Bosses: faster to kill or higher droprates?

[Mike]

We are currently in the final stages of running simulations to determine how fast our NPC's can be killed before and after the update on 21 January. The numbers are being crunched and decisions are being made. One thing is certain: with a few exceptions (read: bosses that don't have OSRS stats yet, such as Nex, the WildyWyrm and TzTok-Jad), all our bosses will become significantly faster to kill as of the next update.

With an appropriate global NPC defence modifier for all NPC's that have OSRS stats, many bosses will become (almost) as fast to kill as before the 21 January update. Some bosses, such as Zulrah, Cerberus, Skotizo, Vorkath, Alchemical Hydra and all ToB and CoX bosses, will even become significantly faster to kill than before.

However, there are a few exceptions. A couple of our bosses, including a few wilderness bosses such as Venenatis and Callisto, will still be quite a bit slower to kill than before, because they have very high defence in OSRS, which they didn't on PkHonor until a week ago.

For these bosses, we have a choice to make: either apply an exception to the global defence modifier and reduce their defence even further or significantly increase their droprates to compensate. Which would you rather see?

Please note that this poll is merely meant to get an indication from the community, we will still be making the final call on this.

[Sparky96]

Based on seeing how the community reacted to the slower boss kills a few things seem largely evident. The community has became accustomed to and enjoys a faster pace pvm experience and its what many of us love about the server.

If we wanted a slow experience we would be on OSRS. Being said in the end of the day nothing tells more truth than the data. With the extensive logging system you've beautifully put together i'd be curious to know if you have data for something like avg time spent damaging bosses for the whole community or a similar data point that you could run some data analytics on. Potentially compare it to the avg time over a group of similar 7 day cycles. I know this has a few flaws and may not be possible however i am curious as to what your data alone can tell you about how this update REALLY impacted the players experience rather than basing it on upset opinions and the loudest voices alone.

If my hypothesis is correct based on what i've heard and seen actively playing in the community during this update a large amount of players have claimed to move to pvping & skilling as many of the monsters even in current form are painfully slow to kill compared to what the players are used to.

[Attack like]

fast kill = brain happy

Id rather kill something in 30 seconds than 1:30 even if it takes the same amount of time on average to get an unique. If I wanted to go hit a boss for 5 minutes straight id go play osrs. I have ench comp and pretty much all BIS gear and if im sitting here thinking shit is taking forever to kill even with the best weapons and what the monster is weak to (DHL for dragons etc) I cant imagine what its like for new players/irons with shit gear trying to do wilderness bosses solo. The defence levels also highkey scuffed me trying to do my wildy diaries on my iron because it has shit gear. I could barely kill all the bosses in 1 trip before the defence now it feels like it either takes forever or I simply cant do enough dps to kill them all in general.

[Church]

Harder kills mean more supplies required and could be beneficial to the economy.

[Finalizer]

The economy is already messed up in this server. Everything is already 100s times the actual price. Making it harder is not gonna fix the economy but making new players feeling like its pointless to grind something for minutes just for a dragon bone to train slayer or a piece of equipment thats useless against bosses. Especially for ironmen players. Dont get me wrong, i like the skilling a lot but PVM not so much anymore.

[Pk gts]

faster kill

[Rapsey]

I think the right solution to this isn't one or the other extreme but a balance of both. In general I think most bosses on PkHonor were a bit too easy and should be made a little harder, but I also think the drop rates should be buffed to compensate. It shouldn't be as slow as OSRS but it also shouldn't be as brainless and mundane as it was.

[Sparky96]

Harder kills mean more supplies required and could be beneficial to the economy.

Not anywhere on a large enough scale to matter.

All super prays stuff is in store unlimited and many people have 60k+ from 2b herb.

Ovl 1 pot last 20 min = 3 pots per hour per user.

Let’s say 50 users on at once that’s 150 pots being using per hour.

multiple users literally have 100k overloads with this math that’s enough to supply the entire 50 people pvming on the server for 666 hrs straight without a break or equivalent to 27 days straight of 50 people never missing even 1 second of an overload dose.

Assuming not even 1 more overload is made or dropped from brim chests.

Please don’t use the economy as a excuse to make the game harder

[Snapzhot]

I think the right solution to this isn't one or the other extreme but a balance of both. In general I think most bosses on PkHonor were a bit too easy and should be made a little harder, but I also think the drop rates should be buffed to compensate. It shouldn't be as slow as OSRS but it also shouldn't be as brainless and mundane as it was.

This makes too much sense.

[Ephriam]

I think the right solution to this isn't one or the other extreme but a balance of both. In general I think most bosses on PkHonor were a bit too easy and should be made a little harder, but I also think the drop rates should be buffed to compensate. It shouldn't be as slow as OSRS but it also shouldn't be as brainless and mundane as it was.

I understand this to some degree however irons are getting fucked in the ass by how hard everything is. I'm ench comping another acc at the moment and its a main. It's still seems semi easy with an honor to Pvm but I was wearing best gear on task and could barely do any damage to bandos boss on the account. It was the honor basically killing it for me. When I made my iron I didn't even have a mid teir set up I was using torags, chaotic, and ely. It took me 400 kc to get bandos top and bottoms and that felt like a huge, hard, grind as it was since the bandos boss and its minions do tons of damage. Also with how hard corp is at the moment it will take an iron without any good gear like 10-15mins to kill. Also with all the huge buffs to bosses it throws off a lot of the Pvm dairies and wild diaries. A few days after the buff was done I tried to do the 3 trips of every boss. It was absolutely miserable. The bosses didn't do much damage but they took so long to kill. I ended up logging into my main and asked a clan mate to help me get all the bosses down in health and each trip still took over 20mins. There is only so much room for pots so if I had tried to do it by myself I might have completed it but I think I would have ran out of prayer or overload pots. It was weird though because vetion felt like one of the easiest bosses to kill when it use to be the most ass to kill. The update doesn't bother me too much on the main account side due to access to so much gear/potions/ and honors, but it does concern me when people start playing a new iron or start the game as new account. Also if the drops don't match how they used to the eco is going to get fucked. We have an issue with hoarding and this is going to make everything even more expensive. It's been hard for me to grind anything on my non ench comp account because nothing feel rewarding like it used too. I used to be able to grind a boss for 10 hours and it was fun. Now I find killing the same boss for 1 hour is lack luster because how long it takes. Even if drop rates were buff with the damage it still wouldn't feel as rewarding. I also think we need to remember that yes everything was easier then Old School RuneScape but that's why this private server is so appealing. People like feeling like they are achieving something. We can't expect everyone to be a sweaty gamer like nazuth, empty pot, eye of ra, pkh takeover, or Mitrovic. Some of us have kids and other obligations but still want to spent time on pkhonor. I play osrs and pkhonor. I have close to max gear on osrs including a t bow. I don't find it fun to pvm on old school, except raiding. I find myself playing pkhonor over RuneScape because I liked how it was unique but similar to osrs. I wish also that if you implement buffs and other things like that you'd do it more slowly so that people can get used to certain things instead of changing a bunch of shit making the game unrecognizeable to some players. Change is good and over the last three years I've been excited to see new content and more quality of life changes. I think if you changed each boss like you did in the last update you should have done it one by one not all at once. I also think that if the wider population of players aren't complaining about something and its not breaking the game (safespoting bosses that's shouldn't be safe spotable, and duping) why change it? Future content should match osrs but I don't think most players mind how the older content was. Work on things like gauntlet, group ironman, and challenge mode raids. I'm excited to see what ya'll have coming in the future especially with nazuth helping develop content. There is way more I could bring up but those are my simplified thoughts.