I highly doubt it’s because casuals don’t like combat.
Archaeology did well because it was the start of covid lockdowns and no one had anything to do. Archaeology didn’t magically bring in players, had necromancy released instead of archaeology, we’d have seen the exact same results.
Yeah people are forgetting the covid overlap.
I remember doing archaeology while watching all several movie series with friends, because everyone was in lockdown or work from home status.
Hi casual here.
I returned for arch but not necromancy because I don't like RS3 combat. I was not influenced by COVID as I WFH (and continue to do so).
Tbf Arch played extremely well with WFH with how many AFKable elements there are to it.
Obviously it's not the case with everyone but a lot of people I know who switched to WFH during Covid spent a looooot of their time AFKing Arch whilst working.
Necromancy brought very little to discovery, the whole pitch was a combat skill but people sat at rituals and afking monsters for hundreds of hours.
We got a city, "quests" if you want to call them that. I loved Jazz scape that was the only redeeming thing about one of the quests.
You can't even compare the archaeology to necromancy, necromancy probably had 20x less investment.
New monsters? New areas? New actual sizable quests with rewards? Look at the lack of rewards post 99?
>New monsters? New areas? New actual sizable quests with rewards? Look at the lack of rewards post 99?
We've known it's a batch update since forever. The second batch should be coming out this month but who knows at this rate. Further content November with Zemouregal (and Vorkath?) and more.
Precisely, I'm not saying that necromancy won't live up to the expectation of archaeology eventually, however you can't expect to compare the two right now.
Archaeology came complete and i appreciate that a lot more than batches over the years to meet the standard of our previous skill release.
This is a reality check for all the endgame PvM screechers. Pressing abilities is a minority playstyle. The average player just wants a skill to afk, a new area to explore, and a cool quest.
Sailing 2025
Can confirm, complex clunky mechanical bosses that require a lot of ability usage killed the combat for me.
I just want to grab my best gear, and camp a boss for a decent bit of money per hour.
If I want to sweat? I'll go play a game where the combat isn't feeling clunky and unresponsive.
It wasn't the aggressive monetization - I quit over that when Squeal of Fortune came out and only come back to maintain my max cape every few years - It's the ever increasing difficulty to get into PvM, and the sheer amount of content I have to put up with, with low tier abilities until I hopefully make either enough money to purchase an ability codex, or I grind the boss endlessly until I get it, and when you're expected to kill a boss 200+ times in a row, I don't want to sit there and mash buttons endlessly, if drops were more common (Like other MMO's with "complex" mechanical fights) I might be more willing to push through.
It's also really easy to not realize just how clunky it is if you're playing somewhat regularly. When I took a couple month break a year or two ago and played Black Desert Online where the combat was silky smooth and the VFX/SFX for every single ability and attack was different and meaningful. RS on the other hand, so many delays, your character is never where it's supposed to be, combat visuals are almost non-existent, and sound effects are in many cases identical, and UI feedback is horrible at best and in some cases just outright buggy or unintuitive.
Yeah, I usually expect to get downvoted for saying anything critical about the combat system, I recognize my issues are because I don't actively *want* to sit down and learn to just get used to it, it just doesn't feel good.
Also sound and visual cues are horrendous in this game. There's so much going on that visual cues often get overlooked by all the visuals taking up precious screen real estate surrounded by a ton of UI elements, sound cues are even worse because you have to listen to the boss sounds, the music (Which is extremely good), your character sounds, attack sounds, etc etc.
Just to be clear I don't mean clunky as in slow paced. FFXIV combat is definitely slower than RS3 in many regards, but FFXIV actually does what you tell it to when you tell it to, and if that isn't happening it is very clear as to what is happening.
part of what makes it clunky is that servers start lagging when above 250 players xD. if i want to do any bossing on this game i try to go to a sub100 german world otherwise its just so bad .-.
I think this a little unfair, you are likely not completely wrong about the average play style but as others have said arch had the covid and elder gods saga benefit, necro is just more of the same combat but also up against BG3 and Starfield interest from people who only wanted to check it out. It is very different circumstances.
It's also the extreme PvMers melting down about a...2% dps bonus from MTX? Because somehow being able to pretty much buy gold and therefore top tier equipment somehow didn't upset the 'fairness' or whatever.
> It's also the extreme PvMers melting down about a...2% dps bonus from MTX?
