Thieving Rebalance: Feedback Thread

[rocky idol]

We are working on addressing your feedback to Thieving today. It’s clear we’ve introduced some gameplay issues when pickpocketing at high levels following the Thieving rebalance.

Rebalancing is important for ensuring skills are diverse in gameplay options, but not to the detriment of fun. There’s a difference between necessary balance and a worse experience, and we’ve landed more in the latter.

Sorting this out is our top priority for the week. We’re currently designing changes based on your feedback, particularly the AFK gameplay experience, which we intend to release by Thursday. We’ll detail our proposed changes in full tomorrow to get your take.

Note that this may come with some tweaks to XP and GP/hr to keep the intent behind the rebalancing work while dramatically improving the gameplay experience. We’ll be clear on any proposed trade-offs in the blog.
We’re also opening this thread to gather focused feedback on the Thieving changes

Please keep feedback centered on the following:

• What’s harming the fun factor of pickpocketing most at high levels?
• What feels like a step back for pickpocketing gameplay, outside of XP and balance?
• What changes feel most important to you to be included in any solution?

If you’re responding, it really helps us if you:

• Explain what isn’t working for you
• Share why it feels off
• Suggest what you’d like to see explored instead, where possible

A Few Quick Notes
This thread is about feedback, not final decisions.

Not every suggestion will be actionable, but everything will be read
Some topics may need more time or further iteration before changes can be confirmed
We’ll jump in where we can to clarify points, call out common themes, and feed this back to the team.

This thread will be monitored. This is the best place to share your thoughts now that you’ve had time to see the changes and hear more context, but know we’ve also read everything we’ve seen so far today too

[limber plank]

i think the changes to black ibis rate and scepter of the god rat iss a goo thing

[dense crater]

I think the drop rate changes are fine however the nerf to Crystal mask, making it so you cant really afk thieving is a major L

[glass escarp]

I am 120 thieving... I should be able to afk ham members 100%

[limpid narwhal]

A suggestion I have for balancing xp vs afk is having the XP diminish from pickpocketing the longer you go without clicking again. With something like that hopefully you can bring back max AFK so people can still pick for the items, such as clue scrolls off menaphite guards. Have it kinda be like safecracking, where you can interact with something to maintain XP

[smoky tide]

Please don’t take away afk vyre pickpocketing

[stable heath]

Please do something about how pickpocketing locks you into your target. Especially bad with sticky fingers. When you click during the action, autopickpocket will take priority and your input gets ignored. Now it's especially bad with how you are encouraged to switch targets occasionally.

[wise sleet]

Would be nice to have longer afk, even if xp and loot was way worse

[civic spire]

I work a day job.
15 minute afk is important.
I can't be distracted every 2 minutes for a stun..
Every 5 minute for a crystal mask..
Every 6 minutes for lightform prayer upkeep... (also why the heck do we need lightform with mask when mask is so hard to get and costs runs?)

Also why am I forced to do active play when it's not very rewarding and uninteresting??

Nerf the coins from 100% of what they are today to 20%, no one pickpockets for coins, they want the materials.

Make mask 100% chance, and 15 minute duration

[errant spade]

As others have said, very few are arguing pickpocketing wasn’t overturned before today, but 90s/inconsistent AFK removes its one use-case.

The oblivious perk change is what set the nerf into heavy-handed territory. If you took ~3 hits per five minutes (about what it is with max boosts) you’d be fine for a five minute AFK with max boosts before needing to re-cast crystal mask.

Additionally, you’d need to incorporate some - potentially multiple forms of - healing, e.g. enhanced escalation and persistent rage/ice asylum. This would actually increase the communal aspect of it, whilst bringing it back to the sweet spot of AFK.

Alternatively yes, both nerfing the xp/raw gp from pickpocketing instead of the AFK are vastly preferable.

[devout flint]

1. The changes to the Oblivious perk was not communicated well by Jagex.

2. 1-2 minute AFK pickpocketing is too hard of a nerf, 5 minutes would be much better; still a nerf, but not nearly as awful for players with limited attention spans or busy schedules.

3. An overhead bar that indicates your success rate over time would be welcomed for players to more optimally pickpocket.

4. It should still be possible to never fail a pickpocket if your level is high enough; "you'll get caught eventually" is not a good way to go about it for high level targets.

5. The reduced stun time from 5 to 3 seconds is a good change in my opinion.

[vague coral]

im 200m thieving and for me to not be able to afk for elite clues is trash... the upkeep with fermiliar and pot and health and cmask and even tho light form and pray becomes not needed when qp cape and such is done still is just to much!!! with the full outfit and mushy bag with oblivious and ring also with bik and ardy task.. way to much drama... i absolutly loved the new thieveing b4 nerf! thought what a gr8 update. it brought many back to the enjoyment of the game even with afking. and heist is gr8 addition to it.. also dont even care if its loot free tbh.. just want my clues!!! and b4 this we had to fight over abby beast in wildy for spots to get the elite clues, this opened up so much for skillers, and tbh to get it as it was pre nerf was alot of reqs. i deff think should be able to 100% afk at 120.. with all reqs. i mean lets fact it.. we put in our time. let us have this one!!! pvm'rs can afk mobs all day long, (glacies,abby beast) they can buy pots and supplies and skillers need afk too... also H.A.M. members level 30 npc. arent 100% afk at level 120 @.@ with full gear outfit.. who thought of this. and why give us a ring of vitur to increase thieve by %5 then take it away???? i dont understand.

[serene badger]

At minimum, crystal mask should always allow you to AFK for the full duration, otherwise what’s the point of spending the runes?

edit: maybe some exception for the very highest level NPC’s, except when used in conjunction with other buffs (excluding the aura of course), but the general point is that a duration-based spell should be effective for the whole 5 minute duration.

The 120 cape perk also should be reconsidered a bit to possibly provide the buffs for things you inherently can’t over level for since it’s currently not particularly useful considering how easy it is to not get caught in heists once you learn the mechanics and patterns. Or we get an extreme thieving potion or similar buff.

[ashen tusk]

I think the xp and drops warranted a nerf.

I dont like the idea of "random" amounts of afk time - having it be consistent and/or telegraphed plays nice.

The other thing is that 1-2 mins is an awkward time span to not really be active, but also not really let me get up from my desk to do other stuff.

Some possible solutions-

1. Make cmask be enough with bis for 100% pp chance, nerf base loot and xp.
   1.5. Cmask gives no loot but is enough with bis for 100% chance
2. Make lower level pp targets full afkable, high level targets can still catch you.
3. Make the stun not interrupt pp, have dramatically reduced rates after getting caught

[stable heath]

It absolutely needed nerfed. But if Heists > Chests> Safes>; then pickpocketing should be the low rewards afk version

[haughty pumice]

There's a reason nobody likes the whole '5 minutes of thieving for prif clans, then needing to switch to a different one' and aside from niche cases became dead content after all of the more recent, normal thieving methods have come out.

If there's any actual, valid reason normal thieving methods were changed to be significantly worse than even that gameplay wise (not speaking to the rewards at all), aside from wanting to pressure the sale of radiant stars, I'd like to hear it.

[lavish venture]

Hi! can someone clarify the conversation around afk timer - is that exclusive to something thieving related, or does that apply to the universal account time out after X period of time?

[faint canopy]

What they mean is how long before caught

[uncut vine]

Instead of complaining on how it's not good enough, here's some feedback - make crystal mask remove the denominator of you being able to fail. It's a solid 5 minutes of afk that needs to be recast every time and it would even be future proof with the removal of auras.
The rest is fine.

Unsure on what to do with Light Form then though. Shrug.

[chilly meteor]

I like this idea, it also makes it still feel rewarding. With failure rate increasing incrementally, CM and LF will only really add 30s extra to your pickpocketing success rate. As it currently sits as of today, its not a nice reward for what has taken my account some 800 hours to achieve.
With this change, even with keeping the level boost the same post nerf, feels like a really nice quest reward and a good use of runes and potions.

[civic spire]

CM needs to be extended to 15 minute duration at least.

Maybe 2x the amount of runes

[wary violet]

This + a bit of a nerf, because its still too much XP/GP IMO when you compare it to other skills even with including the CM 5 min proposed changes

[bitter tiger]

thieving is very low effort when pickpocketing, my idea would be something similar to rockatunities where one of the NPCs is highlighted in the area for better loot and xp, or 1 is better for loot and the other is better for xp.

I have a lot of spare time in my life so I can do stuff slowly but surely, this means AFK thieving is a very nice downtime activity that makes me some GP. Sure, I could go fight a boss, or mine ore, or cut trees, but they require other input resources where as thieving requires VERY little, a few runes at most when you have an upgraded grace of the elves for infinite lightform.

I'm not gonna say every single PP NPC should be 100% fully afkable for 15 minutes, but 5 minutes is plenty in my opinion, and maybe higher tiers like vyres shouldn't be afkable at all due to the ring (or make it so only the highlighted NPC for better loot can give the ring but higher chance than currently to make the droprate roughly the same when including the chance the NPC you're currently PP might become the loot highlight)

I hope my feedback can help make this rebalance a better experience for all, but we'll just have to see!

