An Open Letter to Mr. Mark Gerhard (Mod MMG)*

Dear Mr. Gerhard,

Perhaps after seeing the great number of players trolling and flaming on the forums, you will suspect this is another article to criticize Jagex's actions regarding the recent changes to the hiscores system.  Rather than this, it is a request for you to choose one of two distinct possibilities for the future of RuneScape.

But first, please allow us to introduce ourselves.  We are the free players of RuneScape, the ones who have never paid, or are not currently paying, for membership.  The reason(s) that we chose to do so are far from uniform.  For some of us RuneScape is a game we play only occasionally.  Some of us choose not to subscribe to the member's game due to financial constraints, to which today's economy is no exception.  For others, our parents did not believe in paying a recurring fee for this game, or we did simply did not want to pay.  Still others played on free to play for the challenges it presented and a greater feeling of accomplishment.

Now that you have a brief overview of who we are, we would like to communicate to you an urgent message.  Despite the fact that there is weather in RuneScape, metaphorically it still exists, for free players.  There are two distinct kinds-Sun and the North Wind-regarding the approach you choose to encourage us to become paying players.  The ancient Greek storyteller Aesop has a fable [2] regarding these objects, which personify the Sun and the North Wind as persuasion and force, respectively.  The fable narrates a competition between the two with the goal of determining which is stronger by attempting to make a traveler remove his cloak.  While the North Wind howled unsuccessfully until it was out of breath, the Sun shone gently until the traveler shed the cloak due to the heat.

Prior to your leadership, Jagex seemed to prefer the approach of the North Wind, by suffocating us via saturating the free to play game with teaser options, which yielded a message that those features were members-only.  On February 1, 2009 [3] you were officially appointed to lead Jagex.  From that day, the future of RuneScape for us began to look less bleak.  You had reassured us that our demographic was not subjugated to paying players.  In 2009 and 2010, you won the Golden Joystick Awards, which are decided by vote, and we provided the votes.  Indeed, you made several statements that inspired us with hope:

 

We feel both games are substantive in their own right. I want to apologise for habitually over-promoting the benefits of membership to our free players. I strongly believe if you love the free game you will equally love the members’ content and that is sufficient promotion to me. If you can't enjoy the free game in its own right then we're not doing our jobs properly. We will continue to improve the free game and, crucially, make it as fun as possible because we know that this is the way that everyone first discovers RuneScape.  [6]

And Jagex proceeded with that plan.  The Dungeoneering skill was released and made partially available to us, unlike so many previous members-only skills in previous years.  One degree at a time, the forums were made accessible and more accessible to us.  Then there was the issue of reintroducing free trade and the wilderness.  After rioting, which subsided and was replaced by pleading and begging, you introduced a referendum and implemented it according to the final results (over 90% voted "yes" [7]).  For other six months, although we witnessed an infestation of bots, you taught us a valuable lesson that some intervention would be necessary.  Over the last month we have seen an overwhelming number of positive updates.  There was an announcement about an anti-botting measure, follow by operation "Clutter-Fluster."  Substantial efforts toward removing dicing were made.  Yet it feels as if these updates have been negated.

This is due to some of the recent updates concerning free to play.  Soon after operation CF, many free to play worlds were removed, including the world for 1000 and higher skill total.  Although an explanation was provided that this world was under capacity meaning it was on the chopping block, so are many of the remaining worlds.  But we are not asking for this update to be reversed or a total level world reinstated.

Most recently, a substantial amount of us and even our paying friends feel alienated due to the removal of hiscores for free players.  The claim in the recent FAQ [4] was "99.97% of all bots were F2P."  However, economics seems to argue differently.  Consider an item which has always been for paying players only, to which no free to play item is even close: raw sharks.  Based on the claim that most bots were free to play, the impact should be absolutely minimal on the pay to play game.  Can the removal of 0.03% of the total botting we saw result in the kind of behavior seen below?

Raw sharks, an item exclusively for paying players which is a popular choice for training cooking.  What explains the sudden upward trend?  Image copyright ©2011 Jagex Ltd and used under Fair Use.

