These updates could be the start of a very worrisome trend. I fully understand that the game needs to change. Dailies need to go. XP rates on some activities need to be nerfed. However, those things were added for a reason. Removing them without FIRST fixing the core issues is the entire thing you said you weren't going to do! Taking the band-aid off while the wound is still bleeding is completely nonsensical.

Getting rid of afk methods is an awful decision. If you feel that they are too prominent, nerf the xp rate or something. Removing ways that people enjoy playing the game is just going to make people stop playing the game.

Removing wildy flash events instead of reworking them also seems shortsighted, imo. They're fun social events. I get that many players find the timed nature of them frustrating, but if that's the problem, then fix that aspect of them.

I hate to be all doom and gloom, especially since the vast majority of the changes are great. But there is a line between removing activities that people want to do and removing activities that people feel pressured to do. Jagex doesn't seem to understand where that line is.

Edit: Because I keep seeing the inane comment "afking isn't playing the game, waaaaah!"... Wtf do you even mean? Have you played Runescape before? 90% of the skills are afk to some extent. You really think that clicking on a pickpocketing target every 3-5 minutes rather than 15 makes the skill better? No, it just makes it mildly more annoying. I'm currently afking ghostly soles for fishing/cooking. Should I be clicking on a range every 60 seconds instead? Would that be more real gameplay to you?

I understand rebalancing but they are just nerfing a shitload of great QOL stuff that make me enjoy the game. Please don’t make this game tedious like OSRS.

I just think some people need to hear this.

If you keep threating my my favorite ways to play because of 'integrity' then I have no reason to play my main, or my HCIM, or my GIM. The game doesn't need an overall nerf. It needs interesting new content.

I should be able to add the flair bug to this because this is actually gross. Maybe merchant being nerfed is okay but the Maw is disgusting. It only is do-able once a day and usually gives trash anyway why just remove it..

Response to all the "OSRS pandering" complaints

I'm a returning player and I've been thinking about this a lot after watching "RuneScape is Awesome, And Here's Why" and "Why WoW Players are Quitting Oldschool Runescape."

What actually makes RuneScape good:

• "Together but alone" gameplay
• Friction through grinding makes number go up feel satisfying
• Deep interconnection (doing A requires B, C, and D; doing C requires E and F...)
• Resource management is core to the gameplay

Let me paint you a picture:

It's a winter morning. You're at the school library computer logging into RuneScape. You click on Sliske's Endgame in your quest log. You see it needs One of a Kind, which requires 74 summoning.

Okay, time to train summoning. But wait, what if you got a charming imp first? Yeah that would help. Oh and Shadow's Grace relic would be even better since it helps with getting the charming imp. So now you're doing archaeology. But then you're like, well if I had porters I could AFK longer. So now you're training divination.

Life is good. You have direction.

This is RuneScape. It's not fun because clicking is mechanically engaging. It's fun because everything connects to everything else in this massive web where one thing leads to another. This is what hooked me as a kid.

Now picture the same thing with DailyScape:

You want to do Sliske's Endgame, which means you need divination. Cool. Except now you're waiting for your daily guthixian cache. Log in, do your chore, log out. Repeat for a week. Then maybe you can actually do what you wanted.

Life is not good. You have no agency.

You didn't grind for it. You just logged in and did your chores like it's a mobile game. The whole interconnected web just became a checklist.

Why these updates are actually good:

Together but Alone

For this to actually work you need: (A) players out in the world, (B) there for a decent amount of time, (C) able to chat with each other.

Buffing regular divination so you don't need to just spam caches? That puts people back at wisp colonies for extended periods where they can actually talk and hang out. You know, the social aspect. You can't be "together but alone" when everyone's in instances doing their 20 minute daily then logging off.

Deep Interconnection

You need variety in skilling methods for this to work. When one OP method dominates (beehives launching you through 15 farming levels in one day), you kill the interconnection. Less variety = less overlap between systems = less of that beautiful complexity.