[rancid flicker]

Something like we have for divination memories would be nice as a visual indicator for when the afk timer is ending

[sick light]

I think if XP rates were an issue, just nerf the amount. But with the current update, there's no consistency. Essentially made an afk method non afk able because the chance of getting caught is random. One time you may pickpocket for 6 minutes before getting caught, just to re click and get caught in 30 seconds. Very inconsistent.

[civic spire]

Make clues tradable so those that want too do them can, and those who don't can profit.

[sick light]

But what would their value be

[obtuse jolt]

it's really misleading that the update was supposed to be about early game rebalance but it was really concerning the end game experience. It seems Jagex is hoping for an influx of new players and wants to recycle existing players

[tall storm]

Whys is this thread only on Discord?

[crimson forum]

also on reddit

[civic spire]

GE will figure that out

[sick light]

Seems like one would either way over pay, or way under pay

[tall storm]

Weird, found it now

[glacial nexus]

I'm more than happy with a big nerf to xp, just let me get the clues.

[vestal crow]

When i get caught by a npc i am pickpocketing i want to get thrown in jail an have to escape an then escaping gives good exp based

[sick light]

It may not be as bad if clicking the same npc reset the chance of getting caught

[kind bloom]

Man I maxed my gim without crystal mask, finally broke down and did the quest and unlocked it and got 117 theiving. A week later it's nerfed into useless.

Even as an ironman
The loot was already trash, useful trash but still low quantity. The xp was way to high. Now it's just all bad.

Fully buffed every npc should at minimum reach 5min afk. Nuke xp rates, give consistsnt afk windows, possibly add a npc that cannot be afkd but gives 5x loot.

[signal bone]

Posted this on Reddit as well, but posting here for posterity:

Things that stand out to me:

• A drastic reduction in AFK time is conceptually fine but there's also no additional payoff for this change. There's no benefit for actively clicking still, all the reward spaces have been hard nerfed, and ways to avoid damage, which is now more common, also got hard nerfed.
• The Cheeky Monkey effect removal is pretty frustrating as well, when I know many have asked for it to be made more accessible, not removed.
• Similarly all stun damage prevention items getting large nerfs does not play well with getting stunned SO much more.
• The way the stun chance rises with each successful pickpocket until you choose a new target conceptually seems solid but there's a truly absurd amount of dead clicks when pickpocketing trying to get off an NPC, and there aren't many targets in most cases so this is exceptionally difficult anyway. This clearly needs a lot of work.
• The Crystal Mask and Light Form nerfs are INSANELY large. 10 and 20 effective boost removal respectively seems very high for such high end spells/prayers.

All in all it feels like the high end effects were not well tested and balanced for rates. I'm totally fine with seeing AFK xp and rewards reduced - Safes are more active so they should be more rewarding and Heists should clearly be the most rewarding and they don't feel it. The rewards from Safes are bad and Pilfer Points are better obtained from looping low level safes instead of high ones. Heists are great but are only high end. Longer term it'd be very valuable to look into converting Cabbage Facepunch and Flash Powder Factory into Heists instead of their current PvP type minigames to give a larger level band access to active methods.

[sick light]

Yea loot is low but useful. XP should just be lowered. Being anything over 99 should a minimum be 5 min afk. With master camo it could increase to 10 min. It's already a long grind to master camo. Those that get it could be rewarded in that way

[devout flint]

I thought safes were mostly for the XP anyway.

[pearl sleet]

do not kill afk thieving

[ornate phoenix]

I just feel like we just got the new experience where if we kept prayer up and crystal mask on we could pickpocket new cool targets. I mean thats already clicking 2 things every fifth minute. Dont really see why that would be too good? It felt rewarding and fun. Cant really see why you would just remove that. Like pickpocketing some of the higher targets it can be hard to find another target every like 90 sec. Which feels really annoying. Like when I play on my phone just to sit and spend time looking for another fairy or the right type of vampyre.....

[kind bloom]

I can't wait for leauges 2 where the auto pickpocket relic is bugged the first week and your chance still reduces to 0.

Lol I know its gonna happen.

[knotty quiver]

Just lower xp for afk pickpocket and things are solved - gp/hr on the highest lvl pickpocket target is only 5m/hr already so there isn't any room to nerf there.

The current changes to pickpocket should be exactly as mentioned before, change the success rate for lower lvls etc but undo all the nerfs for the stun - and then slowly tweak them accordingly because a blanket nerf to all of them is just taking the piss.

People who have maxed their thieving and done the quests for some perks should be able to enjoy their mastery over the skill.

Why bother with 15min timer when it will never and can never be utilised with current gameplay?

[halcyon venture]

Should not be able to afk for 15 minutes in any skill. Instead it should be around the time of 2-5 minutes at the max. Pickpocketing should be the least amount of loot and least amount of xp and things like heist and safes should give you the most xp per hour. As you level up lower tier npcs should not catch you as often but there should never be a point where you never get caught. It’s not like cooking food and you don’t burn anything. You’re picking pockets there is a chance you will get caught.

[sick light]

Agreed. Just lower the xp rate

Having to click again at random intervals does not seem very rewarding for maxing a skill

[wind mason]

i think afk thieving would be best if at lv120 you cld afk anything from the lv 110-120 range for 5 mins anything from 99-110 for 10mins and anything under 99 for the full 15 mins

[sick light]

Not a terrible idea

[silent river]

Yes, the thieving rework was still really overtuned. But this update completely removed the long afk option and made gearing almost meaningless.
what isn't working:
Thieving gear doesn't seem to help all that much and there's no methods at all that allow full afking. Also the reward risk of oblivious was way more interesting (eventhough the risk was minimal)
Share why it feels off
Regardless of the setup/skill level there's no way to fully afk even low level methods. This also somehow means that thieving went from an afk skill to having no real afk methods anymore.
Suggestions
Please add/rebalance some items to make fully afk possible again for the low-mid level targets at the high levels with gear. Bring back the old oblivious, make feather necklaces (or other anti-stun items).
That said, do try to make full afk less efficient than low-effort pickpocketing. Ideally some new items would be introduced to compete for extra gp/h or exp/h on those equipment slots to make gearing interesting again and widening the gap between afk and low-effort. (think different pickpocketing bags, perks, necklaces, rings, outfits etc)
Specific example:
Introduce oblivious as it was, but make sure the thieving success rate doesn't reset until the player switches npc. Also make sure the damage on failure is adequate.
This gives us a problem to solve instead of denying us the possibility to afk. Stun avoidance gear, community skilling with ice asylums and such can now be used to overcome this. This means afking now comes at a cost of consuming charges on gear and needing certain gear while also adding a social element to pickpocketing as well. (not sure if ice asylums stack, I hope they don't)
Potentially change oblivious so it will not remove the stun, but simply re-attempt pickpocketing after the stun duration. Makes fully afk less efficient, but still viable.

[vestal crow]

5 mins afk max with 1/3 to half the exp as before should be good enough

[sick light]

Imo if you're over 99 thieving, the man or woman in lumbridge should not stun you

[prime harness]

Why did you push back the aura blog to discuss the thieving changes when the pickpocketing aura is one of the biggest buffs pickpocketing has Jagex. Would like too know what your current final plans are with it before we go and "fix" what you broke today incase it needs another fix when those changes are made.

[slender gate]

Making pickpocketing essentially non afkable is ridiculous. I never comment on any updates for RS3 but I genuinely cannot fathom how this update was passed or who thought it was a good idea. Having BiS gear with max level and being able to average 3:25 at a lvl 1 npc is literally just laughable. There is skill mastery for a reason. If the problem was the loot was too good.. nerf it? If the problem was the xp was too high.. nerf it? Why change the whole core of pickpocketing when no one asked for it in the first place? 120 Thieving update received from what I could see as one of the best updates in recent years to the game and within a few months it's been tarnished because of a stupid update that no one asked for. Early Game rebalance should be exactly that, making the early game better not messing with late game. What's the point of having new players join if old loyal players leave? The player-base stays stagnant forever not improved.

[sick light]

Well if you just reduce XP rate then that fixes itself. 15 min would effectively be 7 min if XP rate is 1/2

[solemn token]

Make it so that whenever you're x amount of levels above the required level to pickpocket, you don't fail anymore.
With the cooking skill, you also stop burning food x levels above the required level.

[halcyon venture]

Still doesn’t fix the issue that not doing anything in game for 15 minutes is a problem.

[hybrid reef]

At first I was also in favor of not 15mins afk pickpocketing. Altho this has existed for so long now in the game. Fishing you can also afk 15mins and have a very low exp rate. no one complains about this. Because the exp is low.
Just nerf the xp to the ground and gp as well (if you want). Keep the items because they make the game somewhat doable for casual ironman players. I understand ironman is a game mode which should make the game harder but, this game gotten so big, so much stuff is in this game. So in my opinion (dont shoot me) its good there are stuff afkable with "decent" loot like there is now in the pickpockets. even if it is 15mins. Or atleast make it so if you unlock everything you can afk for 15mins. 5-10 is also doable. But why have the 15mins logout timer if you cant afk for 15 mins. You could also just lower the logout timer then if you dont want people to afk for 15mins?? But this would also upset the community i think.

