Fixing Game Mechanics / More

[i just rag 31]

1. Pirate Hut / Axe Hut

Some updates ago Ryan added Pirate Hut and Axe hut functionality. However, it is quite broken. Currently if you have a lockpick you can use the left click option to enter I believe which shouldn't be how it works (should have to right click -> pick lock to enter with a pick lock, but you can leave with left click option.) However the bigger issue is that doors do not function and it pretty much just kinda teleports you to the other side of the door. This can currently be abused by someone who just spam clicks the door going from side to side which also limits the damage they can take because they go through the door so quickly that there isn't a chance for the combat timer to run up. The real way it should work is that the door should actually function properly. Upon picking the lock they should enter the door with the actual animation of opening the door and entering. If they exit the animation should take place once more. If someone is using the door, they should not be able to use it, which is a common tactic if your team has enough individuals available to jam the door and prevent someone from entering/exiting the hut. If this is fixed they will be able to be hit on both sides of the door but they will have a break during the door animation which doesn't give a major interruption of combat as the door currently does since they can't be hit on both sides, but they still take less damage than they would be had they not been using the door.

 

2. Teleporting to a new zone

This has been broken for some updates and honestly it's horrific that it isn't fixed yet. It is a massive issue and should have been attended to / fixed as soon as it was broken. Essentially now when you teleport into a location any white dots there are invisible. You won't see anyone on your screen or on your minimap for some time. This can easily result in you losing kills or even dying due to being rushed by someone who you can't even see. The worst place for this is at magebank at the mage arena lever, because if you're chasing a kill and they teleport outside, unless you have someone out there, they're pretty much gone. This has happened to me a number of times where they lever out, I lever out, and it takes so long for their character to appear that I can't even tell what way they've gone. If by some chance I am lucky enough to run the right way, they've likely already logged out or they're too far away for me to catch them anyways. This is currently one of if not the biggest issue with deep wilderness PKing on the server and needs to be fixed immediately.

 

3. Breaking combat upon DC - Currently if you disconnect in combat your combat cycle continues. This should not happen. It is quite common for people on RS to get a box from an NPC or another player and XLOG and some people do it on here as well. The problem however is that if you xlog/DC in combat on here while in combat / hitting the person back, you will not stop. That is not how it should be. Unless you have autoretaliate on, upon disconnecting, your account should stop fighting back. This would be useful for people who DC in combat or get DDoSed so that someone can hit whatever is attacking them and allow them to log out. 

 

4. DC Timer - Partially related to the last suggestion, there should be a DC timer. After you disconnect, close your client or whatever in combat you currently don't log out until combat ends, which is not how it should be. I have seen people get DDoSed as well as just normally DC in combat but because there's no timer, there's little to no hope that they won't end up dead unless the person or NPC on them stops attacking them. If you DC fighting a demonic gorilla for example, you're pretty much dead as they also use protection prayers. The timer should be 60 seconds and if someone DCs in combat in the wild or wherever else they should log out after 60 seconds if combat still hasn't ended, granting people some possible way of survival. If this is added (and hopefully it is, because this is how the real game works as well), the above suggestion is also necessary to keep people from being able to XLOG in combat with something and log out after 60 seconds, if they do not have auto retaliate enabled.

 

 

Additionally it is no secret that there are a number of rules on here which can result in players being banned or punished quite easily. Some of these rules aren't active or as strict on other servers meaning it's a tough transition for players of other servers to come and play this. But that's what we want right? More players? This is a simple fix - there are a number of ways Ryan can simply add additions to the server which will cut down on a lot of rulebreaking and severely reduce the need for moderating certain offenses.

 

1. Multilogging - Add a system which restricts the ability to have two accounts on the same UID in the wilderness at the same time. I know this is possible because Ryan already has a system to determine same/different IPs and UIDs ingame via ::ipmatch, ::uidmatch, ::allmatch and so on. The rules state that two people can be on the same IP and in the wilderness (brothers, IRL friends, room mates, whatever), but not the same UID which is the same PC and thus is multilogging. Add a system which does not allow people to have two accounts in the wilderness at the same time. There is at least one other server I know of which has such a system. If a user has an account in the wilderness they should not be able to bring another account in the wilderness, nor teleport to any wilderness location on another account on the same UID. The main way this was evaded on the other server with this system was by bringing account A in the wild, logging out, then bringing account B in the wild. This was first remedied by making the second account to log in immobile, but it could be moved by following the other account and still attack people. The second patch done restricted attacking on both accounts. This is what should be done here - add the system, if anyone manages to get two accounts in the wilderness via evading it in that way or another way then neither account will be able to move or attack anyone (or any NPCs such as bosses) which largely defeats the purpose that most people multilog anyways, largely discouraging it. This will severely cut down on the amount of new players multilogging and getting warnings/jail time because they don't know it's bannable, as well as old players abusing it because they think they can get away with it or people intending to farm. It will also cut down on the need for staff to constantly police this because for the most part it will no longer be existent. To get around this system they would have to be using two PCs or some other method which would have them attached to different UIDs and most people wouldn't bother. Additionally, it would be incredibly obvious when someone would be doing such a thing, making it much easier for them to be caught. This will prevent new players from being turned away from the server because they were pulled aside by staff and given a lecture on breaking a rule which isn't present on most servers as well.

