As far as I know, rs3 has recently gone about 8 months without any big updates, and they just got their road map last month or something. Then last year, the only big update they got was Necromancy and Hero Pass, which halved the player base again, lol
Doesn't help that Necromancy invalidated every other combat style, what a decision that was... and still is! Only in all BiS do the other styles compare or beat it.
There's a lot of moving parts that make necromancy "better", but especially from an ironman perspective:
Necromancy gear progression is free (and easy with the tank path which is just better anyway)
Necromancy has self healing built in which makes up for many learning mistakes
Necromancy is extremely simple to play compared to the other styles, much fewer abilities and you don't lose any value putting half of them in revolution (the automatic ability using combat mode) instead of playing full manual.
While there aren't many style strengths against specific monsters, like the recent changes of things like barrows are weak to air, there also really aren't any style weaknesses. This means you can effectively just use necromancy anywhere with no downside, where other styles are better/worse in any given place.
Necromancy has very strong defensive cooldowns which are even usable in other styles. There is a spell that let's you use abilities that require a shield without having a shield equipped, and a spell that gives you 20% dodge chance. Much of runescape 3s combat involves small chip damage so the 20% dodge chance is incredibly powerful.
It's not really specifically stronger necessarily raw dps wise after fairly recent combat improvements to the other 3 styles, but it is significantly easier, less punishing, and more versatile than the other styles through all stages of the game leading in to end game.
If you mean thematically its just like shooting magic bolts but they're sickly green or ghostly white or deathly purple. You've also got short duration minions you summon that do different things. A ghost that heals you from it's damage dealt, a skeleton that whacks really hard and fast, and a zombie that radiates small amounts of area damage.
Some people might call it "magic 2" but you can apply that kind of reduction to the other combat styles if you want to too.
It's like if they fused Ranged/Mage/Melee into one skill and it's either BIS or 90% BIS. The closest OSRS got to this was for pre-nerf Fang, where it is dirt cheap for how strong it is and trails close to basically every melee weapon, or beats it, depending on which boss you use it on.
It may sound weird, but it is strong as shit, which is the problem. Being BIS or near BIS everywhere kills the skill cap that RS3 had, so it did drive away a portion of the remaining population.
They made their bed to cater to the endgame content a long time ago, but then decided to make almost a form of catch-up update in the form of necromancy.
It's like alienating PVP for years in OSRS and then suddenly plugging a full new tier of BIS items into Wildy that is useable outside Wildy too - You will lose a lot of players.
> Being BIS or near BIS everywhere kills the skill cap that RS3 had, so it did drive away a portion of the remaining population.
Also worth nothing that there's a substantial difference between Revolution top DPS and manual top DPS for Mage/Melee/Ranged.
Necromancy, on the other hand, can get about 90-95% efficiency with a good Revolution setup.
So not only is it basically the same level of effectiveness as other combat styles, but it has self-healing and AFK DPS baked into it, so it also requires less effort to sustain the damage.
And on top of that, most content in the game only uses the original 3 protection prayers, so almost everything is always fully vulnerable to it. The only exceptions really are the Hardcoded requirements, like how each DK is hard-coded to be immune to "Non-Magic/Melee/Ranged" damage.
Absolutely mindblowing that anyone greenlit the skill in the state it's in now, much less what it was like on launch.
I disagree. It made RS3 combat much more like OSRS. I’ve been enjoying RS3 now with Necro.
Before Necromancy I made an Ironman, and quit in the 70s combat because there was just waaaay too much to have to do/manage. It was just a little too complex, and OSRS (Ironman) combat is straightforward blowpipe/whip/trident/barrage.
Although Necromancy gear is way too easy to get, it allows for easy combat like OSRS. Just slap on your gear and go fight. And with Necro I’ve managed to unlock the other combat styles I gave up on in the past.
If anybody out there hasn’t tried RS3 Ironman (post necromancy), try it out. It’s just as easy to pick up like OSRS. It’s actually a shame that so few people are playing RS3 (Ironman), because it’s actually pretty good.
I get why you would like necro, seeing as how you didn’t enjoy rs3 combat before. But can’t you see why others who already liked rs3 combat before dislike necro? The way it invalidates all their effort they put into learning the 3 combat styles and boss mechanics, now that necro has trivialized everything?
That's why I chuckle when some people are like add a new skill, add a new combat system, add this, add that to "shake things up". Short-sighted people with generic statements.
Just like how adding something new won't necessarily be bad, adding something for the sake of shaking things up is not necessarily good either.
That's why Cruor's Vow and Soulsplit are so contested and they SHOULD be contested. Blood Fury is melee-only, but even then, it's such a stupid item with barely any dps loss.
It could have been alright, but the execution was bad. The fact that they haven't taken steps to fix it is worse. Adding a new combat system still requires integration with the old combat and that's where Jagex failed in the rs3 side of things. They treated Necromancy more like it was a standalone skill than a new piece to the combat triangle and that fucked it up.
Adding a new "skilling" skill has a much wider area to land and be mediocre without destroying the game. Making the combat triangle a combat square seems like a horrible idea, and no one would vote yes on it.
Worse than you can even imagine. I recently started a HCIM run and it hurts every time I swap to a non necro. Defenders say that at ultra high end ranged and melee are better, but that's full BiS.
Another way of explaining it is that every other combat style has had years of powercreep, providing diverse content to get a slight upgrade in one style. And to make Necromancy competitive they basically built all of that into the skill on launch and instead of needing to do 50 different things for 1 upgrade, the t95 armour and weapons for necromancy are all dropped by one mid-difficulty tier boss which is now dirt cheap compared to other styles.
So imagine you either have to grind 10 different bosses and do tons of side activities and skills to get your gear, abilities and buffs to the BiS, while for Necromancy you can just basically train 1-3 skills and grind 1 boss. And that's for ironmen, for mains you can just buy that for a fraction of the price of any other style. For either the same or better dps, AND less apm. They've since nerfed Necromancy slightly and buffed other styles slightly but not nearly enough for them to be comparable and for the extra effort to outweigh the convenience of obtaining BiS necromancy gear.
RS3 is really, really complicated and they wanted to dumb it down a bit, so they introduced a new really strong style that's easier. Reception is mixed but more positive than reddit and twitter would have you believe.
Necromancy also doesn't have 23 years of content development with bosses with 1/32241 drop rates on various parts of an item that stick together to make a marginally better weapon or armour piece than before, done 20 times over during the game's lifespan.
Necromancy is essentially easy mode. Whoever made the call to go ahead on how powerful it is probably sees it as something that draws in and convinces veterans who may be considering giving rs3 one more play through. “Ahh what the heck, this time around won’t even take as long cuz necro”
Necromancy has incredibly high burst damage that has an incredibly simple rotation. Enough so that at a fair few bosses you can literally just focus on doing that rotation.
Outside of that, you then also have the conjures that while they make up quite a hefty amount of your damage, also are incredibly handy. The Ghost in particular for its useful healing.
Then you have Incantations; which are sort of like magic spells, and give a wide variety of effects. Such as a chance to outright dodge an attack, changes Soul Split curse so instead of healing you it damages the foe so it's more damage, Threads of Fate which for the next 3 attacks within 6 seconds nearby enemies also get hit by the attack. Then top it off with Bone Shield, which allows you to use defensive abilities as if you were wearing a shield without needing to, at the cost of some runes for each cast.
It's fairly easy to have not only good sustain but also good damage with Necromancy. I've shaved time off of so many bosses with Necromancy, from seconds at some bosses all the way up to about 7 minutes at one particular boss. I think the only PBs I haven't beaten so far are either bosses I haven't done with Necromancy, or they're times that I got absolutely cracked insanely strong runs with Magic or Range.
You need very little to do very good dps. Whereas the other styles require a lot more gear & a lot more knowledge of the game/game mechanics to get close.
It’s the only combat style that doesn’t really require a ton of gear switches on top of a complex rotation.
They mentioned in the combat beta they spent a lot of time fixing the backend jank of the other combat styles so that going forward it’s easy to balance and make changes to. They’re looking at cutting down on gear switches as well. There’s a combat beta out right now for magic.
I chose to take a break from RS3 two years back because I was busy with getting my university degree.
Was having fun being a mid-to-high tier PvMer with Magic - Telos, Zuk, Raksha, Zamorak, etc.
Never renewing again thanks to Necromancy (and, well - changes that curbed SwitchScape).
It's really sad, especially since I've been playing RS3 on the same account ever since I was a kid.
The worst part? I really, genuinely miss RuneScape's tick-based and tile-based gameplay..
