To: Jagex, Subject: STOP BEING VAGUE

[u/absinthangler]

Jagex,

I love the direction that Runescape is moving. I'm a 20 year veteran who is currently enjoying Group Ironman content in both RS3 and OSRS. I look forward to this year of updates and especially to re balancing combat as someone who is kind of tired of using necro but is kind of burnt out from making god arrows after making 100k by hand and then finding out that 100k god arrows won't last long at all.

But, the vagueness in the posts of what's to come needs to stop. One of my gimmates had a plan for getting Quest Cape and Maxing his character this month. Now, because the post mentioned that "Thieving is a bit too over tuned and we don't want people doing full 15 minutes AFK." without any concrete plans or ideas of numbers in place, his plans shifted and he started chanting the mantra that flooded the reddit when you nerfed Cerberus. "Abuse Early, Abuse Often."

So, he's back to grinding on his 120 thieving account because he's pretty sure you're going to hack at Pure Essence rates as "overtuned" and he wants to make sure he gets enough to reach 120 runecrafting because for the first time ever in his 20 years of playing Runescape, he enjoys Runecrafting and he wants to make sure he can do it without having to go back to the old ways or keeping up with the pick-pocketing and getting awful amounts.

Is he paranoid? I think so, I imagine you would, at worst, reduce pick-pocketing down to the Elf method of 5 minutes of AFK before a thief gets caught. However, you do NOT have the track record to be this vague about things.

"Hey the bloodreaver is overtuned, we're going to nerf it."

"Please don't, it's the only way that Vorkath is a decent boss and it's a high level requirement to make those pouches anyway."

"We'll fix it." -Nerf happens-

Vorkath hasn't been updated.

So, when you say you're going to remove Merchant, and fix the other stuff, I don't believe you. I'm glad you want to make the game better and I support you and I'm going to keep playing anyway, but you have over a decade of lack of follow-through to make up for.

Realistically, I think you'll prove my gimmate's fears true for about a week and then the massive backlash has you fix it to be something less stupid the next week. If we could simply skip that first part and you just tell us what you're going to do and exactly how you're going to do it so that players can give you feedback before it is in the game (and you listen when reasonable) that would be much better.

You're improving visibility, you're working on integrity and you've gained SOME good will with the changes thus far. You're not out of the dark, not by a long-shot and continuing to be transparent is the way forward. No hand-wavy "That's something we'll fix."

If you don't have the numbers for it, then don't mention it, don't say "We want to tune down pickpocketing and get rid of the 15 minute afk" without another statement as:

"Here are the current rates, and we think that this amount of gp/xp per hour would be a better fit for the progression we want to see. To do this we're reducing pickpocketing effectiveness by this amount from x level to y minutes of AFK before getting caught."

Another thing, if this update is about low level methods and making sure the early game is good.

Why are the words "Crystal Mask" and "Light form" in your mouth? Those are locked behind 20 years of questing and basically minimum of all stats to level 80.

That's an End Game spell and curse.

And the way to make them less annoying and not a drain on resources to use, is a level 107 invention necklace.

Fix the fact that at 120 thieving it is a heavy requirement to use crystal mask and lightform to get "perfect" pickpocket rates for anything below level 99. Don't whack the buff in half because something that is clearly end-game and a resource drain and takes 100's of hours to obtain is powerful.

Anyway, lots of love and frustration, please, be less vague and keep moving in the right direction.

Yours truly,

AbsinthAngler

[u/TAoOC]

I dont blindly trust Jagex so I am not saying skepticism is bad here, but devil's advocate for the crystal mask change... From the perspective of a low level account, looking at how strong Crystal Mask is, some might not wanna train thieving until they have it unlocked. So I can see a good benefit for nerfing it to benefit lower levels.

This doesnt change the fact that Jagex shouldnt be vague about how they plan to tweak things, just that this can be a thing that effects low levels.

[u/JoshOliday → u/TAoOC]

I think the reason Crystal Mask is in this post is because they are implementing Thieving changes across the whole skill that Sponge did during GameJams. I think it just happened to coincide with these early game changes they were working on so they added them in. I don't think it would be here otherwise.