 

2. RWT

This would likely be something to grant @Phenomenon, being the ability to handle 07 donations. Currently the minimum is 50m 07 which is ridiculous, because the minimum amount of money you can donate via paypal/other methods is $5. Yes 5m 07 is a minuscule amount but it adds up and if players have an easy method of transferring 07 gp to SpawnPK they will be less inclined to RWT, meaning less RWT bans / warnings and perhaps even more players. Grant Phenomenon the ability to spawn $5 bonds to his own or other accounts (obviously only grant this to trustworthy and active staff, such as Phenomenon, Yeezus and perhaps Casey.) Then allow these users to accept OSRS donations, lowering the minimum to 5m 07 for a $5 bond. Require them to take record of what was donated through who and for how much and so on and collect every few days, at the end of the week, or whenever. Through keeping records of what bonds are spawned this minimizes the ability for this to be abused. You could also restrict them from spawning to themselves through IP/UID and have them spawn the bonds directly to other peoples' accounts who have donated after receiving the money. To prevent staff from abusing it with friends endlessly, you could also add a limit that they can only spawn up to 100m 07 worth the bonds in any given day or something like that. At the end of the day Ryan can check how much they've spawned and they should be able to present the correlating amount of 07 GP, otherwise he can deal with them accordingly. This requires a lot of trust and some regulation on Ryan's end but would be quite worth it. Less bans for RWT and another donation stream (currently 07 gp donations with how inactive they are and a 50m minimum are pretty much non existent) will grant more players and donations to the server. I'm sure most people can agree both of these are a positive thing. Players will be able to see what staff are able to handle OSRS donations and up to what amount and if they're online via a command such as ::osrs. Another command such as ::donateosrs could notify staff that some intends to donate OSRS GP. 

 

3. PK Farming - Currently the main mechanism preventing people from PK farming is a timer which does not allow you to kill the same IP address more than once every 160 seconds or so. This is easily avoidable by having multiple players involved (staff have caught people PK farming with 3-4 different individuals involved and usually each of them on multiple accounts) and in reality isn't very much of a deterrent whatsoever. In addition to the anti-multilog system I mentioned above, restrict the ability to kill the same account more than once every 3-5 kills. This doesn't fully prevent PK farming either but is another thing that would be a pain in the ass to PK farmers. At the very least they would have to continually make new accounts or get far more people involved which considerably increases their chances of being caught. This and the lack of the ability to multilog in the wilderness as per the previously mentioned system would result in considerably fewer PK farmers, more actual PKers and less bans due to farming.

 

4. Staff Impersonation - This is less common but still happens occasionally. Staff crowns are restricted in yell but not elsewhere, such as clan chats. Restrict staff crown images everywhere, normal players don't need to be able to use them. Additionally, restrict people from being able to create accounts using the words "Moderator" "Mod" "Admin" "Administrator" and so on (make sure to restrict accounts using the words alone, not with just the letters in the same order to still allow people to use the sequences such as "mod" somewhere in their name, just not as the individual word 'Mod' and so on.) This could also be done with offensive terms such as cancer to service the rule against making flame / inappropriate account names.

 

5. Flaming - This won't fix flaming in PM/public chat (it could if you added it there as well, but you shouldn't because that's a bit too much of restriction.) However you could easily reduce flaming in yell by adding a mechanism which serves as a blacklist and if a player attempts to yell a blacklisted term they will receive a warning initially in their chatbox (something along the lines of "Please do not flame on yell." ) and if they do it again within say.. 10 minutes or so.. they will receive a 12 hour yell mute. 

List of restricted terms could be:
Faggot

Downie

Fuck

Cancer

Kanker

Fag

Cunt

Nigger

Autist

Autism

Retard

(and so on, but be weary of adding too much and restricting yell too much as well, should only be used for words that are almost if not always considered flame and would lead to a mute, perhaps remove fuck from the list as well)

 

6. Advertising - This can be done with the same mechanism above, just change the warning to "Please do not mention other server names on yell" or something along those lines. Add a list of known servers which would be useful to blacklist. This is also important because on many other servers, simply mentioning another server's name isn't illegal but on here it is and a lot of players get warned or punished for it (even seen it lead to a ban at least four times.) This would serve as an unofficial warning and also prevent people advertising other servers on yell.