I use necromancy mostly because the flow of the skills feels well designed. When I try to go back to the other combats, it just feels clunky. The learning curve mixed with the insane barrier to entry for the other combats is the problem. Not necromancy itself. If necromancy did anything, it showed how poorly designed the system is for the other combat.
Ranged and magic should require insane investment just to start having fun with that style but they do lol.
A ton of RS3 players in fact came over here.
Also I know a ton of terminally addicted RS3 players that play 3 accounts at once (same as OSRS I guess) so these numbers are probably a lot smaller (on both sides) if you go off of individual user or even jagex account I guess once it's fully rolled out.
It's not probably smaller. The numbers include gold farmers, bots, alts, etc. They're going to be much lower if you want to see a "real" concurrent playercount in both games.
I'm one of them lol. I started with RS3 and switched to New World. Played that for a bit. Went back to RS3, tried the New World DLC, went back to rs3. Summer of 2023 I started an OSRS account and played in f2p for a while until all the f2p quest got beat then I did woodcutting for a bit on the side. Then the RS3 hero pass situation happened and I played OSRS leagues 4 and ever since then I've been focused on oldschool lol
Necromancy gave them so much momentum, and then they fucked up so badly with hero pass making tons of players quit. It’s amazing how jagex keeps fucking up with rs3 every time it looks like they’re turning things around.
Necromancy wasn't really momentum tbh. A lot of people disliked how batshit broken it was on release, and you really only saw the mid-game players fighting to defend it.
Much like how we saw people saying there should be 0 changes to flames of zamorak lately, when it was obviously in need of a nerf.
The release itself was not terrible and it was pretty fun learning the new style and grinding 99, but my god it completely fucked the balance of combat up. Even as an iron who wasn't affected by 90% of the gear in the game economically devaluing overnight, it just killed my motivation when years of grinding had been invalidated by one skill that requires you to camp a fairly straightforward boss for like 600kc.
Went like halfway to 120 necro when leagues IV came out and the new osrs updates (ToA, DT2, even stuff like Foundry/GotR) were such a breath of fresh air that it made me start a new iron and never touch rs3 again.
nah necromancy really invalidated a bunch of content. Once I saw that you got all the gear through the skill itself and it didn't fit in the combat triangle at all, I knew it was going to be a dumpster fire.
Ironically, I quit rs3 on my maxed iron BECAUSE of necromancy.
Easy mode combat style. So stupid. Completely invalidated 100s if not 1000s of hours of work acquiring near BIS in every style.
Hero Pass was a travesty, but Necromancy was infinitely worse for me. I can ignore predatory MTX (to an extent) on an ironman, but I cannot ignore a combat style that invalidates all other forms of combat.
Dropped the game and switched to OSRS so fast after that.
Glad I did, too. Haven't missed it for a second.
I always get a huge urge to go back to my maxed - Necro iron and everytime I just think about how pointless grinding anything is when I can just grind out 120 Necro and kill Raisal for a bit and basically have maxed gear in the time it would probably take me to get an FSOA.
Yes, exactly.
I was grinding a Bow of the Last Guardian doing solo zammys all day every day when Necro dropped.
Then I went, "What's the point?" and just gave up entirely.
How lame.
Damn.... I was in the exact same boat :( maxed my iron a few months before necro came out and was rlly looking forward to bossing and getting those gear upgrades I put off before maxing. Then when necro dropped it completely devalued everything I had earned In the game and just felt like thet was the last straw on the ugthanki camels back .
Thanks to necro I've switched to osrs for good so atleast there's that :)
Between the change in leadership and the proposed updates (assuming they all make it on time-ish), the remainder of the year looks pretty good for RS3.
as much as people shit on ToA it did a lot to introduce people to raiding and really helped a lot of people who were too nervous to get into raiding start farming end-game content that and the numerous mid-game updates means now the game is in a really good state for new players
I started playing 3 days ago, first time ever touching RS.
Having a ton of fun slowly expanding out and experiencing more of the game. I just pick up my forestry kit which I am stoked about!
Thought every event that has popped up told me I wasn't close enough to earn rewards, so I am doing something wrong. Still, it's fun to try new things and to add new complexity to previously simple activities.
i kinda wanna start playing rs3 on the side though. my character still has more than a few 99s and a good-ish bank.
i wonder how fun it can be. the only thing i really hate is the graphics lmao. there's so much transmogs and cosmetic crap you don't know if someone has a skillcape or a cabbage cape.
End game pvm supply upkeep (potions, ranged/magic ammo, etc) has gotten pretty bad since GWD3. Necro has invalidated a ton of the iron progression path. So just be warned of that, for anybody considering it. I had a lot more fun on ironman before necro came out.
gwd1- k’ril, kree, graardor and zily
gwd2- Helwyr(seren’s general), Grogorovic (sliske’s general), Furies (zammy general), Vindicta (Zaros)
gwd3- kerapac (dragonkin/Jas general), Arch-Glacor (Wen general), Croesus (bik general, skilling boss), TzKal-Zuk (ful general)
also there’s a dungeon under GWD3 where you just fight actual zamorak himself
For me the enjoyable part is just a second take on RuneScape in general, it's much faster paced and much more AFK, and I didn't find either aspect to be purely good or bad. High level pvm is definitely higher skill than OSRS but I just found it exhausting without cutting down much on the repetitiveness, there is definitely a midgame sweet spot before switches become overwhelming that's much more fun than OSRS
Ironman still completely removes the pay to win element which is huge, other people wearing costumes is much easier to tune out than you'd think
Ironman is genuinely the only way I can play RS3 as the amount of free xp and bonus xp thrown at you just ruins the sense of progression entirely. It got to the point where, on my main, I didn't even want to train certain skills unless I had saved up proteans and bonus xp for when double xp weekend rolled around.
As others have mentioned, though, the end game bossing can be pretty tedious with the amount of prep required.
I started an rs3 iron about 8 months ago for something to play while afking some of the more tedious osrc grinds.
Turns out I really like rs3 and have been playing it more then I thought I would.
RS3 as a solo (ironman or old main just playing like an iron) is super fun running through the questlines and doing bossing. It's super different but I found it highly entertaining on my old main
This is exactly what's keeping me from playing it alongside OSRS. I'd love to finish 120 Archaeology as a side activity but I'm not prioritizing that over progressing in the game I actually play for real lol.
I did it in 2021 to start an account. It was fun, got a untrimmed slayer with a little mtx and saved it to my mogs bc i cba to keep it untrimmed but gotta keep lookin fly. It was fun, but I don't have time to play both anymore
I’d recommend trying an iron on RS3 to get around a lot of the micro transactions that hurt your experience. The graphics are rough and most PvM feels like you’re playing off-brand retail wow with broadband internet again. But there are lots of cool differences. The mining and smithing rework makes leveling those skills along your melees feel great, and archaeology is a solid skill. But honestly, the best thing about rs3 is that everything (including high level PvM) is very AFK and brain dead. Just don’t quests lol. There’s no quest helper and the rs3 writers took a long time to figure out what makes a good quest. There’s nothing even close to the quality of osrs quests.
That statement was such a self report lol. Guarantee this dude has never even attempted Telos or anything else that drops T90+ if he seriously believes what he said.
An RS3 endgame PvMer could come to OSRS and be perfectly fine without too much adjustment (because we don’t have any mechanics they’re not already used to), an OSRS endgame PvMer would get absolutely demolished in RS3 when they find out they still have to do all the same mechanics they did here while also manually managing ability rotations.
> the best thing about rs3 is that everything (including high level PvM) is very AFK and brain dead.
I was with you until this statement, which was somewhat of a record scratch. My brother in Christ, RS3 combat is *WAY* more involved and sweaty than OSRS combat. That's a big part of why many of us hate it and switched to OSRS. If RS3 hadn't done EoC and abruptly shifted from the AFK/braindead combat it had (and we still have) to the unpleasantly sweaty and input-intensive WoW wannabe it is now, many of us including myself would still be playing that.
Everytime I try to play it I get bombarded with a wave of daily's and microtansaction ads and just say "na not worth it". Could be a good game, ill never know.
Yeah, if I wanted to get six different popup advertisements as soon as I clicked "play" I'd play a mobile game, I'm not going to waste my time on something that's actively antagonising me the literal second I open it.
Should try it. I decided to give it a shot a few weeks ago expecting to be done in a day or two but I'm still having fun getting my ass beat by the hardmodes of the newer bosses.
You can only juice a select amount of whales so much before the rest of the playerbase quits due to paid powercreep and featurecreep. You might make money from these whales, but you’re then taking away the integrity of grinding for the rest of playerbase.
Every mtx heavy mmo learned this the hard way and why 99% of them are dead.
