Improvements For Multiple PvP Minigames

Almost every PvP minigame struggles to have a viable reward shop.

However, a viable reward shop is the #1 driver of activity in any minigame.

There's a few rules we have to follow when it comes to this topic:

1. It should not be optimal to boost or AFK for rewards.
2. The rewards should be good for normal players, but not worth botting.
3. It's very difficult to pass rewards that might give PKers more power in the Wilderness. I do want to point out that most LMS and BH rewards did pass their polls though, and these PvP minigames seem to be quite active.

We already know what Jagex has tried:

1. Jagex has nerfed the reward shops of several minigames to the ground, removing bots and real players alike.
2. Last Man Standing requires a minimum total level of 750 and 30 Quest points, or a minimum total level of 1,500 if they have less than 30 Quest points. This is a restriction to even play the minigame.
3. Last Man Standing requires 1 win to buy any rewards from the reward shop. (Which backfired and LMS bots became worse).
4. Soul Wars requires a minimum total level of 500 and a combat level of 40 to play the minigame.
5. Soul Wars tracks your contribution activity and scales your Zeal accordingly.
6. Castle Wars has no requirements to play or to buy rewards at all. The PvP Arena also has no requirements at all.
7. Castle Wars Plaudits can only be earned on the official Castle Wars world.
8. Soul Wars auto-scrambles the teams when the round starts.
9. Pre-EoC Castle Wars had a lot more cosmetic cape rewards.

So here are the general rules for what works:

1. Cosmetics tend to pass polls.
2. Some monetary value rewards work, but limits are needed to prevent botting.

There are a few metrics by which Jagex could scale or lock monetary rewards away from bots, some of which Jagex has and hasn't tried before:

• Quest points
• Total level
• Achievement Diary Completions
• Milestones of the minigame itself (win one game of Last Man Standing, achieve Dragon rank in PvP Arena, buy the Soul Wars cape first)
• Design ranked reward shops (see my Unbottable 6v6 PvP Arena concept)
• Don't design minigames around using alternative savegame worlds, wherever possible. They allow bots to participate with no requirements and no equipment. Aka, no startup cost, and no cost when the bot gets banned.
• Untradeable rewards

Jagex could do more of separating the requirements to play the game versus the requirements to buy rewards.

Jagex could make untradeable rewards buyable with no requirements, while locking monetary rewards behind different requirements.

I want to note, Jagex tends to seem to be alright with locking good money makers behind Quests. All major PvM encounters worth money are locked behind Quests.

So can't we just lock monetary minigame rewards behind a certain number of Quest points, or specific quests?

Then normal players can still play for the untradeable rewards, and later if they get enough Quest points, they can buy the tradeable rewards because now they are an "worthy adventurer".

How can Jagex combat boosting and AFKing?

1. It varies per minigame, but generally, players only boost because that's the optimal way to earn the rewards.
2. If playing normally becomes the optimal way to earn rewards, players will just play normally.

I have specific solutions for the PvP Arena, Castle Wars, and Soul Wars which you can read on their respective pages.

My solutions take into account most of the stuff I mentioned above.

Please give us Minigame Hybrid Armor again. Castle Wars is a minigame that suffers from being dominated by max level players with maxed equipment. Soul Wars is the same.

Additionally, if Jagex were to take my suggestions for the PvP Arena and Rookie Bounty Hunter seriously, we could reasonably expect that same exact problem to pop up.

It's not as fun for the casual, mid level, or the not-rich player when everyone else is just an unkillable war machine.

Seriously, Minigame Hybrid Armor is no longer a nostalgic wish of mine, it's a game balance necessity.

Oldschool Runescape now has all of the same armors in the game that were the reason Minigame Hybrid Armor was created for Pre-EoC in the first place.

Just as a quick reminder: Minigame Hybrid Armor was added to Runescape 2 after the addition of the Nex armors - Torva, Virtus, and Pernix.

In Runescape 2, each of those armors provided +40 max health and provided the best defensive and offensive capabilities of any other armor in the game.

And in Oldschool Runescape we literally have Torva and Virtus now, and we do technically also have Pernix... because Fortified Masori armor has nearly identical stats to what Pernix armor had in Runescape 2.

