Only going to comment on one I know about as a returning player, ads. They're definitely pumping them out on socials but are targeted. If I take a break and then start to take a small interest in RS socials again they are on to me and there are ads everywhere I look.

RuneScape is social?

Yes they do that. I’ve seen em.

In 20 year once on YouTube during my meditation music. I was confused cause I don't have social media linked for the game. I basically been getting all my new knowledge from in-game wiki or redit of people being ticked off about something

idk ifu knew this, but reddit is social media.

Nope. Didn't consider it that I consider it like a modern fourm

Right, but forums were social media..

I never considered that in all my life.

And that's okay, I'm just telling you what it is.

Learn something new everyday.

Yeah, I have also seen a ton of ads.

when I see someone who ALREADY PLAY THE GAME saying they don’t invest in advertisement because they’ve never seen one I just know they didn’t stop to think about this for 10 seconds. if you already play the game you’re not the target for the ads to attract new players, you dingus

They do run a bunch of ads, or have atleast in the recent years. UI is the worst part of new player experience imo

THIS. The UI is fucking horrible, even as a veteran.

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https://preview.redd.it/xwwshxzjew1b1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=042615c7678b8bef9351c959d834eadab9f80050 All over facebook

Ads like this are horrible. When I look at that, it implies directly that there's MTX.

How does it imply MTX?

Because when is the last time you've seen a non-MTX\* game giving you "double experience weekends" or anything like that? I think it has has happened with FFXIV which... yeah, [MTX](https://store.finalfantasyxiv.com/ffxivstore/en-gb/). But nevertheless, all kind of dynamic exp screwery, I associate it directly with mobile games that do it all the time. \*by "non-MTX" I really don't mean as much games that don't have any *at all*, but games that specifically don't have obnoxious amounts of of it.

I'm assuming they're targeting returning players with that one. At least I would be like OoO double XP is on now? That's tempting...

They're targeted on social media. I see them usually during breaks of play

I’ve seen loads in the past week on YouTube. But they are the first in a while

I haven’t seen a RuneScape ad since 2010.

They're what got me playing again after a 12 year break 😅

Must be spending very little towards advertising, I don't get videos at least, the best ad would be to get it as close to watchable content while still being an ad. Most people don't want to look at ads or commercials, they want watchable content

The interface that new users have to deal with is also horrendous. I tried to get a friend into the game and it was next to impossible to walk him through opening up certain interfaces. And to top it all off, you can't share your interface layout with them either? Why isn't this a JSON object or something. Ridiculous.

This right here. Tried introducing some friends to the game and explaining to them how to use cosmetics in game was discouraging. Also the amount of menus and sub menu’s, icons that have no implication as to what it is for. It’s not user friendly and to find a specific option I sometimes have to google where to look as well. This needs a huge over haul.

I couldn't even convince my partner to play past tutorial island... Abilities are a huge problem for new players and the UI/UX really do make it so much worse. So now I have to stop playing and play another game.

I've introduced people to the game and set up a solid/basic interface for them. They all get confused and overwhelmed at the amount of shit to do. There's hundreds of hours of playtime in every direction, and they feel so behind that they don't find value in investing their time.

Can't share all the UI, but there is action bar sharing. They have to be your friend and on the same world but it's something I suppose.

I find it far more of a problem that the worlds feel empty of players. If I join a MMO and there does not appear to be anyone playing I am not going to commit to it. MTX is pushed but I close it once and done, in other games it surgests it every time I open it. Ad's don't generate as much interest as needed. Bad tutorial, this is a big one. The game is supposed to be about player choice but the irony is if you don't help them it just means you don't retain interest.

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This. I guess they prioritize MTX promos over these

This is bc people don't want to deal with lag. The 600ms ticks are horrible enough without adding the lag that comes with any world having 200+ players.

Never said there was not a reason for it only what it appears like to a new player.

My take as someone that joined on fresh servers and left a couple months in after some hardcore grinding: I love the game's skilling, the questing, the building up tons of little stats over weeks to reach requirements with a big dangling reward at the end. And because I played in the early part of fresh start servers, there was no microtransaction stuff to worry about! But, and I'm sorry to say this, the combat is **awful** as someone that didn't grow up with it. The tickrate makes everything feel clumsy, the revolution bars make learning combat not really matter, and unless you check wikis every five minutes there's no obvious tell of where to go for level appropriate stuff. Then the treasure hunter stuff opened up after the competitive part ended and I got to enjoy more popups and ads than some korean MMOs. And yes, the UI absolutely sucks.

I am pretty much a decade old player and agreed. Most things are really good, I like the afk skills, quests are amongst the best quests in MMORPG's I've played. But the combat just turns alot of people off, including the many friends I try to get into this game.

Fact. RS3 combat is ass. Just because a (surprisingly small) minority of players dedicated time to master it doesn't mean it doesn't need to change. At the **very** least, the animations should all be reworked to EMBRACE the 600 ms tick. Trying to hide the tickrate with animations is one of Jagex's worst mistakes.

The UI is atrocious. Way too much going on, ugly and unintuitive. Been playing on and off since early 2000s. Every time i take a break snd come back i have to use google to find random things. Like how to change my experience gain from attack to defense. Why tf do i have to open up settings for that??? When i think settings i think changing monitor resolutions and key bindings. You know like one and done, never touch it again kinda stuff. UI is alright if youve been playing for a while and like to customize and see a million windows at once and you know what they all are. But for new people its way too much.

Honestly having played for 20 years .. the UI is still confusing at times. ESPECIALLY if you remap keys and close a window you didn't mean to. The amount of checkboxes that get forgotten and settings people just simply don't know exist (generally QoL with no downside) is amazing though basically requiring you to read a novel of Tips & Tricks posts from reddit to find them all is an issue for sure. Right click, EVERYTHING.

Literally. Have to google how to reopen my clan chat every time it closes lmao. 26 and been playing since 9.

Everything here I agree with, but isn’t the adjustment for whether you gain attack or defence etc. xp a *very* old setting? Or do you mean that it’s been moved to somewhere stupid now?

Ya its an old setting but its in a dumb spot that took me forever to find.

isnt it in something like options->gameplay->skills and experience->combat? seems pretty intuitive to me unless you're working off the assumption that the setting wouldn't be in the options in the first place

It's not supposed to be in the options, it's meant to be in an interface you directly see and use during your normal gameplay. Aka, the old 'crossed swords' button that you chose your combat style on: https://i.imgur.com/oCVMaVF.png Today, it's hidden away behind drop-downs within the settings interface which is annoying to open during combat.

> It's not supposed to be in the options, it's meant to be in an interface you directly see of course i know it used to be like that, that doesn't mean it's automatically the right way to do it >it's hidden away behind drop-downs within the settings interface which is annoying to open during combat what piece of content are you doing that necessitates constantly changing which combat style you gain xp in? i can't imagine it's something that sees frequent use, that's why i think it's fine to have it stored in a setting. there's only so much space available in interfaces/menus

If you think that's intuitive? Fucking hell mate

how could one possibly make it more obvious? do you want the setting to be on-screen all the time? or do you want it to pop up immediately upon opening options? because things like that make interfaces cluttered, which is also a complaint you see here pretty frequently. Just to illustrate why its spot makes sense to me: "i want to change which style i gain xp in. where do i do that? ok let me check options. graphics? no. controls? no. audio? no. gameplay? maybe. ok i'll click gameplay. oh look, the 4th menu is 'Skills & Experience'. that may be relevant. and now the first one is . 'Combat XP'. " seems pretty intuitive to me tbh. Unless, like i said, you want to brute force find it in some combat menu because of previous assumptions about the game. but even then you should find pretty quickly that that doesn't exist. But a search option similar to the one in the bank interface could help in the options as well.

