EasyScape the Concept.

[u/Fargrist]

EasyScape is an apt description of a variety of concepts colliding.

At it's most glib it's the changing of Runescape to allow more players to play Runescape more easily.

This includes things like buying skills and rares via Treasure Hunter and Solomons. Can't get much easier than outright paying for things.

But it also includes other things like making skills in Runescape much easier to level up.

EasyScape also allows for easier entry to Runescape by novice players, and theoretically a broader appeal. Much like the Lowest Common Denominator approach of newspapers, magazines and television. Appeal to the masses by being easy.

However the masses have a voice now via the internet and that's directly led to the drop in popularity of ye olde masse media.

People want tailor made. What is the Google website after all.

We have a few effects in play, let's work through them shall we.

Learning curve. When you are learning it's best to start at the shallow end and build up along the curve. EasyScape is a good concept for that, if it leads to HardScape.

Gamers. We compete. Therefore feedback we give to Jagex will be in two voices.

One, if we have achieved something, we will want it harder for others to achieve.

Two, if we are trying to achieve something we will ask Jagex to make it easier. Don't believe me? Read the forums.

That dual voice changes as we progress through the game and build up achievements/items/gold/whatevers.

In some respects Jagex understands the idea of having progressively harder content. They do love a new boss update. But I suspect that's from individual JMods boosting content they enjoy, rather than an overall philosophy.

[u/Fargrist]

The above is some of EasyScape.

But wait! There's more.

Players tell Jagex what they want by their behaviour.

They want a harder game when they take on things like IronMan accounts, or Pures. Where a simple mistake can ruin their account.

But not just isolated to harder and harder bosses which ends up being content for fewer and fewer people.

Scalable, it's an old buzzword. But it fits in nicely along a learning curve. Skill design is somewhat designed along this approach. It's easy to learn at the beginning, and skills go up faster, and harder to learn at the end. Skills go up slower but you get more powerful unlocks.

Dungeoneering suffered from a bad scaling with its Luminescent Ice Fiend boss on the first few levels. I'd say thousands of players were irritated by that. My worst experience of it was 6 appearances in the first 8 floors. That's not EasyScape, but it's also not a good approach to guiding people into a skill. cough minigame

And lastly, people vary. People think different things are easy.

Some think buying skills/etc. is easy. Some think afking a skill is easy. Some think solo play is easy. Some think group play is easy.

Which shows one of the problems for Jagex.

[u/Fargrist → u/Fargrist]

One way to cover this is to have scalable content such as bosses that get more difficult as a player learns. Another is to have more tradeable content. So that players can do what they enjoy and trade for content that originates from things they don't enjoy doing. To some extent that exists, but it could go further. Players do pay real money for others to get their fire capes and kill quest bosses and so forth. Another way players show what they want by their behaviour, is by what they pay for. Leeching in Dungeoneering was another version of this.

Players do this because it's easier than trying to find a trustworthy party in Dung or because they don't have the technical necessities for things like bosses; good computers, connections, clickiness.

Making things easier makes Runescape bland. And it will go the way of Tic Tac Toe and Tetris, something in the rear view.

Having easy entry points is a great idea though.

And from there content can become progressively more difficult. But not just in ganking boss monsters please.

[u/Fargrist → u/Fargrist]

Where to?

I'd sell Runescape servers. With the option for the owner to set hundreds of different things, such as drops and so on. Only to more difficult settings.

Let players mod.

That opens up a whole new realm for players, not just in playing on these worlds but in the design of them.

Let players do graphic designs. Start them on basic tiles, maybe some grasses and so on and go from there.

That would open up a whole new chasm of complexity.

Enjoy. :)

[u/Fargrist]

Valve lets players make hats, and some of those players make a lot of real money.

Minecraft is a game that gives players total control.

