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QUOTE (Quick find code: 15-16-964-58678924)
As part of our promise to communicate with you better I'm planning on posting on the forums more often.
My plan is to answer questions, clear up misunderstandings, explain why things are done, get ideas and suggestions, and also give a bit of technical insight into how things works and what we are working on and what priorities various things are at.
I'll be mostly doing this in the evening and at weekends, as I'm kind of busy during the working day developing the game. As such it won't be every day because of course I'm doing it in my spare time.
There isn't really a suitable forum for this yet. I'm planning on getting some sort of 'developer communications' forum setup for our developers to post on. In the meanwhile I'll be posting stickies on the 'game feedback' forum. There are 2 there already, and I'll be making some more today.
Thanks
Andrew
My plan is to answer questions, clear up misunderstandings, explain why things are done, get ideas and suggestions, and also give a bit of technical insight into how things works and what we are working on and what priorities various things are at.
I'll be mostly doing this in the evening and at weekends, as I'm kind of busy during the working day developing the game. As such it won't be every day because of course I'm doing it in my spare time.
There isn't really a suitable forum for this yet. I'm planning on getting some sort of 'developer communications' forum setup for our developers to post on. In the meanwhile I'll be posting stickies on the 'game feedback' forum. There are 2 there already, and I'll be making some more today.
Thanks
Andrew
QUOTE (Quick find code: 74-75-453-58679028)
One thing I'm actively working on doing at the moment is removing some of the grand exchange price caps.
The price caps on the grand exchange were never really meant to be something that was regularly hit, they were meant to be just a failsafe against certain types of price manipulation.
Unfortunately that didn't turn out to be the case and far too many items ended up resting against a price cap. I have to admit that it is pretty poor that we left it like that for so long. It should have been fixed straight away not left for a year.
Anyway I have now woken up, and am working on ways to fix this. Some ideas I'm working on are:
I'm planning on changing the way shops works so that instead of having infinite stock, they have a generous stock per player instead for many items. (not shared between players still). This in turn means we don't need to link the grand exchange price caps to shop prices which should instantly half the number of capped items overnight, which I really think will help. It also means we can fix some of the shop prices back to what the used to be (e.g raw bird meat).
There are a few other tricky price caps which exist not to prevent abuse, but as a rather lazy way of making the economy work correctly. For example many of the low level armours and weapons in the game if not capped would fall to almost worthless, but that would spoil the early the game where the new players are challenged to save up for their first decent armour. I certainly remember fondly the excitement of getting enough cash for my first mithril plate and I don't want to spoil that. I still think it can be fixed properly though by adding new ways of levelling up smithing, or adding in new demands for the surplus armour and weapons. However it is clear that just using price caps to make this work is a rather lazy solution and doesn't give a proper economy. I think we should instead do it properly and tweak the supply and demand rather than artificially capping it. And then let the player controlled economy do its job.
It's obviously a huge job but the aim is to have no capped items. It's not going to happen overnight. But the plan is to track the number of capped items each week and month, and make sure it is continually going down, not up!
The price caps on the grand exchange were never really meant to be something that was regularly hit, they were meant to be just a failsafe against certain types of price manipulation.
Unfortunately that didn't turn out to be the case and far too many items ended up resting against a price cap. I have to admit that it is pretty poor that we left it like that for so long. It should have been fixed straight away not left for a year.
Anyway I have now woken up, and am working on ways to fix this. Some ideas I'm working on are:
I'm planning on changing the way shops works so that instead of having infinite stock, they have a generous stock per player instead for many items. (not shared between players still). This in turn means we don't need to link the grand exchange price caps to shop prices which should instantly half the number of capped items overnight, which I really think will help. It also means we can fix some of the shop prices back to what the used to be (e.g raw bird meat).
