Locked Future updates.. plans...?

[Mean]

As many have mentioned, the key to keeping a body of players will be transparency in the changes you make, after someone is invested in the server (Time, social ties, money, etc.) It feels almost rude for something to be changed without some sort of mention beforehand. Not saying you should be 'asking', but letting the players know is always good. I also think you should see how passionate people are about unexpected changes as a good sign -- there is a large amount of players who are heavily invested and the passionate responses are evidence of that.

For PVM-

Find other ways to modify PVM difficulty that don't involve changes to health pools or damage output of the of the boss.

(with potentially the exception of telos, he is perhaps a bit too weak)

 - This would mean modifying what 'difficulty' is in the future should be applied to upcoming content, as there are a HUGE amount of bosses not yet in game to choose from that you could realistically modify in your own way -- Not every mechanic is intended for legacy, as we know. I don't think custom boss mechanics would be a bad thing.

I do think that adding EOC abilities will be a detriment and should be avoided.

Obviously, there are players who welcome raw health/damage output changes but as far as I've seen those players are the in the minority. (They also exist in a self-affirming bubble) Playing a piece of content, difficult at first, but then becomes easy as you repeat the content is not a reflection on the difficulty of the content. -- It seems things are made difficult due to the response of veteran players who've accumulated hundreds of kills. This is nonsensical. 

 

As far as drawing in new players (and keeping them) - I think it would be beneficial for you to sometimes think of the player base as one large clan. Regardless of if a player is skilling, pvp, or pvm oriented, a strong social aspect of the game is what retains players longer than the typical couple of months. There are a number of past suggestions that fall under this idea for me, such as -- A public instance boss spotlight that has bonus % on drop rates, the idea of having a boss that spawns in the wildy. You could also have a key spawn in one location of the wild while a chest spawns elsewhere -- Simply, new rotating events that stay relevant for players longer than just getting the best pickaxe, that way the community engagement is consistent.

 

Adding achievement diaries/runescore system would be a great way to increase longevity as well -- give little things for players to go after, a completed runescore diary is hundreds of hours of content in RS3.

 

The in game economy -- is terrible. Item prices in the GE make no sense at all and are often completely untethered from the actual value of an item. Due to the low volume of some items and the fact that some players have tens of billions of GP from pre-thieving stall nerf, these players can entirely dictate the prices of items in the GE by buying them whenever they get posted and immediately posting them for ridiculous prices. Players also insist on trying to charge pre-nerf prices, which now take several hours more to reach for new players. Thus, buying/selling is stagnated for everything that is above a 1/30 drop-rate. Allowing GP to be created faster will not fix this, it will make it worse. Honestly, the economy of the server should've been reset to some degree with the thieving stall change. I don't know of any other way that would fix this nor would any of the other suggestions here regarding trading make a difference when new players are at the mercy of prices that existed when you could make 100m in two hours. 

 

Last but not least -- Velheim realistically doesn't touch at all the massive pool of players who love to PVP, mostly because of balancing issues in legacy mode PVP.. admittedly I don't have the data to give a meaningful suggestion on how that could be fixed, but I think a static debuff to PVP damage could be a start, at least to the point of a 1hitKill not being possible. (Sorry Lush) -- I would love to see the wilderness alive and dangerous, as it should be.

 

P.S. -- Never add gambling. 

 

[Xaris]

Personally, I am going to stick to the same thing I have been talking about since I joined the server.

Item Values: 

After Gold drops were nerfed it was expected for all items to crash not heavily but a fair bit. (Which would make sense)

Problem being, this was not the case. But why? Ever since I joined it was quite clear price manipulation was happening

at such a severe rate where the top players in terms of wealth managed to hold item values at same price by essentially-

lying even after the cash nerf. 

 

*Players have spent hundreds of hours AFKing bosses/low-mid tier AOEable monsters for cash and hundreds of hours,

buying items with cash to eventually resell for profit.(Players were even insta buying items such as Dyes on the G.E for 400, 500 and even 600m each constantly; then they try to resell for way more so it comes to no surprise they managed to keep values up even after the Coin nerf, because some users have so much bulk of so many items including Dyes to where a Coin nerf this large would cripple their bank value quickly hence them doing what they can to keep item values up and when newer players eventually join they have to deal with the nerfed cash(While rich players have cash gains from before the cash nerf.) Meaning players who join will struggle to get items simply because the item values are no longer matching up with the obtainability of cash..

 

Which brings us to how item values are being manipulated.