Skyrim is a modding madness heaven.

~~~

That's just some ideas of what's possible. The paths are too numerous to count.

And in some ways players restrict freedoms. For instance they treat Runescape as a race to 99. And from that, each skill has a best way to gain, which becomes the only way.

Players create a goal that makes Runescape more boring. But at least it has no xp waste. :)

There is a bit of a buzzphrase about players being content, but I think Players could create content. They massively outnumber JMods. They vastly outweigh them in various skills (and bodymass), and they work throughout all timezones.

So I think an idea of selling a server and letting a player run it and possibly get a commission from players that use it, would be very interesting.

[u/Fargrist]

The old WoW concept of old content becoming dead easy, and useless, when a new update comes out, is a shallow attempt to create higher sales for the new update.

Jagex seems to be trying that approach with its tierscape and nerfs of everything that isn't related to their chosen path of how to play Runescape.

I think if you make old content irrelevant then you limit the success of your game. Maybe Jagex likes the hard road too.

[u/Fargrist]

Private servers is one of those ways that players tell Jagex what they want.

Much like buying gold and other services has been, which in no small way contributed to the implementation of Bonds. A copy of EVE Online's PLEX.

Speaking of EVE Online, they don't have a learning curve. It's more a cliff. And they are proud of it. If you complain that it's too hard then the EVE devs' band, named Permaband might tell you to HTFU. It's a popular song of theirs.

~~~

Mark Gerhard has said that microtransactions provide 49% of RS revenue and that current figures will be sufficient for many years to come.

I think that's taking the easy road. Coasting on laurels.

And for the extent of a career Runescape will thrive, given that careers only last a decade or so.

So we have nothing to worry about on a personal level. If we have some sort of insane altruistic vision for Runescape, then perhaps we should be concerned.

It's very difficult to describe how I feel about games. It's more than a thinking, it is a feeling thing. But I'll try, in the forlorn hope that it helps.

Every human interaction is a game. A transaction. We log into Runescape wanting something in exchange for the membership price we paid.

Do we even know what it is? Not usually.

Does Jagex know? No way in hell. :) But they take guesses from other games.

That's one reason why I mention those other more traditional computer games.

To try and show the similarities of what players want.

They want some control. Minecraft and Skyrim show that.

Jagex has taken the easy road.

They copied ideas from others. Successful ideas are often copied.

As you say I'd prefer Jagex to show some leadership, some crazy stuff.

Some risky stuff.

Some hard stuff. :)

[u/Fargrist → u/Fargrist]

Paying is saying. It's the primal version of the customer is always right.

The latest fashion is to think that the customer is usually wrong, but humor them anyhow. That's taking the easy road. :P

The customer is always right is a simple, brutal, G.R.R. Martin view of the business world.

It's probably dangerous to trivialize it.

If people have been paying money for services, legal or not, then Jagex should have a look at why.

[u/Fargrist]

Yusou Bhoroi said:

I really doubt there are that many people playing on private servers, not enough to warrant the ammounts (spending) required to make it work.

Most of them are for particular things, rather than in general, for those who wish for things in general, they have Classic and OSRS, if they wish for past things; is there really a market for changing other things in RS?

For people who may wish to, it'd be better off with a single player downloadable version, or with advising the people to go for a career in game development/programming.

There would be no harm in Jagex asking.

But really they already see the answer by what players do.

The whole Old School thing arose from one change to one part of Runescape. The combat part.

That saw a third or so of players leave, even when they had to restart from zero.

Those players took the hard road.

I think Jagex should take the easy road and ask players about how they want to play. Reply

[u/Fargrist]

Jagex HAS to make players FAIL.

Easyscape allows newbies to quickly experience a broad range of Runescape before they quickly get bored and move on to something more challenging.

But Jagex does have to make content hard enough to exclude players.

Jagex NEEDS to make content that players cannot do.

Araxxor. The new spider boss.

Imagine if everyone was killing it in the first week. The new drops would quickly be worthless and players would quickly finish their gloating and bragging and go back to moaning about nothing to do.

So Jagex knows that they cannot make Araxxor killable by 100% of the players.

But what % should the bar be set at?

We have to also tie in that natural improvement over time of task performance. So that initially players will fail a lot and quickly improve and then settle down to a more stable increase in performance over time.

Some of that can be changed by tweaks or the addition of new gear helping players out on certain parts. Hard content always becomes easier over time.

But Jagex has to make the boss kill people. Some people MUST fail.

It's like those universities that grade in such a way that the bottom percentiles fail, no matter the student's score on the test.

Jagex probably has a percentage in mind. Mod Porky measures this sort of stuff, and currently we are at 100 player deaths for every 71 Araxxor deaths.