There are a few other tricky price caps which exist not to prevent abuse, but as a rather lazy way of making the economy work correctly. For example many of the low level armours and weapons in the game if not capped would fall to almost worthless, but that would spoil the early the game where the new players are challenged to save up for their first decent armour. I certainly remember fondly the excitement of getting enough cash for my first mithril plate and I don't want to spoil that. I still think it can be fixed properly though by adding new ways of levelling up smithing, or adding in new demands for the surplus armour and weapons. However it is clear that just using price caps to make this work is a rather lazy solution and doesn't give a proper economy. I think we should instead do it properly and tweak the supply and demand rather than artificially capping it. And then let the player controlled economy do its job.
It's obviously a huge job but the aim is to have no capped items. It's not going to happen overnight. But the plan is to track the number of capped items each week and month, and make sure it is continually going down, not up!
QUOTE (Quick find code: 74-75-534-58678981)
This post is in response to the feedback that the continual
You catch a shark.
You catch a shark.
You succesfully cook a shark.
You succesfully cook a shark.
etc...
are annoying!
I have to admit I hadn't realised how many people were finding this annoying until a few days ago. But since posting on the forums and talking to people on my clan chat is has been mentioned repeatedly!
Therefore I've raised the priority of fixing this.
I'm planning putting a filter option on the 'game' tab, like on the other chat tabs, which will switch between 'all' and 'important only'.
When in 'important only' it will filter out the repetitive messages which you get over and over again when doing certain skills.
As with all 'future updates' discussions I cant promise when this will be finished, and bear in mind that it takes a surprisingly long time to develop anything! (programming is time consuming!) But we are working on it, and the fact that I'm talking about it here generally means I'm treating it as a priority.
P.S.
If anybody wants to suggest messages they find annoying that should be filtered when 'important only' mode, it would probably save us a bit of time, and make it more likely that the message that is annoying you is one of the ones blocked
Conversely if there is particular message which is really important to you that you WOULDN'T want blocked, that is helpful to know also. For example 'you have completed your slayer task' really wouldn't be blocked!
You catch a shark.
You catch a shark.
You succesfully cook a shark.
You succesfully cook a shark.
etc...
are annoying!
I have to admit I hadn't realised how many people were finding this annoying until a few days ago. But since posting on the forums and talking to people on my clan chat is has been mentioned repeatedly!
Therefore I've raised the priority of fixing this.
I'm planning putting a filter option on the 'game' tab, like on the other chat tabs, which will switch between 'all' and 'important only'.
When in 'important only' it will filter out the repetitive messages which you get over and over again when doing certain skills.
As with all 'future updates' discussions I cant promise when this will be finished, and bear in mind that it takes a surprisingly long time to develop anything! (programming is time consuming!) But we are working on it, and the fact that I'm talking about it here generally means I'm treating it as a priority.
P.S.
If anybody wants to suggest messages they find annoying that should be filtered when 'important only' mode, it would probably save us a bit of time, and make it more likely that the message that is annoying you is one of the ones blocked
Conversely if there is particular message which is really important to you that you WOULDN'T want blocked, that is helpful to know also. For example 'you have completed your slayer task' really wouldn't be blocked!
QUOTE (Quick find code: 74-75-279-58679020)
In answer to one of the most asked questions of all time.
Yes, we are planning on increasing the trade limit for 'long term friends'. E.g for people who have both been on each others friend list for at least a month the trade limit will be doubled. Something along those lines anyway
As with all 'future updates' discussions I cant promise when this will be finished, and bear in mind that it takes a surprisingly long time to develop anything! (programming is time consuming!) But we are working on it, and the fact that I'm talking about it here generally means I'm treating it as a priority. I feel these are the sorts of upgrades the 'year of upgrades' should be about.
Yes, we are planning on increasing the trade limit for 'long term friends'. E.g for people who have both been on each others friend list for at least a month the trade limit will be doubled. Something along those lines anyway
As with all 'future updates' discussions I cant promise when this will be finished, and bear in mind that it takes a surprisingly long time to develop anything! (programming is time consuming!) But we are working on it, and the fact that I'm talking about it here generally means I'm treating it as a priority. I feel these are the sorts of upgrades the 'year of upgrades' should be about.
QUOTE (Quick find code: 74-75-443-58678931)
Well I've just done a fair bit of testing with prayer, and I really do think it is back to its original speed.
