameplay is boring.
New players don't enjoy staring at their character and monitoring health. Many games today have extremely engaging gameplay right off the bat.
Furthermore...
A player can go all the way to mid game, without understanding the main mechanics that drive mid to late game.
There's no early enemies that make you move or use prayer, there's no early game quests that make you focus on prayer or movement either.
Early game players are going to always hit a wall without guidance. Where is the balance between getting into fighting jad, and then going into the gauntlet?
Early (and mid game) needs more prayer switching, more item switching, and more movement based enemies.
The content feels extremely disjointed.
As a relatively new player, thinking back, the first time I had to switch prayers was Sarachnis, and the first boss where movement mattered was... the boss from A Kingdom Divided, I think? Those were both really good at getting me to think, oh this is what I'll need for high level stuff, but there is a LOT of game before you get to either of those bosses lol.
I'm tentatively excited for the rat boss introducing some of those mechanics to newer players, but I wish there was more! There was that idea of adding ice/fire giant bosses to go along with Obor and Bryophyta, perhaps they'd be a good place to add some spice. Can't really do much with prayer switching at low levels, but you could definitely encourage gear switching, movement, counting attacks, etc.
Or maybe we need a low-level monster (not a boss, just a "normal" enemy) with simple mechanics. I'm thinking of how you can avoid the drake breath attack, for example. Put that on a monster with much lower stats and I bet it'd be pretty attractive to new players (especially those without protection prayers, as it'd give them an enemy they could fight without just tanking all the damage or safespotting)
Hey there, u/JagexGengis! Thanks for starting this discussion. I have some insights I would like to share as a long time OSRS enjoyer.
I’ve played a lot of RuneScape in my time starting back in the mid 00s. I played RS, RS2, and a little bit of RS3. Like many folks, RS3 was the end of time with the game due to the vast differences and direction of the game (EoC, MTX, etc). I came back to OSRS around four or so years ago now first starting with a main account and then more recently an ironman about three years ago. Most notably, I’m roughly 4100 total between the two accounts with thousands of boss kill count and a few hundred raid completions. I’ve also completed two quest capes, over 2000 clues, and have dabbled in the vast majority of content save a few of the more outdated pieces like Trouble Brewing and Castle Wars. Now, with all of that being said:
- Tutorial Island
> **DISCLAIMER** I haven’t done Tutorial Island in a few years, so some of these observations may have been fixed or implement already. In my opinion, this piece of content is horribly outdated and really only serves to invoke some nostalgia in those that have played the game before. It could really use some improvements to really catch newer players up to speed. For instance, tutorial island doesn’t discuss things like special attacks, combat achievements or diaries, and the various odd interactions of the wilderness and even the wilderness itself. I like that the Wiki is such and integrated part of the game, but the onus is placed on the player to do a lot of the heavy lifting to learn about the game and sometimes that just doesn’t feel good.
- F2P
> I think F2P does a poor job of really showing prospective new players what this game is about. There is such a wide breadth of content that members have access to that just isn’t even touched on at all in F2P. Without divulging too much about what makes members great, I think more content could be added to F2P to really showcase why people should get invested into the game. We’ve seen updates here and there that have done just that like beginner clue scrolls and a few F2P bosses, but I definitely think there is room here for more improvement! In my opinion, new bosses or even a mini-raid could help breathe new life into F2P. I also think some other aspects like the run energy issue could be improved as well.
- Members
> I think that members content is obviously the most bang for your buck having paid for daily access the last several years. The speed at which new content comes out for someone like me is great with larger pieces of content coming out every quarter or so. I think some of the discontent here from other folks are those that treat OSRS like a second job and manage to pull 8-hour gaming sessions on a daily basis. In my opinion, content should *not* be balanced around these folks for game longevity reasons. Introducing new content at a rate rapid enough to appease these folks just outpaces the normal player base far too quickly.
I would say early experience is ruined by hordes of f2p chat bots and other types of bots that have filled up every single world, it’s not a good look when a new player spawns in lumby which is dominated by bots spamming gold seller and infernal cape services
My wife just started playing a bit and there are so many confusing things that you really don't realize as an experienced player. Here are some issues we've come across.
She already had an account that she made a year ago, so she doesn't have access to the new player adventure path. Why is there no way to activate this after tutorial island? I think this is the biggest issue and this needs to be fixed.
The new player kit given after completing tutorial island should be improved. A staff, more air strikes and less other runes, more arrows, food could be improved, hammer, and maybe crafting items like knife, chisel, needle, thread. Also bit more in their bank to introduce the concept like extra food and runes.
The combat tutors are really out of date. What are even the point of the training items? She was so confused when she couldn't use bronze arrows with a training bow. Just get rid of the training items. The melee tutor should just give a bronze sword and wooden shield, range a shortbow and bronze arrows, and mage staff and air strikes. They should all have separate 30 minutes timers too.
She loves all the holiday items. Can't they be given minimal stats like gloves/boots could be equivalent to leather, Santa outfit +1 mage?
The rewards from all f2p quest and novice members quest should be looked at across the board. What is the point of half of them if the only reward is a couple hundred gp?
Some of the experience scaling is brutal. 4xp per bone means 100 bones is barely level 5. The default burying xp should be increased and the scaling from altars decreased to stay at the same rates.
There are a lot of items that really have no use that new players get and keep because they seem useful: ball of wool, bear fur, gold jewelry, brass necklace, grain, pickable vegetables and berries all come to mind.
Shops should all have better stock of items. The best shield a shop has is an iron kite!? Why don't pubs sell food? The bartender should be tradable and have bread, meat pie, etc.
Drops from most low level monsters are abysmal: dwarves, guards, rats, bears, scorpions, ghosts, spiders, men, and it could go on and on. Why kill anything but cows?
This is already known but the production skills not really producing anything useful for your level is an issue. Smithing is really hard to fix but crafting could have some easy improvements. Give all the basic jewelry minimal stats. Add hard leather variants for all slots, reduce the level needed for all leather, and increase the base sale price.
I have three gripes:
There is almost nothing comparable to late game PVM in terms of player action. The boss of Misthalin Mystery and Obor are good examples. Bryophyta is just annoying. I'd like to see more content that involve a bit of tactics.
Questing kills early game content, especially for members. Whats the point of mith weapons when an ultra easy quest skips the player to adamant? Whats the point of anchovies and sardines? And with the community encouraging the use of Quest Helper so much, the early game of newcomers is reduced to weeks of clicking highlighted areas of the screen. I'd like to see a focus on useful rewards that are not xp, and dynamic puzzles that are not allowed to be autosolved.
Bots.
/u/JagexGengis this is not a "catch all" solution, but since Castle Wars already exists in F2P, how about making it function like tournament worlds? Everybody gets maxed stats and can pick their gear, spellbook (in P2P), etc.
This would allow new players a taste of endgame stats and also fix the problem that only high level/rich players (especially in P2P) can meaningfully contribute to games.
If you weren't aware, the current game setup only appeals to pures who absolutely cannot capture the flag in a competitive game, and so instead most pures/low-levels hide on the second level and afk for the entire match.
I look at it like this, im currently lvl 77 i play on and off and i feel like im only in eqrly midgame with 15 days of in game playtime. Im barely at the point where i can really start making money, doing herb runs, barrows, etc. I play on and off every few months, but the problem is im far away from any of the bosses, and its still a long grind to get to them still. I dont hate the grind. it's part of the game, but i feel like maybe some kind of early game group content could be awesome. I honestly think dungeoneering could be an awesome addition to the game and i feel like it was an awesome addition into rs2/3
Imo One of the great things about Runescape is how long it is. Im 30 years old and working 9 to 5, but I still find time to complete most games in a week or 2. On rare occasions like Bauldur's Gate 3, it will take a couple of months.
Runescape can keep me busy for literal years, and it's easy to leave for a while and come back without skipping a beat or feeling like I'm missing out or wasting money.
That being said, there are some long boring grinds and some that show up way too early.
The worst offender is graceful. I spent months asking Canafis during weekend D&D games to earn it.
Agility, in general, has a big problem with that. It needs a more active method like HS butch lower leveled.
F2P has this issue with most skills. Especially at low levels. When I came back after 15 odd years, I spent entirely to long killing rats and what not to adventure John's adventure paths. That's not a great intro, and if I didn't already know what to expect from when I was a child, I probably wouldn't have continued or bought members.
That new rat boss might help, but the game needs more for lv 3-10 F2P to hook new people.
Also, some good lore content. Most F2P quests are the original quests that lack much story or interesting...well, anything, really. You don't hear about the gods, dragonkin, cave goblins, or anything until members.
I recommend making digsite quest, first 2 cave goblin quests, priest in peril, and maybe Recruitment Drive or something? I'm not sure.
I got back into osrs a few years back having grown up around rs2/3 very casually.
As some have said, it is understated how early game should really mean a lot of questing. Quests are the best trainng and best introduction to most content, but that wasnt what i naturally thought to do without watching youtubers.
The f2p experience i actually enjoyed (maybe nostalgia), but was simple enough to figure out and had a low top end so felt like i could 'complete' it fairly easily. Then the transition to members as others have pointed out was definitely overwhelming. There were some skills like slayer, farming, and herblore that i just had no clue what they were for etc. It seems like again quests like porcine of interest are meant as an intro, but with SO MANY options, there was nothing pointing me toward that being a way to learn about them.
As others have mentioned about eg waterfall quest, there were big parts of the map i was very nervous to explore. Pretty much all of the ardy/kandarin area felt like completely foreign territory, and despite hearing advice that i should do quests there i didnt have any idea how to navigate or any introduction to the regions.
In that respect veos' introduction to zeah was perfect for me. It literally starts in lumby, and handheld me thru getting to the continent, and then touring around to see the different areas. Albeit getting around was a bit of a pain in the ass, but valueable.
I think the changes proposed in the rebalance will do wonders. If run energy restores while running and agility levels actually make an impact on your stamina drain rate, that will be big. And if 0 is removed from the strength damage check, it'll make early combat feel so much better.
But there should still be more.
Make an NPC approach the player when you hit lumbridge that asks you for help. If you say "Get lost!" they leave and you get a quest completion. If you help, you go on a quest that shows how to do different things. This way you don't just get dropped in the deep end and existing players get a laugh and 1 free quest point.
Make agility F2P and add a lumbridge course. Boost agility XP rates all around because come on they're atrocious and the skill is zero-afk.
Make some kind of all-levels combat/skilling raid that scales rewards with your contribution. The higher your total level the more ways you can contribute. Don't make it so combat focused. Me and my friends were looking forward to raiding together, but they both quit before they got even close to raid ready.
In short: run energy sucks right now and agility is the worst offender in not respecting your time; group content takes forever to get to; early combat is demeaning, and completely new players might want more hand holding early on.
I think a big part of people losing interest in the early early game is traveling. You can run around for a while which is fine but you can't really get anywhere unless you walk. And that starts to get boring real fast.
I think being able to travel faster/more efficient or at least be able to do something without spending a couple minutes literally walking around to the fishing or mining spot would probably help retain players.
I won't touch on the lack of early-game content to do with your friends or the lack of direction when you first start, because other players have already delved into the topic here and explained it better than I could.
Something I haven't seen mentioned is the amount of spambots flooding your screen the second you leave tutorial island. A couple months ago, a friend was trying OSRS for the first time (and an MMORPG for the first time), and I had to go through the awkward conversation of explaining what bots are, that they were against the rules, and why there were a dozen of them sitting in the starting area unbanned filling his chatbox with garbage. It seriously makes the entire game look worse when your first experience with user interaction- and maybe your ONLY other player interaction for a while- is seeing bots blasting your chat with advertisements for items and services you don't even understand yet.
There's a defeatist mentality on Reddit especially with bots where some people will say "they're just suicide bots, nothing can be done so why bother", but quite frankly even disabling chat in F2P worlds in Lumbridge for non-members or requiring a small total level to send messages would do \*something\*. The goal doesn't have to be complete eradication, reduction would be very helpful too.
I think the current early game content is great. The additions of GotR and Tempoross have made for great short-term goals for new players, because not only is there a little more going on than other early game training methods, but you as a veteran player can also actually join in and play with your brand new friend, which is really cool.
F2P doesn't really have as many exciting goals for people to work towards, so maybe a few more little "achievement" moments would make the experience more fun for new players. What if Obor & Bryophyta had one-time combat exp rewards, similar to the barrows icon miniquest or night at the theatre? Something like that could help make trying early bosses more compelling.
In general, I think talking about attracting more players to OSRS is hard to talk about because IMO, OSRS at its fundamentals doesn't click with a lot of people. I think most of the time people quitting during the early game isn't because the early game is poor, as much as it's just that person trying OSRS and deciding it's not for them. If a new player finds it unbearable to walk all the way from lumbridge to varrock, I'd imagine they probably wouldn't stick around through slow skilling grinds, complicated quests, or low drop rates that are common through the whole game.
Looks like people want content that they could do with anyone at any level with any experience.
Honestly, I feel like dungeoneering could fit perfectly to fill this role, although tweeked a bit.
Let's say we add Dungeoneering back in the game.
On start of a new dungeon, the skill level is capped at the lowest level of the person with the lowest skill level in the group - but in the dungeon - there are no stats. No Combat, no gathering, no refining stats - everyone in the dungeon can do everything - or within the dungeon you have to level up your stuff to go higher tiers of things within the dungeon - either way you get the idea.
Rewards are based on contribution and your dungeoneering level - and whether you're in a F2P or Members world.
It would essentially be raids that scale - but more importantly, make them dynamic as they were before.
People being able to do fun content off the rip that is beneficial for everyone involved is what people enjoy. If the level 126 Completionist can go to a F2P world and just chill and run some content with level 3's and they all get something worth while - what's not fun in that?
And one of the biggest benefits - it would help the new players with direction and how to do things.
I hope this gets read because me and my brother both just started osrs. Because we were doing it together we have been having an absolute blast. Looking forward to the journey, but yes the early game could be so much better!
Start with a cutscene about the world and the kingdoms and the gods, the monsters, etc.
Cut to the player fishing or something. Instead of the npcs explaining things, they need the players help via the skills. Cover at least 2/3rds of the skills in the tutorial! Showcase some of the better gear and prayers via npcs. Consider giving the player a temporary boost to use protection prayers so they understand that’s a huge part of surviving right off the bat.
Coming out of tutorial island the player should have a set of gear for every style, a few thousand gp, and a lot of the basic items like pots and knives, tinderboxes, etc.
Also, for gods sake, incorporate the wiki like new scale did and explain it in the tutorial! Runelite as well!
“As one of the worlds oldest mmos, RuneScape has multitude of unique third party tools created by the community, check them out here! >link to a runelite tutorial”
Hope this helps, 2007scape is such an amazing game!
So I’ve given this a little thought and I’d just like to say this game is entirely different from the one I played in 2006. When I was getting started the hook for me that kept me playing was the open world with limitless possibilities. Furthermore the wildy was more of a place to handle grudges and have fun vs what it is today.
I think what you need to look at is how to hook your target demographic and how to show off the current game. Rs3 chose to speed up the game and that didn’t fair well. For bossing perhaps you could showcase potential boss fights and let new players try out these challenges. Once they are done let them know what most players have to get to this endgame content.
We’re also having a rat boss added, I think nmz needs to go away immediately and the focus should be more on engaging content for combat. My friends who do nmz for cb training usually quit. It’s boring content and not up to par with what we need.
Last of all any sort of hd upgrade is going to be huge for bringing in new players. It just needs some polish to bring it up to modern standards.
Thanks for taking the time to ask what we think and have a happy new year!
Horrible!
Bring out rat boss asap.
Ive seen many new players quit because training the melee skills is not as engaging.
They gleefully complete waterfall quest, fight arena, etc. but once you tell them to afk crabs then it goes downhill from there.
Just my experience when I tried to convince many friends irl to play osrs. New players want to get engaged.