As you can probably tell or have been told, Mr. Gerhard, we are angry now, plastering the forums with derogatory images and cartoons of you.  But the operative word, Mr. Gerhard, is "now."  Although some of us have rashly decided to be angry, we will regret that decision and those feelings will soon subside.  Removing the hiscores is not a crippling blow to free to play.  We will digest this eventually, and we are not asking for you return hiscores to free players.  The current series of post-"Cluster-Flutter" updates are equivalent to heaping more hay on a camel's back, and the last straw has not yet been reached.

What we would like is for you to consider the trajectory of RuneScape.  The possibilities are a sharp bifurcation.  Jagex can try to maximize its income by cornering free players to encourage they to pay for membership, or it can revert to the behavior we have seen over the last two years, aside from the latter half of 2011.  Mr. Gerhard, according to your own words, you "strongly believe if you love the free game you will equally love the members’ content and that is sufficient promotion to [you]" [3].  This is the approach of the Sun in Aesop's fable, with the action of opening one's wallet analogous to the traveler removing his cloak.  However, removing content from the free game casts a shadow of doubt on these words.  We ask you if you still stand by those words.

Reading the recently released FAQ, the answer does not seem to be in the affirmative.  The response to one of the questions you pose regarding the remaining lifetime of the free game beings "We don’t need to recall all of the free benefits, do we?" [4].  While it is true that RuneScape has many free benefits, we urge you, Mr. Gerhard, not to be lulled into complacency.  The Golden Joystick Awards and the Guinness World Record for the largest MMPORG, which is currently held by Jagex, are prestigious honors, and RuneScape is not the only competitor on the stage.  Other games will begin to create more free content with the intent of earning those awards themselves-and if Jagex continues to cut free content, it is reasonable to assume at some point that the games will swap places.  You have described the free  to play community as "bustling" [5]; do you want it to remain this way?

Lastly, Mr. Gerhard, we are not leveraging this in any way as a threat.  We are not demanding the return of any specific update.  We have had a great decade enjoying your game and are just as eager for the next.  But simultaneously, we are not incapable of moving on.  We are clinging onto the small remaining sliver of hope that RuneScape and Jagex are not just about the money, but we don't know how much longer we can hold on.  Quotes like the answers in your FAQ serve only to reinforce this notion and dissipate this hope.  And once that it, our numbers will rapidly dwindle and we will be scattered like dandelion seeds in the wind.  In your FAQ, there is also the implication that all free players who are not botting are considered "dormant."  Through more updates and discouragement, this can be made a self-fulfilling prophecy.   There is nothing wrong with this, Mr. Gerhard.

You are the only one who can determine which of the two eventual fates that the free to play community can take: restoration or nonexistence.

We're waiting.  Choose one.

Your truly,

10,000,000 active free players [1]

*This article has also been submitted to Rune Tips and may be posted on the RuneScape Official Forums, so if you see it there is may not necessarily be plagiarism! 

 References

[1] Adam Hartley.  “MMO developer Jagex outlines 'MechScape.'”  Techradar, 17 July 2009.  Web.  20 November 2011.  <http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/mmo-developers-jagex-outline-mechscape--617551?artc_pg=1>

[2] Aesop.  “The North Wind and the Sun.”  N.p., n.d.  Web.  20 November 2011. 

[3] “Mark Gerhard.”  RuneScape Wiki, n.d.  Web.  20 November 2011. 

[4] Mod Emilee.  “Hi-score Changes – FAQ.”  Jagex, n.d.  Web.  20 November 2011.  < http://services.runescape.com/m=forum/c=91Z2qO9S4P8/forums.ws?16,17,732,63382107>
[5] Mod MMG.  “Anti-Gold-Farming Measures.”  Jagex, 22 November 2011.  Web.  22 November 2011.  < http://services.runescape.com/m=news/anti-gold-farming-measures>

[6] Mod MMG.  “The Future of RuneScape.”  Jagex, 9 February 2010.  Web.  20 November 2011.  < http://services.runescape.com/m=news/the-future-of-runescape>

[7] “Wilderness and Free Trade Vote.”  RuneScape Wiki, n.d.  Web.  20 November 2011.  < http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Wilderness_and_Free_Trade_Vote>

Quest-ion: what makes a (RuneScape) quest?

