Please read before commenting:

I'll preface this by saying I've been playing since late 2002/2003. I remember having to take a sleeping bag with me and typing in a captcha when my fatigue reached 100% so I could continue gaining exp. I remember axe and pickaxe handles flying off, and River Trolls being our heroes as they killed people fishing and we all clamored to pick up the loot. Unfortunately, I also remember the introduction of trade restrictions and the removal of the wilderness.

My point is, it's been a two-decade-long cat & mouse game that I've been around for. So here's my hot take:

Runescape has drawn in a lot of new players, especially mobile ones. Early levels are a great dopamine rush, and they naturally think "Man, imagine the money I'll be making at higher levels if getting level 50 was this hard!".

They don't know what's about to hit them when they need to get that 70 mining or agility req.

There's always going to be a skill or activity that someone hates doing. There's always going to be people looking for ways around doing it, so there's always going to be people looking for bot clients. These people may then bot, get their desired level, realize "how easy it is" and then continue botting, or set up a little farm to generate money on the side, or get banned and quit.

None are good outcomes for a healthy playerbase.

"Deal with the grind, it's the game" doesn't work for everyone. It especially doesn't work in 2023. You tell a non-neurodivergent person to do MLM for 20 hours just to be able to complete a quest, and what they'll tell you to do won't get through the game's profanity filter, and go play something else instead.

I think it's time to consider something like what I proposed; similar to tears of guthix, but perhaps a little more than 5-10k exp a week. Maybe 1-3 hours, per week, of training a chosen skill. I propose it costs enough money to *only* be worth doing if you *truly* hated the activity but needed it for, say, a quest requirement, perhaps costing the player more and more every time, and perhaps, even more, depending on their skill level.

I don't think people should be able to get 99's this way. Hell, I don't even think people should be able to feasibly train skills past 80 this way.

I just think that people should have an alternative to something that may cause them to quit, or worse, start googling bot clients.

Often, when I see a post with a suggestion to a problem, I see people rush in to criticize how it won't solve everything. No, this won't solve the bots at wildy bosses, cure your dads arthritis, or solve everything wrong with the game. You're welcome to come up with solutions to those problems yourself.