RuneScape Forum Archive | Skill Training Methods

Seasons Past

Posts: 559 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Below are suggestions to improve Agility, Hunter, Prayer, and Runecrafting training.

Main Issues
-Agility and Hunter training lack variety, especially at lower levels
-Training methods are mechanically dated and repetitive, including:
* Most Agility courses
* Tracking
* Bird snaring
* Deadfall
-Prayer and Runecrafting lack a variety of viable training options on F2P worlds, despite being free skills
* Prayer is much more costly and extremely inefficient for F2P as compared with P2P
* Runespan is the only viable training method for Runecrafting on F2P worlds, despite being peripheral to the core of the skill
-These shortcomings impact the early game most acutely, leaving a poor impression on new players

Suggestions

Agility
-Increase XP earned when completing a lap on Agility courses
* Excluding Anachronia, Het’s Oasis, and the Hefin course
-Remove obstacle failure
-Consider introducing a permanent, low-activity training method similar to one of the following:
* Dancing platforms (Prayer activity from the discontinued Spring Fayre event)
* Stone celebration (Spring Festival event)

https://runescape.wiki/w/Dancing_Platform
https://runescape.wiki/w/Spring_Festival_(2023)

Hunter
Rework tracking and bird snaring to be similar to the Farming skill, as follows:

1) Set up traps
-Traps would no longer be items deployed from the backpack. Instead, players would set traps by interacting with objects built into the environment, such as rocks or trees
-Setting traps would take several minutes, awarding small amounts of XP

2) Catch prey
-After a certain amount of time (minutes to hours), there would be a chance to catch prey
-Multiple creatures could be caught, depending on the level requirements and amount of time passed

3) Collect rewards
-For each creature caught, players would receive XP and materials
-Non-guaranteed rewards could include:
* Bird nests
* Gemstones
* Summoning charms
* Wood spirits
* Clue scrolls (rare) Spirit of Forinthry ~ Runecrafting: Magic Armour ~ F2P Extensions ~ Dragon Slayer improvements ~ New Player Experience

21-Aug-2023 23:09:23 - Last edited on 15-Nov-2023 00:55:50 by Seasons Past

Seasons Past

Posts: 559 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Prayer
-Allow all players to offer bones/ashes at regular altars, receiving a modest XP boost
* This would function identically to POH chapel altars
* Altars in certain areas, such as Edgeville Monastery, would potentially grant a larger boost
* Members would potentially be able to use the Construction skill to upgrade certain altars
-Replace the Nexus with a permanent, unrestricted training method
* This new training method would be similar to the serenity posts (Agility) activity in Prifddinas
* The new activity could be called Meditation and take place at Edgeville Monastery

https://runescape.wiki/w/The_Nexus
https://runescape.wiki/w/Serenity_posts

Runecrafting
-Allow all players to complete Enter the Abyss (miniquest) and use the abyssal rifts of the first six Runecrafting altars (air through body)
* Would include access to rune essence pouches, binding necklaces, and combination runes
* Would not include access to the demonic skull or magical thread
-Allow all players to enter the Chaos Altar and create chaos runes
* Includes the ability to obtain chaos talismans, craft and wear chaos tiaras, and enter the chaos rift in the Abyss Spirit of Forinthry ~ Runecrafting: Magic Armour ~ F2P Extensions ~ Dragon Slayer improvements ~ New Player Experience

21-Aug-2023 23:11:00 - Last edited on 04-Oct-2023 11:00:52 by Seasons Past

Seasons Past

Posts: 559 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Thanks for reading. Spirit of Forinthry ~ Runecrafting: Magic Armour ~ F2P Extensions ~ Dragon Slayer improvements ~ New Player Experience

21-Aug-2023 23:18:52

Oct

2013

Rikornak

Posts: 9,169 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

The issue with agility is less that it requires a lot of attention, it's more a lot of the older courses are crap - utter crap you just could remove from the game and nobody would bother. You easily could double to triple the xp gains of most of them, bringing down failure rates to reasonable levels and they're still not really en par with modern courses like anachronia or the oasis of het.

In general I think it would be better if courses were to be reworked to work more like prif or the oasis. Not you click once and you can go afk for a few minutes. You'll play them as they are - but you need to keep your eyes open for shortcuts or other rewarding distractions (I mean - I could even imagine something like marks of grace from OS for that matter). Obviously fixes like drastical incrases to experience rates, removal (or at least drastical reduction - but honestly I'll opt for removing any failure that costs you more than a bit of health, since those things just suck ) of failure rates and partially more intuitive clicking layouts.

