14 July 2014 - Legacy Mode Launch, Global Combat Improvement

Shane · **Posted:** July 14th, 2014, 3:11 pm

RuneScape.com wrote:

At the beginning of the year we started the Power to the Players initiative, and in the last six months the RuneScape community has used it to shape the game in over 50 polls.

Today brings the biggest player-driven releases so far: the launch of Legacy Mode and return of the 138 combat formula.

This year, we vowed to work with the community on making Evolution of Combat the best it can be, as well as finding an alternative for players who preferred things as they used to be. Our aim has been to allow all types of players to enjoy combat their way, and to have them able to play side-by-side.

Read on to find out the details of Legacy Mode and the many other combat improvements - available in-game now.

Legacy Mode

Legacy Mode is an optional setting which allows you to play the modern game, but with traditional interfaces and old-style combat, without the need to learn the new Evolution of Combat system.

Legacy Mode can be turned on or off in either the Game Settings or Powers - Combat Settings interfaces, and when activated enables the following features:

No abilities, with auto-attack damage scaled up
Pre-RuneScape 3-style interfaces, both resizable and fixed
Old-style combat animations and stances
Old-style minimap icons
Health and damage visually scaled down (e.g. 9900 life points in EoC becomes 990 in Legacy)

Global Combat Improvements

For those of you who enjoy Evolution of Combat, we’ve also made significant improvements to the system, based on your feedback. We've fine-tuned these on the beta servers in recent months.

The 138 combat formula has been reinstated, tweaked to have equal contribution from melee, ranged and magic
Special attacks on weapons have returned. In EoC mode you can find the 'Weapon Special Attack' ability in the Defensive Abilities menu
Strength bonuses have replaced critical hit chance
Ability damage has been fine-tuned to address some long-term imbalances. Damage output potential remains the same, but weaker abilities have been improved and overpowered abilities toned down
More life points come from stats than from armour, and combat triangle penalties and bonuses are slightly relaxed
The Loadout interface has been updated to give clearer info for offensive and defensive stats
Some bosses - such as the God Wars Dungeon generals - have had their difficulty slightly increased
Today’s update also brings a few Legacy-only and EoC-only game worlds. While the systems have been designed to be played side-by-side, we appreciate that PKers will want to know which mode their opponents will be using.

Fancy seeing this for yourself? Tune into our Twitch channel at 6pm BST today for our special Legacy Live Stream to spend 4 hours getting the lowdown with Mod Pips, Mod Pi, and Mod Slayer.

Future Combat

Today’s launch of Legacy Mode and the Global Combat Improvements are a landmark point in our quest to make RuneScape’s combat the best it can be – but our ambitions don’t end here.

In the short term, we’ll continue to tune both EoC and Legacy in response to your feedback, and we will also soon be offering limited stat rollbacks for those who used to have pure accounts but lost these in the change to EoC or re-introduction of the 138 combat formula.

In the longer term, we want to do more to revive PvP minigames and the Wilderness; to bring back monster aggression; to rework equipment that has lost its relevance; and to offer options to have Legacy Combat within the New Interface System, and vice versa.

To keep up with our progress on any outstanding issues, visit our 'Known and Fixed Issues' thread.

Please always give us your feedback, both what you’re enjoying and what you’d like to see changed. We’ll do our best to make it happen.

Gear Guide

Having the right weapons and items can help you take your adventure in Gielinor even further and that’s why we created our brand-new Gear Guide.

Use it to find out the very best weapons, accessories, and armour available to your character; simply select a combat method and a skill level to populate a list of all the best gear!

Head to the Gear Guide now to discover the best gear for you.

Summer Special Membership

The Summer Membership Package has been flying off the virtual shelves, and plenty of you have saved yourself over 25% on three months’ membership, plus got your hands on those XP boosting auras and amulets.

To make sure everyone is prepared for the launch of Elf City, we’ve decided to extend the availability of this awesome package. You can now get your hands on your discounted membership and XP boosting items until 28th July.

See our previous news post for more details on what’s included in the package.