And damn, those guys in Masori are nearly impossible to kill or freeze. Meanwhile they hit constant 40s off-spec also.

Minigame Hybrid Armor essentially gave you the same stats as Nex armors, but without the +40 max health, and instead with a set effect providing a +15% damage bonus to the two relevant combat styles of that armor.

This might be inaccurate. I remember it being +2% per piece and an additional +5% if you wear a full set.

Please, for the love of the gods, throw us mid-level players a bone.

It shouldn't cost billions of GP to be able to do well in a safe PvP minigame.

The Minigame Hybrid Armors were great for Pre-EoC minigame enjoyers. They don't affect the rest of the game including the main game economy or PvM and they don't affect the Wilderness.

They do add another reward incentive to play various different safe PvP minigames because you have to obtain the pieces of each set from different minigames. Please though, just don't make LMS a requirement to obtain these.

I personally would love to see the original Battlemage, Vanguard, and Trickster armor sets recreated in the Oldschool Runescape style. I always thought they looked absolutely sick, especially the Vanguard and Trickster armors.

As for the Battlemage armor, all I can say is... AMERICA

But just in-case people want to say "no, that looks too much like RS3", well, I have concepted my own version of Minigame Hybrid Armors so we could have a version unique to Oldschool Runescape.

Instead of a focus on the hybrid combat styles being mixed, I made a design focused more on the materials used to make them.

Let me introduce these 3 armor sets:

• Lapis Lazuli Platerobes
• Metal Dragonhide Armor
• Dewleaf Armor

More details about these concepts can be found at the bottom of the page.

As mentioned in my Castle Wars fixes page, the existing Castle Wars Bolts and Arrows could be rebranded to Minigame Ammunition and become available in other safe PvP minigames.

And we could use a "Fake Dragon Crossbow" or "Minigame Crossbow" to fire the Minigame Bolts.

In Pre-EoC the freeze spam was kind of balanced out because it costed you 1million gold per hour to use Ice Barrage in a safe PvP minigame with no monetary rewards. So very few people actually did that.

Nowadays anyone can do it for free in Castle Wars and in Soul Wars you can do it for 300k/h using Ancient Ice Sacks as opposed to 1.3m/h with runes.

Needless to say, it's a lot more prevalent than it ever was before in these minigames.

With that being the case, I think at least these minigames, which have the best potential to be a good casual forms of PvP, should offer some kind of options for negating freezes.

So like, maybe we can give both of these minigames an Anti-Freeze Potion.

You can just drink some antifreeze and get

• Unfrozen with your normal duration of re-freeze immunity
• A 1 minute cooldown before you can drink that potion again

The cooldown means that we won't completely invalidate freezing, thus requiring you to use it at the moment you really need it.

I think that would help these PvP minigames a LOT in terms of fun factor and just make them far less obnoxious of a freeze-fest.

The 1 minute cooldown is important so you can't just completely negate freezes when trying to break through the enemy's defense in Castle Wars.

Most powered staves are already enabled in Castle Wars and Soul Wars. You can even use Tumeken's Shadow in these minigames if you want to.

Yet most powered staves are silly expensive to use in PvP minigames. Even the cheapest ones are still around 300k/h to use, to 500k/h, to 1m/h. These are expensive for newer and mid-level players looking to just have some casual fun.

I would love the return of a cheap, but strong powered stave like the Polypore Staff. I mean, we do have the Trident of the Seas, which is a direct copy paste of Polypore Staff, but it costs almost 9 times as much to use as Polypore Staff.

The whole point of Polypore Staff was that it made magic more financially accessible to more players, and I remember very distinctly back then it only costed around 60k per hour to use in charges. Trident of the Seas today costs 500k per hour.

How about for PvP minigames we just make our current powered staves cost 90% less to use by saving their charges 90% of the time within the minigames?

That would put most OSRS powered staves in line with the cost that Polypore Staff was per hour in Pre-EoC.

Or you know, since Ranged gets free bolts and arrows anyway, and Castle Wars gets a free rune pouch, why not just make powered staves completely free?