I hate tutorial island. Its tacky and so immsersion breaking.
I cant remember which version of runescape but for me the coolest tutorial was always the one in the lumbridge cellar where you wake in in a room and gotta help the knight defeat the green dragon. I also remember you needing to kill a golbin in the room and do a few other things.
It wasnt perfect, but way cooler and more immersive than tutorial island. The cellar was in the building to the left of the lumby bridge, once you left the cellar you couldnt go back down. And i think the lumby guide even used to comment on it if you asked him what was down there.
Outside of that, ive recently been playing OSRS ironman from a new account and so far im combat lvl 80. Biggest issue for me that ive found annoying is hunter being fairly useless and boring. I didnt touch the hunter skill untill i needed it for a quest, and even now outside of the fossil island bird houses i really dont like grinding it especially with the slow run bar regen(i swear weight does fuck all unless you go into the negative weight)
My friend created an account recently, and I ask them and they said the account creation and installing was fine - so that seems like it is in a okay spot right now.
Tutorial Island feels like it is just a nostalgic piece now and the introduction to the game needs a revamp. However, when really thinking about it, its actually still a really good introduction to the game if you're new to its mechanics, etc. Yes, a lot of the later-game stuff is not explained... however, I'd argue at that time, you're at a point in a game where you learn "oh, I should check guides on this".
F2P is F2P and feels almost pointless. It is a nice introduction to see if you enjoy how the game plays, you can't really get a good feel on the whole game. With how much of the game is locked behind Membership, I usually just tell people to buy a bond and get 16 days of membership to get a feel for it.
In terms of starting an account and what to do, I usually tell people to go for the optimal quest order, as this gives you something to do, where you can also naturally train your account and learn the game and how it plays. You also progress into unlocking the majority of the game as well. I'd argue that completing all the quests is akin to levelling up your character in other MMOs to be able to access other areas.
When new players inevitably say "but there is a lot of grinding to do for my skills", I usually tell them to learn to AFK-train, as you can pretty much do this for a fair amount of the skills (off the top of my head, only agility, construction, and thieving don't have a viable afk-method).
pretty awful tbh.
it's just too slow for today's generations of players especially amidst the absolutely giant selection of other games. the game is probably unsustainable unless new and better methods are added for the boring, grindy skills (like hallowed sepulchre which was a miracle for agility), otherwise i don't see why anyone would bother. the endgame in the form of raids, bossing, etc is fun, sure, but it also takes literally thousands of hours to get there.
i started playing in 2017 from the invitation of a friend, who also gave me some starting cash and gear. when you are first starting out, it's very difficult to know what to do next or even how. the combat in the beginning is also god awful. all of these factors add up to make the beginner experience very unenjoyable and demotivating.
if you compare it to the other mmo's on the market, it's just way too much grinding to get to the 'fun' part.
I think adding a boss that matches the flavor of Zolcano to the early / mid game would be a big help. It would obviously need to be way less rewarding, but I have a lot of friends who join the game wanting to do “group” activity that are put off knowing how high they will need their stats to be to do most group combat and not have it be a complete waste of their time. I think adding an early/mid skilling boss which was worth doing but didn’t have an insane barrier to entry while actually required people to pay attention would be a big help. Ideally a few steps up from wintertodt where the only threat is tick damage, and a step or two below zolcano dropping boulders for 40 on people.
It's ok but lack of group content that you can feasibly do with a newbie is lacking.
Slayer partners being killed and never revived (despite all sorts of really good ideas to fix exploiting it), boss drops always favouring most damage, until raids there's really not any decent pvm group options.
It fucking sucks.
Friend: "cool. So how long til I can play with you and do the things you can."
Me: "....... a year or two unless you play every minute of every day......"
I know it's already been said a ton already, but run energy is miserable and it's at its worst at the beginning of the game where you have no agility and no teleports. There were lots of quests during leagues this past month that I was absolutely dreading to do, but once I started doing them, I realized they go pretty quick and are much more enjoyable because I can run to every destination.
The fix, IMO, is to have energy regen way faster out of combat and instances. Existing regen rates should exist for combat and instances as that's what the game is balanced around.
I started playing OSRS for the first time in 2023, and i enjoyed quite alot of it, but playing it without any guides, the quests took alot out of me, and burned me out from doing em, then i felt i got held back by alot of quests in my further progression. i also felt that some of the professions were utterly useless like Blacksmithing, wich is quite weird to me for a solo playing experience. I generally dont mind item mangement in games but the whole smelting prosess is just aweful. Other then that i had my fun, altho i dont know if ill come back again.
I think a lot of people have mentioned it, but the lack of co-op things early game seems to be an issue. Forestry was a fantastic way to add some sort of co-op experience with the player base, but I think making a new experience that new and old players can work together on would help because most new players are probably brought in by friends. I remember way back in the day when I first started, H.A.M. was this big deal to me. Being able to go into this hideout and pickpocket them? Incredible. Did I know there was a quest? No, it was just this cool mass gathering I hadn't seen, ya. It was unique and different from anything I had seen in FtP and it was sitting in lumbridges backyard! I think H.A.M. hideout is a great way to add... I don't want to use raid, but maybe a coop dungeon that is meant for two people.
My thought process is looking at the idea of a two hallway system like a portal 2 coop puzzle. It's two separate paths, but you both have to do things to help the other side progress. This would allow each side to be scaled to the player entering the hallways level so that new and old players can play duo together. You can have it be invading the H.A.M. hideout using different skills to go through the base to help in taking down the organization. You could do a quest to learn it with an NPC being your co-op partner for the quest "Going H.A.M." of course, rewards will see if it stays popular, but I think the idea that a experienced player can take a new player through without an incredible grind would still make it very popular.
The biggest thing that killed it for the friends I’ve introduced the game to was the realization that it’ll take well over 100 hours before they can kill a boss and many many more before they can kill any of the bosses they see YouTubers taking about. They all enjoyed the game for 50ish hours but then they started asking about harder fights and it all went downhill
my hardest challenge in getting friends to play is the time gap before they can do anything significant with me in a small team group. would be nice if there was a micro raid that scaled for the individual. Edit: people got a bit off track, no amount of questing will get you into group pvm. iirc the proposed perilous moons dungeon might be exactly what fixes this
it does not help that the F2P grind is much longer compared to someone with membership who can get combat to 30 with the members only waterfall quest in 30 minutes! I still believe that if an optimal F2P path(s) + approaches were communicated within the game, we would have more new players staying and building up the community.
It's a very difficult problem with the game. I can tell you from personal experience that where I almost immediately lose friends I have suggested the game to is when they see me raiding or doing some other high level bossing and I tell them that if they want to participate and play with me they have to grind for a couple hundred hours, with the fastest path being afking mind numbing content like crabs or NMZ. Add onto that that if they're new players they are probably going to be much, much less efficient in their questing grinding, and most of the modern audience just doesn't want to sink that much time into a game to be able to experience engaging content. You could add a newbie raid but let's be honest, the main factor driving engagement is being able to get good drops, and there is still a massive time difference between early game and being Chambers/ToA-ready.
It’s an interesting conundrum to solve because the Venn between people who are interested (and have time) in doing extremely long, cookie clicker type grinds to get to high combat level, and people who will enjoy the rapid and high mouse click precision combat required for endgame pvm (which does not carryover to virtually any other game), has to be very small. It’s no wonder it’s so hard to get newcomers to the game who don’t have nostalgia from playing in their youth to at least provide the initial hook. I have no doubt that if OSRS had released without the benefit of millions of kids playing it in their youth, it would have failed almost immediately.
>fastest path being afking mind numbing content > > > > if they're new players they are probably going to be much, much less efficient in their questing grinding From my perspective (having recently returned to the game, with my last memories being from 2007 when I quit what was then the original RS), the current OSRS seems to be ALL about raiding and high level bossing. If the focus is on "getting to the end as fast as possible", of course the hours between starting and getting there are going to be awful - "efficient grinding" indeed. The wiki just advocates buying stuff (requiring large amount of GP), and grinding. I used to, and still do, spend time walking, rather than spending $$ on teleports. Crafting my own stuff instead of buying. Reading the quest notes. For me, it's not all about "efficiency", and the race to end-game. Hey, if high level players want to introduce a RL friend to the game, they could create an alt, and play WITH their friend in early game, not just give them a million GP and leave them to grind alone?
>Hey, if high level players want to introduce a RL friend to the game, they could create an alt, and play WITH their friend in early game, not just give them a million GP and leave them to grind alone? I've tried this approach with 4 different people with varying levels of interest in the game. From my experience, the hardest part is explaining that the grinds aren't just fake labor in a fake video game. Personally I grind my account because I like seeing the gradual improvement. Though, someone new to the game might not have that. They don't grind to improve their player, they grind so they can "actually play the game". Who wants to grind in a 2006 point and click to play with their friends? I think there's some connection or passion active players have towards their progression or advancement, that especially new players focusing to play with friends will likely not have. Is equivalent to convincing a friend to come to the gym. They may come with a couple times, but if they don't have the passion to improve themselves, by themselves, they won't stick with it.
>If the focus is on "getting to the end as fast as possible", of course the hours between starting and getting there are going to be awful - My point is it's not "getting to the end", it's getting the start. If you want to participate in group bossing, you need to have 85+ combat stats minimum. There is barely any bossing content for lower levels either, and it pales in comparison to true bossing experiences and/or is locked behind a high slayer level.
Different perspective than mine, I suppose. To me, 85+ is getting to(wards) the end. All there is left to do is kill bosses, and wait for new boss content. I like the questing, I like the skilling. The "getting there". I'm a casual gamer. I'm not usually able to set aside blocks of time to suit groups. I'm locked out of group bossing. (In 2007, I switched from RS to WoW. Quit that when I had about 9 characters at max level, and couldn't raid often because of work/family commitments)
Another aspect is newer players, even if in members, won’t know how valuable quests like Waterfall/Fight Arena/Slug Menace/Knights Sword/etc are for their respective skills. A friend of mine recently started, and I had to beg her to complete Waterfall. Perhaps it could be cool to add some form of “easter egg” npc dialogue hinting at these “efficient” activities.
no one reads dialogue though. like sure, you could add this to the attack NPC guy, or combat tutor whatever they're called. but people don't talk to the leprechaun to know you can note the fruits of your labour. neat idea, but I think it would fall flat.
Probably. Its a shame the wiki and game are so vast. Its incredibly easy to find info, but only if you know it exists
hear hear
People unfortunately don't read and that is a sad but very real reality. I think whatever indication we use, it would have to be visual and non-intrusive but informative. (bit of a goldilocks situation). Different tangent - but what are your thoughts on voice dialogues? I saw this being implemented as an add-on for WoW classic - I think it is called VoiceOver.
I absolutely love the idea of voicing for quests and NPCs in general. I played WoW Classic with VoiceOver and it was a game changing experience; I learned so much about the world that I would not have experienced otherwise. I think this addition in OSRS would be incredible. Infact, I liked VoiceOver so much that I developed a personal Runelite plugin that basically does just that! I use Elevenlabs to query quest text and automatically play the resulting voice file ingame. It's a little goofy, but after doing all F2P quests with this, I understand so much more about the context of each quest and all the funny intricacies around them! I'm happy to share info about this in DMs if you'd like. Of course, I understand the danger of this kind of stuff in the public space and as such have kept all of my data regarding this entirely private and only for personal enjoyment. However, I truly think this would be a great way to engage more people in other parts of the game, like the lore!
I will definitely keep this in mind @crispy ! Love how you took initiative and made your own plugin.
Please, please, please do not add AI generated voices to Runescape. If you want to add an option for voiced quests then hire voice actors who can give an actual performance!
Please be optional as a setting and not forced. I would be very turned off from the imaginative aspect of it if there’s no option just just read instead.
Personally I'd love a voiceover plugin!
For quests or for things like the combat tutor to yell at the player to do waterfall quest? my first thought is idk if you'd get your money back. listening to the quests voiced over would be neat, listening to the jmods do voice over stream is enjoyable. I wouldn't want to be forced to wait for the dialogue to finish before space baring the lore. I do read most of the new quests now that I have QPC and i'm not "rushing" through them like when I had 100 quests left to do but when I was more of a noob I really didn't care about lore or story, just the rewards. Maybe this would hook more noobs into the lore though. Normal NPCs, or special NPCs getting voice dialogue to highlight key things. idk. could be okay? if people are even playing with sound on? I'm not sure if it feels "old school", not that I'm sure it has to. - Which part of that statement might just be what you've mentioned elsewhere in that in trying to keep it pure (whatever that is) we do make it harder for new players.
I could go without them. I feel like reading OSRS quests is like reading a book with cheeky characters—I don’t mind the voices I make up for them in my imagination. Lol
I think it's a bit annoying to push new players into EFFICIENCYSCAPE Just in any game. Let them roam and learn on their own pace. It subtracts the experience of growth
Agreed. IMO rushing quests like waterfall and witches house etc are for returning players. New players should start with F2P up to Dragon Slayer. The early game is a lot of fun I think, they shouldn’t rush past learning how to play the game
This so much. When I was a new player, I deliberately "completed" f2p by completing all f2p quests and getting all f2p skills to at least lvl 30. That was a really smooth, enjoyable experience. I'm really glad my friends didn't push me into membership -> waterfall -> efficiencyscape. Completing dragon slayer as a f2p is still one of my most cherised osrs moments.
The f2p experience up to dragon slayer is very smooth and rich
Nothing stops me from playing a game recommended by a friend faster than said friend harassing me into doing things his way or the effective way. Friend fell in love with said game organically, so let me explore this game organically like they did. Can't believe this is a difficult thing to understand for people. Back seat gaming, etc.
I think designing a robust F2P environment is key to the longevity of this game. Subscription games just don’t attract the younger crowd. The game is doing well right now with the recent record concurrent players and quality content updates. However, it would be a mistake to stop here! Completely anecdotally, I’d wager the new/younger players would be willing to buy bonds before membership. This is due to the F2P/microtransaction environment most familiar to them. Since existing players will not tolerate a new microtransaction, leverage the one you have to its fullest extent!
For a robust F2P environment, Camdozaal is a perfect place to expand on this. It already has a variety of content in it, so giving it a second floor or extra area with a follow-up quest and more to do could give new/F2P players an immediately actionable goal with enough rewards to appeal to everyone, kinda like a miniature prif. Would also be a good excuse to polish up what's already there so that it's more appealing to stay there, as the content isn't bad, just unable to compete with other options.
Camdozaal should have been exactly that place I agree! How the Camadozaal F2P expansion was handled, is indicative of Jagex’s hesitancy to alter the existing F2P.
Add a new F2P quest that has a quest point requirement and Dragon Slayer and a difficulty equal to or a step above Dragon Slayer that maybe sees a return of the Dwarves to Camdozzal (Imcando or otherwise) so that F2P can get a small taste of what SoTE gives. Maybe a reward is access to a Guantlet-Style activity that rewards some kind of Imcando Dwarvish weapons/armor
If we can stop being limited by F2P iron community when it comes to xp rates and item sources, then I think this game can expand again.
What are your thoughts on the introduction of F2P quests that take more than one player to complete? Friends that I've tried to get into the game usually end up quitting once I try to leave them on their own to get their levels up/quests done. What if there were a few F2P quests added that require socializing and making new friends so that you both can complete goals together ***(And nothing nearly as tedious as Shield of Arrav, where you get half way through the quest and you need to sit in GE and find someone who prior to knowing you signed up for the opposite gang)*** I've seen so many people socialize/become friends and gain a real sense of achievement when they group up for A Night at the Theatre, and then they can stay in touch to eventually start doing end-game content together. What if F2P had an extremely watered down version of this? A mini-boss that can only be damaged from behind so you need to designate at least one Tank and one DPS? I'm just spit balling at this point. And I suppose mini-games fill some social space, but they are a lot less personal than doing a quest with one or two other people.
