EoC Combat Improvements

[Memphus]

Question: Will off-hand weapons have specs?  I feel like that would make a big difference both in their prices and just stuff in general.  Like, say you have two drag weapons, like DDP (hope that comes back) and off-hand mace.  Would they both get their stuff back, or would only main apply?

 

Offhand weapons are completely ignored when you are using abilities (except their base damage is added to the mainhand when calculating output damage), and since the new "special attacks" will just be another ability with cooldown, I'd venture a guess at no. But maybe having an offhand with the same special attack as the mainhand (i.e. two daggers) will decrease the cooldown of the "special attack" ability?

[Memphus]

"PvP refinements – We want to revive PvP in RuneScape, and will be starting with a collection of essential combat tweaks and rebalances. This will include changes to stun durations, incoming damage, PvP minigames and removing the global cooldown on weapon switching."

I think this is a great first step towards reviving PVP. I'm interested in seeing how the rest of the changes will influence the game.

 

The technicalities of the combat system are not the cause of the lack of PvP - PvP is actually quite fun in the game right now, and is much more tactical than ever before. A smart player with bad gear can easily overcome a dumb player with great gear. What killed PvP is, as His Lordship pointed out before the EoC even came out - a lack of desirable Wilderness-only content. Warbands are really good for that though, and PvP is abound during them. What killed the warring scene was stubborn players without the patience to learn a new system, combined with the release of the Old School servers.

[Memphus]

The current system is broken

 

This won't fix everything

 

What about the current system is broken, in your opinion?

And what needs "fixing"?

 

 

All that this update seems to be doing is making the game more AFKable, once again. If you watch the video, you see with the "Revolution", you basically program the game to automatically cycle through your abilities for you.

What I love about the EoC is that we actually have to PLAY the game. They are taking that away again, we will click an enemy and wait for it to die, while the game automatically cycles through our abilities for us. A garbage update, IMO. They might as well just let us use third-party macros to save themselves the effort of programming one for us.

Edited January 25, 2014 by Memphus

[Beric]

A smart player with bad gear can easily overcome a dumb player with great gear.

Can confirm. I watched my wife in barrows gear absolutely destroy some dude in virtus/seismic (both as mages). I definitely married the right woman.

[Douglas]

Sounds good, in combat i would rather put a little less effort/attention into basic abilities which i'm only really using to farm adrenaline anyway. currently momentum penalizes you too much not only in damage output but also in all the special effects that you miss out on like healing stuns and damage modifiers. It's also a pain to forget that you're on momentum and throw an ability in there.

For dual wielding special attacks it's likely that they'd just make each piece do half of the special attack effect. For instance dual wielding ddps would be the same special as before but maybe if you had a shield on it would either do just the first hit of the special or maybe do the whole thing but take up 2x from the bar, or the whole spec but 1/2 damage penalty.. With a ddp and a dlong using spec could just give you half of each bonus, would be weird interactions with d scim though

[Steven]

The current system is broken

 

This won't fix everything

 

What about the current system is broken, in your opinion?

And what needs "fixing"?

 

 

All that this update seems to be doing is making the game more AFKable, once again. If you watch the video, you see with the "Revolution", you basically program the game to automatically cycle through your abilities for you.

What I love about the EoC is that we actually have to PLAY the game. They are taking that away again, we will click an enemy and wait for it to die, while the game automatically cycles through our abilities for us. A garbage update, IMO. They might as well just let us use third-party macros to save themselves the effort of programming one for us.

 

With a very limited ability pool, EoC very quickly felt like mindless mashing, even if I have the right order/timing, I don't feel like i'm playing the game, I feel like i'm typing an essay. Weapons and armor lost their individual uniqueness with the removal of special attacks and unique stats (i.e. Bandos' Strength bonus).

 

I do agree that Revolution is not a very great idea, and I honestly wasn't sure what it exactly was until I watched the video, which I just watched now; but ability queueing however is a good addition. That's what mainly made it a spamfest. "Ability not ready." Will I still slam my keys multiple times? Probably, but it's nice to know that I don't have to.

 

Vigi once summarized the brokenness of the system quite well, and I wish I could find the post to quote exactly, but he basically compared it to League of Legends, and the way that someone doing something at a specific time can change the outcome of an entire fight, while in Runescape, it's nothing but a predictable cycle of spamming the same 5 keys, until you can spam the next 3 keys, and then the 9th key. And the fact that currently Runescape is almost entirely 1 on 1 combat, it makes this cycle even more apparent.

[Deathstar]

html or not logging on

[Beric]

Can I just butt in and mention how weird 'revolution' seems as an ability name?

[Pyrolord]

Nice triple post, Memphus. 

 

 

A smart player with bad gear can easily overcome a dumb player with great gear.

Can confirm. I watched my wife in barrows gear absolutely destroy some dude in virtus/seismic (both as mages). I definitely married the right woman.

 

Why isn't this woman in Gladz? Spouses don't let spouses not be in Gladz. 

[Beric]

I've tried to hard, Jason! So hard.

[Pyrolord]

I've tried to hard, Jason! So hard.

 

 

Finally got the beta to work but I have no items that have a special attack and apparently you can't use the GE.  

[Rafi]

I got two things out of this topic:

1) Jagex finally acknowledged that they doused PvP with a wet towel.

2) Jade's wife is a RS badass.

[Lord Skyhawk]

pvp lessened during the start of limited trade and the original removal of the wildy pre bounty hunter. the downward spiral continued from there and never really improved. these updates are ideas players had offered quite some time ago and were completely ignored. only now when their player base has drastically diminished do they bother listening to the players. overall its their income that makes these changes not the true interest of the players. if it were up to the players these types of changes would have happened years ago. its a stab at gaining their player base back and making more current players happier. it is a step in the right direction i just hope it wasnt too late. Like tattles has said in previous post, he felt like he was mindless button mashing instead of playing a game. i like how fast i kill things now but it also seems like this game takes no effort anymore. i wanted 99 mining once before things like fast xp granite and living rock ever existed. when mining was a skill that actually took time and meant the person took effort to get the lvl. if i had to guess, before rs2 came out i think there was roughly 300 ppl with 99 mining while most other skills had over 1k with 99. now you have people everywhere getting maxed capes daily. too easy now???

[Dan G]

Revolution is great. I don't see special attacks improving the pvp scene unless you count rushers as wilderness activity. You can gain adrenaline way faster than special attacks would ever take to restore and adrenaline pots are a thing.

That said, I like that some weapons are going to become usable again even if only for the special attack.

But yeah revolution is excellent from my little playing time.