Nerf Impling Rewards

[Iron Logic 910]

Click bait title aside, I believe that Runex has an overpopulation issue, an overpopulation of raw supply drops. Now when we look at things like RS3 and OSRS, they are always careful to balance the methods in which supplies are gained in order to still allow for skilling and gather skills to be viable compared to more pvm centric methods. 

Unfortunately, when you examine Runex, our methods for obtaining supplies are a little strange, coming mostly from PvM with one major exception, Implings. 

Now I have been playing Runex for a long time, and my main ironman predates the impling update, So I've been able to experience a generally more grindy period and then the later impling centric period. 

If any new ironman asks what they should start off with, they will always get the same response: Do Kharazi for a falcon glove, hunt chinchompas until 63-74-83 or 99 hunter and then just hunt implings for the rest of your days. It feels like Impling are the Runex equivalent of Wintertodt, where if you don't start your account this way, you are just at a disadvantage. 

Implings give so many supplies, food, potions, herbs, seeds, ores, bars, gems, hides, logs, planks, runes, bones, dragon tools, tome of fire, GCP pieces etc If there is a class of skilling supply, there is an impling that awards those supplies. 

So I have two main issues:

1. The general supplies are a little too overpowered when compared to other methods, especially when you factor in risk (0 for implings) and skills required to gather resources (63 hunter is all you need for 95% of implings you find).

2. Some of the 'unique' item rewards are unnecessary. Things like tome of fire, dragon tools etc. 

Here are the suggestions I propose:

1. Remove the unique items such as Dragon pickaxe and harpoon.    <-- Worst suggestion here. 
They already have drop sources in the game, so there is no need to have them as impling rewards as well, especially when you consider how easy it is to get them from implings as opposed to PvM sources. 

2. Add in rarities for higher end supplies.     <-- Second worst suggesion here.
Currently, all items on impling drop tables are 'common' meaning everything has the same rate. 50 copper ore or a dragon pickaxe, it's random. If some of the higher end supplies had a rarity, nothing too rare, but something to balance out the good and bad supplied. Rarities would also allow items like the dragon equipment to stay on the drop tables as they can be made much rarer. 

3. Buff other methods to compete with the power of implings.
I already know that suggestions 1 and 2 will never happen and no-one in the community will support them, no-one likes nerfs. So I want to make a suggestion that people will like.
Low level slayer is quite boring and most monsters you face drop nothing of value, maybe 4 noted coal and 58 dust runes here and there, but for the most part you are wasting time if you try and pick stuff up. I would love to see early game slayer monsters be treated like the implings, where we can pick 2-3 of the lowest and add some loot to their tables similar to baby implings and the next 2-3 we add drops to compete with young implings and so on, obviously not including magpie, ninja or dragon. 

I have said for years that slayer is the most popular skill and Runex slayer, especially early game is lacking in so much possible content. Adding lower level superiors was a good thing, but they are still locked behind 1000 slayer points, meaning by the time you get them, you are already on high end slayer. Adding in impling-like drops to early-mid game slayer creatures would be the perfect balance, giving new players a choice between skilling and pvm centric starting methods.

There are obvious balancing issues that would need to be factored in, you can't simply copy and paste the impling tables on to slayer tables as implings will take far longer to farm than a slayer monster. I'd also love to see implings remain the primary starting method, which can be accomplished by leaving some of the higher end supply drops out of the early game slayer creatures. 

 

I'd love to hear what you all think, I'd personally love to see lower to mid game slayer get some much needed love and buffing their tables to compare somewhat with implings would be a great way to show it. 

[han solo 16]

You mistake "overpowered" with "viable" too much. Currently all Implings have an abundance of items on their tables.. with more than 10+. When this is applied it takes quite some time to gather bulk amounts of the same resource. That Dragon Pickaxe coming from an Impling will take you quite a few tries before finally getting it, mainly due to how much variety there is.

Example; 

It took me at least 100+ Eclectic Implings to get just 1 Marble Block. Finally rolling on the table and getting this item was quite hard due to the amount of items there were on the table.

Low tier slayer being buffed is a mistake. Most players are doing easy tasks for slayer strictly for the 100 Streak, if not they are going for quick superior spawns. If you were to change the drop table to add low tier skilling supplies in bulk amounts you will find 10x more resources abroad than you would someone catching baby implings, etc. There are far more slayer NPC's than there are actual implings. Instead of instantly thinking some of your ideas are better than others let us first decide. Stating "no-one likes nerfs. So I want to make a suggestion that people will like" only makes me not like the suggestion as a whole.

I've never heard of anyone having an issue with the abundance of resources coming from hunter, it's always seemed very well balanced so that Ironman accounts can have a great way of collecting raw materials. It's also not the only way to obtain these raw materials, there are at least 2-3+ more ways to obtain them.. imps just happen to be the most common method.

I've felt the only reason we had D'harpoon + D'pickaxe on the table was for skiller accounts, which is totally acceptable. We aren't OSRS nor RS3 where everything has to have a certain balance, etc. Runex has been successful this far and If it doesn't need to be fixed don't change it.

[Iron Logic 910]

I'm not sure where you are coming from.