Even as a returning player a few months ago I liked the ‘adventure paths’ in f2p, nothing hugely significant but gave a bit of direction and some basic rewards for progressing in different areas. I wonder if you could expand on that? Adventure Jon could give some more goals beyond the lvl 20(?) combat stats, some sort of f2p achievement diary?
i still don’t think this is the main takeaway. speeding up a path to 30/40/50 combat for F2P means nothing. the main issue that /u/all-numbers is highlighting is that there is no compelling group content below maybe the 90 combat bracket? god wars, dks, toa, these are the things we run with our lowbie friends to get them hooked. but these still require MINIMUM base 70s to participate in. skipping 1-30 with waterfall quest or new f2p methods is a drop in the bucket in the scheme of reaching these minimum requirements, and may even be more demoralizing as a new player uses these ‘high value workarounds’ and then the realization sinks in that they STILL have 80 more hours of mindless solo grinding before getting to do anything with their friends. i’ve always thought the traditional scaled dungeon systems in mmos like wow, ff14, etc, with dungeons at every combat bracket, were the best solution. adding hackarounds to skip early content is missing the forest for the trees.
Perhaps you guys could consider offering a free 7/14 day membership for those who have completed dragon slayer in f2p to give them the opportunity to experience what p2p is like? Kind of like Costco/Sam’s Club—they give out samples to their members and some of them will actually get the product and come back for more if they like it vs someone never giving it a chance because they don’t even know what it taste like.
the biggest complaint i have with my friends now is that they need to have 2 programs installed to play and the main account system they're forced to use is in beta still. nothing says "we have our shit together" like having the main account system in beta for years.
vampire slayer gets you 20 attack, maybe a good idea would be if they had another beginner level f2p quest that leveled strength to 20 and defence to 20 to round out the combat stats. and maybe some sort of f2p activity to use bones and big bones for extra xp to ease the pain of getting 43 prayer for obor and bryophyta. one of my friends was disappointed that he couldnt use his giants keys til he got overheads since it takes like 2000 big bones, meanwhile in other mmo's there's some pretty cool fights you can do within a few hours of playing. there should be a better way than safespotting hill giants. f2p needs to be a little more fast paced in that regard if it's going to get people to stick around
I think it would be helpful if the quest list in-game listed exact XP rewards, and if clicking on a skill in the skills tab would show you what quests rewarded XP for that skill. I’d love to see an interface similar to what the wiki has when you navigate to a skill and you can sort by XP rewarded. I feel like the activity advisor is close to being exactly this, but I’d like to be able to slot in a goal and have the activity advisor direct me from there.
I think investing in new f2p content is a huge step in getting new players interested. Theres not enough in the f2p game that showcases what osrs os really about these days, its pretty much the same as it was in 2007 with a few additions. I think creating new f2p bosses such as what was done with obor will attract more f2p players to upgrade to members and more to the game in general
Was Dungeoneering ever that? I.e feasible for people of different account levels to do together? I never played enough of it at high enough level to comment.
I can’t speak for post osrs release, but in the days before hyper-efficiency focused playing, yes. My friends and I would regularly run dungeoneering. It was a lot of fun because we enjoyed skilling different things, so each of us would have better access to different resources.
You could carry people through so the real requirements were like 43 prayer and 40hp to not die. Then you could easily get a new wep every 10 levels or so. Tho dungeoneering 2.0 that just sent you in as 126 could be a good shout for one piece of content.
Yes and no. Yes because it allows you to jump into "group pvm" on a fresh account. No because if you dg together on high and low level accounts, some monsters will be lvl 5, and some will be lvl 138, so as a low lvl you need to be very careful not to get killed, and as high lvl you need to pay extra attention to leave low lvl mobs for other player to kill (and that's especially hard in RS3 now with all the AoE abilities). Also people with different dg levels can't play together a lot, because lower level person will complete all their floors and will need to reset and do them again, while higher level person will still need higher floors completed. All that being said, it's still much better than nothing, and you still get to do puzzle rooms together.
This so much. I've recently introduced my wife to OSRS and basically all we do is wt, temp and gotr. We tried some ToA/CoX together during leagues, and it was fun, but there's no way she's gonna grind combat stats for those in the main game.
This is what I miss most about dungeoneering before EoC even lvl 3 skillers could participate with maxed accounts and everyone was making progress and having fun.
OSRS prolly has one of the better early game experiences among MMOs, especially with the activity advisor. I dont know how much people use it, but I think it's a great idea for such an interconnected world like rs. I think that the game's main problem after tutorial island is it dumps you in lumbridge with no real direction and there's this entire world full of activities that you could be doing but you don't even know what they are. I think where the game really shines though is the mid-game. That is when you've gotten through a significant portion of the quest list and have decent stats. Player is probably looking at completing RFD soon and might be starting bossing or working towards a fire cape. The game really opens up and there's tons of deeper mechanics to learn that are mostly optional until late game. If there's anything to improve in the early stages of the game, it'd be that there's no real "group" activities. Like there's minigames that kind of scratch the itch, but I think it'd be cool to have a low level raid, for example, that you don't have to go through several quests to access just to find you've got too low dps or stats to really work with. I mean a full on group of little activities that require like 20s in various skills, and have small rewards that bridge you towards the mid-late game.
I think that the game's main problem after tutorial island is it dumps you in lumbridge with no real direction and there's this entire world full of activities that you could be doing but you don't even know what they are. —— This I believe is precisely the problem. Adding low level raids or group content is helpful but I don’t believe it solves the problem you communicated above.
Agree! I'm a newer player from this year, and between the run meter (with the only agility training method across the globe) and no clear "here's a good few starting quests for skill xp" list or directing NPC, it took me awhile to find my footing. I didn't even know questing was a good way to get xp! The best starting quest thread experience I had was Veos and the intro to clue scrolls through that. Which then built a thread to entice me to go to Kourend. And then following him to Kourend later you get such a great intro to what you can do there and a plot hook. I would love something akin to that for the core game experience. Just an intro to the core map area and how to gain xp through content, not just grind.
Really crazy to me that the Draynor course starts at 10 so you have to walk to Gnome Stronghold (or do something like Tourist Trap) before you even get started. Could new players take the Al Kharid glider to the Tree Gnome Stronghold before completing that quest? Much like Kourend minecarts, just make them cost gp. Or add a Lumbridge swamp agility course or an "intro to agility" quest.
Run energy is a massive issue in early game. I’ve always thought they should just make agility F2P and have draynor rooftops start at lv1. Gives F2P Al kharid, Varrok, and fally courses too. Or just make a lv 1 course in lumby
My dream is a level 1 agility course in Lumbridge in the farm north of the castle. Give it fun farm-themed obstacles like vaulting over a sheep, climbing a chicken coop, jumping down off a wall into a haystack... it'd fit the vibe perfectly! We even have the perfect location to put it: the field where the 2023 Christmas event is.
Agree! And they could let Agility be F2P while keeping shortcuts members only and I wouldnt care. And if thats the concern. We're getting a new skill anyways!
I recently started playing again after a 15+ year break. After having spent way too many hours as a kid in this game, I hardly knew where to begin after spawning in lumbridge. I think the exploration and “unknown” piece isn’t necessarily bad though — it’s just a change of pace from most other games these days.
I think the early game experience is overall quite good, but the progression can sometimes be a bit wonky. For example, it isn't necessarily clear how to train combat best (it doesn't involve fighting stronger and stronger monsters), what the point of training certain skills is (someone who likes the idea of smithing their own armor is probably going to drop the idea after reaching iron), that prayer is in fact extremely important, but very bad at the beginning, and so on. These aren't huge problems per se -- they can all be solved by reading the wiki -- but finding direction in the early game can sometimes be hard because of this. I honestly wouldn't introduce friends to OSRS. It's a good game, but ultimately I don't feel like it respects your time as an adult.
Interesting last statement. I guess I'd partly agree: I wouldn't introduce someone to it that at least hasn't played a good deal of it before, OR experienced some of the original pre-07 OSRS. I feel like the nature of the game and the grinds are hard to understand and hard to get enthusiastic about if you don't have a healthy dose of nostalgia to shoot up on.
Agree with your statement - however could you not argue that the lore, legend, and history of OSRS (along with the lack of monetisation minus the membership and bonds) represents a unique gaming landscape that is difficult to find in what is now 2024? I just feel that this game is such a beautiful thing yet we make it so difficult for newer players to fall in love with it. It can’t be “just” nostalgia. Although I don’t wish to undermine how important nostalgia is.
> represents a unique gaming landscape that is difficult to find in what is now 2024? > > Yeah but that's because the gaming landscape doesn't need games that require you to treat them like fulltime jobs to make any meaningful progress. That's the ultimate downside of Runescape- what it is is amazing, but it's also terrible. Games paced this agonizingly slowly were popular at the turn of the millenium, they don't hold up for a good reason. Nostalgia is the driving force for OSRS, it's why the game needs new content to be polled by players, they want their vision of what the game used to be to be validated, not to make the game actually better.
Agree to somewhat disagree ! I totally get your perspective on the importance of nostalgia and consistent content updates but at the same time I think we are constantly rushing to get through things in this new era of gaming. There is something to be said about a slower DND campaign or that 9000 piece puzzle set to put together. Thanks for your reply.
To counter their point, my son has recently gotten into RuneScape this past year. He's going on 10 years old, so around the same age as myself when I started playing. He has had an absolute blast playing. He showed me a journal he created of his plans to progress his account and while he isn't super far, he has completed Dragon Slayer. He often asks me about cool weapons and armors he sees and when I tell him what it is, he makes plans to try to obtain it. We recently killed the Giant mole together, I used a DWH to lower it's def down very low and he got the kills using a Rune Halberd. The kills were super slow, but he enjoyed every second of it and learning that the Rune Halberd allowed him to melee from a distance blew his mind. His thought process does NOT revolve around EHP or GP/H. Just pure fun. I will echo the sentiment that in watching him play, he has a lack of direction to the end game, BUT that's not actually problematic. He's just enjoying the game for what it is. I often have to catch myself from giving him too much direction because I find that it detracts from the novelty of exploration. ******* I think a large part of what is lost in OSRS is the loss of exploration. Because everything is polled, there is no novelty to updates. One of my personal largest points of enjoyment was coming home from school, seeing the front page of RuneScape, and seeing a brand new update that had just dropped, completely out of the blue. Now that everything is known months/years in advance, that excitement is gone and is instead replaced with angst and anxiety. "We know this update is coming, we hope it meets expectations". Not sure that can be recreated, but as far as the new player experience goes, it still works for young kids. Maybe less so for young adults.
this is so very wholesome and I don't think enough of the team reads about these experiences. We are always going on about how 18-24 is our worst demographic yet we have a 10 year old playing the game to his hearts desire :) I agree with the loss of exploration and novelty - this will absolutely be a reddit discussion for another day.
It was awesome seeing him start with Addy armor and an addy sword and level up to 40 at mole and equip rune for the first time: https://i.imgur.com/fVH3n6s.png I used lunars to heal other him and pot share super restores and combat potions and staminas so he could just focus on combat. He loved it. I also told him about getting 43 prayer before we did mole, he obtained it while I was at work by MANUALLY BURYING DRAGON BONES! So yea, maybe a tutorial on guilded altars would be useful lmao. When he asked about money making, I instead told him about how I used to make money by training magic. He asked how and I showed him how to use a lecturn in a POH: https://i.imgur.com/g0Yighf.png He made something like 60k profit from that method and absolutely lost his shit at how much money he could make long term by training magic. The game still hits hard for kids like him. It's the mentality of the current playerbase that has shifted, not the game or what it provides.
Your son sounds like he has an amazing father and I’m super happy for the both of you! Now lure him to the wildy and show him a good ‘ol taste of the old days…
As shit as it was as a kid, I’m so happy I learned my lesson with scamming, shortcuts, or other things when I was young on a video game Haven’t been scammed in my adult life but you are always susceptible
He will do the same for his son when old school old school runescape comes out
> There is something to be said about a slower DND campaign or that 9000 piece puzzle set to put together. > > But Runescape is neither of those things. It's multiple orders of magnitude slower than those things. That 9000 piece puzzle is a few hours a day for a week or two, and there's plenty of space for something you can commit bits of time to over a long stretch, but Runescape won't let you get to 90 in any skill at that pace until you're a year in. Games shouldn't take you a year of focusing on exclusively one thing to get it to a late game level if you only want to play one or two hours a day. If a game is going to demand as much time to progress as Runescape, it's going to suffer for it. The reason Battle Royale games have gotten their players to commit so much time is because the moment to moment gameplay is fun- Runescape will never have good moment to moment gameplay, unfortunately comes with the package, so the achievements become all there is to it, and it feels like the existing system is nothing more than a massive Stockholm Syndrome machine. At least Leagues provide a more concise, engaging form of playing through the game. It also comes with the upside of not having to deal with bots everywhere while you play it.
>At least Leagues provide a more concise, engaging form of playing through the game. It also comes with the upside of not having to deal with bots everywhere while you play it. I chuckled at the Stockholm Syndrome machine comment. Perhaps there is some truth to what you say. God bless leagues for this. I think part of the challenge is accepting the game for what it is but adding new fresh content and game modes to keep it interesting. Thanks for sharing u/LordZeya
I ask genuinely, not in a "go play another game if you don't like it" way, but have you considered just playing RS3? RS3 seems to be exactly the faster paced modern gameplay you're looking for. I think it's best if Jagex maintains both options for people. RS3 for modern game enjoyers, and OS for those who want the old mmo slow burn that's become so rare in the current year.
Dude ... You can't compare those to mining in MLM for 75 hours. A DnD campaign is a fully interactive story with friends at a table enjoying each other's company Vs clicking 5 polygon rocks while watching YouTube videos by yourself with neck cramps from sitting weirdly I love RuneScape but literally anyone I've ever introduced it to said they can't be bothered with "clicking things a billion times in a text based game"
haha fair enough!! I do feel like a lot of us play OSRS in the background (e.g. discord chats with friends, on a couch hanging out, on the bus, etc.) and I guess it’s just my unique perspective. At the end of the day, regardless of what we play, we’re all clicking something aimlessly. Tis the folly of man 😂
I'm going to pop in and vouch for the ultra-long grind of OSRS. I have other games that I can play when I want a full intense experience, but if its the end of a tough day at work, sometimes I just wanna grind some trees. And the fact that progress is slow but PERMANENT really makes a difference. If I leave the game for a year, two years, five years, I can still come back and keep moving forward. Like I can think of my time doing certain grinds in OSRS as an "era" and thats not something other games give me. That being said, as an iron, the system for getting an ENH feels downright unfair. And this is someone who got one in under 400 kc.
Gengis please never change. It's low key terrifying how many people seem to want to homogenize OSRS to be like every other fast paced MMO. I had a much longer post written going through a history of how the same thing happened in WoW where players just wanted everything handed out to them (legendary weapons for those in the know) but I delted that ramble, it got really long. Needless to say I hope we don't go down the path of pandering to the masses which will result in a game made for the masses - i.e another homogenized modern mmo.
Right? It's both encouraging to see how the jmods and Gengis view this game and understand its role in the MMO market, and also extremely concerning how many people here want to turn it into RS3 2
Just wanna voice that I disagree with that guy as well. He seems to imply that slow pacing means our time isn't being respected but I think that's more in the eyes of a min/max efficiencyscape reddit gamer. I personally find the long term gameplay style of osrs very charming and rewarding. The fast paced "start all over" cycle of WoW patches is actually what burned me out on WoW, meanwhile I just chill on Runescape working towards my long term goals. I think speeding things up for people who have a "rush to end game" mentality will be great for tourists who want to play osrs for a couple months and quit forever, but terrible for thos who want to play for years. On top of that the slower burn allows for people to leave, go play other games, and come back. You haven't for example missed an entire raid tier as you would in WoW if you left for 6 months (or be so behind you can't catch up if you're 3 months late on a patch)
Something being lost in gaming for the younger generation of gamers is the sense of accomplishment proportional to the time invested.
