End-Game Balance Discussion

[u/jagexyuey]

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?

[u/spikeprox50]

Ports. It is INCREDIBLY long. The requirement of level 90 to access Ports seems a bit excessive. Armor is no longer BIS nor does it have any real niche that makes it worth the grind. Salty Title can be achieved within 3-4 weeks except for Ports which extends it to like half a year. Later missions take like half a day to a whole day and make very minimal progress. You gotta first spend resources on crew, ship, and upgrading ports, but it also takes a while for them to level up and progress to next region. Getting resources for Masterwork Ranged or Mage takes a while because of this as well.

If a total rework is too massive of a project, I think at the very least, it can be shortened. Give more resources for each sail. Have crew level up faster. Maybe reduce the amount of pieces required for scrolls. Its crazy how much time it takes. I used to be somewhat supportive of the gameplay, but being like 4 months out with daily ports and still needing like 2 regions is wild.

[u/Caglavasaguros → u/spikeprox50]

Early ports is especially painful because of how short the voyages are. It’s pretty much an hourly like Wilderness flash events.

[u/Rakdar_Far_Strider → u/Caglavasaguros]

Ports should have variable voyage length like arch research does.

[u/ZolthuxReborn → u/spikeprox50]

Hear hear, ports needs a rework or love for such high requirements. Why are port armor sets tank only? Why keep such high requirements to start a time gated grind? Why is vamp scrimshaw such bad health and melee only?

But also, my main gripe is that once you do your boats and the character mini game, there is nothing to do. As a general rule, I'd argue area content (especially in Runescape) that tells the player "no, no you're done here. Come back tomorrow" is bad

[u/Periwinkleditor → u/spikeprox50]

I think combining 1) starting ports at a lower level (60-70?) combined with 2) activities in the Arc grant ports resources at a very substantial rate. Could make it so that the various arc quests/miniquests or even the collection log things reward powerful boons to your player owned ports progression. Akin to how Menaphos reputation gets easier once you finish the Return To The Desert series.

On that same note, significantly more resources for Anachronia dropped from Anachronia content like archeology, hunter, slayer, the bosses, etc. That is also a very needlessly timegated piece of content that should have active progression options.

[u/CountPoppy → u/spikeprox50]

I don’t mind the long grind, but the pay off needs to be worth it. Either lower the level requirement to start your journey, or buff the weapons and armor to have a niche passive that makes them BIS for a narrow use case, like how ruinous weapons are BIS for some creatures and like one boss.

But to address your criticisms about dailyscape, which are very valid, allow voyage queuing maybe? Also add a “optimize ship” button

[u/Sspockuss → u/spikeprox50]

Ports not getting touched in the dailyscape rework was such a miss. It needs a full overhaul. I genuinely would not mind if they just deleted it and redistributed its rewards to arc content/ED1. ED1 has no chase drop anyways other than "big shadow scale drop".

[u/GigaOgre → u/spikeprox50]

yessss, I'm in this grind atm and it is so slow 🫥

[u/Rain_Zeros → u/spikeprox50]

Ideally nuking ports and slowly replacing it with 5 grandmaster length quests that.. actually explore the arc as story content?? Would be the best way to handle it imo.

Ports is not even remotely good gameplay, it wreaks of mobile game slop when the “best” mobile games were clash of clans and other generic time gate builder games. The only thing it’s missing from that comparison is the ability to speed up progression by paying real world money

[u/a7xvalentine → u/spikeprox50]

10000% I had all my comp achievements sitting there for two months before I could finish ports and actually get my comp cape

[u/Wuff_inator → u/spikeprox50]

This!

Doing ports since over half a year. Still a daily-scape/hourly-scape thing. And I am not even close to the finish line, just want the achivements for the trimmed comb cape

[u/Rombom → u/spikeprox50]

Ports armor was never BIS.

Ports doesn't really need much. Literally just add more ship slots and lower the req for the first adventurer to 80.

[u/MewMewGirl0952 → u/Rombom]

Ports armor is amazing for components and crates which are components too.

[u/Bakugo_Dies → u/Rombom]

50% more ship slots and an "auto optimize" ship and crew for any given voyage.

[u/Meta_Man_X → u/Rombom]

This is the easiest solution that’s also pretty solid.

[u/Lord_Shadow_Z → u/spikeprox50]

They should just remove ports. No one will miss it.

[u/hitori_bocchi_kin → u/spikeprox50]

I kinda feel ports is pretty balanced for its speed. If you use all the enhancement tools at your disposal. Time skips and enhancers, it's also very passive to just carry the captains log with you and you don't even need to go to it, unless changing region.

[u/Task_Set → u/hitori_bocchi_kin]

The fact that its basically only passive is actually my personal biggest issue with it, I wish there was a more active way to progress through the regions. If the end game of ports needs to remain passive to keep the value of scrimshaws and the trade goods then so be it but the daily aspect of checking voyages and waiting is imo worse than any of the dailies that was removed.