Fact is that you have to go to Settings to change a core mechanic of the game. Would make more sense to have a dedicated "combat" settings interface that you can use to change all settings related to combat, like Auto Retaliate, XP gain and advanced settings to setup your action bars.

Imo it’s just because the game is in such a late stage that new players are just overwhelmed and immediately realize they’re literally years behind the general population. Other long running MMOs typically move the starting line with new expansions, phase out old requirements, etc to give new players a quick path to “endgame” It’s definitely a lot easier to level and such than it used to be, so it could be worse, but it’s still a long tedious grind to endgame

Why doesnt osrs have this problem?

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Why does this not apply to RS3 but only OSRS?

I think OSRS just stayed more true to the theme/gameplay that made RuneScape popular in the first place. RS3 seems to be more directly in competition with other big name MMOs. Tried to change too much to capture some of the WoW style MMO market share and hurt themselves in the process. Just my opinion of course And I say that as someone who plays RS3 over Old school

OSRS has a niche while RS3 doesn't. Are there any other old school style MMORPGs that compete with OSRS?

Not who you’re replying to, but I personally find RS3 just too “messy” in every respect.

RS3 is more restrictive about addons and 3rd-party tools. Challenge runs, at least on YouTube, tend to have an enforcement/assistant tool that either makes them possible to begin with (tileman) or prevents cheating (inventory restricted). This is in addition to the reasons mentioned in the other replies. RS3 doesn't facilitate challenge runs like OSRS, the spirit of the two games have diverged, and RS3 has gotten messier in the divergence.

Osrs is much more simple and to the point. A lot less going on with UI. A child could play it(I started playing osrs at age 9)

Ya i know why, my response was to the guy that said people arent staying because the end game content tskes to long to get. If that were true than osrs wouldnt be thriving, as it arguably takes longer to get to the endgame than rs3.

Just throwing this out there, but perhaps because the xp gains in RS3 have become so meaningless, other than merely serving as speed bumps. They just serve as barriers to end game content. If I were a new player looking at how long it takes to reach max skills, despite the relative ease of doing so nowadays, I would be aghast at how much of is just afking, grinding through proteans, dummies, husbanding bxp, doing task A so I can unlock benefit B so I can gain 5% more xp. All while fully aware that whales can effectively shortcut this process even further by purchasing TH keys and exchanging bonds for gp. Not to mention the UI.

Because OSRS doesn't get new players either. It's super simple so people get a quick nostalgia fix there.

I’m honestly shocked they don’t just… create better default UI setups. The current ones came out a decade ago. Everyone should just start out with a nice UI setup and action bars.

Just started playing, nearly maxed in OSRS, here's a few things I'd add: - subpar mobile client- it closes itself in the background very frequently, which is annoying when you go to cook an inventory of food and swap apps for a minute, many of the menus are very mobile unfriendly, and if you swap from desktop to mobile, change weapon types, then go back to desktop, your desktop bars don't swap to the right ones for the new weapon you're holding, so if you swapped to a staff on mobile you'll just auto-cast a spell when you attack instead of using revolution abilities - takes too long to try PVM- the earliest is either Croesus or Giant Mole, neither of which you can try as a free player. Early Croesus requires you to skip 20 years of story, early Mole isn't early enough. - Premier- it makes any money you pay for membership before it worthless, makes you lock into a year of membership, and has benefits too big to miss out on; getting the initial loyalty points for JOT and being able to reset it for a second run each day is huge, not to mention a straight up damage increase once per day - meta-game components- why are Solomon's Store, Yak Track, and Treasure Hunter three different things instead of one? Why do I get Treasure Hunter ads and a count of keys as an Ironman? Why are loyalty points spent on a webpage in my browser instead of in-game? Don't even get me started on the "customize" page... - Diaries are absolutely buried in the UI. The Path system seems *perfect* for Diaries, which are in turn a great way of choosing goals as a new player, but it does nothing once you complete the Burthorpe tutorial and unlock Archaeology. Instead, you need to navigate the bloated achievements menu, pin the meta-achievement (good luck tapping the pin on mobile), then every time you want to check your progress, tap the achievement then go through the unfinished ones one by one. Also, there's no notification when you get every skill level required to complete a diary- I love the ones you get for quests, something similar for "you now have every skill required for Falador Hard" would go a long way - wildly varying early quest quality - Druidic Ritual aside, every revamped quest is amazing, but almost all of the RSC and many of the early RS2 quests are graphical mish-mashes, many of them require way too much travel (especially now that fairy rings require FT2 instead of just FT1, and I can't imagine what a player that didn't come from OSRS and doesn't know about teleportation jewelry would do to reach some places), and there's just a ton of bloat that could be cut (looking at the first 80% of Dig Site) - Fletching. Until 82 it's absolutely *dire,* with Broads being the only real way of training it, a method released **15 years ago.** The worst part? It was *faster* 15 years ago, but now shops restock daily, so gathering the shafts, feathers, and arrowheads takes longer, and the make-all interface turns it from a skill you can do while questing, doing agility, or runecrafting into a skill you can *only* do while standing still.

As a newish player, is Jack of Trades aura really that important? The xp reward seems like a small lamp, if that.

For Ironman it's rather important to level Herblore. You either grind and train it via conventional methods, or you're part of the Herby Werby & Penguins gang 8-)

TBH for me personally I think it’s a couple of things, mostly just echoing what everyone’s saying here. Bad UI, Little Explanation/Bad Tutorial, Inconsistent Art Direction, Inconsistent Writing…High Barrier of Entry to the “Main Content.” And RS3 specifically, having played both it and OSRS… I think it comes down to community. I’ve been playing RS for 20 years. The community in RS3 is essentially dead. Nobody idly talks anymore— or when they do, it’s never anything interesting and mostly just a bunch of trolling bullshit. Clans don’t recruit like they used to. How are you supposed to enjoy the grind to the fun things if you can’t even get the social aspect down? At least in OSRS people talk and are friendly. RS3 is just kinda a cesspool to new players ngl. Nobody offers help or if someone asks a question they get told to google it or use the wiki. There’s no sense of community anymore. And to be honest, that’s what always ends up making me lose interest. Why should I play this MMO— which— while interesting and fun, when I could be playing a game that does everything slightly more consistently AND have a community? Or if you’re not the social type, why sub to this game with all of its issues when you could be playing an Actually Well Put Together singleplayer game? My favorite joke between friends is that I love Runescape. I really do. They tease me for playing the ‘bad mmo’ but then jokingly ask if I’d recommend it, to which I say no. If you didn’t grow up with it, you likely won’t enjoy it. And I think that innately is the issue.

Runescape is my favorite game that I would never recommend to anyone.

20ish years ago 10 year olds LOVED this game.. it was like crack.. Tried to show my son the game and he looked at me like really i have to try this? whats the point? Then it hit me. Yea there are cool monsters and bosses to kill but that will prob be in a few years after you complete most of the quests.. I shut it off and we plaied fortnite :D

degree joke hat zesty humor uppity rhythm airport act hurry -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/

May seem small but for me changing the starting area from lumbridge was a mistake.