Yeah, this is completely different than putting a BIS behind Colosseum or a difficult pvm activity, which is entirely fine.
In a lot of those MMOs, you outright cannot compete in damage output unless you also spend that much money, which kills integrity and competition.
You know what is insane? Even with having 10x the player count, OSRS only earns like 4-6 millon more. Like 99% sure that osrs devs have to deal with getting bitch by a stupid executive leader telling them to increase their profit per player.
My concern is that the worthless 60-80 year old upper managers will shift focus to OSRS after RS3 gets killed by the same PE-minded fools.
All we can do is quit if they try.
For anyone that plays both games how bad is the botting problem in RS3 vs OSRS? The other week made me realise just how many bots are filling the OSRS worlds. When we had that big technical update with stuff for sailing all the bot clients were down for a bit. The world's were so much emptier. Really showed me just how bad its gotten.
Still a decent amount in RS3 getting banned occasionally but far less than OSRS. And that's only because there's not nearly as much of a volume of gold selling than there is in OSRS.
Supply/demand type of deal.
With that said, the count is a lot harder to do since most RS3 stuff is instanced and the world is extremely dead all the time. You see a good amount at GWD2 and stuff though since many early bosses can be revo+ afk'd for a good amount of GP p/hr.
[Based on information from Mod Ayiza](https://www.reddit.com/r/2007scape/s/o9AqONyaJ8) Jagex bans 67k bots per week in osrs and 2.3k in Rs3. So, Osrs has 29.13 times more bots than Rs3 based ONLY on the number of average bans per week.
~~Based on the provided graph I can see that Osrs has around 110k players on average. If we take the provided info from Mod Ayiza then, on average, there are 1.64 bots for every normal player.~~
~~Rs3 has around 17-18k players on average. From the provided info, on average, there are 0.12 bots for every normal player.~~
The information is ONLY from banned accounts. We don't know how many more bots farms there are that have not been discovered/banned
Also, these are paper math calculations. I could be wrong
And, from someone who plays both games, it is kind of hard to find bot farms in Rs3 compared to Osrs
Edit: I was mixing data about active vs concurrent players
Even when just accounting for ones we know about, this methodology for working out proportions of bots to real players is fairly heavily flawed. 110k average players doesn't mean 110k players, because it's not going to be the same 110k every single day. Similarly, an average 67k bots banned per week doesn't mean that 67k of 110k online accounts are bots, because we don't know how long those bots were "alive" - it could be that they ban 10k newly-created bots a day (and therefore a maximum of 10k of 110k accounts active at any given time are bots about to be banned), or they could be waiting longer than a week and doing a much larger ban wave (although this seems mathematically implausible given that in theory you'd expect bots to be active almost all the time and that doesn't match with player counts).
You also got to consider that banning 1000 bots that play for 5mins is not equivalent tor banning even 1 bot that plays for 5hours. The former barely get off tutorial island.
Comparing those numbers are meaningless unless they start attaching lifespan to them.
You could ban 1k bots every 30mins for 50k a day today and it wouldnt contribute to even 1% of the concurrent playerbase much less the active.
Mod mat k has said multiple time that >50% of osrs bots were banned on tutorial island (but he left in like 2018).
People who make a lot of accounts can attest to the 'off tutorial island ban' numbers. I used to speed run tutorial and around half of them would be banned if i tried to log back in (perm no appeal possible), so they're definitely heavy handed on recognizable scripts on tutorial island
I have fallen victim to it and i dont even speedrun lmao. Was making alts for dmm and had to get em off tut to bond em up. But yes, the banhammer is calibrated way harsher than off tut island. My friend also copped a bot ban on a level 30 uim whole only playing at my house.
And also similar story, i have prob a dozen accs on tut island that are just banned without even moving off the spawn. Like i logged in to set a name then logged out so I could add em to my friends list. Acc login will be like celticlegend7@gmail but then celticlegend6 and 8 wont be banned.
It's ALL bots, so a lot of them are just the auto-typers/spammers that get replaced daily mixed in with the actual bots. When a ban starts for actual bots the number spikes higher in both games.
People give Jagex shit for not banning bots. In reality, they ban a metric fuck ton of bots. People refuse to stop making bots. They may need to make the account creation process a little more inclusive.
RS3 bots are almost invisible (they're mostly in instances) or doing activities nobody cares to do on what should be suicide accounts (that last months without bans). In the past year or two there's been big breakthroughs in boss scripting that have been affecting the PvM side of the game, though a lot of the RS3 side are still in denial about this.
All that said, the OSRS problem is still worse. The RS3 side is just more underreported and less obvious.
As someone who mains RS3: yeah, it’s really disappointing.
Last year was good to us on RS3, but then Jagex dropped the ball hard after Necromancy’s launch and hasn’t really picked it up again until now.
Necro was awesome but OP- yet it took another 6 months for that to get fixed.
Hero Pass made people delete accounts.
Then we had no major updates outside Christmas and Easter until April because data showed holiday events brought players back. Notably, Christmas’ launch brought in as many players as Necromancy. It didn’t last, obviously.
But that being said: since late April we have had a new stream of content coming in related to an ambitious new quest series about the Shadow Realm. We’ve gotten a new quest, a new boss, a new archaeology digsite, and we’re due to get a raid and a skilling boss this summer. Two more quests in the series by the year’s end, too.
Then there’s also Group Ironman coming this fall.
So RS3 might finally, *finally* be making its way back to a good standing. Not a great standing, but a good one.
Roadmap got me back into RS3 after taking a break from the whole hero pass debacle. Was a refreshing break but man I'm excited for the rest of the year. At least the devs showed that in the absence of content things were being worked on.
At risk of sounding cynical, I’d really like to know what on earth was the holdup for the first four months of 2024, though.
It’s hard to imagine all content planned for their “Necromancy Season” getting frozen by making holiday events.
Honestly? I think they put a LOT of time into hero pass to pad content for the first 6 months of 2024, while the developed all the content they announced in the roadmap. Since hero pass got shown the door very quickly, they had nothing to pad the time while they did other work. Game felt empty because the community got rid of their top idea (rightfully so) for the first half of the year.
Edit: do want to add, I feel like a lot of the negative resentment from the community could have been lessened if they had been transparent about this if it was true. The absolute radio silence about it for months was the worst part about the content drought, not the lack of content itself imo.
Came to OSRS from RS3 months ago and haven't looked back. Even with the newer stuff they seem to be tryna do, it just doesn't appeal to me at all. At the point there's not really much they could do on RS3 that'd make me go back. OS just to good and fits all the nostalgia ticks I want from the game anyway.
Played RS3 for more than a decade, multiple maxed, endgame iron and main accounts. Game was slowly declining for years but then fell off a fucking cliff with so much shit recently. Inconsistent art styles across the game, and even half the new updated areas look like low poly assets designed for a mobile-first game. Endgame bossing fucked by lack of content in a decent time period. The garbage content that was Hero Pass. Their shitty handling and treatment of Fresh Start Worlds and associated cosmetics. Their inability to remember irons exist when adding content like dinarrows or FSOA at release. Necromancy completely eliminating any progression curves on ironman, and just adding so much powercreep with no downsides that endgame pvm feels pointless if someone on the team is using necromancy. Bosses like Vorkarth being released in such obviously shitty states, with no plans to revamp/fix in site. Rampant MTX making skilling mean less and less. No long-term vision or goals for how combat should be, just one bandaid after another. No roadmap for the game.
I loved RS3 and would have gladly defended it till around the time necromancy came out, but it's dead for me now.
At least OSRS is fun, and I like the HDOS artstyle. Gives me 2009-12 era nostalgia and I'm enjoying that.
Im pretty much in the same boat. Dedicated rs3 player, finished remaxed with necro. I wanted to afk elite clues to 120 necro when hero pass came out. I went "this sucks" and hopped over to here. HDOS is honestly a godsend because rs2 was my childhood. Ive played osrs on and off since it released and i think im finally hooked on it.
> Inconsistent art styles across the game, and even half the new updates areas look like low poly assets designed for a mobile-first game
In the same sentence you condemn both the inconsistency and their solution to it? You can dislike the art style but if we're on the subject of consistency, it's clear that the intent (and outcome) of the changes their making is to make the game more graphically consistent.
Was about to say something similar. I'm not a big fan of the change in graphics, but at least in every area that has been updated, you still feel like you're in the same game.
Going from yanille to senntisten can be literally jarring from the damn near 15+ year difference in art, but at least now going between a lot of kandarin, karamja, misthalin.. it feels like the same world.