[sick light]

Is that the prob? Or is people leveling up using afk method the problem

Yea I don't think 15 min is a problem in itself. It's just an XP issue

[halcyon venture]

Not having to play the game for 15 minutes at a time is a problem 100%. Every hour you play you only have to touch the mouse 4 times which would equate to 2 seconds maybe. So for every hour you’re playing 8 seconds? You mine as well bot bro I mean come on.

[civic spire]

I love how they took away 15 minutes of afk and everyone is settling with 5 minutes afk...

Crystal mask should be moved to 15 minutes with 100% everything at 120

[halcyon venture]

Because 15 minutes is far too long and a majority of people agree to that

[civic spire]

Maybe for ppl who don't have jobs

[halcyon venture]

I work a full time job away from home

[distant trench]

They could just introduce a proper afk thieving method, rather than having something that's half afk half proactive.
Priff elves were that initially

[sick light]

But would 15 min for virtually no meaningful XP matter? Look at seasonal events that have activities where the xp rate is on the floor. People still do them.

[distant trench]

Perhaps helping npcs with opening caskets they lost their keys to at a helpdesk.
A bit like the zygomite hairstyling

[halcyon venture]

I get your point about reducing the XP. But it comes to a point where players being AFK for 15 hurts the game. Interacting with people and being present in the game

[civic spire]

What you talking about? Hardly anyone talks in world chat

[sick light]

True, other than events

[flat raptor]

Ide be very careful listening to feedback from people who just want an AFK skill, it's what made Runescape a second screen idle game, not a MMO RPG. For the first time in weeks, people were actually talking while thieving today, it was refreshing. Seeing 30 people afk thieving a NPC for hours on end without a single person talking is depressing and terrible for the game.

That being said;

What’s harming the fun factor of pickpocketing most at high levels? - It wasn't or isn't "fun" anyway. It was used as a second screen idle simulator. Make the skill more fun and interactive and therefore more rewarding.

What feels like a step back for pickpocketing gameplay, outside of XP and balance? - I spent a lot of time doing quests, getting outfits, and unlocks to be able to thieve at a better rate, this now feels somewhat negated.

What changes feel most important to you to be included in any solution? - Standardly, you go up 1% per thieve like your update says. But if you have outfit, perks, quest unlocks etc etc, this should go up even slower, and maybe click somewhere or do something to keep the threshold of being caught down. Be rewarded for being active, not inactive. If people work all day, that's just a sad reality of life and they shouldn't be pandered to in a MMO RPG. They should move to a Idle game that now suites their lifestyle. Or; nerf the xp for afk methods hard, and buff xp for more active skilling like the heists.

Please don't pander to these people who just want a second screen idle game, they are very loud minority. This is a MMO RPG, not a second screen idle game. Reward those who put in the effort to unlock things, but don't make the skill completely AFK, or nerf the xp hard.
High AFK = Low XP and low reward.
High input = High xp and high reward.

[marsh schooner]

I’d say you’re the minority not us

[sick light]

I agree with most of that. The current update negates the work put in for the outfits, quests, etc. But to say, "they should find a game that suits their lifestyle" seems like a push away statement. I think jagex wants everyone to be able to play, regardless of lifestyle, at their own pace, which, for many people, includes afk activities for several skills that aren't as enjoyable.

[halcyon venture]

What do you need me to explain better? I’m taking about people being present in the game and actively skilling and doing combat. Not bot your account 15 minutes at a time.

[halcyon venture]

Yeah but he’s right

[ruby trout]

High AFK = Low XP and low reward.
High input = High xp and high reward.
I can agree with this as a nice goal. How low/high idk but maybe afk being half as good after the first couple minutes sounds fine.
Instead of getting hit and outright stopping pickpocketing, I wonder if the Mining-like system would fit - like, when you run out of stamina (afk too long), you stop and rub your forehead (steal at half speed or something, for half rewards in both xp/loot categories).

[sick light]

They are still doing the thing though. See removing lamps and such prevented buying your way through levels and make you play the game. Even though they are afk, they are still doing whatever thing it is.

[civic spire]

A clan / guild revamp is the way, not making the grind more insufferable.

I for one will quit, many others too, you'll have less conversation not more.

[sick light]

Yea pickpocketing like mining or smithing would be fine

[grand verge]

i would love this

[marsh schooner]

Most of us like afk because we are winding down from the day and skilling and watching some tv and tryna chill. Like I love afk, I’m still sitting there and will glance over and respond, just not 100% staring at the screen. There is nothing wrong with having afk options in the game. Especially for remote people which is a lot of the player base.

[halcyon venture]

I agree with you 100%! I just don’t think it should be 15 minutes

[sick light]

So make it 10, or whatever. Don't have a random abstract time of how long it is. Which is what this is with pickpocketing

[rotund fern]

For myself the main issue is not click intensity or raw xp. It is the consistency of failure and stuns at 120 with the best gear and stats. When a player has max level and every available buff, frequent failures break flow and make progression feel meaningless. Late-game mastery should feel stable.

Failure does not need to disappear, but the penalty could shift. Instead of stuns, a short damage hit and temporary reduced pickpocket speed would preserve risk while maintaining rhythm and respecting investment.

Restructuring early and mid-game thieving makes sense. However, weakening late-game consistency feels counterintuitive. High-level content should reinforce mastery, not erode it.

Menaphos guards are a strong example of good late-game incentive. The clue rate gives meaningful value beyond xp or gp. If that becomes less attractive, players will default to safecracking, which risks new content seeing low engagement.

Mastery should translate into reliability, even if risk remains part of the system.

[sick light]

This seems to be the biggest issue people have. End game thieving feels robbed.

[marsh schooner]

Menaphos guards are amazing. Great for clues, great afk and great xp. The crystal masks needs to be fixed

[prime harness]

even like 30% of the exp it is now profs/guards would be like 350 - 400k an xp an hour

[marsh schooner]

And there should be a good way to afk with the removal of the aura, that is important

[prime harness]

but you need something to make it better for people that want to be more active pickpocketing to

[sick light]

Plenty of ways to offset the 15 min issue that some have. Making the skill less enjoyable is a backwards step

[prime harness]

if the aura is totally being removed with no real replacement crystal mask would have already reduced the 15 minutes to 5

[flat raptor]

If you cater to everyone, you cater to no one.

I'm just not a fan of demanding an MMO RPG become an idle game.

But like i say, have AFK methods, but much slower xp and very low or slow rewards you shouldnt be able to get 100's of clue scrolls for example from menaphos guards for clicking once every 15 minutes. It is really really poor game design.

People shouldn't be rewarded for clicking on the screen every 15 minutes while watching netflix. In my opinion of course. Runescape went down this road before, and it's why it ended up with like 10k players and MOST the player base left. We're trying to pull things back here. But yeah, i get your sentiments and they're fair enough buddy.

[steep mesa]

Thieving already had a more click intensive, high reward activity. Heists. Why would I ever pickpocket now

[vague coral]

i agree, so many ppl hate them.. and alot of us love them...

[prime harness]

I have 2100 hard and 1800 elite that I got from getting 200m theiving that I will almost certainly never get through, let alone any I might get after this

[sick light]

The scrolls are a drop rate issue though not necessarily bad game design. Same could be said for archaeologist. I think the tetracompases should be nerfed. But that doesn't mean kill pickpocketing. If I had to click the screen every few seconds or minutes I'd do heist and pickpocketing would become obsolete. I don't think that's the goal.

[knotty quiver]

I guess we should increase the xp rate and drops accordingly if we getting a blanket nerf across everything?

[slender gate]

Exactly. The issue now seems to be people having problems with other people afking for 15 minutes yet Jagex themselves offer a 5 minute extra logout timer for being a member and an additional 5 minute extra logout timer for having a Jagex account. All of a sudden you shouldn't be afking for 15 minutes but Jagex conveniently use it as a selling point for memberships...

[night canyon]

You’d really think the world was ending over this coming from the Reddit

[runic flame]

I curious to people who think the prior "effort -> Xp & Gp" of pickpocketing was justified;

Where else in the game was it previously possible to do something where you click 1 time every 15 min and earn 1.5m xp and 5+m per hour?

I don't even think end-game highly optimized combat afk was that lucrative and xp rewarding in most cases.

Fishing Soles? Seren Stones?

The XP and GP aren't even close.

[signal bone]

Speaking for myself, I didn't think a full 15 of pure afk with no chance of getting caught at high end stuff was very healthy either, but this is such a drastic reduction in both afk-ability and xp/hr and rewards and reward space to improve your Thieving that it's a serious shock to the system as a whole

[grand verge]

almost any high level slayer mob,and most skills havev some variation on this (maybe not that high xp but still sizeable)

[brisk jackal]

We need to bring some effort back into the game, while I agree laid back methods should exist they were too AFK before and should be scaled back. They were scaled back today (and maybe a bit too much idk). The game should be more active and social. People that are afking arent playing the game they are off doing something else.