The blacklist would look something like this:
Os-Scape / Osscape

Locopk

Dawntained

Roatpkz

 

However, abbreviations should not be restricted. The list would not include terms such as:
Oss

Loco

Dt

Roatz

 

This will allow players to mention other servers in passing or ask if someone else is 'that person from that server they know' but largely cut down on advertisement (intentional or otherwise) on yell.

 

The main theory behind these changes is that there are countless people banned or punished for rules they weren't aware were rules in the first place because other servers are not as strict or don't have them. Staff can easily say 'you should have read ::rules' but realistically anyone who goes to a new server will tell you that very few people ever bother to read the rules because most of them are the same on every game. This will cut down on rule breakers and staff handling menial rule breaking by just reducing the rule breaking itself and the ability for people to break such rules. Less people getting punished, more players, less ability to break the rules, and in some cases (such as RWT), more donations. 

@Ryan

[Phenomenon 398]

This is an amazing thread and it's well put together, as always. I will send this over to Ryan and hopefully he makes his own response/PM's you about it, may i ask of a favor?

Can you do a thread like this on all of the flaws we have with combat? (This includes Hybrid/nh, i mean everything full-scale with an explanation for each). We are currently working towards fixing that, but i couldn't present what i needed to for this update. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

[i just rag 31]

2 hours ago, Phenomenon said:

This is an amazing thread and it's well put together, as always. I will send this over to Ryan and hopefully he makes his own response/PM's you about it, may i ask of a favor?

Can you do a thread like this on all of the flaws we have with combat? (This includes Hybrid/nh, i mean everything full-scale with an explanation for each). We are currently working towards fixing that, but i couldn't present what i needed to for this update. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

If I do it's probably not going to be for some time as most of this was either stuff i've thought of for quite some time or just recently realized, I would need to remember a lot of the issues on the server at the moment and don't really play enough to get everything. It would probably be best to ask someone else who plays more like Mindstate, Faith Pots, Pm 4 Help and so on and if they need help I will try to help them as they can all contact me quite easily. The main issue though is that the tick system which was reverted back to the current relatively broken state following everyone complaining is the root of a fair bit of the problems on the game

[Kellatha 631]

16 hours ago, i just rag said:

Grant Phenomenon the ability to spawn $5 bonds to his own or other accounts (obviously only grant this to trustworthy and active staff, such as Phenomenon, Yeezus and perhaps Casey.)

Ouch i'm not there  I'm actually the most active staff member since I hardly see anyone else online, and not to mention online and actually doing staff stuff. Me and Tevin are tied in activity, we pretty much have the same daily schedule since he goes to school in the morning and I work while he is at school for the exact time. Tevin does beat me in weekend activity like Fridays-Sundays since he can stay up late and I can't. I gotta be asleep by a certain time for the next day meanwhile Tevin has a messed up sleeping schedule lol. That aside, I think only Super Moderators should have access to that, and Yeezus being an exception since he has seniority in the staff team, extra trust due to also being staff on runex, and plays osrs a lot. Maybe once one of our moderators gets moved up, allow that privilege to them.

I agree with everything else, definitely a great addition and some major changes to how our system currently handles those issues right now. Add some color and structure and this would be a perfect topic  

[Phenomenon 398]

2 hours ago, Kellatha said:

Tevin has a messed up sleeping schedule lol.

 

LOL

[pj3r 91]

I agree with these except the DC mechanism mainly because it doesnt effect edge pking, but if you DC at edge you still have a chance at not being smited for bonk it is pretty good to not get smited for bonk.

[i just rag 31]

53 minutes ago, pj3r said:

I agree with these except the DC mechanism mainly because it doesnt effect edge pking, but if you DC at edge you still have a chance at not being smited for bonk it is pretty good to not get smited for bonk.

Then why do you disagree with it pleb

[Faith pots 81]

"cunt" and "retard" should never be a muteable offense lmfao. It's a fucking pk server, if u can't handle it, just fucking leave. Also, there's an ignore list for a reason, but the new staffmembers are a bit doo-doo so they prolly don't know what that is and what it can do.

Edited October 14, 2017 by Faith pots

[pj3r 91]

2 hours ago, i just rag said:

Then why do you disagree with it pleb

On 10/14/2017 at 11:00 AM, i just rag said:

4. After you disconnect, close your client or whatever in combat you currently don't log out until combat ends, which is not how it should be.

my bad it should be different

Edited October 15, 2017 by pj3r