After two pretty tough weeks of having to look after the family business and take care of our dog by my­self, it seems like I’ve gotten a little bit of a fever.

Believe it or not, taking care of the dog is actually more difficult than running the family business. It’s hard to imagine exactly how much work it takes to keep this dog entertained because she’s so small, but it’s unbelieveable (without even mentioning how many times she needs to go to the bathroom in a single day).

Something that I like to do when I’m sick is eat McDonald’s and play RuneScape. McDonald’s is my comfort food, and RuneScape brings back memories of the old days – it basically puts me in a very relaxed mood that helps me recover.

If you’ve been keeping up with my posts from the past few weeks, you know that I’ve been grinding quite a bit of RuneScape lately, and decided to take a short break from it after my membership ran out at the end of July.

Today, I saw a news post about changes to player-owned houses, and I thought that I was going to re­sub­scribe right away.

I like creating things on my own, and the Construction skill lets me do that. There have been talks from Jagex about the Construction and player-owned house systems getting an overhaul, and I’ve been excited to see what they can do to make it better.

I thought that update came today.

Unfortunately, it didn’t.

I read through the news article and patch notes, and realized that there wasn’t really an actual update to player-owned houses.

They made it so homes can be set to day or night (and it’s just that – a setting – it’s not a day/night cycle). They also implemented individualized designs, where basically it can look like you have a home fit for a de­sert, sitting on top of a lawn of luscious green grass.

I was hoping that construction training would become more useful and less grind-heavy. I was hoping we could rearrange our rooms and redesign our layout without having to destroy our entire home. I was hoping that the build interface would be improved so we could upgrade things rather than having to destroy and rebuild them.

None of that happened today, and my high hopes were let down. I’ll definitely be remaining a non-member for a little bit longer.

It would be pretty nice if Jagex got a little bit more creative with their updates. For example, they’re con­stant­ly introducing new outfits into Solomon’s General Store.

I’m not sure if they’ve realized this yet or not, but you can only wear one outfit at a time. This somewhat deincentivises people from continuing to buy from Solomon’s General Store, seeing as pretty much all they release are new costumes.

Why not integrate Solomon’s General Store better into the game and provide aesthetic upgrades for in-game content? For example, why not release a pack of skin overrides for your player-owned home so you can get some new fancy building materials for your home?

There are a lot of crazy and innovative things Jagex can do with their game, and unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like they’re thinking outside the box that well.

Yes, I’m sure that I’m being particularly critical because I’ve been so demoralized by the poor quality of this player-owned house update, especially because this has been the one update I’ve been waiting for, for so long.

But still, I’m sure that most of us can agree that Solomon’s General Store can be put to better use than for massive pet dragons that take up a quarter of your screen.

Something that has always been a bit tedious about RuneScape is looting.

Because of how RuneScape works off Java and game ticks, there is a delay after all your commands, and all these tiny delays threaded in between picking up items can really add up.

Jagex decided to address this problem by creating a new improved looting system, where you can pick up multiple items at the same time. It comes with a lot of different settings to customize your one-click pick-up.

Unfortunately, there seems to be two critical flaws in features in the new system.

The first is that the pick-up range is tiny, at three units. This basically means that you only get fast looting for monsters you kill from pretty much the same spot. Otherwise, the one-click function is only useful for picking up all the drops from one monster.

But, even in that situation, it’s not necessarily always effective. The one-click button only appears after you try and pick something up, so if a monster were to drop two items, you would need to click twice, which is the same number of clicks prior to improved looting. To make things worse, formerly, you could just spam click the pile of loot and get everything, but now you need to click on a piece of loot, move your mouse, and click the pick-up button.

This can easily be improved by just increasing the range of the pick-up. In my opinion, five is a bare minimum to even consider more than two monsters’ worth of drops to realistically be included in in the improved looting window. Simply increasing the range to five instead of three increases the surface area covered by over double.

The second problem is the fact that one seemingly very obvious setting was not included – stackable items. There are settings for gold value and different categories of items, but usually, if something is stackable, I would like to loot it, simply because it takes up only one space in my inventory, and picking them up little by little can eventually add up.

Unfortunately, the only way it will pick up stackable items with your custom looting settings is if that stackable item is already included as a part of a different setting (for example, stackable crafting items, or stackable items worth over 50,000 gold each). There is no setting to pick up an item simply because it is stackable.