[prime harness]

Jagex's problem with that @brisk jackal is if people are not afking 2 or 3 accounts at once they eventually wont be paying membership on them either

[signal bone]

The issue is Thieving just got exactly that - a high effort activity with good rewards and rates, that being Heists, and then instead of scaling back afk rates and improving Heist rates as well, we got this insane reduction, tbh.

[brisk jackal]

yeah and you just lose active players because the world feels dull and just people afking or botting so you win nothing by having that

[quartz junco]

thats what a think, just make heist rewards more xp, and cut xp form afk pickpocking by a 25-50% and leave the rest as it was before this update

[runic flame]

Agreed that the nerf is a shock to the system. No disagreement there. That's on jagex for poorly Play testing things IMO.

In the livestream earlier today they basically said this impact to end-game thieving was kinda incidental because they didn't want early thieving and end-game pickpocketing to have different systems.

That's kinda unacceptable from a Development perspective because it shows he actual play testing was not sufficiently understanding of the magnitude of this change.

But also IMO; should not have been this overclocked in the first place.

[wary violet]

+1 Fully agree! That my issue, it needs like a 75% nerf if they want 15 mins afk

[signal bone]

I definitely agree. I'm fine with them sharing systems but they made them share systems and then also massively nerfed the endgame Thieving on top of it all

[slender gate]

Agreed, it's gone from one extreme to the other.

[runic flame]

I'd argue the level of effort required to set up 15 min afkability in PvM at least somewhat justifies it a bit

But acknowledged for sure.

[grand verge]

full bis thieving also takes a considerate amount of effort

[halcyon venture]

The problem is the game is too easy and requires no effort in places it should. It’s going to put off a large amount of potential players. There has to be something in the game that attracts people who want to work hard in the game and rewards them for doing so. People aren’t going to want to play when they work hard and earn rewards and then someone on the other side of the coin can just sit in one spot and get the same rewards if not more. Working hard and actively playing has to always outweigh afking by a large margin.

[rotund grove]

The way I'd probably change it would be to make the rate at which success decreases scale to thieving level such that with a bis setup at late game thieving, you'd be able to go around 5 minutes worth of pickpockets (not including use of the sticky fingers relic) before being caught at the same npc but could go a bit longer at lower level npcs. Probably could add some other engagement mechanics akin to time sprite or stamina but I'm not sure.

[tidal bear]

I'm currently getting this for clicking my screen every few minutes at Archaeology professors. That's pretty insane in my opinion. I was never able to do 15 minutes afk since Crystal Mask only lasts 5 minutes.

[halcyon venture]

That’s why are population is as low as it is! The main proponent of this being MTX not this recent update but the principle is the same

[knotty quiver]

If full BiS isn't something to even work towards because its as useful as being naked when pickpocketing, who even wants to play it?

Your min max skill set is going to extend your pickpocket by a colossal one minute. Or maybe two.

[halcyon venture]

Exhibit A of what’s wrong with this game

[quartz junco]

the 15 min there was able thanks to maxed aura

[wary violet]

Theres no other AFK content that comes even close with such minimal effort!

[slender gate]

100% Agreed, but this recent update was definitely the wrong way to go about it

[wary violet]

If it got a 75% nerf it'd be more in-line with things like eternal magic trees, which are afk friendly which are about 370,000 xp an hour, not 1.3-1.5m

[runic flame]

Acknowldged. I'd argue think it's a bit of a different level, but I still strongly support long-term unlocks enabling enhanced and more laid-back skilling;

Just again trying to ground the conversation in mentioning that from a skilling perspective, there are very few instances in which the last 2 months of pickpocketing is comparable in the Effort to Reward trade-off.

I think interestingly, the most comparable instance to thieving as of today (post-nerf) is Corosus Front Hunting and Fishing, which offers a comparable input -> GP ratio (about 1~3 min afk) but for about 1/3 the xp or less.

[grand verge]

i see where ur coming from but for the past 15 years thievings identity has been 'afk' so the change today leaves a bad taste (which i get)

[runic flame]

What other skill other than combat offers that same level of "afkability" boost?

I don't think there is one except for Shark outfit fishing.

[wary violet]

blackjacking and spam clicking dwarf traders

[sick light]

Agreed. You could even make it like mining and smithing where you get reduced rates until you click again.

[runic flame]

Which is fair; and I support tweaks here because I think the variability of getting caught and the nerfing of the Oblivious was not communicated and sufficiently tested by Jagex.

[grand verge]

yeah the tweaks are fine,the idea behind them that is.execution/communication has been poor

[analog tulip]

Just thought I'd say my thoughts . Thieving update is wack AF

[wary violet]

True, more testing should've been done, but it was a bit crazy that you could click 4 times in an hour and get 1,300,000+ xp in that same hour (not to mention the gp)

[runic flame]

💯

[runic flame]

Agreed. It doesn't line up with similar effort -> reward in other skills at all.

[frank plover]

time for pickpocketting to max out at 300k exp per hour

[grand verge]

i think most people actually don't care about the exp at all,so scaling that back massively would not make a huge uproar i think, it's the afkness that most are upset with. any opinion is okay to have but the 15minute afk was nice while you were busy doing other things, if u wanted big xp/gp u would do heists, at least that was my idea of thieving

[wary violet]

Well heists are also harder, and the risk of death + death cost no? AFK pickpocketing was safe

[grand verge]

then u would do the first heist,even with the death cost paying 300k to get a chance at a 700m is a non issue

also afk pickpocketing could get u killed as some of the npcs hit hard if u don't notice it quite soon after buffs ran out

[wary violet]

I'm just saying the effort to reward factor was so weird with pickpocketing, nothing else in the game is like that at all, not even end game mining/woodcutting/fishing

15 mins afk pickpocket should be around 300k-400k xp an hour imo, it would line up much nicer with other skills/methods

[grand verge]

yeah 100% agree on that

[analog tulip]

I'll take 250k XP to be able to afk for 15 mins I got kids and work if I wanted to play os I would play os

[grand verge]

[knotty quiver]

every single skill has their BiS gear/augmentables/perks/relics and they more or less do contribute to making it more afk/convenient. GOTE and mining juju+stone spirits for example

but everything in thieving is nerfed to the ground though lol.
prayer, magic, augmentable, gear etc all do not contribute much, if you are on maxed out everything you can only pickpocket ~3min on a lvl 1 target

and keep in mind the highest level content that you can pickpocket on thieving pre-nerf only nets you like 5m gp/hr if there is no stun. exp is good though

[wary violet]

That's a required input for that afk'ness though, you're using supplies, not just a handful of runes

and also the xp/gp from those 'other' skilling methods are nothing alike

[grand verge]

xp wise theres nothing that gives that much xp except combat,but gp wise almost every skill has an equal xp/afkness

[knotty quiver]

its also a required input for thieving.

if xp/gp is the problem why not tackle that? but afk GP is kinda similar to others though

[willow surge]

I'd rather have the xp nerfed, compared to mining ( with perfect juju ) or fishing ghostly soles (with shark on consume) and keep the 15 minute afk and rewards ( they are not that OP, maybe reduce direct GP ) or have xp go lower the more you stay on one target, but keep it afk at high levels and with buffs/items on ( instead of increasing chance to get caught ).

[wary violet]

I agree, should be 300-400k an hour, and let people 15 min afk

It'll be more in-line with other methods, even end-game ones

[hybrid reef]

Halleluja to you. Thats what i meant in my message. But you said it way better!!

[runic flame]

Sure. I agree the afkability should be restored to provide a viable afk method for thieving.

If it's 15 min afk, it should aligh with the input -> reward of other comparable skills like Seren Stones and Sole fishing.

Less afk = more rewards.

[knotty quiver]

somthing like the rocketunities that others mentioned to reduce xp rates overtime and 'refresh it' would be much better, loots is already crap though if the max you can get on those methods is around ~5m and not including the potential stuns

[runic flame]

The current post-nerf pickpocketing is comparable to Corosus front Fishing in unlocks required and input -> gp reward (like 5m per hour), but pickpocketing still overs like 5x the xp as Corosus fishing does.

[wary violet]

Exactly, the XP you could get from full AFK pickpocketing isn't even close to any end-game (even click intensive) non-combat xp that I can think of

Granted it does sting a bit since I did miss the 'early bird special' and didn't get 120 while it was OP

[iron thicket]

Dwyou can still doe heists and safes for great xp

[wary violet]

True, but I can't let my dog outside while getting 120 doing heists

[runic flame]

This is where Jagex continues to fall flat. The play-testing is insufficient which leads to disappointments and missed "early-birds" like this :/

[wary violet]

I feel like there's been a lot of 'early bird specials' over the years tbh, and it hurts each time, be it skilling or bossing

[wary violet]

I imagine they knew how broken it was since there was 2 jmods that got 120/200m during the broken period (iirc)

[steep mesa]

Reduce afk xp, everyone agrees on that, and make the 99-120 targets need at least crystal mask to 100% afk so it becomes a 5 minute afk with considerable investment to obtain. Double the rune cost of crystal mask if you want. Needing Light within + grave of the elves * dark onyx core to achieve the optimal afk setup is more than enough to warrant a 5 minute afk. Saying you can’t 100% anything below 99 as you’re level 120 is immeasurably dumb. Heists exist as the active huge xp/reward activity, and pickpocket should be the afk low xp activity, not the unusable high intensity low reward activity.

