SRL Archive - RuneScape News and General

How are things in Old School?


mocrosoft

2015-05-20 13:23:36

tl;dr Mat K and Ian will be analyzing dater involving NMZ/Splashing and the drop rates at Wyverns/Zul-Rah while the SysAdmin team tries to resolve the DCs





mod_mat_k

May 20 2015

We wanted to update you about some of the more pressing issues that the community are facing as it has been a few months since we last spoke about some of them. We feel it is important that you know we are aware of these issues and that we are working towards resolutions for all them. These solutions will take time and your support and patience during this process is really important.

Obviously, the biggest issue you are facing is the ddos attacks that are happening. This came about as we started to ban the accounts which have been ddossing the servers. In retaliation these people started to attack the servers once more. We have continued with this approach and banned these accounts as we believe it is the right thing to do for the long term health of the game.

Our SysAdmin team have put a lot of effort into making our network more resilient which makes it harder for them to be ddossed. There is still some way to go and work has been continuing to improve the network further and give you the service you want.

Bearing in mind all this, you should expect the attacks to continue in the short term. We have left our kinder death mechanics in game so should you die during one of these attacks, you have a good chance of retrieving any lost items. In the meantime, if you have any information regarding the attacks you can contact us anonymously at [email]tipoff@jagex.com[/email].

The next big issue is Nightmare Zone and Splashing. We know that the community is divided on this issue which means that whatever happens, it is unlikely any change will pass a poll. This means we have to dig further into who is doing this, why and what they do after doing it. To get all the information we need to understand this we need Ian to allow the game to export all the data into our data warehouse so it can be analysed properly. However, this is a considerable job and at the moment Ian’s priority is resizeable mode which we believe is more important to you.

We do have some information though on who is using Nightmare Zone which the Analytics Team have been able to put together and it shows that about 5% of players use it (although whether they all AFK in it is something we do not know yet), which is much lower than we first though. Once we have all the information we need, we will share it with you and discuss the next steps.

Another issue that is regularly near the top of the list is botting and cheating in general. With the increase in players we have seen an increase in cheating. Mod Weath does a fantastic job with the bots and although we see an increase in bots over the weekend, their impact is minimal. However, we want to put some more effort into general cheating and negative behaviours that impact the game. As such we will be looking at bringing someone in to do this. It is likely that this person will work behind the scenes and you may not know who they are, but that remains to be seen.

The final issue we want to cover is Zulrah and the skeletal wyverns. We have seen that some of you think these two pieces of content are too generous with their drop tables. Our studies tell us that these are about right from a balancing perspective, however we are more than happy to question ourselves. So, once the work outputting the game data to the data warehouse has been done by Ian (as mentioned earlier on in the post) we’ll be asking the Analytics Team to see how many items are coming into the game from Zulrah and the skeletal wyverns compared to other areas and make any changes based on that.

So, there we have it. There are many issues that every game faces however despite these issues Old School is in a fantastic place. We are a growing and healthy game with a fantastic community and working together we have a long and great future ahead of us.

Join us on the forums if you want to discuss this newspost.

Mods Archie, Ash, Ghost, Ian, John C, Mat K, Ronan and Weath
The Old School Team


Another bullshit threat from jagex?

3Garrett3

2015-05-20 14:51:52

From: mocrosoft
Another bullshit threat from jagex?


Read it as "We know that people are breaking the rules and Mod Weath is completely overwhelmed. We're looking to hire another person to help with his work load"

I'm not sure how it counts as "News" but I suppose it probably makes legit players happier that "we're looking into it" rather than not saying anything. It shouldn't be news because it's the obvious decision to make if you're getting overrun by bots. The economic impact of bots has probably become higher than the cost of hiring more staff, so Jagex will hire staff to reduce their losses (real or perceived).

acow

2015-05-20 16:27:51

What I got from todays post is that they consider themselves to be relatively on top of botting. Regarding the new hiring, I believe it's to address bug abuse (Mod weath's surprisingly good at hunting down major rwt on osrs and it's not in jagex's best interest to crack down on small-time rwt), note the bit that says "It is likely that this person will work behind the scenes and you may not know who they are". You don't want your bug abuse guys being contacted to leak explotable bugs for $$ thus having them be unknown is a good idea.

