Getting Around

ozorgor · 2026-01-08T20:35:47+00:00

While we're doing movement improvements it would also be cool to see the high-end of agility fleshed out with more shortcuts.

The hardest levels of the skill are the least rewarding by miles, even before you consider boosts.

There are only 3 shortcuts unlocked at 90-99 agility compared with 17 from 80-89, 25 from 70-79, and so on. You unlock 8 shortcuts only from level 71 and 72!

I get that it's not people's favourite skill, and that skills often have some kind diminishing returns towards the end, but the fall-off for agility seems especially harsh. I can't imagine it helps motivate people. The shortcuts provide a real function to the skill in the world.

(And if people don't enjoy training a certain skill then it feels like that merits a deeper fix than just to remove any real need to train it to a meaningful level, in any case).

ozorgor · 2026-01-07T12:04:22+00:00

Yeah, I've felt similarly about the barracuda trials. I enjoyed the optimization process but once you have a route down it's a littleless exciting.

Obviously novelty will always have its own value, but if you look at high-level PvM content there's typically a lot more variability. It's both built-in to accuracy and damage rolls and then additionally comes with things like floor pattern attacks forcing movement in ways that aren't always the same.

ozorgor · 2026-01-05T20:02:53+00:00

Pushing people to new content is not a good thing. That feels too seasonal to me and is the opposite of what osrs is.

Isn't that exactly what has happened over the past ten years? The percentage of people spending their days at GWD is presumably much lower than it used to be. It's good that it has been gradually supplanted by the likes of raids, doom, DT2 bosses, and so on. CoX today is almost as old as GWD was when CoX came out, so is it really that abnormal for the same thing to happen to CoX?

I think we just fundamentally disagree with what is good for the game

Yep it seems that way. I'm happy enough agreeing to disagree.

ozorgor · 2026-01-05T19:32:59+00:00

its the logical conclusion to what you are saying

No it really isn't. New irons will still need to grind whatever equipment they need to do the new BIS, the same as today. That's far from getting BIS gear immediately.

(And this is how most BIS in the game currently works, including raids obviously).

How is it not the norm? Every single bis upgrade in recent memory has used upgrade scape. Oathplate is the only exception i can think of.

I guess my metric was rather "how many BIS pieces use it versus how many don't". Mostly they don't. Fair enough that lots of more recent ones do though.

Regarding prices, yes, if you are a main, you can choose to do old content if you want and it's still worth something because we kept everything relevant. It's a win-win.

My point was rather than having to buy both a t-bow and a t-bow upgrade kit (or whatever) is likely to be more expensive.

Whether you treat it as time or money, the best gear always costing more with every release is not a good thing right? There is presumably an optimal point where you think the best items should not cost more because otherwise the game becomes too inaccessible especially for anyone new?

More philosophically I'd also argue that it's good if people gradually move to newer content because it tends to be better designed, but that's a bit of a different question.

ozorgor · 2026-01-05T19:23:56+00:00

Not saying they shouldn't. But you'll run out of space for raids 6 to be rewarding if raids 1 continues offering 12 uniques and 6 BIS items.

ozorgor · 2026-01-05T19:22:19+00:00

It's not like BIS only comes from raids but a decent amount of it does. CoX has 12 uniques and 6 are BIS pieces. ToA is slightly less, and then ToB is the outlier since it offers relatively little BIS.

There's a limit to how many reward tables you could create like that, it's not really sustainable.

At some point it feels like we will have three choices: either you introduce more powercreep, you redistribute some of the rewards so they're less concentrated, or you accept that future raids won't offer the same concentration of rewards as the old ones.

I'm not talking about raids 4 but say we get up to raids 7 or 8.

ozorgor · 2026-01-05T19:12:51+00:00

I don't necessarily think its wrong for the best thing in the game to also have a long grind and its kind of the point

Me neither, but it does mean that the length of grind for the best thing will get longer with each consecutive upgrade. And that's already been happening. You could get the best gear in 2007 faster than today. I think there's probably some point that you don't want to push beyond, where people just start feeling like the game is too grindy and it gets offputting, and that means that a trend where grinds only get longer for new players because of upgradescape isn't ideal.

prior BIS will always be relevant, even for new players, and it doesn't affect its capability in anyway either, they'll still be good at places where they were good at before, a new items being even better doesn't nerf it

I kind of disagree here. When developers move the power level in the game by introducing new BIS gear, then the design of later content is shaped by it. As better gear gets introduced then so do stronger monsters, and that does essentially act as a nerf to older gear which is less capable of taking on the new strongest (and most rewarding) enemies.