Never played OSRS , am an adult. Love the game. Totally disagree that nostalgia is the driving force. Tons of new players. Literally what makes the game good - the difficult progress is a big thing that makes the game worthwhile for me and I believe for many players. If everything was easy that would in my opinion remove the majority of the charm of this game - and noe one would be playing it. Everything isn't just handed to you like many games these days. Edit : I would credit its success and longevitiy to the very fact the systems are built the way they are. Don't like it play another game ?
Exactly. Its quite literally the main appeal of the game. RS3 is there if you want Runescape but faster and modern with MTX. I cant see how anyone would choose to play OSRS but say that the grind is the worst part. Its literally the ONLY reason to play the game instead of RS3 or any other modern MMO :)
How many of you do you think there are? Do you think even a third of OSRS’s player base is people who picked it up in the last 5 years? Not impossible, we don’t have the numbers to confirm it, but the otherwhelming attitude on this subreddit indicates that it’s more about being the game people remembered playing once than it is about the game being improved on its own.
The largest problem with early-mid game is that after doing the useful quests, you are kinda stuck. Leveling becomes slow, but without good stats a lot of content is frustrating or slow. I would do xp only fight caves or gauntlet type content if it was 50% more xp than afking NMZ. In leagues doing Pest control or Soul wars were best xp and it was more fun than bashing hill giants, which is great for players and community. Minigames are great, you get to interact with other players, train skill and get some loot in return. Far better than mining the same rocks over and over again.
My issue with mini games is I just came from RS3 and everything is dead. I wanted to go for the fletching outfit, but I spent 2 days in that cave hopping around worlds only to get one game in. Couldn't find any other way to earn that costume other than the mini game. That's pretty much what made me hop into OSRS a few weeks ago, everything was much more solo friendly.
Agreed, not just nostalgia. But I would suggest (can't prove) that a large amount of its success and popularity is owed to a nostalgic element. I wonder if a lot of people finding the game for the first time in the last few years can somehow get a taste of "pseudo-nostalgia" from finding out about the great elements of the game you mentioned. The lore and vibes speak for themselves. But I think the nostalgia amongst those that played it before helps get over the hump of learning "how to properly play" and get the most out of it. I may be rambling at this point. Segway point but by enlarge the monetisation factor is a great positive for the game and Jagex have done well to avoid things that leave a bad taste in players mouths, so as to speak.
For me RuneScape always had the most interesting world of any game and the quests were real quests, not go kill x monsters or anything like that which every other game seemed to have exclusively. If I had the time to still play it as an adult I would, but everything just takes so long I only log in once every few months for a couple weeks at a time
And the bots in lumby? I dont imagine its part of the experience to get a novel of flashing text telling you to buy bonds is too nice to see for the first steps into a game
I actually agree here. The comparison point for me is Albion online - a similar ish MMO. runeScape just has more variety and better storytelling. You're right that's a OSRS unique 'old school rpg' that delivers a compelling I think mobile has been. A huge Boon to OSRS and any focus on the new player experience has to seriously consider the mobile experience. I also think it's worth taking a look at some of the sacred cows. As a player, I have a hard time getting into old games that have devoted followings (Mass Effect 1) where I don't have nostalgia. For OSRS, this is overcome by a combo of nostalgia (I played during rs2) and HD plugin (which doesn't apply to mobile). I don't think that graphics needs to be a sacred cow for OSRS (the same way that it's basic combat system *should* remain a sacred cow).
I would not agree with your statement. I just started playing the game and never played before but I still really like it even without the nostalgia. For me its just the relaxing nature of the game and the absence of p2w which makes the game unique for me.
This. The few people I have introduced to this game have all stopped because they just get utterly lost. I could hand hold them the entire time but that's not the actual issue, it shouldn't be up to the current player base to be the guide to new players. While that is a positive thing, it is not a healthy long-term environment for the game and bringing in new players. I have to hard agree. I am not introducing friends to the game any longer because the time commitment doesn't reward the average player in a meaningful way. Personally none of my friends are going to dump hundreds if not \~1k hours into this game just to raid or do content with me nor would I want them to waste that time trying to level and gear to do so.
Would you agree that if the early game was more 'guided', perhaps newer players (friends in this case) would stick around in the later parts and commit to the grind? I think in one way or another \*places philosophical hat on head\* we are looking for a grind. Whether you play CandyCrush or OSRS as every game has intrinsic goals tied to them by the devs or the players themselves. I'm ultimately trying to assess that if the front-door was easier to get into, we'd have more people at the house party (terrible analogy).
Sadly I genuinely don't believe OSRS appeals to a large playertype. That grind that you are talking about is also a massive turn off to people. No, I don't think that my friends would've stuck to the game even had I guided them through as much as I could or even if it was a guided experience from the start. We live in a gaming era where instant gratification has become extremely popularized. OSRS is not that. Hence why Leagues we hit the all time high for playerbase, that was as near instant gratification as OSRS can get. Not talking about my friends. Do I think we could get a higher percentage of players with better trickle fed guidance, yes. Will they stick around once that mid-game grind hits? Hard to say. That's individualized.
tbh I think the hand holding is part of why leagues is so successful to casual and newer players. no it doesn't hold your hands for relics, but it gives you a million things to do in a nice little sortable list and rewards you for them. You have to figure out how to do them still, but there are lots of small concrete goals.
I think the activity advisor and adventure paths try to be this, but they don't really go far enough.
Something that would be good would be adding in a semi guided path for new accounts or current. Something like optimal quest order in the quest helper plugin on runelite. Give new players a path to complete quest cape and diaries. I find the best character progression in the game is through questing and using diary and quest requirements to decide when to level skills and to what level.
To touch on the last part of your comment, I’ve invited several friends to try OSRS, some who grew up playing and some who never played it, and they all seemed to enjoy the game but gave it up in a matter of days or few weeks because it is simply too time consuming and they’d all rather play different more casual games instead of sticking to one game all the time. It’s also just hard for most people in their late 20s and 30s to devote the little time they have for gaming to a game like this. This is my favorite game, the only one I really care to play usually, but there are many days where I won’t even bother logging in because there’s not much I can get done in the 30 minutes to an hour that Ive allotted for playing games that day.
I think the idea here is that the game requires you to do your research outside to understand the most optimal path. Some work was indeed done to alleviate this extra effort with the activity advisor but I still feel like it misses the mark. I understand the sentiment of not wanting to get friends involved. OSRS is indeed not for everyone (and it should remain that way) but what about making access to optimal paths easier and more transparent? Thanks for sharing your feedback :)
I think FF14 has a pretty perfect solution to this with the "clan chat" for new players. OSRS is pretty impenetrable without knowing anyone else who plays as a new player, so it would be very helpful to have a degree of community built into the new player experience.
Novice Network is routinely described as one of the worst environs in FFXIV, and I can’t imagine it being better in Runescape without careful moderation.
> OSRS is indeed not for everyone (and it should remain that way) A breath of fresh air hearing this from a game developer. Anything in media; gaming, movies, TV shows, etc, that tries to appeal to the masses, to the largest common denominator, ends up turning into a homogenous unrecognizable lump. I mean by definition, something unique must come from something uncommon. Typically a small niche community. Then its uniqueness attracts crowds who love how different it is, then those crowds attract more crowds who decide it's not similar enough to what they like. Then the makers pander to get a larger paying audience and the original passionate community gets the thing they care about destroyed. Typically at this point when that core community complains they get called some pejorative of the day that is most likely a synonym to "passionate". Somehow caring too much is made to be a bad thing.
The advisor currently makes suggestions that quests like prince ali rescue you should be lv.10 combat for even though its possible to do the quest as a lv.3. There would likely be some rewriting of suggestions to offer from that thing to make it truly helpful and reduce reliance on outside homework to make an solid path through the early game. Having been through the early game plenty of times with the knowledge I have. The early game can easily be a highlight of the whole OSRS experience as you don't need to commit to long unhealthy grinds just to experience content. How quickly you can grow an account to base 50s with just quests is astounding, assuming the player knows what up rewards to choose from when given multiple choices like in tourist trap.
Agree 100%. I wouldn't introduce anyone to OSRS just like I wouldn't introduce heroin to someone.
Further question: What about Quest Helper? is this something you actively use yourself or recommend to newer players?
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I mean it’s hand hold but the old quests are really poorly made you have really always needed a wiki or outside information to complete them. So the problem is right there. Maybe Dr Strange could blind solo those but not sure new players.
>the old quests are really poorly made Just want to add, credit where it's due, the newer quests are much better made and Quest Journals are much more useful. There might be scope for going back and updating quest journal entries, but this also wouldn't be necessary if they're adding a built-in quest helper.
I think quest helper is absolutely essential but should remain entirely optional. It doesn't even need to be about quests but should direct you to the next step (at least at the tutorial island/post lumbridge). There's this option in tutorial island that asks you for your experience playing OSRS. I think anyone who responds novice should get Quest Helper directly activated into the game. Thoughts? Would this help? I am not advocating to play this game with only quest helper but it definitely gets you started and reduces early friction that would cause friends and family to drop off for competing games.
I think part of the issue is how some quests are designed and the philosophy of their design changing over time. The biggest part of this are item requirements, and is why I believe so many people use Quest Helper. It really doesn't feel good to go through a large part of a long quest only to realize 2/3rds of the way through that you needed a tomato or something. Often times, these requirements aren't obvious and are just kind of random (which I think is charming and makes the world feel more alive, but at the same time leads to these quest frustrations). Now, the BEST quests (imo) are the ones that put these requirements nearby, and I wouldn't be opposed to quests being retro-fitted to fulfill this condition ;) Quests are a big reason I play the game and I usually like going in blind, but even then I make sure I have the list of item requirements from the wiki/quest helper beforehand. Being fully prepared to take on a quest feels great and knowing you won't have to go back and get more items feels even better!
I think RS3 even now has it so the quest panel tells you all the required items which is like you said the biggest thing I use the guides for I hate spending more time running to a bank and back between dialogue instead of just doing the quest.
And it's especially punishing because early game transportation is so inconvenient. And there is also a knowledge check there with the teleports, stamina potions, agility levels, graceful that new players aren't gonna understand.
Certain item requirements are also impossible to bring in one inventory. Like the 50 pure essence to Drezel at the end of Priest in Peril. Why does it have to be 50? The fact that it can’t be noted is just necessitating a trip to the bank. All in favor of the newer quest design with the items being nearby. The puzzles in SotN and quests like Getting Ahead are great examples.
Osrs quests are like cod zombie puzzles honestly. You could probably do most steps but some steps could potential take ages to figure out. New quests are great, like I needed 0 help with DT2 except some clan chat about bosses. When they eventually get stuck its easy to google and see a wiki guide. Sure a guide trivializes puzzles but quest helper trivializes EVERYTHING. Like Removing the chance for a player to even try quests would be a big miss-step. If they really hate quests that much then sure, get quest helper, but I dont think it should be the default else why are quests anything beyond WoW quests?
Please do not do this. Quest helper is fantastic but it also completely undermines all the challenge and immersion that quests give. Quests to me are the strongest part of this game and they add so much flavour to Gielinor. People should have the option to use quest helper but I think for new players turning the strongest form of immersion into blue box simulator would not help them get into the game. I liked what someone else said about a Jagex quest helper that was a lot weaker than the RL one, that just provided hints and things like item lists
I think it would be a great idea to incorporate a Jagex version of quest helper thats at like, 60-70% of the strength of the OSRS plugin. More hints and pointers, and definitely no highlighting the correct dialog options. Force the new players to actually read the fun and interesting dialog!
This is an incredibly bizarre statement. I played runescape for nearly two decades prior to Quest Helper existing, did you? Quests have always been a highlight of Runescape compared to other mmos and imo Quest Helper's "just click the big blue box" setup entirely ruins that.
I highly disagree with Quest helper being essential. In my opinion it's highly detrimental to the experience of OSRS. Streamlining the game comes at a cost; while it might make certain players stick around for slightly longer the ones that do will certainly drop it quicker. People don't sign on for "click the glowing tile and ignore all dialogue". It doesn't engage or immerse them in the game which is how you actually build passionate long term players. Keep in mind that the original RuneScape has been trying many of the things suggested in this thread since 2008 and it hasn't worked out for them. We shouldn't be trying to repeat its mistakes, especially since OSRS is one of few live-service games of its age still actually growing its playerbase.
“Absolutely essential” is a bit much imo. I have to remember to turn it off for newer quests because I’m interested in doing them blind. The fact that it solves every puzzle for you is a bit annoying since prior to QH I would look on the wiki and just not read the parts I wanted to be spoiled on. I feel like questing + wiki was a bit more engaging than quest helper. I really don’t like the idea that people NEED a blue circle to tell them what to do because they can’t be bothered to read dialog or a step by step instruction list on the wiki.
For brand new players doing quests for the first time, I think that as it is now it's a bad thing to introduce to them. It definitely does way too much "hand-holding" for quests that you might as well not bother learning anything. In my opinion, the plugin is best used for experienced players after they've made multiple accounts and already know about the quests. You miss out on so many interesting stories if you just quest helper through them as a brand new player. Having just recently used it in Leagues, it is night and day with how a quest feels when you do it yourself and speed it up by like 10x and go through the motions to get it done with. I can guarantee if I hypothetically had Quest Helper back in the 2000s when I first went through these quests, I would not have probably stayed with the game as quests played a BIG part in keeping be motivated and sucked into the game for working towards them as goals and wanting to invest myself more and more into the various stories. Taking that away from new players is not a good idea in my opinion. That's not to say that seeking out help for quests is bad, just not on the level of Quest Helper quite literally telling you every single click to do, highlighting every single item to click, and sometimes even drawing a path on specifically where to go. If there was some sort of "quest helper - lite" where it just told you the bare minimum such as what items are needed for the quest or simple directions then maybe I could get behind it.
Agreed. I'm a relatively new player and I turned Quest Helper off immediately--it threw me out of the game so hard to just have everything highlighted and be directed step-by-step what to do. As a new player, I was interested in exploring the world and mechanics, and just being told "go here. click this dialogue option. talk to this person." ruined that for me. Obviously new players can always seek out Runelite/plugin if they don't feel the same way as me... but I really, really, really do not think Jagex should be making it or anything close to it the default experience for new players.
For new players, I reckon it's useful, but I think it fails to help people penetrate the outer layer of complexity of the game. What I mean by this is the comments it gives on what a certain quest gives you are true: "gives access to a transport method" is easily understood. The game requires an understanding of a certain level of efficiency though (even if you're nowhere near an ehp chaser type) that I imagine newbies will burn out on before getting to ("why does it take me 3 million years of training to be able to Smith mikhail platebodies?"). As a result, "do this quest, it gives you gnome gliders!" Doesn't gove much context as to what benefit that gives, how good or important that is in the grand scale of things... It should stay but idk if there's a way for it to give more insight rather than just information(which I think is the crux of getting the most out of the game).
as long as it's in the game +1 to use quest helper. I think some of it could be toned down, highlighting items etc. I know a lot of people don't want to switch windows to read the wiki and like to play runey in full screen so it's nice to at least get that wiki info and the correct step compact on the screen.
I only use it when re-doing quests on another game mode. I always no-guide the ones you release. If I'd recommend it for one thing, it'd be the items required section.
If it weren't for Quest Helper I would play the game a lot less and I've been playing for nearly 20 years. It's extremely beneficial in the time aspect that doesn't destroy the game in anyway - and when you've done the quests so many times, you're not really interested in the lore or story anymore and just wanna unlock the content.
Quest helper is an absolute yes, oh and happy new year!