Here is how you can tell:
In RuneScape because of: a) the time it takes your message to get to the server, and b) the 'tick' rate of the server, there always a slight delay between ANY request and the resulting reaction.
The easiest way to see this delay it to stand stationary, and then click to walk somewhere. Notice how there is a brief click between you clicking and your character starts moving? Thats the 'minimum delay' that it is possible for anything to occur at. Nothing can respond faster than that. The delay will fluctuate a bit depending on what time in the servers processing cycle you click, but on average it is always the same.
Some things pretend to be faster, by updating the interface in advance on the client, but the actually effect on the server, which actually affects the gameplay, can't ever occur faster than that. This is true for every single thing in the game.
Now trying clicking on a prayer on your prayer tab. The delay between you clicking and the prayer icon lighting up and the icon appearing above your head is exactly the same delay as the 'start moving' delay when you click to walk. Try counting as you click, it really is the same delay. I've just tried this multiple times to test.
To people saying that delay didn't use to be there at all, and it used to be faster with no delay whatsoever. That is just impossible, its just not how the game works! I know I coded it! There is 0% chance that there used to be no delay!
Also it is not possible for it to just a tiny bit slower than before either. The game 'ticks' at 600 millisecond intervals, so if the script was broken (like it was previously) then it would be a full extra 600 milliseconds slower which would be obvious when clicking and counting. It's not possible for an error to cause it to be something other than a multiple of 600 milliseconds slower.
So in conclusion, it really is back to how it was. I think you are just noticing the delay more because you are looking for it now.
Here is how you can tell:
In RuneScape because of: a) the time it takes your message to get to the server, and b) the 'tick' rate of the server, there always a slight delay between ANY request and the resulting reaction.
The easiest way to see this delay it to stand stationary, and then click to walk somewhere. Notice how there is a brief click between you clicking and your character starts moving? Thats the 'minimum delay' that it is possible for anything to occur at. Nothing can respond faster than that. The delay will fluctuate a bit depending on what time in the servers processing cycle you click, but on average it is always the same.
Some things pretend to be faster, by updating the interface in advance on the client, but the actually effect on the server, which actually affects the gameplay, can't ever occur faster than that. This is true for every single thing in the game.
Now trying clicking on a prayer on your prayer tab. The delay between you clicking and the prayer icon lighting up and the icon appearing above your head is exactly the same delay as the 'start moving' delay when you click to walk. Try counting as you click, it really is the same delay. I've just tried this multiple times to test.
To people saying that delay didn't use to be there at all, and it used to be faster with no delay whatsoever. That is just impossible, its just not how the game works! I know I coded it! There is 0% chance that there used to be no delay!
Also it is not possible for it to just a tiny bit slower than before either. The game 'ticks' at 600 millisecond intervals, so if the script was broken (like it was previously) then it would be a full extra 600 milliseconds slower which would be obvious when clicking and counting. It's not possible for an error to cause it to be something other than a multiple of 600 milliseconds slower.
So in conclusion, it really is back to how it was. I think you are just noticing the delay more because you are looking for it now.
QUOTE (Quick find code: 74-75-443-58678931 bottom of page one)
I don't have a huge amount of problem with prayer flashing. It takes a fair amount of skill and close attention to do it, and anything which makes the game more skillful is generally a good thing. I wouldn't be so happy if people started trying to use some sort of tool to do it automatically that would be cheating.
QUOTE (Quick find code: 74-75-987-58678951)
Q: What is the point of the new windows client? It seems the same as the old one?
A: You are right it isn't massively different. This was never meant to be a huge project. It was just a small maintenance release to fix a few bugs and issues. If you prefer to keep using the old client you can.
Q: What did you change?
A: The main things we did were. a) change it to depend on less windows libraries which makes it smaller and faster, b) this then meant we no longer needed to compress it, which stops false positives with antivirus software c) we added in support for foreign languages, d) we updated the icon for newer versions of windows which use larger icons, e) we digitally signed it so when you load it, it tells you who wrote it (Jagex), and you can see that is hasn't been tampered with.