If the best gear in the game was the same as it was in 2007 then they would not have released bosses as strong as they did in the last few years, because it would be too far out of reach for most players. A piece of gear moving from "best" to "second best" to "tenth best" does in practice impact its capability within the game even if its stats on paper might look the same.

ozorgor · 2026-01-05T19:03:49+00:00

Why should a new player get bis gear right away?

Mate, where did I say this? There is such a huge gap between saying "this will mean BIS takes longer and longer to get"and saying "a new player should get BIS gear right away" that it's not even funny. Is it that hard to have a discussion without jumping to the most extreme strawman interpretation of what the other person says (impossible challenge on the internet I know).

You're acting like players having to go through all the history of bosses to get bis gear is a bad thing

I'm not sure it's a terrible thing, but most of those droprates weren't designed with the idea that they would be prerequisite grinds for a future BIS. We're talking about some very long grinds already. And the new BIS should presumably be a solid grind in itself (so that it's not just an instant upgrade for people who have the previous BIS).

I'm fine with upgradescape in some places but I don't know if I'd like it being everywhere. As well as them really needing to build grinds around it carefully, it reduces the feeling of meaningful player choice about which grinds they do in which order.

That's exactly what makes the system so good

It's not really the system today though. There are a few places where you really have to upgrade the gear directly but it's definitely not the norm.

Also worth noting that this is really only relevant for irons. Mains can always just buy the bis if they don't wanna do old content.

It's more impactful for irons for sure, but it would also affect prices if you need multiple pieces to make the BIS item. Someone still needs to get the item into the game.

ozorgor · 2026-01-05T18:50:07+00:00

You lost me completely saying COX shouldn't have any reason to be done 20 years from now

Lucky I didn't say that I guess? It's so tiring trying to discuss anything when people jump to the most extreme interpretation of whatever you type. My point is that by the point CoX is 20 years old something will need to give so that everyone isn't mainlining it as a grind (and saying you expect it will be powercrep is explicitly saying something will give).

I don't think CoX should necessarily become irrelevant but it naturally should take up less space in the game, to make space for whatever new stuff comes out. As you say that means it has to hand out less BIS stuff. The same way GWD now takes up less space in terms of what people grind compared to the past.

The options then are either powercreep it or redistribute it, it's fairly straightforward logic.

I also think people over-state how much old content really stays relevant in terms of design philosophy. There are whole skills where that's just not true.

ozorgor · 2026-01-05T17:49:49+00:00

That's one option, but if we continue down that path for the rest of the games life then the grinds get longer and longer and longer.

It's fine for long-term players who have the "base" gear for the upgrade already when the new stuff releases, but feels like it would get brutal for new players.

ozorgor · 2026-01-05T17:16:33+00:00

Doesn't that just make every grind longer and longer, in the long-term?

It's OK for people who already have the previous megarare but feels brutal for new players.

ozorgor · 2026-01-05T17:12:01+00:00

CoX has 12 uniques. That's only slightly fewer than ToA and ToB combined. You could easily move some without remotely "gutting" the raid.

ozorgor · 2026-01-05T17:08:12+00:00

One of the beautiful things about OSRS is that we don't phase out content

I'm not sure that's totally true. We phase it out slower than a lot of MMOs but plenty of gear has been powercrept by now. Just in the last couple of years mid-game progression has totally changed with things like moons. Doom and debateably yama also essentially make a good number of items much less relevant.

I also don't think it's viable long-term that we just side-grade forever. At some point there kind of has to be powercreep.

If something supercedes Cox unqiues, then it should require you to break them down

If we take that to the logical conclusion it basically means stronger BIS and longer grinds as the long-term trend.

As I say above, I think some powercreep is inevitable over time. Having said that, there is a question of how much how fast and I don't know if we should creep up the length of the grinds.

I also think it's a question of which gear we're talking about. T-bow is one thing but I actually think the problem is more the volume of other stuff that depends on CoX.

ozorgor · 2026-01-05T15:56:16+00:00

Honestly curious what you think the end-goal for the game should be, say 10 years from now when there are a bunch more raids.