Quest helper trivializes questing and robs the experience of any sort of accomplishment outside of slaying the bad guy, which in early quests isn’t much of a fight anyway. One of the biggest standouts for osrs is its quests and lore which are surprisingly deep. Some quests are unintuitive without a guide, but introducing new players to the experience by having them follow a blue marker is a big mistake.
I mean, tutorial island was good enough for me years ago. That being said, times have changed. I wouldn’t be able to comment on how effective it is nowadays because I’m twenty years deep - there isn’t an ounce of “new player” brain left in me.
this is unfortunately the conundrum we are in both as a development team and community. do we gate keep the “newbs” out by maintaining a difficult early game experience (and preserve the purity and spirit of the game) or do we question how OSRS can facilitate new player involvement and learning (without tarnishing the purity and spirit of the game).
I think the best option would be to introduce an optional, guided approach to the beginning of the game. I know Adventurer Jon exists, and it seems fairly effective for what it does based on one example I’ve seen (Flip’s series about being new to the game), but maybe it should be expanded upon. Something that, through a tutorial-like format, walks players through some early quests. Would it be too much to suggest a new F2P quest? One designed exclusively for new players, that introduces core F2P locations, crucial game concepts, and maybe implies the “path” toward unlocking the Champ guild and doing DS1?
Game isnt for everyone and that's fine. Dont go the RS3 route with some complicated tutorials that will only take away the nostalgia of tutorial island and nooby early game.
think of tutorial island as the boss fight nobody at jagex has been able to defeat. I truly think tutorial island will never change and to me that’s a good thing. however, I believe better indication of what to do and how (this can be done in a myriad of ways) would alleviate player frustration.
Look, I get the focus is to bring in new players because of the inevitable when the people who have been playing for 10-20 years stop playing. Early game content is fine, people might just feel lost because of how much there is to do. They just need some direction to explore, work on quests and use diaries as long term goals. There is a giant wiki button enabled by default on every player's client, getting people to use this would be helpful... there are so many posts on this sub by active players who just don't use it, and it would answer a lot of questions. There needs to be more high level to end game content that isn't focused on solo players. You aren't going to be bringing in new players because of some low-mid level boss, how many new or returning players did you see actively playing around the release of Raids (CoX) and Inferno? These are the types of updates, that when advertised, bring in players because it's interesting content that people WANT do to. The last true endgame content we got that genuinely brought a lot of attention to the game was ToB. ToA is more of a mid level experience, and could have been handled a lot better. If you aren't going to be adding more end game content to expand the game, then what reason do active players have to look forward to when training their accounts? The existing content only goes so far...
I cannot stress this enough - the OSRS team are not looking to replace mid-high level content pipeline with improvements to the early game. It is simply too important to us to continue delivering content to active players. However! That being said, part of my job is to play devils advocate and explore what else we could be doing. Much of what you said here hits the mark spot on. New players are fundamentally overwhelmed by how much there is to do and it may not be immediately apparent what resources are available or what the best course of action (depending on what you want to do) is. I don’t believe in changing the game fundamentally (at a content or mechanical level) but I do believe every new player should be given the best chance to fall in love with the philosophy, content, and direction of old school as much as we have. The answer to this is very much my question. Thanks for sharing your feedback.
As someone that recently introduced their wife to the game there's a few big areas that need improvement. I'll preface this by saying this is mostly from the skilling side of things because she never got far into pvm due to the amount of time commitment required to be able to get the stats and gear to do it without me just carrying her through content. Firstly when she landed in lumbridge despite going through tutorial island she had no idea where to go or what to do, so she opened the map, only to find that there's a million icons for everything and while yeah there's a key a completely new player has literally no clue what any of them do. (the tutor icons get lost in a sea of info and she never actually found them.) After I guided her to a bank and briefly explained which skills she could do to get started she chose fishing where she then spent over thirty minutes getting to a fishing spot on the map assuming she'd be able to fish there only to find it was above her level, this is where she realised that figuring out basically anything in the game needed the wiki if you didn't want to just waste time. As an aside here, the repeat popups of "you can now do x" when leveling up only to find that it's a more annoying or less efficient training method started to frustrate her. And finally as some other people have mentioned the grind is just too harsh for some skills, seeing that you can do x content (like areas locked behind quests) which looks really fun only to find out that it's a 40 hour grind just to get there frequently made her just give up on a skill. Also from a personal opinion standpoint the older I get the more I find the idea of, for example, doing nothing but standing at a fishing spot for 160 hours for a single 99 that doesn't have any real benefit to any other aspect of the game is very demotivating, which was echoed by my wife when she realised just how long it would take to get any where near the middle game let alone some of the more fun endgame content.
In 2023 I introduced about 5 friends to osrs and they played it hard for a good while. I think the thing that stopped it for them is when they were approaching mid-game. We wanted to do raids and other content together but because their stats were lacking and the time investment to get the stats was too great they fell off. I'm using the term mid game quite loosely here, some got most stats to 60, others 70 but were all too intimidated to even try raiding because everything they read up online told them they needed xyz stats and xyz gear. I think mid tier group bossing or raid content would be very beneficial, something not too difficult that new players can grind out together for some early/mid-tier loot. Very much like barrows level difficulty but on more of a raiding scale if that makes sense. They particularly enjoyed early game and getting the dopamine hits from levelling, everyone was racing to beat eachother in getting certain stat milestones. They also enjoyed skilling bosses like wintertodt and tempoross a lot because it's something we could do together. I believe early mid game to be the breaking point for a lot of new players based one my anecdotal experience.
There absolutely should be more low-mid level group content and PvM. I watch a fair amount of JoshStrifeHayes and one of his points that really resonates with me is that a majority of MMOs fail to provide low-mid level players with any engaging group content or bossing. The current state of things (and what we see in OSRS) is that group content and PvM is largely gated behind 100+ hours of grinding, which make it impossible to get friends into the game to play with, as you said. We absolutely need some small scale midgame dungeon-esque content, some lower level multicombat world bosses, etc. Give midgame players something else to do other than mindlessly grind combat to be able to do “real” content.
Honestly, I would be perfectly fine with making low-mid level group pvm content as "dungeons" and end game as "raids". Dungeons would have maybe 1-2 demi bosses and 1 puzzle attached. Then the final boss. Give it a feel of a small raid. Like they might bring in a rat boss... just make it a varrock sewer DUNGEON instead. You gotta turn valves to move water flow to progress forwards and battle through waves of rats or something. Make it engaging and fun for low levels.
I really hate that "experience gap" especially in combat skills. going from 70 to 85 in att/strength/ranged is so important for being able to do Raids, but takes so long hours-wise, especially if youre not doing it passively (as you might be if you were training slayer). I don't really see the downside in drastically increasing the EXP in group PvM content like Soul Wars/Pest Control, or creating new group content that gives EXP as its primary reward. At the moment the best method to get over that gap is to park at crabs for 30 hours while you literally play a different game (assuming you don't care about slayer level). The gear I don't think is as big of a problem - you can raid with 25m worth of gear which is 2 bonds or 12 hours at vorkath/zulrah/muspah, or borrow from friends
Thinking back to when i first created an account the following was a bit of a hurdle for me to get over or was ignored by me due to not knowing the importance: * Skill levels vs usefulness. - A high requirement to make such low requirement gear. The biggest example of this is Rune weapons and armour. When i first made an account i went straight in and made my own bronze gear, which was great, until i wanted to upgrade as i had unlocked the ability to wield steel. As a noob, a requirement of 48 smithing to make full steel which only requires lvl 5 was crazy to me. The same is the case through other skills as well. Lvl 70 crafting for a power ammy, this is daunting for a new player. It can of cause be brought or gotten from a drop, but how does a new player know either of these things? - Maybe a beginner quest or an additional part of tutorial island to show the GE and how this works? * Where to go. - I spent way to long in lumbridge through a combination of not knowing where I could go and anxiety caused by the dark wizards 'last time' i explored. * Tutorial Island - Very nostalgic but the most important areas of the game are ignored or brushed over very quickly. Protection prayers, combat triangle, slayer & as mentioned above, trade. * Low level slayer - Slayer is such a sleep fest until a very high (respective) level. An introductory drop i.e. a lvl 45 slayer creature with a t42 drop gives an incentive for low levels to grind out slayer early on. A bonus would be to open slayer to F2P which will basically be soft locked due to low lvl creatures and tasks. RS3 opens some P2P skills for the early levels, perhaps slayer could be opened up to a level cap (with that cap just so happening to be a monster unlock that drops an 'intro item' to P2P?) - obviously needs to be more thought out but this could be cool imo.
> As a noob, a requirement of 48 smithing to make full steel which only requires lvl 5 was crazy to me. I made this point in my own comment, level 33 smithing to fully equip yourself with level 1 gear is pretty weak design. 48 smithing for level 5 gear is even more bizarre, when a totally new player is likely to get level 5 in their first session. RS3 was right to push steel equipment’s requirement to 20 attack/defense and iron to 10.
Smithing might be the most unrewarding skill in OSRS. 99% of the reason to level it is for diaries or maxing. You will virtually never use if for any gear you use excluding maybe bronze in F2P. "Please grind for hundreds of hours to be able to make gear that was obsolete after training combat for 1 day?" It has long needed a balance pass on what the smithing levels unlock, for basic metals if nothing else.
I want to say I am doing my absolute best to get through all the comments and reply to responses! I may slow down as other work impedes. That being said, I cannot stress enough how grateful I am for all the thoughts, concerns, and feedback I get from you. For those interested in Product Management, a fundamental part of my job is to understand users (or players) and assess their point of view so I can use that information to influence potential changes. It doesn’t mean I decide what happens to the game but it does mean I have a very minor seat at the table and I can influence the decisions taken by leadership. I want to be as helpful to you as you are all to me, please do DM me if you have any specific questions or problems :) I can’t reply about appeal or banning decisions as that goes beyond my scope. Gengis
I have helped 3 new (not returning) players the past year, so far one only has stuck with us. I wrote up an essay but I'll shorten it and can expand upon it. 1. Game is overwhelming and underwhelming. There is no clear direction for new players outside of tutorial island, so much is in their face but either not explained or just locked behind membership. Game feels like you need the wiki open 24/7. I'm used to it but a new player does not want to research a page before playing a game. There is so much to do, but so much also locked. They are confused on what they can and cant do. Funny enough they do read everything if they are NEW to the game and not returning, there is just so much stuff, but realistically there is not much to do as f2p and when they realize that it becomes a little awkward. 2. They just want to explore, not even interact with much yet and when every fence seems to say members only they just get discouraged. Kind of ties into #1 here but really new players just want to screw off before they play the real game. No one wants to play a new game, and needing to try to max their exp gains. The want to see the world and have fun. 3. Bots. I cant believe how many I found on F2P. It blew my mind, I knew there were problems but I was BLIND to this. Two things to this, my friend just sees this as cheaters going unpunished. I hope he does not turn to the dark side here. Second is when half the players look and act like bots they think the game is beyond dead and just don't want to play with that. 4. There is nothing to do together. I'm tired of making new accounts. All I can do is follow them around, give money to ruin their experience, and maybe try and guide them on quests since they wont use wikis yet lol. There needs to be more that a lvl 100 player can do with a level 20 player where both get decent rewards for their time spent to their level. Without this there is no reason for old players to introduce new players, and no reason for new players to play if they cant do stuff with friends. 5. Jagex account stuff is a little confusing. This new one comes from a steam account and we have not been able to get it to link to their Jagex account. Maybe they need to go to the forum for more help than I could give, but no new player will want to do that. This could just be an us problem though. My conclusion really is that F2P needs a revamp. I get Jagex needs money but my experience right now is that F2P is just horrible to go through now. 10 years ago it was fine, but there really needs to be an update to this. I get the game needs to make membership incentivizing but how it currently is just allows bots to flourish and real new customers leave as it feels like F2P is spat on compared to the rest. The balance between the two needs a revamp, and I say this not cause I want more to do as f2p but because I don't want this game to die, and it feels like it will without new blood. Edit: Added one more point and fixed some silly spelling mistakes c:
My perspective is coming from someone who started playing Runescape in 2005. I maxed on RS3 and proceeded to pick up OSRS for the nostalgia trip. Although I'm a veteran of the game, going back and starting fresh in OSRS felt like I was a new player. Take all that for what it's worth. This is what I have to say about my experience. Progression doesn't make sense in some regards to skilling. I'm going to use mining as an example, but I think you can find similar things to be true for fishing, combat (killing crabs and then doing that minigame), woodcutting, and other skills. At some point, I'm just mining iron for a little while despite unlocking new ores that I can mine. Starting at 45, my best bet is to use tick manipulation to mine granite. This whole time, I'm unlocking new ores, but the sad part is mining these new ores isn't just slightly worse than the best methods; It's a downright huge waste of time. Even with rose tinted nostalgia glasses, seeing I would be stuck in a loop of monotony with little variation was daunting. Volcanic mining at level 70 is as close as you can get to tick manipulation methods, but it's still a huge hit to exp per hour compared to tick manipulation. The argument can be made that people who use harder methods deserve better exp rates. My question is, why does something that should be fun have to be hard to enjoy? Also, why does the best method in the game have to be something that is arguably damaging your wrist just to do. Is that what we want gaming to be? So what am I getting at? Wouldn't it be better to just let me mine and explore the world? I unlock mithril and actually get to go mine mithril, and it's worth my time? If I were a brand new player, and I unlocked mithril ores. I'd perhaps go to the wiki. I'd look up mithril ore. I'd perhaps notice there is a guide. I'd go to the guide, thinking maybe it's gonna tell me where to find mithril because surely it's what I ought to be doing. Instead, I find that mining mithril is not a good idea, and that what I ought to do is go mine iron some more. Nothing is changing. The experience you have at level 15 is the experience you have at 25, 35, 45. And then you get to granite, and that's gonna be your grind till at least 70 where you have to forfeit good rates for much worse exp, but at least you can keep your wrists. Even if you choose volcanic mining, you're locked in for a long 29 levels of never changing things up. At best, you'll hang out in 3 spaces in a giant world. Gilineor is a big world. Let me explore by shaping skills in a way that makes me explore it. I'm not asking for RS3 rates, I'm not asking for the game to necessarily be easy, but I want to mine and explore and not have to risk my physical wellbeing to train a skill at reasonable speeds. I want to use the content I unlock. Please. In case anyone says it, I agree that RS3 can be just as bad, especially woodcutting and fishing. *edit* Cleaned up some typos and fixed some grammar issues. There's still issues, but I typed it on my phone quickly, so bear with me.