The very concept of a quest implies that embarking on one entails a great deal of difficulty, and the word itself conjures up images of everything from magic spells to slaying dragons.  Furthermore, quests lie safely in the realm of fantasy, enabling them to hold a prominent place in a fantasy game like RuneScape.  They also enjoy a tremendous degree of popularity among players-or at least that would be the conclusion from the expansion from the very short initial list of quests to the long list of quests one can easily see today.

However, the idea of quests is a bit tangent to reality, as is perhaps necessary.  Consider the slaying of the dragon Elvarg in the free-to-play quest with the highest requirements, including the completion of most previous quests to attain 30 quest points to start it.  Yet every player to do the quest accomplishes the same goal: to kill the same dragon.  No effort is made to camouflage or circumvent the problem of the seemingly immortal dragon that has been "killed" and its head severed by so many new players.  In general the same pattern holds true for seasonal events.

Could there be a quest which breaks this pattern?  It would be difficult, not only to involve so many players, but also trivialize the role of each player in the quest.  For example, players could be forced to team against a monster of a difficulty so hard that even all of world 1's players would be insufficient to topple it easily.  But even then, once the monster had been dispatched, one would return to square one-no new players could fight it without "reintroducing" it.  And so it seems that we are stuck with the idea of a repeatable monster for each player.

Another manifestation of the modified element of quests in RuneScape over the traditional definition of a quest is the lack of a real challenge.  Simply obtaining high enough skills almost assures success, and attempting a quest with low enough skills, genuinely for the first time, almost guarantees failure.  And furthermore, before one interjects about how there are elements that require finding an NPC in a certain location, or doing something in a certain way, consider the amount of literature under the heading of "Quest guides."

I myself, and many other players who will freely admit it, am guilty of using a guide instead of attempting to navigate Jagex's Quest Help system, or figure out a quest on my own.  And even though I did so completely under my own free will, I regret not enjoying quests for the true "questing" nature for which they were intended.  And due to the soup of guides available, many other players also choose to take that route, and surely many more will follow.

With the nature of quests as they are now, requiring high skills and seeming a tad unrealistic due to the repetitive nature for each individual player, now more than ever I wonder aloud: what makes a quest in RuneScape?  Due to both the demand and supply of guides, is it even possible to make a task that matches the true spirit of a quest?  In my opinion, the answer is in the affirmative, but does not require action from Jagex.  The true criterion for the definition of what qualifies as a quest is given by the judge: the player makes the quest.

Dungeoneering: a case study

**Note: this was written before the Evolution of Combat update.  The "90+ f2p combat" penalty no longer exists, but this is kept for historical purposes.**

The expression "you can't please everyone" and its class of small variations has perhaps just as much application to gaming as to real life issues.  Consider, for example, the skill Dungeoneering, comparatively with the skills predating it.  Visiting any world at any place with a sufficient gathering of people and conducting a quick search will undoubtedly yield a substantial subset who are disgruntled with this latest skill.  They will provide different reasons for their displeasure, claiming either it is not a skill, or it is too slow to train.  Rather than strongly arguing for one side or another, this article seeks to uncover "the good, the bad, and the ugly" things about Dungeoneering.

Single-spot and isolated training.  Almost any previous skill can be trained in a multitude of locations-consider rocks to mine or trees to cut, for example.  A skill like Magic is completely location-independent, as players can and have trained it by repeated casts of the spell High Alchemy virtually everywhere.  However, Dungeoneering must be trained in the dungeons of Daemonheim, and no where else (aside from some one-time bonus rewards).  Furthermore, although it seems fair to argue that every skill is needed to train Dungeoneering, it seems that (excluding rewards) no skill requires Dungeoneering to train it.

Beginner-unfriendly training.  One can imagine the frustration felt by a beginner to the Dungeoneering skill-to facilitate understanding this, I have included a short video of what happens in a beginner's dungeon, if they were to repeat a floor on Complexity 1 (the size could unfortunately not be altered; click the pop-out button for full-screen mode).  After the skill corners bewildered newbies into Complexity 1 and having a completely irrelevant "Guide Mode" forced on them, as well as alien-named armor, weapons, and food, they are subsequently presented with the "winterface."  In this interface, players are confronted with a barrage of numbers, which somehow ultimately determine their total XP.  Although these numbers are each a simple concept and easily understood and even predicted to some extent, a new player is completely overwhelmed, especially with a majority taking away their XP even though the decisions, such as "Complexity 1" and "Guide Mode" were out of their control.  Although there is a one-off bonus in XP for completing each complexity for the first time, it is not what initially draws the player's attention.