Overall, I feel as if the intention for releasing this update is good, but it still needed a bit more work in terms of features. It seems like Jagex wanted to make looting less tedious, and encourage people to pick stuff up off the ground, but rather than releasing a satisfying change to the looting system, it feels like they only gave the players a small tool.

A very long time ago, I got myself a legendary pet on RuneScape in hopes that it would basically pick up all my drops for me.

When I first used it, I realized that it only loots about once every half minute or so, and when it does go to loot, it only picks up one random item and leaves the rest behind.

I was pretty disappointed that the legendary pet was so expensive, so I contacted RuneScape’s customer support to see if this was actually intended, and if so, to get a refund for the legendary pet because the description very clearly implied that it was basically an auto-looter.

We had an exchange back and forth, and ultimately, they said that they were unable to provide me with a refund because they are not able to remove in-game items from my account (or something along those lines).

However, if you know me, I’m very detailed, straightforward, and persistent, and it ended up working out for me – they returned all the RuneCoins I had spent on the pet, and let me keep the pet on the account. They told me that I could spend the RuneCoins on something else, and they did this to ensure that I, as a customer, was entirely satisfied.

I was pretty satisfied at the time, and I just assumed that the legendary pet just wasn’t quite legendary.

But, a recent update changed that.

In this last patch, the legendary pets’ functions were revamped for the better. The looting system, although it still doesn’t act like an auto-looter, is much better than before. It picks up items with much greater frequency, and it lets you know what it picked up in the chat box.

But my favorite part is the plethora of other features that were added to the legendary pets.

For example, the banking feature was improved such that it is now represented in the Summoning interface as an icon. You’re able to see when your pet will return from its trip to the bank, and when you can use it again. This is an important update to me because, prior to this update, I never actually knew when I would be able to use the skill again.

On top of that, the pet now provides you with a bunch of utility. Supposedly, you can only have three abilities active at the same time, but realistically, you can pretty much use all of them because you are able to swap out abilities at any desired frequency, with no penalties.

In summary, these are the kinds of updates I would like to see more of from RuneScape. RuneScape already has a ton of content, but a lot of the older content is either outdated, or isn’t up to the quality standards of modern-day gaming.

If Jagex goes back and improves the quality of older content, it can more or less become new content simply because people who never actually played the old content would have an incentive to play it.

The legendary pets are a good start, and I’m hoping that we’ll see some other things, like mini-games, revisited in the future.

The top two options on the voting poll for last month’s RuneLabs ideas are the Seren and the Elves quest and an Agility enhancement.

The two choice are very close, and has apparently been swinging back and forth by a single percentage in votes. But, a lot of people seem upset that the Agility update is even that high on the polls.

A lot of people are saying that, if Agility happens to win, we wasted a month’s worth of RuneLabs.

Although I personally would like the Seren and the Elves quest to win so we can get more magic spells and prayers, I would be happy if either one wins.

One thing that I believe people are missing when they are hating on the Agility option is the fact that it’s an Agility update/rework, not just new Agility content. Jagex isn’t just going to add a new Agility course; they are going to change how Agility training works, and implement more ways Agility is useful in the game world.

I believe that, if Agility were to win, Agility training would become more like a single-player mini-game than a monotonous clicking chore. I’m sure that they would leave agility course options in the game for those who prefer it, but for those who want a more exciting training experience, Jagex will probably implement a completely new, interactive training method.

On top of that, similar to how Agility was integrated into Thieving, an Agility update would also most likely mean that Agility would be integrated into more skills. For example, paralleling how you can get double loot from pickpocketing, a high Agility level might also allow you to burn two logs at a time.

But, even with all these potential updates for Agility, I still prefer the Seren and the Elves quest because of my personal view on what makes a game good.

I like to unlock things. I like to earn rewards by completing in-game content, and I like these rewards to be permanently bound to my account (rather than just being floating items like high-level gear might be).

If they add new spells and prayers into the game, these would be unlocked by doing the Seren and the Elves quest, and these spells/prayers would be permanently useable in any situation I’d like.

Overall, I think both of these options are perfectly fine candidates for being the RuneLabs winner, and those who are aggressively opposing the Agility enhancement might be doing so with a misconception as to what the Agility enhancement actually will end up being.

Back on September 1, 2014, Jagex released the grouping system on RuneScape. I had heard about the news, but didn’t pounce right on the opportunity to try it out. Since then, I also forgot about it for a while.

Recently, I took a closer look at the grouping system, hoping to play some mini-games again that I hadn’t played for years.

