For new players - Runescape is NOT pay to win

[UpsetCouch]

For all the new players hearing about how this game is pay to win, let me tell you why that's wrong, and that you can have the same game experience spending 0 dollars. I am a maxed player, been playing on and off for 12 years, so I think I am reputable enough to be able to speak about this.

I saw a negative review that pointed out all the specific things that you can spend money on, but i'm gonna dissect each one of them, and tell you why you don't need them, and how little each of these actually effect your game play. The game does push some of it in your face, I will say that, but it's usually just when you log in, it'll give you a pop-up, and you can exit out and not have to see it for the rest of your game session. It's not that bad.

Membership will be about the only thing you could spend money on, being about 15 bucks a month. If you are adamant about not spending money, you can get a "bond" with in game money. It is a bit expensive, but is totally obtainable as a free to play player. it just takes time.

Anyways, let me lay out the different micro transactions in Runescape:

Premier Membership - Nobody needs that, It basically only gives you a few extra perks that don't really give you much of an advantage in the game whether it be through killing monsters or training skills.

Runecoins - You can buy cosmetics, which nobody really cares about, and not necessary. You can buy Auras, which give you perks like life-steal, or a better chance at catching something through fishing or something, but these aren't absolute necessities, at least until a higher level. At that point you can just use loyalty points (which are accumulated through just having membership, no additional cost to you other than the membership. By the time you need those auras, you'll already have plenty of points stockpiled to buy them).

Treasure Hunter Keys - This is the most common one that people bring up. To get anywhere with just keys, you need to spend thousands of dollars, which 99.9999% don't do that. It does give you quite a bit of bonus experience, and experience lamps for you to use on skills, and items that you can sell for a small bit of money. That's just what Treasure Hunter is all about. However, experience rates are decently high for every skill, so if you train yourself up with your time. If you just used the 1-2 free keys you get every day at the daily reset time, and extra keys from random things like quests, random keys you'll get killing things, etc. (Quests give you 2 each, i've had questing days where I can get like 15 keys in a day doing easy quests) then you'll be completely fine, and be able to get quite a bit of bonus experience for just playing the game.

Bonds - Can be bought for real money and sold for in-game money, or used for buying runecoins or a name change, or a few other things, but money is pretty easy to come by anyways. There are so many money makers that make millions of gold per hour at higher levels. There are even low level money makers that can make over a million gold per hour. As you keep leveling, more opportunities are unlocked for you, just like any game.

Runemetrics, Wealth Evaluator, Action Bars, Yak Track - For the first 2, you don't need them. It may be convenient, but it's by no means a necessity, and gives you 0 advantage anywhere. Runemetrics and Wealth Evaluator just give you statistics on what you're killing, your drops, how much experience you are getting an hour, and how much money your bank is worth. I don't have any of that, and I just use my computer's calculator for every one of those. As far as action bars go, you already get 9 of them free, which is more than enough. I'm a maxed player, and do a bit of high level PvM, and I have never regularly used 9 action bars, or needed more than that. Maybe 4 or 5 for everything i've ever done? Even if you are doing lots of high level PVM, you will NOT need all 9 action bars.

As far as Yak Track goes, that's just grasping for straws at this point. You get pretty much nothing except cosmetics and maybe a bonus experience star every so often.

Bank boosters - You can spend money on bank boosters, giving you extra bank slots, but you really don't need them. You can go to the Solomon Store and grab like 200-300 EXTRA bank slots for FREE in the FREE SECTION. I have never needed to buy bank slots ever. (Note that these extra slots are for members only, but free to play players still won't have any need to buy bank slots)

I just slapped this discussion together, because I am sick of seeing people give Runescape the reputation of being very play to win. It has it's flaws for sure, but I think people get their panties in a knot way too often about these.

If you are a new player reading this, I hope that it has helped you. Runescape is a great game in my opinion, and I hope that some of these negative reviews solely based on micro transactions don't deter you from giving the game a fair shot and you can form your own opinions based on your experience. Have a wonderful time playing, and welcome to Runescape!

