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1

Introductions & Farewells / Why I no longer play

« on: June 10, 2018, 11:57:25 pm »

Some of you are probably curious about why I left given that I've played emps the way I did for years, I'm going to clarify in this thread. A lot of you probably know already, but that's not going to keep me from making a final statement. Tl;dr at the end for people that suck at reading.

If you do not know who I am because you joined the game after I quit, I spent a bit over two years in the staff team and wrote wiki pages, guides, suggestions and feedback.

Direction
Emps has had a couple of big problems since it came back, and while the problem of endgame content got solved with the addition of new bosses there are plenty of problems left. The economy is in shambles due to the low amount of new players, the lack of attempts to help it with updates and due to the effects of stakers on the market. The amount of trading that goes on would almost force people into ironman mode if it weren't for the grand exchange. The sheer amount of money and items that gets rwted by stakers not only takes away huge amounts of donations but also means those players don't participate in the market regularly. Ironman mode doesn't have this issue, but they don't exactly participate in group content the same way regular players do.

New boss drops are done in a way that creates more powercreep, powercreep harms pvp, pvp shapes a lot of demand for gear and supplies and this is why nothing is worth jack shit anymore. The lack of balance in exp rates is making rs3 an actually bearable alternative for emps. It's becoming more and more of an impossible task to fix these issues in a realistic manner with the current conditions. If there is no major change in game direction it will be what kills emps.

Community
Let's analyze two important aspects of the community. The forums and the staff team.

The forums continue to drop in post and topic activity, not only that but the counting to 10k thread makes up for a significant fraction of the posts nowadays. To top that off, the important sections of the forum (guides, suggestions & feedback) are dying rapidly in activity. This makes it a lot more difficult for a developer to connect with his playerbase. I don't know why nobody is doing anything about it. There seems to be very little motivation from players to improve the state of the game.

The staff team, oh boy where do I start. The way the staff team is set up in terms of recruiting and policy is what has caused the team to be in it's current state. In the past recruiting anyone that stood out in terms of quality worked because we had the playerbase for it, however this is no longer the case. We've had seemingly more random promotions and a lot of staff members that were in the team shorter than I was game admin. And rather than putting effort into creating a new system the standards for new staff members continue to reach new lows. And here I thought promoting Mario all the way to admin just to keep him from breaking the rules was a bit of a weird way to do things. The lack of transparency is also something that makes things very difficult for the staff team. There's a huge barrier of entry to it due to the sheer lack of information on what being a staff member actually entails.

Rules continue to be enforced very little if at all, and you can see it's effects on the community. The topics for rules aren't kept up to date. The issue of the report abuse button not doing anything is still unresolved. Real world trading is more rampant than ever, people really seem to want to liquidate their banks, I wonder why? A botting issue was "solved" by just cutting everyone's supply, just making the bot a bit less profitable. I wonder how easy it would be to become the richest player in the game by creating a few scripts, it's not like staff members can do anything if you just get your bot to reply to them.

The current way the staff team is set up continues to make conditions worse for them. If nothing is done about that there won't be a functional staff team left. You can host events all you want but it's not going to make up for the absense of proper rule enforcement. I won't take shots at any staff members, Martin is ultimately responsible for the team and should be held accountable. Not that I expect that to happen, criticism is met with censorship, demotion or punishment. The only time Thomy interfered was when he was told Martin was checking through staff members personal skype accounts using teamviewer and that this was mandatory else they'd be demoted, this was in 2015 for those of you that joined the staff team more recently.
Tl;dr:
It's not a single decision or event that made me quit, rather it's certain things that kept happening. The direction that updates are headed in makes the economy suffer, the forums are rapidly dying and the staff team is set up in a way that makes it hard for them to positively affect the community.
Just like Jp I've found a better alternative to emps in RS3. I don't like that emps is like this, but I'm not adamant about changing that anymore. I've come to terms with it, and in time so will everyone else.

That's all. If this thread gets censored I'll put up the original somewhere so everyone can read it.

2

Suggestions & Ideas / Ironman mode

« on: November 09, 2017, 11:19:01 am »

I'm suggesting to remove the ability to trade member tickets/dxp scrolls/ga tickets to ironmen.

The GE or donating should be the only way for them to acquire the scrolls.

