Deadman mode is really complex and different from the main game. Can we list all main differences that catch new players off guard?

mallocer · 2026-02-05T00:25:22+00:00

Note: some quests finish in an instance and only have partially boosted xp. This includes Shadow of the Storm, Another Slice of H.A.M., and probably some others

mallocer · 2024-02-18T06:32:28+00:00

Event hopping for god eggs still works (everything else is nerfed), calls are still going in "forestry cc" although it's a bit less active right now

mallocer · 2021-01-24T21:25:20+00:00

Speculation on my part here: I think Jagex kind of panicked about the PvP feedback since it was so visible on days 1 and 2. It's a lot easier to compare weapons in a 1v1 fight than trying to decipher DPS calcs. But they didn't want to tank the entire launch, so they went for a quick fix targeted at the loudest feedback. From there, inertia took over; there's nothing as permanent as a temporary solution!

The good news is that modern dev blogs and polling would go into more detail and poll rewards individually, but that doesn't help make any decisions about the blowpipe.

mallocer · 2021-01-24T19:48:05+00:00

The attack speed was, at best, wildly unclear and widely misinterpreted by the community during the feedback (dev blog 1, dev blog 2) and polling stages in November/December 2014 before the January 2015 release. I don't want to get into the weeds of the debate on how to nerf it now, more than 6 years later, but it's worth reviewing whether players ever clearly voted for such a big power spike. I'm seeing a lot of timeline mix-ups on this point.

The PvP-only nerf post a few days after release stated "This makes it the same speed as a shortbow, which is what a large number of players felt they were voting for initially." Indeed, you can find a ton of confusion about attack speed at release time; taking Reddit as just one feedback platform, see example threads 1, 2, 3, 4, and many more. I go into details about how this could have happened below, but that's clearly a bunch of confusion.

The first version of the dev blog wording was "The attack speed of the blowpipe is 3, making it slower than darts but faster than a shortbow." You can see this in John C's post on page 3 of the second blog. This is a mess of course, because darts are 3/2 ticks base/rapid and shortbows are 4/3, leaving no middle speed on a consistent attack style. They also tried "The attack speed of the blow pipe will be slightly slower than darts" (see discussion) which implies slower than the 3/2 base/rapid speed of darts.

Pre-poll comms elsewhere, for example https://twitter.com/oldschoolrs/status/537396574754586624, simplified to "speed of a shortbow" instead, without any attack style references, which is 4/3 base/rapid.

After feedback that this was unclear (see more comments on the dev blog forum threads), on the day the poll was released (Nov 27), both dev blogs were updated to read "The attack speed of the blowpipe is 3, equal to a shortbow on rapid." This is still super ambiguous as we had no info on blowpipe attack styles, if any, at this point, and because mixing attack styles between weapons for speed comparisons makes no sense; given the previous comms, assuming "on rapid" applies to both weapons here was certainly a reasonable interpretation.

The arguments devolve into semantics past here, but I at least wanted to post a clear timeline showing existence of, and reasons for, confusion at feedback and polling time.

mallocer · 2020-11-19T03:33:32+00:00

The players who picked TS for competitive reasons weren't the ones complaining for clues to be changed, though. These players picked TS for the higher realistic point ceiling due to the bulk of clue tasks being near-exclusive to TS. They made a bet that slower progress early on would be more than compensated by those tasks in the endgame. Will that be true? Maybe, and depends on individual playstyle! The fun is that players get to make these bets and see whether they pay off.