[Randy Orton]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Kazugane:

maxed out osrs player here, no we are not spiteful of this game, actually many if not most are there for the nostalgia. this is a different game. many runescape players in general were playing during the change. rs3 isnt a bad game at all, although i do find it a bit overly complex which happens with many mmorpgs

+1 for being honest.
I play both, as I grew up playing OSRS but I love the new content of RS3.
And RuneScape use to be competitive xp wise back when the highscores meant something, but now no one really cares and just plays the way they want to play.

[Kaos]

Depends on how you look at P2W.
I don't think membership is pay to win.
There is nothing to win even (unless you consider being top 100 in high score a win)

If you do consider having a good spot in the high score a win then yes.
There is even a youtube video about a guy that spent $13000.00 to max all his skills in 3 days.

[MetaVoid]

But what about those reviews saying they could not level a skill or go into an area and other features one would expect to be able to even as free player. Is this correct ? I agree it cant be P2W as its not PVP and hence there is nothing to really win. I was just wondering if those negative reviews cover over the fact it will be a bad experince if you dont pay for sub. Some games say its free to play but in reality the grind will be so massive it will not be fun at all. I wonder if RuneScape is like that or it would be ok fun to spend time on.

[Wolfie]

i'm not maxed, i'm 118 but i have my 15 year cape, when there is double XP events i spend real cash on treasure hunter keys for XP items, i managed to get a few skills to 75 from low 20's by buying keys, just saying, it is possible to skip many levels with paying for keys

[UpsetCouch]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Kaos:

Depends on how you look at P2W.
I don't think membership is pay to win.
There is nothing to win even (unless you consider being top 100 in high score a win)

If you do consider having a good spot in the high score a win then yes.
There is even a youtube video about a guy that spent $13000.00 to max all his skills in 3 days.

I consider it pay to win if you are given a serious unfair advantage. I also mentioned people spending thousands of dollars. 99.999% of people will not spend that much money, and anyone that does, probably isn't going to do it to 5.8b exp or whatever it's at now.

[UpsetCouch]

Początkowo opublikowane przez MetaVoid:

But what about those reviews saying they could not level a skill or go into an area and other features one would expect to be able to even as free player. Is this correct ? I agree it cant be P2W as its not PVP and hence there is nothing to really win. I was just wondering if those negative reviews cover over the fact it will be a bad experince if you dont pay for sub. Some games say its free to play but in reality the grind will be so massive it will not be fun at all. I wonder if RuneScape is like that or it would be ok fun to spend time on.

There are certain skills that you have to be a member to be able to access. I do think that some might be turned off by the lack of several skills and being very blocked off from so much content, and I personally think it should be opened up a bit more to allow free to play players get to taste a bit more of member content. I also think that the free to play experience is more than enough to make a decision on whether to get membership or not. There is easily dozens of hours of content, and in the very early levels, you'll probably stay in the areas Free to play consists of.

[UpsetCouch]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Wolfie:

i'm not maxed, i'm 118 but i have my 15 year cape, when there is double XP events i spend real cash on treasure hunter keys for XP items, i managed to get a few skills to 75 from low 20's by buying keys, just saying, it is possible to skip many levels with paying for keys

Agreed, it can be easy to skip tons of levels, especially on double experience, but buying keys at low levels especially isn't necessarily worth it, and even without keys, you can get from level 20 to level 75 fairly quickly, and especially on double exp.

[Witcher Pie]

Damn, I had the exact same thinking about mtx as OP said.
I actually can't believe there are like minded people in rs3 lol
I see people whining about mtx all the time saying it ruined the game. bro wat? X'D
who cares about mtx?
nobody..

p2w? if you want to spend 1-2k dollars then alright, but with 2 keys per day when the skills go up until 200m xp.. like mate, use logic.. the grind is still there, with bonus xp or not.