Because the items are tradable they can be given to ironmen. Ironmen receiving benefits from trading is the very thing you're not supposed to have when playing on an ironman. Since it's possible to transfer items from an ironman to a main account an ironman could actually sell their items using an alt and return the profit to an ironman in the form of tickets/scrolls.

There is already next to no competition on the highscores, in it's current state it puts newer or poorer players at a severe disadvantage when starting an ironman. Someone with funds on a non-ironman account has a huge advantage because they won't have to do anything for membership or double exp. It takes away a lot of 'value' from the seperate highscores. Any skill that doesn't involve using up resources is essentially already the same on an ironman as on a regular account since you get to trade for dxp. If ironmen at the very least have to get their own cash to pay for these things it'll actually be somewhat different for them.

GA tickets are a problem as well. Death should have consequences, especially on a gamemode about working for stuff yourself. It was one of the main things people said ironman mode shouldn't have access to before it was released.

If I start an ironman right now I could trade over 500 dxp scrolls and essentially have dxp running until I'm maxed. I could trade over a year's worth of member tickets. I could buy a bunch of GAs and essentially never fear dying. How is that fair? Frankly I'm suprised there are little to no complaints about this. It goes against the gamemode and essentially devalues a lot of the work people have done before the change.

3

Feedback / The halloween event/quest

« on: November 07, 2017, 10:24:53 pm »

Quest
I don't think there's too much to be said about the quest to be honest. It was fairly simple, which saves having to give a ton of people directions. It would've been nice if the quest forced people to use the new map search feature. It was sufficient for a holiday quest imo.

I don't know why the event had to delay the new boss though, it didn't feel like much work had been put into it.

Skulls
Is it just me or did skulls seem much rarer this year? Every monster seems to only drop a single skull compared to the earlier events where multiple could be dropped from higher level monsters. You were already condemned to afk in a multi-combat zone last time and I feel this has just gotten worse this year. There's no fun in collecting skulls and if it's money you're after you're honestly better off doing an actual moneymaking method.

Muncher was honestly a nice touch thematically. I like the idea of the skulls only dropping if I have him with me. However I did find myself accidentally picking muncher up quite often and missing drops as a result. It gets especially annoying in places like the abyss with a high monster density. Having him automatically pick up the skulls would've also made this whole thing a lot more bearable.

I'd like to see skulls be obtainable from pretty much anything (skilling, just being online, maybe even forum activity) next year. Maybe have them stored inside your account instead of having them be an item. To see how many you have you'd have to talk to muncher. Could re-name them to souls, that'd make a bit more sense.

I feel holiday events could be done way better in general.

4

Suggestions & Ideas / Bank expansion

« on: October 29, 2017, 11:31:36 am »

I'm going to suggest it yet again. We get new items every update, they may not be much but the urgency for more space is rising. There's been talk about how exactly we'd want the expansion to be done. I honestly don't think it would matter much so long as we get some more space. It has just been delaying the process.

That being said, I do have a way I'd prefer. We've talked about having a second bank account before. I think that would be the way to go. It would mean the interface doesn't need to be changed, there'd be no lagg caused by loading an extra 10 tabs worth of items and it would be purely optional. It would allow people to also keep loot tabs without having to remove things from their bank, as they could just move it to the second bank or keep the tab there.

The amount of items we've got with the last 10 updates:
To give you a bit of a picture as to why we need more bank space.

• October 27th - 6 new items
• October 6th - 3 new items
• September 19th - 11 new items (counting 1-3 dose versions of overloads, not counting lower dose extremes)
• September 6th - 29 new items
• August 23th - 21 new items
• August 8th - 0 new items
• June 9th - 25 new items
• May 24th - 0 new items
• May 12th - 4 new items (only counting the upgraded versions of abyssal weps as 1 rather than 12)
• April 27th - 4 new items

Total: 100 new items in the span of about 7 months.

The amount of items we get per update varies quite a lot. We've had several updates introducing 0 new items. We've also had updates that introduced a lot of items, clue scrolls for example introduced a total of 174 items on their initial release. Granted, updates containing a lot of items are not very common. In the long term we are going to need more bank space, it'd be quite convenient to get it as soon as possible.