For hunter the same - the issue isn't how those things are played - it certainly are some rather uncanny failure rates - as well as often unappealing loot and experience rewards. The things that actually are rewarding to catch with box catching like activities (like skillchompas for instance - basically everything you currently would want to catch en masse like that) would heavily suffer from this skill being degraded to "do a hunting run every hour or so&quot

. How many different spots would you even want players to run to?

I honestly think, that a lot of those old activities wouldn't be as bad as they are, if they were to get that RNG involvement out of them - preferably entirely, but at least toned down. They are for combat after all with necromancy and potentially the other three styles later on - so why should old skilling stuff suck as much as it does? Obviously "being rewarding" would be another can of worms. Improvements: Tooltip / (F2P) QoL v2
Quick Fixes: Invention

26-Aug-2023 11:16:35 - Last edited on 26-Aug-2023 11:31:09 by Rikornak

Oct

2013

Rikornak

Posts: 9,169 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

I think the prayer suggestions are fair. Albeit I said it in different places - they should rather fix the nexus as some lore containing one off activity - it shouldn't be removed just due to you not liking it. And maybe considering making a weekly d&d out of it. But fixing it is some minimum.

Runecrafting is... curious. The runespan once was intended as some better way to train runecrafting - but at the costs of not creating runes - preserving and at that time even bolstering their value. OS - which is in a comparably crappy situation as RS2 was when the runespan was introduced has introduced an activity with even worse experience rates - but not as awful to do as altar/abyss running. With the result that this increased convenience caused all the featured runes to plummet heavily. Improvements: Tooltip / (F2P) QoL v2
Quick Fixes: Invention

26-Aug-2023 11:16:40 - Last edited on 26-Aug-2023 11:34:59 by Rikornak

Jan

2018

Daddy Roshi

Posts: 3,348 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

- "Agility is unnecessarily tedious" I rightly agree with this it is tedious and slow but u can always buy silverhawk feathers and train it that way

- hunter is slow at first sure but with protein traps it's super easy at higher lvls everything shouldn't be afk'able so I see no issues with hunter personally

- "F2P lacks a viable Prayer training method." Well it's f2p for a reason obviously f2p shouldn't have the best training methods if u want more xp buy membership

- "For F2P, Runespan is the only viable Runecrafting training method." Again f2p is free for a reason I have no issue using runespan either since that's were I got 120 RC I think it's great as is

"The above issues affect early levels most" it's the same for everyone in that regard not just f2p gotta start somewhere right?

200m defence 08-10-2021

comp cape 12-19-2021

26-Aug-2023 17:08:28

Seasons Past

Posts: 559 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Rikornak said :
I think the prayer suggestions are fair. Albeit I said it in different places - they should rather fix the nexus as some lore containing one off activity - it shouldn't be removed just due to you not liking it. And maybe considering making a weekly d&d out of it. But fixing it is some minimum.

Runecrafting is... curious. The runespan once was intended as some better way to train runecrafting - but at the costs of not creating runes - preserving and at that time even bolstering their value. OS - which is in a comparably crappy situation as RS2 was when the runespan was introduced has introduced an activity with even worse experience rates - but not as awful to do as altar/abyss running. With the result that this increased convenience caused all the featured runes to plummet heavily. I hadn’t considered leaving the Nexus as a one-off activity. My dislike of it stems from how it seems to have been used as a hasty substitute for a core training method. As F2P have no incentive to train beyond protection prayers, it feels a little too convenient that there is still no adequate training method. I am scapegoating the Nexus for that, but I acknowledge that it isn’t making the game worse off except aesthetically.

The issue is similar for Runecrafting. While the Runespan obviously added a lot of value, it also sidestepped more fundamental concerns. The major benefit was having a low-intensity training method. However, xp rates for regular Runecrafting weren’t addressed until the demonic skull.

Both of these felt like short-term solutions. The devs could have increased experience across the board rather than relying on the Abyss as a workaround. They could have also applied a similar design as the soul altar to all rune altars. I remember hearing that one of the justifications for the Runespan was for more time spent training to actually involve runes as opposed to running back and forth. Spirit of Forinthry ~ Runecrafting: Magic Armour ~ F2P Extensions ~ Dragon Slayer improvements ~ New Player Experience

28-Aug-2023 02:03:50

Seasons Past

Posts: 559 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Rikornak said :
The issue with agility is less that it requires a lot of attention, it's more a lot of the older courses are crap - utter crap you just could remove from the game and nobody would bother. You easily could double to triple the xp gains of most of them, bringing down failure rates to reasonable levels and they're still not really en par with modern courses like anachronia or the oasis of het.