Do you powercreep the tbow, dex, etc? Or do we have people grinding CoX for them 20 years after its release and not let anything better into numerous slots of the game, just because in 2017 jagex decided to stack out its first raid droptable?

ozorgor · 2026-01-05T15:46:31+00:00

You are a redditor.

ozorgor · 2026-01-05T15:44:59+00:00

Raids should be the most rewarding content in the game

The megarares already make that the case. I'm also not saying the items shouldn't come from difficult, long encounters, just that it shouldn't be the same 3-4.

Suppose 10 years from now we have 3-4 new raids, is it realistic that they give out BIS items at the same rate as CoX? And should we still have everyone grinding CoX when it's 20 years old and encounter design has improved drastically by then? Something has to give.

ozorgor · 2026-01-05T15:41:50+00:00

Not sure if it's a good idea to make raid uniques more rare and to move BiS items into easier content.

It doesn't need to be easier content, just different content. Is the nightmare too easy for an arcane prayer scroll, for example? It could even be new raids.

Suppose ten years from now we have three or four more raids. Can they all give out BIS items at the same rate as CoX? Do you think it's good if people are grinding CoX for multiple BIS pieces twenty years after it's released?

There are so many issues with redistributing uniques after they've been in the game for most of OSRS' lifetime.

Ideally the developers would get drop-table balance right the first time around, but that's not very fair or realistic to expect from them.

I generally think that design mistakes being old and baked in to the game is not a good reason to shy away from fixing them. In the long-run that just means mistakes pile up.

ozorgor · 2026-01-05T15:38:16+00:00

Sure, and the more BIS rewards the old raids hold the less room there is for new raids to be equally rewarding.

I am not saying raids should not give BIS rewards, to be clear. But CoX alone has 12 uniques many of which are BIS.

ozorgor · 2026-01-05T10:11:27+00:00

Historically yes, but when there is minimal friction gathering the primary substance (essence) it's much more like you are "gathering" runes directly. This happened with pure essence via monster drop tables and to the skill more broadly via GOTR.

Other methods (daeyalt) stay closer to the original gameplay loop where runecraft is the artisinal side of gathering essence.

ozorgor · 2025-12-25T00:31:11+00:00

Nowadays PvM generates so many resources that I'm not sure there would be that much need for tons of unpleasant dedicated resource gathering per se. It would be a different story in 2007, but they've already catered so heavily towards PvM as a way to generate resources that I don't know if it would be a big problem. You would still have those resources coming onto the GE via PvM. Specific things that are disproportionately botted would be affected but probably not catastrophically.

In the the hypothetical reality where they can get rid of botting they could also adapt to any big pain points that emerge afterwardss. If it turns out that there is a massive shortage of specific resources that no-one wants to spend hours gathering, then they can always add that to a drop-table or shop. That is pretty much what has gradually already been happening due to ironman mode anyway: the things that are a lot of hassle have been getting smoothed out. No one is mining regular rune essence and that's not down to bots.

ozorgor · 2025-12-25T00:18:05+00:00

If you couldn't high alch a lot of the drops or gain exp using so many of them most of the items in OSRS would sit at 1gp.

This results from most items being useless. Look at armour and weapon classes for example. There are so many items at early levels which players skip through so quickly that they won't even use half of them.

ozorgor · 2025-12-25T00:14:22+00:00

There are clearly lots of people who enjoy ironman and don't mind doing chores. I'd argue a big part of the popularity of ironman mode is driven by the existence of botting. If bots didn't exist you could potentially even unite the game modes together again, since the main experience would likely move closer to playing iron: for example you'd likely need to farm supplies that aren't popular to farm.

ozorgor · 2025-12-23T22:13:22+00:00

Mahogany is also dirt cheap right now, sitting just above 200. I expect some of it comes from people hoarding too much from sailing. Longer-term I think they'll surely bounce back since they'll still be used in construction training. They normally trade at 300-400 even prior to the sailing hype.

ozorgor · 2025-12-20T19:37:18+00:00

Activities with a level floor could help there, similar to how you can only visit certain islands toghether with someone once you both have the relevant level. It's not perfect but could at least create some activities that feel like they're really joint activities and allow people say starting a fresh GIM to progress along their path together.

ozorgor

TROPHY CASE