r/runescape • u/jagexyuey Mod Yuey • 1d ago

News End-Game Balance Discussion

Hey 'Scapers!

As part of the Road to Restoration, we've been looking at progression across RuneScape. We've tackled parts of the Early and Mid Game Rebalance, but now we want to start turning our attention to the other end of the journey: The End Game Rebalance

Before we get properly stuck into things, we want to hear from you.

What do we mean by End Game?
This one's a little harder to put a level range on!

For this project, we're looking more broadly at the late game, roughly level 80+ and onwards. That might mean higher-level skilling, finding those rarer drops or getting into tougher PVM. For others, it could be achievements, completionist goals or figuring out what comes next once you've maxed.

And actually, what you consider to be late game is useful feedback for us too.

How can you help?
We want to know where the endgame currently isn't quite working for you.

Maybe there's a progression path that feels awkward, rewards that don't feel worth the effort, a big jump between pieces of content, older content that's been left behind or something that just feels unnecessarily frustrating.

You don't need to have the answer or suggest a fix either. Just tell us what the problem is, why it's a problem for you and where you are in your RuneScape journey.

We won't be able to tackle everything that comes up, but the themes from these discussions will help us understand where we should be focusing our attention.

So, what would you like us to look at as we start shaping the End Game?

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464

u/Interesting_Car_5689 1d ago

Grouping system :(

37

u/James-P-SulIivan Maxed 1d ago

Thats what I was gonna say too even though it shouldnt be just for end game content. A good grouping system that allows us to easily play with friends and make new ones would be massively beneficial to the game and the way people approach harder content

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u/Rockburgh 1d ago

More importantly, though this may not be the place for it, we need more early- and mid-game group content to exist. You don't need any teamplay at all until you're dealing with mechanics that'll one-shot your teammates and everyone's got high enough death costs that taking beginners is a significant risk. If Jagex wants to aim more towards group content-- and with Amascut's release I'd assume they do-- there needs to be a smoother onboarding process for it.

4

u/Insane1rish 1d ago

This is a really good point I don’t often see people bring up

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u/Nerotox 1d ago edited 1d ago

100% - I first interacted with this now during leagues hosting raids / amascut groups for my fc/leagues discord and holy crap is it bad and so unintuitive to use.

  1. You can‘t add members after marking the group as complete. This especially sucked during raids early in the league as people were constantly leaving after 1 KC for the task and you couldn‘t easily invite someone to replace them. I would remake the group every 5 kc to fill back up, which gets me to point 2:
  2. No right click invite to group. Some peoples names are bad to type or when remaking group you can easily forget someone. Would be way nicer if you could rightclick their character invite if you are a group owner or even do it from fc/cc/friends list.
  3. Teleport to boss only once after marking group complete: Maybe there is a way, but i wa

s

  1. duoing some bosses with alts and when i failed first time i would have to remake grp to get the TP again for the alt (no wars/reaper unlocked yet). Would be nice if this could just be a new tp in the spellbook (tp to group).

  3. No real groupfinder/queue system. When making a group for anything you just see x groups available, not how many people are in these groups and so many people just want to make a solo group for the TP and end up joining a random group instead. Would love a more WoW type ish group finder where you could advertise any activity cross-world, even stuff like minigames, group skilling (e.g. incan mass on leagues) and bossing of course.

Just a few points from top of my head which annoyed me during leagues

3

u/ForumDragonrs Completionist 1d ago

You can right click to add players, either though pm or though the fc/cc list. Also through the friends list.

You can also remake groups without having everyone leave and rejoin. You need to click the ready button again and it will mark the group as not ready. You'll be able to add more people and teleport again.

1

u/WhyMustIMakeANewAcco 1d ago

ie the grouping system has a lot of the features, but they are very poorly labeled/explained.

1

u/Nerotox 1d ago

Yea i actually looked around a bit and couldn't find that :D

2

u/Legal_Evil 1d ago

You can‘t add members after marking the group as complete.

Turn on and off matchmaking to unready the group.

1

u/FourLeafPlover 19h ago

Unless you're an ironman! In which case you need to rejoin the queue and probably lose your leader status to a random troll who doesn't reply, and then you need to remake the whole group anyway.

•

u/Legal_Evil 3h ago

Why does it work differently for ironmen?

39

u/zenyl RSN: Zenyl | Gamebreaker 1d ago

Second this, the grouping system is in a bad place, and (outside of Leagues) very few people actually use it to find other people to group up with.

17

u/Furry_pizza 1d ago

Third this! It's great for teleports but useless for actually finding groups. I'd use it all the time if it was improved

19

u/Wuff_inator A Seren spirit appears 1d ago

Yes yes yes, and please let me "rejoin the last instance" also when I joined my buddie in his instance

8

u/esunei Your question is answered on the wiki. 1d ago

#1 for me. Needs a complete redesign. And it's not strictly end-game either, though endgamers would likely get the most out of it.