Rather good question if you think about it, but a lot of buying/selling of items does happen on Discord in private messages. This is where players can easily trick players especially with the ability of:

A. The Grand Exchange has a History tab. 

B. You can send pictures on Discord.

C. There is no form of Tax in the Grand Exchange and users who fake buy/sell between their own accounts has no consequences such as a coin tax. 

Not to mention the fact where rich players will try buying something from someone and if the item seller is unsure of the items value they usually have an alt or a friend yell in chat saying they are selling said item for (X) amount to help trick them into thinking that is the items value. (I see this happen quite often and it's rather unfortunate to see.) 

-We also have rich players that still have so much Gold somehow just emptying the Grand Exchange of things like Armadyl, Bandos, Bonds and much much more and try to resell in the Grand Exchange for way higher to make a bit of profit. 

Winter Revel dumped a bunch of bonds into the Grand Exchange at 20,000,000 Each and in result a lot of rich players bought tons of them before players who really needed them for game perks could buy them and the players who bought some in bulk resold in G.E for higher to aim for profit. (Luckily some players who actually needed bonds managed to get just a couple before his stock sold out.) 

[THINGS WE NEED]

*[A counter of some kind to prevent item(s) buying in the Grand Exchange and then instantly reselling in the G.E for higher.] 

*[The ability for players to search up individual items in the history tab and see how much the items have been bought/sold for in the past(Not just their personal G.E History, this would prevent some level of price manipulation.)

============================================================

BONDS:

Bonds can be bought for $1.00 each and you wont need to convert them to make them tradeable.

I feel as if this is a missed opportunity for a very good money sink for the game to help balance

things out. I think we should remove bonds from the Shop entirely and just have VelheimCoins

on the donation store. This being players would have to spend cash to convert the Bonds into

their tradeable variant in order to resell on the Grand Exchange which might help force item values

to drop to meet the most recent cash drop nerf.

(This is assuming the price manipulation is monitored and dealt with so prices can properly even out and become more stable to work for all players.) 

============================================================

In short:

1. Price Manipulation needs to be resolved because it honestly is damaging the game at a rapid rate.

2. If we can deal with price manipulation where players are keeping item values up even after a heavy

cash obtainability nerf so they don't take a massive hit, we can then work on money sinks(This would allow cash obtained from before the cash gain nerf to be removed so prices can drop down just enough to meet the nerf.

3. Ability for players to see G.E transactions by others by searching the item by specific name for the last (X) amount of days, weeks or longer maybe if possible. (Also tp prevent G.E merching.)

4. Something to prevent players from being able to Buy something in the G.E and instantly Resell for higher(Example)

If you buy a Bond(s) through the G.E you must wait X amount of time before you can sell that exact item within the Grand Exchange.

=============================================================

Two more things came to mind while typing this. :3

1. Bonds in Vote, Loyalty and Trivia store.

-I feel like 28 vote points for a bond from the Vote Shop is rather balanced,

however the Loyalty shop considering you can play on up to 3 accounts at once

if you vote on one account you get max of 300 loyalty points each time and

maybe 200 - 250 each on your other two accounts(This brings a lot of bonds

into the game considering bonds only cost 14,400 each.) I would suggest

increasing the price of bonds in the Loyalty Shop. 

-Lastly: Bonds from the Trivia Store. Players sometimes notice trivia's end almost instantly especially when the player count during night time is low. I did some testing and if you answer the trivia question on 1 client and logout to an alt you can not answer it on your next account. But what you can do is play on three clients at once and answer the trivia on all 3 accounts(Maybe due to it being client based rather than IP based?) Not rightly sure but that is why trivia questions end almost instantly because tons of people do it. 

Trivia Questions happens very frequently and bonds only cost 100 trivia points, the trivia shop alone brings in tons of bonds according to a handful of players.

Some changes that could fix this:

A. Prevent users from answering on multiple accounts by only allowing it to be answered once per IP

B. Remove bonds from the trivia store entirely (Trivia being super often brings in bulk amounts of cash + bonds constantly

B. (1) I would prefer this option since it would overall decrease the obtainability of bonds a bit to give an incentive to donate for them (As would increasing the cost for bonds in the Loyalty Shop.) 

C. Increase the gap between each Trivia Question.

===================================

Lastly

2. Old Grand Exchange Buy/Sell offers on items.

We have item Buy/Sell offers in the G.E by players who don't even login anymore and most are extremely old Buy/Sell offers (Before the cash nerf.) 

We need to make it so after a given period of time players will NOT see your buy/sell offers in the G.E unless you login Nor can you actually have an item sold/bought with your offers voided due to inactivity. 