[analog tulip]

Lmao I have 200m thieving on one account with crystal mask and light form I can't even afk for 2 mins thieving on fairys Lame lame lame

Jagex you guys need to fix this mess. I under XP rates are crazy but this ain't it

[lime dome]

I do like the idea of diminishing returns on pickpocketing and I hope it stays, either by decreasing success chance, loot and/or xp over time. Ideally with a visual indicator or chat warning not unlike Ithell harps.

It should probably be mitigated partially or completely by crystal mask + light form, and have some kind of minimum defined by level diff.

I also didn't find 15 min afk pickpocketing rewarding at all, it felt very cheesy. It felt more rewarding to do safes for the toolbelt unlocks which at least required some input.

Fwiw I'm 'only' 96 thieving and in no rush to max, feel like these feedback threads are usually dominated by 120s/200ms so here's a mid-game player's perspective

[latent totem]

Jmods: you are ruining this game so bad!

[analog tulip]

If we can't afk make the NPCs stationary at least my god this is awful training on a newer accounts lmao I'm about to cancel membership on an alt account this ain't it.

[distant trench]

could just make them a valid target for the bind / snare / entangle spell to stop moving

[shut anchor]

https://tenor.com/view/troy-community-room-fire-pizza-gif-5612111

[lilac fern]

I think the featherfingered necklace should have been buffed rather than nerfed. There's a lot of jewelry coming into the game, and there should be more sinks for them.

[wet pelican]

I think these changes need tweaking, especially in the case of damage taken and the item consumption rates.

[thorn storm]

i don't know. seems like the same antisocial pickpocketing as always just more clicking. the rebalance was good fore early stages (cant tell you how annoying it is thieving early game) but the removal of afk pickpocketing seems a bit ridiculous to me. if you want people to participate in more active training then the way you do that is not removing afk skilling its by making active activities more lucrative and fun.

[stable heath]

The high end buffs should allow for longer times

[shut anchor]

If they worked like porters, added to gote or whatever via an option like how brooch works

So you'd be able to use lightform and whatnot still

[wet pelican]

An addition that could be made as a compromise to items like the featherfingered necklace is by allowing us to make a compacted version of it with invention, and increase the rate to be 15%; with some kind of passive effect like increasing thieving success chance by 0.1% per successful pickpocket, up to a max of 3 decaying over a few seconds of disuse; or just a flat small increase.

[wary violet]

Yes in theory, but can't just leave the post-nerf xp rates, 1,300,000+ xp an hour for 4 clicks an hour is broken

[stable heath]

Ths changes are an actual buff to people without crystal mask

[analog tulip]

Quest for crystal mask and light form for what? Lower those requirements if I can't afk a 200m account for more than 2 minutes

[distant trench]

platinum version of it could be nice

[thorn storm]

the rates need to be tweaked yes. thats part of making active more lucritive.

[shut anchor]

99 thief as a huge buff, to note items, down the drain for afking lol

[lilac fern]

I agree, Jagex should have nerfed the drops rather than the success rate. The influx of items coming into the game have caused a lot of them to crash.

[thorn storm]

not nessisarly make active give more but make it more lucritive then afk.

[shut anchor]

(It does still be good, but the fact it unlocked(was required) to even do 15mins of afk at most spots made it somewhat balanced, if they half the xp after 5mins or however the current timer works that's fine

[winter kernel]

Yes, broken. But Jagex wanted to go that direction 2 years ago that is why they gave 5 minutes extra with Premier and 5 minutes with the Jagex Launcher. Now they want to change it and make it unable to afk for longer times. I agree that 1.3 for 4 clicks is absurd, reward the active players, but dont take away afk possibilities

[shut anchor]

Or simply make xp go down over time, but now it's the worst of both worlds really tbh

[wary violet]

Agree, I think 300k-400k for 15 mins of afk pickpocketing is fair (which is still higher than other end-game methods for other skills)

[shut anchor]

It's interesting that we went from 1.4-2.2m xp/h at traders whilst spamclicking like ardy knights. To making thief autopickpocket, giving it a relic, and then making an update surrounding it, and then nuking that into the ground.

Thief has been a 1-99 skill within 24h since like 2007, it's notoriously fast, and it's 1/30 skills with this 15min afk option besides mining and autorefillcannoning pvm

[flat raptor]

AFK/Inactive play - Low reward, Low XP.
Active play - High reward, High XP.

Doing quests, unlocks, and achievements etc bridges the gap slightly. People should not be highly rewarded for AFK'ing a MMO RPG.

[shut anchor]

I would say nuke the xprates into the floor like how it currently goed, keep most drops as they were nerfed earlier already for balancing reasons, keeps active thief viable for xp, keeps afk thief viable for items, win win

Like after 2mins (or whatever other number idgaf) afk thief, you dont get xp

[pastel oracle]

You ought to pick a better phrase. That's largely considered an offensive and derogatory slur.

[shut anchor]

Cool, but pls dont derail the convo

Just pm them that next time or whatever

[thorn storm]

this is the same issue as whats going on now. people are doing this for xp and allowing afk with no xp creates the same issue.

[sinful schooner]

I would say that decreasing xp (And possibly drops) the longer you stay on the same target sounds like it could work? Allowing people to afk, while also not resulting in too high xp rates for afk-ing

[shut anchor]

The dumb thing is, we did this dance already with mining lol, and that got potions to upkeep afking, so waiting for thiefpots lol

[thorn storm]

just hitt he divide by 2 button and thats what you get if your afk farming. or do what you did with mining and add fatigue (still hate that system).

[naive oar]

Copy-pasting from Reddit/Previous Thread.

I think there's room for 15 minute AFK on super low level thieving targets. If you're 50 levels higher than your target you should be able to indefinitely AFK for the miniscule amounts of XP/GP they give.

I think a lot of people are hoping that they'll still be able to AFK good targets like Archeologists, Menaphite Guards, Vyres, which just isn't realistic for the health of the game, but surely what is the harm in being able to AFK pickpocket a man for 15 minutes straight?

[lilac fern]

As a side note, the camouflage potion could be updated to temporarily boost thieving rates. It's mostly intended for PvP scenarios, and PvP is all but dead nowadays.

[shut anchor]

It's fun for hide and seek, camopot every min and use ring of trees

[wary violet]

This also

[grand verge]

if i'm fully bis i should be able to pickpocket a lvl 107 npc for longer then 2 minutes

[knotty quiver]

other than archaelogist, the rest are content locked though. and to even get to full afk, there is also lots of things you need to do first to get the levles/quest/perks etc

[sinful schooner]

How long would you say that you should be able to pickpocket for with bis gear?

[snow dew]

5 prolly

[grand verge]

my heart says 15 but my mind says around the duration of a crystal mask is a good middle ground

from 110 onwards this should be a bit lower ofc

[naive oar]

Those things should still be good and help make it from 1-2 minutes AFK -> 5 Minutes AFK in my opinion, but full 15 minute is absurd for their rewards.

I don't want them to take all this feedback, revert the AFK change, then just nerf the XP/Drops.

[wary violet]

I think allow 15 mins, but nerf heavily. 300-400k max per hour (its only 4 clicks an hour..) and it still better than all other non-combat skills

[winter kernel]

Crystal Mask duration, 5 min. With all the effort put into it to unlock it.

[knotty quiver]

with the prayer doubling the time

and max cape adding 5 more min

[wary violet]

And nerfing the xp, 1,300,000+ xp an hour is insane, no other non-combat skill compares

[naive oar]

1.3m xp for clicking every 1-2 minutes is good
1.3m xp for clicking once every 5-6 minutes is pushing it
1.3m xp for clicking once every 15 minutes is absurd.

That's why my suggestion says allow us full 15 minutes at lower level NPCs, less AFK at higher level NPCs with good drops, you don't need to nerf XP/Drops if you just make it so the scale slides as the level of your target increases.

[unkempt cedar]

I still don't see why thieving was even touched this update

It has NOTHING to do with early game rebalancing

[wary violet]

1,300,000+ xp an hour for 4 clicks doesn't seem broken to you?

[naive oar]

Well, they changed the entire way pickpocketing works for lower levels that had downstream effects on how higher level pickpocketing success chance was calculated.

[glass harbor]

the update did at least make low level and low gear/unlocks thieving feel much better. of course on the other hand, the high end thieving did get nerfed in the process, which doesn't feel great

[unkempt cedar]

1.3m xp in 4 clicks is entry level early game content you you?

[thorn storm]

thieving foundation starts at early game. it just trickled up since the core behavior was changed.

[runic flame]

This update does make thieving wayyy better for low level players with no skill modifiers; upper level got swept-up in the update because Jagex didn't want 2 different systems/rules for pickpocketing.

They explained this in the twitch stream today- which points to a QA/Testing issue.