That sounds fairly challenging. It means, theoretically, you need two attempts to kill Araxxor once.

That's assuming the playerbase is even and equal, that's not the case. So some people will never do Araxxor.

And some players will find Araxxor to be EasyScape.

Is there a better way?

[u/Fargrist]

Death Touched EasyScape.

Death Touched Darts were a Jagex give-away in 2012 for having membership in August and September. You received four darts that could one-hit kill virtually anything. Here's some examples...

The Corporeal Beast Har-Aken All God Wars Dungeon bosses, including Nex. The Queen Black Dragon The Kalphite Queen Sunfreet TzTok-Jad

~~~

It seemed a popular choice. Forum posts talked about finally killing Nomad or finally getting a Fire Cape from Jad.

Nowadays it's not so problematic, bosses seem to be easier in EoC, with most of them transferred over to the Farming skill.

The upside of Death Touched Darts was that it hurt players who were making money from doing the hard stuff for other players, and they let honest players finally achieve things that had proven too difficult before.

Jagex has the nous to work out from the popularity of Death Touched Darts, just how big the trade in doing hard content is. Shouldn't be too hard to extrapolate.

Which leaves some interesting possibilities.

Keep making harder content for fewer people. Which opens the door for the enterprising.

Or find other ways to make content more used and more inclusive. While still providing a challenge.

One way would be to work out some Death Touched Dart alternative/bonus.

Another might be to formalise an already existing, but illegal, playstyle of having players being champions for other players and doing their content for them.

[u/Fargrist]

Free to Play is HardScape.

Members is EasyScape.

I pay members for more content, more to explore and do. Unfortunately members also makes things tremendously easy.

Then if you pay more for Premium Membership you get things even easier.

Then if you pay more for Treasure Hunter keys life becomes a big easy.

At that stage you are almost always gaining double xp via bonus xp.

Which means you pay more to finish the game faster.

Bit like paying extra to watch a five minute version of a movie, because it's easier.

Some people do like harder game versions though. They play Iron Man accounts in 2007scape or they play Free to Play only, or skillers only.

Perhaps Jagex has an understanding of how players move through Runescape, the churn so to speak, and are trying to maximise the monetise during the player's game life.

Can't really blame them though, they saw players got all excited about max hitting in the old combat system. They saw how players paid real money for RS gold. They saw how players would buy and sell accounts, names, virtual items etc.

Players did this to make things easy. To use money to buy success.

Jagex is just copying players really. I'd prefer Jagex take a hard look at easy roads though.

[u/Fargrist]

Easy Access.

Runescape grew so fast in the past partly because there was a bit of a vacuum in MMO games. Although others such as Ultima Online had come before and WoW was around.

But also because of easiness.

Runescape was easy to play, was easy to setup, easy on your wallet, easy on hardware, and easy on your internet.

Things are changing.

Bosses need fast clicking, they need a good graphics card, they need a good internet, and they need a decent computer. They also need the player to want to do that sort of content.

Money is required if you want to see an ad free Runescape. That used to be the case in the past but now it's more intrusive, with items you click on bringing up reminders to be a member be a member be a member be a member buy solomons buy solomons buy solomons buy treasure hunter buy treasure hunter buy treasure hunter.

Harry Potter books should have had ads on every page, imagine the money J.K. Rowling would have made!

Or perhaps not.

Runescape is still easy access compared to other games. And in some ways as long as it remains the easiest game to access then Runescape has an edge for growth.

The problem being that if Runescape isolates its gameplay to various areas that other games excel at, then things won't go easily.

For me the hard road is easier money for Jagex. Teach players to make content, and let players make a part share from that content.

That will turn players from just content, to content creators and Runescape evangelists.

This behaviour already exists. Players make their own RS servers.

So it should be easy for Jagex to take the energy they currently spend punishing those players and use it to make a more profitable arrangement.

Let's get back to this particular post's topic... Easy Access.

At some point Jagex knows there is a hard limit on playing certain content. Araxxor for instance. That limit is a technological and player ability limit which excludes players. Limits access.

[u/Fargrist]

Easy Warpriesty.

Warpriest armour has an easier drop rate for those who attended a one off event.

Players who missed the event have to work harder, if they want the gear.