In general I think it would be better if courses were to be reworked to work more like prif or the oasis. Not you click once and you can go afk for a few minutes. You'll play them as they are - but you need to keep your eyes open for shortcuts or other rewarding distractions (I mean - I could even imagine something like marks of grace from OS for that matter). Obviously fixes like drastical incrases to experience rates, removal (or at least drastical reduction - but honestly I'll opt for removing any failure that costs you more than a bit of health, since those things just suck ) of failure rates and partially more intuitive clicking layouts.
[...] I do see your point that modern xp rates would make the older Agility courses more tolerable. The xp needs to be increased regardless of any mechanical adjustments. By “AFK,” I didn’t mean that Agility courses would be completely without input; it would make sense to have to re-engage every time you complete a lap, at minimum. Getting rid of obstacle failure is something I can get behind, simply due to the psychology of it. It’s unpleasant and serves the same balancing purpose as the shortcuts/distractions, so there really is no more need for that punitive mechanic on a non-combat activity. Spirit of Forinthry ~ Runecrafting: Magic Armour ~ F2P Extensions ~ Dragon Slayer improvements ~ New Player Experience

28-Aug-2023 03:01:07

Seasons Past

Posts: 559 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Rikornak said :
[...]
For hunter the same - the issue isn't how those things are played - it certainly are some rather uncanny failure rates - as well as often unappealing loot and experience rewards. The things that actually are rewarding to catch with box catching like activities (like skillchompas for instance - basically everything you currently would want to catch en masse like that) would heavily suffer from this skill being degraded to "do a hunting run every hour or so&quot

. How many different spots would you even want players to run to?

I honestly think, that a lot of those old activities wouldn't be as bad as they are, if they were to get that RNG involvement out of them - preferably entirely, but at least toned down. They are for combat after all with necromancy and potentially the other three styles later on - so why should old skilling stuff suck as much as it does?[...] I don’t think the majority of the Hunter skill needs to be reworked. Admittedly I left it pretty vague, but methods like box trapping and barehanded butterfly catching are already how they should be. The main problem is that the good options aren’t available until the player already has some levels under their belt. Now that you mention it, I think the RNG element is the problem. Simply having birds not land on a snare unless they get caught would be an enormous improvement.

However, I think there would be value in diversifying the skill a bit more. I imagine periodically visiting one or more Hunter areas to set up traps and/or collect rewards. The traps would be built into the environment and take a bit of time to set up, awarding a small amount of xp. Higher-leveled areas would give better xp and items but would have longer wait times, so you would be incentivized to prioritize the most advanced areas you can access. I think something like this would be fun and more realistic and immersive than the original design for the Hunter skill. Spirit of Forinthry ~ Runecrafting: Magic Armour ~ F2P Extensions ~ Dragon Slayer improvements ~ New Player Experience

28-Aug-2023 03:20:36

Oct

2013

Rikornak

Posts: 9,169 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

In general I am not super sure what actually was the intent of the nexus in the first place.

It was released as a p2p only activity initially - but it basically always just was a quick xp grab for the first few levels. They only rolled it out later to be available for f2p. If you have a team you can get the experience rather quickly - but it being an one-off activity (since yeah - you do it once and never again that's why), you just won't have an influx of players eventually. This leads to two potential fixes - either you can scrape off that one-off experience significantly faster - which would make it into a training method roughly as much as a quest is. Or this thing is changed to some kind of d&d, which would allow you to get the experience more often (and since this game has lots of dailies already, I certainly would opt for weekly). But even then it needs more fixes - like a level based scaling - since static experience rewards never age well...

The runespan fits in a line with activities, that do not offer any rewards, but are either more afk and/or grant better experience rates. At the time it was released it offered better experience rates than the abyss, so it wasn't just more convenient, it also was faster to level. It should be taken as a fact, that Jagex is extremely ungenerous to free players when it comes to runecrafting for reasons to protect the economy. The abyss certainly one of the things more understandable if they never are released to f2p. But as it stands you certainly have the choice if you rather want profit or experience - making water runes is highly profitable even without access to the abyss for instance - of course experience rates aren't too insane - but that's more than viable as a tradeoff. Improvements: Tooltip / (F2P) QoL v2
Quick Fixes: Invention

28-Aug-2023 08:40:47

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