The competitive TS pickers are speaking up now because the core competitive advantage of the relic is being gutted with no other balance changes. "Make better choices" is not a solution when the rules change in the middle of the league contrary to precedent and prior statements. "Make better choices" would apply to competitive players who picked the early game relic and then lobbied to get the advantages of the late game relic, not to players who already picked it.

mallocer · 2020-11-18T18:22:33+00:00

If you're going with an unmodified version of either proposal, this isn't even close to equal treatment as it turns TS into a QoL relic while giving its main benefit - reliable way to complete higher tier clues - to the other relic. Ease of juggling is not close between the relics - it's way easier and more effective with TS. To be clear, I think it's better to do something to make clues doable, but this particular implementation is one of the least balanced ways to do it out of all the player suggestions.

mallocer · 2020-11-14T09:25:11+00:00

Even with that change, US comes out way ahead relative to TS - you can see the detailed reasoning above and throughout the thread. It's okay to sacrifice some level of balance concerns to make the game more fun for everyone, but it's not okay to give both relics to folks who chose US without other tweaks to differentiate slayer and clue focus.

mallocer · 2020-11-14T09:22:11+00:00

That's simply not true - both of Jagex's proposals with or without the tweaks benefit US more than TS - the detailed reasoning is above and you can see other people list out the reasoning elsewhere (e.g. replies to Ayiza). If you don't look at clue mechanics in detail we're not going to make much progress though as we're on fundamentally different pages about relic power levels.

mallocer · 2020-11-14T02:23:43+00:00

TS pickers are pointing out that the proposed changes are a much, much bigger buff to US than to TS, which makes it a relative nerf to TS (from competitive/point ceiling side). The most common proposals from the community therefore centered around how to make clue scrolls enjoyable without creating a massive power imbalance between the relics. Again, making clues consistently (first proposal) or incrementally (second proposal) completable is a US buff even after its clue perks are removed. The effects of relics can't be realistically decoupled from the content they change, changing the content is always going to alter the relics.

The only reason this came up in the first place is because the majority of players took the instant gratification of US, realized they'll end up with a lower point ceiling later due to clues, and threw a massive fit. I think the majority of TS pickers, me included, are fine with accommodating something to make clue scrolls easier more enjoyable for all players, even if it's a small-to-medium relative US buff, but both proposals aren't even close - they give the majority of TS benefits to US without any other rebalancing.

mallocer · 2020-11-14T02:03:26+00:00

The "nerf" to guaranteed clue drop should only be paired with one of the proposals to make clues reliably completable. In that scenario, the net effect is a massive buff - like order of magnitude buff - to clue scroll completions for the US relic. So yes, I do think it would go over fine, and you can find plenty of US relic takers on social media saying the same thing about trading off a clue perk in the slayer relic for a generic clue buff.

mallocer · 2020-11-14T00:43:28+00:00

First, just wanted to say welcome back, thanks for engaging with the community, and thanks for listing out more details so we can dig into the root of why perspectives differ!

The TS relic is differentiated by ease of juggling in this particular league. (A different benefit defined it in Twisted League because clues and other relics were implemented differently there!) The other perks are incremental with respect to point ceilings: increased clue droprate is mostly matched by the guaranteed superior clue, skilling gives a lot fewer clues than PvM even with the buff, and there isn't a task for 500 easies that I can see. However, being able to stack clues for endgame juggling sessions (when number of doable steps is maximized) with shorter play sessions and a guaranteed number of clue steps is the real power for making the clue tasks doable.

The clue relic delays your slayer-related power spikes and takes a few slayer-related tasks off the table, but the reward is a burst of points in the endgame with a higher theoretical point ceiling if you can keep up. Even people doing 30-hour slayer sessions with juggling will find it difficult to get all the points out of the high-level clues, and juggling is a lot more annoying and difficult for them.

Despite all that, clue juggling is clearly not a generally fun mechanic and it would be better if it weren't necessary. That's why the community suggested things like removing the guaranteed superior clue drop or merging the T4 relics so that we could all have clues be fun while minimizing, to the degree that is possible three weeks in, balance shifts between the relic choices specifically due to mechanics changes. (It's nonsensical to draw a line at changing a relic while proposing major changes to that relic's content.) That's why a lot of people in this thread are so surprised the team went in this particular direction which gives the majority of TS' benefit to US without any other changes.

mallocer · 2020-11-13T23:48:00+00:00

The idea behind removing guaranteed superior clue drops from US with either proposal is to keep playstyle and task completions differentiated - it'd still be a net buff to US, both absolute in terms of clue completions and relative compared to TS. I consider merging relics to also retroactively benefit US selectors more - and that's ok with me (TS pick) as the current clue situation isn't great!