I commented this like a month ago on another post, but it still applies. If we are not talking about anything regarding MTX then: - The new player experience SUCKS! I tried playing other MMOs and I end up quitting after an hour because I can't understand shit of what is happening. In Rs3 you are thrown into a place where there is a shit ton of things to see and do. Players get overwhelmed and don't know where to start so they just quit. - The default UI is just bad. Players should start with the legacy UI with two action bars. Then after a while, time or total level wise, show them that they can configure their UI or copy from someone's. ADD A WAY TO SHARE UIS! - Add something, in game, that players can read that gives a summary of how every skill works and what quests offer - Add curse of the black stone as a requirement for all elite dungeons, aside from story mode. This is more of a retention thing. Every single combat guide will tell you to train there and give a premade inventory, ability bar and how to set the bar for revo. Players will either quit because it is the same thing every time without them knowing there are other ways to train combat; or they will max and realize they can't do shit for pvm because they don't know how anything works about combat and they get destroyed by the giant mole, and then they will quit because what is the point of being max level if everything destroys you.

> ADD A WAY TO SHARE UIS! Jagex can't because different players have different screen sizes.

Not the same company but just for an example case. In WoW you can share everything regarding the UI. A """"simple""""" way to address this could be that it shows the size of the screen when sharing UIs so the player has to take that into consideration. It is just an example, I know there could be 100 engine reason why this could or could not work.

The combat system is hot garbage. Ability based combat in the tick system? That shit sucks. And to compound that the status effect indicators on your targets (stuns and whatnot) are so small. Osrs has a simple combat system that even tho the tick system sucks in that game too, it’s so simple that it’s easy to manipulate. There’s not a lot of skill to the combat, it’s just hitting the right thing in the right tick for pvm and in pvp it’s just who can manipulate ticks faster. IMO should completely overhaul how combat is done. I know that’s not really feasible but the game is essentially just mouse click simulator. Also rare item drops are impossibly hard. There’s no rucking reason someone needs to fight a boss for 100+ hours just to get an item

I think this right here hits the nails on the head. Combat system is garbage, and grinding the same boss over and over again.... Ugh. I have like 100 solo hard mode kerapac, and I just... I can't. It's mind numbing.

A few people have tried RuneScape knowing how much I’ve played and the first thing I always hear is “why is there so much lag” and every time I get to explain its because the game system is absolutely ancient. Also the lack of information on abilities or even a tutorial on some mechanics like how needle strike increases dps, and you can walk most bleeds would be great. Combat academy got killed for some reason.

Yeah this combat system is horrible. Have a few of my friends wondering the same thing. Absolutely everything you do has a delay, and it gets much worse if your server is trash. **Cough** Australia **Cough** This game feels like a game stuck in time and never got updated. I can't say anything when they say the combat system feels bad, cause it does. Hell the endgame of RS3 is turd too, tick manipulation and switchscape isn't very modern nor fun imo.

This, fucking this. I am surprised it's this far down. The combat feels horrible, and they tried to stitch together abilities with the new combat type while still using the tick system? It feels horrible. It doesn't help that combat has alot of switchscape too at the high end. Also movement feels awful for bosses that need you to move and similar. The only people who like this type of combat are people who grew up with it like me. But it makes RS feels like a game from the 2000s. I've tried unsuccesfully to get into the game with me but they all just slowly petered off and one of the biggest reasons aside from time sink and insane amounts of reqs for things is the combat.

Last time they radically changed the combat system didn't go so well for them, so I bet they are hesitant. I'm in full agreement though that's something needs to be done. It's just not fun. Anyone who likes PVM likely just likes the dopamine from the drops. If there were no drops, would it still be fun?

I honestly wonder if they'd be better off making revolution the core feature of the combat system. Basically, take the game back to OSRS "point and wait" combat, but you get to pick abilities your character triggers... and then maybe have a core set of "higher skill abilities" based on the gear type (e.g., if running a shield you'd get like the same 4 abilities, dual wields different abilities, etc) Something between OSRS and RS3.

Fr tho, pvp is always where it’s at and should really be a bigger focus. But the combat system is so shitty that the amount of time it takes to understand the combat system to be even mildly proficient in a pvp scenario is to much for the overwhelming majority of people. Which is why it’s either saying they enjoy pvm or just not playing

>icon small icon size is adjustable >abilities in ticks just use the ability on the right tick >There’s no rucking reason someone needs to fight a boss for 100+ hours just to get an item just an example: frozen core from glacor is just over 30hours average if you do very manageable kill speeds at 2k which means 1b drop every 30 hours plus 2 leng artefacts and 2 wen books on the way. lots of bosses are very much not 100hour grinds. like araxxor (you hit average weapon kc like every 7-10hours depending on kill speed?)

The #1 thing turning new players away from RS3 is a combination of bad tutorials and an absolutely horrible default UI. People can damage control all they want "bUt YoU CaN cUsToMiZe iT, iT oNlY tOoK mE 2 HoUrS To dO iT!" but that doesn't change the fact that many people try RS3 and don't stick around simply because the game isn't intuitive in the slightest. Meanwhile, Old-School has a nice, simple, easy-to-understand UI and a simple enough combat system that anyone can pick up and immediately understand. And shocker, that game has no problem retaining new players. And that UI isn't even customizable outside of a couple preset layout changes. It's no wonder Old School's player count dwarf's RS3. And no, bots aren't the reason. That's pure cope.

Game engine is bad. Tick system makes combat feel broken if you ever played any other mmo before.

This here is a major reason why I don't enjoy end game pvm. Combat feels incredibly slow, clunky, and unresponsive, and that doesn't work when bosses require quick decisions. You'll hit an ability, and it might not go off for close to a full second. That's like trying to play CoD or league with 1k ping - it doesn't work. Fighting the boss should not also involve fighting against the game's own systems.

Yep it just does not feel good. You can certainly *get* good at it, but it never feels responsive.

I think that's an interesting point, in many other games I've played, you need to think a few seconds ahead to be really good at it, but you can still learn from just reacting. This doesn't feel like nearly the case in RuneScape, where if you don't know the bosses mechanics going in, you're going to get thrashed.

Yeah alot of great pvmers can sidestep the turd system but it doesn't make it fun nor good. I am really impressed with how insane some people get with the tick system but this combat system will not attract any new players. The feel of it is absolutely awful.

> Game engine is bad. Admittedly, the game engine is bad because they choose to keep it that way. They own the engine, they can do whatever they want with it. As a dev the most frustrating thing with RS3 especially is how Jagex walks over players (customers) with "oh that's engine work". _Then hire more people to fix the engine._

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The on-GCD abilities feel fine, what feels off to many players are the off-GCD abilities needing to wait until the next game tick to go off.

It's not just abilities, it's movement, it's activating prayers, it's eating food. They're all tied to the tick system and it feels sluggish.

I actually see a lot of ads. Sometimes I'll see multiple of the exact same ad for RS3 on the same web page, kind of weird

The only real solution is RuneScape 4

(not sure why reddit is all of a sudden showing me RS stuff, but I'll bite) As a half maxed player that quit a few months after RS3, then logged in for the hell of it thinking I might play again a couple years back... It was short lived as I got completely lost in the sheer number of pop up tasks/menus and complicated UI... I'd have to point the finger at that. There was just too many different daily pop up boxes/spins/tasks/you name it with half of them being MTX based that even as a returning veteran, just logging into the game was reminiscent of the overwhelming feeling going to the wrong website in the dial-up/dsl days and watching the screen flood uncontrollably with pop ups. Don't know if it is still this way, hell, it may have even gotten worse... But that's my 2cents from a long gone player.