Q: Why don't you add lots more features to the windows client?
A: We'd rather build them straight into the game.
Q: You shouldn't be wasting time on this, you should be improving the game.
A: Firstly we didn't spend very long on this, it was just a few bug fixes and maintenance improvements. Secondly it was done by completely different people to the ones who do game updates.
Q: The new client is broken! You can't copy and paste on the forums, and other keyboard shortcuts are broken.
A: We are looking into this now.
A: You are right it isn't massively different. This was never meant to be a huge project. It was just a small maintenance release to fix a few bugs and issues. If you prefer to keep using the old client you can.
Q: What did you change?
A: The main things we did were. a) change it to depend on less windows libraries which makes it smaller and faster, b) this then meant we no longer needed to compress it, which stops false positives with antivirus software c) we added in support for foreign languages, d) we updated the icon for newer versions of windows which use larger icons, e) we digitally signed it so when you load it, it tells you who wrote it (Jagex), and you can see that is hasn't been tampered with.
Q: Why don't you add lots more features to the windows client?
A: We'd rather build them straight into the game.
Q: You shouldn't be wasting time on this, you should be improving the game.
A: Firstly we didn't spend very long on this, it was just a few bug fixes and maintenance improvements. Secondly it was done by completely different people to the ones who do game updates.
Q: The new client is broken! You can't copy and paste on the forums, and other keyboard shortcuts are broken.
A: We are looking into this now.
QUOTE (Quick find code: 74-75-448-58678965)
In response to the comments that you shouldn't lose your gravestone if you lose connection.
Yes I agree. It has long been one of my main aims that the game should still be playable if your connection is a bit unreliable. I totally agree that you should keep your gravestone.
We are actively working on fixing this now. mod_mike added in support to the server on Thursday that lets the system remember players across logouts. Next the content team needs to use that system to make the gravestones not vanish and keep working.
As with all 'future updates' discussions I cant promise when this will be finished, and bear in mind that it takes a suprisingly long time to develop anything! (programming is time consuming!) But we are working on it, and indeed I'm personally pushing this one through.
Answer to questions lower down
------------------------------
Yes the timer would still count down as normal whilst you were logged off. It just wouldn't immediately jump to 0. (otherwise we would end up with semi permanent gravestones everywhere! The game would look like a graveyard before long!)
Yes I agree. It has long been one of my main aims that the game should still be playable if your connection is a bit unreliable. I totally agree that you should keep your gravestone.
We are actively working on fixing this now. mod_mike added in support to the server on Thursday that lets the system remember players across logouts. Next the content team needs to use that system to make the gravestones not vanish and keep working.
As with all 'future updates' discussions I cant promise when this will be finished, and bear in mind that it takes a suprisingly long time to develop anything! (programming is time consuming!) But we are working on it, and indeed I'm personally pushing this one through.
Answer to questions lower down
------------------------------
Yes the timer would still count down as normal whilst you were logged off. It just wouldn't immediately jump to 0. (otherwise we would end up with semi permanent gravestones everywhere! The game would look like a graveyard before long!)
QUOTE (Quick find code: 74-75-841-58678936)
Since the recent PvP glitch is causing some discussion, I'd better post a quick explanation.
There was a bug in PvP which some players were abusing to gain high drop potential unfairly. (i.e to get money which they hadn't earned)
As far as I can tell this was first discovered by a player on Easter Saturday, and how to do it became fairly widespread knowledge early on Easter Sunday.
I was alerted to the problem when chatting to some players on my clan chat early on Easter Sunday morning. I immediately went into work and fixed it there and then, so it isn't happening anymore. The bug was therefore not abused for very long.
It also wasn't possible to abuse the bug unless you were a member, and there was minimum level requirements, so the impact was limited by that. It also meant people couldn't abuse it on 'throwaway' accounts.
To the players who were stupid enough to deliberately abuse this bug on their members accounts, all I can say is, why!?! What on earth made you think that was a good idea? You know we have in depth logs and can and do catch people who abuse major bugs.