Originally, I thought that the grouping system was sort of like a dungeon or raid finder in other massively multiplayer online games. For example, in World of Warcraft, when you queue up, the system finds other players for you, then puts you inside the dungeon or raid together.

So, logically, my expected result for the group finder was to check off all the mini-games I wanted to play, queue up, then after several minutes, end up inside a mini-game with other people who also wanted to play.

The RuneScape grouping system is completely different.

The RuneScape grouping system is there to help you find other people who claim they are interested in playing the mini-game or doing the activity. Actually setting it up, hopping worlds, and entering the mini-game is all up to you (or the leader of your group).

Pretty much nothing is automated.

I tried using the feature and got nowhere. On occasion I had a few people come and go, but literally noth­ing happened as a result.

It is a near-useless feature, because it finishes one task for you, then leaves a lot of effort-re­quiring tasks for you to do on your own.

Basically, the grouping system baits you into thinking that it’s an easy way to get what you want, pretends like it’s going to do it for you, then pretty much does nothing.

I was actually pretty hyped to play RuneScape’s mini-games again, and now I’ve crashed down to dis­ap­point­ment.

Yesterday, Jagex released a list of the top five ideas from January 2015’s RuneLabs session.

RuneScape’s forums are a little strange and threads tend to be deleted very often, so rather than linking to the announcement thread, I’ll just quote/paraphrase it here:

“Here are the top most supported ideas for January 2015’s RuneLabs criteria. Pick your favourite. As these are all smaller ideas we will definitely make the top two.

• Farming timer
• Slayer belt
• Adamant and Runite Dragons
• Trimmed Quest Cape
• Editing GE offers

More information on each of these options from Mod Osborne coming soon…”

The first thing I want to note is that, before the RuneLabs session began, RuneScape requested medium-sized updates.

From this list, the only thing that seems like a medium-sized update is the Adamant and Runite Dragons (and that’s only if Jagex decides to create brand new models for the dragons, rather than just recoloring Mithril Dragons). All the other updates seem to either be small, or tiny enough that it could be a tweak done by the Ninja Team. (However, it does seem like Jagex noticed that as well, and are stating that they will do two updates instead of one.)

From this list, I personally would like to see the Dragons and the Slayer belt going through.

I’ll start by elaborating on the ones that I don’t want.

The farming timer seems a bit unnecessary. I personally don’t do farming, so I don’t know how the skill even works, apart from planting things and picking them. However, I do know that there are some in-game items and spells that allow people to check on their crops. If anything, I feel as if this update can be worked into what we already have, and the ninja team can improve the effectiveness of the items and spells that already exist. It could possibly work as an upgrade (for example, a new reward could be added to Livid Farm that allows you to upgrade the farming spell).

The Trimmed Quest Cape is also pretty unnecessary. Sure, it will be a cool feature for those who manage to earn it. But, relative to the other possible updates, the trimming on the cape will affect a tiny number of people, while the other updates have a much broader target audience. On top of that, those who are doing achievements and tasks already have incentives to complete those (they get region-specific items, like the Varrock armor and Falador shield). If trimming on the Quest Cape ever becomes a thing, it seems like something that would better be pushed out with a larger update (i.e., an achievement cape overhaul with new graphics).

Finally, editing Grand Exchange offers seems like an easy project for the Ninja Team, or something that could be packaged with the upcoming bank update. I’ve seen screenshots in various locations of the bank update, where tabs will now be draggable. Throwing “G.E. offers are now editable” into the bank update seems like a better way to push out this update, rather than creating a dedicated project just to do it.

Now we move on to the two updates that I do want. The Slayer Belt is something that sounds very con­ven­ient and has good utility for everyone. One thing I really enjoyed was the Slayer Helmet update from a while back. It gave me a new motivation to do Slayer tasks, earn points, and buy the upgrades. I would like to see the Slayer Belt introduced in a similar fashion. I love having to work for and earn rewards, especially ones that make tasks more efficient and easier. I’m a fan of cutting down on the time spent on preliminary tasks (like withdrawing monster-specific items from your bank), so I support the Slayer Belt.

I also like new content, and Adamant and Runite Dragons sound like a decently-sized update. Although balancing might be a little bit tough (assuming the dragons resemble the other metal dragons and drop five of each corresponding bar), once the technicalities of the update are resolved, it could end up being a very fun update. If they release it as just more monsters to kill, nothing special, maybe included in a list of slayer tasks, then it’s a lost opportunity. But, if they integrate some sort of unique mechanic or useful reward for defeating the new dragons, these new dragons could get pretty exciting.