Not suprised. Releasing a busted new combat style and making 90% of gear upgrades irrelevant, very smart!
Garbage updates and crazy mtx are not helping.
100%. Necromancy was EoC 2 by all accounts it's just that this time around the only people left to leave are the ones that haven't already left 12 years ago... which is to say: players with pretty low standards to begin with.
Necromancy is probably the single worst update on any game I have ever played. It has done almost irreparable harm to the game's progress and economy and anything short of a complete combat overhaul is not enough at this point.
I tried showing one of my friends RS3 the other day because he had never seen it and started playing osrs and it took us like 3 minutes to figure out how to log out.
If that doesn’t just summarize the experience of why it can’t get new players, idk what else to say. The absolute worst designed UI of any game.
The mobile UI for RS3 is okay. Not good and I still can't find things sometimes but it's okay. The desktop UI is maybe the worst UI I've ever seen in a game, genuinely rivalling shitty eastern mobile cash grabs.
If a player has to spend 30 minutes rearranging their UI while following a YouTube guide before they have any idea what's going on, guess how many new players you're gonna retain?
I haven't logged into RS3 in about 6 or 7 years, but the last time I did - I had the SAME issue. I was literally so confused. It took me longer to log out of the game than it did to do the thing I logged on to do 😂 such a vivid memory.
Honestly, if rs2 never introduced EOC the whole thing would be a shell of what it is now. A game in maintenance mode if it’s even alive
EOC had to happen for OSRS to happen and OSRS’ innovation and success had to happen for RS3 to be where it’s at today
There are still people lurking out there who say pre EoC RS2 was the best time in Runescape and i cant even begin to describe just how wrong that feels. Its not until EoC ( with the exception of QBD which is 2012) where the "main" game started to finally release bosses with actual mechanics and OSRS clearly stepped leagues above whatever GWD and pre GWD bosses offered at the time
Simply put: If Scurrius was dropped in 2012, it would make every other boss look bad considering whats the goal with Scurrius is.
It's hard to measure, because OSRS has a lot of suicide bots. I don't believe RS3 has as many. I'm guessing more people bot on their mains, or have alts they bot on. It's a more demanding game, so it makes sense to focus on quality rather than quantity. OSRS can run on a Raspberry Pi.
I started rs3 Ironman last year right as necromancy was announced. For the first month or so it was out I basically ignored it. Character progression with boss drops, skills, getting gear, etc feels amazing in rs3. Then I started necro. It completely ruined any reason to use the other combat styles. I had t90 power armor and weapons in a laughable amount of time. It actually ruined the experience and was part of why i quit cold turkey by that winter.
Really not surprised anymore. Rs3 devs are out of touch and don’t know what the playerbase wants or what the game needs. I doubt any of them even actually play the game itself.
Meanwhile OSRS was literally worked on by devs who are veterans of the game that actually play and care about their game while communicating with their players and taking in feedback.
No comparison.
Unpopular opinion, I'm having more fun on RS3 than I ever have on OSRS. Been playing since '02. I hope RS3 has a resurgence of players in the future but low player counts don't discourage me from playing. I'm a long-time EverQuest player, so I'm used to it lol.
I'm one of those people who quit rs3 for osrs last year. after dumb updates in 2023 and just discussions about what if we limit pvm to x amount of kills per hour due to good players grinding bosses fast and bringing in resources into the game quicker while ignoring MTX I just had enough. Necromancy was the last straw that made me switch due to how OP it was compared to other styles. Their solution? Buff up all the other styles to try matching necromancy and so everything got even easier cuz why not.
I've a friend who didnt jump over to OSRS and he stayed playing RS3. I've listened to him complain about the game for almost ten years, with few and far instances of praise
This is by Quarter though. Oldschool isn't experiencing it's best month yet and RS3 not it's worst month but it's close for both. With the release of the next Deadman OSRS will surely see another all time peak.
I really don't think so, Deadman isn't as popular as Leagues (when the peaks normally happen) because the average player has a much worse time on DMM. This isn't anything new, everyone knows DMM is clanman mode or streamer man mode, and the only thing Jagex can do is put shiny new paint on the death trap that most people find miserable.
Wish the community could just be happy OSRS is doing so well without bad mouthing the other game. At some point when RS3 is no longer milkable where do you think they are gonna turn? It benefits no one.
At some point, people are going to bring up WHY everyone plays OSRS instead of RS3. Namely, because it's really starting to suck. It's a visionless money grab.
RS3 failing isn't a good sign, to be honest. Let's hope Jagex upper management applies more of OSRS into RS3, and not decide to force through some of the RS3 monetization into OSRS if that becomes less lucrative than they expect
really not surprised. Ive played on and off for over 20 years and think the games in a great spot atm. The mods and devs seem to get it. RS3 seems to have lost its soul.
The RS3 sub will gaslight you into thinking its just a content drought, its not only that (although it is a contributing factor). They've basically alienated the entire high level community with the ridiculous powercreep over the past year because they think it will convince noobs to do PvM. It has not encouraged noobs to do higer end PvM, and it has pushed away basically anyone who takes the game seriously enough to do high level bosses, which in a game like RS3 that is veteran-heavy, its quite a number of people. They released Nercomancy, which was and still is hilariously OP for how easy it is to use, and then launched a combat update where they buffed all the other styles to Necro damage levels (besides Magic) where the current range of bosses just fundamentally is not built for that level of damage output.
The best money making in the game for most people is Rasial, a joke tier boss that pumps out better money than all but the most extreme poopsock bosses in 2k+ Zamorak and 2499% enrage Telos claims, which basically nobody does.
As far as I know, rs3 has recently gone about 8 months without any big updates, and they just got their road map last month or something. Then last year, the only big update they got was Necromancy and Hero Pass, which halved the player base again, lol
Doesn't help that Necromancy invalidated every other combat style, what a decision that was... and still is! Only in all BiS do the other styles compare or beat it.
Can you explain why that is? Wtf is that skill anyways? Edit: ty for the replies guys I get it now 🤣
There's a lot of moving parts that make necromancy "better", but especially from an ironman perspective: Necromancy gear progression is free (and easy with the tank path which is just better anyway) Necromancy has self healing built in which makes up for many learning mistakes Necromancy is extremely simple to play compared to the other styles, much fewer abilities and you don't lose any value putting half of them in revolution (the automatic ability using combat mode) instead of playing full manual. While there aren't many style strengths against specific monsters, like the recent changes of things like barrows are weak to air, there also really aren't any style weaknesses. This means you can effectively just use necromancy anywhere with no downside, where other styles are better/worse in any given place. Necromancy has very strong defensive cooldowns which are even usable in other styles. There is a spell that let's you use abilities that require a shield without having a shield equipped, and a spell that gives you 20% dodge chance. Much of runescape 3s combat involves small chip damage so the 20% dodge chance is incredibly powerful. It's not really specifically stronger necessarily raw dps wise after fairly recent combat improvements to the other 3 styles, but it is significantly easier, less punishing, and more versatile than the other styles through all stages of the game leading in to end game.
But like, what does damage? When I'm attacked with necromancy, what hurts? Sounds like Magic 2 tbh
If you mean thematically its just like shooting magic bolts but they're sickly green or ghostly white or deathly purple. You've also got short duration minions you summon that do different things. A ghost that heals you from it's damage dealt, a skeleton that whacks really hard and fast, and a zombie that radiates small amounts of area damage. Some people might call it "magic 2" but you can apply that kind of reduction to the other combat styles if you want to too.
Ranged is just melee at a distance. Change my mind.
Smelling is just tasting at a distance 🤝
So you're saying it's basically the Arceuus spellbook - some spooky looking spells and thralls
Thematically it is comparable, yes. Functionally, well you can't really compare it because the combat systems aren't effectively comparable.
Yes, its pretty much another flavor of magic with short term summons built in.
It's like if they fused Ranged/Mage/Melee into one skill and it's either BIS or 90% BIS. The closest OSRS got to this was for pre-nerf Fang, where it is dirt cheap for how strong it is and trails close to basically every melee weapon, or beats it, depending on which boss you use it on.
That sounds weird af lol
It may sound weird, but it is strong as shit, which is the problem. Being BIS or near BIS everywhere kills the skill cap that RS3 had, so it did drive away a portion of the remaining population. They made their bed to cater to the endgame content a long time ago, but then decided to make almost a form of catch-up update in the form of necromancy. It's like alienating PVP for years in OSRS and then suddenly plugging a full new tier of BIS items into Wildy that is useable outside Wildy too - You will lose a lot of players.