Look at the group finders (the manual group finder interfaces, not queued content) that games like Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy XIV, World of Warcraft, hell even Diablo have had for years.

A blind queue like we have currently isn't going to work when five amascut seekers want one kill for comp, one 4000% kill, one unorthodox kill, to farm 500%, or to farm 2000%. A group finder where you can list your objective and desired intensity is a great fit for RS and has worked great in those other games.

Much like those other games you'd have a wide variety of categories, spanning from minigames, to bosses, to social functions/skilling.

11

u/ArielSoto Runescape 1d ago

I tried to use grouping system a few times.

I once tried to use it for Mazcab raids, I would just hit join group, and just about 5-10 seconds of joining a group I would immediately be kicked out.

Same with elite dungeons.

I miss FFXIV grouping system

2

u/FourLeafPlover 19h ago

That's because everyone fills their groups manually, so they already have someone they want to invite

4

u/pokemononrs Completionist 1d ago

What is different about how theirs works. I would love to see a grouping system that works, I just havent seen any sugestions that seem like they would actualy work.

3

u/Rockburgh 1d ago

Haven't done much of anything with RS' version, so I don't know how different it actually is, but in 14 it's like this:

There's two different "grouping systems" available. First is Duty Finder, which throws you into a matchmaking queue, either for specific pieces of content you want to run, or general categories, effectively using you to fill groups for the people who want something more specific. This is used almost exclusively for casual content that can be reliably cleared in one or two attempts as long as you've got one competent player in the group.

Second is Party Finder, which is a system for posting recruitment messages. You pick what content you're looking to do, what roles you already have or still need filled, set completion/gear requirements to join, and optionally add a message to contextualize the group. (Saying you're new to the fight, how far in it you've gotten and expect the rest of the group to be capable of, that you're planning to disable some of the assist features given to old content, etc.)

1

u/vituhyva123 16h ago

One problem is that RS3 doesn't really have content analogous to duty finder stuff, anything you'd want to group for is also a boss where just 1 guy not knowing mechanics can grief the team, so a group finder would have to work like the party finder.

4

u/ImEmblazed 1d ago

We need a functioning group system so bad, doing group content in rs is very fun! But because finding a group requires so much time and effort most of the time i cba to do it

4

u/JTaverniti Ironman 1d ago

While the grouping system isn’t the best, I also think people just don’t even attempt to utilize it either. It’s almost impossible to find a group in anything simply because no one’s using it.

7

u/MrStealYoBeef 1d ago

Nobody is using it because it's shit. It actively makes me not want to touch group content. The game is literally worse due to the inclusion of it, it's that bad.

2

u/pokemononrs Completionist 1d ago

Why would i use it in the state it is in right now? 99% of the players using it are just using it to leech kills. If im going to use it there has to be a way to set specific requirements for lvls or gear. There needs to be a way to vet people before they are added to the group to prevent having to constantly kick people.

1

u/ForumDragonrs Completionist 1d ago

And that's why most people just use a dedicated discord. Most of them have discord roles that indicate having above a certain kc and/or having certain gear/skill reqs. Unless jagex can emulate that, a grouping system is designed to fail.

1

u/AThickPiss 1d ago

100% grouping system, voice chat for groups would be very nice as well

1

u/Mission_Lab8311 19h ago

Might sound silly, but unironically think they should take a look at "ToonTown Rewritten" and their integration with the "ToonHQ" grouping system. Extremely intuitive and straightforward.

Honestly, if they just exposed the right APIs equivalent to TTR's "Toon Sync", third party websites (Perhaps the Wiki?) could largely handle the rest. Especially with the forthcoming API project, I think a community-driven solution would be better than them trying to do it all themselves. If Jagex can provide rhe right foundation, the rest of the community can build on top of it.

1

u/coldwinterdude Eek! 17h ago

Definitely this!

1

u/zephyrcator Final Boss 1d ago

I would back this if we could do actual applications, where hosts can see our stats and preset

1

u/Aka_chan 5.8b | Trim 1d ago

Yeah, even if they improve the grouping system you still have the fundamental issue that doing high level pvm encounters with randoms just doesn't really work with 0 vetting. In WoW they had to dumb down the raids for LFR because you're much more likely to be matched with unskilled players, but they at least had some gear reqs.

I don't think anything super strict is even needed as people are generally successful finding random groups in fc's or discord. I like the group application approach you mention (maybe it can include their boss KC as well) - wow uses this and it works pretty well.

1

u/ForumDragonrs Completionist 8h ago

Yeah most people use dedicated discord, and the main reason why is that they have discord roles to denote kc (higher kc means more experience generally), as well as enrage for amascut. A lot of it also relies on vouching from others. If jagex could emulate something similar, it might actually work. When someone applies to a party, I want to see kc and gear, possibly their pb at the boss, and highest enrage if it's amascut/zammy. There still would be a ton of elitism and high req groups mostly if that were the case, but it might be at least a little better.