And by the way, even if you pay, you CANT WIN xD the hiscores are already established you won't ever reach them with any amount of keys. Like even if you buy all your keys to 200m xp in all skills (which should cost more than 10k dollars btw), you still won't make it at top hiscores xD your only chance is when a new skill get released and you no life no sleep for 2-3 weeks and get it to max xp faster than the others (WHICH IN THAT PERIOD YOU CAN'T USE ANY FORM OF BONUS XP IN THE SKILL, IT'S CALLED GRACE PERIOD)

Most rewards in treasure hunter are trash, and the only ones I ever wanted in 5-6 years of playing were the cosmetic rares lol.

[Doctorwhom]

Początkowo opublikowane przez IndustryStandard:

Początkowo opublikowane przez UpsetCouch:

My thread is about micro transactions and how they don't affect gameplay too much in reality, not about how grindy the game is. I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say.

It's a fact that membership includes higher tier equipment that cannot be obtained or as easily obtained as non members.

It's a fact that members get hundreds of shortcuts and grind ease compared to non members. Allowing them to make money much faster and easier, level up quicker and get tons of member only benefits like wonderfully placed member only banks or NPCs in key grind areas.

Runescape is an MMO and this is expected. It might not be strictly P2W in the literal sense but it's pretty close and really not worth defending.

Pay to win what ?
To do quests before your f2p friend ?
To have access to areas f2p can't go ?
Is that winning ?

People keep spouting pay to win but what exactly is it you think is winning ?

[Witcher Pie]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Wolfie:

i'm not maxed, i'm 118 but i have my 15 year cape, when there is double XP events i spend real cash on treasure hunter keys for XP items, i managed to get a few skills to 75 from low 20's by buying keys, just saying, it is possible to skip many levels with paying for keys

you know levels dont say much right? in rs atleast
92 lvl is half of 99, let that sink in for a bit.

Skill xp caps at 200m xp and not just at 13m xp (99lvl).

In a 20 year old game where 95% of playerbase are maxed for YEARS already, getting maxed is basically a newb thing nowadays.

Skipping levels from 20 to 75 is basically the good thing to do, why would any new player that has 20 lvl in a old skill, want to get to osrs zones and content to level it up?
The player wanted to play rs3 in 2020, not rs3 in 2001. So it's a very good thing to skip the old irrelevant content and get asap to the new cool updated content and zones, specially when the race is no longer to get maxed at 500m xp, but at 5.4b xp.

[VahidSlayerOfAll]

its pay to level faster, be able to play 98% more quests,unlock higher for the game, also bigger screen until RS 3 changed it, hold more stuff, sell and buy more stuff at GE, have pets, use 99% more maps, and get way more stuff
if you really want to pay i would say get about level 60 in most ftp stats and do all the quests then become member if you still like the game
also move faster XD forgot about that one

[Ladioz]

You can easily grab a credit card, buy bonds from the website and sell them in the G.E for in-game cash. It is a pay 2 win dead game.

[Witcher Pie]

Początkowo opublikowane przez MetaVoid:

But what about those reviews saying they could not level a skill or go into an area and other features one would expect to be able to even as free player. Is this correct ? I agree it cant be P2W as its not PVP and hence there is nothing to really win. I was just wondering if those negative reviews cover over the fact it will be a bad experince if you dont pay for sub. Some games say its free to play but in reality the grind will be so massive it will not be fun at all. I wonder if RuneScape is like that or it would be ok fun to spend time on.

I have this acc for over 4-5 years, I don't think I ever payed for membership with real money, maybe for 1 month?
And I've maxed all f2p and membership skills, have done 60%+ of all quests, several 120 lvls in skills.

F2p is fun, but membership is even more. That's what you pay, more fun ways to play the game, you're not paying to win, cause you never win in this game.

[Ladioz]

They probably made the game to level up faster so you can get max cape over and done with it, and quit the game faster

[Witcher Pie]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Ladioz:

They probably made the game to level up faster so you can get max cape over and done with it, and quit the game faster

Yea, no
they made the game to level up faster so you can catch up faster with your in game maxed friends from 2005, AND so you don't have to go to outdated old content and zones and get into the new cool areas :)
that simple