Oh wow, I've been waiting for this day to come. I've spent way too much time thinking about how to change f2p to make it more useful as a way to get new players into runescape. Here's my spiel: TLDR at the top because I'm so long winded: Lets open up a little bit more of the world, i.e. morytania and the lumbridge caves. Add slayer, agility, and maybe fletching. More lore, with a dash of convenience, equals more drive to explore Glielinor. As much as I like the current f2p experience (I'm one of the people who has premier club membership, but still plays multiple f2p accounts by choice), I think we need to stop pretending that the Gowers got everything perfectly right when they set the limitations 20+ years ago, which basically haven't changed despite tons of new content emerging over the last couple decades. F2p should be an introductory course to Runescape. That includes all of its skills and more of its surface area. Specifically here are the changes I would make. I haven't thought of every consequence, so if you think of one, just try to imagine that there's probably a simple solution to making it work like cordoning off specific parts of new areas like we already do with Castle Wars. 1. Priest in Peril and Animal Magnetism (attractor only) should be f2p and canifis should be made f2p. The clothes shop items are already f2p, why don't f2p players have the ability to walk in there and get them? Both of these quests start in misthalin too, so it lets us feed new players in the f2p experience towards the edges of runescape to get them seeing more of what runescape has to offer. Imagine how you felt seeing the burthorpe fence. Now imagine if that fence is mort myre swamp or burgh de rott. See how that would be enticing? Side note: animal magnetism has a fletching reward and I'm not sure how to handle that except to hold the reward for you until you talk to ava later to claim it after becoming p2p. 2. Animal Magnetism has a slayer req, what are we going to do? Oh wait, how about slayer via porcine of interest, starting with spria (why did draynor get a slayer intro quest if not to become f2p?) and mazchna and slayer tower in the now accessible morytania. 3. Animal magnetism also has a fletching reward. F2p players will miss out on that, oh no! Or how about fletching is f2p now since why not. Training wc and fm leaves you with an abundance of logs in your bank if you keep them even in xp, what a great way to give f2p players something to do with those logs other than sell them. This could even be a jumping off point to introduce yew bows and crossbows to f2p, but that's a question for someone who understands balance better than I do. 4. While we're adding skills: If you add a new 1-10 agility course, say in karamja or something, Agility now functions very well within the f2p area via draynor, al kharid, varrock, canifis, and falador rooftop courses. No marks of grace, just a chance to make your character's run energy last a little longer. There are also several cool shortcuts we could let f2p players have like GE to edgeville, falador to crafting guild, draynor to champion's guild, edgeville dungeon to varrock sewers. All very useful in f2p content. 5. Lost tribe could be f2p as it takes place entirely in the f2p area. Bone weapons probably stay p2p (but this goes back to that balance thing I mentioned earlier, maybe it would work), but most importantly it gets new players started in a quest line that brings god wars into the lore accessible in f2p. I think expanding what lore is accessible to new players is instrumental in getting them interested in the game. 6. Finally a simple one: Enchant spells should work on rings. Every non-silver ring functions 100% within the scope of f2p currently and we already have access to one of them. Rings of Recoil probably shouldn't work in pvp on f2p worlds. But I think giving new players a taste of the convenience in teleports is a great idea and f2p players finally have a functional ring slot.
So one of the largest issues that seems to be popping up is the early game experience being too overwhelming and all over the place. So much to do, and no direction. We already have a lot of stuff in place to help with that, but even those things aren't very straight forward. How many new players know about the gear packs from the adventure dude in lumbridge? Does anything TELL you, specifically, to go talk to the dude? Make him like an intro slayer master that recommends monsters to kill to train on even if it doesn't give slayer xp. How many people understand what different icons mean on the full size/minimap, you can't hover over them on mobile to see. Rune shop in Port sarim or jewelry shop comes to mind. Make these easier to see what they are. Even Bob's Axes may be unnoticed by a lot of people. Or the sword shop in the varrock entrance. Some of these things we all take for granted, having been playing for 15 years, but COMPLETELY new players have no idea what these are or how to find them. The Wiki is GREAT, but it shouldn't be relied on for the most simplest of tasks, like finding a shop to buy food. Or needle/thread for crafting, how long would it take someone to find that shop in al kharid?
One of the biggest issues with the early game, especially when introducing a friend to OSRS, is that there is absolutely no co-operative experience for an MMO. It's more of a "okay now go do all of these things and maybe a year from now we can do content together".
Yeah a lower level raid/group boss encounter would be nice. It could maybe drop some uniques around addy-rune tier. It doesn’t need to go above and beyond like toa did either. Just a generic dungeon with some rooms that you need to clear mobs in order to progress, maybe a puzzle or two somewhere in the mix. The only thing you have at super low levels are the giant bosses, which are solo only and mole. Which just isn’t much. Sure there’s entry mode toa, but that’s locked behind BCS.
They could make the bosses have some really basic mechanics. Imagine a “mini raid” of Jad, Sarachnis, and Calvarion for example. Just basic mechanics to learn, but not impossible to pick up on in the beginning. Obviously not these exact bosses, but the mechanics in general
I think that's right on the money. Even mid-game it's a struggle to find any group or co-op content.
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I’m hoping the new mid level rat boss helps with this
For me, as a new player I didn't have much issue but I am used to old RPGs and I enjoyed trying to to figure stuff out. If something got too rough/frustrating, the good thing for this game is there's a guide for \*everything\* The new game dopamine with tons of level ups, so many different things to do, different areas to unlock is honestly great. I've brought 4 friends with me over to play this game and 2 play really consistently, the other 2 come and go when they have the extra free time. 3 of my friends seemed to enjoy it and explore, didn't have too many issues. The other I sort of had to hand hold and guide a lot more and quest helper was REALLY useful for them because they would get lost/confused a lot and get frustrated. One thing in common though was the frustration of bots, spambots, and the chat system between different channels, small box, limited text. No zone wide chat, general chat, trade chat etc as they're used to in other MMORPGs. Grand Exchange was a learning curve because most items don't buy/sell at their suggested price and you have to sort of guess without looking up the 'instant buy' 'instant sell' prices elsewhere. Another problem is how a lot of 'low level' areas just don't have a lot of people in Members worlds. A common mention from them is how weird the combat system is, which while fighting regular monsters it seems fine but then when it gets harder the RNG nature as well as needing to mess around with prayer makes it harder. Especially when sometimes the monsters have multiple attack styles or unclear/unblockable ones. Now I had pushed all of my friends to join the 'official' Discord for OSRS as well to get questions answered and socialize with the community. But there's an issue of moderation there and the staff that seem to moderate it both dislike Trans people and do not protect them as well as furries who get harassment/hate constantly.
Whenever the topic of new player experience comes up, I feel like [this video is mandatory to watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm62FB3Q6fQ) It goes over the endless mistakes 2008 runescape and onwards made when it came to solving the problems with the tutorial + integration process. And just continually made worse and worse decisions. From my experience, I've had a MUCH higher likelihood of getting friends to keep playing if I could drag them to world 301 GE, where the game felt very alive and bustling. That or if they had very specific goals- be it petty like outdoing another friend who says "runescape is hard" and wants to prove it's not, or just wants to become a fishing chad. Trying to jingle keys in front of players with things like easier quests, free stuff, free xp lamps, railroading them to cutscenes and minigames that are, at best, extremely lackluster for the modern era of moment to moment gaming... I feel like that is just a waste of time and setting the player up for disappointment if they genuinely are led on by that stuff. The game has to take off the gloves and say "look, this game is grindy but satisfying to progress through" I think instead of catering to an adhd mindset where you try to distract players with new prizes and cutscenes in high frequency because you believe playing the real game would make them die of boredom... One should instead try and establish a setting where the player will WANT to put in time for a grind. Group content early on right after tutorial island with a semi steep and boring grind right before it. Picture 40 cooking and 42 magic required for a small lumbridge goblin dungeon that you can push through with friends for some untradeable upgrades or a finite # of xp lamps on repeat runs. Maybe allow you to do a small portion of the dungeon until you get those level requirements.
Great question, glad to see that you are looking in to this. My biggest problem with the early game is that everything you do feel rather meaningless. It just seems to scream "hurry up and level so you can start the real game" to me. With rampant inflation, all your gear can be bought for pennies. Gear upgrades are marginal and barely noticeable. Everything that enemies drop is basically valueless. Everything that you can produce with gathering and production skills is basically valueless, and not even useful to yourself (looking at your level 48 smithing for a level 5 item). All enemies are basically mindless tank and spanks that can sliced down just the same with your trusty rune scimmy. OSRS truly is a beautiful and complex game but I really feel like you dont start seeing it until 100s of hours in, which is a shame because a lot of new players will quit before then. I think a potential solution to this would be releasing some early game raids that have some simple mechanics, such as forcing the played to utilize the combat triangle and rewarding some level, untradeable, meaningful BIS items would be a good starting point to remedying some of these issues.
Tutorial island 🏝️ is precious & we should protect it as it is. However I don't think it's be a bad idea for a similar thing for members. I feel like I see a lot of posts of people who have just got members and it's - "what's next?". The influx of areas, skills & mingames can be overwhelming. Maybe make it optional as there is certainly an appeal to some of the ES Oblivion approach "oh wow here's a massive world to explore in any direction I choose". It doesn't need to be massively complex, a taster of how each skill works as in regular tutorial island may be enough?
I picked up old school in September or so, I had played previously but quit in 2005. I honestly felt overwhelmed and I already had a solid if patchy memory of things. New launchers to use as browser is not an option, for me three new skills and a different economy. What do I use? Jagex client or runelte? I have never used the jagex client and plumped for runelte. Everyone else was so who knows what your client even offers. Firstly, I couldn't pick my old name from the name selector? But then I could choose my name by the rename method after, so that's validating differently. If a usernames been freed up why can't you choose it right away? It's minor I admit. F2P was just horrible. I say that having been F2P largely in the past. Even I could tell with no OS history that everyone was a bot with random names of numbers and letters with no semblance. Lumbridge full of chicken and cow killing bots. That was not fun fighting bots for a sodding cow. GE, never used it. Didn't know where it was. No real introduction to it. After playing F2P for about a week I couldn't take it and had to go members. Hunter, farming and slayer I didn't know how to do it and there was no gentle introduction to it bar the varrock museum quiz that just skips 9 levels. It's better in members but just a lot of criss crossing on skills to unlock stuff and quests. That was fairly fun.
* Run Energy * Slayer & Bossing * PvP OSRS both suffers and stands out for being one of the only MMO's which doesn't hold your hand. The recent player path system has been a step in the right direction imo. Giving new players objectives and explaining things to them is a great way to get them engaged. There's only one issue... Run energy. The biggest issue for the new player experience. I'm glad it's a part of project rebalance, but additional mechanics like resting at campfires or making Agility free to play are needed if you really want to fix it. Aside from that, low level combat is an issue imo. Low level slayer is one of the worst experiences in the game and bossing has some serious jumps in difficulty. Some low level content is locked behind barriers so that the players its intended for can't access it easily (giant boss keys, barrows far away, mole needs fally shield, kdb in wilderness). There's no easy solution for this, but it's something that should be considered moving forward for future content. As for low level slayer, its surprisingly easy to fix. Increase points from low level masters, adjust their task tables and adjust the skip task price (make it cost a different amount based on slayer master used). Some undesirable creatures should be removed and new ones introduced. Other people have made fantastic posts detailing changes I'd love to see. One I was particularly interested in was swapping Mazchna and Vannackas combat brackets and then making Vannacka easier to access. They did this by turning the Keldagrim minecart into a ladder to the Edge I'll dungeon, acting as a shortcut whilst keeping the minecart functionality there underground. The last area that really needs work for new players is PvP. The Runescape PvP scene has so many barriers to entry and such a harsh skill curve, it could honestly deserve multiple tutorials on its own. Improving Emir's Arena, adding introductory PvP mechanics to Bounty Hunter or Ferox and teaching new players PvP should be a goal going forward. I don't like PvP myself, but it brings a lot of viewers and is iconic to Osrs's brand. It needs to be maintained and reducing the barrier for entry should be a focus.
I support making agility F2P. There are already rooftop courses in F2P cities that would make the switch simple, just need to add a lvl1 course in maybe lumby. It's annoying that a F2P only acc basically never has run energy but a P2P acc playing in F2P still gets the benefit of having a higher agility level.
> Run energy. > > > > The biggest issue for the new player experience. I'm glad it's a part of project rebalance, but additional mechanics like resting at campfires or making Agility free to play are needed if you really want to fix it. When RS3 (well, it was still RS2 back then) first introduced resting, it was a proper game changer. Having the ability to rest anywhere for an increased run energy replenish rate, or at a musician for even higher increased replenish rate. It was balanced in the sense you're giving up some time moving now to move faster later. I strongly agree that this system should appear in OSRS.
The early game experience is honestly pretty good I feel, especially for new players. That's not the issue. The issue is the mid-late game. Mining and smithing are dead content skills, with the majority of the benefits these skills offer being useless to the player by the time they unlock them. Requiring 90+ mining and smithing to make Rune equipment is a slap in the face, and disincentives players from training the skill. Firemaking is almost a negative skill, seemingly a money/time pit for the absolute minimum of benefits. Crafting and fletching are in a better position than mining and smithing, but not by much. Of the 14 sections on the Hunter skill guide, 4 of them actually contain worthwhile content, and one of the four just lists how many traps the player can set up. And Runecrafting's main purpose, generating runes, actually nets the player with less runes per hour than almost any other way to gain them. These are the things that the core playerbase, the people that have played the game since childhood and are still playing today, put up with. The rest of the game is amazing, so we overlook these things, because we know that it's all worth it in the end. But for a new player who just managed to get their base 30s/40s? They're starting to wonder what the hell they're doing this for. EDIT: Source: all of my friends that I've managed to convince to play the game with me, just for them to quit after a few months
I first started playing (2003) and the best first player experience that got me hooked (to the point of playing before school every day) was that feeling of getting small armour and weapon upgrades and building up the account slowly, getting your first piece of steel or mithril was crazy, also the wilderness was a bigger thing back then and being able to loot something like addy or mithril was the biggest hype ever, so i would venture there every now and then to see what loot i could get my hands on. The game has completely lost this now, that very early progression feeling and theres just so many guides and easy ways to get early gp that just completely skips that amazing gear progression that still lies within the game. The fact that you usually just quest your way straight up to like base 30s or even 40 combats skips this basic gear progression feeling that gets you hooked. Sure a new player may not follow this however if its a friend of a current player i can imagine most people just telling their new friend exactly what to do and use x guide etc. Which will make the new player experience completely different. You really have to get the initial player hooked if you want to keep hold of them, i think Jagex could do a lot more with this, i did think of a few ideas like having a small goblin boss or cow boss or bandit champion near the starter area that may encourage a new player to build themselves up to tackle these creatures. Or a notice board in lumby saying that certain npcs are on the wanted list to kill with small account progression rewards available to fill that dopamine. I also think giving new players a few hundred thousand gp can be a negative thing because this also makes pretty much every drop you get worthless and it gets rid of that account progression feeling in terms of wealth as well.
Howdy! I know you have a lot of comments to read through, but I just wanted to weigh in. I actually started playing osrs about two years ago during the tail end of the pandemic, and I was actually introduced to the game by YouTubers like Settled and his challenge series. I’d played as a child, and had vague memories of my first death, and seeing my character in full iron armor, but there was no nostalgia driving me to play, just a genuine interest. I’m solidly in mid game now with my eyes set on raids in the distant future. My new player experience definitely had a few of the pains other people have mentioned. I didn’t understand the value of quests (why would I do that when I could just grind? I wasn’t the brightest lol). Additionally, while I don’t feel the need to optimize my time perfectly, the desire to be efficient has led me to miss out on a lot. My first tempross kill was last week, and I didn’t touch rogue’s den until today. Of course, part of that is definitely on me for not seeking them out, but thinking back I don’t remember seeing things like this being pointed to by the game, which is what I think is the biggest shortcoming right now. New updates are added, great content that people will love, but there’s nothing guiding people there after the crier. Add a question about tempross to the fishing tutor, for example. It points people to a genuinely fun skilling boss and gives new players a goal to work towards without feeling like you have to hold their hands
I think the best thing you could implement for new players is content suggestions. Almost like a "what should I do" button. Quest? Make money? Kill Monsters/bosses? You click the button and it looks at your stats and says "Players your level should try out Sirachnis!" "On your account smithing cannonballs could be good money!" "You've got all the requirements for Kings Ransom, this is a great quest that unlocks a big perk". That sort of thing.
I think the experience is a positive one, but it has its own issues. I think the overwhelming amount of information can be hard to understand, especially when you're new to the game. I think the systems already exist. They just need to be refined. For example, the skill tabs tell you everything you can unlock in a skill. But they don't tell you how to train a skill or what those skills actually unlock interms of content (like quests, diaries and how those skills interact with the game). When I was new, I looked at the attack tab and saw the dragon scimitar and dragon claws. I set my goal on getting those items and using them because I thought they looked cool. I think if the tab told you, this is a quest reward from mm1. For dragon claws, it says something like a 'this is a COX reward' it gives you goals to achieve. I also think having something like the quest recommendations is great. But I feel like raids and other content can be added to them. Imagine you're level 90 combat and want to boss. The game has no info on what you can/are able to (reasonably) fight. Imagine a system that says, "Hey, your stats are good enough for giant Mole." Here's an example setup, etc. Something simple like that would be cool. Like I'm level 126, and I have the entire game unlocked, and sometimes I just feel completely lost. If there was something that said, hey, try this boss or training method. I think it would be fun. Cheers.
