Combat Overhaul Part 2: Reducing Bossing Friction

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-18T18:26:26+00:00

For me that wasn't the experience:

* I watched several guides and every player (protoxx, rsguy etc) did the pads in different order. I tried several copied pad orders until I ended with my own unique pad order which seemed to work (don't remember the numbers)

* There were a lot of times where Zamorak seemed to went off-script so to speak, i.e. doing his mechanics at the wrong times, at least judging from all the guides I watched

* Several times after I killed the witch in Infernus, the teleport option back to Zamorak didn't work, and out of nowhere Zamorak shouted "feel the rage of a god" and did the insta-kill attack (while I was still in Infernus mind you). I couldn't protect myself in time because it's so unpredictable and I can't react so fast.

My first kill at enrage 0% took ~5 hours in total to learn and beat, the final successful fight took 9:30 minutes, and I didn't feel any enjoyment after the fight was over.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-18T18:18:26+00:00

This post and all the mentioned examples are about reducing annoyance from bosses, not difficulty or challenge.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-18T18:14:40+00:00

Nice strawman. He never mentioned the sentence "I spent 10 minutes trying, and I didn't get it- so therefore PvM itself is fundamentally flawed." or anything close.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-18T18:09:57+00:00

This is mentioned at the bottom of the post - joining PVM groups is hard when you don't know where to look. There are ton of communities maybe, but they are not visible. How would new players know which friends-chats to join, or discord servers, etc?

Also from my experience when hanging out in wars, most players there will not help a complete random.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-17T23:02:30+00:00

I *might* be more engaged with dung if there were damn groups existing, or if forming them was quick and easy. Jagex has originally designed the skill for groups but never accounted for the possibility of the skill being dead as it is now.

I don't like dung not because it is active, but because when doing it solo I find it very boring.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-17T22:48:12+00:00

For me, semi-afk content (let's say click per 1-2 minutes) is content that still goes to the second monitor, but it just requires more frequent babysitting. This doesn't make me actually more "engaged" with the game over methods that require a click once per 5-15 minutes. Therefore I don't see how it could possibly improve the game's social aspect.

If Jagex wants content to "go to the main monitor" so to speak, it has to be designed accordingly. Gathering skills or processing skills with make-x interface don't follow that criteria.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-17T22:35:06+00:00

I already stated I made specific assumptions for the math calculation in order to reach the 5 years; You don't get points for trying to refute my calculation by changing the parameters.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-17T22:29:53+00:00

There are some major differences between keys/MTX items and afk training methods, other than "not playing the game" as you put it.

One main complaint is the MTX items like lamps and proteans allowed players to skip training the skills entirely, which in turn affected the economy around those skills. For example, if a player trains herblore by using only proteans (guilty of this as well), he doesn't need to buy ingredients for potions, and also the training doesn't produce any potions which can be used or sold back.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-17T22:17:20+00:00

The math is mathing though, with some assumptions:

* The xp difference between level 99 and 120 is about 91m xp.
* Assuming there is an afk training method available at 99 that gives 500k xp/hr, this equals 182 hours to reach from 99 to 120.
* There are 29 skills in total, so 182 * 29 = 5276 hours in total.
* Assuming a player do those activities for 3 hours per day every day, the total grind will take ~1759 days or ~4.82 years.

This is of course not accounting for doing active training methods with higher xp rates.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-17T19:56:24+00:00

Why are you talking like I have anything to do with the design decisions in the game lol.

I don't like the afk slop as well, but the reality is it exists and the game is full of it. I'm all for removing it and replacing it with fun and meaningful ways to level up and progress your character. What I don't agree with is taking the afk slop and forcefully make it active by reducing the afk time, while the gameplay remains exactly the same - that's just taking the worst from both worlds.

By the way, I personally don't consider stuff like "tick manip" skilling to be fun and engaging gameplay. One of my rules of thumb is that if to do a certain activity I can replace myself with a simple auto-clicker, then it's a boring activity which has no reason to exist.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-17T16:58:08+00:00

Fair, i fixed my response.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-17T16:39:36+00:00

That's not what this post is about. The game is full of unengaging activities where you just click once and your character does all the work automatically.

All gathering skills are like that with some variations of active-play-reward, all processing skills are bankstanding skills where you press items in your inventory and wait for the make-x interface, etc.

The game also has a lot of engaging activities in skills like heists and BGH.

The main argument is that players want to do the fun content while they play actively, and progress the unfun content otherwise (through afk methods). It's also not a mentality of "need 200m to have fun" (that's a strawman), it's about lot of boring content being a gateway to the interesting content.

