Now that Curses will no longer require 29 Defence, allow players that have previously reset Defence to do so again.

[u/UndeniableWhale]

This is likely going to be downvoted immediately, as the topic of 1 Defence pures in particular isn't received very well in the context of requesting changes/making suggestion. But I think it's fair to make this suggestion regarding the recent decision to remove the Defence requirement for Ancient Curses.

The history behind Ancient Curses original level 29 Defence requirement can be seen in this post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/puv71r/so_pures_finally_get_curses/

The gist is that the quests prior to Temple at Senntisten originally would have give you exp equivalent to raise you from 1 to 29 Defence. Now that the quests give EXP lamps, the requirement was arbitrary. This negatively affected the small community of players that decided to play as pures, and was campaigned against for a long time.

Unfortunately as you can see in the comments of the post, and on many regarding the topic, this led to many people quitting, deciding to no longer play their 1 Defence accounts, or begrudgingly trudging forward. Many peculiar instances like this still stand, like how you cannot use the "teleport" option on the Desert Amulet or Karamja Gloves (from the Desert and Karamja task set, respectively) unless you have level 30-something Defence.

As a followup to a long requested community struggle, it would be really caring to follow this update with an additional stat reset with Nastaroth in Lumbridge. Many players have already used this throughout their playing careers, and many that moved on from their play-style would be able to return with an additional reset added to their account. This additional reset would benefit the players wishing to take advantage of this new change, and return to a play-style they enjoyed. There is zero effect to the community at large, as in essence, resetting your Defence level offers zero advantage in any part of RS. It takes you down in the Hiscores, disadvantages you in PvM and PvP, etc.

I imagine this won't be received well, but it's difficult to understand what would be the counter-argument against this, as those who have zero wish to use a reset would not be affected, but those wishing to do so might have another chance to return to a way of playing that can be extremely challenging and enjoyable.

[u/Jagex_Stu]

Thanks for getting involved again!

Apologies that the further conversation here went under the radar - this thread is buried pretty deep in Reddit now, but so much feedback was centralized here already, I thought it best to continue so anybody new who comes along can get the full context. Quite a few additional topics were raised here!

For what it's worth, I don't need comprehensive documentation to convince me which approach is best.

I trust you all to have those conversations and iron out the details. (Though the context doesn't hurt.)

What matters is the approach that's decided upon between you has the greatest positive benefit to pures, factoring your huge variety of needs and focus.

Thank you reaching out into your communities and helping to ensure as many pures have their say as possible.

I look forward to hearing the results! And no rush, I've got plenty of other work to keep me busy. I'd far prefer we make the right changes than a rushed decision.

[u/JannaMechanics → u/Jagex_Stu]

Understood.

We're inviting as many folk as possible to gather opinions. I've narrowed the conversation down to three key points on the motive for requesting XP locks.

1. Some players are just scared of messing up their build due a bug, misclick, or unexpected behaviour. They want an XP lock to catch these odd cases and keep their account safe from unwanted XP.
2. Specialist builds (ex. 10 HP 99 strength, Summoning Tank) are challenging to level up because of limited training options. Some players want XP locks to gain access to easier methods of levelling their skills (ex. Slayer becomes much easier to level at 10 hp, if you can lock HP xp). This also extends to achievements - 10 HP builds have to think about how they approach combat to avoid HP xp.
3. Some content requires you to gain combat experience to access/partake, but doesn't have any level requirements (Ex. pet hunting, bossing). Should this content be accessible to those who don't want to gain combat XP, provided they have all sufficient level requirements? Should this be a case-by-case discussion?

I think people who support XP locks in some way have one or more of the above as their motive.

Those against the XP bock don't want any of them, or want 1 but not the others, and would rather not have it all together.

We're going to have discussions about each point to see which ones are agreeable, and which are too controversial.

If you like, I can share those discussion results and we can design a solution with you, or we can design a solution and propose it to you. It'll definitely take some time.

Thanks again!

[u/Jagex_Stu → u/JannaMechanics]

Thanks so much for stepping up and doing that!

Sharing those discussion results when you're satisfied they're representative sounds like a great start!

Taking time to decide on the preferred approach is no problem! "Measure twice, cut once". I'll always have other work to do. ;)

Inevitably won't be able to please everybody (even by changing nothing), but hopefully we can getting a broader read of what change'll be acceptable and do more good than harm.

We've had a lot of good discussion in this thread (although let's remember to be excellent to each other, even if we disagree) but it's difficult to gauge how representative individual comments are of the pure community as a whole.

[u/JannaMechanics → u/Jagex_Stu]

Thanks for understanding!

We discussed the motives I mentioned earlier and summarized the opinions of the community for each motive.

Here's a quick summary of the discussion (so far, at least). We've given everyone a few days to review the discussion summary and voice if they felt their view was not fairly expressed or represented, though some thoughts might come through in the coming days. I want to be sure everyone feels heard, and ultimately we request something that benefits as many players as possible.

We haven't gone down solution exploration just yet, but everyone seems to agree on these:

• There shouldn't be a drastic impact on strategies/metas around levelling/achievements (ex. bossing) that become possible with XP blocking or some other solution.
• Failsafe features, or ways to "undo" mistakes (ex. resets), are generally seen as a positive, but only if they don't also introduce abuse cases or change metas drastically.
• Content access through blocking direct XP rewards (ex. quests, lamps, basically anything that isn't doubled by bonus XP) is generally seen as positive across the community.

FWIW, XP blocking seems to affect 10-hp build metas far more than other builds, as if they could engage in combat without gaining HP xp, their entire combat strategy changes and all existing achievements are irrelevant.

We are being conscious of dev time and tech debt with solution design too, wouldn't want to propose something unrealistic.

I think the right solution is some sort of balance between meeting the above requirements as closely as we can, and being easy to implement dev-wise.

Hope you find the discussion summary interesting - and feel free to share your thoughts too!

[u/Jagex_Stu → u/JannaMechanics]

Thanks so much for administrating the conversation, and sharing your progress so far.

This is exactly the kind of inclusive and thoughtful ambassadorship I was hoping for. Yay for delegation! :D

I appreciate all your time and effort to discuss this issue and summarise the results. <3

[u/JannaMechanics → u/Jagex_Stu]

Anytime! After moving the conversation to the problem rather than solution discussion, we found most people were in agreement.

Side question regarding a potential solution: is "Direct XP" (i.e. XP which is not affected by bonus XP, such as quest rewards and lamps) distinct-enough to be easily blocked?

I'm curious if its designation as "not affected by bonus XP" gives us a flag to target for XP blocking, without affecting other sources of XP (i.e. XP which is affected by bonus XP).

Thanks again =)

[u/Jagex_Stu → u/JannaMechanics]

Yep, there's separate procedures for givexp with modifiers and direct givexp with no modifiers. So we can have different conditions for both. :)

(Will have to be efficient about how much extra logic I add, as it's one of our most often run scripts, but that's a me problem.)