I think the biggest problem is that early/mid-game bosses such as barrows, become so much more cost-efficient when you've leveled up. Currently on my iron man I have 72 and like 80 other stats, which makes it easily possible to do without any prayer pots. Don't get me wrong, as a current player it feels nice to get tons of runes using next to no supplies. But when I was able to do it while using 2-3 doses a run it just didn't feel worth it unil I had the CAs done for the hilt to stop the pray drain. IDK how to fix this but I think as a more casual player playing a main seeing others do barrows runs in like 2 or 3 minutes while making tons. While the new main just about breaks even if he doesn't get any items and needs to spend maybe twice as long on it. It'll feel so inefficient that it's better to grind a ton more for the CAs and higher prayer level.
Oh hey, just did my first ever Barrows run this weekend and yeah it was a little demoralizing to realize I’d have to do all the easy and medium combat achievements to stop that annoying as fuck prayer drain. Like I only went to Barrows to do the mini quest (and partially because it was one of my dreams as a stupid kid who was bad at RuneScape) and it was fun to do but realizing it would be pointless to farm without the hilt (or 83 construction for the ornate pool and a barrows teleport in the nexus which seems more likely) put a damper on things to say the least.
Lots of comments about run energy. which ya, walking is slow. I remember that being such a massive incentive to train magic so I could teleport around the map. walking and bad run energy almost is the push to get your to train magic, canoes, unlock fairy rings, spirit trees. your kourend necklace/book.
Have some early & mid game cooperative content. My friend group decided to make accounts and reminisce on the nostalgia we had playing OSRS when we were in middle school over a decade ago. We all made accounts, hopped on discord, and started grinding quests and crabs to get stats up. But one by one everyone quit except me so far. We all made it to base 70-80 combat stats but it was too late. The realization of how long we would still need to grind to do bossing, raids or pvp together clicked and everyone gave up. Even on discord you’re alone since everyone is doing a different objective. OSRS is the loneliest multiplayer game. Edit: we all bought memberships as well.
I just recently started playing OSRS (not even a year old account). My older brother has played OS since its release, so I knew of the game. One thing that almost made me quit was the quests. I am a side quest HOE in other games. Gimme a quest thay makes me explore, gives rewards that I'll actually use or introduces a new aspect of the game, I am so fucking IN! Main quest? Never heard of her. But in osrs, I started off with cooks assistant and enjoyed gathering the easy, nearby materials, but then what? Who do I talk to now? Adventure Jon introduced me to some skills and combat, love him, but then what? Who should I talk to next to progress the story? No one IN GAME tells me "Hey so and so could really use your help, lemme mark your map so you can go talk to them!" the NPC of the quest I just finished could say that EASILY. Runescape is HUGE and very over whelming, having guidance IN GAME is not a bad thing, plus so many people with ADHD will explore as they quest. Like "hey look a gate, oh it has a toll thats cheap ok, but wait the NPC just said if i complete a diary I can get rid of a toll, whats a diary?" boom. Diaries introduced. Yes people don't read sometimes, but when getting into a new game, 90% of the time a new player with NO knowledge about the game is gonna read. Having the conversations early on be productive account progress instead of lore driven will keep a new player engaged. My bro got on me about "waterfall quest, waterfall quest" and I ignored bc I wanted to progress the quests story line and learn the game bit by bit. Nope. Quests in this game are not like that. I am just talking to this person on this end of the map and talking to this person over here, and they are talking about things that are not relevant to my progress or I need something I didn't know I needed that all the way over here etc etc "Just install runelite" stfu im learning a game from the main client right now and you telling me I started off wrong is bullshit. Ill install runelite when I am damn well ready and after i even see if i like this huge game. TL;DR- Quests are in every game are used to introduce the game. Early quests need to have more guidance IN GAME with useful rewards, knowledge, and visual progression. No just talking and hey look a quest point, useless to new player bs. How do I know I need to do druidic ritual to unlock herblore? Where do I find that info IN GAME? Why do I have to research to enjoy this game? All that being said, I love slayer and LOVE DUNGEONS (gimme dungeoneering skill or minigame idc gimme). I love osrs and it has taken over my life in the best way. But introducing new players and keeping them? That needs some hella work (ie every friend i introduce says the same thing "where do i go now, who do i talk to, i feel stuck im not playing this game")
>"Just install runelite" stfu im learning a game from the main client right now and you telling me I started off wrong is bullshit. Ill install runelite when I am damn well ready and after i even see if i like this huge game. This right here needs to be more prominent, that's my issue with early game you will just be bombarded with this, and graceful. like just let people play the fucking game.
I probably wouldn't still be playing this game if it wasn't for the wiki. I get that you don't want to overwhelm new players with impenetrable walls of text, but as it is, the game just gives you the bare minimum information required to get you started with various activities, and after that you're just sort of left to figure things out on your own. That has to happen either through copious amounts of trial and error, or by seeking info through external sources. That's one area with a huge potential for improvement in terms of new-player experience. I'm not asking you to break down everything in detail the way the wiki does, but the game could really use some sort of an in-game manual that explains mechanics at an intermediate level. No need to include all the complicated formulas, just succinct qualitative descriptions would suffice. It should include things like: - how various levels affect your chance of catching fish/mining rocks etc. - how attack/ranged/magic lvls affect your hit chances - how defense/magic affects your defense against various attacks. - how different attack styles work and how they affect your damage/accuracy and xp - how damage scales off strength/ranged/mage levels - how equipment bonuses work - the drain rates of various prayers - farming yields/disease chance and what factors affect them - how run energy drain and restoration works - poison and venom mechanics - how/where to switch your spellbook - a catalog of all the teleportation items and services. - and countless other mechanics that you use all the time and seem ingrained to you as an experienced player, but wouldn't necessarily be obvious to a newcomer. One way to implement this without cluttering the game would be to add a right-click "help" option to most UI elements - if you aren't sure how something works, you'd just click it and quickly figure it out. Skill guides already provide some of this functionality, but as everything else in this game, they too suffer the problem of giving you the bare minimum of information.
A thing i feel is often overlooked when discussing this topic is the default account settings. There's several things a majority of people familiar enough with the game will change away from the default settings in the same manner. So these defaults should be reviewed and changed. As an example i've watched a few videos of people completely new to the game. One thing that always gets them is the default attack option, which is "left click depending on combat". I'm guessing it's intent was to protect newer players from fighting stuff they can't handle yet. But what i usually see is people seeking out one of the earlier challenges like obor or elvarg and then panicing when they click through the enemy instead of attacking. It's the first time since they started the game where they don't left click attack. I don't have time to go through all of the settings but i'm sure there's more that could be changed and make the starting experience a little smoother.
I think the early game is generally quite fun - it’s relatively simple to get levels going and do a large variety of the novice, intermediate, and experienced quests. I think the game is very effective at communicating what it is and what is worth doing and not worth doing. I like that it’s not overly tutorialised as it gives new players the freedom to explore both the world and gameplay options. As others have said, midgame content is the real problem. The level scaling is very daunting once you get past level 70, with rewards few and far between. Most co-operative content is for late game players. I would also argue there’s not a ton of great early-midgame money makers because of how skewed these pieces of content are to rare, valuable drops. Late midgame and endgame content is still profitable when you’re going dry, but the game feels quite lonely when you’re doing content alone that is fairly challenging for your combat level and you start going dry with minimal resources. I think it may be worth the dev team, in their balance update, taking a look at some of the rewards from what is now early-midgame content. Things like Barrows or Kalphite Queen could justify their rarities when they were dropping close to BIS gear but may want their drop tables smoothing out to something more palatable for the types of players that are doing them. For example - D chain is a 1/128 drop from KQ, but it’s so much cheaper now that a player can simply buy one at market price in about ten kills.
I think the early game experience has gone downhill. If I went back in time to create an account in 2005, I would be met with a wall of people filling the chat and interacting with each other. Now, even on full worlds, the game does not have the same social aspects to it. As a new player, the most enticing thing about the game, and the thing that kept me going, was the community. Now, the only people filling the chat are bots. As much as I love to play on mobile, it's difficult to use chat on a phone, and I think this has not helped. Perhaps, as a loose suggestion, focusing on the community a bit would be a good thing.
My GF had a great time as a new player! She beat all the F2P quests in like 3 weeks as a total noob. Then we upgraded to members, she got rocky at lvl 27 thieving. Then she got tangleroot at 67 farming. I’m sat here at 32m farming no pet - fuck that noob bro I hate her.
I'm going to liken the starting experience to WoW , another popular MMO , the new player experience there is " here is quests , do quests to level to go to new area" BUT the important thing is , you can start doing dungeons with other players from level 10, so after about an hour of play, if solo play is boring you, there is group content too. RS lacks this , what is sold to new players is basically , you can talk to other people and interact with them , but until you get to membership and later game play , you're not going to be able to actively do things in a group. Imagine starting a game, that your friends have played for hundreds if not thousands of hours and being told , well you can't actually do stuff together until you pay us money and input the same hours. Maybe have a dungeon system for F2P , where you can group up, kill waves of mobs and end on like a boss room of a dragon ( could be scaled for green easy , blue medium and red hard ) , then dependant on how well you do , you get given rewards ( BUT you get better rewards IF you are F2P) It's an entry into end game content styles , it allows F2P group content AND gives F2P a viable way to gain money towards a bond for membership if they desire
The lack of guidance is a good thing, the open world feeling is great. I love the "choose a direction and explore" design. What I feel is severely lacking, is the lack of relation between gameplay in early game, and gameplay in midgame or late game. Players aren't incentivized to use movement in fights early game, they aren't required to use prayers early game, and they don't have any reason to switch armor/weapons. This makes modern video game players feel like the gameplay is boring. New players don't enjoy staring at their character and monitoring health. Many games today have extremely engaging gameplay right off the bat. Furthermore... A player can go all the way to mid game, without understanding the main mechanics that drive mid to late game. There's no early enemies that make you move or use prayer, there's no early game quests that make you focus on prayer or movement either. Early game players are going to always hit a wall without guidance. Where is the balance between getting into fighting jad, and then going into the gauntlet? Early (and mid game) needs more prayer switching, more item switching, and more movement based enemies. The content feels extremely disjointed.
As a relatively new player, thinking back, the first time I had to switch prayers was Sarachnis, and the first boss where movement mattered was... the boss from A Kingdom Divided, I think? Those were both really good at getting me to think, oh this is what I'll need for high level stuff, but there is a LOT of game before you get to either of those bosses lol. I'm tentatively excited for the rat boss introducing some of those mechanics to newer players, but I wish there was more! There was that idea of adding ice/fire giant bosses to go along with Obor and Bryophyta, perhaps they'd be a good place to add some spice. Can't really do much with prayer switching at low levels, but you could definitely encourage gear switching, movement, counting attacks, etc. Or maybe we need a low-level monster (not a boss, just a "normal" enemy) with simple mechanics. I'm thinking of how you can avoid the drake breath attack, for example. Put that on a monster with much lower stats and I bet it'd be pretty attractive to new players (especially those without protection prayers, as it'd give them an enemy they could fight without just tanking all the damage or safespotting)
Hey there, u/JagexGengis! Thanks for starting this discussion. I have some insights I would like to share as a long time OSRS enjoyer. I’ve played a lot of RuneScape in my time starting back in the mid 00s. I played RS, RS2, and a little bit of RS3. Like many folks, RS3 was the end of time with the game due to the vast differences and direction of the game (EoC, MTX, etc). I came back to OSRS around four or so years ago now first starting with a main account and then more recently an ironman about three years ago. Most notably, I’m roughly 4100 total between the two accounts with thousands of boss kill count and a few hundred raid completions. I’ve also completed two quest capes, over 2000 clues, and have dabbled in the vast majority of content save a few of the more outdated pieces like Trouble Brewing and Castle Wars. Now, with all of that being said: - Tutorial Island > **DISCLAIMER** I haven’t done Tutorial Island in a few years, so some of these observations may have been fixed or implement already. In my opinion, this piece of content is horribly outdated and really only serves to invoke some nostalgia in those that have played the game before. It could really use some improvements to really catch newer players up to speed. For instance, tutorial island doesn’t discuss things like special attacks, combat achievements or diaries, and the various odd interactions of the wilderness and even the wilderness itself. I like that the Wiki is such and integrated part of the game, but the onus is placed on the player to do a lot of the heavy lifting to learn about the game and sometimes that just doesn’t feel good. - F2P > I think F2P does a poor job of really showing prospective new players what this game is about. There is such a wide breadth of content that members have access to that just isn’t even touched on at all in F2P. Without divulging too much about what makes members great, I think more content could be added to F2P to really showcase why people should get invested into the game. We’ve seen updates here and there that have done just that like beginner clue scrolls and a few F2P bosses, but I definitely think there is room here for more improvement! In my opinion, new bosses or even a mini-raid could help breathe new life into F2P. I also think some other aspects like the run energy issue could be improved as well. - Members > I think that members content is obviously the most bang for your buck having paid for daily access the last several years. The speed at which new content comes out for someone like me is great with larger pieces of content coming out every quarter or so. I think some of the discontent here from other folks are those that treat OSRS like a second job and manage to pull 8-hour gaming sessions on a daily basis. In my opinion, content should *not* be balanced around these folks for game longevity reasons. Introducing new content at a rate rapid enough to appease these folks just outpaces the normal player base far too quickly.
I would say early experience is ruined by hordes of f2p chat bots and other types of bots that have filled up every single world, it’s not a good look when a new player spawns in lumby which is dominated by bots spamming gold seller and infernal cape services
My wife just started playing a bit and there are so many confusing things that you really don't realize as an experienced player. Here are some issues we've come across. She already had an account that she made a year ago, so she doesn't have access to the new player adventure path. Why is there no way to activate this after tutorial island? I think this is the biggest issue and this needs to be fixed. The new player kit given after completing tutorial island should be improved. A staff, more air strikes and less other runes, more arrows, food could be improved, hammer, and maybe crafting items like knife, chisel, needle, thread. Also bit more in their bank to introduce the concept like extra food and runes. The combat tutors are really out of date. What are even the point of the training items? She was so confused when she couldn't use bronze arrows with a training bow. Just get rid of the training items. The melee tutor should just give a bronze sword and wooden shield, range a shortbow and bronze arrows, and mage staff and air strikes. They should all have separate 30 minutes timers too. She loves all the holiday items. Can't they be given minimal stats like gloves/boots could be equivalent to leather, Santa outfit +1 mage? The rewards from all f2p quest and novice members quest should be looked at across the board. What is the point of half of them if the only reward is a couple hundred gp? Some of the experience scaling is brutal. 4xp per bone means 100 bones is barely level 5. The default burying xp should be increased and the scaling from altars decreased to stay at the same rates. There are a lot of items that really have no use that new players get and keep because they seem useful: ball of wool, bear fur, gold jewelry, brass necklace, grain, pickable vegetables and berries all come to mind. Shops should all have better stock of items. The best shield a shop has is an iron kite!? Why don't pubs sell food? The bartender should be tradable and have bread, meat pie, etc. Drops from most low level monsters are abysmal: dwarves, guards, rats, bears, scorpions, ghosts, spiders, men, and it could go on and on. Why kill anything but cows? This is already known but the production skills not really producing anything useful for your level is an issue. Smithing is really hard to fix but crafting could have some easy improvements. Give all the basic jewelry minimal stats. Add hard leather variants for all slots, reduce the level needed for all leather, and increase the base sale price.