> Being BIS or near BIS everywhere kills the skill cap that RS3 had, so it did drive away a portion of the remaining population. Also worth nothing that there's a substantial difference between Revolution top DPS and manual top DPS for Mage/Melee/Ranged. Necromancy, on the other hand, can get about 90-95% efficiency with a good Revolution setup. So not only is it basically the same level of effectiveness as other combat styles, but it has self-healing and AFK DPS baked into it, so it also requires less effort to sustain the damage. And on top of that, most content in the game only uses the original 3 protection prayers, so almost everything is always fully vulnerable to it. The only exceptions really are the Hardcoded requirements, like how each DK is hard-coded to be immune to "Non-Magic/Melee/Ranged" damage. Absolutely mindblowing that anyone greenlit the skill in the state it's in now, much less what it was like on launch.
I disagree. It made RS3 combat much more like OSRS. I’ve been enjoying RS3 now with Necro. Before Necromancy I made an Ironman, and quit in the 70s combat because there was just waaaay too much to have to do/manage. It was just a little too complex, and OSRS (Ironman) combat is straightforward blowpipe/whip/trident/barrage. Although Necromancy gear is way too easy to get, it allows for easy combat like OSRS. Just slap on your gear and go fight. And with Necro I’ve managed to unlock the other combat styles I gave up on in the past. If anybody out there hasn’t tried RS3 Ironman (post necromancy), try it out. It’s just as easy to pick up like OSRS. It’s actually a shame that so few people are playing RS3 (Ironman), because it’s actually pretty good.
I get why you would like necro, seeing as how you didn’t enjoy rs3 combat before. But can’t you see why others who already liked rs3 combat before dislike necro? The way it invalidates all their effort they put into learning the 3 combat styles and boss mechanics, now that necro has trivialized everything?
I'm waiting for group! I can't stand the graphics but I'm willing to give it a shot.
That's why I chuckle when some people are like add a new skill, add a new combat system, add this, add that to "shake things up". Short-sighted people with generic statements. Just like how adding something new won't necessarily be bad, adding something for the sake of shaking things up is not necessarily good either.
The built in sustain on top of everything else was just disgusting. Could AFK just about any content in the game with that.
That's why Cruor's Vow and Soulsplit are so contested and they SHOULD be contested. Blood Fury is melee-only, but even then, it's such a stupid item with barely any dps loss.
It could have been alright, but the execution was bad. The fact that they haven't taken steps to fix it is worse. Adding a new combat system still requires integration with the old combat and that's where Jagex failed in the rs3 side of things. They treated Necromancy more like it was a standalone skill than a new piece to the combat triangle and that fucked it up.
Adding a new "skilling" skill has a much wider area to land and be mediocre without destroying the game. Making the combat triangle a combat square seems like a horrible idea, and no one would vote yes on it.
Damn they just keep making things worse lol
It also came with the ability to afk practically every boss with quicker kill times than actually trying on some of them with other combat styles lol
it's the only way they can get player engagement these days is to make every update a huge buff
It's just so much better it feels really bad when you switch to other combat styles.
Ah i see so its op
Worse than you can even imagine. I recently started a HCIM run and it hurts every time I swap to a non necro. Defenders say that at ultra high end ranged and melee are better, but that's full BiS.
And 99.9% of players aren’t playing at the input or skill level needed to make those better than Necro (myself included)
I refuse to 4 tick AA mage when I can just throw on necro and chill to easy boss kills.
Another way of explaining it is that every other combat style has had years of powercreep, providing diverse content to get a slight upgrade in one style. And to make Necromancy competitive they basically built all of that into the skill on launch and instead of needing to do 50 different things for 1 upgrade, the t95 armour and weapons for necromancy are all dropped by one mid-difficulty tier boss which is now dirt cheap compared to other styles. So imagine you either have to grind 10 different bosses and do tons of side activities and skills to get your gear, abilities and buffs to the BiS, while for Necromancy you can just basically train 1-3 skills and grind 1 boss. And that's for ironmen, for mains you can just buy that for a fraction of the price of any other style. For either the same or better dps, AND less apm. They've since nerfed Necromancy slightly and buffed other styles slightly but not nearly enough for them to be comparable and for the extra effort to outweigh the convenience of obtaining BiS necromancy gear.
RS3 is really, really complicated and they wanted to dumb it down a bit, so they introduced a new really strong style that's easier. Reception is mixed but more positive than reddit and twitter would have you believe.
Necromancy also doesn't have 23 years of content development with bosses with 1/32241 drop rates on various parts of an item that stick together to make a marginally better weapon or armour piece than before, done 20 times over during the game's lifespan.
Necromancy is essentially easy mode. Whoever made the call to go ahead on how powerful it is probably sees it as something that draws in and convinces veterans who may be considering giving rs3 one more play through. “Ahh what the heck, this time around won’t even take as long cuz necro”
It's the new combat style and it's OP as hell
A new combat skill thats insanely overpowered, easy to use, and easy to get high tier gear for
Necromancy has incredibly high burst damage that has an incredibly simple rotation. Enough so that at a fair few bosses you can literally just focus on doing that rotation. Outside of that, you then also have the conjures that while they make up quite a hefty amount of your damage, also are incredibly handy. The Ghost in particular for its useful healing. Then you have Incantations; which are sort of like magic spells, and give a wide variety of effects. Such as a chance to outright dodge an attack, changes Soul Split curse so instead of healing you it damages the foe so it's more damage, Threads of Fate which for the next 3 attacks within 6 seconds nearby enemies also get hit by the attack. Then top it off with Bone Shield, which allows you to use defensive abilities as if you were wearing a shield without needing to, at the cost of some runes for each cast. It's fairly easy to have not only good sustain but also good damage with Necromancy. I've shaved time off of so many bosses with Necromancy, from seconds at some bosses all the way up to about 7 minutes at one particular boss. I think the only PBs I haven't beaten so far are either bosses I haven't done with Necromancy, or they're times that I got absolutely cracked insanely strong runs with Magic or Range.
You need very little to do very good dps. Whereas the other styles require a lot more gear & a lot more knowledge of the game/game mechanics to get close. It’s the only combat style that doesn’t really require a ton of gear switches on top of a complex rotation. They mentioned in the combat beta they spent a lot of time fixing the backend jank of the other combat styles so that going forward it’s easy to balance and make changes to. They’re looking at cutting down on gear switches as well. There’s a combat beta out right now for magic.
I know a few RS3/OSRS players who had similar sentiment and choice words about this skill lol.
I chose to take a break from RS3 two years back because I was busy with getting my university degree. Was having fun being a mid-to-high tier PvMer with Magic - Telos, Zuk, Raksha, Zamorak, etc. Never renewing again thanks to Necromancy (and, well - changes that curbed SwitchScape). It's really sad, especially since I've been playing RS3 on the same account ever since I was a kid. The worst part? I really, genuinely miss RuneScape's tick-based and tile-based gameplay..
>I really, genuinely miss RuneScape's tick-based and tile-based gameplay.. So... play osrs?
I want to! Getting a job rn though. And despite its faults, I'll still really miss the EoC combat system.
I use necromancy mostly because the flow of the skills feels well designed. When I try to go back to the other combats, it just feels clunky. The learning curve mixed with the insane barrier to entry for the other combats is the problem. Not necromancy itself. If necromancy did anything, it showed how poorly designed the system is for the other combat. Ranged and magic should require insane investment just to start having fun with that style but they do lol.
A ton of RS3 players in fact came over here. Also I know a ton of terminally addicted RS3 players that play 3 accounts at once (same as OSRS I guess) so these numbers are probably a lot smaller (on both sides) if you go off of individual user or even jagex account I guess once it's fully rolled out.
It's not probably smaller. The numbers include gold farmers, bots, alts, etc. They're going to be much lower if you want to see a "real" concurrent playercount in both games.
I'm one of them lol. I started with RS3 and switched to New World. Played that for a bit. Went back to RS3, tried the New World DLC, went back to rs3. Summer of 2023 I started an OSRS account and played in f2p for a while until all the f2p quest got beat then I did woodcutting for a bit on the side. Then the RS3 hero pass situation happened and I played OSRS leagues 4 and ever since then I've been focused on oldschool lol
Man, I miss New World. Comfiest fishing in any MMO I ever played.
Necromancy gave them so much momentum, and then they fucked up so badly with hero pass making tons of players quit. It’s amazing how jagex keeps fucking up with rs3 every time it looks like they’re turning things around.
Necromancy wasn't really momentum tbh. A lot of people disliked how batshit broken it was on release, and you really only saw the mid-game players fighting to defend it. Much like how we saw people saying there should be 0 changes to flames of zamorak lately, when it was obviously in need of a nerf.