+ the recent mod reach incident
+ jagex has historically been weak in this department (imo anyways)

just my .02$

mocrosoft

2015-05-20 17:22:34

Hahaha, people being pissed for months saying that 90% of players are NMZ prods –> camping bosses–> crashing prices–>etc…
Now it turns out it's only 5 % of people. just funny fact :D

rj

2015-05-20 18:24:10

From: mocrosoft
Hahaha, people being pissed for months saying that 90% of players are NMZ prods –> camping bosses–> crashing prices–>etc…
Now it turns out it's only 5 % of people. just funny fact :D


simple case of people looking at a legitimate negative aspect of something and losing credibility by blowing it out of proportion

Sin

2015-05-20 19:17:22

From: mocrosoft
Hahaha, people being pissed for months saying that 90% of players are NMZ prods –> camping bosses–> crashing prices–>etc…
Now it turns out it's only 5 % of people. just funny fact :D


That figure doesn't include splashers so idk

Incurable

2015-05-20 20:09:23

From: Sin
That figure doesn't include splashers so idk


I have a vague idea of what NMZ is, but what's splashing in this context? Is it the same thing people used to do where you'd wear armour and splash spells on purpose to afk train magic?

Hyperion

2015-05-20 22:04:31

From: Incurable
I have a vague idea of what NMZ is, but what's splashing in this context? Is it the same thing people used to do where you'd wear armour and splash spells on purpose to afk train magic?


You got it! If you go into the free for all portal at clan wars, I think it is, it's just filled with white dots beside each other splashing. Good luck trying to get a real fight there with someone you don't know.

cosmasjdz

2015-05-21 01:37:53

Hahaha, people being pissed for months saying that 90% of players are NMZ prods –> camping bosses–> crashing prices–>etc…
Now it turns out it's only 5 % of people. just funny fact


Recently been in my town rsers meet. Quess whos pissed of of those guys camping boses? The boss campers/gold farmers. Because their proffit decreases rapidly. I was surprised how many of them are playing rs just to earn few hundred € a month legitly, and only few playing game for fun. Well cant blame cause average salary in here is 270 € a month+taxes, so you get like 230€ left or so. And when guy gets elly everyone in town knows he got and asks him for a drink :)Small town 20k people there. Yet atleast 15+ proffesional boss campers…I can only imagine what happens in China and other poor countries. Seems like rs3 is being botted exclusively with only few adict playing for max capes. While osrs is becoming somewhat legal goldfarming and now since prices drops botting comes in spot not excluding me in the osrs goldfarm area. Few years ago people mostly used to farm EVE for cash, now some shifted to OSRS.

And since legal farming proffit drops you need to bot it to keep steady cash flow in your pocket :) So bots will be very high demand atleast few months especially in semi high lvl areas as i already been requested to make some high lvl bosses scripts.

mocrosoft

2015-05-21 04:12:31

From: cosmasjdz
Recently been in my town rsers meet. Quess whos pissed of of those guys camping boses? The boss campers/gold farmers. Because their proffit decreases rapidly. I was surprised how many of them are playing rs just to earn few hundred € a month legitly, and only few playing game for fun. Well cant blame cause average salary in here is 270 € a month+taxes, so you get like 230€ left or so. And when guy gets elly everyone in town knows he got and asks him for a drink :)Small town 20k people there. Yet atleast 15+ proffesional boss campers…I can only imagine what happens in China and other poor countries. Seems like rs3 is being botted exclusively with only few adict playing for max capes. While osrs is becoming somewhat legal goldfarming and now since prices drops botting comes in spot not excluding me in the osrs goldfarm area. Few years ago people mostly used to farm EVE for cash, now some shifted to OSRS.

And since legal farming proffit drops you need to bot it to keep steady cash flow in your pocket :) So bots will be very high demand atleast few months especially in semi high lvl areas as i already been requested to make some high lvl bosses scripts.


Well, I must say I don't see that many bots in Runescape 3 as I see in Oldschool, So i'm curious what they are going to do about it. I think we are lucky here that Jagex does not put a lot of developers into Oldschool Runescape, this way a lot of people are getting away with botting, for now…

rickhunley

2015-05-21 07:48:23

If people didn't bot and gold farm, there would be less people playing in general, and people would have to spend more time grinding to get what they have already worked for. Makes sense for Jagex to just focus on bringing in new game content, appealing to people's morality, and finding the right pricing points for bonds. GG.