[naive oar]

At level 103 you could 15 minute AFK with zero perks (Besides the cape) at Archeologists for like 600-700k xp/hr. Pretty broken in my opinion.

[wary violet]

100%, gets really crazy with vyres

[unkempt cedar]

Ok, so nerf XP then, not the whole idea of pickpocketing?

[runic flame]

Yeah, this is what should have been done.

[wary violet]

Agree! 300k-400k xp max an hour, let people 15 min

[thorn storm]

the issue was success rates for new players not xp rates.

[analog tulip]

Need light form and crystal masks I'm level 117 on an alt and I can't do archeologists for more than 2 mins

[naive oar]

I'm saying prior to update it was insanely easy to get to 120 with basically no unlocks.

[analog tulip]

Oh yeah def was crazy

[knotty quiver]

according to some people you cant do npc man for 3min too

[unkempt cedar]

Don't get me started on crystal mask, a spell that requires 7 different skills to 80, costs soul runes, light form has prayer upkeep or a massive time/cost sink

[naive oar]

You didn't NEED lightform or crystal mask to AFK to 120 in like 100 hours.

[sick light]

The update seems fine for low level thieving, but at high level thieving, jagex fumbled the mushroom bag and lost their loot

[analog tulip]

That's true I did it in a week to 117

[real narwhal]

What’s harming the fun factor of pickpocketing most at high levels: Why bother working for high level unlocks for hours when you can still fail at level 99 thieving from a level 30 mob. I may as well just boss and use the money for mats I need for skilling at that point and not interact with thieving.

What feels like a step back for pickpocketing gameplay, outside of XP and balance: We were given several options on how to gather materials such as heists, chests and pickpocketing which all severed a different purpose. Now pickpocketing is just worse chests so it makes it feel like dead content.

What changes feel most important to you to be included in any solution: 15 minutes of afk. Either lower the exp or nerf the drops but don't take away the fully afk method. We have several active and semi active methods already.

Explain what isn’t working for you: Timer going from 15 minutes to 2 minutes on average is a huge jump that was very jarring.

Share why it feels off: Feels like I just wasted time getting 99 when I could easily fail the same at any level honestly.

Suggest what you’d like to see explored instead, where possible: Adjust the drop table for items you're concerned about and lower the experience if you must change it. Personally considering you can make more money afk at gw1 with less requirements it feels almost counter intuitive to the statement made at one point about bringing skilling up to bossing / combat.

[thorn storm]

if you can 100% sucess an npc the first 10 will always succed then it goes down 1% for each sucess. so yeah if you can 100% a late game pick pocket and you stop after 2 mins then its the same for a man in lumby.

[knotty quiver]

its also funny that the relic now nerfs you so you pickpocket stun comes faster

[glass harbor]

I had 3 minutes between times getting caught at master farmers, with 94 thieving and prif camo (+ prif exoskeleton and I think ardy cape 3?) without crystal mask or light form
so I'm fairly sure someone higher level should be able to get 3 min+ at citizens

[knotty quiver]

seems like 3min 15s is max

[unreal crypt]

Thieving feels bad, so... change that

[sinful schooner]

What specifically feels bad, in your opinion?

[sick light]

It's really just the success/fail rate

[shut anchor]

So what's the concensus atm?

[glass harbor]

so, personal opinion
what feels good:
level appropriate targets do actually feel viable now compared to before, even without gear
what feels bad:
massively overleveling targets along with various unlocks and gear barely seem to improve pickpocketing much

[unreal crypt]

This, and if high level pickpocketing is going to be active/semi-active I think rewards should probably be improved directly or new reward spaces added

[sick light]

Put it back how it was. Just reduce XP rates and maybe certain loot from certain npcs. For high level. Low level seems ok

[naive oar]

I really hope they don't restore full AFK by just making bad XP rates / drop rates at the current meta targets. Make thieving ardy knights the best full AFK thieving XP or something , leave our loot / xp from Menaphos Guards, Vyres, Archeologits alone 😂

[unkempt cedar]

Having no way of knowing "when" you're going to get caught, and then shoveling in a change that guarantees that you get caught after an unknowable amount of time, is not a recipe for a fun time

[naive oar]

The very first thing I had in mind when today's changes went through was either a 'progress bar' or a buff that shows your current failure rate. That's the least they can do.

[sour parcel]

Idk man I think the timer should be reduced, just not as severely.

[lilac fern]

Another idea: how about having pickpocketing work like rockertunities?
One random NPC in a group would have an arrow over their head. Pickpocketing that NPC would give slightly improved drops, or a chance of rolling the RDT. The "featured" NPC would change every minute or so.

[unkempt cedar]

They could have even put the timer at the 5 minute point, anything past 5 minutes the success chance drops, but this current change is in no way a good system

[sour parcel]

maybe, but at low levels people could kill your rockertunities, literally lol

[lilac fern]

It could work for non-attackable NPCs, though.

[sick light]

But by saying it shouldn't be 15 min implies no skill should be 15 min. Yet they use the 15 min logout timer for marketing. So that would apply to the whole game, not just thieving. But the 15 min afkability is a hot topic in general

[sour parcel]

What about the master farmer? Hes just 1 guy

[unkempt cedar]

I still say if they were worried about the xp rates, they could have simply buffed low level and nerfed high level where concerned, if success rate was a concern, they could have just fixed the low level success rates, but to change the core of how the system works disproportionately effects high level players

[distant trench]

all the nearby crops look out for them

[sick light]

Agree

[fathom dust]

At risk of pointing out something else that will be nerfed, you can afk at GWD1 fairly easily with modest necro gear and practically no risk of dying for about the same gp/hr as the highest level pickpocketing targets. I don't think the loot is that out of line, but definitely the XP was tuned far too high.

Lots of good input in here on what makes it unfun and how these changes just kinda break pickpocketing and make it active. Setting up buffs and getting gear and unlocks doesn't seem to have any point anymore for high level pickpocketing. The changes seem positive for lower levels and without gear/unlocks, but it's two steps backwards for endgame pickpocketing.

Also what's our primary source for starbloom seeds now that they aren't in the master farmer's drop table?

[stark sundial]

HAM Women and Men should have different loot, but yet compareable loot. Women should have salvages while Men have individual items listed in the post.
With double/triple/quad loot chances, the inventory becomes full within seconds. The thieving cape perk allowed noting these items making theiving them good sources of salvages and low level herbs.
With the reverted changes, salvages no longer available, player's inventory are full even with the thieving noting perk.

[unkempt cedar]

I just can't wrap my head around the thought process for the change. There were so many alternatives they could have taken to how they approved this, but taking the nuclear option to a whole subset of a skill is not one of them.

[sick light]

Yes, many options were available

[lilac fern]

Not to mention that many J-mods themselves are RS3 players. They had to know how bad the change would be.

[sick light]

I don't remember who said earlier about making it like mining and smithing where efficiency decreases over time the longer you're afk. That'd be perfect. Along with some other slight modifications to drop rates for certain npcs

[lilac fern]

On a side note, we need our own drama calendar. Can't let the OSRS sub have all the memes. 🙂

[naive oar]

It's also wholly unbelievable that Jagex could've just gutted the XP/Drop rates instead of touching the 'AFK timing' and people would be happy about it... they made a change that made lower level thieving better at the expense of high level thieving, which while a shame, was exactly what they said they were focusing on with this update.

[sick light]

You're right

[silent escarp]

Why change the oblivious perk though? Let us afk a bit longer at the risk of dying

[unkempt cedar]

Yes, but there's a huge difference between cutting xp rates though, and completely destroying the core of how a system works

[stable heath]

Thieving is way better for targeting new mobs and you don't all those success buffs
Those buffs becoming bad is what is being grieved over

[thorn storm]

the other problem i having is that i cant click the same target again to reset the timer and if i click off and actually wait for the action to stop then click again on the same targer i still get stunned almost immediatly. it doesnt reset the chance on that npc till i get stunned by them. then i get another roughly 2 mins. i cant switch targets theres only the one in this area.

[real narwhal]

Another thought having read the comments that a few people have brought up. I do feel like requesting being able to go afk for 15 minutes is a reasonable one. There is a 15 minute timer, why have one if the intent is not to have activities that let you afk for the whole 15 minutes. Pickpocketing is at least engaging with the core gameplay loop and you change targets based on what you're doing so it should be encouraged.

[naive oar]

Yeah this feels really bad at targets where there's only a single NPC...

[sick light]

Yea it works if you switch targets. But in several cases there isn't one close enough

[thorn storm]

yeah it seems to only reset if you choose a seperate target entierly. witch is dumb.

[sick light]

Well a big part for high level players is, if I have to active play to pickpocket. I could do many other things to train actively for better XP

[glass harbor]

at least thankfully, other than the hp hit and the shortened stun compared to before, getting caught isn't too punishing (usually)
and switching targets when you're not even sure of your current chance takes about as much time depending on how far the alternative target is away

[thorn storm]

here is an interesting question. from what i've noticed the timer is reset on the stun. what happens if you us a cheeky monkey. does that reset the timer when the stun is absorbed? probably not.