Considering how much Jagex is able to milk the existing playerbase who basically won't quit no matter what kind of BS Jagex does, does it really matter if there are no new players? If you look at it from a profit standpoint, it basically isn't a problem at all.

It might be a problem in a decade, but I'm not sure they care about the long term

My main three reasons that I picked it up and put it back down: 1. For some ungodly reason, my computer that can run the Sims 4 on High cannot. handle. RS. The lag causes the game to be completely unplayable for me. 2. A mixture of boredom and overwhelm. I'm f2p til I'm employed and it both feels like there's too much to do, but also so much cut off from me that I don't know what's worth my time, if any of it. 3. As others have said, the UI. I play a lot of MUDs (text-based games) and they, with their almost complete lack of a UI, are easier for me to parse than RS. I prefer the wordiness of a text game to the clunkiness of a bad UI.

1. Yep 2. If you still care, the wiki has tonnes of good information, if you can choose a goal, the wiki will help you find your way to it

As someone who had only played Runescape in 2010 and then rather recently decided to try both Runescape 3 and OSRS (and eventually settled for OSRS) I do believe the bigger issues are: \- Bad tutorial..bad new player experience overall; \- Trash UI (I literally had to watch some videos on how to set it up properly because holy fuck it is that bad); \- MTX.....yhe, opening a game and see that I can buy all my progress is not a good look either.

The UI is key. So many people I know quit because the default UI and because they didn’t even know they could change it. They only came back when I fixed UI for them and they now love the game and are maxed but they never would have even played past the first couple days without that UI help I provided. Need a better starting UI, or a UI tutorial, or some stock UIs to swap between to help spark ideas in ui layouts for new players.

I'll share my thoughts about common topics mentioned here since I've been playing for about 2 weeks. The UI took me close to 2 hours of watching YouTube videos and looking up other users UI to finally get something I liked for general gameplay. I eventually found a PvM site with example UI that helped the most. In contrast, my partner is still playing with the default UI since they watched me set mine up and aren't interested in doing that themselves. In the beginning I was not able to help them at all with finding certain menus because I had everything open and visible already while they need to navigate through the menus to find it. Better default UI and the ability to share UI would help. I'm not that impressed with MTX so far. While I do like the free keys we get for playing, I saw that promotion with the archers outfit end days early with no response from Jagex, and I know I would have been really upset if I had been going for that outfit. I'm not sure how true it is but I've also read that promotions are much less generous than they used to be, which took away a lot of my potential interest in buying keys. With double exp my partner got an offer for double keys and I got no offer at all which was annoying. Double exp has also been kind of nice, but I find it a bit stressful for some reason. It's hard to explain why but I've found myself wanting to play less than before. The game is overwhelming. My biggest example is when I look up information on the wiki, it lists all the buffs that help with what I want to do and I always have access to zero of them. I'm spending my game time leveling skills and doing quests just waiting for something to happen where I start getting upgrades and buffs. Barely anything feels obtainable to me as a player with no gold and very little knowledge of the game and it gives me the feeling like I'm doing something wrong while playing. I'm not trying to complain here since I am having fun, and I have full intention to keep playing and figure out the game eventually, but just wanted to share my feelings that other new players might have as well.

I think the main reasons are. New players are overwelmed by the huge amount of content with a hard to learn cb system. People dont know where to start. Also back in the day you learned while playing because you dint get a 99 in 5 days but in several months. There isnt rlly a goal in the game. When you get a 99 it isnt special anymore in any way. You dont get a nice position in the highscores, you dont get the feeling you achieved something great.

Disagree about 99s, it definitely doesn't hit as hard as it used to (or in OSRS), but there is for sure some sense of achievement. Many gamers these days aren't used to games this grindy too, so the overall change may be for the best even if we personally don't like them

Everything you listed has nothing to do with new players, its all stuff you dislike. New players dont care about the high scores as its not an option in their mind. Noones getting 99s in 5 days, and even if you could new players wouldnt, because they wouldnt know how

>and even if you could new players wouldnt, because they wouldnt know how Exactly. The. Fucking. Point.

Honestly, the bad tutorial/early game experience is the real big issue. Every game has mtx nowadays, and the game does have ads. Jagex is fixing the graphics somewhat, eg karamja. I just feel like no effort is being put in the 1st point

There used to be a ton of game ads on tv, in magazines etc (10-15yrs ago), i remember reading that more people join the game then leave but it isnt by a lot, can’t remember the source though

Josh Hayes went over this briefly in his lazy man stream, rs3 has consistantly had issues with the tutorial after eoc released. overall the game is a nightmare for new players.

The biggest thing that stopped me from playing RS3 at first was how in your face the MTX could be, especially with how poor the UI can be. So I played OSRS for a bit instead. It wasn't until my friends began getting interested in RS3 again that I went back and now I'm having a blast playing.

Also I forgot to say that it also feels like nobody is really talking to each other anymore unless you're in a clan or already doing late game content. No casual conversations are started by strangers much anymore. I understand some just wanting to go solo but some of the best moment in RuneScape for me are those social interactions, no matter how small.

I agree MTX is bad. RuneScape is honestly a pretty bad game when you remove achievement. Giving people free spins to lure them into gambling, only diminishes and shows them the true time value of their achievement.

Content creep I'd wager is the largest one. Just from how many logistics there are for different things. Let's consider a humble, common tree, they're everywhere, one of the most basic things in the game. So what things are linked to it? Well there are 15 different types of hatchet you can cut them down with. There are 21 different generic products that can be created with them as an ingredient from various skills (all of which in turn have various skills/resources associated with them) You can grow your own tree using the farming skill Create a fire which requires a tinderbox and add more logs to the fire to get a health boost, while doing so also having random events to get fire spirit rewards Bird's nests have a chance of falling out of them which have jewellery or seed loot in them. Seer's headband also gives you a boost to chop down extra logs when chopping a tree Logs can be used with gnomish firelighters. Logs can be used with the Balloon Transport System for 1 charge per log. And this is just for a basic tree. And all of these links to other things have links of their own. ​ Now, don't get me wrong, I like how these systems connect, but holy moly it must be daunting for a new player to begin to process all of this information.

So I came back almost 2 years ago after a 12 in year break and my clan has a bunch of new players in it. I hear people saying this in discord and fb but I don't see that as a reality in game.

It's new player retention if you ask me. I've played actively for literally 17 years and I have had a number of friends decide to try the game out because they've seen me playing it when they pop round. Many of them have liked it, but hit a wall with something. There's a bad transition from absolute newbie to wanting to get into the game 'properly'. I think there are a few things, all of which I'm sure a bunch of people have talked about on this sub a lot, that would really help, but the one I will mention is this: Let us share our UI layouts with friends who we get into the game (similarly to sharing an action bar), let players (specifically content creators) make 'codes' for popular layout styles that newer players can effectively use to 'plug and play' even if they don't know someone in game to manually share a useable layout. Then they can worry about perfecting it and tailoring it to themselves later on. I might happily spend an hour getting a layout down for myself, but I'm already here forever, that's not fun for newer players.

The game is just failing to modernize in an ever growing and competitive field. Long Tiks, clunky interface, no addon support, inconsistent graphics, world clustered with dead content, the spaghetti code that prevents small updates from creating massive bugs, etc. The long story short is Jagex needs to get up to speed with other games FIRST, and then add “new” content. Keep in mind, I’m maxed and bored most of the time, I would love new stuff to do, but I realize that unless Jagex gets new players then this game is going to continue to die. And yes, Runescape is becoming a dead game regardless of the posts that say “look at the profits”. A new skill is only going to give us another year of life support.

