OSRS — Oldschool Runescape.

[Anon]

If developers allow a superior strategy, then you are merely choosing to lose by not picking the strategy. It's not the player's fault.

I mean, what's winning in a game? Mainly in a never ending one like MMOs typically are

Is killing your fun and spending more money worth it for seeing some numbers go up faster? I think not.

OSRS itself has dozens of 'winning' conditions you could quantify, probably more than any other MMO.

You can reach any of them without multiboxing or spending an extra cent.

[rusty_shackleford]

I mean, what's winning in a game? Mainly in a never ending one like MMOs typically are

Is killing your fun and spending more money worth it for seeing some numbers go up faster? I think not.

OSRS itself has dozens of 'winning' conditions you could quantify, probably more than any other MMO.

You can reach any of them without multiboxing or spending an extra cent.

It's about beating other people to the goal.
You might want to ask your doc to check your testosterone levels during your next checkup.

[Anon]

OSRS itself has dozens of 'winning' conditions you could quantify, probably more than any other MMO.

You can reach any of them without multiboxing or spending an extra cent.

It's about beating other people to the goal.
You might want to ask your doc to check your testosterone levels during your next checkup.

You don't want to speedrun OSRS trust me

[Anon]

Have I ever mentioned OSRS is also the best mobile game in the market?

[Oyster Sauce]

[rusty_shackleford]

Rs3 is probably the better game because nothing was added to osrs of note

[rusty_shackleford]

Polls are basically "should we add another boss that rewards vastly more loot than anything else in the game???" And that's it.

[rusty_shackleford]

Grinding is probably my least favorite part of the game, always shocked that people enjoy doing it.

[Oyster Sauce]

Grinding is probably my least favorite part of the game, always shocked that people enjoy doing it.

In theory Runescape has the greatest quests of any MMO out there, but in practice most of them are gatekept by dozens of hours of the least fun skill grinding that could possibly exist. Unsure whether a complete overhaul or just extremely elevated XP rates would be better.

[rusty_shackleford]

Grinding is probably my least favorite part of the game, always shocked that people enjoy doing it.

In theory Runescape has the greatest quests of any MMO out there, but in practice most of them are gatekept by dozens of hours of the least fun skill grinding that could possibly exist. Unsure whether a complete overhaul or just extremely elevated XP rates would be better.

Saw it described as "quests are rewards you get for grinding" and yea, that's right.
I think skilling bosses are the right general direction, but "skilling content" would be neat.


Also, the game has way too much focus on bossing.

[rusty_shackleford]

OSRS has been hitting new player count peaks.

Step 1. Cancel homo month
Step 2. Collect money

[rusty_shackleford]

Been playing RS3 ironman, which is imo superior to OSRS ironman. The issue with RS3 has nothing to do with various forms of QoL it added, but all the extra XP, rewards, and MTX that is generally missing from ironman.
I believe it was @Oyster Sauce that said grand exchange was bad and I disagreed at the time, but now I agree. It makes it too easy to just go and buy anything you need, turns every activity into measuring whether you should just farm gold instead.

It appears they're attempting to address the MTX issue in RS3 but even if it gets anywhere near fixed they'd have to create entirely separate servers at this point.

But… ironman doesn't have to deal with that, so, it's all good.

[rusty_shackleford]

A major issue with both games is they have been 'figured out' and therefore if you are the type of person to look up how to do X, you are going to ruin the game for yourself. I just pick something to do then that needs something else and so on down the line. This gets the closest to how the game felt 20 years ago. I have no interest in rushing anything.

This is generally an issue for any online game, I think. Who was it that said the players will optimize the fun out of games?

[Rienen]

A major issue with both games is they have been 'figured out' and therefore if you are the type of person to look up how to do X, you are going to ruin the game for yourself. I just pick something to do then that needs something else and so on down the line. This gets the closest to how the game felt 20 years ago. I have no interest in rushing anything.

This is generally an issue for any online game, I think. Who was it that said the players will optimize the fun out of games?

Quests/Tasks that end up being a stream of "to do A, you need to do B, which needs you to do C first, which require D and E" burn me out the second I see it happening. The good news is, like you said, in some cases, you can weigh doing the tasks to purchasing the end result. But if it's a stream of mindless quests you have to travel to in order to "prove yourself to" or "gain the trust of" a dozen people, the game will lose me.

