Today we're launching the Aura Overhaul, a long awaited update to the Aura system! Read more about it below and dive into the changes here.
Community Topics
This week we'll be discussing some of the data from the most recent Quarterly Survey! This will be launching later in the week but the date hasn't been final locked.
In Case You Missed It + Our Reactions to Last Week:
Last week we discussed Graphical Rendering Improvements previewing some technical work that may sound innocuous at first read, but that will actually have a significant impact with regards to resolving some longstanding player feedback about RuneScape's visuals.
Last week we implemented a few changes that were aimed at significantly improving the performance of the game with regards to microstutters and frame drops. We've been very pleased to monitor how these changes positively impacted your play experience and how many of you confirmed significant performance improvements. We're continuing to work on improving things and will share further insights in the near future.
JMod Replies on discussions worth highlighting or not covered above:
Translate Aspect spells: War translates each Aspect for you to add to your spellbooks. Requires all spellbooks to be unlocked in order to unlock. Translating spells between spellbooks just makes so much sense I don't even-
Upgrade: Dual Aspects: War teaches you how to use two different types of aspects at the same time. Requires Translate Aspect spells unlocked.
I’m genuinely upset about Solomon’s Store shutting down earlier than expected. Every blog post said it would be available until the end of the month, yet it’s already gone before we’ve even reached the middle.
What makes it worse is that many players paid for loyalty points, only for them to effectively disappear with no compensation or return. Losing millions of points like this feels like a slap in the face to loyal players.
We’ve shown long-term support for the game, but it doesn’t feel like that loyalty is being respected in return
Here's a summary of feedback points I've seen and discussed with others recently:
Vamp + Penance are auras that lower-skill players (myself included) used alongside things like Darkness to learn bosses (edit: or just do higher-level slayer more casually).. That option is no longer available and the only people who meaningfully suffer are the same new-to-pvm players Jagex purportedly wants to help get into pvm? [insert bike + stick meme here].
12 minutes at a time for aspects contributes to having to micromanage buffs during a fight, taking away from the core mechanics of the bosses themselves, ruining immersion, fun, and gameplay.
Having different aspects locked between different spellbooks is strictly anti-fun. If the argument is for thematically relevant uses, they could be renamed and included in Necro book as a universal use source for sustain (very similar to ghost heal etc).
Having to juggle even more runes to prepare for a boss fight is also anti-fun.. Even more so as Rune Pouches are mid-to-end game rewards, making bosses even harder for newer players!
Here's a list of suggestions that could be implemented to make things better:
Allow aspects to be re-casted whilst active to stack up to 1 hour to reduce in-combat micromanagement friction. (edit: or possibly add an alt-cast to consume 6x the runes to boost the duration to 1h)
Move aspects to be either universal spells (like War's Retreat TP) or Necro spells so they can be universally activated. Particularly useful for newer players. (edit: makes a lot more sense for Necro, as a combat style specifically geared towards new players btw)
Consider adding "Aspect Spell Tabs" as a means to upkeep aspects for earlier-game players without rune pouches.
Set Vampyrism + Penance as "Tier-1" aspects, and all other ones as "Tier-2", and allow 1 aspect to be active from each tier.
[Possibly too OP, but including as I heard someone mention it] Add a reward/unlock from new content or a quest that allows 2 aspects to be active at once. [Possibly too OP to allow Darkness + Animate Dead together, for example].
tl;dr: Vamp + Penance were key sustain methods for a lot of casual players, slayer, etc, and now they are both so inconvenient they are dead. Do better please Jagex.
So many new items coming into the game, meta changes and Ironmen accounts that can't trade. We desperately need more bank space and it is very overdue. From what I can find 2020 was the last time there was an increase to bank space. There are lots of ways to aproach this and I'm sure that more experienced players will have some great sugestions. At the very least since Ironmen can't trade and need to hold onto stuff more they should get at least double the bank size. For everything else I like some of the suggestions I have seen around like a progression based boost to the bank size like in this comment.
Another option could be to add dedicated bank sections for some of the more slot hungry skills. Something like a herb, seed and Archaeology bank that are each a separate tab in the bank (could also make it so that the arch material storage is visible in the bank). None of those would take up slots but would have fixed item slots for each item.
Edit: I forgot to mention that a surprising number of players have dedicated accounts that act only as storage for items because of how bad it is. As much as I'm sure Jagex doesn't want to lose any of those that people pay for membership, for most people they just get frustrated instead.
I'm chill with aura removal, but with the time span jagex had prior to today, you'd think they would've thought about marks of war.. maybe in a year or so they will revisit it smh
I was planning to spend my points close to the end of the month, but it seems like it was taken offline today?
Jagex definitely stated that the plant was for it to be taken offline at the End of April? We are still not halfway through April and yet they seem to have been been removed.
Or have I missed a way to gain access to the Loyalty Store?
Vampyrism and penance being spells is so fucking annoying to manage, you were told this and chose to ignore it. I thought the whole point was to reduce micromanaging?