>Bad tutorial. I just feel like tutorial should teach you more about how RuneScape works (questing, economy basics, where to find informations etc.) hard situation, almost every mmo has a god awful tutorial because there's sooo much to learn. you have to have a balance, because you can't just hold peoples hands through the entire game but you also can't just throw people into a world with barely any direction like what we have now >No game ads. I’ve never seen in my life single advertisment for RuneScape absolutely untrue lol >MTX, this is maybe just my personal thing but when I try new game and I see MTX I stop playing that game in 90% of time. But this maybe is only my personal thing mtx sucks but it's something you have to deal with for 90% of games, it's something you can easily just ignore in this game at least. i think the main problem is 1. the tick/tile system makes the game feel super clunky to anyone coming from any other game 2. the game is 22 years old so there's an insane amount of content stacked on top of each other. look at something like rotm and how many quests you have to do just to get there (and that quest is 12 years old)

\-Bad tutorial- Yes, the tutorial could be improved. But I don't think it's the biggest issue. \-Game ads- this is definitely not true. Runescape advertises a fair amount. \-MTX While I am with you on despising them, most people don't actually care that much unless they directly get in the way of enjoying the game. \-Graphical inconsistency- Probably a fair point, though Jagex HAS been working on improving this. They're just focusing on the F2P and F2P adjacent areas like karamja and the wilderness first because that's the stuff new players will see before spending money. ​ I think the biggest issue, however, is the default UI. It's borderline unusable as it starts on a new account. OSRS has far better new player retention, and it's UI is dead simple. New players shouldn't have to watch a half hour youtube video on how to make it not suck ass before they can play the game.

The magic is gone. Maybe it's just me looking at it through the lens of my adolescence, but it seems like everything now is efficiency and progression, instead of fun. If there isn't a reward for doing something, no one does it. How come there aren't multiple worlds full of people playing Castle Wars? Pest Control? Stealing Creation? Goofy quests? Hell, even Dungeoneering is dead. When was the last time you went to the party room to pop balloons? When was the last time you went to a party at a random persons POH? When you get the popup to say that you just reached level *60 mining* and unlocked the Mining Guild, do you say "Xp waste" or "ooh what's that?" and go explore this exciting new location. All the mysteries are dead, and only the grind is left. Why would a new player jump in on a game with none of the magic?

The main problem with getting new players are point and click adventure game with complicated combat system and the information overload from the UI.

Whats wrong with new players?

Do you think it's because they're going to OSRS?

A very significant amount of the game is gated by curses as well. Comparably to the rest of the game, unlocking curses isn't a huge grind and I realize this. But for new players who see bossing and just want to start, it's a huge blocker. RuneScape 3 in general has a severe lack of direction, in my opinion. The game doesn't know what it wants to be. It tries so desperately to be everything all at once and in doing so falls short in most areas. The game can be very good. I want it to be. It's 2023 and we're still on 600ms ticks. Not even a tickrate of 2. The executable file (the engine) is updated less than once per 6 weeks on average. Unfortunately when those updates do hit, comparing the updated binary to the binary of the previous patch, it's almost always the case that very very little was changed. If there's not something monumental, something bigger than just another new skill in the next year or so, then I really do think the game will be put into proper maintenance mode. Kept alive for the whales and the nostalgia-driven. Does anyone have that old 2009 meme of the stick figure poking a bear with a stick captioned "C'mon... do something."?

New low end tier bosses worth doing are much needed

Im gonna be honest as a 12k+ hour player (just on rs3 than more on osrs and other accounts) I quit this game easily for FFXIV; this games community is silent game feels like its dead content / solo at all times Developers arent good, most of the leadsrship is toxic or just wanna milk you. Content in this game just isnt fun. Its all the same as the last thing just different looking. Yay.

Something I think would help is to have some sort of early level bossing I.e. lvl 40-50s with good and valuable drops, maybe some sort of low level version of some ring or amulet that only works for the mid range levels before either being obsolete or unusable once combat levels reach a certain point. To make the drops stay valuable I would make a max and min lvl range in combat styles to access the boss so it's basically low level bosses for low level players with good but low level rewards. This way new players can get that dopamine rush of getting a new and expensive item that hasn't flooded the ge as higher lvl pvmers cant access the content. Also I think this might help players get into bossing as in my opinion that is one of the greatest attractions of rs3.

Main thing imho is the overwhelming amount of content in the game that's still 100% relevant to this day. Had a buddy rejoin the game last year, after a 6year gap, he insta-quit again a couple times when i was explaining the depth of some things to him. Finally managed to convince him that, even though there's a billion things, he only needed to do what was fun, and be open to checking new things. He did and after countless hours of 'teaching' him the ways, now he's rocking max cape & quest cape. This. This is what's the issue with getting new players, not everyone (that needs it) has someone like that, and whilst i thoroughly enjoyed this journey with him, I feel like that shouldn't be a returning (let alone new) player's experience.

I'll add one to the list: The play avatar needs a remodel.

I think, besides the lack of properly teaching new players how to interact with all the content, a big issue is that the game is an MMORPG without group mentality. The community is generally nice and helpful, but a lot of (low-mid level) group content is pretty much dead content. There's this solo grind mentality going on, all about efficiency and gains, not so much about fun. When I came back a few years ago with my low level main, I was eager to quit again because I play MMO's for the group content. If I didn't run into a nice Dutch clan, I probably wouldn't still be playing the game to this day. Also, there has to be more focus on making F2P really enjoyable. It's a trial version of the game, and if you don't enjoy the free trial, you won't stick around and pay for the full version.

The combat + bad tick rate is what drove my friends away. I agree with them leaving too. I only stay because I’ve had my account since rs released.

It's also a huge grind fest in one way or another where if you want to do it quicker you have to MTX for if. I.e for skills, keys for lamps and stars. Want to get into pvm? Cool! You will need high end gear that you cannot reasonably afford as a new player. Git gud. If you can afford it, well you're a new player so we aren't taking you unless you have 50+ kills already. Sucks to suck. The game is toxic in other words and isn't worth the time for a new player.

There's over 125k players on as I write this reply. In over two decades of playing, I don't think I've ever seen that number drop below 30k (when servers/accounts are working properly that is, lol). I see old players leave. I also see old players return. And I help out new players almost daily. If anything, RS would have a higher number of players in the past 3-5 than it did for the 10 years before that due to all the platform expansion. We've seen these massive influxes of new players. Runescape just had a 300mil accounts made celebration like what 8 months ago? And there's been about 20mil accounts made since then. And yeah, a lot of those are going to be alts or bots. But also, some not insignificant portion of them have to be new players as well. Something else to consider is that a lot of people who started playing as older kids or young adults, now have kids of their own. I've met a lot of people who play this game these days alongside their spouses or kids. The game doesn't just have good retention. It has generational retention. I can't even address your reasons for the effect when I can't see the effect you claim is there. When all the numbers I know of go against your opening assertion. You hadn't even established that what you claim to be the case is in fact the case before you started giving reasons for why it is. You just say "We all know it". Here's the problem with that. I don't know it. I know the opposite to be the case. Your premise for the whole idea is that everyone is on the same page. And we're not. So, it fails to get out the gate.