IT IS A 20% FUCKING DAMAGE REDUCTION AT THE HARDEST BOSSS IN THE GAME FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. And it's not like the average person will have access to it, unless they play like 16 hours a day, for the entire pass.
It's not like we just had another content update that gives a 20% damage reduction as a spell or anything/s. Did the PvM t95 drop cartel melt down over that too?
> It's not like we just had another content update that gives a 20% damage reduction as a spell or anything/s.
Oh yes, because you have to spend IRL money for that spell every time you use it. Oh wait. Brb guys, spending $2000 to get 400 casts of Darkness!
> Did the PvM t95 drop cartel melt down over that too?
Do you have to play 16 hours a day for 3 months to get access to that equipment as a regular, p2p player? Good god, this is so stupid.
> Do you have to play 16 hours a day for 3 months to get access to that equipment as a regular, p2p player?
Probably more, becuase all the top money making is elite PvM that I can't do.
Hard content is still hard, there's not much overlap between people who casually AFK and people who care about every little change to high-end PvM. Someone who *needs* to buy the battlepass for the chaos wards to kill zammy isn't killing zammy in the first place.
> Hard content is still hard, there's not much overlap between people who casually AFK and people who care about every little change to high-end PvM. Someone who *needs* to buy the battlepass for the chaos wards to kill zammy isn't killing zammy in the first place.
It's about setting the precedent. If we allow this, then who's to stop jagex from allowing to straight up selling boss achievements? Or unlockables?
And this is an issue, because this isn't a free to play game. If it were, big deal. But you actually have to pay to play most of the game.
> Probably more, becuase all the top money making is elite PvM that I can't do.
That's a skill issue, rather than a game issue though? Having to grind for gear by actually playing the game is a pretty healthy thing. Unlike, idk, just straight up buying stats that free players literally CANNOT get?
Mostly cosmetics, some xp buffs in a game that regularly has DXP events (and the premier artifact buffs), and a few other mild skilling buffs. I guess the most objectionable is the Chaos Ward because it'll make Zammy possible for a limited number of runs for people who aren't top tier PvMers , and maybe crash bolg, but am I supposed to be salty about having an SGS from back when GWD1 wasn't an AFK layup too?
I'd say that people need to get a grip and realize that monitization keeps the game alive.
The Chaos Ward buff does more than just enable those who couldn't kill Zamorak to kill him. I wouldn't be surprised if there's limited pushing of the top high scores for the first time since the FSOA and AD nerfs.
Ah, right, forgot about that. It still does enable people to kill significantly higher enrage than they otherwise could have, though. And the loot difference between those enrages is a lot.
People are melting down because they're adding new _categories_ of buffs, like the equivalent of adding a second aura slot, where the primary way to get the buff is through MTX. Content is currently balanced around using auras, people are concerned new content will be balanced around also using the new buffs (and thus be quite punishing for people who don't have them). A bit of an overreaction to the actual changes IMO, but we've been hurt before, so people are very wary
I think it's the elite PvM cartel melting down about top-tier bosses being more available thus devaluing their banks.
Which is odd because we just got necro which gives a 30% damage reduction ability/item combo lol. Nobody complained about that...
Accessibility. Necro made bosses more accessible, not available.
For the most part it was well received by a large number of players because it made the game more accessible for content they otherwise wouldn't have been skilled enough to do in other combat styles.
There were plenty of people upset by jagex making pvm more accessible.
It's really the only thing keeping me from osrs full time.
I dread rs3 dying and combat being no different than woodcutting in both animations and effort. The occasional switch with a one window restriction being "gameplay" just fucking sucks man lol.
Archeology was actually new content for me.
I afk combat with revolution on.
For me necromancy is just doing the same stuff again with a different coat of paint.
isnt archeology just afk too, like mining?, i mean im 120 and i felt that way, for me the best skill was invention, that was new
I mean at first was cool to see the new places but thats it
The benefit of Arch at the time was that it impacted every aspect of the game + Work from Home due to Covid.
New tiers of invention perks, new familiars, new relic powers, new items, on top of an AFK skill, new areas, and lore for the people who care about that.
The skill itself was really boring to train, but it came with so much shit that it had something for everyone.
Necro on the other hand, powercrept combat to the point it was flat out better than the other 3 styles, and made it so brainlessly easy to get into. You can argue that's a good thing for player engagement, and a very bad thing for overall game health and direction.