The f2p "90+ combat penalty."  Shortly after releasing Dungeoneering, Jagex realized that the lower floors, which are much less xp than the higher floors (see figure), could be completed and cleared "out of the way" much faster by members on an f2p world than by the same players on their own p2p worlds.  This left presumably a few solutions: decrease the difficulty of p2p dungeons for those floors or decrease the rewards for f2p dungeons; Jagex chose the latter option and supposedly chopped XP in half for f2p players above 90 combat, claiming 95% would be unaffected [1].  The dependence of an XP reward prior to this update is unknown due to its short timespan, but the post-update dependence for a few dungeons is sketched below and is more complicated than they indicated.

A graph of prestige controlled for a few variables against the average combat level of the party.  It is suspected that the change in convexity at the endpoints is due to the nature of the cubic regression rather then the behavior of Dungeoneering XP at these extremes.

Image © Arceus 2011.

A graph of XP awarded for an arbitrary floor plotted against the projected XP for Floor 35, assuming this floor has not already been completed and one has "Prestige 35."  It is unknown if converting to reduced variables (Floor => Floor/Prestige) yields the same curve for different prestige.  This works for ANY dungeon under the above restrictions.

Image © Arceus 2011.

This average combat penalty has effectively been neutralized by bringing along three players with combat level 3, bringing the party's average combat level down to about 50.  And in addition, coordination among two high level players responsible for the majority of keying and opening doors is far easier than among five of them.  Thus one wonders if the infamous penalty actually affected XP rates substantially or was merely a nuisance.

Cooperation-requisite training.  In training most skills cooperation is anything but requisite.  Indeed, many skills are competitive for resources, meaning a higher density of people yields lower XP.  Furthermore, in general, other people's opinions have limited or no influence on the efficacy of your training-players can and will swear and flame all they want without penalty.  The game engine will not retaliate and give fewer logs from the same tree, for example.  Dungeoneering differs since there are up to four other people who all must be willing to train together.

Difference from previous skills.  Dungeoneering differs from most previously released skills in that it is a "net zero."  Nothing is taken in, and nothing comes out.  Although rewards are given, they are all untradable, so some players argue it is a minigame instead of a skill.  Cooperation among multiple players becomes a necessity for fast experience.  Furthermore, although there is some grinding, it is completely different from other skills.  If one considers a skill like Mining or Agility with the goal of gaining some experience as quickly as possible, the method is to travel to a designated spot and not move around much.  In contrast, Dungeoneering requires a conscious effort to keep track of keys and respond to different situations by offering a degree of randomness.  Although it was probably not the initial intention, these factors outlined above also increase difficulty and decrease efficacy of botting this skill-although without a profit motive, it is difficult to imagine many players doing so.

Expensive rewards.  Many players claim that the rewards are expensive-such as "chaotic" weapons in p2p, requiring 200,000 tokens to purchase [1], requiring an amount of experience equivalent to level 80 in the skill.  However, there is room for disagreement-if they were cheaper, everyone would be using one, and they would become as devalued a rune scimitar.

These are some of the factors that have made players dissatisfied with the Dungeoneering skill in general.  Rectifying these problems would require a colossal effort, a lot of programming, and overhauling the whole skill.  Anyone is free to suggest ways in which the skill could have been more successful from the outset, but at this point, it is not unreasonable to say we are stuck with it.

References:

[1] "Dungeoneering rewards.”  N.p., n.d. Web.  10 November 2011. 

The World's Largest MMOG

Of course, this post's title refers to the game RuneScape.  Keen-eyed readers will glean that from the title that I have made an error in my omission of two letters from the acronym "Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG)."  I assure them that my "mistake" was intentional, for the gameplay of RuneScape, and other games in general, should adhere to the description, abbreviated as six letters or not, plastered over their respective homepages.