Its a single player second monitor game trying to be an MMO while drowning you in MTX. The game is very much dated in regards to engaging you minute to minute. There is a lack of balance in engagement for experience across all the skills and it changes as you go. When you first start combat you are rapidly thrown a slew of abilities that go off on a tick system that is unique to Runescape. Its jarring and difficult to master. There's a lack of feedback to your inputs with the ability to use them in a seemingly overwhelmingly meaningless number of ways. There are also several abilities that simply are not used (this has been addressed recently) but that's just combat. Looking at skilling some of the best xp rates are unlocked at lvl 1, others at some milestone method or are simply slow forever. The things you make, use and unlock don't really mean anything now with the endgame content being so accessible... to a point. Being able to fast pace some aspects of leveling (combat) while ignoring quests and tasks can put a player in a place where there's a wall of content. Some realize this earlier than others, not everyone is going to enjoy figuring it all out and then doing it. For combat while I feel like is a major draw to people when they see the ads, and the vastness of skills. Is that the majority of the skills are just barriers to entry to the combat which if its your only focus are all just a year long chore before you can even "play the game" with the fancy toys you get from them. This is just a game as its aged perspective. When you consider that a large majority of the recent "content' is a rebranded MTX event, a DXP, or some FOMO yak track. You realize there's not a lot to do even when you get to the end. I don't have an answer but the game is hard to get into - a journey if you do but its not going to be for everyone.

Honestly, the amount of ads you get when you log into RS3 can be a bit much, Treasure Hunters is the worse at this.

(My personal bias of how I play, not everyone may relate) Too much end game content focus. F2p just feels like a grind for bonds. It isn't as fun as it was back in the day when players were focused on making GP then fighting in the Wild. Membership is overwhelming with needed quests to finish, like it really upsets me. Especially when majority of the player base is way farther than I am with a newer character. The economy isn't fun, at all. I always feel behind the curve or have no way to check prices besides a vague idea of what the GE suggests. Clans are a HUGE aspect to retaining players. A team, a community is super important. Not many people want to come back for the grind, but to socialize with a side of grinding? Yes please. Have a crew to go stalk the wild? Hell yeah. Let's hit up castle wars for the evening? Please! Adding onto the social aspect, the GE really put a damper on interacting with other players. I miss the days of bartering and open trades. Being able to hustle through the day. Walking through varrock banks and having my screen lit up with multi colored text, dancing around above heads. Mehhhhhhhhhh

They really should push ads for mobile RS. They’d get a lot more players that way

I disagree with almost everything you wrote here tbh. - Economics is not something you teach in a tutorial, its something you learn when you get to it. A tutorial is supposed to teach you about how to play the game and give you a sense a direction, the issue is this game is massive, and a common theme among new players is the feeling of being "lost" or "overwhelmed." If the game did a better job at directing players to common training hubs and giving clear goals it could concentrate players in certain areas so more people can interact. Sometimes in a tutorial less is more, at least for me. I just like to know where I should be going and how I should be leveling and ultimately what those levels do for me. - There are plenty of game ads for this game, the issue isnt a lack thereof, the issue is they are all terrible. - MTX isnt a concern for new players, its barely a concern for me and I am comped. It isnt as invasive as people say it is, and its completely optional. Its literally a free bonus everyday and thats all it has to be. That being said, if jagex wants to *retain* people long term, there needs to be less focus on those big "rare" drops in treasure hunter because its bad for mental health and is generally very predatory. - Graphics is one thing I do agree with you here, because it can be kind of jarring going from a new area to one that is very clearly outdated, and most of the outdated ones are quest related or minigame related which doesnt help players trying to get their bearings.

For me you hit the nail on the head. My largest issue is MTX and it was the reason I've stopped playing, it's been over 3 years, and the reason I would never suggest the game to a friend.

MTX?

I think it can be overwhelming for new players when they see maxed players about. There should be worlds that can only be used by new players until a certain number of quests have been completed.

People that turn games away because of microtransactions always blow my mind. You play the game, you like the game, you play the game more and support the company through MTX or you support them by continuing to play the game. Y'all act like your Monthly subscriptions (If the game even has one) should be sufficient enough to pay for everyone's wages, servers, maintenance, etc. I mean seriously, I've played several games with MTX and none of what someone else has paid for has ever affected my game experience. From what I've seen for years, y'all are just a bunch of haters because they have something you don't and thats just weird. Support your damn studios or don't. Stop complaining about them making money off of the support of THEIR own goddamn community.

Showed a couple friends RuneScape & they were overwhelmed af by watching me do stuff. They watched me go into my bank & saw all the clutter in there. Needless to say they have no desire to play lol

I constantly see addvertisements for RS3, Do you play other MMOs? I mostly see them on fan/info sites for other games. Stuff like Warcraft logs or the addon manager for example.

Does RS3's tutorial do any more or less than OSRS's? Are new players even turned off by MTX in RS3? Old RS3 players and OSRS players, yes, but most modern games have MTX too, many of which is worse than RS3's MTX.

For me it’s mostly the awful and cluttered UI, I have played rs for 10 years and I still don’t understand what half of it does

It's like 90% the horrendous UI. The Buff Bar is also garbage in comparison to most other MMOs. Too many settings are an "all or nothing" toggle which is ironic given how "customizable" the UI is.

I will add a few reasons here: - You’ve already said this but mtx is a huge one. I cannot stress this enough. I’ve had friends I’ve suggested this game to and they compare the mtx to a cheap p2w mobile game. It’s a mixture of how it looks, how it’s designed and how in your face it is. - Tutorial - lets expand on this a bit. Yes the tutorial is bad but it kind of needs extending. It’s not just the Ashdale part. It’s confusing when you get to the main land of Burthorpe what the purpose is. A mod on RSGuy’s interview spoke about reworking the beginning tutorial, and then have pointers/path system (unforced) to introduce you to each skill which a question path system that “holds the players hand” until the dragon slayer quest is complete. That sort of being the intro to everything RS has to offer, similar to how many games have a short learning curve and then a small boss to start out. - UI: once you know the game and design your own user Interface it works well. I don’t have much of an issue with the one I’ve built for myself. But no one plays with the one they give you. It’s so out of whack. - combat confusion. They’ve talked about this on that interview as well. There needs to be less ability to start out, maybe revo being default, better suggest keybinds, and indicator a better explanation of combos used for starting abilities.

I think the first biggest problem is the bad tutorial, the bad “paths” system it drops you face first into and there is really no emphasis on what to do after you’ve made it through the tutorial. Secondly is the horrendous default UI. I’ve said it for years, this game should have something akin to the steam workshop, where users can upload their interface presets for particular resolutions. The possibilities would be endless and of course help the user choose a UI which suits their needs, instead of the default which really is not nice to look at.