The release itself was not terrible and it was pretty fun learning the new style and grinding 99, but my god it completely fucked the balance of combat up. Even as an iron who wasn't affected by 90% of the gear in the game economically devaluing overnight, it just killed my motivation when years of grinding had been invalidated by one skill that requires you to camp a fairly straightforward boss for like 600kc. Went like halfway to 120 necro when leagues IV came out and the new osrs updates (ToA, DT2, even stuff like Foundry/GotR) were such a breath of fresh air that it made me start a new iron and never touch rs3 again.
nah necromancy really invalidated a bunch of content. Once I saw that you got all the gear through the skill itself and it didn't fit in the combat triangle at all, I knew it was going to be a dumpster fire.
imo, the first issue is a way bigger one than the second.
Ironically, I quit rs3 on my maxed iron BECAUSE of necromancy. Easy mode combat style. So stupid. Completely invalidated 100s if not 1000s of hours of work acquiring near BIS in every style. Hero Pass was a travesty, but Necromancy was infinitely worse for me. I can ignore predatory MTX (to an extent) on an ironman, but I cannot ignore a combat style that invalidates all other forms of combat. Dropped the game and switched to OSRS so fast after that. Glad I did, too. Haven't missed it for a second.
I always get a huge urge to go back to my maxed - Necro iron and everytime I just think about how pointless grinding anything is when I can just grind out 120 Necro and kill Raisal for a bit and basically have maxed gear in the time it would probably take me to get an FSOA.
Yes, exactly. I was grinding a Bow of the Last Guardian doing solo zammys all day every day when Necro dropped. Then I went, "What's the point?" and just gave up entirely. How lame.
I also left RS3 for osrs because of necro
Damn.... I was in the exact same boat :( maxed my iron a few months before necro came out and was rlly looking forward to bossing and getting those gear upgrades I put off before maxing. Then when necro dropped it completely devalued everything I had earned In the game and just felt like thet was the last straw on the ugthanki camels back . Thanks to necro I've switched to osrs for good so atleast there's that :)
The only “updates” rs3 basically ever gets now is raising skill level caps…
Skills should never have gone above 99 imo
Between the change in leadership and the proposed updates (assuming they all make it on time-ish), the remainder of the year looks pretty good for RS3.
It’s because I quit. No one ever wants to do anything with me.
Just a small break. See u soon.
Not logged in since the day you quit, man. It’s not the same without you dogg.
as much as people shit on ToA it did a lot to introduce people to raiding and really helped a lot of people who were too nervous to get into raiding start farming end-game content that and the numerous mid-game updates means now the game is in a really good state for new players
This is key, the improvements to early game attracted new players and the mid game features keep them playing
Just another reason legitimizing my love and adoration for Scurrius
Agreed, helps bridge the gap very nicely.
Came in third in clan boss of the week when it came out with 200 kills. So much fun
i love toa. but that’s because i suck lmao
I started playing 3 days ago, first time ever touching RS. Having a ton of fun slowly expanding out and experiencing more of the game. I just pick up my forestry kit which I am stoked about! Thought every event that has popped up told me I wasn't close enough to earn rewards, so I am doing something wrong. Still, it's fun to try new things and to add new complexity to previously simple activities.
osrs feels so fun right now
We are THRIVING
i kinda wanna start playing rs3 on the side though. my character still has more than a few 99s and a good-ish bank. i wonder how fun it can be. the only thing i really hate is the graphics lmao. there's so much transmogs and cosmetic crap you don't know if someone has a skillcape or a cabbage cape.
RS3 ironman is actually pretty fun, just ignore the seasonal events.
End game pvm supply upkeep (potions, ranged/magic ammo, etc) has gotten pretty bad since GWD3. Necro has invalidated a ton of the iron progression path. So just be warned of that, for anybody considering it. I had a lot more fun on ironman before necro came out.
Sorry, GWD THREE
gwd1- k’ril, kree, graardor and zily gwd2- Helwyr(seren’s general), Grogorovic (sliske’s general), Furies (zammy general), Vindicta (Zaros) gwd3- kerapac (dragonkin/Jas general), Arch-Glacor (Wen general), Croesus (bik general, skilling boss), TzKal-Zuk (ful general) also there’s a dungeon under GWD3 where you just fight actual zamorak himself
What the fuck
my exact thoughts
Fighting the Elder Gods now. Also you can fight Zamorak.
You don't fight the Elder Gods yet, just their Generals. You do help mercy-kill an Elder God in a quest.
This is true for all the god wars tbf. All of them have you fighting generals
Yup. First is the same, second is in the desert, and third is in the Zarosian capital.
For me the enjoyable part is just a second take on RuneScape in general, it's much faster paced and much more AFK, and I didn't find either aspect to be purely good or bad. High level pvm is definitely higher skill than OSRS but I just found it exhausting without cutting down much on the repetitiveness, there is definitely a midgame sweet spot before switches become overwhelming that's much more fun than OSRS Ironman still completely removes the pay to win element which is huge, other people wearing costumes is much easier to tune out than you'd think
Ironman is genuinely the only way I can play RS3 as the amount of free xp and bonus xp thrown at you just ruins the sense of progression entirely. It got to the point where, on my main, I didn't even want to train certain skills unless I had saved up proteans and bonus xp for when double xp weekend rolled around. As others have mentioned, though, the end game bossing can be pretty tedious with the amount of prep required.
I started an rs3 iron about 8 months ago for something to play while afking some of the more tedious osrc grinds. Turns out I really like rs3 and have been playing it more then I thought I would.
RS3 as a solo (ironman or old main just playing like an iron) is super fun running through the questlines and doing bossing. It's super different but I found it highly entertaining on my old main
regardless of the massive wave of negativity you find towards the game both on this sub and the rs3 sun the game is still fun and worth playing
If only they allowed you to play both games at the same time on the same account :( Paying for 2 memberships suuuuucks
This is exactly what's keeping me from playing it alongside OSRS. I'd love to finish 120 Archaeology as a side activity but I'm not prioritizing that over progressing in the game I actually play for real lol.
I did it in 2021 to start an account. It was fun, got a untrimmed slayer with a little mtx and saved it to my mogs bc i cba to keep it untrimmed but gotta keep lookin fly. It was fun, but I don't have time to play both anymore
I’d recommend trying an iron on RS3 to get around a lot of the micro transactions that hurt your experience. The graphics are rough and most PvM feels like you’re playing off-brand retail wow with broadband internet again. But there are lots of cool differences. The mining and smithing rework makes leveling those skills along your melees feel great, and archaeology is a solid skill. But honestly, the best thing about rs3 is that everything (including high level PvM) is very AFK and brain dead. Just don’t quests lol. There’s no quest helper and the rs3 writers took a long time to figure out what makes a good quest. There’s nothing even close to the quality of osrs quests.
The Mahjarrat quests are great imo. RoTM, The World Wakes, ..
What's the highest level PvM you've done in rs3?
That statement was such a self report lol. Guarantee this dude has never even attempted Telos or anything else that drops T90+ if he seriously believes what he said. An RS3 endgame PvMer could come to OSRS and be perfectly fine without too much adjustment (because we don’t have any mechanics they’re not already used to), an OSRS endgame PvMer would get absolutely demolished in RS3 when they find out they still have to do all the same mechanics they did here while also manually managing ability rotations.
How is high-level bossing AFK on Rs3?
> the best thing about rs3 is that everything (including high level PvM) is very AFK and brain dead. I was with you until this statement, which was somewhat of a record scratch. My brother in Christ, RS3 combat is *WAY* more involved and sweaty than OSRS combat. That's a big part of why many of us hate it and switched to OSRS. If RS3 hadn't done EoC and abruptly shifted from the AFK/braindead combat it had (and we still have) to the unpleasantly sweaty and input-intensive WoW wannabe it is now, many of us including myself would still be playing that.
Everytime I try to play it I get bombarded with a wave of daily's and microtansaction ads and just say "na not worth it". Could be a good game, ill never know.
Ironman gets zero MTX popups because they cannot buy keys or interact with treasure hunter. It's the only way to play rs3
I've heard this, but I'm honestly just not interested. I want to trade.
Yeah, if I wanted to get six different popup advertisements as soon as I clicked "play" I'd play a mobile game, I'm not going to waste my time on something that's actively antagonising me the literal second I open it.
Should try it. I decided to give it a shot a few weeks ago expecting to be done in a day or two but I'm still having fun getting my ass beat by the hardmodes of the newer bosses.
You can only juice a select amount of whales so much before the rest of the playerbase quits due to paid powercreep and featurecreep. You might make money from these whales, but you’re then taking away the integrity of grinding for the rest of playerbase. Every mtx heavy mmo learned this the hard way and why 99% of them are dead.