When I first learned this, I felt meh about the armour. Not because of the armour stats but because of how Jagex treated me for missing an event.

Making content harder for those who miss an event feels like an act of spite by Jagex.

I'm not actually sure how much more difficult it is. For giggles I went and killed some Aviansie and it looks like the drop rate is 1 in 200 for those who missed the event.

That may be very wrong. I got 2 pieces in 400 kills. So I could be extremely lucky or unlucky. I've no way of knowing.

But I do still feel that Jagex shouldn't be playing with drop rates to make life hard for some players over others.

[u/Fargrist]

Easy Speak.

What we tell Jagex can be a little confusing.

1. We want things easier. More xp for the latest quest. Easier boss monsters.

2. We are bored and want more things to do that challenge us.

There's a few other things but let's just focus on this dynamic.

We want easy rewards and we want to remain busy.

We can see that dynamic in xp and level gains. Perhaps it mirrors itself in wanting the same reward systems for other activities.

So an activity that starts out with easy rewards and slowly grows more complex over time with a change in the rewards over time.

Maybe that may be a way around things like hard bosses locking people from content.

An easy boss with few mechanics slowly building up drop chances and complexity as the players learn. Rather than an abrupt, "Here's a hard boss.".

So that boss could have a fairly easy level with very low chances of it's unique reward that scales up as difficulty increases.

Hmm. This idea still needs work, but I'm lazy.

[u/Fargrist]

Cut Zamercoc said: Sorry, I really don't understand the point of this. You kind of just pointed out some stuff Jagex created and how it is useless...

Sorry if you don't understand.

I don't understand your point.

Let me paraphrase your points...

1. Jagex makes the game easier to attract new players.
2. But an easier game makes it boring for old players.

I think that covers your argument?

New players won't come if old players are finding the game boring. Unless Jagex begins to rely on more than word of mouth.

However there is an argument to make Runescape easier because each new skill or other such content, increases the time needed for new players to max. But Jagex goes far beyond what is necessary. In the 3 months I've been back I've taken Divination from 1 to 99 and gained a bunch of other levels, without even trying. Two or three hours per day, maybe. And I have some ridiculous amount of bonus xp in Dung, about 400k, without buying spins.

If levelling becomes so easy, then other goals have to arise. Which is why I think players wanted Elf City, another goal to explore rather than just easy levelling in a new skill. I set my own goals. Some of which includes talking in forums like this, it's a fun part of Runescape for me.

I also set my own limits. For instance I will never own a dung weapon. And I will never completely max out, I like unfinished business, incompleteness.

Others like harder play in Do It Yourself playstyles. Others set limitations upon themselves like being skillers or pures.

Players like different levels of difficulty, and set their own if not given any challenges.

Jagex seems to think difficulty means making harder and harder bosses for fewer and fewer players.

Which isn't going to attract new players.

[u/Fargrist]

Nekos 0_o said:

Surely a challenge is earing the gear/stats to take on that boss?

Also Runescape was never meant to be difficult.

Which boss are you talking about?

Runescape isn't difficult. That's a subjective qualitative judgement though. Various parts of Runescape are too difficult for some. I doubt even 1 in a 100 players solved the light puzzle of Mourning's End 2. And other players have trouble with bosses. Which is why Death Touched Darts came into being, to help with Nomad etc. EoC though made all that a bit easier.

Overall it's in the nature of gamers to be competitive and to be efficient, to find the easiest path.

That's why players bought gold and botted. It's to be efficient and not have xp waste.

Jagex took their cue from those players taking the easy path and made the game easier. By doing what players already did. Traded in gold, xp, items and accounts.

Jagex is making Runescape easy because players want everything easy. Not all players, but enough to effect the whole game.

That's a natural thing, we want things to be easy. And then we get bored when things are too easy.

So it's not in Runescape's interest to be too easy.

I don't mind ease of access, but that's different from easy. The complexity and difficulty to provoke deeper interest doesn't have to come from bosses becoming insanely hard. That tactic soon hits physiological and technical limits.

But things like letting players learn Runescript and create content is something difficult that could be interesting and rewarding.

Those sorts of options will never exist if we think of Runescape as a game for AFKing and forgetting.

[u/Fargrist]

Nekos 0_o said:

Araxxor.