Example:

If I throw a buy offer on an Armadyl Godsword for 20M ---- Or a sell offer of an Armadyl Godsword for 20m in the G.E

(lets say Buy/Sell offers are voided after 5 days of inactivity)

After I have been offline for a total of 5 days no players would see my Buy/Sell offers in the Grand Exchanges Player listings.

Now lets say someone throws in a buy offer for an Armadyl Godsword for 20M

-With my Buy/Sell offers being voided due to inactivity my Armadyl Godsword would not sell to said person for 20M

(This would overall give an incentive to be relatively active.) 

Upon logging back in all Buy/Sell offers would become visible to all players again and if that buy offer for an AGS is still in the G.E upon logging back in the transaction would automatically be made. 

The same thing would work the other way around also. 

 

Now what if two people had buy offers in the G.E for an AGS at 20m, who gets it? I feel as if the person who had the buy offer in the G.E for the longest would get it.

===================================

Side Note: Sorry to hear you feel this way Sand, hopefully we can all work together to build it back up just hang in there.

[Winter Revel]

7 hours ago, sterling said:

Do you have any idea what would happen current Regulars if they get discontinued? Would we just keep our accounts as is? Or would our accounts get knocked down to Novice xp rates?

Accs would stay as is, I said that XD

[DuendNess]

Best idea to date! 

 

maybe when you cancel a reaper task you don't get the same task B2B That's enough Velheim for this month.

[Kasha]

Some suggestions from @Korbin because he's too lazy to post xD

1. Reading over the suggestions, seen a couple talk about how pressure to prestige and re-grind is off putting

Then why not have each mode get an increase to their xp rate after each prestige, not much to make it broken, but like, we're on classic atm with 2x, if we prestige at all 99s, that xp rate goes up to 2.5x-3x to make the next grind slightly, but not too much easier.

Normal 200x accounts, meh, balls to them. Have prestige cap out at a certain xp rate, say classic goes up in increments from 2x to 5x at max, get 0.5x extra each prestige. 10x could cap out at 50x. Give prestige more value than just points!

2. Give more for us to spend points on. Sitting here at harps wishing for more per tick... why not stick a perk on it? Imagine a 2k VC perk that notes archaeology stuff. Give us some more tiers on perks that stack up or give different buffs.

3. You know how shooting stars are useless once you've got everything from them? Let us spend dust on spins/vote books/bonds or something! Keep it viable, like Evil Trees are always more popular because of the gp and spins. And the stars have a daily limit so its not like it'll be a massive deal in terms of an influx of bonds, want more? Donate!

4. Give methods of obtaining the xp outfits other than spins. Like the fletching/herblore/smiting outfits, etc. Could be on a mini game, spotlighted skilling activity or just a small % from training the skill.

5. Upgraded bonecrusher please :3 gives the choice of what bones to crush and which to auto pickup or not.

6. Code missing relics. They're what make archaeology viable and even if they need to be adjusted to work around existing perks, they're a great source of perk rewards for people putting time into the skill.

[plusrw]

1. Playtime points, 1 point every 24 hours of playtime which results in being able to exchange for other items, bonds, skilling items etc..

 

2. More Trivia questions, I've only played the past couple of days and I already know all the answers to the Trivia questions that come out.

[Zog]

Hey Sandstorm, I've been playing Velheim for about 4 months or so and I love what you've made, it's clear that you have strong ambition to create great content unlike any RSPS so I just want to praise you on that first and foremost.

I also wanted to say that I'm loving the discussion around PVM and Money Sinks, Skilling, New game modes etc. and think the ideas being posted are well thought out by players and are coming from a truly passionate place. 

Since PVM and Skilling aren't my strong suit I will brush over what I generally think needs to be fixed as a Novice PVMER/Skiller at first glance; And then get to the recurring theme that keeps popping up to rejuvinate player base: PVP/Wilderness Content. 

For PVM, Gear Gaps between bosses and the accessibility of high level bosses with low level gear I think should be addressed. I grinded out full sirenic, eof, flarefrosts, rod lotd sgb thinking I would need it to kill Telos as I thought he'd be hard to kill, soon to find out i can basically kill anythng with an armadyl set, souls and hex bow.

(IF I'm wrong about anything mentioned just dismiss it as I am only a novice in this aspect of the game and more experienced PVMers should be talked to about these things).

For Skilling, I think the idea mentioned by someone above about increasing the rewards (GP/XP) for skillers who have higher engagement through clicks and efficiency is an amazing idea and will really encourage players to become more efficient while also learning the mechanics of the game.

PVP RELATED

Now as a RS3 player who participated in Legacy PVP in the peak periods from 2016-2018ish I became a pker through that content as it was a very fun and new sytem of combat that no one had tried before; and I think it has lots of potential to be amazing through a few combat system balances.