[glass harbor]

cheeky monkey no longer functions I think? other dodges seem to reset your pickpocket chance to full

[signal bone]

The Cheeky Monkey lost its effect today

[thorn storm]

lol of course it did.

[naive oar]

To be honest, I think that's genuinely only fair. It's kinda wild that perk was locked behind a premier token. 😂

[signal bone]

I really wanted them to just make it available from content, tbh

[sick light]

Yea here's an idea. Keep the functionality, just remove it from being premier locked. But that's too easy 🤦🏻‍♂️

[naive oar]

Wish granted, Cheeky Monkey is now a 1/5000 drop rate from catching monkey's on Karamja 😂

[sick light]

Lol

[thorn storm]

i mean yeah. but it wasnt always behind premier content. it was part of the road trip in 2014. thats when i got the one on my main.

[naive oar]

I wish they'd have done that... but then you have a bunch of premier members screaming that their membership package was devalued or something...

[thorn storm]

oadviously the one on my alt came from primer though

personally i don't think there should be any game affecting stuff behind real world money (any primer object affecting the game, bank space, etc)... cosmetics are fine as long as i can disable them for others on my end. no pay to win.

also the effects of the cheeky monkey being removed would make a lot of primer members feel like htere account was devalued as is.

[still helm]

Nah, make it a 1/5K chance from feeding bananas to a monkey /j
It's the Master Quest Cape req but far worse 😂

[wary violet]

You can never win lol, maybe lock it behind 1000 hours of lunar farm as a compromise

[naive oar]

Absolutely agree, in-game buffs should not be locked behind paywall! They chose to just remove the buff instead of adding it to non-paywalled content which is... an opinion of all time for sure. (I am a premier member before anyone says I'm just a brokie looking for a hand out)

[stable heath]

A random chance from ape atoll agility

[unkempt cedar]

Honestly they should be refunding people their premier tokens for the monkey with this stunt, as well as the gizmos that went into getting oblivious, especially people who got oblivious+prosper, those changes feel like a spit in those peoples faces

[thorn storm]

i have a main that is primer and an alt that is primer (1 main and 1 ironman) and my opinion on that is the same. i dont care about the perks of primer. i care that its the cheapest way to play rs over the coruse of a year.

[sick light]

Premier has already been devalued

[thorn storm]

thats my point

[wary violet]

How? Its still the cheaper than paying month-to-month? The rest was just a bonus

[thorn storm]

cheapest per year of game time, but all the perks are devalued.

[naive oar]

As a premier member I agree, I'm honestly just locked in for the 8.99 a month lol, the cosmetics and bank slots are nice additions

[unkempt cedar]

Yea but nuking the premier artifact without any warning, rhyme or real reason just feels distasteful. Sure it was a bonus, but it was still part of an overall package people bought, which was therefor stolen from a paying customer

[sick light]

Yea it was devalued simply by taking away something that came as a package deal

[thorn storm]

ok then next year its just a 12 month membership and no perks. all pre existing perks roll out to the game as content shortly after. now its not devalued.

no longer part of the package right?

[sick light]

Yes, but to players that bought premier shortly before all the updates got sort of screwed because they didn't truly get what they paid for

[unkempt cedar]

I would understand if it was something that they said "hey we arent including this is next years package, or any packages bought after x date" but im actually pretty sure removing it the way they did is kind illegal to an extent, mind you i could be wrong on the legality of it

[wary violet]

pretty sure the TOS/T&C that everyone clicked 'agree' to says not

[sick light]

Yea could have easily said next year going forward it will this. But the way they did it was in poor taste

[unkempt cedar]

TOS dont supersede the law, regardless of what any uela would like you to believe

[thorn storm]

you mark it so that it shift to 12 months only before you roll out the updates 12 months after that. noone would be premier anymore by then.

im going to miss the cheeky monkey.

[sick light]

There's ways to do it so that people don't feel gimmicked. I'm not arguing for the perks, I'm just saying the way they got removed could have been way cleaner

[thorn storm]

hes an ugly mofo so if he doesnt have the affect anymore he is just never coming out again.

[unkempt cedar]

ill admit i unlocked it myself, but literally never used it, i didnt need it since i had like every other unlock available, but it still feels slimey to remove a feature from something without any warning, all for the sake of an update no one wanted or asked for

And again, there were sooooo many other less "sledge hammer" choices available for them to take here, and i will stand by this every time, but they could have POLLED these changes, instead of taking a nuclear route and just cleaning up the pieces later

[wary violet]

ngl who will say 'yes remove my free +10% xp and aura refreshes Jagex"

[thorn storm]

you want polls go to osrs. rs3 is developer driven and no mater what they say players arent there concern. profit is. so no polls. as good as it would be for the game.

[wary violet]

I bet a poll to re-add TH would pass here💀

[unkempt cedar]

i guess this whole feature is useless and shouldnt be in the game then?

We quite literally have a built in polling system in the game that hasnt been used in years

[thorn storm]

ive never really seen it used. have you

[stable heath]

To poll what?

[analog tulip]

Jagex is probably just getting ready to merge both games together at this point. I would not be surprised. Having 2 games with the same name is bad for marketing

[unkempt cedar]

Yes, back when it was initially introduced

[sick light]

Maybe but the player base has been stagnant for 10 years. That's the reason for all the changes. If it was purely profits, mtx wouldn't have been removed

[wary violet]

ong yall would vote to add the squeal of fortune back

[unkempt cedar]

Ive been playing this game off and on for like 19 years, Ive been here through a LOT of the ups and downs

[sick light]

Can't agree there because they launched dragonwilds with the RuneScape name.

[sinful schooner]

I feel like this discussion is veering a bit off-topic now...

[unkempt cedar]

I was talking about polling the thieving changes specifically

[sick light]

Indeed

[unkempt cedar]

Im juggling this and work, so i got a little jumbled in topics

But they could have used the polling system to see how people felt about changing the core pickpocketing system rather then just shoehorning it in

[sick light]

I agree

[stable heath]

The changes were largely good. Its just that many pickpocketing related buffs and unlocks that take effort to get became useless in the process.

[wary violet]

I don't think you'd need a poll to stop the, for a lack of better analogy, 'orphan crushing machine'. 1,300,000+ xp an hour by only clicking 4 times is crazy and is bad for the game

[sick light]

Correct. Which makes it better for low and mid lvl players at the expense of high lvl players

[unkempt cedar]

why are you so hung up on the 1.3m xp thing? That easily could have been cut in half or even less. instead of nearly destroying an entire method of training

[runic flame]

Polls are just excuses to not engage with the community in actual detailed and nuanced conversations.

[sick light]

Yes so just reduce the xp. 300k XP sounds much more reasonable

[wary violet]

I agree! 15 mins should be allowed, just 300,000-400,000 xp/hr I've said it several times

[unkempt cedar]

Ok then i missed that part, so i apologize, we are in agreement there then

[glass harbor]

pickpocketing prior, without the various buffs from quests, gear, etc. was barely worth the time from what I remember

[wary violet]

not true, light form wasn't needed, it was still OP

[unkempt cedar]

Yea but it should be, you either had a constant prayer drain, or needed to spend hours or hundreds of millions to make it feasible for upkeep'

[glass harbor]

at around 90-ish, stuff like dwarf traders, crux equa, elves, gnomes, barely felt doable when I tried them in the past

[unkempt cedar]

Dark facet of grace isnt exactly a low level options, and neither is grace of the elves itself.

as an iron, you need like a minimum of like 93 invention with extreme invention potions to even make that

[sick light]

Aside from pickpocketing being broken, what are other aspects of the update that are good/not good? Seems to be pretty good for the game as a whole and for low lvl mid lvl players.

[wary violet]

early game seems a lot better imo

[unkempt cedar]

Im not a huge fan of the whirligig changes, but i can also see why they were needed, spending almost an entire skill at 1 single location is not healthy for the skill or game

[stable heath]

Hunter traps no longer have like a 70% fail rate

[signal bone]

Well the reduction on anti-stun stuff itself is poor, the doors in the thieving guild are broken, and Crystal Mask was hard nerfed. Very little else was changed outside of Pickpocketing but I do think the changes were great for very early levels.

[wary violet]

big W

[unkempt cedar]

Overall i am happy with a majority of the changes, even if ive long since outleveled them, but i have friends who havent, and i like that they will get a better experience overall in the early game then i had.

Literally the only change i take any major issue with has been this pickpocketing one.

It just takes away any real sense of achievement in the higher levels, and basically kills any of that with the various unlocks since it makes them all nearly functionally useless as well

[sick light]

Haven't seen a single person complain about whirligigs lol but yea 1-99 doing the same thing is wild. So that was needed

[stable heath]

It was a very high apm activity

[sick light]

But also, make hunter not as bad and people wouldn't want to whiligig from 1-99

[runic flame]

Right; but it made he entire rest of the skill skippable from 1-99.