[rusty_shackleford]

Game design criticisms(negative and positive) of both versions:

• Both version have a weird focus on PvM. This was never a focus of runescape at the height of its popularity. I suspect it's because people don't actually like grinding(shock), and a lot of PvM is personal learning, a synergy of character/player.
• Grinding isn't fun. It's just not. It never was. I don't even know where to begin to fix this.
• The thing that enables ironman playstyle, allowing one character to max every skill, actually makes it kind of a bad RPG in the same way Skyrim is a bad RPG. Games like Ultima Online handled this better as far as I know, but I don't have much knowledge of them(@Tweed ?)
• The new quests in both games have completely different styles of writing that feel like they belong to a different game. Quirky chungus redditor / joss whedon. Painful. I have a feeling that the ~2016-2023 era of video games will go down as some of the worst written video games, at least from this era. Already aged like milk.
• RS3 combat sometimes feels like it was designed for a game that does not have RS3's server limitations.
• RS3 "auto attack" combat is actually kinda fun in one of those autobattler ways. Instead of only having auto attack like in OSRS, your character auto-uses abilities from a bar left to right based on whatever is not on cooldown. So it's basically a more in-depth autoattack that you can customize.
• New RS3 content should have made use of phasing. I don't like seeing gods walking the earth when I'm doing quests 20 years of content prior to the gods even doing that. Makes the new player experience feel bad.
• New content is mostly designed all wrong by people who don't understand the game. They create new areas for new content, and that's all the areas do. Old content was clearly designed by wanting to add something, then adding it to an existing area that fit thematically. There's a spooky mansion in the spooky village, let's put a quest about slaying a vampire in the game and have him own the mansion.
• Adventure games and RPGs go together like peanutbutter & jelly, runescape is one of the longest living proofs of it. It's fun being able to examine anything, use items on anything, combine items freely, etc.,
• The inventory system was never good to begin with and has a million bandaids to "hold more" items. Having to run between a furnace and a bank to quickly deposit/pull out items just feels completely gamey. Inventory systems with a flat cap on how many items you can hold is probably the worst design after unlimited inventories as far as RPG inventories go.

Can I recommend either game?
Not really. The grinding just didn't age well. I don't think the fix is simply giving out more XP, it's just not a fun activity. I don't even know how to make it fun, I don't think it can be.

I'd say it would be impossible to change it because it would affect the longevity of the game, but the main RS3 already gives out XP lamps like candy. Therefore, they should probably just completely revamp the skill system(they won't, of course, but just hypothetical game design criticisms follow): Have masters you either pay or perform tasks for to train you, require constantly doing new things to advance rather than the same mundane task… failure is the best teacher, learn by doing is meant to be a simulationist view of game design to begin with, so you should be trying to model a more accurate view of how people actually learn.
The truth is that nobody(or close to it) actually wants simulationist learn-by-doing in 1:1 time. Have you ever tried to learn to draw? You gotta dedicate an hour or two a day every day, just sucking at it, until you get kinda good at it. If you didn't pick it up as a kid you're probably not gonna learn how to draw.


One of the core strengths in Runescape's design was the interconnected skill/progression web. You never just need to do X, you have a long chain of things you need to do X:


This would be improved by directly integrating the skills with each other. I think dungeoneering tried to attempt this, but dungeoneering is well… dungeoneering.

[rusty_shackleford]

A major issue with both games is they have been 'figured out' and therefore if you are the type of person to look up how to do X, you are going to ruin the game for yourself. I just pick something to do then that needs something else and so on down the line. This gets the closest to how the game felt 20 years ago. I have no interest in rushing anything.

This is generally an issue for any online game, I think. Who was it that said the players will optimize the fun out of games?

Quests/Tasks that end up being a stream of "to do A, you need to do B, which needs you to do C first, which require D and E" burn me out the second I see it happening. The good news is, like you said, in some cases, you can weigh doing the tasks to purchasing the end result. But if it's a stream of mindless quests you have to travel to in order to "prove yourself to" or "gain the trust of" a dozen people, the game will lose me.

I think it's fun

[Rienen]

A major issue with both games is they have been 'figured out' and therefore if you are the type of person to look up how to do X, you are going to ruin the game for yourself. I just pick something to do then that needs something else and so on down the line. This gets the closest to how the game felt 20 years ago. I have no interest in rushing anything.