We haven't banned anyone yet, there is no massive rush as all the activity is logged anyway. On Tuesday once everyone is back from the easter break, and we have the staff to go through the logs very very carefully we'll do that then. We obviously don't want to risk banning anyone incorrectly, so it takes a bit of effort.
But if you *deliberately* abused the bug (or tried to abuse it after we fixed it), you should be very very afraid. I cant imagine why anyone thought it was a good idea to try!
I should mention that it's fairly easy for us to distinguish between players who did it by accident and players who did it on purpose.
Luckily it was quite hard to do by accident anyway. (in fact this bug was in the game for a while before it was discovered, which shows how obscure it was). Also people doing it on purpose were using absurd amounts of cash and/or extremely valuable items they would have no reason to possibly do that with normally.
Finally we'll also obviously take into account how many times it was done/attempted, and if the person reported it as a bug promptly afterwards.
But like I say it's quite easy for us to tell anyway.
I'm not going to give exact details, because it *is* still logging people who try it. Trying to abuse a bug is just as bad, so please don't 'test' it. You don't want to get caught up in this.
----------------------------
Edit added afterwards, answers to questions asked lower down this thread:
People who only killed people using the glitch obviously won't be banned! Because they had no way of knowing the person they were killing was using a glitch. It would be silly to ban them.
We will generally give people the benefit of the doubt of course. Which means yes a few people might get away with it. But many won't, and ask yourself, was it really a risk worth taking?
I should also mention it's not a huge number of accounts we are talking about here. It's nothing like the 50% figure some are throwing about. It's a tiny minority of players who think the rules don't apply to them, and that it's ok to cheat.
There was a bug in PvP which some players were abusing to gain high drop potential unfairly. (i.e to get money which they hadn't earned)
As far as I can tell this was first discovered by a player on Easter Saturday, and how to do it became fairly widespread knowledge early on Easter Sunday.
I was alerted to the problem when chatting to some players on my clan chat early on Easter Sunday morning. I immediately went into work and fixed it there and then, so it isn't happening anymore. The bug was therefore not abused for very long.
It also wasn't possible to abuse the bug unless you were a member, and there was minimum level requirements, so the impact was limited by that. It also meant people couldn't abuse it on 'throwaway' accounts.
To the players who were stupid enough to deliberately abuse this bug on their members accounts, all I can say is, why!?! What on earth made you think that was a good idea? You know we have in depth logs and can and do catch people who abuse major bugs.
We haven't banned anyone yet, there is no massive rush as all the activity is logged anyway. On Tuesday once everyone is back from the easter break, and we have the staff to go through the logs very very carefully we'll do that then. We obviously don't want to risk banning anyone incorrectly, so it takes a bit of effort.
But if you *deliberately* abused the bug (or tried to abuse it after we fixed it), you should be very very afraid. I cant imagine why anyone thought it was a good idea to try!
I should mention that it's fairly easy for us to distinguish between players who did it by accident and players who did it on purpose.
Luckily it was quite hard to do by accident anyway. (in fact this bug was in the game for a while before it was discovered, which shows how obscure it was). Also people doing it on purpose were using absurd amounts of cash and/or extremely valuable items they would have no reason to possibly do that with normally.
Finally we'll also obviously take into account how many times it was done/attempted, and if the person reported it as a bug promptly afterwards.
But like I say it's quite easy for us to tell anyway.
I'm not going to give exact details, because it *is* still logging people who try it. Trying to abuse a bug is just as bad, so please don't 'test' it. You don't want to get caught up in this.
----------------------------
Edit added afterwards, answers to questions asked lower down this thread:
People who only killed people using the glitch obviously won't be banned! Because they had no way of knowing the person they were killing was using a glitch. It would be silly to ban them.
We will generally give people the benefit of the doubt of course. Which means yes a few people might get away with it. But many won't, and ask yourself, was it really a risk worth taking?
I should also mention it's not a huge number of accounts we are talking about here. It's nothing like the 50% figure some are throwing about. It's a tiny minority of players who think the rules don't apply to them, and that it's ok to cheat.
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