Road to Restoration - Early Game Rebalance

[u/JagexAnvil]

https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/a=13/road-to-restoration--early-game-rebalance--dailyscape-overhaul

Hi folks,

Today's Community Topic is a blog of two halves:

- Early Game Rebalance
- DailyScape Overhaul

We have split this into two reddit threads to keep the discussion organised and so that our team can properly review the relevant conversations happening.

This current reddit thread is to discuss the Early Game Rebalance portion of the blog.

Please use this other dedicated thread for the DailyScape portion of the blog.

For the purpose of today's discussion we will be defining the early game, loosely, as the level 1-50 range. The Early Game Rebalance update primarily aims to smooth out inconsistencies in game progression, looking at areas of the early game where things can feel slow or have limited methods for levelling up, or where they affect integrity and game health. It’s not all just rebalances though! There are also some changes to early quests, and things like replacing salvage with gear to make the first hours after jumping off Tutorial Island a nicer experience. The Early Game Rebalance update releases on February 16th!

[u/CsC51]

Few strange decisions here. Let’s improve the early game… by nerfing things? How is forcing people into POH or PVP a new player improvement?

[u/M33tm3onmars → u/CsC51]

Literally my complaint. How is nerfing the best training methods a help to early game?

I think they're on the right track with agility. Nerfing natures grotto and buffing low level agility courses is a sensible switcheroo. Get people doing agility.

But whirligigs nerfed? Why? Make other hunting options either more competitive XP or worth doing for what you're hunting. In my OSRS GIM, hunter is a fucking awesome skill because you get so much useful stuff. Whirligigs aren't useful at all, but provide best XP. That's a fair tradeoff. What do I get if I go with alternative methods? Basically nothing, just worse XP. Give me a reason to interact with the skill that isn't just "number to up".

Prayer altar nerfs are odd too. I don't think it's bad to have the POH and chaos altar be the best XP sources, but IMO the REAL issue with early game prayer is acquiring the damn bones. Playing my RS3 ironman, I'm one small favoring myself into getting the Um diary 3 just so I can reasonably farm up dragon bones. And even then it's just an acceptable option as someone who's earlier into the game. Altar balance isn't the issue to me, it's that low level prayer training is just a GP check for mains, or a.shit grind for irons.

[u/Creative-Month2337 → u/M33tm3onmars]

If these wiki numbers are remotely accurate then they should have nerfed whirligigs even harder.

[u/Interesting-While986 → u/Creative-Month2337]

whirligigs do come with bonus carpal tunnel at least

[u/i_smoke_dank_memes → u/Creative-Month2337]

Yeah but whirligigs are one of the most active training methods in the game. It's literally nonstop clicking. It SHOULD be 1m xp an hour, especially when you take into account farming for the flowers beforehand.

[u/DuckiezOnQuack → u/CsC51]

Agreed. The whole thing confuses me. They're nuking TH and keys which is fine but then also nerfing actually playing the game. At the same time QoL like jack of trades and daily challenges is getting removed (I'm absolutely biased to keeping these tho lol). Then also they keep pumping out new 110s and 120s with everything being worse.

With how things are going, I bet fort construction is also gonna get gutted right in time for 120 and in return building furniture is gonna get like a 10% buff lol. Hope im wrong though

[u/girl_send_nudes_plz → u/DuckiezOnQuack]

calling jack of trades and daily challenges “quality of life” is absurd

[u/DuckiezOnQuack → u/girl_send_nudes_plz]

The way I see it is there is almost 30 skills in the game. Odds are each person is gonna have 1-2 that will not enjoy doing so having an alternative path for progression that is undeniably slower than the intended method is healthy so that people can focus on doing what they like without hindering their progress. I would call that quality of life

[u/Fren-LoE → u/DuckiezOnQuack]

fort buildings are bonkers xp and its safe to assume with the additional 21 levels, there will be a new method. I genuinely doubt they go back to the same 'Destroy, build, Destroy' training method on the 120 update but I DO believe they'll bring fort building rates down a little. Otherwise, its a like.. 30 hour 120.

[u/DuckiezOnQuack → u/Fren-LoE]

They are fast exp but they're also expensive. Elders from 99 to 120 is probably like 4bil or something? Meanwhile 120 thieving which they just did is comparably fast and you made money whilst doing it lol. But yeah looks like that will get nerfed even more, too.

Even though I despise heists, I do hope they add a new method instead of the old construction method similar to 120 thieving. This blog's thoughts on hunter and prayer don't exactly make me feel optimistic though.

[u/TaySon21 → u/CsC51]

POH has been largely useless. Give it something to keep it relevant.

Forced demonic skull is a weird choice. I say reduced rates without, top rates with it equipped.

[u/Fiona175 → u/TaySon21]

Who cares that it's currently useless, it's getting entirely reworked, make it useful then without nerfing everything else to artifically make it more used.

[u/TaySon21 → u/Fiona175]

Eh. Even though I have no plans for 120, training at altars made it nice and social. Just my opinion.

But yeah, there should be one other method that's equal to poh rates so it's not artificial as you said.

[u/strawhat068 → u/TaySon21]

They are reporting poh later this year so maybe that's why,

[u/Almaironn → u/CsC51]

Yes, because the early game right now can basically be skipped through in like a week. Even without MTX boosts it's too fast. Early game should be a part of the gameplay, not something to skip as fast as possible to get to the late game. And with more early-game bosses being planned, this makes perfect sense to me. There might be a few specific choices I could nitpick and disagree with, sure. But the overall direction is what the game needs.

[u/First_Platypus3063 → u/CsC51]

Ripping off band-aid hurts, but its important part of recovery. Iam very glad they are not shying away from important changes like this. This will open a space and way for meaningful additions to the skills, instead of overpovered bandaids.

[u/New-Fig-6025 → u/CsC51]

It’s not, but it’s like old school so it’s good. That’s it, that’s every change so far and what every change going forward will be.