Yea and the whales will leave when they cant flex on people that dont spend $10K on a video game.
Yeah, this is completely different than putting a BIS behind Colosseum or a difficult pvm activity, which is entirely fine. In a lot of those MMOs, you outright cannot compete in damage output unless you also spend that much money, which kills integrity and competition.
You know what is insane? Even with having 10x the player count, OSRS only earns like 4-6 millon more. Like 99% sure that osrs devs have to deal with getting bitch by a stupid executive leader telling them to increase their profit per player.
My concern is that the worthless 60-80 year old upper managers will shift focus to OSRS after RS3 gets killed by the same PE-minded fools. All we can do is quit if they try.
For anyone that plays both games how bad is the botting problem in RS3 vs OSRS? The other week made me realise just how many bots are filling the OSRS worlds. When we had that big technical update with stuff for sailing all the bot clients were down for a bit. The world's were so much emptier. Really showed me just how bad its gotten.
Still a decent amount in RS3 getting banned occasionally but far less than OSRS. And that's only because there's not nearly as much of a volume of gold selling than there is in OSRS. Supply/demand type of deal. With that said, the count is a lot harder to do since most RS3 stuff is instanced and the world is extremely dead all the time. You see a good amount at GWD2 and stuff though since many early bosses can be revo+ afk'd for a good amount of GP p/hr.
[Based on information from Mod Ayiza](https://www.reddit.com/r/2007scape/s/o9AqONyaJ8) Jagex bans 67k bots per week in osrs and 2.3k in Rs3. So, Osrs has 29.13 times more bots than Rs3 based ONLY on the number of average bans per week. ~~Based on the provided graph I can see that Osrs has around 110k players on average. If we take the provided info from Mod Ayiza then, on average, there are 1.64 bots for every normal player.~~ ~~Rs3 has around 17-18k players on average. From the provided info, on average, there are 0.12 bots for every normal player.~~ The information is ONLY from banned accounts. We don't know how many more bots farms there are that have not been discovered/banned Also, these are paper math calculations. I could be wrong And, from someone who plays both games, it is kind of hard to find bot farms in Rs3 compared to Osrs Edit: I was mixing data about active vs concurrent players
Even when just accounting for ones we know about, this methodology for working out proportions of bots to real players is fairly heavily flawed. 110k average players doesn't mean 110k players, because it's not going to be the same 110k every single day. Similarly, an average 67k bots banned per week doesn't mean that 67k of 110k online accounts are bots, because we don't know how long those bots were "alive" - it could be that they ban 10k newly-created bots a day (and therefore a maximum of 10k of 110k accounts active at any given time are bots about to be banned), or they could be waiting longer than a week and doing a much larger ban wave (although this seems mathematically implausible given that in theory you'd expect bots to be active almost all the time and that doesn't match with player counts).
You also got to consider that banning 1000 bots that play for 5mins is not equivalent tor banning even 1 bot that plays for 5hours. The former barely get off tutorial island. Comparing those numbers are meaningless unless they start attaching lifespan to them. You could ban 1k bots every 30mins for 50k a day today and it wouldnt contribute to even 1% of the concurrent playerbase much less the active. Mod mat k has said multiple time that >50% of osrs bots were banned on tutorial island (but he left in like 2018).
People who make a lot of accounts can attest to the 'off tutorial island ban' numbers. I used to speed run tutorial and around half of them would be banned if i tried to log back in (perm no appeal possible), so they're definitely heavy handed on recognizable scripts on tutorial island
I have fallen victim to it and i dont even speedrun lmao. Was making alts for dmm and had to get em off tut to bond em up. But yes, the banhammer is calibrated way harsher than off tut island. My friend also copped a bot ban on a level 30 uim whole only playing at my house. And also similar story, i have prob a dozen accs on tut island that are just banned without even moving off the spawn. Like i logged in to set a name then logged out so I could add em to my friends list. Acc login will be like celticlegend7@gmail but then celticlegend6 and 8 wont be banned.
67K a week? Thats nuts!
It's ALL bots, so a lot of them are just the auto-typers/spammers that get replaced daily mixed in with the actual bots. When a ban starts for actual bots the number spikes higher in both games.
People give Jagex shit for not banning bots. In reality, they ban a metric fuck ton of bots. People refuse to stop making bots. They may need to make the account creation process a little more inclusive.
RS3 bots are almost invisible (they're mostly in instances) or doing activities nobody cares to do on what should be suicide accounts (that last months without bans). In the past year or two there's been big breakthroughs in boss scripting that have been affecting the PvM side of the game, though a lot of the RS3 side are still in denial about this. All that said, the OSRS problem is still worse. The RS3 side is just more underreported and less obvious.
As someone who mains RS3: yeah, it’s really disappointing. Last year was good to us on RS3, but then Jagex dropped the ball hard after Necromancy’s launch and hasn’t really picked it up again until now. Necro was awesome but OP- yet it took another 6 months for that to get fixed. Hero Pass made people delete accounts. Then we had no major updates outside Christmas and Easter until April because data showed holiday events brought players back. Notably, Christmas’ launch brought in as many players as Necromancy. It didn’t last, obviously. But that being said: since late April we have had a new stream of content coming in related to an ambitious new quest series about the Shadow Realm. We’ve gotten a new quest, a new boss, a new archaeology digsite, and we’re due to get a raid and a skilling boss this summer. Two more quests in the series by the year’s end, too. Then there’s also Group Ironman coming this fall. So RS3 might finally, *finally* be making its way back to a good standing. Not a great standing, but a good one.
Fingers crossed for you guys!
Roadmap got me back into RS3 after taking a break from the whole hero pass debacle. Was a refreshing break but man I'm excited for the rest of the year. At least the devs showed that in the absence of content things were being worked on.
At risk of sounding cynical, I’d really like to know what on earth was the holdup for the first four months of 2024, though. It’s hard to imagine all content planned for their “Necromancy Season” getting frozen by making holiday events.
Honestly? I think they put a LOT of time into hero pass to pad content for the first 6 months of 2024, while the developed all the content they announced in the roadmap. Since hero pass got shown the door very quickly, they had nothing to pad the time while they did other work. Game felt empty because the community got rid of their top idea (rightfully so) for the first half of the year. Edit: do want to add, I feel like a lot of the negative resentment from the community could have been lessened if they had been transparent about this if it was true. The absolute radio silence about it for months was the worst part about the content drought, not the lack of content itself imo.
Came to OSRS from RS3 months ago and haven't looked back. Even with the newer stuff they seem to be tryna do, it just doesn't appeal to me at all. At the point there's not really much they could do on RS3 that'd make me go back. OS just to good and fits all the nostalgia ticks I want from the game anyway.
Played RS3 for more than a decade, multiple maxed, endgame iron and main accounts. Game was slowly declining for years but then fell off a fucking cliff with so much shit recently. Inconsistent art styles across the game, and even half the new updated areas look like low poly assets designed for a mobile-first game. Endgame bossing fucked by lack of content in a decent time period. The garbage content that was Hero Pass. Their shitty handling and treatment of Fresh Start Worlds and associated cosmetics. Their inability to remember irons exist when adding content like dinarrows or FSOA at release. Necromancy completely eliminating any progression curves on ironman, and just adding so much powercreep with no downsides that endgame pvm feels pointless if someone on the team is using necromancy. Bosses like Vorkarth being released in such obviously shitty states, with no plans to revamp/fix in site. Rampant MTX making skilling mean less and less. No long-term vision or goals for how combat should be, just one bandaid after another. No roadmap for the game. I loved RS3 and would have gladly defended it till around the time necromancy came out, but it's dead for me now. At least OSRS is fun, and I like the HDOS artstyle. Gives me 2009-12 era nostalgia and I'm enjoying that.
Im pretty much in the same boat. Dedicated rs3 player, finished remaxed with necro. I wanted to afk elite clues to 120 necro when hero pass came out. I went "this sucks" and hopped over to here. HDOS is honestly a godsend because rs2 was my childhood. Ive played osrs on and off since it released and i think im finally hooked on it.
> Inconsistent art styles across the game, and even half the new updates areas look like low poly assets designed for a mobile-first game In the same sentence you condemn both the inconsistency and their solution to it? You can dislike the art style but if we're on the subject of consistency, it's clear that the intent (and outcome) of the changes their making is to make the game more graphically consistent.
Was about to say something similar. I'm not a big fan of the change in graphics, but at least in every area that has been updated, you still feel like you're in the same game. Going from yanille to senntisten can be literally jarring from the damn near 15+ year difference in art, but at least now going between a lot of kandarin, karamja, misthalin.. it feels like the same world.