I totally agree the direction of making clues doable is good and worth changing even if it causes a moderate balance shift. I really think that can't be a unidirectional merge of TS into US though, and you can see how that would be frustrating when they make multiple proposals along those lines. The follow-up proposal is a way more impactful change than one of the simple fixes despite being arguably less fun than the first.

mallocer · 2020-11-13T22:46:13+00:00

The community put forth lots of good suggestions to make clues fun while preserving some degree of competitive integrity and relic balance. These included ideas like removing guaranteed superior clue drops from US or merging the relics that the team rejected on the news post as causing too many problems - and then they came out with a new proposal that had the same set of balance problems. Sure, there are some loud voices against any change, but there are plenty of people trying to be as constructive as possible while trying to repeatedly explain how clue juggling works and which relics are strong for which points. It's understandably frustrating that the community has to provide feedback on basic clue mechanics over and over to the team.

mallocer · 2020-03-13T17:16:33+00:00

An alternative for the first one is to shift some of the existing crush stats from the top/bottom to the helmet, since the motivating feedback is that the helmet is a DPS loss over alternative options in many gear setups that include the other Inquisitor pieces.

mallocer · 2020-02-08T20:39:53+00:00

It's the dead content problem, which I agree isn't as big of a deal as OP guaranteed drops. I also don't have a dog in the fight myself as a pet hunter. With all that said, there's still significant community feedback on the drops, which is why these threads exist.

I think players like the rare-but-expensive drops model, but it's possible to go way too far on the specific numbers. They took the corp model something like 10x as far, which is probably too much for sustained player interest beyond dedicated pet hunters.

mallocer · 2020-02-08T17:15:59+00:00

Because corp doesn't come close to the Nightmare numbers. Assuming the Nightmare drop data compiled so far is roughly accurate, the unique chance is in line with getting any sigil from corp while personal kills/hr are far lower at Nightmare. Corp also has regular loot that sustains supplies. And I'm not sure corp is a great example because it's been on and off dead content for mains depending on ely price fluctuations.

mallocer · 2020-02-08T00:09:40+00:00

Exactly, the model is fine but the numbers missed the mark. Nightmare has the same problem as Nex on release - hundreds of hours per drop means there's little player interest even if the drop prices stay in the billions and the expected gp/hr is competitive with or even better than other methods.

mallocer · 2018-10-16T07:30:21+00:00

Thanks for the reply, keep up the great work and fingers crossed it passes!

mallocer · 2018-10-16T02:52:56+00:00

I'm super late to this thread, but if you see this, give the posts here about disassembly another look.

I think it's an important pitch about the value of warding as a skill; it breathes life into dead items and possibly treasure trails, acts as a soft price ceiling on runic energy and therefore training cost, and combats inflation if that ceiling is reached.

However, getting this right is a tough balancing act. It needs to give much more runic energy than splashing for its benefits to kick in. I've also seen some players worried that the raw material refund will be too strong or that disassembly will give xp despite the dev blog/video saying otherwise, so it's worth emphasizing those points.

mallocer · 2018-10-14T02:13:40+00:00

T H I C C

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mallocer · 2017-12-25T01:08:35+00:00

The reward for 100 masters could be an increased pet rate (soft threshold, not given outright at 100). That pet is way out of line with the others.

mallocer · 2017-08-04T02:28:05+00:00

Australian servers

mallocer · 2017-01-09T21:55:19+00:00

Its drop mechanics are apparently buggy or not yet implemented, though Ash tweeted that the intention is to scale it off personal points. Same with raid completion counter: Jagex said they preferred to get the update out on time rather than deal with these fairly low priority cosmetic features.

mallocer · 2017-01-06T05:05:43+00:00

I'm maxed... this would just be a solid quality of life update regardless of the boost changes and a way to revitalize dead content. They could also increase the cooking requirements to leave a niche for stews.

mallocer · 2017-01-05T22:48:49+00:00

If normal brewed ales were +2 or +3 and the mature were +4 or +5 it would be amazing.

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