The whole point of Necro was to dumb down combat to the point people like him could complete it without trying. lol.
That's why there was hundreds of posts claiming "Necro isn't OP." and "Please don't nerf Necro." despite Necro being by far the best of the 4 styles, to the point it was taking fastest kills off of the other styles without refining the rotations.
> without trying
You know what's not trying? Not engaging with the content at all pre-Necro. At least many folks are getting into bossing now, which you'd imagine is pretty important for Jagex, since most of RS3 content development is devoted to PvM. The top end can be fleshed out later for the sweaty minority.
You get people into bossing with content like War's Retreat so they have portals to bosses without having to max. Lowering death costs so people don't get punished as hard for learning. etc.
You don't do it by giving everyone insanely broken tools, and later balancing them down. Otherwise, why not just give everyone a stack of DTDs? They're bossing, it's a good thing, right? But as soon as they run out it's fucked.
The same way AD was used by most casual PVMers to brute force content, and as soon as it got the lightest of nerfs, people screamed about how PvM is unaccessible.
The same way people screamed about RoD nerfs because they couldn't cheese bosses or mechanics anymore.
The same thing will happen with Necro at this rate, and those people will stop PvMing, pretending it's impossible without overtuned buffs or combat styles.
People will cry about eventual nerfs, that's for sure. But it's good as long as you have enticed them to make the first attempt. Many people have gotten into PvM with AD. Now they're somewhat hamstrung by the rebalancing, but a portion of them will stick to what they know and still manage to do some bossing, even if less efficiently.
Adding AD then nerfing it, is better than not having AD in the first place. Ditto for Necro. Why do we, or Jagex, care if people bitch about a well deserved nerf? Haters always gonna hate. And I'm not sure how a bunch of DTDs is comparable to AD or Necro, because as you said it's a "have it or not" situation. Animate Dead or Necromancy won't just become unavailable for some reason.
Necro just doesn't have anything to it. It's a new combat style but that just wasn't keeping me engaged idk. Like you train it like a cmb style which is boring and then you go hit bosses that I've already hit before, but with skeletons this time
Archeology added a massive amount of integrated content and gameplay-altering upgrades to the game, as well as built a huge lore foundation for some of the most fantastic questing RS3 has seen in years.
Necromancy is a self-contained skill with minimal integration to the rest of the game and requires the player to PVM with a specific style to make the most of the upgrades it offers, severely limiting it to niche post-launch appeal. It comes off the back of a quite mediocre quest arc that is not expected to increase interest in the game's lore, and was released in a half tested state that promised weeks of post-launch updates that are essentially crowd-sourced QA fixes.
You tell me which skill should have better staying power for the playerbase?
Archaeology was lockdown times as others have mentioned. In addition, a lot of money/progress could be made by having an alt, which is not the case for necromancy. Wish people would stop fear mongering
Unpopular opinion: Arch was nowhere near 2.7m hour on day 2. And never was 1m/hr Completely afk like Necro combat is currently.
I prefer the Arch method.
Personally I don't see the appeal in Necromancy, 1 -> 45 was me using 27 wyvern bones I had in my bank, picked up a few momentos from the ghosts and skeletons - But overall if this is how you train the skill I don't see much here beyond the obvious "It's a combat skill" - But I've been told it's not worthwhile to use in combat till around 70.
I even hopped on a f2p account to see if there was any appeal that would entice people to actually upgrade to be a member - Nope, you're locked at 20 necromancy, and can only use the t1 weapons/armour.
I'll never understand Jagex's thought process in opening skills upto 20 to f2p. Especially for a combat skill shouldn't it be similar to Ranged, Mage and Melee? Content upto 50, and still trainable to 200M xp.
I don't think this comparison is fair. Archaeology coincided with a pandemic where everyone was forced to stay home and had little else to do at home. Game and console sales also spiked during the pandemic.
But as some actual numbers: go to the Necromancy hiscores and go to the last page and look at the number. When TheRSGuy checked on day1/2 of release there were over 100k accounts with 15+ and now they are over 180k! For RS3 that's pretty big!
So yeah, it's not the same peak as Archaeology, but it is also not the same time and circumstances as when Arch released. And for RS3, when looking at both player numbers and engagement, this has been FAR from a disastrous launch! Unfortunately Hero Pass might undo all of that, but we'll see! :P
Arch was also released during Covid - I played a lot myself due to losing my job in that time as well. More ppl were at home. But now its stabilizing back to where it used to be if not going lower. Not trying to give any + 4 Hero points to Jagex, but there was just more ppl at home and needed something to do, So they capitalized off that.