But you could just stop collecting useless garbage
This is a valid counterargument, one could indeed throw out everything that is useless and save a ton of bank space. You'll definitely have enough bank space if you throw out all cosmetics, not best in slot gear and skilling items. You'll easily keep multiple tabs of your bank completely empty.

However, there are reasons players might consider keeping items that aren't exactly useful. Some people enjoy collecting sets of loot. Pkers might keep gear around that isn't exactly best in slot. People that do lots of PvMing might have some loot in their bank. There are plenty of reasons why someone's bank would end up full. It's most definitely a choice, and I think people should be able to make the choice to collect stuff and not be inconvenienced by having to use two accounts to bank.

5

Feedback / Yet another topic about spirit shields

« on: October 27, 2017, 05:25:59 pm »

This topic is about spirit shields, their viability and changes to them. I may also give some feedback on other shields if it's relevant.

I'm pretty sure everyone regards spirit shields as the "end game" shields. Given their relatively high requirements and the way they're obtained, that's what I think they should be as well. I do not want them to go back to being hundreds of mils and ultra rare, that's stupid. I do want them to be viable. Two out of four weren't exactly viable before this update, and the most recent change has put another nail in their coffin. I'm going to go over each spirit shield and talk about the state they're in at the moment.

• Spectral spirit shield
  
  Still the best defensive shield in the game. It will be very good at keeping you alive due to it's hp boost. Lowering it's stats may not affect you much but will get people to consider going for something to boost their damage instead. It wasn't hurt very much by the last two stat nerfs, but it can't really take another.
• Arcane spirit shield
  
  Has been in a bad state for quite a long time. Before the initial decrease in defense bonus it was debatable whether it was better than ddef or not. After the nerf to def bonus and the buff to defenders it became flat out inferior. Regardless, people were still stupid enough to use it for some reason. The nerf to it's offensive bonuses should make it a lot more noticable that it's garbage.
• Divine spirit shield
  
  Will always be viable because it's the only real shield for ranged. That being said every nerf to it affects the viability of 1-handed ranged weapons. It's not necessarily in a bad state, but if we were to get an actual shield for ranged it could end up being in one.
• Elysian spirit shield
  
  Before ice shield it was the best shield for magic. On ice shield's release ice shield was roughly equal but ice shield ended up being better in certain situations. After the def bonus nerf to spirit shields ice shield became flat out superior. The recent nerf to offensive bonuses makes it even worse. It's in the same bad state as arcane.

The changes relevant to this topic:
19/01/2017 (Lost -23 to neutral, -38 to strong and -17 to weak)

Spirit shields have slightly been nerfed. I reduced their defensive bonuses.

27/10/2017 (Lost -5 attack and -3 str)

Spirit shields: They are just way too strong. I've reduced their offensive bonuses from 15 to 10 and strength bonuses from 10 to 7. In my opinion a shield with defensive bonuses and a useful operate option shouldn't straight up outclass defenders.

The operate
All spirit shields can be operated in order to gain immunity to damage for a brief amount of time. This operate is why spirit shields were nerfed this update, at least that's what Thomy said. Yes, this operate can have a huge value in certain situations. However, in most PvM situations it's not going to be very significant. It's by no means reliable in PvP, but can also have a decent value. I don't think it's what the shield's stats should be balanced around, it would need to be a whole lot more reliable for that.

The old recoil operate had a timer, this one doesn't. While the new operate is a lot stronger, it's also more inconvenient to use. It might help spirit shields a lot of there were a timer.

If you must, remove the operate completely so spirit shields can at the very least have good stats. I would rather have spirit shields be universally good than rely on the operate. The only place where it's really good is Nex, that's one place, a set of shields that we introduced a boss for is only really good in one place. That shouldn't be the way to go.

The difference in offensive stats between arcane and ddef is 0.2 dps. The effect can be activated every 60 seconds. Let's say you're fighting in melee and it's a ddef vs arcane fight. In order to outperform ddef you would need to block at least 13 damage every 60 seconds. This makes the effectiveness of the operate very RNG reliant, which is bad.