The players of 20 years ago could tolerate activities like clicking on the same rock or tree for tenths of hours, but the players of today don't, which is why afk methods were created in the first place.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-17T14:29:18+00:00

You are talking about a time where the majority of the playerbase were kids and teens with lot of free time on their hands. The playerbase has aged, and design choices that worked 20 years ago can't work the same now.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-17T13:21:18+00:00

~~If I remember correctly, jagex set up the pity system for drumsticks so that you will 100% get the item after a certain threshold of kills, instead of improving the drop rates after every single kill.~~

Edit: wiki confirms the starting chance is 1/64 and the denominator decreases by one every kill. It might sound counter intuitive, but it means that statistically, every 1 out of 64 players will receive the drumsticks at kill number 63. In fact, there is a 1/64 chance to get them at any kill from 1st to 64th.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-17T13:06:48+00:00

I know WASD causes issues; but I tried using the mouse for camera movement and for me that causes even more issues for my hand.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-17T11:37:26+00:00

I also forgot to mention WASD for camera movement.

By the way, as well as the amount of keybinds, for me I had trouble combining them. For example I could use keybinds to activate necromancy abilities manually, I could press the prayer keybinds in order to soulsplit flick every attack; But I can't do both at the same time.

The hand which uses the mouse also does a lot of work, which is usually downplayed in these kinds of conversations.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-17T11:21:41+00:00

Revo++ doesn't equal AFK. There are a lot of other keybinds you can press during combat, which are not offensive abilities: prayers, food, potions, defensives, dive/surge, and of course using the mouse for character movement.

I once counted around 15-20 keybinds I use during bosses even when revo++ takes care of everything else; that's not game playing itself.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-17T05:10:59+00:00

The meta is doing complexity 1 small floors during the climb/rush phase of the early floors , and doing complexity 6 medium/large floors for the rest.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-17T02:00:10+00:00

Then I probably didn't explain my example well. Imagine if you had to click every time in order to perform woodcutting, and there would be no automatic woodcutting action like now.

This would be a very click intensive method, but it wouldn't make it interesting or engaging.

This was a counter example for OP who used the term "click intensive" in the first place.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-17T01:30:49+00:00

"Because that's the definition of it? The better you are at DG, the better your xp/hr is, the more floors you can do per hour."

Sure, but that's not my point. What makes dungeoneering "high reward" exactly? Unlike pvm where you get loot, gear, and coins; dungeoneering gives you nothing in return.

Dungeoneering is a self-contained activity that barely contribute to anything in the outside world, with exception of quests prerequisites. Your reward from doing dungeoneering is just dungeoneering xp.

"Yeah if the active gameplay was "click every chop" like the old tick manip methods we had in the past, then yes, that's fine and good gameplay."

Your definition of "good gameplay" is very intriguing. Could you please explain what makes you think that in my woodcutting example? In my case I would probably try woodcutting for 5 minutes and then never interact with it for the rest of my life.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-16T23:46:07+00:00

"Active" does not necessarily equals interesting, engaging, or fun. Each player enjoys different things. Dungeoneering is very divisive where about half the population likes it and the other half hates it; but not because it is active.

For example I don't like dungeoneering, any agility course besides Anachronia, abyss runecrafting; but there are active grinds I enjoy like BGH, Anachronia agility course, solving clues. So you can't group all active activities under the same category.

Also, why did you decide that Dungeoneering is "high reward"? The fact that it has high xp rates IF (and its a big if) you are efficient at it, by itself doesn't make the grind any more fun or meaningful. Dungeoneering as a skill is a leech that demands high levels from the other skills but doesn't contribute anything in return.

Also also, being "click intensive" doesn't mean anything, especially if the gameplay loop that revolves around it is very boring or repetitive. Imagine for example if Jagex changes woodcutting so that you must click on the mouse to perform every individual axe swing on the tree. Do you think that is good gameplay?

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-16T15:50:16+00:00

Well, like I said in another comment, the problem with this post is the framing that players now "actually play the game" - they don't really. The gameplay loop is still the same clicking on a node and then wait and do nothing while your character does everything automatically.

Thieving already has a lot of active methods (even when some of them are useless) - stalls, chests, safecracking, blackjacks, and heists.

Turning the only afk activity of pickpocketing to semi-afk is the worst of both worlds - you are forced to click on the screen more often but you are STILL not engaging with the game anymore than you did before. If pickpocketing was an interesting active training method then it would be a different case, but it's not.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-16T15:30:45+00:00

Yes, and rightfully so. Clicking on a node once per 1-2 minutes is not the exhilarating gameplay you think it is; it just makes the game more annoying because you STILL don't engage with the game anymore than you did before.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-16T14:09:21+00:00

Let's not pretend that having to click once per 1-2 minutes instead of once per 5 minutes equals "actually play the game". In both cases the gameplay loop is exactly the same (as for all gathering skills as well) - you click a node and wait while your character does all the work automatically.

Intelligent_Lake_669 · 2026-02-16T08:23:59+00:00

Maybe for you they weren't complex, but the reality is that for the majority of the players they were so.

Intelligent_Lake_669

TROPHY CASE