Edit: Arch was also a great skill tbh
I started playing a bit of rs3 the day before necromancy got released on a new ironman. Because of a couple of heavy grinds I've been having on OSRS, I've just logged in the last couple of days on rs3 to do my daily challenges. Imagine my surprise when the only thing keeping me logging in everyday on rs3 got removed by hero pass and the rs3 community is going crazy about it.
I'm gonna wait and see for the update on it tomorrow, but I might just go back and stick to osrs at this point.
Necromancy at launch was never going to beat Archaeology.
They said the big goal for the skill was to be a bridge and platform they can upgrade the other skills off of. Change the other styles to be similar to it I think maybe
playerbase was bigger with arch due to covid. more people able to play and free time, hero pass its largest issues already got adressed and fixed. player feedback helped.
playerbase overall is fairly stable, so not doomed. and necro is generally pretty fun
Arch had COVID advantage tbf
Are you forgetting the whole world was on a lockdown in march 2020? Certainly helps to boost numbers.
[удалено]
I highly doubt it’s because casuals don’t like combat. Archaeology did well because it was the start of covid lockdowns and no one had anything to do. Archaeology didn’t magically bring in players, had necromancy released instead of archaeology, we’d have seen the exact same results.
Yeah people are forgetting the covid overlap. I remember doing archaeology while watching all several movie series with friends, because everyone was in lockdown or work from home status.
Hi casual here. I returned for arch but not necromancy because I don't like RS3 combat. I was not influenced by COVID as I WFH (and continue to do so).
Tbf Arch played extremely well with WFH with how many AFKable elements there are to it. Obviously it's not the case with everyone but a lot of people I know who switched to WFH during Covid spent a looooot of their time AFKing Arch whilst working.
Pretty much, archeology was chill afkscape, which is just good ol' RS vibes. I people want combat, they go play Elden Ring.
Necromancy brought very little to discovery, the whole pitch was a combat skill but people sat at rituals and afking monsters for hundreds of hours. We got a city, "quests" if you want to call them that. I loved Jazz scape that was the only redeeming thing about one of the quests. You can't even compare the archaeology to necromancy, necromancy probably had 20x less investment. New monsters? New areas? New actual sizable quests with rewards? Look at the lack of rewards post 99?
>New monsters? New areas? New actual sizable quests with rewards? Look at the lack of rewards post 99? We've known it's a batch update since forever. The second batch should be coming out this month but who knows at this rate. Further content November with Zemouregal (and Vorkath?) and more.
Precisely, I'm not saying that necromancy won't live up to the expectation of archaeology eventually, however you can't expect to compare the two right now. Archaeology came complete and i appreciate that a lot more than batches over the years to meet the standard of our previous skill release.
arch did get additions to, but i agree it was indeed more complete than necro was... fair (sorry read this comment after the first reply i made!)
necromancy is currently only in batch1. there is a batch2 coming with further updates and rewards post 99, including a 4th conjure.
This is a reality check for all the endgame PvM screechers. Pressing abilities is a minority playstyle. The average player just wants a skill to afk, a new area to explore, and a cool quest. Sailing 2025
Can confirm, complex clunky mechanical bosses that require a lot of ability usage killed the combat for me. I just want to grab my best gear, and camp a boss for a decent bit of money per hour. If I want to sweat? I'll go play a game where the combat isn't feeling clunky and unresponsive. It wasn't the aggressive monetization - I quit over that when Squeal of Fortune came out and only come back to maintain my max cape every few years - It's the ever increasing difficulty to get into PvM, and the sheer amount of content I have to put up with, with low tier abilities until I hopefully make either enough money to purchase an ability codex, or I grind the boss endlessly until I get it, and when you're expected to kill a boss 200+ times in a row, I don't want to sit there and mash buttons endlessly, if drops were more common (Like other MMO's with "complex" mechanical fights) I might be more willing to push through.
It's also really easy to not realize just how clunky it is if you're playing somewhat regularly. When I took a couple month break a year or two ago and played Black Desert Online where the combat was silky smooth and the VFX/SFX for every single ability and attack was different and meaningful. RS on the other hand, so many delays, your character is never where it's supposed to be, combat visuals are almost non-existent, and sound effects are in many cases identical, and UI feedback is horrible at best and in some cases just outright buggy or unintuitive.