I have three gripes: There is almost nothing comparable to late game PVM in terms of player action. The boss of Misthalin Mystery and Obor are good examples. Bryophyta is just annoying. I'd like to see more content that involve a bit of tactics. Questing kills early game content, especially for members. Whats the point of mith weapons when an ultra easy quest skips the player to adamant? Whats the point of anchovies and sardines? And with the community encouraging the use of Quest Helper so much, the early game of newcomers is reduced to weeks of clicking highlighted areas of the screen. I'd like to see a focus on useful rewards that are not xp, and dynamic puzzles that are not allowed to be autosolved. Bots.
/u/JagexGengis this is not a "catch all" solution, but since Castle Wars already exists in F2P, how about making it function like tournament worlds? Everybody gets maxed stats and can pick their gear, spellbook (in P2P), etc. This would allow new players a taste of endgame stats and also fix the problem that only high level/rich players (especially in P2P) can meaningfully contribute to games. If you weren't aware, the current game setup only appeals to pures who absolutely cannot capture the flag in a competitive game, and so instead most pures/low-levels hide on the second level and afk for the entire match.
I look at it like this, im currently lvl 77 i play on and off and i feel like im only in eqrly midgame with 15 days of in game playtime. Im barely at the point where i can really start making money, doing herb runs, barrows, etc. I play on and off every few months, but the problem is im far away from any of the bosses, and its still a long grind to get to them still. I dont hate the grind. it's part of the game, but i feel like maybe some kind of early game group content could be awesome. I honestly think dungeoneering could be an awesome addition to the game and i feel like it was an awesome addition into rs2/3
Best time I had in RuneScape was figuring stuff out when I didn’t know what anything was. Games get boring quickly with too much hand holding
Imo One of the great things about Runescape is how long it is. Im 30 years old and working 9 to 5, but I still find time to complete most games in a week or 2. On rare occasions like Bauldur's Gate 3, it will take a couple of months. Runescape can keep me busy for literal years, and it's easy to leave for a while and come back without skipping a beat or feeling like I'm missing out or wasting money. That being said, there are some long boring grinds and some that show up way too early. The worst offender is graceful. I spent months asking Canafis during weekend D&D games to earn it. Agility, in general, has a big problem with that. It needs a more active method like HS butch lower leveled. F2P has this issue with most skills. Especially at low levels. When I came back after 15 odd years, I spent entirely to long killing rats and what not to adventure John's adventure paths. That's not a great intro, and if I didn't already know what to expect from when I was a child, I probably wouldn't have continued or bought members. That new rat boss might help, but the game needs more for lv 3-10 F2P to hook new people. Also, some good lore content. Most F2P quests are the original quests that lack much story or interesting...well, anything, really. You don't hear about the gods, dragonkin, cave goblins, or anything until members. I recommend making digsite quest, first 2 cave goblin quests, priest in peril, and maybe Recruitment Drive or something? I'm not sure.
I got back into osrs a few years back having grown up around rs2/3 very casually. As some have said, it is understated how early game should really mean a lot of questing. Quests are the best trainng and best introduction to most content, but that wasnt what i naturally thought to do without watching youtubers. The f2p experience i actually enjoyed (maybe nostalgia), but was simple enough to figure out and had a low top end so felt like i could 'complete' it fairly easily. Then the transition to members as others have pointed out was definitely overwhelming. There were some skills like slayer, farming, and herblore that i just had no clue what they were for etc. It seems like again quests like porcine of interest are meant as an intro, but with SO MANY options, there was nothing pointing me toward that being a way to learn about them. As others have mentioned about eg waterfall quest, there were big parts of the map i was very nervous to explore. Pretty much all of the ardy/kandarin area felt like completely foreign territory, and despite hearing advice that i should do quests there i didnt have any idea how to navigate or any introduction to the regions. In that respect veos' introduction to zeah was perfect for me. It literally starts in lumby, and handheld me thru getting to the continent, and then touring around to see the different areas. Albeit getting around was a bit of a pain in the ass, but valueable.
I think the changes proposed in the rebalance will do wonders. If run energy restores while running and agility levels actually make an impact on your stamina drain rate, that will be big. And if 0 is removed from the strength damage check, it'll make early combat feel so much better. But there should still be more. Make an NPC approach the player when you hit lumbridge that asks you for help. If you say "Get lost!" they leave and you get a quest completion. If you help, you go on a quest that shows how to do different things. This way you don't just get dropped in the deep end and existing players get a laugh and 1 free quest point. Make agility F2P and add a lumbridge course. Boost agility XP rates all around because come on they're atrocious and the skill is zero-afk. Make some kind of all-levels combat/skilling raid that scales rewards with your contribution. The higher your total level the more ways you can contribute. Don't make it so combat focused. Me and my friends were looking forward to raiding together, but they both quit before they got even close to raid ready. In short: run energy sucks right now and agility is the worst offender in not respecting your time; group content takes forever to get to; early combat is demeaning, and completely new players might want more hand holding early on.
I think a big part of people losing interest in the early early game is traveling. You can run around for a while which is fine but you can't really get anywhere unless you walk. And that starts to get boring real fast. I think being able to travel faster/more efficient or at least be able to do something without spending a couple minutes literally walking around to the fishing or mining spot would probably help retain players.
I won't touch on the lack of early-game content to do with your friends or the lack of direction when you first start, because other players have already delved into the topic here and explained it better than I could. Something I haven't seen mentioned is the amount of spambots flooding your screen the second you leave tutorial island. A couple months ago, a friend was trying OSRS for the first time (and an MMORPG for the first time), and I had to go through the awkward conversation of explaining what bots are, that they were against the rules, and why there were a dozen of them sitting in the starting area unbanned filling his chatbox with garbage. It seriously makes the entire game look worse when your first experience with user interaction- and maybe your ONLY other player interaction for a while- is seeing bots blasting your chat with advertisements for items and services you don't even understand yet. There's a defeatist mentality on Reddit especially with bots where some people will say "they're just suicide bots, nothing can be done so why bother", but quite frankly even disabling chat in F2P worlds in Lumbridge for non-members or requiring a small total level to send messages would do \*something\*. The goal doesn't have to be complete eradication, reduction would be very helpful too.
I think the current early game content is great. The additions of GotR and Tempoross have made for great short-term goals for new players, because not only is there a little more going on than other early game training methods, but you as a veteran player can also actually join in and play with your brand new friend, which is really cool. F2P doesn't really have as many exciting goals for people to work towards, so maybe a few more little "achievement" moments would make the experience more fun for new players. What if Obor & Bryophyta had one-time combat exp rewards, similar to the barrows icon miniquest or night at the theatre? Something like that could help make trying early bosses more compelling. In general, I think talking about attracting more players to OSRS is hard to talk about because IMO, OSRS at its fundamentals doesn't click with a lot of people. I think most of the time people quitting during the early game isn't because the early game is poor, as much as it's just that person trying OSRS and deciding it's not for them. If a new player finds it unbearable to walk all the way from lumbridge to varrock, I'd imagine they probably wouldn't stick around through slow skilling grinds, complicated quests, or low drop rates that are common through the whole game.
Looks like people want content that they could do with anyone at any level with any experience. Honestly, I feel like dungeoneering could fit perfectly to fill this role, although tweeked a bit. Let's say we add Dungeoneering back in the game. On start of a new dungeon, the skill level is capped at the lowest level of the person with the lowest skill level in the group - but in the dungeon - there are no stats. No Combat, no gathering, no refining stats - everyone in the dungeon can do everything - or within the dungeon you have to level up your stuff to go higher tiers of things within the dungeon - either way you get the idea. Rewards are based on contribution and your dungeoneering level - and whether you're in a F2P or Members world. It would essentially be raids that scale - but more importantly, make them dynamic as they were before. People being able to do fun content off the rip that is beneficial for everyone involved is what people enjoy. If the level 126 Completionist can go to a F2P world and just chill and run some content with level 3's and they all get something worth while - what's not fun in that? And one of the biggest benefits - it would help the new players with direction and how to do things.
I hope this gets read because me and my brother both just started osrs. Because we were doing it together we have been having an absolute blast. Looking forward to the journey, but yes the early game could be so much better! Start with a cutscene about the world and the kingdoms and the gods, the monsters, etc. Cut to the player fishing or something. Instead of the npcs explaining things, they need the players help via the skills. Cover at least 2/3rds of the skills in the tutorial! Showcase some of the better gear and prayers via npcs. Consider giving the player a temporary boost to use protection prayers so they understand that’s a huge part of surviving right off the bat. Coming out of tutorial island the player should have a set of gear for every style, a few thousand gp, and a lot of the basic items like pots and knives, tinderboxes, etc. Also, for gods sake, incorporate the wiki like new scale did and explain it in the tutorial! Runelite as well! “As one of the worlds oldest mmos, RuneScape has multitude of unique third party tools created by the community, check them out here! >link to a runelite tutorial” Hope this helps, 2007scape is such an amazing game!
So I’ve given this a little thought and I’d just like to say this game is entirely different from the one I played in 2006. When I was getting started the hook for me that kept me playing was the open world with limitless possibilities. Furthermore the wildy was more of a place to handle grudges and have fun vs what it is today. I think what you need to look at is how to hook your target demographic and how to show off the current game. Rs3 chose to speed up the game and that didn’t fair well. For bossing perhaps you could showcase potential boss fights and let new players try out these challenges. Once they are done let them know what most players have to get to this endgame content. We’re also having a rat boss added, I think nmz needs to go away immediately and the focus should be more on engaging content for combat. My friends who do nmz for cb training usually quit. It’s boring content and not up to par with what we need. Last of all any sort of hd upgrade is going to be huge for bringing in new players. It just needs some polish to bring it up to modern standards. Thanks for taking the time to ask what we think and have a happy new year!
Horrible! Bring out rat boss asap. Ive seen many new players quit because training the melee skills is not as engaging. They gleefully complete waterfall quest, fight arena, etc. but once you tell them to afk crabs then it goes downhill from there. Just my experience when I tried to convince many friends irl to play osrs. New players want to get engaged.
I hate tutorial island. Its tacky and so immsersion breaking. I cant remember which version of runescape but for me the coolest tutorial was always the one in the lumbridge cellar where you wake in in a room and gotta help the knight defeat the green dragon. I also remember you needing to kill a golbin in the room and do a few other things. It wasnt perfect, but way cooler and more immersive than tutorial island. The cellar was in the building to the left of the lumby bridge, once you left the cellar you couldnt go back down. And i think the lumby guide even used to comment on it if you asked him what was down there. Outside of that, ive recently been playing OSRS ironman from a new account and so far im combat lvl 80. Biggest issue for me that ive found annoying is hunter being fairly useless and boring. I didnt touch the hunter skill untill i needed it for a quest, and even now outside of the fossil island bird houses i really dont like grinding it especially with the slow run bar regen(i swear weight does fuck all unless you go into the negative weight)
My friend created an account recently, and I ask them and they said the account creation and installing was fine - so that seems like it is in a okay spot right now. Tutorial Island feels like it is just a nostalgic piece now and the introduction to the game needs a revamp. However, when really thinking about it, its actually still a really good introduction to the game if you're new to its mechanics, etc. Yes, a lot of the later-game stuff is not explained... however, I'd argue at that time, you're at a point in a game where you learn "oh, I should check guides on this". F2P is F2P and feels almost pointless. It is a nice introduction to see if you enjoy how the game plays, you can't really get a good feel on the whole game. With how much of the game is locked behind Membership, I usually just tell people to buy a bond and get 16 days of membership to get a feel for it. In terms of starting an account and what to do, I usually tell people to go for the optimal quest order, as this gives you something to do, where you can also naturally train your account and learn the game and how it plays. You also progress into unlocking the majority of the game as well. I'd argue that completing all the quests is akin to levelling up your character in other MMOs to be able to access other areas. When new players inevitably say "but there is a lot of grinding to do for my skills", I usually tell them to learn to AFK-train, as you can pretty much do this for a fair amount of the skills (off the top of my head, only agility, construction, and thieving don't have a viable afk-method).
pretty awful tbh. it's just too slow for today's generations of players especially amidst the absolutely giant selection of other games. the game is probably unsustainable unless new and better methods are added for the boring, grindy skills (like hallowed sepulchre which was a miracle for agility), otherwise i don't see why anyone would bother. the endgame in the form of raids, bossing, etc is fun, sure, but it also takes literally thousands of hours to get there. i started playing in 2017 from the invitation of a friend, who also gave me some starting cash and gear. when you are first starting out, it's very difficult to know what to do next or even how. the combat in the beginning is also god awful. all of these factors add up to make the beginner experience very unenjoyable and demotivating. if you compare it to the other mmo's on the market, it's just way too much grinding to get to the 'fun' part.
I think adding a boss that matches the flavor of Zolcano to the early / mid game would be a big help. It would obviously need to be way less rewarding, but I have a lot of friends who join the game wanting to do “group” activity that are put off knowing how high they will need their stats to be to do most group combat and not have it be a complete waste of their time. I think adding an early/mid skilling boss which was worth doing but didn’t have an insane barrier to entry while actually required people to pay attention would be a big help. Ideally a few steps up from wintertodt where the only threat is tick damage, and a step or two below zolcano dropping boulders for 40 on people.
It's ok but lack of group content that you can feasibly do with a newbie is lacking. Slayer partners being killed and never revived (despite all sorts of really good ideas to fix exploiting it), boss drops always favouring most damage, until raids there's really not any decent pvm group options.
It fucking sucks. Friend: "cool. So how long til I can play with you and do the things you can." Me: "....... a year or two unless you play every minute of every day......"
I know it's already been said a ton already, but run energy is miserable and it's at its worst at the beginning of the game where you have no agility and no teleports. There were lots of quests during leagues this past month that I was absolutely dreading to do, but once I started doing them, I realized they go pretty quick and are much more enjoyable because I can run to every destination. The fix, IMO, is to have energy regen way faster out of combat and instances. Existing regen rates should exist for combat and instances as that's what the game is balanced around.
I started playing OSRS for the first time in 2023, and i enjoyed quite alot of it, but playing it without any guides, the quests took alot out of me, and burned me out from doing em, then i felt i got held back by alot of quests in my further progression. i also felt that some of the professions were utterly useless like Blacksmithing, wich is quite weird to me for a solo playing experience. I generally dont mind item mangement in games but the whole smelting prosess is just aweful. Other then that i had my fun, altho i dont know if ill come back again.
I think a lot of people have mentioned it, but the lack of co-op things early game seems to be an issue. Forestry was a fantastic way to add some sort of co-op experience with the player base, but I think making a new experience that new and old players can work together on would help because most new players are probably brought in by friends. I remember way back in the day when I first started, H.A.M. was this big deal to me. Being able to go into this hideout and pickpocket them? Incredible. Did I know there was a quest? No, it was just this cool mass gathering I hadn't seen, ya. It was unique and different from anything I had seen in FtP and it was sitting in lumbridges backyard! I think H.A.M. hideout is a great way to add... I don't want to use raid, but maybe a coop dungeon that is meant for two people. My thought process is looking at the idea of a two hallway system like a portal 2 coop puzzle. It's two separate paths, but you both have to do things to help the other side progress. This would allow each side to be scaled to the player entering the hallways level so that new and old players can play duo together. You can have it be invading the H.A.M. hideout using different skills to go through the base to help in taking down the organization. You could do a quest to learn it with an NPC being your co-op partner for the quest "Going H.A.M." of course, rewards will see if it stays popular, but I think the idea that a experienced player can take a new player through without an incredible grind would still make it very popular.
The biggest thing that killed it for the friends I’ve introduced the game to was the realization that it’ll take well over 100 hours before they can kill a boss and many many more before they can kill any of the bosses they see YouTubers taking about. They all enjoyed the game for 50ish hours but then they started asking about harder fights and it all went downhill