My argument, as one may have anticipated, is that the "Role-playing" element disappeared from RuneScape long ago, and has not yet resurfaced.  At first, this claim may elicit much debate-of course you can "role-play" by doing anything from fishing lobsters to felling trees.  It is hard to speculate on the developers' predictions for the evolution of RuneScape ten years ago.  Indeed, significant changes such as upgrading the game engine to enable "RuneScape 2," [2] the version of the game enjoyed by the vast majority of players, creating an entire new revenue stream for the company in the form of a "pay to play" (or "p2p") version, and the sequential addition of new skills to appease a paying customer base.  But these updates are not the cause of the aforementioned changes.

On January 2, 2008, Jagex instituted an update which affected every RuneScape player ever since [3].  Of course, this is the removal of free trade, and its subsequent reinstatement on February 2, 2011.  But the topic neglected in players' discussion is the second half of the update, which still persists today-not free trade, but the introduction of the Grand Exchange.

Often abbreviated as the "G.E." by players, this innovation effectively destroyed any role-playing by the majority of players.  Prior to this update, imagine a medium level player who, although not exceedingly wealthy, wanted to go player-killing, or "pking."  An essential staple for pking is a strong weapon to score a KO on an opponent, and the one of choice was a rune two-handed sword.  The requirements for creating this sword are daunting-85 Mining to obtain the ore and near 99 Smithing (feasible by boosting one's Smithing level to obtain '99' temporarily).  But for any current player, the reaction is instantaneous-buy one from the G.E.

A far less extreme example is food, another pking staple.  For example, in free to play, one could travel a substantial distance to Karamja, fish the raw food, and then cook it.  This still requires a reasonable investment of time in training one's Fishing and Cooking skills, but meeting them is a far more feasible task for a new player than the above example  Yet instead, most players choose to buy their fish off the G.E. for the obvious advantages in terms of convenience.

Although my experience on RuneScape does not predate this update, but some research and imagination have yielded me the conclusion that in pre-G.E. times, obtaining desired items was either more difficult or costly.  Whereas today one simply puts in a buy offer, for which countless sellers compete and vice versa, before a player had to find someone with the desired good, and perhaps pay substantially more.  This also applies to the quantity of items-a single player buying one inventory of food will pay much more than someone buying a "lifetime supply" of ten thousand, due to the inefficiency of making many trades, each to a different buyer.  All of these are so-called transaction costs.

With the advent of the G.E., most transaction costs were wiped out.  There was no need to shout in world 1 that one was purchasing a few swordfish repetitively in the hopes of finding a seller.  This occurred not only because the G.E. collected all the market participants in one place using a computerized system, but also due to its lack of concern with the relative quantities of a perspective buyer and seller.  If a seller has ten thousand swordfish to sell and a buyer needs only twenty-five, the G.E. will happily match the offers, despite the unlikelihood of the seller with a bulk quantity selling such a small fraction at the bulk price in a player-to-player trade.  Furthermore, bots were able to find ample buyers for their goods, given they lowered the price a small fraction.

Perhaps the addition of the "Assist" system, by which players can "borrow" the skills of a higher level player in return for not receiving any experience, helped, but only infinitesimally.  In creating a rune two-handed sword, one needs runite ore-and obtaining the ore is almost equally difficult to smithing the weapon, and there is only assistance in certain skills, which exclude Mining.  But this would still involve tracking down a player willing to provide the assistance for a negligible amount of xp.

In conclusion, for better or worse players are able to purchase their goods from the Grand Exchange with minimal transaction costs, and for a relatively cheap price due to bots.  The massive "bot-nuking" advertised prominently on the homepage and implemented recently [1] may lift some of these items off the "floor" temporarily or permanently, but it will not change the element of purchasing goods.  Of course, modern life is filled with markets resembling the Grand Exchange, but the setting of RuneScape is not exactly contemporary-or is it?

References:

[1] "Bot-Nuking Day: Making RuneScape Fairer and More Fun!"  Jagex, 25 October 2011. Web.  3 November 2011.  <http://services.runescape.com/m=news/newsitem.ws?id=4831&dir=n&allcat=true>

[2] "RS2 Launced!" runescape.com.  Jagex, 29 Mar 2004. Web.  3 November 2011.  <http://services.runescape.com/m=news/newsitem.ws?id=204>

[3] "Unbalanced Trade Removal."  runescape.com.  Jagex, 2 Jan 2008. Web.  3 November 2011.  <http://services.runescape.com/m=news/unbalanced-trade-removal?allcat=false>;