Implings may not be the best over all method for grinding out a specific resource, the issue is that doing impling awards every type of resource, meaning that unless you only need a specific resource, implings are very overpowered.  Having an over-saturated drop tables is also not an issue for implings, because everything has an equal chance. 

The fact that it took you over 100 implings for a specific resource is just unlucky for you and isn't worth bringing up. Just because I went 1.5k dry for a 1 in 300 item doesn't make it 1 in 1.5k, just means I got unlucky, same as someone getting it on 1kc is just lucky. 

I'm also not sure why you are against lower tier slayer being buffed either, we have lots of newer players who do slayer, I myself have 2-3 ironmen doing low-medium tier slayer as the moment and I don't pick anything up, it is boring. 

You also miss where I clearly spoke about balancing supply drops from slayer monsters, the whole section about balancing in your reply has already been addressed in the original post when I simply said:

2 hours ago, Iron Logic said:

There are obvious balancing issues that would need to be factored in, you can't simply copy and paste the impling tables on to slayer tables as implings will take far longer to farm than a slayer monster.

Also, this whole section here:

1 hour ago, han solo said:

Instead of instantly thinking some of your ideas are better than others let us first decide. Stating "no-one likes nerfs. So I want to make a suggestion that people will like" only makes me not like the suggestion as a whole.

I really don't care what you think on a personal level. 
This is a RSPS, all RSPS and gaming communities in general react better to buffs to aspects of the games then they do to nerfs, so this was just a general comedic statement to point out that I knew nerf suggestions would be unpopular. 
That comment says nothing about MY suggestions being better than OTHERS. 
If a comment like that really makes you not like the suggestion in general, then you have obviously don't care about the content of the suggestion and are driven by malice. 

2 hours ago, han solo said:

I've never heard of anyone having an issue with the abundance of resources coming from hunter,

Who on earth would complain about having too much supplies, except for me.

2 hours ago, han solo said:

We aren't OSRS nor RS3 where everything has to have a certain balance, etc. Runex has been successful this far and If it doesn't need to be fixed don't change it.

This comment here is killer, I will be copy and pasting that on any suggestion you make in the future  

 

I'm not sure why you are against the slayer monster suggestion If I am honest, you brought up a decent point about skillers, which while I don't 100% agree with on the grounds of 'you pick your game mode', I understand where you are coming from.

But all you say about the slayer suggestion is that people might farm it? no shit, people farm everything, people farm implings. 

Go do 100 easy tasks, collect all the loot for me and then tell me that nothing needs to change. 

I appreciate the feedback none the less. 

[han solo 16]

You're right. I was a bit harsh by saying it would make me not like the whole suggestion simply over a common dislike for nerfs. I'm sorry.

As for your theory of boosting low tier (16 hp) monsters like the Crawling Hand dropping bulk amounts of raw materials.. that's a mistake. Nothing balanced about this makes sense. You have just increased the amount of raw materials coming into the game by a tenfold due to how easy these monsters are to kill. You will never find 10 Baby Imps in 1 spot that you can catch in the matter of 20 seconds, but you can find 10 Crawling Hands in 1 spot that you can kill in 20 seconds. I don't see any reason to go from Impings to Slayer for the meta for raw materials. 

It doesn't hurt the economy at all currently and updating it the way you are thinking will only make it easier to obtain raw materials. 

[Iron Logic 910]

33 minutes ago, han solo said:

You're right. I was a bit harsh by saying it would make me not like the whole suggestion simply over a common dislike for nerfs. I'm sorry.

As for your theory of boosting low tier (16 hp) monsters like the Crawling Hand dropping bulk amounts of raw materials.. that's a mistake. Nothing balanced about this makes sense. You have just increased the amount of raw materials coming into the game by a tenfold due to how easy these monsters are to kill. You will never find 10 Baby Imps in 1 spot that you can catch in the matter of 20 seconds, but you can find 10 Crawling Hands in 1 spot that you can kill in 20 seconds. I don't see any reason to go from Impings to Slayer for the meta for raw materials. 

It doesn't hurt the economy at all currently and updating it the way you are thinking will only make it easier to obtain raw materials. 

The title was only to grab attention, I don't want any of the supply drops nerfed, nor do I want implings to be replaced with slayer. 

I just want slayer to be able to somewhat compete with implings to be a viable, but still less efficient method. Without number crunching I can't come up with perfect balancing, but I would want it to work something like this:

1 hour of hunting implings in general would reward you with a lot of different supplies, but not a huge quantity of anything specific. 
1 hour of killing a lower level slayer monster would reward you with 1-2 different supplies in a greater quantity than if you had average luck hunting implings, but you lose out on the variety. 

I'm also not suggesting we add everything that is an impling loot to a slayer monster, instead the implings are fairly one note, meaning something like the baby impling is the potion, logs and ores impling. So we would disperse some potion, logs and ores into some slayer drop tables.  Such as some noted prayer potions and super potions, some willow and maple logs and some iron and coal ores, nothing too great or worth grinding as a main/endgame iron, but very helpful for early game players. 

Implings would remain the meta, but having the option to do something else would be fun for newer players.