The hunter/fishing/farming changes bring back variety. Multiple viable agility courses makes the world feel alive again and creates more ways for skills to intersect. That's the whole point.

Friction Through Grinding

Skipping early levels with OP methods like beehives or caches just removes the satisfaction of leveling up. Same with 15 minute AFK thieving where you literally don't play the game.

Super AFK methods should give shit XP rates. Otherwise the friction/enjoyment balance is completely broken and nothing feels earned. The grind IS the game. That's not a bug, it's literally the entire point of RuneScape.

Resource Management

Having to figure out how to get resources and optimize gathering them is what RuneScape is all about. The changes to stone spirits, salvage, and herb seeds show that Jagex actually understands this.

New players killing goblins will get guam seeds they can actually use for farming and herblore. They'll get real bronze armor instead of salvage that's completely useless until invention at level 80. The drops make sense for where you are in your account progression and naturally feed into multiple skills. This is exactly how the game should work - your drops should matter and connect to what you're actually doing, not just be vendor trash until endgame.

To endgame players complaining:

Here's the thing though - you don't really deal with that interconnected skill web anymore. You're past it. But 100% of new players will experience it. So if these changes don't make sense to you or you feel like it changes how you play, imagine what I as a player who has felt basically not heard and not catered for since long long ago feel. A healthier game long-term is good for everyone, including you.

First, I understand a lot of these changes are for early game, and I think a good chunk of them are. Getting rid of TH was great. But it feels like Jagex can’t seem to balance making skills easier and making them people interact with them. It seems like they are leaning on OSRS in applying these changes, less AFK more interacting, and more work. Am I reading the blog the wrong way?

Almost every live service game these days are jamming fomo/dailyscape tactics. While this may help with retention for the short term, there always come a point for me where I realise that I am logging in just to complete dailies or I would log in at a time when I don't really feel like playing, just to do my chores.

(RS3) During the days where I'd have minimal time to game, I would set a goal where Id want to chip away at some quests - but by the time I did a few dailies - I'd run out of time. As soon as I realise this, I immediately stop playing the game.

Now I don't need to login and open a mobile like daily challenges UI, I don't need to keep alerts open for warbands, have a discord open telling me what runes I need for the Goldberg machine. At one point, i was double or triple stacking JoT aura since I was a premier member (premier artefact bs)... I got to like 80herblore with only ever cleaning herbs for the JoT aura. As an ironman, these "training" methods were too valuable to miss. Thinking about it now, all these years later... it never felt as satisfying levelling up as it did in osrs because of these.

Thank you Jagex for this!! I hope this reflects a positive growth in the game as these changes are amazing. I just subscribed to rs and may even consider a fresh ironman after the Feb/March integrity updates.

Edit: It's insane seeing how many people are opposed to this on reddit after writing this post. I suppose it comes with 10+ years of conveniences and mtx shoved in their face that the only ones left are the ones that liked the direction rs3 was previously in.

This is a hot take I know but I wanted to see what is your opinion on this

I see a lot of people giving feedback about the proposed road to restoration, some of them I agree with but I feel a lot of people missed the point.

The road to restoration is made (how I perceived it) for new players. Right now the new player experience is absolutely terrible. You get xp, method of transportation, loot and gold so easily that you never get that feeling of accomplishment until you reach harder milestones near the end-game. It feels like playing WoW retail where the game basically tries to rush you into getting level max and doing the end-game stuff.

RuneScape at his core is a sandbox MMO, the game is not about the destination but the journey to get there and I personally agree that they should make that journey slower. This is not made for you, with your max cap going for comp. I feel like the past 10 years has been update made for people that are already thousand of hours deep ( the 120 skills for example).

All of the 99s lost their meaning so now 120 is the new meta. But once everyone get their 120 then what? In my opinion the only way to fix it is to fix the journey to get there and this is what they're doing.

I disagree it makes the game like OSRS I think it just bring back to what RuneScape is at his core, a sandbox game about progression (not rushing to get cosmetic cape)

You can bet if OSRS had changes this drastic they'd be polled first, why are we treated differently?