These balances might not encourage people to start PVPing because I know a lot of PVMers that are as stuck in their ways of PVM; as I was with PVP, but I do know that it will actually allow for people who do come into the wilderness to enjoy new content fairly and actually have a more balanced risk to reward ratio to not die to a 8k Dbow spec (yes we all know its Lush) through prayer. Through experiencing a more balanced combat system in the wilderness, people will feel much more safe to come in and do what they need to do, which would then passively increase the pk base.

I would be more than glad to talk with you to brainstorm ideas to help rejuvinate the wilderness and create a whole different player demorgraphic, creating a whole new path and stream of income for old/new players to come but most importantly, creating an INTERMINGLING OF BOTH PVMERS AND PVPERS. This is just so these parts of the game become interconnected and all flourish at the same time, not having one side of the game that is literally dead area.

For the non-PVP Wilderness content, I think it is crucial to create some sort of risk/reward system for skilling that would truly encourage people to continuously go back to the wilderness, whether it be for good XP gains or item drops, you name it. It just has to be something that is WORTH coming back to unlike the CST mentioned many times. A boss that spawns in varying locations or some sort of NPC to kill is also a nice base idea that can be built upon to be made unique and fun to visit every time you go back to it.

 

To address the people that passionately hate Wilderness related/PVP content and the people who do it, I just want to say that when this thread was first posted I didn't want to comment anything as I agreed with all the ideas being said in the comments related to PVM and the other things I mentioned in the second paragraph. Though, since then many reccomendations for Wilderness/PVP content additions were made by players who dislike wilderness/PVP, I thought I'd volunteer everything I know to help this aspect of the game as I haven't seen many consistent PVPer's on this server who might be able to provide help in this area. 

 

I also always think that things should be done with prioritisation in mind so with this said, I advise you to talk to players that are the true backbone to your server base and discuss with them, what specific content would help encourage players like themselves to come back NOW.

Lastly Sand, just wanted to say that everything I mentioned above is for helping the server base flourish. I want to help you improve your masterpiece. If the way I typed something isn't gramatically correct and came across as rude or anything, I do apologise as I am just trying to best express my self and not force them onto you, as I said, prioritisation is key.

 

Edit: P.S. I'm Diamond rank IDK why I have the ruby title still on forums lel

 

 

Edited July 18, 2021 by Zog
add info

[Xaris]

One more thing I did not put in my post above. 

Cash from the Squeal of Fortune

Unlike RS3 where you get a max of 2 keys for members and 1 for F2P some donator ranks get bulk amounts of SOF Spins.

A lot of people have all kinds of Alt-Accounts all with donator ranks and combined that adds up to a lot of spins all together. 

I personally have noticed the 10M and 50M rolls are relatively common I believe we should make these a bit more rarer to actually

hit. Doing so could help improve the overall Economy also. 

[MrNasty]

surge/ bladed dive (speed up the tempo of the game)

quick home teles ( utilized through vis wax)

use of the full globetrotter outfit (gloves don't work)

being able to use more than 1 eof

*weekend events*

certain bosses get highlighted and for a few hours they get increase drop rates

minigames give 2x points

loot share masses including ironmen

 

slayer point shop - increase superiors spawn rate, being able to prefer and extend

being able to reset auras through reaper points (or maybe even having the Ring of death lose charges when you die but you keep aura and familiar)

Different donator zones or "perks" above diamond. currently there's not really an incentive to excel above diamond        ( rank wise )

add nihils and ripper demon familiars to the game

make khopeshs a slash weapon 

being able to access the "wars retreat boss shop"

Gizmo bags

MORE BANK SPACE above 806

 

 

 

[doke]

On the advertising side, i'd make a point to identify that this server has RS3 Content with NO EOC. Emphasize that somehow, i.e: Want to play RS3 Content & the newest bosses without EOC? 

 

Admittedly I skipped over this server many times because this is what I saw on the advertisement page:

8 fully functioning skills (including Divination, Invention & Archaeology), All 3 Elite Dungeons, An authentic server with NO customs. Mining & Smithing rework, Wilderness slayer,

 

I immediately NOPED, until I realized that there is no EOC system in this game. 

[Sun]

I have been here since day dot. Whether it is 1 person on the server (me) or 100+, Sand what you do, are doing somehow makes me want to stay. Keep doing what you are doing. 

I think I have played this more than RS3 in regards to continuous play w/o breaks. That's saying something. I have even had an account wipe/server reset and still play.

