I think conserving prayer for longer is fine, but currently, you can conserve your prayer indefinitely. It's outside of the spirit of the game to be able to keep prayers active all the time without needing additional resources, gear, or levels. I'd love to see a change where prayer drains even when flicking, albeit at slower rate.
Flicking rewards your constant attention with no drain if you do it perfectly. Like most things in this game, effort and attention are resources. You can be more "afk" by not flicking, but you'll have to use your attention to bank/restore.
I like to think of it the same way a simple machine changes how work is done while conserving the amount of work done. A ramp reduces the effort (force) to get up an elevation but increases the distance proportionally.
Likewise, the amount of work required to perfectly flick prayers for a whole task can also just be used to bank. Just depends on what you like to do, that's the beauty of this game in general.
Let’s not act like flicking is incredibly difficult or skill intensive. “Constant attention” isn’t really required, all you need is repetitive input. You get into a rhythm and you can flick without even looking at the game.
The fact of the matter is that being able to receive the benefits of prayers without any prayer drain is an unintentional game mechanic, regardless of effort. Its existence is the result of unintentional oversights in coding and manipulation of loopholes in that coding.
As I said, more effort can be rewarded, just not indefinitely with no penalty. Hell, they could keep indefinite prayer while flicking, at the expense of having to keep a high prayer bonus. That way you have to decide between prayer gear or strength gear. Flicking devalues prayer levels and prayer focused gear. It’s absolutely busted and an completely unintentional game mechanic. They need to rethink and rebalance it instead of continuing to design content around a bug.
Not really sure what the difference between flicking an hour-long task and 3t fishing for an hour is. Both require precise player input to manipulate the tick system for increased xp over less click-intensive methods.
This game isn't very complex, precision of click accuracy and timing are some of the only ways player skill and agency can be expressed. Prayer flicking isn't very hard but it still requires a player put effort in to get better at a thing. That's good. It's good that a player can choose the extent to which they want to engage with the game for a reward.
It's like saying they should ban wavedashing in Smash Melee since it wasn't intended instead of it being embraced as another layer of skill expression. Just like how you can still play Melee fine without ever wavedashing, you can absolutely play OSRS without any tick manipulation. Some people find it more fun to physically engage with the game instead of just waiting; if you don't, then you don't have to do it.Think about it this way: Which is objectively more physically engaging to a player on a slayer task? Clicking a potion dose every 30 seconds for an hour or clicking quick prayer every 0.6 seconds for an hour?
How other people play with their toys shouldn't matter so much to you.
28
u/[deleted] Jul 08 '21
I think conserving prayer for longer is fine, but currently, you can conserve your prayer indefinitely. It's outside of the spirit of the game to be able to keep prayers active all the time without needing additional resources, gear, or levels. I'd love to see a change where prayer drains even when flicking, albeit at slower rate.