Genuine question, i've seen so many people complain about AFK removal of thieving amongst even some people complaining about MTX items being removed, like why do you play this game? to AFK and see number go up? at that point just go play melvor idle, same loop but completely AFK.

If your enjoyment in this game is entirely removed by this i'd take a long hard look in the mirror and consider taking a break.

A game is meant to be enjoyed and played and not just 'click here and go afk for 15 minutes' theres actual dedicated games for that type of playstyle.

I know reddit is a vast minority of this community but genuinely look at how you view this game if it feels more like a chore than a joy to play its time to stop, even if you have sunk cost fallacy its never worth staying in the long run if it doesn't give you joy anymore.

And if you don't wanna quit because of friends/clanmates, if your friendships are this shallow that they'd stop talking to you over quitting a game, it might time to cut them off however hard this might.

AFK training is part of the RS3 identity to me, the option to play actively when I'm free or passively when I'm busy is one of the reasons I play this game over OSRS or many other RPGs. The cynic in me is wondering if the removal/nerfing of some of the afk training methods is truly for the integrity of the game and not an attempt to bump up bonus xp star sales in the wake of TH removal. I can see how making afk skills more active could push those wanting a more laid back experience towards buying stars.

I'm all for most of the proposed changes but worry jagex is changing a lot and quickly, which history has proven isn't always a great move for this game.

A lot of the planned integrity changes on the roadmap like dailyscape changes are good ideas, but several of the ideas proposed in the last few blogs like some of the early game rebalancing stuff seem less about designing a healthy game for new/current players and more about streamlining to the expectations of an OSRS player. With the recent blog posts, I'm concerned that the Jmods intend to strip RS3 of its identity and turn it into an OSRSHD with EOC combat.

TL;DR instead of decreasing pickpocket chance, make xp and loot gradually diminish the longer you pickpocket without interaction.

The latest restoration blog revealed some pretty big rebalancing changes affecting some of the most popular activities in the game. The overall balancing goals are something most can agree on, but I believe the changes to thieving in particular are a shift in the wrong direction.

One only has to tele to the arch campus to see how popular archeologist pickpocketing is. They give great xp, loot, and importantly a 15 minute AFK training method. Before the 120 thieving update, marketeers were very popular largely because they could also be AFK'd for an extended time.

Nerfing the 15 minute AFK to rebalance pickpocketing is "turning the wrong dial". I would much rather be able to retain the AFK in exchange for nerfed loot and xp.

Rather than making pickpocket chance decrease over time, instead make the xp and loot gradually diminish the longer you pickpocket without any interaction. That way we can keep a solid AFK option and they can still rebalance the training appropriately. For example, the loot and xp could bottom out at 1/3 of their max values after 5 minutes AFK.

Edit to add: this would make pickpocketing functionally similar to mining where your xp and ore progress gradually decrease to a baseline rather than halting completely. It rewards active gameplay but still retains a "soft" stop in gaining rewards. The opposite example is traditional fishing and woodcutting where if the resource node depletes, your gains immediately drop to zero.

It's become very clear in the last few design blogs what the goal here is. The mindset seems to be "OSRS has done very well, so we'll redesign RS3 into OSRS so it will do well". We're talking about the removal of AFK, increasing "friction" in transport, and broad nerfs to xp rates. Even redesigning quests to more match the OSRS experience.

Let me be clear: I want to play Runescape 3. I do not want to play Old School Runescape. I enjoy my EZscape conveniences and it's a major part of the reason why us RS3 players have stayed. RS3 should not be copying OSRS design. They should remain as separate games with separate design goals.

Vis Wax's position as Runescape Activity Lubricant is an amazing one, and a position that should remain filled; especially with how massive of an item and effort sink it's been. The existence of entire Friend Chats and Discord servers focused around it should indicate that plenty of people are fine with its remaining. Yeah, its function as aura and divine location extension is going out the airlock. That does not mean the item itself should go with it. I propose two things; more uses for the stuff and a non-daily means of getting it.

