Delaying archaeology to have the J-Mods play the skill from 1-99/120 without cheats is the single best decision Jagex has made in years

Original Post

As someone who loves skills on release (reached 120 in the top 100ish of Invention) I was really looking forward to crushing out Archaeology and gaining some levels again, but I am happy it got delayed.

Invention was an unmitigated disaster, at first training the skill by weapons was so freaking slow, a level 10 weapon disassembled into 30,000 xp with the weapons + augmentor costing an exorbitant amount of GP for the experience it gained. It was cheaper and faster to just dissasemble random items instead of leveling items, let alone the OP xp rates from gizmos.

The players complained and they changed the skill, they gave a 1800%, yes that big, of an XP boost to the gear you were using. This meant leveling was the new meta and you could get over ~1m xp/hr just killing random slayer mobs. I personally did Muspah's with Gano (d/a) and a Nox Staff (siphon).

To this day invention is pretty unbalanced for the xp/hr you are getting, this is evidenced by the fact that ~1/16 people who have unlocked invention have 200m in the skill and over half have 99.

Now the delay will allow the J-Mods to play out certain parts, see if its frustrating to do certain things, whether you do a method for too long or too little, etc.... All these sorts of things that you don't experience when playing on an accelerated server or spawning in items. Hopefully this will lead to a smoother release and a more fun experience

JagexRowley 5 years ago

Original

STCLAIR88

How long is the delay estimate?

To be determined. All we have said so far is 'not January'. We will confirm the new date once we have figured it out and have high confidence in it.

JagexRowley 5 years ago

Original

Zoinke

There is no way they are just sitting there leveling to 120. It’s a complete waste of money from a business sense.

Let’s just say it takes 120 hours to get to 120 arch for arguments sake. That’s 3 weeks of full time work. Not happening.

Yes I saw this quote:

We can also do more longevity testing which allows us to play the skill as a player would.

There is a HUGE difference between “longetivity testing”/“as a player would” and straight out leveling it from 1-120

Those of us playtesting have all started from level 1 and are avoiding use of mod cheats (except occasionally to mimic a live economy). Personally, I've only had time to reach the mid 40s so far, before Xmas, and have not had a chance to get back to it this year just yet, but I will (I'm part of the core dev team and we're also still implementing all the valuable feedback from the test and fixing bugs). I've heard others have hit the high 50s/low 60s (Xmas period gets quiet for some people).

My intention is to reach level 99 naturally (though I doubt everyone doing the playtest will get that high). We also intend to spot check key content across all levels including 99-120. The process has already led to a number of nice improvements. But, yeah, it would be a big ask to find time to train 1-120 naturally, and there would be diminishing returns in the value of feedback you get past a certain point anyway.

EDIT: Posting here encouraged we to train up to level 50 this AM (plus note that I'd trained 1-40 a couple of times already before this current run, iterating on the skill's opening levels). Also, some others who are playing are close to hitting level 70.

JagexRowley 5 years ago

Original

xhanort7

It'll also help lots to take player feedback into account as soon as possible. Be prepared to gather player feedback and implement changes as necessary before the skill even goes live. Please avoid waiting months or years to make massive xp balancing decisions like with invention, hunter, player owned farms. I don't want to see things like people getting 200m xp in a day with jank, unfair methods or people pouring bils into a skill for nothing.

I'm not sure how long it will be for now (since the delay), but we had time built into our schedule for post-release support, and would be surprised if we still didn't.

JagexRowley 5 years ago

Original

xFlem

Is that before or after March 3rd. Cuz ff7 remake is coming in marchhhhhhh so I would appreciate no skills released 2 weeks before or after. Else my eye hand brain coordination is gonna break apart doing both x.x at the same time. I can just feel the heavens plotting March 2nd release, to totally mess with me

Believe me, I know. I already have the first week of March booked of so I can play. :)

JagexRowley 5 years ago

Original

Narmoth

Take your time. If you all are getting sick of the new skill while playing it, imagine how we will feel being required to pay to play it.

Happy to report those playing are enjoying it. That doesn't immediately equal that players will, and certainly not all because when does that ever happen, only suggests we are on the right track.

(2020) Delaying archaeology to have the J-Mods play the skill from 1-99/120 without cheats is the single best decision Jagex has made in years

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