The rune kiteshield meme
This has been used as an example to illustrate how bad the stats of a spirit shield actually are. It's a good fucking example. Arcane has +3 melee, +5 ranged and +2 mage def over rune kiteshield. The defensive stats are mediocre at best. Corrupt dragon sq shield has +16 melee, +12 ranged and +4 magic bonus over arcane, it requires 5 less defense levels to wear. Corrupt dragon equipment is a subject for another topic, but should a spirit shield have less defense bonus than a shield that is essentially a tier below them?

Defenders
Dragon defender has always been equal to or better than arcane. Something you kill glorified hill giants for to acquire shouldn't really be taking the lunch of a shield you have to kill an actual boss for. The initial buff to it was unnecessary. An upgraded version (like a barrows or chaotic defender) might be nice. Ranged and magic versions would be nice as well.

Making spirit shields more defensive isn't necessarily a bad decision. Spectral will eat the lunch of all other shields if that's the way you wanna go however. Making them a decent balance between offense and defense isn't necessarily a bad idea. Ranged needs another shield if you want to do that though.

6

General Discussion / Three new weapons

« on: October 15, 2017, 09:19:14 pm »

In the last update we got to know that there will be a new boss that drops new weapons. We discussed it a bit in discord today and I thought we could continue that here and involve more people in the discussion. Thomy wants to add three new weapons to the boss. In discord them being t85 weapons was mentioned but he's open to ideas. As such I'd like to have everyone bring in their ideas for weapons.

I'm a tad worried about powercreep, so I wouldn't want to have t85 weapons that would just be a straight upgrade to elemental weapons. In general I think it's a very bad idea to release weapons that'll eat other weapons' lunch. Giving us more "useless" weapons isn't a good idea.

In my opinion these new weapons should be 1-handed special attack weapons that would be designed to be good for PvM. There are only two special attack weapons really viable for PvM and it would be nice to have more variety. Of course it would have to have a different effect than swh or sgs. I have a few ideas for them.

• Decrease all stats by a percentage
  
  • We don't really have a way of reducing a monster's offensive power, this would provide that.
  • It would be very good for group bossing if multiple people bring one. It would need a 50% cap like def reduction.
  • The percentage would have to be noticably lower so that it doesn't eat swh's lunch. 5% would already be quite okay. It could get a 25% or 33% spec cost to compensate.
• Bleeding effect
  
  • Could make for a weapon good both in PvM and PvP.
  • Would provide pretty safe dps in PvM as you can eat while the DoT continues.
  • Difficult to balance and might not perform that well compared to flat dps. Could heal to compensate, but that might be too much.
• Execution
  
  • This might be my favorite concept out of all of them. It would basically finish off a monster from a certain amount of hp dealing guaranteed damage.
  • Would feel really satisfying to use since it assures you something dies. If given some nice gfx could look amazing too.
  • Might be overpowered depending on what it can execute from. Though I don't think this would be much of a problem. Should use 100% of spec bar.
  • Might devalue mechanics in boss fights. I'd suggest an execute from 300hp, that'd mean you'd still run through all nex phases and won't be able to instantly kill most things.
  • Might be really annoying in groups, as you'd be able to easily get a drop to yourself.
  • Would need a different effect vs players. Maybe a really accurate hit with a fairly low maxhit compared to other weapons? Could also just give it dscim spec but with prayer drain based on hit.

For the weapons themselves, a mace, some sort of boomerang/chakram and a wand would be nice. Outside of their special attack they shouldn't be totally useless, they should have slightly lower dps than abyssal weapons.

7

Suggestions & Ideas / Automated broadcasts/announcements

« on: October 14, 2017, 09:24:08 pm »

The concept is fairly simple, broadcasting information. The information would broadcast on login and other things would be broadcast on a timer. Broadcasting rights should be given to admins, similar to yell. It would basically be a yell on repeat.

Important information about updates and bugs can be given to the community really easily. It would prevent the staff team from failing miserably at informing the community. Like with the recent stake bug and the protect item bug. It would also prevent countless people asking if there's been an update or not.

Broadcasts on login could also be put in private so that people will see them more easily, since most people have private on split.

8

Guides / Glacors

« on: October 14, 2017, 08:32:20 pm »

As requested, a guide on glacors.

Recommendations

• 80 (preferably 99)
• 70 (preferably higher)
• 96 (to make overloads)*
• 92 (active membership)

*Overloads aren't completely necessary, however they make everything a lot more convenient.

