December 12, 2012

Evolution of Combat: Player Feedback Changes

By maplestory

It’s been five months since the Evolution of Combat Beta launched, and the feedback is still coming in swathes from every corner of the RuneScape community. While we knew you’d jump at the chance to help reforge the combat system into one that’s well and truly yours, the level of passion, commitment and insight that you’ve demonstrated in your feedback has been mind-blowing.

Huge thanks go out to everyone who’s tried the beta and offered their opinion so far. The Evolution of Combat’s come on in leaps and bounds since its beta launch in June, and that – in large part – is down to you. Some of the biggest changes we’ve made so far have been in direct response to feedback from you. Here are a few examples of the most prominent:

The new combat system’s more involved, tactical and exciting than ever before, but some of you found that long combat endeavours such as Slayer tasks had – as a result – become feats of endurance. As such, we upped auto-attack damage and introduced a new ultimate named Momentum – which further increases auto-attack damage for 20 minutes per activation – which means a lower intensity approach to combat will remain available.

The relationship between gear and your combat capabilities is one of the most profoundly altered areas of the combat system, and your feedback and gameplay data have been invaluable in balancing these aspects. A great example of this was rebalancing shields, which many of you said were overpowered.

Another big change is the introduction of adrenaline and abilities, and your input helped us not only to ensure that they worked in a fair and balanced way, but also to make the ability book interface as user-friendly and intuitive as possible.

Dungeoneering was a big point of feedback too, as increased emphasis on the combat triangle and introduction of elemental strengths and weaknesses meant that solo players among you were having a much harder time than you should. With this in mind, we relaxed the vulnerability relationships as they’re applied in Daemonheim, and brought in a new range of omnielemental staves for use by dungeon-delving wizards. There are some big changes to the binding system coming soon, too!

As we’ve said from the start, we need every bit of feedback and every suggestion you can offer on how to make the Evolution of Combat system the update that you want. The beta’s now open to everyone, and there’s still time to make your opinion heard, so – if you haven’t already – log in, gear up and start sending your feedback!