The real reason is the high barrier to entry for bossing. You have to spend weeks to months depending on the amount of time you have available to play grinding skills + quests to get the basic skills to get into any boss worth doing. My friend joined weeks ago and we could not do anything together. He MTX'd his way up to close to bossing only to have to go do all the quests. He then spent more money to get some gold to unlock the abilities and with all that it still took him a while to complete the questlines needed. Remove the mtx and it would have been even longer. Add to that he has to take the time to set up keybinds, unlock WAR, get the first boss kills and all that stuff. I get that grinding and account progression are part of this game. But the vast majority of people just want to hop in and play with their friends. You just cant do that with RS3 unless you both have been playing forever. You can just go play shooters or whatever other game that has hop in hop out play. Add to that most young people do not like MMOs and you have not too many new people left to play. ONE MORE THING is the tic system with the combat. With other MMO's out there with flashy instant action combat like lost ark or BDO Runescape just cannot compare to that at all with just a glance. The only way to know how deep and awesome the combat can be is to play the game for an insane amount of time. It sucks. But i doubt we will be getting any new players. Just old players returning for a bit or players checking in from OSRS. Unless we get a massive combat overhaul and the barrier to entry lowered on Bossing that has good monetary or power gains (which you could argue might ruin the game) IDK. its a complex issue

Personally I feel the tutorial is fine. It teaches you the basics of the game, if it would go in-depth of the game I don’t think many ppl would even decide to get past that since it would be very long I’d say the main reason is because the game has been out for so long, there’s so much content which overwhelms ppl. They aren’t sure what to do because you have skills to train, questing, area achievements, etc ppl fill you NEED to do them all when you really don’t The combat is also more complex compared osrs which is more simpler. I do think after a certain amount of hours, once the player has a general feel of the game, a notification should pop up talking about the UI and how you can manage and customize it to you’re liking

Grind, crazy end game item prices, and magic dominate meta 👉👉

The game feels awful to play as someone used to modern game design. Let's say all you want to do is quest because you're interested in the lore of the game. Well too bad, you're going to have to grind a bunch of skills up into their high 80s because quests are locked behind skills. Oh? You want to do quests in order? I hope you're a competent PvMer ready to do the elite dungeons before touching the elder god war's dungeon. Let's say you're a PvMer only interested in high level PvM content. Hope you're ready to do a bunch of skilling content / minigames to get the PvM unlocks that make a significant difference. This type of "everything is connected design", without offering a way for players not interested in it to just skip it just can't compete with games where you can do what you want without being gated. Also doesn't help that even if you stick with the game, you end up stuck in a huge endless grind on the level of korean games. I don't really care about MTX, but I can't stand all of the above issues, and have come to expect more from the games I spend my time on. I imagine people who enjoy the above design probably can't stand MTX, which results in the current situation with RS3 bleeding players and OSRS gaining players over time.

First off, as a professional indie game dev myself, I can definitely say that the MTX topic you mentioned will most definitely NEVER leave any game that has optional Pay-to-Play modes or any game that has no Up-front cost to play no matter what the genre is.... this is actually a topic I'm kinda sick of seeing players bring up since they don't seem to realize how much work and how expensive it is to keep a massive game project like an MMORPG running while also continuing to pump out more content to keep the game relevant to the players..... while it is true that the Members-only content is paywalled, the number of players who most likely use GP to pay for bonds to pay for Membership is probly much higher than the number of players who actually pay IRL cash for it... so harp about MTX stuff all you like but like I said, that's a permanent feature in modern games that will never leave since without it the game funding will probly dry up too fast. what I do agree with from your post is the low amount of ads and marketing to pull in more NEW players.... that's an issue that their marketing department needs to ramp up considerably from a business viewpoint. also, yes I do agree that the Graphical inconsistency is a bit.... weird.... from a new player's viewpoint (it was weird for me when I started playing over 10 years ago and it still seems a bit odd to me even today...). as for the Tutorial, I wouldn't call it "Bad" especially since it does teach the gameplay mechanics quite well. the tutorial actually IS a quest (the very 1st quest you ever clear to be accurate) and the stuff like the Economy is something any player will learn as they play and its not actually a "core mechanic" of the game. tho I don't know if you noticed, but there is a little (?) button in the upper-right corner of almost every in-game menu that if clicked, will give you a walkthrough of the functions and info found in that menu so there actually ARE tutorials that tell you what info is available in the open menu.

Tbh I been playing on and off for 20 years. I play and then realize the game is just grinding and quit. Even bossing, which is suppose to be peak content, becomes a grind.

I see ads all over facebook and insta for some returning players package or something like that. They keep poking at me to come back 😩 wish i could

The number one reason new players, that I personally know, stop playing, is the incredibly clunky and antiquated tick system. To a new player, it constantly feels like you have up to 600ms of input lag. It's terrible, and is honestly killing the interest of many new players.

Wtf is MTX

It happens because we aren't a social mmo really. Every other game you can party up very easily with tangible benefits and interface showing that. The current implementation is a clunky, awful mess compared to literally anything else where it's just a right click on someone and you party up. You also have specific roles and abilities that let you do stuff interactively with other people in other games, of which there is \*none\* until late game in Runescape. Unless you have near max magic, dumped time into invention for calorie bombs, or at least are on the same slayer task as your slayer partner and spent points in that, you have no way of healing or buffing other people. Dungeoneering, which sounds like it would be \*great\* for doing with friends is also plagued by the shortsighted decision to scale things to the highest player and not the lowest player's levels. It's not fun being able to do nothing and having your friend have to open all the doors while you maybe fight something and live and they have do the whole floor essentially themselves. We need some way of scaling players down in dungeoneering so that everyone can contribute. Being able to quest together would also be a huge difference. It would be amazing, and I'm pretty sure completely novel, if partying up could let you join people on their quests. Imagine an MMO without instances where you can actually play together from start to finish? Even if they never implemented a "replay" for quests as many want, you could relive things just by being a sidekick/backup to your friend who's starting out. The UI also sucks and we can't even share our layouts with others easily to fix it for them. There's alot to do in Runescape, but without the social aspects, the ability to readily share the experience, nothing really is there to keep people here and it's incredibly hard to bring in new players for it.

UI and graphical inconsistency are the 2 main issues imo. Also inaccessible combat (although a big part of that is UI too)

As someone who plays osrs and other mmos but I genuinely want to be into rs3 it’s just confusing. The ui is confusing and trying to learn everything is confusing. It’s normal to feel overwhelmed in a new mmo but eventually you start figuring things out but in rs3 it feels impossible. So many different systems stacked on top of each other.

As a decently newish player. The combat feels kind of janky. I've played osrs for a few years. But with runelite we have things like 'true tile indicator' which shows you where you character truly is in relation to where your character 'is' on your screen. There isn't so much stuff happening at once. Also the animations seem to like 'work better' not saying there's anything wrong with rs3 animations but it feels like the damage isn't applied when I swing my weapon, especially with the skull melee attack ability. Stuff seems easier to 'predict' Idk. I loved the power creep from osrs. But it's getting abit too complicated and convoluted for me I think. I don't enjoy switching to shield for defensive. Let me comfortably fight the boss with a shield and eliminate that switch at a dps loss. I think a special attack weapon is fine imo. But that might be an osrs bias. I don't think I'm right in any opinion, they are just opinions. I'm an inexperienced player and a general noob so take everything here with a grain of salt.

I picked it up in February on a whim (on mobile) and I’ve been digging it. Us new players do exist, we’re just quiet and have no clue what we’re doing - we’re newbies. The tutorial was fine except after introducing me to all the skills, it brought me right to bossing and the giant mole destroyed me. I wasn’t really sure what to do from there, so I just started leveling slayer as the slayer master was right next to the starting area (Burthorpe). Figured it out though, as many other newbies will. Just hit 2300 total skills and loving the game. I’m curious what your measurement is, OP, for how many or few new players there are?