No matter what people will always want more, quick, fast and needy. It's the generation of today, we are so used to -instant-

Create content that would make you want to play and the followers will soon come behind :)

[Pvm Chapi]

As a veteran player that "quit" the server a couple days after ed3 release I can give some feedback on what could help me and others stay

Make PvM higher skill - NOT HARDER

Many people are asking to make PvM harder and there have been instances where bosses were made harder, it's the right idea but very wrong execution. Let's take kalphite king for example, it used to be very easy to afk solo and to compensate, the minions were made into mini magic cannon machines spamming 200-300s on you if you don't have mage prayer. This was a terrible change imo, made the boss more annoying not harder, with no proper AoE to kill the minions people simply find spots to hide from the minions and camp range gear to compensate with magic defense and hope to get magic phase kills

So instead of this linear nerf how about we do something more interesting, for example:

• Increase KK's defence/weakness against the combat triangle based on the phase, forcing players to bring hybrid armor and multiple attack styles or form teams with roles. Currently everyone just uses ranged for magic defense + good damage
• Add a green attack like Rs3, obviously we don't have abilities but something simple like wear a shield after the green to cover from the insta kill (Make sure to implement an attack cycle like in rs3 where the green always falls in the 3rd cycle or something and not just random)
• Add a bleed ability to melee phase that can be cleared by wearing a shield
• Fix mage phase balls to have proper timing (they are too fast and cant be dodged without running around all the time)
• Add weakness to keris (add desert amulet 4)

Boost Bosses basic drops

Currently, pretty much every boss (other than telos maybe) people only farm them for the rare drops, the side loot is always awful and once the main drop is nerfed nobody does the boss anymore. This would be a deviation from Rs3 style but maybe a big table of random noted skilling supplies that players can reliably sell in ge for a profit (currently only drop that fits this is dragon bones in vindicta). Elite dungeons could really benefit from this, ed2 is 100% dead content after ecb was removed from drop table (I know this is a flaw in rs3 as well), so some actually interesting drops to the minibosses and bosses here would be nice. This applies to ed1 and ed3 as well

Invention

Two main changes I would suggest to invention:

1. Fix the gizmo calculator, either make it 100% like rs3 so that we can use wiki's calculator reliably (also adding inv potions) and be somewhat confident that we can get the perks we want without doing 100 attempts at a combo OR show percentages of success somehow in the creation interface. Also make combos easier to get, bis stuff or any decent combo at all is just pointless to even attempt

2. This can be quite controversial since it deviates highly from rs3 but I think it would make a more interesting and fluid ecosystem to boss drops. I purpose adding custom perks or changing existing perk recipes to make all rare components useful. Gwd1 components are all 100% useless with the exception of armadyl, and as a consequence bandos and sara items are worthless and new players can actually lose money by farming these bosses.

If all rare components had an use, items like bandos, sara items, seismics, noxious items (except scythe) and many others would actually have a value on pair with their rarity and people would buy/sell these much more frequently with the end goal of disassembling them for components, creating more item sinks so the market isn't overflown with them and their price crashes to shit. (take seismic wand/orb going for 30m each in ge and no one buying it...)

Transparency in game changes, drops rates, etc

I know pretty much everyone mentioned this already but please before adding a huge nerf/buff to something discuss it with the community, no hidden nerfs like those done to ed3/ed2 base drop table and a couple months ago to pretty much every boss. Make the examine drop table more reliable, in ed1 and ed3 there are items like rune salvages that show as x% to drop 1-50 yet 90% of the time it drops its only 1? Either make the 1-50 a uniform distribution or share the % changes for the different amounts

 

Thanks for reaching out and listening to the community, this was very much needed

[Miser]

I think having the KOTS event available to new players would have been smart. I believe I suggested this on discord but I told all my RSPS friends about it and none of them were interested since there wasn't a time limit, when you leave it open ended it just means whoever plays the most wins. Compared to a 10 hour where new players can get in and learn a bit to win. I genuinely believe this greatly missed the mark on what could have been a massive gain for the server. I am close with many RSPS youtubers and know quite a few who were excited about it until reading the full rules.

[Yggdrasil]

53 minutes ago, Miser said:

I think having the KOTS event available to new players would have been smart. I believe I suggested this on discord but I told all my RSPS friends about it and none of them were interested since there wasn't a time limit, when you leave it open ended it just means whoever plays the most wins. Compared to a 10 hour where new players can get in and learn a bit to win. I genuinely believe this greatly missed the mark on what could have been a massive gain for the server. I am close with many RSPS youtubers and know quite a few who were excited about it until reading the full rules.

10 hour event for 4k USD in prizes? Hard pass, sorry.

[Tits]

Gambling is the key