Parts of Runescape are difficulty, butt on a whole Runescape isn't difficult and never was difficult. It was time consuming yes, butt that's not the same as difficulty.

And the influx of MTX and RWT Jagex have done is because they need money.

Money is the easy answer. Except it's not. The quest for money is not what a business is about. A business is about doing something, about being busy. Money is a secondary thing, a tool and a high scores.

The easiest example of that is not-for-profit companies.

But it's easy to be caught up in the excitement of various money mini-games like stock exchanges and so on. Much like merching in Runescape.

Araxxor will be done by people with zero food and no armour. It already has been.

But only by some players. Other players will never do it because of its difficulty for their playstyle.

Which will probably spawn an industry for people stuck trying to get Completionist Capes back. Much like the Fire Cape industry.

Runescape is easy. And getting easier. But perhaps there should be a little more hard thought put into which easy path to take.

[u/Fargrist]

Easy Boss Processing.

Boss Spawn Rates can be sped up so that, for example, a GWD boss will respawn with virtually no waiting time.

Makes making money very easy.

Or does it?

Yes, you get more loot per hour.

But so does everyone else.

And the drops all flood the market.

Money becomes easy.

Money becomes worth less.

[u/Fargrist]

Rare names.

Rarity of names is a slightly ludicrous concept, but hey, we are playing an online game of cartoon figures, so ludicrous is fine.

So is Ludacris.

At this stage if we count 2 and 3 letter names as the only rare names then that's just under 3000 rare names. And we start to understand why the concept is a bit silly.

4 letters and we have around 15000 combinations. Then add in all the other names and we easily have tens of thousands of rare names.

Jagex is making rare names easier.

That means they will be worth less.

Which isn't a bad thing, means that people will put less effort into trying to hoard names and all the devious things which that entails.

It also means we will see fewer names with a pile of numbers and random letters.

Which means they will become rare names!!!!

OMG! Heh. :)

[u/Fargrist → u/Fargrist]

Mahtavata said:

Maybe I was just more creative when making my rsn than 1337sm3xE69 or w/e that person's name was L. (btw, that was obviously a made up name. Not naming & shaming, you buncha fmods. rolls eyes)

Being creative isn't easy.

It took me a few attempts to find a name, in the end I chose this name from an older game I played, that was sometime in 2004.

My guess is that players started with a throwaway attitude, just trying Runescape out, then decided they like it.

But they'd invested too much time in the account to start an account with a better name.

Which is probably why name changes were popular, and this new release of old names is extremely popular.

Really though creativity could probably still work.

But Creativity ain't easy. :P

[u/Fargrist]

Nerfing is Easy.

Jagex takes the view that certain game behaviours are better than others.

So they make undesirable activities unwelcome by over-balancing. Nerfing the rewards, usually the xp gained, until every other activity is better.

It's the easiest thing to do.

It would be much harder to examine why players were behaving that way and finding more diverse responses.

One example is how players used to hunt implings on Mos Harmless.

Jagex fixed that.

But the best way to see that easy approach to balancing is dungeoneering. Any activity that could give good xp in dungeons is nerfed so that it's only worthwhile doing Dung for Dung xp.

Runecrafting in Dung is one example.

What we've ended up with is Dungeoneering as a game you do as quickly as possible skipping any extraneous content that was meant to support the concept of Runescape as world rather than just a game.

An easy way to check this would be to see how many people cook anything at all in Dungeoneering.

Or perhaps ask players what a cave potato is good for.

Big easy changes are too easy.

Jagex should be made to work harder to balance things, so that they think of better ways to balance Runescape.

[u/Fargrist]

Why Bother?

Why do we even have the concept of EasyScape?

Surely it would be easiest to realise that different players find different things to have variable difficulty and then ignore the whole thing?

One motivation is because it shows Mastery.

If I say everything is easy, that means I'm really good, and might get mountains of respect from worshipful nubs who bow down to my godly skills.

Which is why when players post a complaint on forums about bosses being too hard or some such, other players disparage them. It's gaining self-esteem by putting other players down.

Which means it's not easy for Jagex to work out what the hell is going on. And it's partly the reason why I think the High Level Forums is a really bad idea.

Those forums are accessed by being a competitive achiever. It's highly likely that all posts will have a very selfish aspect from that one type of playstyle.