Just had to say this, we ALL started off in that old sh*tty tutorial and fell in love. Don't add tasks to the game for new players, this is part of the reason RS3 makes me feel like a rat in a cage. Please do not take this path.
OSRS is unique and fills a niche. Don't try and streamline it for the masses. It won't work.
External link →A'ight, so this is my perspective on things. I played the game 10 or 11 years ago for about ~3 months, only ever in F2P.
I tried getting back into RS3 in 2016 because I have a friend that really enjoys the game, and dropped off pretty quickly because it had the 'Dead MMO' feeling. I've played quiet a few in my day, but the overcrowded areas, constant badgering from the MTX shop, and general lack of interesting content made me fall off when the free membership expired. So then I tried OSRS, and my main mistake was making an Ironman, I played for a few weeks, but stopped when I learned that I couldn't buy bonds with GP on an Ironman.
I got back into things recently after coming across some youtube series on the game. New character, Not an Ironman. This time, I had a concrete goal: Earn a bond. And while I have the bond, I haven't redeemed it yet due to real world obligations. This took an absurd amount of time, and I probably would have saved myself a lot of headache if I just shelled out the 11 bucks.
So here's what I think, as a 'new player' that's made it out the other side.
- This game is very impersonal. You don't control your character, you command them, and they go about what you told them to do. This may seem insignificant, but it removes a good deal of the MMO catharsis of sitting back and smooshing enemies for a few hours. You both don't need to pay 100% attention to the game, but can't pay no attention to the game, so focusing on it and afking it both feel unrewarding. On top of that, the game is very antisocial. It's an MMO where if someone else is near you, it's an active detriment. While this isn't uncommon for MMO's, I often think "Man, I wish I could play this in Single Player". Now, you may say that's Ironman mode, but no, Ironman mode has all the aggravations of someone messing with your play experience, with none of the positive aspects of it actually being an MMO.
- Getting around when you start sucks. Plain and simple, F2p run energy is awful, and there's no way to mitigate it until you get high magic. There's a few select items like the Chronicle and Skull Scepter, but those only bring you to Varrock. Additionally, shortcuts are P2P, so not only is it a pain to get around, but all the things that look like sensible shortcuts result in a popup saying "This could be much more convenient for 6 bucks".
- The game doesn't present challenges that feel rewarding. I have 2 bosses to fight, both of which I earned a bond before guides said I could competently fight them. The 'Challenge' in front of me is to rake through tedium, and while there's interesting and challenging content in the endgame, it's not where I am. Because of this, players are often left wandering in no particular direction. While this isn't awful by its own right, the area to wander around is is depressingly small, and I don't want to pay a monthly fee to wander around, especially when there's games that make it more rewarding that I could be playing.
- There's nothing I can do to get my feet squarely under me. You see it constantly in "How can I make money with these stats" posts, players want to do things that can help them progress and feel like they're getting tangible rewards for their efforts, but robots are already doing all the menial labor. It gives off the impression that the game is full of holes, there's an uphill battle with automation that I personally doubt Jagex is ever going to win, and new content seems to be stopped up by a community that can't agree what it wants. Granted I wouldn't expect it to, you can't please everyone. On top of that there's a lot of fun and interesting things the devs say can't be done without extensive work on a game engine that's nearly old enough to vote.
- The game can't stand on it's own. Case and point is an overwhelming portion of the community considers the game unplayable without a third party client. This is absolutely ridiculous. While there's a lot of things Runelite does that are QOL beneficial changes, those should be part of the damn game. Additionally, the wiki is considered so mandatory they're adding a link to it in the game, this is made worse by the fact the first wiki to come up on a google search is the one that's trying to die. You lookup what you need for a quest before you do it because walking back to the bank sucks. You have a client that solves clues for you because actually solving anagrams or inspecting the map sucks. You have a program to skip the Arceuus book grind because it sucks. It feels like there's a million things that make the game less fun, but there going to be in the game forever because there's no way 80% of the people playing are going to agree it needs to change.
Thanks for the feedback - you make a ton of good points here, a lot is stuff we're aware of, and want to try improve.
At the core, the game is the game, that isn't going to change right - but what we don't do, is help people understand what it is that it offers.
There's a ton of choice, so much that you can do, and not any awareness of how to get to what you want to do, without assistance from friends or guides - which can be an overwhelming amount of information.
A ton of new players are checking out the game, especially due to mobile, and we want to make sure as many as possible stick around - it means the games got a much healthier future, more players etc.
What we did mention in the post too, is that any changes we make will be tested via A/B tests. These will ensure we're making positive changes there, and if something doesn't work - we'll simply not move forward with it. As a framework, it's something we're getting up to speed with, we've spent sometime working on making A/B analysis as automated as possible, which will really help here.
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