The Tip.It Times


Issue 199gp

A Lack of Clarity, and Nerfing

Written by and edited by Tip.It

What's a 'bug?' What is 'bug abuse?' When does a smart strategy that is dominant need to be nerfed? Being honest, the only real thing that got 'nerfed' was rangers killing cockroach soldiers. This entirely eliminated the need for food if you had a ranger, and caused an imbalance in combat methods in f2p. This was rightfully nerfed, but why was it changed to begin with?

At JAGEX people had a concept for a cockroach lair etc, worked on it, and released it (with not nearly enough real testing.) They never realized this imbalance and let it get through. Throughout this article I'll state the many cases when the severe lack of testing really shows...

The bone crossbow is a small but applicable example to this lack of testing. The bone crossbow was powerful and had extremely cheap bolts. Due to this it got nerfed, which caused a bit of outcry, but nothing massive. Throughout the history of Runescape I have noted that new updates either are extremely useful, or have no use at all, yet many have been extremely useful and have been killed to being poor. I think that the community needs to stand up and give valid reasons for why to keep such updates etc.

A good example is Sara GWD.

Thanks to soma2035 for the following writing:

"Ever since this boss was released, people realized how deadly she was. The Saradomin Godsword is also very useful, making its price sky high. Of course, everyone wanted to know how to kill it.

The first method was pretty obvious. Someone would stand in her path, and the rest stand behind him and shoot at Zilyana. This lasted all of 8 hours, after which she was able to walk through people.

The second method was also fairly well known. There used to be a gap where the door was. Zilyana would be lured and trapped north of this gap. Then the team would take turns stepping out and hitting her, and hiding when she targeted them.

Most were satisfied with this method. I wasn’t. With Madmanpur3 and Jard Y Dooku, we found an even better way of fighting her. In addition to luring her to the wall, we’d lure the melee bodyguard, Starlight. Then we’d bombard Starlight with Chinchompas. Due to the mechanics of Chinchompas, the accuracy was greatly increased and allowed us to tear Zil apart without her ever attacking. Unfortunately, this didn’t last long either, as Jagex removed ALL the door gaps when they fixed the Bandos safespot.

It was months until we discovered the next safe spot. The corners of Zilyana’s chamber were slanted, as a decorative feature. This made for a safespot not unlike the one used against Dagannoth Rex. This was kept secret for months, until someone else happened upon us using it, and later spread it. Eventually the secret was spreading, and to put it at rest, we just released the technique.

Why is this relevant? Well, Jagex decided to make a partial fix until they could come up with a real solution. Their partial fix was to distort Zilyana’s AI, and that will prove VERY helpful for the advanced technique. Anyways, after messing with the AI, Jagex eventually removed the slanted wall, replacing it with the nice square corners found in every other boss chambers. Regardless, Zilyana still has one major weakness… the AI meant as a temporary fix." (Well, not with no more triangulation, and the fix of AI but...)"

As you can see, throughout the early history of Sara GWD, it was regarded as the most difficult boss. Methods were found, and throughout many updates they were all killed as bugs, but what is a bug? By default a bug is not intended, but how do we know it isn't intended? In many cases people have been banned for bug abuse rightfully, but many other times it is without reason. Thankfully throughout the history of Sara GWD, people were not banned and it became extremely evident that any method that took advantage of the room or safespotting would be destroyed, and so people progressed to the current methods. With the recent update preventing triangulating the boss, the last 'unique' way to kill the boss was eliminated.

Bugs are going to happen; the point of testing a game is to eliminate them. I have a cousin who did quality assurance for World of Warcraft, and I can assure all of you that the quality assurance for Blizzard is extremely good. Rooms of people play, messing around, and testing new areas. What do testers at JAGEX do? Make sure you don't fall through the floor and call it good? They should hire more staff (or more productive staff) to make sure that innocent people aren't banned and glitches aren't exploited.

An example of this is the Durial doomsday glitch that lost people party hats etc. Had they really used houses somebody would have kicked out somebody while they were fighting. The glitch was inexcusable and it had horrible consequences. However I think Jagex did do the right thing by not rolling back.

Other bugs that hurt the most are those that ban on silly issues. I don't believe if you get a familiar in the GE you should be banned, there is no point in that, it is entirely counter-productive. Players are banned who have really done nothing wrong and they come out guns blazing, trying to hurt JAGEX.

Jagex needs some more comprehensive testing before release to prevent these kind of things.

Did You Know...
... That if you get a Teleport Matrix Random event when teleporting to Ape Atoll, you get a free Banana!(Thanks to the Tal Shiar Alliance!)

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Will you use Menaphos to train your skills?



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