This is generally an issue for any online game, I think. Who was it that said the players will optimize the fun out of games?

Quests/Tasks that end up being a stream of "to do A, you need to do B, which needs you to do C first, which require D and E" burn me out the second I see it happening. The good news is, like you said, in some cases, you can weigh doing the tasks to purchasing the end result. But if it's a stream of mindless quests you have to travel to in order to "prove yourself to" or "gain the trust of" a dozen people, the game will lose me.

I think it's fun

It's all good, brother. I'm glad it's a hook you enjoy. With limited play time, and decent gaps between most play sessions, my monkey brain loses sight of the plot... Or I'm just old and losing it. Could be both.

[Tweed]

UO has a skill cap of 700 so you can be a grandmaster in seven skills, which means that classes form around templates. If you want to be a mage that's at least three skills right there: Magery, Evaluate Intelligence for additional damage, and Meditation for mana regen. Now what kind of mage do you want to be? Tamer? That's Animal Taming, Animal Lore, and possibly Veterinary. Necromage? Necromancy and Spirit Speak. Going melee? That's a weapon skill, Anatomy for damage increase, Healing if you're pure melee, Parrying if you're going to use a shield, Tactics for additional damage. If you want to live very long as an adventurer you'll need magic resistance so you can see that skills fill up pretty fast. Later on the cap can increase to 720 and there are special scrolls that increase skills caps by 5, 10, and 20 (I can't remember if that's all), so you can go beyond grandmaster in some skills for additional benefits.

It's never worth it to be a jack of all trades, most combat skills fall flat until about 80.

[rusty_shackleford]

UO has a skill cap of 700 so you can be a grandmaster in seven skills, which means that classes form around templates. If you want to be a mage that's at least three skills right there: Magery, Evaluate Intelligence for additional damage, and Meditation for mana regen. Now what kind of mage do you want to be? Tamer? That's Animal Taming, Animal Lore, and possibly Veterinary. Necromage? Necromancy and Spirit Speak. Going melee? That's a weapon skill, Anatomy for damage increase, Healing if you're pure melee, Parrying if you're going to use a shield, Tactics for additional damage. If you want to live very long as an adventurer you'll need magic resistance so you can see that skills fill up pretty fast. Later on the cap can increase to 720 and there are special scrolls that increase skills caps by 5, 10, and 20 (I can't remember if that's all), so you can go beyond grandmaster in some skills for additional benefits.

It's never worth it to be a jack of all trades, most combat skills fall flat until about 80.

Seems like a lot of skills-based systems just end up being noob traps.
In fact, nearly all of them

[rusty_shackleford]

Daggerfall's method of picking major/minor/tertiary skills still stands out as one of the best skills-based systems.

[Jordy]

Game design criticisms(negative and positive) of both versions:

• Both version have a weird focus on PvM. This was never a focus of runescape at the height of its popularity. I suspect it's because people don't actually like grinding(shock), and a lot of PvM is personal learning, a synergy of character/player.
• Grinding isn't fun. It's just not. It never was. I don't even know where to begin to fix this.
• The thing that enables ironman playstyle, allowing one character to max every skill, actually makes it kind of a bad RPG in the same way Skyrim is a bad RPG. Games like Ultima Online handled this better as far as I know, but I don't have much knowledge of them(@Tweed ?)
• The new quests in both games have completely different styles of writing that feel like they belong to a different game. Quirky chungus redditor / joss whedon. Painful. I have a feeling that the ~2016-2023 era of video games will go down as some of the worst written video games, at least from this era. Already aged like milk.
• RS3 combat sometimes feels like it was designed for a game that does not have RS3's server limitations.
• RS3 "auto attack" combat is actually kinda fun in one of those autobattler ways. Instead of only having auto attack like in OSRS, your character auto-uses abilities from a bar left to right based on whatever is not on cooldown. So it's basically a more in-depth autoattack that you can customize.
• New RS3 content should have made use of phasing. I don't like seeing gods walking the earth when I'm doing quests 20 years of content prior to the gods even doing that. Makes the new player experience feel bad.
• New content is mostly designed all wrong by people who don't understand the game. They create new areas for new content, and that's all the areas do. Old content was clearly designed by wanting to add something, then adding it to an existing area that fit thematically. There's a spooky mansion in the spooky village, let's put a quest about slaying a vampire in the game and have him own the mansion.
• Adventure games and RPGs go together like peanutbutter & jelly, runescape is one of the longest living proofs of it. It's fun being able to examine anything, use items on anything, combine items freely, etc.,
• The inventory system was never good to begin with and has a million bandaids to "hold more" items. Having to run between a furnace and a bank to quickly deposit/pull out items just feels completely gamey. Inventory systems with a flat cap on how many items you can hold is probably the worst design after unlimited inventories as far as RPG inventories go.