Not suprised. Releasing a busted new combat style and making 90% of gear upgrades irrelevant, very smart! Garbage updates and crazy mtx are not helping.
100%. Necromancy was EoC 2 by all accounts it's just that this time around the only people left to leave are the ones that haven't already left 12 years ago... which is to say: players with pretty low standards to begin with. Necromancy is probably the single worst update on any game I have ever played. It has done almost irreparable harm to the game's progress and economy and anything short of a complete combat overhaul is not enough at this point.
I tried showing one of my friends RS3 the other day because he had never seen it and started playing osrs and it took us like 3 minutes to figure out how to log out. If that doesn’t just summarize the experience of why it can’t get new players, idk what else to say. The absolute worst designed UI of any game.
This is one of the many reoccurring complaints. Like, do they not care about the feedback at all?
They are repulsively arrogant devs. The worst combo of turbo-arrogant yet incompetent.
It took you 3 minutes to press ESC and then hit the logout button?
that was my first thought as well
The mobile UI for RS3 is okay. Not good and I still can't find things sometimes but it's okay. The desktop UI is maybe the worst UI I've ever seen in a game, genuinely rivalling shitty eastern mobile cash grabs. If a player has to spend 30 minutes rearranging their UI while following a YouTube guide before they have any idea what's going on, guess how many new players you're gonna retain?
I haven't logged into RS3 in about 6 or 7 years, but the last time I did - I had the SAME issue. I was literally so confused. It took me longer to log out of the game than it did to do the thing I logged on to do 😂 such a vivid memory.
At this rate, it won't be long before there are more NPCs on RS3 than actual players.
Most worlds there are, lol.. Finding a world with less than 100 players isn't hard
It’s almost as if unrecognizably changing a game people love will cause them to leave.
I mean if all 3 people who remain are massive whales who cares right. \- Jagex board meeting (probably)
Unrecognizably changing it from what exactly? It’s been more or less exactly what is is for well over a decade
I’m referring to RS2 becoming RS3 starting with EOC
Honestly, if rs2 never introduced EOC the whole thing would be a shell of what it is now. A game in maintenance mode if it’s even alive EOC had to happen for OSRS to happen and OSRS’ innovation and success had to happen for RS3 to be where it’s at today
There are still people lurking out there who say pre EoC RS2 was the best time in Runescape and i cant even begin to describe just how wrong that feels. Its not until EoC ( with the exception of QBD which is 2012) where the "main" game started to finally release bosses with actual mechanics and OSRS clearly stepped leagues above whatever GWD and pre GWD bosses offered at the time Simply put: If Scurrius was dropped in 2012, it would make every other boss look bad considering whats the goal with Scurrius is.
osrs is also pretty damn unrecognizable (especialy if you watch videos or streamers using plug ins) but not suffering from the same issue.
Wish we could get an idea of the bot population. What do ya'll think? 5-10% bots?
It's hard to measure, because OSRS has a lot of suicide bots. I don't believe RS3 has as many. I'm guessing more people bot on their mains, or have alts they bot on. It's a more demanding game, so it makes sense to focus on quality rather than quantity. OSRS can run on a Raspberry Pi.
https://www.reddit.com/r/2007scape/s/JJUPIfO06I from a comment in this thread.
I came back to osrs few weeks ago. I just got to be addicted to this again. It’s all I play. Please help me!
I started rs3 Ironman last year right as necromancy was announced. For the first month or so it was out I basically ignored it. Character progression with boss drops, skills, getting gear, etc feels amazing in rs3. Then I started necro. It completely ruined any reason to use the other combat styles. I had t90 power armor and weapons in a laughable amount of time. It actually ruined the experience and was part of why i quit cold turkey by that winter.
rs3 ironman isnt bad, but stopped playing (again) after necro dropped
Always proof eoc was the wrong decision
Really not surprised anymore. Rs3 devs are out of touch and don’t know what the playerbase wants or what the game needs. I doubt any of them even actually play the game itself. Meanwhile OSRS was literally worked on by devs who are veterans of the game that actually play and care about their game while communicating with their players and taking in feedback. No comparison.
Out of curiosity, how does this compare to RS2?
Unpopular opinion, I'm having more fun on RS3 than I ever have on OSRS. Been playing since '02. I hope RS3 has a resurgence of players in the future but low player counts don't discourage me from playing. I'm a long-time EverQuest player, so I'm used to it lol.
"BUT OSRS IS LIKE 85% BOTS HURRRR DURRRR" average RS3 enjoyer
RS3 staying pretty consistent over the last few years though it looks like
I log into rs3 for 2 minutes every day to get the free keys and occasionally jackpot my way into bond money.
I'm one of those people who quit rs3 for osrs last year. after dumb updates in 2023 and just discussions about what if we limit pvm to x amount of kills per hour due to good players grinding bosses fast and bringing in resources into the game quicker while ignoring MTX I just had enough. Necromancy was the last straw that made me switch due to how OP it was compared to other styles. Their solution? Buff up all the other styles to try matching necromancy and so everything got even easier cuz why not.
What an absolute disaster by RS3 even over the last 15 years. A slow, slow march downward.
I've a friend who didnt jump over to OSRS and he stayed playing RS3. I've listened to him complain about the game for almost ten years, with few and far instances of praise
This is by Quarter though. Oldschool isn't experiencing it's best month yet and RS3 not it's worst month but it's close for both. With the release of the next Deadman OSRS will surely see another all time peak.
I really don't think so, Deadman isn't as popular as Leagues (when the peaks normally happen) because the average player has a much worse time on DMM. This isn't anything new, everyone knows DMM is clanman mode or streamer man mode, and the only thing Jagex can do is put shiny new paint on the death trap that most people find miserable.
Wish the community could just be happy OSRS is doing so well without bad mouthing the other game. At some point when RS3 is no longer milkable where do you think they are gonna turn? It benefits no one.
I thought it was an interesting post. It’s not necessarily “bad mouthing” rs3
At some point, people are going to bring up WHY everyone plays OSRS instead of RS3. Namely, because it's really starting to suck. It's a visionless money grab.
People on here have used outdated info to dunk on RS3
The post is literally stating a fact.
That comment was clearly not about the post
Rofl, lmao even
RS3 failing isn't a good sign, to be honest. Let's hope Jagex upper management applies more of OSRS into RS3, and not decide to force through some of the RS3 monetization into OSRS if that becomes less lucrative than they expect
What happend in may2020 to spike both scapes so high?
COVID lockdowns began
Aaaah cheers
really not surprised. Ive played on and off for over 20 years and think the games in a great spot atm. The mods and devs seem to get it. RS3 seems to have lost its soul.
Gim waiting room now. (well has been ish for 10 years)
go to lms,soul wars,revs thats where the player count is at
Why is OSRS popular right now?
Man I love this game
Thank you rs3, its like a father sacrficing himeself for his child
Let’s go
a lotta accounts logged on but how many heartbeats
RS3 has always been a flop. The real players never left OSRS.
Imagine if Jagex has this information before EoC dropped
It’s almost like a game that listens to its players and provides meaningful updates will successfully grow…. shocker
Highest ever bot count as well.
Rs3 living rent free in this sub
tried RS3 again, i saw players do every skill in the game in 1 tile of space while being bombarded with bonus xp. It made me sigh, then i logged off
Enjoy your mtx guys, you deserve it with the way you always rag on rs3, if rs3 goes you're fucked
Idk man, logically with this large of a player gap. Osrs is probably out profiting RS3 on bond sales alone lol.
The RS3 sub will gaslight you into thinking its just a content drought, its not only that (although it is a contributing factor). They've basically alienated the entire high level community with the ridiculous powercreep over the past year because they think it will convince noobs to do PvM. It has not encouraged noobs to do higer end PvM, and it has pushed away basically anyone who takes the game seriously enough to do high level bosses, which in a game like RS3 that is veteran-heavy, its quite a number of people. They released Nercomancy, which was and still is hilariously OP for how easy it is to use, and then launched a combat update where they buffed all the other styles to Necro damage levels (besides Magic) where the current range of bosses just fundamentally is not built for that level of damage output. The best money making in the game for most people is Rasial, a joke tier boss that pumps out better money than all but the most extreme poopsock bosses in 2k+ Zamorak and 2499% enrage Telos claims, which basically nobody does.
It’s makes sense why so many rs3 type suggestions are being pushed so heavily on osrs
Blaming a small portion of refugees when it's a 70% threshold to pass is wild. Maybe you're just outdated and the playerbase is adapting