Location
They are located deep within ice cave. There is no agility requirement to get to them. You may get frozen by skeletal wyverns on your way there, pray mage to prevent that from happening. You can either walk to mudskipper point from Rimmington or teleport to Port Sarim with an amulet of glory and walk from there. You could also use a mounted glory in a player owned house.

Setup
Ranged is the optimal combat style to use. Their melee attacks can be avoided by safespotting and their mage attacks mostly hit 0 on ranged armour. Onyx bolts (e) allow for longer trips due to lifesteal. You will use a large amount of ammo per kill, so cheaper alternatives should be considered. An upgraded abyssal bow might be worth using. It provides better dps than a crossbow and crystals are quite cheap at the moment. I'll give two example gear setups. I don't recommend doing glacors in anything but high end gear. Your inventory setup varies depending on your gear and how good you are at killing them, I've provided an example but you should try different ones.


*On a slayer task you should use a full slayer helmet and chaotic crossbow.

Mechanics
Glacors have a few different mechanics. They attack with all three combat styles. If they use a melee attack they will swing with both arms. If they use a ranged attack they swing up their left arm. If they use a magic attack they swing up their right arm. They have a big magic attack that targets the square you're standing on, this can be sidestepped. It will go right through prayer and armour so be wary of it, I've seen it hit up to 86. The animation for it is fairly long, so it shouldn't be too difficult to dodge.

The magic attack, ranged attack and big magic attack.

Once below 500 hp glacytes will spawn, there are three kinds of them. They have 80 hp and if left alone will sacrifice themselves to heal the glacor for 80 each. While alive they boost the glacor's stats in a certain way. The enduring will boost defense bonuses, the unstable offense bonuses and the sapping will give the glacor lifesteal. You should kill them as soon as they spawn.

Glacytes spawning and sacrificing themselves.

Drops
They drop the new best in slot gloves that match the boots ice strykewyrms drop. I don't really think they'll be worth killing for money after the price of gloves drops as more enter the game, their common drops aren't that great for something with more hp than most bosses. Their slayer exp is kind of bad too, but they are fun to kill imo.

9

General Discussion / A staking bug

« on: October 12, 2017, 06:53:06 am »

There's currently a bug that can be abused in the duel arena. Stake at your own risk. You'll probably not get your items back if someone uses it against you.

10

Guides / How to spend your slayer points

« on: October 09, 2017, 09:45:51 pm »

I've seen people ask what to buy with their slayer points, made a flowchart to provide an instant answer.

11

Feedback / Glacors

« on: October 09, 2017, 07:27:51 am »

Thank you for adding more stuff to PvM that actually requires you to use your head. In terms of mechanics glacors are quite well done. There are some issues they have however, which I'd like to adress in this topic.

It takes quite a long time to get to them, the entrance to their cave could be moved to shorten the distance. Or we could get a teleport to mudskipper point. It'd make them a lot more convenient to get to.



I personally don't really like that they're aggressive, but this isn't too much of a problem.

For a monster that requires your full attention, requires you to sidestep, you'll need to pray switch to kill and has more hp than most bosses its drop table is disappointing. Their numbers could definitely use some buffs if you want people to actually make them worth killing for their common drops alone. That is something you should go for on a monster with relatively difficult mechanics.

Also why do they drop bones? They're literally made of ice.

I think they should get a different slayer exp multiplier. They have more hp than kbd, gwd bosses, kq, sdc and chaos ele and more difficult mechanics than them. They require far more effort to kill, 5k a pop is a bit mediocre. Since they are available in larger numbers I don't think they should get the exact same multiplier as bosses, maybe one in between bosses and regular monsters. Perhaps this multiplier can be given to tormented demons as well, that would make them good slayer exp.

I also hope you plan on using the bane ore in the cave. There's a huge demand for bolts at the moment, bane bolts would be very useful.

12

Feedback / Feedback regarding a bug report and how it was dealt with

« on: October 04, 2017, 03:21:40 pm »

Wanted to point a few things out.

https://emps-world.net/forum/index.php?topic=20162.0

Thanks. I'll let dropping items cancel skilling actions with the next update.