It shouldn't cost 1m per hour to play a safe PvP minigame.

I've also compiled a record of the stats of old Nex armors, Minigame Hybrid Armors, and OSRS Nex armors / BiS equipment.

Note: Crystal Armor's Full Set Effect provides a total +15% damage and +30% accuracy to the Crystal Bow and Bow of Faerdhinen.

Video: Dartmoul1 - All Hybrid Armour sets with Stats and Guide

• Hybrid Body - 200-300 Wins at Fight Pits
• Hybrid Legs - 100-120 wins at Soul wars
• Hybrid Helm - 60-70 wins at Castle wars
• Hybrid Gloves - 130 wins at Fist of Guthix
• Hybrid Boots - 500-650 wins at Pest control

Requirements to wear (Note that you CAN receive the parts even if you don't meet the level.)

• Battlemage armour (requiring level 85 Defence, level 85 Strength and level 85 Magic to wear.)
• Trickster armour (requiring level 85 Defence, level 85 Ranged and level 85 Magic to wear.)
• Vanguard armour (requiring level 85 Defence, level 85 Ranged and level 85 Strength to wear.)

Each piece of the set gave a 3% damage bonus for a total 15% damage bonus if you wore a full set without mixing and matching. Only the set with the most pieces provided a damage bonus, so if you wore 3 pieces of Battlemage and 2 pieces of Vanguard, you would only gain a 9% damage bonus instead of 15%.

I would source the pieces from multiple safe PvP minigames like we did in the past.

• Hybrid Legs - 100-120 wins at Soul wars
• Hybrid Helm - 60-70 wins at Castle wars

However, the Fight Pits are kind of "way too dead" without a real reward shop, and imo, not really the best PvP minigame.

And Pest Control is not a PvP minigame.

So for the Hybrid Body, Gloves, and Boots, there would be a few options for where to source those.

1. All 3 could become part of the current PvP Arena reward shop.
2. We could wait until the PvP Arena gets a full revamp, and source the Hybrid Body from there.
3. If my "Rookie Bounty Hunter" turns out to be a viable idea, a piece of the set could come from there.
4. If my "Multi Wars" concept turns out to be a viable idea, a piece of the set could come from there.
5. We could temporarily source multiple pieces from our existing minigames, and then lock-in a promise to spread it out to new, viable safe PvP minigames if they get added or reworked later.
6. The premise is that we want to source them from GOOD, ACTIVE safe PvP minigames, not from dead content.
7. Please don't put any of this in LMS or require LMS wins oh my god that would be terrible. The entire point is for this to be casual-friendly changes.

Requirements to wear:

• It's level 85 in the relevant stats like before.

Each piece of the set gives a 2% damage bonus. If you wear a full set without mixing and matching, you gain an additional +5% damage bonus within safe PvP minigames.

Here's my suggested stats. It's based on the stats of BiS OSRS armor and the old MHA armor.

I would be happy to copy the Pre-EoC MHA wholesale, but in-case we'd all rather make sets of armor unique to OSRS, I do have some optional new concepts too.

Battlemages, Vanguards, and Tricksters describe something like a type of agent you would see in a dark ages fantasy military or war setting.

My idea for OSRS MHA was to focus more on the materials they are made of.

Similar to the original Minigame Hybrid Armor, these should look powerful, domineering, and representative of both combat styles each armor includes, as well as their apparent weakness.

Mage+Melee style robes, equivalent of Battlemage Robes.

Lapis Lazuli Platerobes are essentially made of a black magical cloth called Darksilk, padded with Lapis Lazuli Stone Tiles, almost like an armadillo or like scales.

Lapis Lazuli in the OSRS universe happens to be very strong and magical. Just like how obsidian is a lot tougher in Runescape than in real life.

The stone tiles are a series of rectangular plates uniformly attached to the robes. There are styles of old "woven-plate" armor this could potentially be based off of.

Imagine plated armor, but it's wizard robes with black or blue stone plating over it, with a distinct wizard robe silhouette rather than a platebody silhouette.

The examine text of an Obsidian Cape is, "A cape of woven obsidian plates."