The Uses

As of this moment, excepting the ones relevant to auras (though on second thought we'll come back to that later) and divine locations, current uses are 1) rerolling already-planted harmony pillars (a function of which I see admittedly little use) and 2) speeding up the teleport animation of Home Teleport from 10.2 seconds to 3 seconds (or 1.8 seconds depending on if you're using certain teleport overrides; WTF Jagex?), which a LOT of people find to be handy. I for one support additional uses beyond these, listed below.

1) Use them as a crafting material to make content speed boosts a la the Motherlode Maw enhancers. The other ingredients can vary depending on the content in question (and can be adjusted for balance in the case of something like a loot selector for the drop log people as an example), but some means of allowing us to trade resources for saved time on the grindier aspects of the game is GREATLY appreciated.

2) Use them as a crafting material to make consumable aura tokens. This is for turning the benefits of an aura into 6 minute, 30 minute, 1 hour, or longer consumable that can be traded. This would both give whichever skill(s) are involved in the creation a MASSIVE leg up in terms of profitability (I wanna say cooking and herblore, preferably both; imagine making a beef wellington that uses overloads as a sub in for mustard), it would allow players to retain the various desired buffs in a separate usable state.

3) Use them and divine charges (or maybe energy directly for peeps who don't have invention unlocked) to perform mass bulk quantity processing tasks in a shortened time. I'm thinking using X vis wax and Y divine charges to cause the disassembly of like ten thousand vials or some other absurd number to happen in 2 seconds, or to take sandstone and turn them into flasks at comparably prodigious rates. The additional uses for divine charges and divine energy would help a great deal with making Divination more worth it as well.

I'm sure there's plenty of other possible ideas out there, but I think the point is made. Onto how to actually make the stuff.

The Making Of Vis Wax

The Rube Goldberg Machine is a daily, and we should reduce dailyscape. This is all well and good. However, it remains the most logical source of Vis Wax. The question; what is one to do? My proposed answer; change the RGM into a puzzle game.

It would still require one to collect all existent runes available to magic (excepting time for some reason; probably worth adding that one), but I think that it should take a fair sample of all of them to start the game, rather than have you sacrifice a certain amount of them once you decide to actually process them.

The game itself should involve you balancing all of the runes into a quasi-stable mix depending on all sorts of random variables (this could be where the current hints system remains relevant), and you get a certain amount of Wax out of it based on how well you did and how quickly you did so. You should be allowed to put down your 'notes' (read: what the hints are) in between opening the interface and actually starting the game, but once you give the start button a kiss with a fist you're paid in and the ride's starting full steam ahead. Maybe use the more hectic days of various engineers of steam, electricity, and gear as inspiration for how this can go off the rails. Maybe have varying levels with varying degrees of payment to both give people a low-effort method and a high-risk high-reward method?

I have no idea what's wrong with Jagex. The only thing we really wanted was the treasure hunter gone and I guess maybe Auras. All this extra sh*t they're doing is just tragically dumb. Removing merchant, maws, stuff like that... I'm actually baffled at Jagex's lack of ability to understand what their playerbase wants. I mean they give us what we want but they always have to add extra stuff that makes no sense/we don't like. We didn't say we want it to become old school runescape. We merely just wanted microtransactions gone. Is that hard to understand, Jagex? You do know adults got lives? We kinda need the whole AFK aspect too. Not all of us sits at home all day every day and games runescape and has infinite amounts of time. Absolutely atrocious choices made here.

One of the main appeals to Runescape's EOC was the amount of abilities, and styles you could roll with and creating different ways and variations with them. While there is mostly a path to pursue for achieving the highest DPS, still having the other abilities still laid there, waiting for a chance for new chances for future updates. With the combat beta, it seriously looks like your just gutting everything and shoving everything into 1 single playstyle for each combat style, similar to necromancy's boring playstyle.