Can I recommend either game?
Not really. The grinding just didn't age well. I don't think the fix is simply giving out more XP, it's just not a fun activity. I don't even know how to make it fun, I don't think it can be.

I'd say it would be impossible to change it because it would affect the longevity of the game, but the main RS3 already gives out XP lamps like candy. Therefore, they should probably just completely revamp the skill system(they won't, of course, but just hypothetical game design criticisms follow): Have masters you either pay or perform tasks for to train you, require constantly doing new things to advance rather than the same mundane task… failure is the best teacher, learn by doing is meant to be a simulationist view of game design to begin with, so you should be trying to model a more accurate view of how people actually learn.
The truth is that nobody(or close to it) actually wants simulationist learn-by-doing in 1:1 time. Have you ever tried to learn to draw? You gotta dedicate an hour or two a day every day, just sucking at it, until you get kinda good at it. If you didn't pick it up as a kid you're probably not gonna learn how to draw.


One of the core strengths in Runescape's design was the interconnected skill/progression web. You never just need to do X, you have a long chain of things you need to do X:


This would be improved by directly integrating the skills with each other. I think dungeoneering tried to attempt this, but dungeoneering is well… dungeoneering.

Not that it solves the issue but last time I played RS3 they also often had XP multiplier weeks/weekends. Everyone would crowd around the main hubs with the easy XP items that everyone could use but these were capped to a certain amount of XP a day.

[rusty_shackleford]

Not that it solves the issue but last time I played RS3 they also often had XP mulitplier weeks/weekends. Everyone would crowd around the main hubs with the easy XP items that everyone could use but these were capped to a certain amount of XP a day.

Like with the lamps, it's just a bandaid. They know it's an issue and there's no real way to fix it without a complete revamp.

[Jordy]

Not that it solves the issue but last time I played RS3 they also often had XP mulitplier weeks/weekends. Everyone would crowd around the main hubs with the easy XP items that everyone could use but these were capped to a certain amount of XP a day.

Like with the lamps, it's just a bandaid. They know it's an issue and there's no real way to fix it without a complete revamp.

I agree but as someone who returned from RS2 late into RS3 it felt very much like cheating at the time, in a pleasant way sort of. I pretty much netted a bunch of 99s right off the bat which I never considered being close to in RS2 and later maxed them out while getting other 99s because they introduced things which net XP in more than one skill at a time.

[rusty_shackleford]

did a quest that was full of brown foids, girlbosses, homosexuals, and "nonbinary" people and realized "wow, I don't want to play this" so I uninstalled the game

"haha he's exaggerating"

Selection_006.webp

RuneScape_002.webp

[rusty_shackleford]

everything ******* sucks

[AmericanMonarchist]

Reject the Modernity of OSRS, embrace the tradition of 2009scape! It is free, unpozzed, and has a dedicated community.

did a quest that was full of brown foids, girlbosses, homosexuals, and "nonbinary" people and realized "wow, I don't want to play this" so I uninstalled the game

"haha he's exaggerating"

That is absolutely disgusting. Monarchs with pronouns? Weakwilled Kings and commoner-blooded queens? Robespierre might have be onto something... *shudder*

[WhiteShark]

Who was it that said the players will optimize the fun out of games?

Soren Johnson, co-designer of Civ, evidently.

[methoxetamine]

There is nothing "Old School" about OSRS. THIS is Runescape.

[methoxetamine]

did a quest that was full of brown foids, girlbosses, homosexuals, and "nonbinary" people and realized "wow, I don't want to play this" so I uninstalled the game

"haha he's exaggerating"
Selection_006.webpRuneScape_002.webp

This is just downright disgusting. I want these ******* all tortured to death

[rusty_shackleford]

There is nothing "Old School" about OSRS. THIS is Runescape.

I actually prefer the way this looked to any of the later incarnations. Pure soul.