The examine text of Lapis Robes would be, "Robes of woven lapis lazuli plates."

Hopefully with that, one can imagine what I'm going for.

This makes the robes very heavy and defensive against mage and melee, but because it's essentially a set of cloth robes with padding over it, it provides little protection against ranged, which easily slips through the cracks.

Alternate names: Lapis Robes, Lazuli Tile Armor, Lapis Stone Robes, Lapisrock Robes

Mage+Range style robes, equivalent of Trickster Robes.

Dewleaf armor is made of powerful wood, wrapped together with rubbery magical leaves. Something sort of elven that fits a mix of ranged/mage.

For a color scheme think of all the trees and plants in Tirannwn you had to navigate through, or Moonclan Robes.

The basic idea is that it's made of natural tree-like materials befitting of a mage/range hybrid.

The wood and leaves are almost like a membrane that magic splashes off of, that are thick enough to function like a dartboard as powerful as a bullet-proof vest, making it defensive against ranged as well.

Overall, however, it's ripped apart easily by melee.

Alternate names: Elfwood Robes, Dewleaf Robes.

Range+Melee style armor, equivalent of Vanguard Armor.

When trying to think of what material would befit a range+melee style hybrid armor, I got stuck at first, then thought about Steel Dragons.

What enemy in Runescape is weak to magic, but excels in melee and ranged defense?

Metal Dragons!

Metal Dragonhide Armor is made of Metal Dragonhide. Simple.

5th age metal dragons don't actually drop anything like "Metal Dragonhide", and instead drop bars of metal.

The metal dragon scales would come from a "lost" dragon race whose Metal Dragonhide is much different and more flexible than the remaining full metal dragons roaming Runescape today.

Metal Dragonhide comes from older metal dragons that no longer exist, just as White Dragons for 3rd age range gear made of White Dragonhide no longer exist.

Lapis Lazuli Stones, Dewleaf Bark & Leaves, & Metal Dragonhide

The materials used to create Minigame Hybrid Armor are considered "Lost Resources" that are now unobtainable and scarce.

Lost Resources aren't common enough to be used in any kind of building infrastructure, and are more suited to combat equipment.

Master crafter NPCs from Zeah make the hybrid gear for minigames, which is why there's no point in them selling the raw materials to us.

Lapis Lazuli Stones have special magical qualities, but are found in very limited supply.

They can only be chipped by magic chisels and are quite heavy, making them good for magic and melee tanking, but hard to craft into flexible robes, and are instead made into mage tank robes.

The magically conductive stones can absorb magical energy, causing magic attacks to fail against you, while empowering your own. This is just a lore detail, not an extra effect on the armor.

Dewleaf Bark & Leaves have magical properties that prevent them from "dying". Although unable to die, Dewleaf Bark and Leaves are unable to grow, keeping the supply of these materials static.

Perhaps Dewleaf and Blisterwood trees are related somehow?

The original name I had for these was "Elfwood", implying a "long lasting lifetime". Elves in Runescape are generally more melee/ranged focused, so I moved away from this naming.

Dewleaf material has been found to only be penetrable by anti-magic needles.

Anti-magic needles are able to create dents in the strange magical membrane of Dewleaf material without damaging it. The master crafters making them have to perform extremely delicate work very quickly to make them.

Dewleaf, when pierced suddenly, is difficult to pierce. Think of it like oobleck. It's otherwise easily ripped up by melee weapons.

It has an interesting effect on magic where it's really good at repelling magic, like dew dripping off of a leaf but unable to pass through the leaf itself.

This means for the person using it, it will splash incoming magic while expunging your own magical energy more efficiently.

The leaves are used as a sort of leather to tie the magical wood plating together.

Metal Dragonhide loses consistency, turning to normal metal, when people attempt to smelt it, and it cannot be tanned.

It is instead smith-crafted by hammering a chisel to shape it, and placing it in extreme cold to make it retain its new shape.

At normal or warmer temperatures, it then becomes a very powerful, yet flexible metal. Perfect for a range-melee hybrid.

As with any kind of metal armor, it conducts magic, making it extremely vulnerable in that way.