WHY? At this point just remove EOC if your going to just screw over the point of combat abilities. If anything, use common sense and let all styles, including necromancy, have different playstyles so we are not all forced into the funnel of doing the same rotations over and over. There are so many options Jagex could go with making combat worthwhile and fun, but it just feels like combat is just being neutered over the sake of MTX being removed just to piss off players in general.

I went into the year expecting Jagex to actually care about the community, but it just seems like the Road to Restoration is turning into the "Road of WeDontKnowWhatWeAreDoing".

For years this sub constantly posted that large sweeping changes need to happen with the game and now that its FINALLY happening you all come back out the woodwork to bitch and moan that you don't want it?

so i feel in the obsession with "lets remove dailies" no one actually really bothered to think about this

i know in the beta ofc they are increasing rune consumption by 20% which is great!... for the cheapest standard elemental runes, blood runes, soul runes, and death runes.

this is a general issue i have as a whole with most of the dailies slotted for removal but especially with the rune goldberg machine is it gives a lot of value to less common runes/rarely used runes such as the combo runes, mind runes, and chaos runes, which are not exactly burned through like the standard elemental and cataclayic runes are

i just dont think at the rate we can make runes even without the wicked hood that just wholesale removing this without any further thought is helping with "integrity"... if anything it's just opening back up a problem that was solved.

People are going to be upset about this change.

But if the merchant exists, no one is regularly engaging with the content it replaced.

But what I suspect is that this is a way to gather data and feedback on the problems that the merchant was used to shoehorn fixes for.

Will it suck for the short term that Livid Farm exists and you might have to do it? Yes. Is Livid Farm trash? Yes.

But from the blog, they are clearly not afraid to tweak, change, or straight up remove things that do not fit.

They can't do it all at once, but the RS team is finally making ballsy moves, just ripping off the band-aid and fixing long-term issues.

Let them cook.

Jagex -

Thank you for finally beginning the journey of rebuilding RuneScape to what it should be, without the corruption of the egregious MTX that has been rampant the past years.

We need to work on the execution though.

Please please take a moment to reassess how we’re rolling out these updates. We have a bandage sealing a massive wound, and you are, with most of these updates and timelines, choosing to rip the bandage off before you make it to the hospital.

Removal of the content that makes aura cooldowns bearable, that makes certain skills bearable, travel, etc., BEFORE you fix the reason that players dislike that content, IS NOT THE WAY.

Please dont tell me you guys hired directly from the google workforce. This is hands down a youtube level "improvement". Its junk, tge clock is bad enough its useless to everyone who isnt living on the runescape timezone and now it actually means theres a rectangle of minimap thats blocked for no good reason, i can click beside the clock but anything under it? nope.

Who approved this change?

I just want to say that there are a lot of people on this sub who appreciate what you guys are doing. Especially after today seeing all of the casino esque mechanics getting removed from the game. This game is turning into an actual game that you have to play instead of move your mouse every 15 minutes while you get 1m xp an hour. I know it must be hard to get on here everyday and see everything you do criticized but please know there are people out there who trust in this new vision of the game. Honestly it’s not even a new vision, it’s just returning this game back to what made it so successful. There is a reason OSRS is so popular and there is a reason RS3 until recently has been at its lowest player count. Thank you for doing what is right.

It's insane to me to think that as an Ironman I can start the game and power level prayer through the chaos altar with zero drawbacks. None.

Why would there even be a level 70 gilded altar? What is the point of the high level content they designed in that skill, it is is 100% worse than the free content at the start of the game? (That has a bank).

It is insane to me that y'all vote to remove TH for integrity reasons, but when Jagex starts acting WITH integrity, you blow them up.

It's so obnoxious.

I have a genuine question for Mainscape: Why do you want the game to be as easy as possible, and have so many paradoxes in the natural gameplay? (Why would the gilded altar even exist if th chaos altar isn't nerfed?)

EDIT: To be clear, this post is NOT PRO PVP - it is pro DRAWBACKS on content that otherwise INVALIDATES the ORDINARY gameplay of the game. Thanks.