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TL;DR
-Zeah feels like a real part of OSRS world after TL
-Concept of Leagues fits well to osrs and TL was a success, considering OSRS team went in blind
-TL had issues with "time" and pacing in multiple ways
-Luck shouldn't be rewarded in a game mode that has competitive aspects, effects of bad luck should be looked at
-Relics system was fun and good, but has room for improvements
-The percentile-based ranking system caused burnouts and stress, it made the game less enjoyable
PROS:
1. In my OSRS world view, Zeah belongs to OSRS now
TL was a proper introduction to Zeah that I didn't even realize I wanted.
We've had Zeah for years now but to me, it never felt like a "real" OSRS place. It was just an addition that didn't feel like it belonged to OSRS. We all know how tedious it was to navigate around Zeah on the release, how tedious it was to get house favour and how square the whole place was.
There has been nice additions and fixes to Zeah among the years, but to be honest there were only a handful of reasons to go to Zeah as a high leveled player. Whenever I went there, I just teleported to the spot I wanted to use, and then left. I had zero interest in walking around the continent. If something on Zeah offered good xp/rewards, I'd go to that exact place every once in a while, but I never "felt home" on the continent.
However, TL gave me an adventure on Zeah. Suddenly I had a reason to look for Willow trees there, figure out good combat training spots, look for item spawns, unlock traveling methods and just roam around. By playing TL, I got to explore new areas like back in the day when I first bought membership. I had a REASON to look around and go on an adventure.
2. The Concept of Leagues as a diversion
The OSRS team wanted to offer an unique OSRS experience that breaks the regular gameplay "meta" we all have familiarized ourselves with. In my opinion, they succeeded really well, considering this was their first attempt at non-PvP seasonal servers. There were so many things that could've backfired, yet the game felt surprisingly balanced. According to my experience with TL, there wasn't one "right way" to play or some extremely broken mechanic/relic that could be abused.
TL offered fresh gameplay experience, which broke my boredom with the main game really well. It was "twisted" enough, but it didn't turn the game into absurdity.
It was something new and exciting. With some tweaks, League servers might have a long life ahead.
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CONS AND CHANCES FOR IMPROVEMENT:
1. Time, Part I
The one thing that really hindered the TL experience for me was Time, on a couple of levels.
First of all, 2 months felt a bit too long time period for a seasonal server. In the beginning it was very exciting, but for me the honey moon was over in a month or so.
POTENTIAL FIX: Shorter leagues in the future
EDIT AFTER READING SOME COMMENTS: There seems to be varying opinions about ideal lengths. Shorter leagues could mean even more hardcore competition. Hopefully OSRS Team gathers information regarding this, via a poll or something like that.
2. Time, Part II
Another issue with time was the fact that it put players in very unfair positions, when it comes to competing against others. I was unemployed for 1,5 months of TL, which allowed me to no-life the game. On average, I played for 6,5 hours every single day. Had I had a regular 9 to 5 job, I would've had 9 hours and 15 minutes to spare daily, which would've included sleeping. I was at a huge advantage compared to anyone who had to work for the whole duration of the league. Players couldn't compensate the "lost time" with being actually good at the game, because having time to AFK train allowed players like me to reap huge XP point rewards.
POTENTIAL FIXES (THAT ARE NOT PERFECT AND STILL HAVE THEIR OWN ISSUES): Daily XP caps, Daily point caps or a point system that heavily rewards players for doing activities that require skill, instead of the amount of free time they have in their hands. Maybe the top tiers could have some "required tasks", so that one couldn't be on the very top of the ladder unless they complete some activities that require effort and skill?
3. Luck-based rewards and advancement on the game mode
RNG is a part of this game. However, when it comes to game mode that has competitive aspects, it should be addressed.
My biggest issue with luck in TL were the Master Tier tasks that rewarded players with huge point rewards for simply being lucky. It makes no sense to give someone 500 points for getting a pet. Two players could be doing the same thing, and one simply wins the RNG lottery and gains a large amount of points. That's simply unfair. Just look at the bottom half of players in dragon tier and in high rune tier. The point differences were very small in the end, I can't help but feel sorry for the players who could've made it into the dragon tier, if only they had the luck that some dragon tier players had. Some of the rune tier players might have played the game wiser and invested more in the game, but didn't make it simply because they had bad luck. As for myself, I got lucky with a very early Golden Tench. Sure, it felt nice to get those 500 points, but in the larger picture I feel like I didn't deserve them.