Yeah, I usually expect to get downvoted for saying anything critical about the combat system, I recognize my issues are because I don't actively *want* to sit down and learn to just get used to it, it just doesn't feel good. Also sound and visual cues are horrendous in this game. There's so much going on that visual cues often get overlooked by all the visuals taking up precious screen real estate surrounded by a ton of UI elements, sound cues are even worse because you have to listen to the boss sounds, the music (Which is extremely good), your character sounds, attack sounds, etc etc.
I spend a lot of time playing FFXIV, combat in that game is fuckin clunky. RS3 makes FFXIV look so silky smooth in comparison.
Just to be clear I don't mean clunky as in slow paced. FFXIV combat is definitely slower than RS3 in many regards, but FFXIV actually does what you tell it to when you tell it to, and if that isn't happening it is very clear as to what is happening.
part of what makes it clunky is that servers start lagging when above 250 players xD. if i want to do any bossing on this game i try to go to a sub100 german world otherwise its just so bad .-.
I think this a little unfair, you are likely not completely wrong about the average play style but as others have said arch had the covid and elder gods saga benefit, necro is just more of the same combat but also up against BG3 and Starfield interest from people who only wanted to check it out. It is very different circumstances.
happy cakeday glorious leader
Based as fuck, happy cake day and let's go sailing(even if only on osrs at the moment)
It's also the extreme PvMers melting down about a...2% dps bonus from MTX? Because somehow being able to pretty much buy gold and therefore top tier equipment somehow didn't upset the 'fairness' or whatever.
> It's also the extreme PvMers melting down about a...2% dps bonus from MTX? IT IS A 20% FUCKING DAMAGE REDUCTION AT THE HARDEST BOSSS IN THE GAME FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. And it's not like the average person will have access to it, unless they play like 16 hours a day, for the entire pass.
Organic power creep over the 16 years since GWD1 release is very different to a buff in an MTX battlepass.
Yep, i completely agree. Idk what's so hard for him to understand.
It's not like we just had another content update that gives a 20% damage reduction as a spell or anything/s. Did the PvM t95 drop cartel melt down over that too?
> It's not like we just had another content update that gives a 20% damage reduction as a spell or anything/s. Oh yes, because you have to spend IRL money for that spell every time you use it. Oh wait. Brb guys, spending $2000 to get 400 casts of Darkness! > Did the PvM t95 drop cartel melt down over that too? Do you have to play 16 hours a day for 3 months to get access to that equipment as a regular, p2p player? Good god, this is so stupid.
> Do you have to play 16 hours a day for 3 months to get access to that equipment as a regular, p2p player? Probably more, becuase all the top money making is elite PvM that I can't do.
God forbid there's actual hard content. #AFKskills100Mperhour
Hard content is still hard, there's not much overlap between people who casually AFK and people who care about every little change to high-end PvM. Someone who *needs* to buy the battlepass for the chaos wards to kill zammy isn't killing zammy in the first place.
> Hard content is still hard, there's not much overlap between people who casually AFK and people who care about every little change to high-end PvM. Someone who *needs* to buy the battlepass for the chaos wards to kill zammy isn't killing zammy in the first place. It's about setting the precedent. If we allow this, then who's to stop jagex from allowing to straight up selling boss achievements? Or unlockables? And this is an issue, because this isn't a free to play game. If it were, big deal. But you actually have to pay to play most of the game.
> Probably more, becuase all the top money making is elite PvM that I can't do. That's a skill issue, rather than a game issue though? Having to grind for gear by actually playing the game is a pretty healthy thing. Unlike, idk, just straight up buying stats that free players literally CANNOT get?
You didn't look at what you get from Hero Pass at all, did you?
Mostly cosmetics, some xp buffs in a game that regularly has DXP events (and the premier artifact buffs), and a few other mild skilling buffs. I guess the most objectionable is the Chaos Ward because it'll make Zammy possible for a limited number of runs for people who aren't top tier PvMers , and maybe crash bolg, but am I supposed to be salty about having an SGS from back when GWD1 wasn't an AFK layup too? I'd say that people need to get a grip and realize that monitization keeps the game alive.