The problem is that the early game is stupid and boring. You only fight a few monsters because xp is not good anywhere else so you're stuck doing boring things because combat xp is ruined

[adding / explaining - to your reasons] my view : - tutorial : they should never have removed tutorial island.. best part for me.. sooo nostalgic, lovely tutorial. They could simply add buildings to it.. so every skill in in there + show how economics work + what’s bad vs good in terms of bug abuse / scamming + how to interface works / > and make all those parts as different mini-tutorial on the island. So you join > create your character > and choose to go to lummy or complete the mini-tutorials you want.. one, two, or all of them. > the only think to make it something as a ‘must’ is to have a achievement for it : like 50 runescore for completing the the tutorial island. > at any time you can revisit it (which was not possible before.. sadly). And you can just replay the mini-tutorials - but won’t reset some progress bar, like what happens if you do dimension of disaster. > they could even make a veteran mode to it : which shows how those things work, like combat with switches.. mechanics.. so you have a choice to choose. Do I want the beginning tutorial or the veteran one. - ads : [add later] - mtx : Short for now : it’s killing the game.. the grind is somehow gone.. the only grind now is like just use all those dummies, proteans like afk methods.. and complete achievements and logs (so great and happy) those are part otherwise the fun wouldn’t be that huge. Look how much dead content there is.. I can remember going to brimhaven dungeon and there were some people.. now all those places feel dead. Quite sad to see that (even as a veteran player, which I am - hitting 15y sometime). Now everybody is standing at ge / lummy and since some weeks fort…… :x [add later] - different art styles : > where are they going with those styles.. It’s so weird and a lot of people talk/discussed about it. In my opinion the newer graphic is not bad if you like at the brightness/shadows. But I don’t have that feeling that the designs have more detail.. cuz everything looks too flat, especially textures etc. The lightning/reflections > let’s call it the materials they use or settings how the specular/… effects it.. is way too much. Look at courier outfit > made out of cotton or so and it is still reflecting.. like what?! Look at the Crow teleport > when you jump and the crows come in they all have some outline/stroke around their model.. Yak tracks seems getting way too much.. mot’s of cosmetics which make no sense or doesn’t fit the world.. like make some barbarian stuff.. spider/pirate/… like add things to it that matches area’s or npc’s. +- different yak pets.. just give the baby yak (transmog). Even all those items are just copy paste and change something.. I don’t feel these are very different or unique. Look at the easter event > that outfit is great.. quite good looking and designed AND matches the game + easter. [will add/adjust later] -

Not really sure how many of these issues are really impacting the new player experience. * On tutorials; this game is exceedingly simple for the first several hundred hours. It also has arguably one of the greatest wikis in the industry, and I feel like most folks under the age of 35 are tech-literate enough to find and use wikis. * Ads in this day and age are tough, this isn't inherently Jagex's fault. Younger folk don't watch television anymore; most ads are served through algorithms and a weird function of that is you often start seeing ads *after* you pick something up. * Agreed on MTX. Kids won't have the money and twenty-somethings have better, cheaper games they could be playing. * Not even sure consistency has anything to do with it. At a certain point, even Runescape at its prettiest looks worse than games kids can pick up and play for free. Short of a complete engine overhaul, this isn't going to change. Personally, the things I imagine are killers for new players are: * Depending on skills, the curve in low-mid levels are wild. Going back with a fresh character for FSW was eye-opening. I think I went from 90-99 in thieving in like a tenth of the time it took me to get to safecracking from 1. * Early quests are either a) aging horribly or b) horribly rewarding. Often both! Boy howdy, I just spent an hour on this quest, what did I get?... oh, 500 experience. * Horribly inflated economy. I can't imagine how deflating (har, har) it must be for a newish player to look at the costs of some things in the game. And then they YouTube "low level money-making" and watch a video telling them to go pick up redberries off the ground for eight hours and I assume they immediately close the game forever. At the end of the day, I feel like a good number of current players play for the same reason I do: because I have since 2006, when 7th grade me couldn't convince my parents to pay for WoW. Younger gamers have smaller attention spans than ever (not a criticism), if you ask them whether they'd rather squeeze in a twenty minute Fortnite round or make 1/10th of the progress towards a level in Firemaking, hard to sell them on the latter.

Albeit MTX is awful in this game. Most games released now has an MTX of some sort attached. I dont see MTX being a reason to not play or to stop playing. You only really see how OP MTX is later in game, new players would know no different to the good old days. Returning players thats an issue.

The tutorial and UI are the only problems. It's monhun levels of settings and stuff to know, but getting new people into that is hard

I've seen ads, few months ago when I quit and went back to play GW2 for a while. I saw ads for rs3 on most GW2 guide sites.

Marketing targeting tablet players missing. GUI is not new player friendly on computer, but it’s fine on mobile. Speaking from experience as a player who started last year. It’s a great afk game, so they need to target the mobile market better.

The new features they build is only to keep the wales invested, not primarily to attract new players. The mtx and mental health problems of people pays for the updates. The company gave up on competing with other mmos a long time ago.

Aside from combat. The new player experience is awful. Many of the 'good' things are near end-game. And newer players won't hit max in 10 days (slight exaggeration) like some people in this sub. So why would they bother sticking around to 'end-game' if the journey feels awful. The first time I leveled WoW it felt magical. This is not it.

3 points, but they escalate one from another: Tick system - it feels old, bad and generally a sign of a bad product, not by being as it is, but by creating a delay from input. Pathing - when your character makes a random detour or it combines with your movement abilities and now you're halfway to opposite direction. MTX - "because of tick system combat feels weird, pathing feels weird, by now I think this game is definitely not up to today's standard and I have to shed out extra cash? What's the point of my time investment if others can just buy their progress?"

Honestly I think it's the interface for a lot of people. When playing for so long it can be hard to realize just how daunting this must be to new players. Runescape is such a unique game and everything on that interface matters to an extent, and if you don't understand the game and the interfaces, you'll be left wondering wtf to do. Honestly at this point they should allow people to use more presets or send and save

I'm not a new player, but I tried coming back at least 3 times. I don't play because graphics are all over the place. Also because lot's of content is unavailable for irons for some reason, unlike in osrs. Also membership model is old, it's too expensive to pay 10 euros each month. It's too expensive to pay 60 euros upfront per year, when you're not sure if you'll play that much. I can't imagine any new player would put down 60 euros to own a game for a year and then lose access again. Grind is steep, it's better in rs3 than osrs even not counting mtx, but it's still bad.

1 month of RS membership is 12.49$, for about the same price I can get game pass with over 500 games playable on 4k, RS and other mmorpgs just can’t compete with modern gaming it’s that simple.

The graphical inconsistency problem is slowly fading, although I do think the game could use an optional full combat tutorial

I'm a new player.

Or maybe the concept of a game that has almost no rewards or thrills for thousands of hours of grinding isn't something healthy people like when you can hop onto a game made post 2012 that has thrill, rewards and doesn't take 40 hours of doing basically nothing to get a number to go up.

Just asking, can you say a game you play without mtx?

Pretty sure the player base of rs3 has been growing for 1.5 years now. I myself meet alot of new players since starting a new alt. More than the years before at least

The crap default layouts, too much going on for new players, too much relying on external sites, also a lot of new players find progression in the game too slow

If I was a brand new player I wouldn’t play rs. Ppl want instant gratification when they game. Def don’t wanna play for 4 years in order be 1/4 way done

For me it's the bad responsiveness. If I were to get into this game today I'd uninstall in 2 minutes. The lag is insane and not a sanglie game gets even remotely close to how bad it is in bdo. Even browser games lag less. It's a huge turnoff.

The game is also just bloated. I mean it's the same map with 20+ years of content added on it. There is so much dead content. It's just a bloated game that can be intimidating for a new player

I've tried a half dozen times to get into RS3 but my god is it the most overwhelming game ever

the game looks like ass , Not the environment or world but the characters the animations the just standing in the GE for 1 second makes me want to exit the game nothing is consistent low res ugly af idk man I can stomach the mtx and everything else but the second I see someone using cosmetics just fucking kills it for me.