In Other News

Keepsake Boxes have been updated to be much more flexible. There are now 20 Keepsake Box slots within the Wardrobe Interface and any type of item can be put into any of the slots.
Treasure Hunter has had its prizes refreshed. They should now be even more relevant to your skills, especially at higher levels. Visit the prize update forum thread for further details.

Read the patch notes for other updates released today.

Mod Pips and the RuneScape Team

Adbot · **Posted:** July 14th, 2014, 3:11 pm

blethorskite · **Posted:** July 14th, 2014, 3:54 pm

So far I've managed 5 minutes at a time of Legacy before having to switch back to EOC.

But I like having 138 back.

Kyle · **Posted:** July 14th, 2014, 6:02 pm

I LOVE THIS UPDATE!! I'll miss the re-sizable minimap but not having to play EOC is worth it to me. For me, switching between legacy and eoc will depend on the monster. EOC did nothing for me training magic at Fungel Mages; but it did for slaying dragons. I like having the option between the two!

Tim · **Posted:** July 15th, 2014, 5:48 pm

I spent maybe 2 minutes looking through legacy and it is nice to have the old combat back, but the UI is terrible. It looks rushed and reminds me nothing of pre EoC and really turned me off. I was more of a fan of the black rock UI compared to the brown UI they have right now.

I really wanted to see the ability to open 2 tabs in legacy so i could have both my skills tab and inventory open, like what my current EoC screen is built around .

1/5 from me, really not what I thought it would turn out to be.

PoisonNova · **Posted:** July 16th, 2014, 9:09 am

This update gets a 1/5 from me. There seemed to be a ton of issues on launch, probably because it was pushed out of beta too soon or there weren't enough people playing the beta. I haven't actually tried the legacy combat yet, but the old UI looks pretty bad.

I just don't see the point of bringing old combat back, which is why i've voted no in the various polls about it. I thought the point of Old School was to be the nostalgia experience, not the main game.

Now Jagex faces a conundrum from a design aspect of having to consider both methods of combat for new content that comes out. Hopefully they can pull it off.

But hey, it's what the people wanted.

blethorskite · **Posted:** July 16th, 2014, 3:50 pm

Just had a decent look at some of the changes to weapons damage, there's now several lvl 80 - Chaotic Maul, Royal xbow, that hit nearly double damage of their lvl 90 - Drygore weapons, ascension xbows - just madness.

Adbot · **Posted:** July 16th, 2014, 3:50 pm

Shane · **Posted:** July 17th, 2014, 3:16 pm

blethorskite wrote:

Just had a decent look at some of the changes to weapons damage, there's now several lvl 80 - Chaotic Maul, Royal xbow, that hit nearly double damage of their lvl 90 - Drygore weapons, ascension xbows - just madness.

Source? I'd like to know what caused this upset in the first place.

blethorskite · **Posted:** July 18th, 2014, 12:59 am

The problem is the buff given to 2h lvl 80 weapons with the the introduction of legacy. I've been switching between the two, godsword and drygore, royal xbow and ascension and the level 80 weapons are just about on par with the level 90 weapons. Their damage has been buffed too much, and in legacy the specials for the two handers also add to this (though the recent nerf has had an impact on this). The problem seems to me to be the fact that the damage output of 2h weapons is too high that it now allows you to kill monsters and other players in fewer hits than before the changes and this then doesn't allow the greater speed of dual weapons to come into play and allow them to then have a greater overall damage output.

Mind you this has caused a good opportunity to buy level 90 weapons as the prices have crashed. And as plenty of others have now pointed out this problem on the forums I'm sure it'll be addressed. If it's not then I can see the new level 90 2h weapons being the future weapon of choice when they come out.

CreepyPirate · **Posted:** July 20th, 2014, 10:56 am

They really are making a mess of this. Trying to please everyone and not pleasing anybody.

The old players are gone Jagex. Not coming back. I made a new account the other day. Took far too long to get into the game, Flooded with annoying pop up boxs, somehow opened up a browser twice asking me to subscribe to membership and when i went to do a quest i walked for 10 minutes and got told it was P2P.

For someone that's played this game in the past i was a little lost and rather frustrated. God only knows what a new player would think of it. You either go all in or you don't. They've got like 3 versions of this game running now don't they lol

No direction what so ever.