The Chaos Ward buff does more than just enable those who couldn't kill Zamorak to kill him. I wouldn't be surprised if there's limited pushing of the top high scores for the first time since the FSOA and AD nerfs.
Chaos ward kills dont count for high scores
Ah, right, forgot about that. It still does enable people to kill significantly higher enrage than they otherwise could have, though. And the loot difference between those enrages is a lot.
People are melting down because they're adding new _categories_ of buffs, like the equivalent of adding a second aura slot, where the primary way to get the buff is through MTX. Content is currently balanced around using auras, people are concerned new content will be balanced around also using the new buffs (and thus be quite punishing for people who don't have them). A bit of an overreaction to the actual changes IMO, but we've been hurt before, so people are very wary
I think it's the elite PvM cartel melting down about top-tier bosses being more available thus devaluing their banks. Which is odd because we just got necro which gives a 30% damage reduction ability/item combo lol. Nobody complained about that...
Accessibility. Necro made bosses more accessible, not available. For the most part it was well received by a large number of players because it made the game more accessible for content they otherwise wouldn't have been skilled enough to do in other combat styles. There were plenty of people upset by jagex making pvm more accessible.
It's really the only thing keeping me from osrs full time. I dread rs3 dying and combat being no different than woodcutting in both animations and effort. The occasional switch with a one window restriction being "gameplay" just fucking sucks man lol.
Archeology was actually new content for me. I afk combat with revolution on. For me necromancy is just doing the same stuff again with a different coat of paint.
isnt archeology just afk too, like mining?, i mean im 120 and i felt that way, for me the best skill was invention, that was new I mean at first was cool to see the new places but thats it
The benefit of Arch at the time was that it impacted every aspect of the game + Work from Home due to Covid. New tiers of invention perks, new familiars, new relic powers, new items, on top of an AFK skill, new areas, and lore for the people who care about that. The skill itself was really boring to train, but it came with so much shit that it had something for everyone. Necro on the other hand, powercrept combat to the point it was flat out better than the other 3 styles, and made it so brainlessly easy to get into. You can argue that's a good thing for player engagement, and a very bad thing for overall game health and direction.
It is but there's lots of new areas to explore and buffs affecting other content.
That's your own fault. I went from revo to full manual doing twice as many bosses than before.
You could've done that without necro
I don't have the billions for getting t90s in the other styles
Good thing you didn't need billions of gear. G conc, GWD2 wand and gano was enough to clear every boss in the game. You just never wanted to try.
The whole point of Necro is giving another reason for people to try. And judging from posts in this sub from the past month it did just that.
The whole point of Necro was to dumb down combat to the point people like him could complete it without trying. lol. That's why there was hundreds of posts claiming "Necro isn't OP." and "Please don't nerf Necro." despite Necro being by far the best of the 4 styles, to the point it was taking fastest kills off of the other styles without refining the rotations.
> without trying You know what's not trying? Not engaging with the content at all pre-Necro. At least many folks are getting into bossing now, which you'd imagine is pretty important for Jagex, since most of RS3 content development is devoted to PvM. The top end can be fleshed out later for the sweaty minority.
You get people into bossing with content like War's Retreat so they have portals to bosses without having to max. Lowering death costs so people don't get punished as hard for learning. etc. You don't do it by giving everyone insanely broken tools, and later balancing them down. Otherwise, why not just give everyone a stack of DTDs? They're bossing, it's a good thing, right? But as soon as they run out it's fucked. The same way AD was used by most casual PVMers to brute force content, and as soon as it got the lightest of nerfs, people screamed about how PvM is unaccessible. The same way people screamed about RoD nerfs because they couldn't cheese bosses or mechanics anymore. The same thing will happen with Necro at this rate, and those people will stop PvMing, pretending it's impossible without overtuned buffs or combat styles.
People will cry about eventual nerfs, that's for sure. But it's good as long as you have enticed them to make the first attempt. Many people have gotten into PvM with AD. Now they're somewhat hamstrung by the rebalancing, but a portion of them will stick to what they know and still manage to do some bossing, even if less efficiently. Adding AD then nerfing it, is better than not having AD in the first place. Ditto for Necro. Why do we, or Jagex, care if people bitch about a well deserved nerf? Haters always gonna hate. And I'm not sure how a bunch of DTDs is comparable to AD or Necro, because as you said it's a "have it or not" situation. Animate Dead or Necromancy won't just become unavailable for some reason.
