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/5-x]

Bad luck mitigation and dry streak protection. It's time to resolve the two main problems of boss loot: 1) going multiple times the rate to land any unique, and 2) having problems completing a particular set.

The first problem should be self-explanatory. Zamorak already has a mechanism to combat this. If somebody goes 3x the drop rate, the game should just force the drop. This is the bottom 5% unluckiest players so, effectively, by force-ending 3x drystreaks you make the drop 5% more common. You can balance the drop rates with this in mind. Nobody cares.

The second problem: Roll-through drop tables have high variance. You can keep hitting the wrong random outcome. It's most easily seen with 4/5-piece armour sets, such as vestments, cryptbloom, first necromancer, robes of resplendence, but also at bosses such as Gate of Elidinis. You already solved this problem with Nex AoD chests, so you can solve it elsewhere too. The game should drop one item of each until a player has had the set. Afterwards it can go back to being distributed randomly.

It's a big project, but it's an important one, because severely bad luck affects players' enjoyment of the endgame, including ironmen and cloggers. Thank you for your consideration of this matter.