Another lesser issue I had with luck were the regular drops from monsters/clue scrolls. I had insane luck and got a Dragon Sword from a Wyrm within my first 100 kills. This sped up my melee training by a large amount, allowing me to save hours compared to players who went straight to whip from Rune Scim. Again, my drop was not deserved in any way, I just got lucky and gained an advantage. On the other end, having an extremely long dry streak at getting key drops might destroy player's chances of getting to the top, even if they deserved it by their commitment to the game.
POSSIBLE FIXES: Much lesser rewards for super rare drops & Guaranteed drops for key items at certain amount of kills, like Vorkath's head.
EDIT AFTER READING SOME COMMENTS: Instead of having guaranteed drops, accelerated droprates could also be a viable solution.
4. Relics
For the most part, relics turned out to be surprisingly balanced IMO, considering how much they altered the game.
However, my biggest issues with the relics were the small amount of them and the severity of their buffs. Once I had chosen a relic, I had to commit into taking the advantage of it.
Unlocking Relics was very fun, I really hope there were more of them. I would've also liked to have an option to turn certain relics off, since they turned out to be more of a hinderance/annoyance than a desired perk (looking at you, Hardcore Harvester). However, it can be argued that having downsides is a part of the relic system, I'm not claiming to be right here, just a personal preference.
POSSIBLE FIXES: More relics more often, but with lesser buffs. Ability to turn off a chosen relic.
5. The percentile based Tiers, burnout and stress
THIS IS COMPLETELY SUBJECTIVE POINT, OTHER PLAYERS MIGHT HAVE FELT VERY DIFFERENTLY ABOUT THE SITUATION. MY ARGUMENTS ARE BASED ON MY OWN FEELINGS, NOT ON ANY THINGS THAT I'D CONSIDER "OBJECTIVE TRUTHS".
The last few weeks of TL were pretty awful experience for me. The competition at the top was really rough. I did well in the beginning, and after a month I was well within the dragon tier.
When I started to get less intrested in the game, I thought of quitting. However, I had already put in a couple hundred hours into the game mode and felt like my effort would go to waste if I stopped playing. Especially since the rewards were the first discontinued items in the history of OSRS.
So I continued on playing. I got points, but I couldn't feel satisfaction with my achievements. The constant fear of dropping behind if I took too many day-offs was extremely unsettling. At no point I had a guarantee that I had done enough. I didn't really like playing anymore, the league started to feel like a chore.
Why did I keep on playing, then? Because I had invested time in the game and I didn't want to feel like I wasted those hours. The last weeks were not about having fun, they were about raw calculation of which tasks would get me the most points, compared to the time they took to complete. I did tasks that I considered to be most optimal, given my chosen relics. I must've returned like 2k library books because it gave me 3m Magic XP/h, even though it was tedious.
The exahustion was heavily tied to the time issues with the league. I had to play constantly, because that was the way to keep up with the pace. I would've been okay with dropping to lower tiers, if there were certain "skill walls" I knew I wouldn't be able to break through, like required completion of at least one CM CoX run or something like that.
When the league was finally over, I felt relieved. Not proud, not satisfied, just relieved.
The percentile based tier system has the obvious advantage of balancing out the game "automatically", when the comparison is done between the players.
After my TL experience, I'd still prefer the tiers to be set in stone, like relic unlocks and buyable rewards. This could ease the the constant stress and fear of losing out, and make players feel more satisfied when they get point rewards. The players would know what they have to do, and setting goals would be more straightforward.
POSSIBLE FIX: I kinda stated this above, but I'd much rather have some other system to rank players in tiers than the percentile system. If the percentile-based system will be used in the future, I highly doubt I'll aim for the top or pay that much attention to leagues again. Then again, maybe the competitive side of TL just wasn't for me in the 1st place.
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