• Dropping items while skilling not interrupting skilling is not a bug. Ctrl + click drop is not a bug. These are both intended.
• What can be abused here requires an autoclicker, which is against the rules and easy to detect.
• It makes powertraining involving dropping less convenient for anyone playing the game legitimately. Hell it removes most uses of the ctrl drop feature.
• This doesn't prevent anyone from actually autoclicking mining or any skill really. The "problem" doesn't get touched by this at all.
• Powertraining is made a far more inconvenient option than it was before the ctrl drop update.

13

Screenshots / Thanks Mary

« on: September 27, 2017, 06:46:17 pm »

14

Suggestions & Ideas / Steadfast/glaiven/ragefire gloves

« on: September 23, 2017, 09:41:00 pm »

The current best in slot gloves look rather shitty when worn with Nex sets. It's obvious they were designed around the gwd armour sets. I propose we release gloves that look like the boots dropped by ice strykewyrms and don't look out of place when worn with nex sets. They would make max gear look a whole lot better.


What gwd gloves look like with nex sets.

Now, we've had more than enough powercreep with the last update. I don't propose these gloves get higher stats than are already available to us in some way. For that, golden precision bracelets and the gwd gloves are what we'll be looking at.

• Golden precision bracelets offer the highest accuracy bonus at +20 for each style.
• Gwd gloves offer the highest str bonus at +7 for their corresponding style.
• Gwd gloves offer the highest def bonus at 17 (own), 21 (resistance) and 7 (weakness).

• The accuracy should be +16, higher than gwd gloves but lower than bracelets.
• The defense bonus should be slightly lower than gwd gloves in order to not make gwd gloves completely irrelevant.
• The strength bonus should be +7 to match gwd gloves.

Gwd gloves should be made to be relatively on par with their boots.

As far as obtaining the gloves goes, what monster they're from doesn't really matter all that much. They can be added to ice strykewyrms or glacors could be introduced, that doesn't matter much to me. So long as they're made by upgrading gwd gloves that should be okay. Whatever is going to be the source for these should drop a kind of scale that is used to upgrade gwd gloves and boots. This should put the demand for gwd gloves and boots on a somewhat equal level. The upgraded variants should remain tradable.

It might not be fun for the people that have the boots/gloves currently as their prices are likely to fluctuate. However, I personally don't think that's too much of a problem.

15

Guides / How to make overloads

« on: September 22, 2017, 10:33:36 pm »

Since it's the first time something has kind of a long recipe I thought I'd write a short guide. I will show the quick way to make them and also talk about the benefits and drawbacks of using them.

96
Required herblore level to create them, they are untradable.

Recipe:
An overload (4) is created by using a torstol on a set of (3) dose extreme potions.
+ + + + +    =

Extreme potions are created by adding an ingredient to (3) dose super potions.
+  = (Avantoe)
+  = (Dwarf weed)
+  = (Lantadyme)
+  =
+  =

• Grenwall spikes are obtained from hunting grenwalls. They can be found west of ice mountain.
• Ground mud runes are obtained by using a pestle and mortar on mud runes. 5 runes are used up for each ground rune.

Quick how to:
This way uses the least amount of mouse movement and clicks. It's recommended you do this at a one-click bank (bank booths, deposit boxes, bank chests) to save clicks. Zooming in to reduce the distance you have to move your mouse is a good idea as well.

Withdraw 4 of all the ingredients except magic, you withdraw 8 of those by clicking "withdraw 10" at the end. You save yourself having to withdraw them for the next 4 overloads. Make 4 overloads and withdraw torstol and the rest of your extremes again and make another 4, then deposit all and repeat.



This makes about 1920 overloads an hour if you're completely consistent with your clicks. However if you're not a robot you'll easily drop down a few hundred or more due to misclicks. This does assume you have your extremes prepared.

The benefits:

• The stats boosted by overloads don't decay like other potions do. This is a really big increase to your damage output.
• The stat boost refreshes every 5 seconds, you won't need to use restores if your stats get decreased.
• 24 minutes of having an overload boost fits into a single inventory slot.
• Using brews as food goes really well with overloads

The drawbacks:

• Creating them is time consuming and may not be worth it for everyone.
• They require a lot of ingredients to create.
• Drinking them deals 20 damage to you, re-potting if your boost runs out might be too risky in certain dangerous situations.

In my opinion the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks, it's up to you if you decide to use them.