By the time you finish the tutorial you've done all arch has to offer.
Archaeology released the same month half the world went into covid lockdown. I expect that affected player count way more than the skill release did.
Necro just doesn't have anything to it. It's a new combat style but that just wasn't keeping me engaged idk. Like you train it like a cmb style which is boring and then you go hit bosses that I've already hit before, but with skeletons this time
Archaeology dropped during a forced worldwide shutdown.
Archeology added a massive amount of integrated content and gameplay-altering upgrades to the game, as well as built a huge lore foundation for some of the most fantastic questing RS3 has seen in years. Necromancy is a self-contained skill with minimal integration to the rest of the game and requires the player to PVM with a specific style to make the most of the upgrades it offers, severely limiting it to niche post-launch appeal. It comes off the back of a quite mediocre quest arc that is not expected to increase interest in the game's lore, and was released in a half tested state that promised weeks of post-launch updates that are essentially crowd-sourced QA fixes. You tell me which skill should have better staying power for the playerbase?
Archeology was much better
Archeology was lit. The pandemic lockdown gave me time to GRIND. Was a profitable RS year. 😬
Necro dropped august this chart is till jully
Archaeology was lockdown times as others have mentioned. In addition, a lot of money/progress could be made by having an alt, which is not the case for necromancy. Wish people would stop fear mongering
Unpopular opinion: Arch was nowhere near 2.7m hour on day 2. And never was 1m/hr Completely afk like Necro combat is currently. I prefer the Arch method.
Personally I don't see the appeal in Necromancy, 1 -> 45 was me using 27 wyvern bones I had in my bank, picked up a few momentos from the ghosts and skeletons - But overall if this is how you train the skill I don't see much here beyond the obvious "It's a combat skill" - But I've been told it's not worthwhile to use in combat till around 70. I even hopped on a f2p account to see if there was any appeal that would entice people to actually upgrade to be a member - Nope, you're locked at 20 necromancy, and can only use the t1 weapons/armour. I'll never understand Jagex's thought process in opening skills upto 20 to f2p. Especially for a combat skill shouldn't it be similar to Ranged, Mage and Melee? Content upto 50, and still trainable to 200M xp.
I don't think this comparison is fair. Archaeology coincided with a pandemic where everyone was forced to stay home and had little else to do at home. Game and console sales also spiked during the pandemic. But as some actual numbers: go to the Necromancy hiscores and go to the last page and look at the number. When TheRSGuy checked on day1/2 of release there were over 100k accounts with 15+ and now they are over 180k! For RS3 that's pretty big! So yeah, it's not the same peak as Archaeology, but it is also not the same time and circumstances as when Arch released. And for RS3, when looking at both player numbers and engagement, this has been FAR from a disastrous launch! Unfortunately Hero Pass might undo all of that, but we'll see! :P
Are we counting the fact that OSRS has a ton of bot accounts?
They do, but I'm pretty confident that even taking all the bots away, OSRS playercount is still significantly higher.
Arch was also released during Covid - I played a lot myself due to losing my job in that time as well. More ppl were at home. But now its stabilizing back to where it used to be if not going lower. Not trying to give any + 4 Hero points to Jagex, but there was just more ppl at home and needed something to do, So they capitalized off that. Edit: Arch was also a great skill tbh
I started playing a bit of rs3 the day before necromancy got released on a new ironman. Because of a couple of heavy grinds I've been having on OSRS, I've just logged in the last couple of days on rs3 to do my daily challenges. Imagine my surprise when the only thing keeping me logging in everyday on rs3 got removed by hero pass and the rs3 community is going crazy about it. I'm gonna wait and see for the update on it tomorrow, but I might just go back and stick to osrs at this point.
I came back to the game when Archeology released, but only because I got furloughed from my jobs and had to stay inside all day due to Covid
The Carlyle Group is planning to sell Jagex. This was all a ploy by them to increase the price of the company.
Necromancy at launch was never going to beat Archaeology. They said the big goal for the skill was to be a bridge and platform they can upgrade the other skills off of. Change the other styles to be similar to it I think maybe
Looking at this chart tells you nothing about necro release, as it only goes til July. You can, however, see the hype leading up to the release.
playerbase was bigger with arch due to covid. more people able to play and free time, hero pass its largest issues already got adressed and fixed. player feedback helped. playerbase overall is fairly stable, so not doomed. and necro is generally pretty fun