[stable heath]

I havent done anything other than BGH since I unlocked it tbh

[sick light]

Agreed

[glass harbor]

I would argue the reduced reliance on crystal mask and other buffs is good... but how much those buffs were nerfed into the ground isn't. though the ceiling should've still been nerfed somewhat.
as far as whirligigs, I do vaguely remember pre-whirligigs being miserable at some levels? (what, with feeding oogleroots to rabbits being recommended for 1-19), though I think the other hunter changes have improved those areas?

[eternal copper]

revert the nerf, not everyone wants to look at their game every 2-5 mins, we got other stuff to do while we get gains

[unkempt cedar]

Honestly instead of the changes they made, the higher level flowers needed could have come from higher level, possibly even quest locked, areas, or just move some of the pools to new locations so you arent just sitting on 1 rock for the entire skill, it would have felt a little better imo, but again, im not up in arms about how they changed it, it was to self contained for a single skill to go all the way to 99

[tidal bear]

Can you guys please discuss the Hunter changes in https://discord.com/channels/303835144073248770/1472914812165029991 ? This thread is just to give feedback on the Thieving rebalance.

[halcyon venture]

If you want a dragon mattock you will

[unkempt cedar]

Sorry, got caught up in others conversation again

[halcyon venture]

Then why play the game? I’ll never understand that point of view. The game already allows for so much afk. Honestly a lot of it needs to be reduced across the board. It’s far to easy to level in the current state of the game. It puts off potential players that could grow our community. We are seeing it happen in live time right now with thieving. There has to be some type of friction in the game and not just easy scape for the majority of the time. I know it’s not a popular belief but it’s true. That’s why the player base has steadily declined.

[sick light]

Player base declined more over mtx than because someone spent 15 min pickpocketing. It's just about XP rates really, not the 15 min

[halcyon venture]

I agree with you on that point for sure it’s not just easy scape but MTX was part of the easy scape mantra

[unkempt cedar]

But yes, thieving update, it does not feel good, and kills the previous sense of accomplishment the various unlocks and upgrades brought to the skill

[glass harbor]

the other thing too, it's not entirely a nerf. the ceiling got nerfed (quite a bit by the sounds of it) but the floor got buffed (or at least got more consistent).
granted, I'm more frugal than others are while thieving and haven't been using crystal mask before or after the update

[stable heath]

+success chance buffs are pretty obsolete with success decay right now

Oblivious might be the only one of note because it warns you of getting caught soon from what I saw

[plush sundial]

no, it just needs to be rebalanced. I think we should more afk thingies, just balance it so be very suboptimal in terms of gp/xp. very sub optimal that people would be encouraged to do the active route but the afk route still needs to exist. both routes should exist. let people pick their poison.

[halcyon venture]

As a community though we have to give the right feedback for the health of the game. All of us here love this game so much. We are all connected by our love for this game. Making it super easy or super non active only hurts us. We have to have things in the game that make it competitive and rewarding. Our goal should be to get the other side of RuneScape (OSRS) onto rs3. And new players from different mmos. Would we all like to level up faster and easier? Yes of course. But if it’s so easy it has no meaning!

[halcyon venture]

I’m not saying afk should be removed, I’m just stating that you should not be able to leave your PC or phone for 15 minutes at a time and you have only touched the phone for 8 seconds out of the hour and you have got 1m xp. That is game breaking design.

[quartz junco]

then why 15 min lobby timer even exist?

[halcyon venture]

It shouldn’t

[glass harbor]

it does also feel weird that crystal mask not only made pickpocketing more afk, but also increased its rates, both due to the lower chance of being caught
if the idea was that more afk had lower exp rates

[halcyon venture]

Just because it’s in the game my friend does not justify it. There’s a lot in the game that should not be.

[sick light]

Yes it will because everyone will still be apart of the game together. Some people are pvmers some are skillers some are cluers. Some play daily, some play every once in a while. That's part of what makes it great. Both systems need to exist, the active and passive. They just need to be balanced better.

[plush sundial]

I agree with the exp rate being removed, I agree it maybe broken if that is so, but I still think longer afk timers should exist. osrs have afk crabs. people play this as well as a 2nd monitor, they still should be able to somehow. osrs have 10 minutes afk combat.

[halcyon venture]

I can agree with you there 100%

[unkempt cedar]

its almost always been
"more afk = lower xp"
"Higher intensity = more xp"
And considering pickpocketing is the main afk method of thieving, they should have just lowered xp to be in line with this.
The changing of the core system of how pickpocketing works honestly is inexcusable to me because of what its meant to be

[flat raptor]

I couldn't agree more. This is what im saying. If you want to afk or idle in a game, you get minimal xp and little to no reward.

If you actively level you should get good xp rates and handsomely rewarded.

People are quickly forgetting that this is a mmo rpg, not a idle clicker.

I think runescape are listening though which is good. They will lose a very loud minority, but I think the majority will start playing again and we will see a lot of new players.

No one should be rewarded for leaving a character and clicking 4 times an hour on a mmo rpg. Maybe on an idle clicker.

There's a reason, alongside mtx, this game nearly died a death. Everyone waa afk and just bankstanding, no social cohesion, economy ruined and skilling wasnt viable for making money because the markets are just flooded with materials, progression is completely hollow when its all afk. The list goes on and on and on.

[halcyon venture]

Good points with OSRS. I think we all are coming to a consensus the xp needs to just be controlled better. Hopefully the j mods can find that balance of working on your character and feeling accomplished after you complete a goal. Right now we don’t have that in a lot of skills. You can do a beehive run from 1 farming and instantly get to 17 farming. That pattern is repeated over and over again in so many skills

[sick light]

Yea they didn't have to reinvent the wheel, just make it smoother

[wary violet]

I agree with alllll of this, good write up ❤️

[vague coral]

i think they should give us a poll! those who with lowering exp or drop rates, others for 100% afk at higher tiers and those opposed! otherwise this thread goes way off topic

[halcyon venture]

Well said I couldn’t agree more

[glass harbor]

spent the past 15 minutes at llyeta elves, getting 150k in the time at 95 thieving. it's not as good exp as other methods, but I'm fairly sure that's more exp than before for not using crystal mask?
(just wanted to put some numbers on things)
that should be about 600k/h?

[sick light]

Pickpocketing isn't supposed to be best XP/hr. But it was largely passive. By making it basically active, why wouldn't you use other methods for XP? Especially for high lvl players.

[unkempt cedar]

Exactly, with how active you now need to be with pickpocketing at higher levels, unless your after something specific, why would you want to bother with it? it functionally makes it dead content

obviously thats a huge overexaggeration, but im being dramatic to make a point

[glass harbor]

I haven't tried heists yet (I was 94 prior to today, 96 now), but pickpocketing the elves at least has been more passive than safes ever were

[tidal bear]

For me it's still as passive as it was before the update. I don't have access to auras so I've never been able to do 15 minutes AFK. It was always 5 minutes max. I can still pickpocket on my second monitor – just have to click every few minutes. I can't play heists on my second monitor.

[sinful schooner]

What's the approximate xp/h for heists, btw? Just to compare

[knotty quiver]

afk pickppcketing is self limiting, pickpocket too much and profit drops. for you to be able to afk to begin with you need to optimise your setup which is pretty much BiS and xp does not really matter

[tidal bear]

I don't have BiS and get 1.4m xp/h pickpocketing Archaeology professors

[halcyon venture]

It has a pretty broad range of but it can get into the low 1 millions

[sick light]

It's north of 1M/hr at 500 loot

[sinful schooner]

Ah

[unkempt cedar]

So once again, nerf the xp rates, not the entire core of pickpocketing

[glass harbor]

only reason I'm not doing dwarf traders, which I think is more exp/h than elves, is due to not wanting to deal with the npc guards

[sick light]

Yea so drop XP and nerf tetracompas rate

[sinful schooner]

So if pickpocketing is to be afk, the xp rates should be significantly lower than that...

[tidal bear]

Tetracompass rates were already nerfed. You really don't get many tetra pieces

[halcyon venture]

Yeah because the active play in heist should warrant the increase in xp

[unkempt cedar]

Yes, thats basically what everyone is argueing from what ive seen, put pickpocketing back to how it was, nerf the xp rates to compensate

[sick light]

Ah. Well that was good then. I didn't usually pickpocket the professor just the archaeologist.

[unkempt cedar]

I just dont see the logic in altering how a skill works at the system level for the sake of xp rate issues, when you could have simply changed a few xp and success rates around instead

[tidal bear]

Just to mention, it was said by Mod Breezy in the Twitch stream earlier today that they would be looking into increasing the AFK time to around 5 minutes (Crystal Mask time), at the expense of xp/hr and/or gp/hr.

[unkempt cedar]

I guess thats more reasonable then the current rate

[sick light]

Yea I'm ok with 5. The current random fail rate is just bad. 5 is shorter than it used to be, but is consistent. So it'll be fine

[knotty quiver]

even on full afk without stuns the gp/hr is equiv to other afk skilling, its the xp thats the problem

[sick light]

Yea it was strictly an XP issue

[unkempt cedar]

NGL i said in a dm with a friend this whole thing felt like a psyop where they intentionally took the heavy handed method and overtuned it all to get us to agree to a 5 minute timer middle ground

[knotty quiver]

they should just get rid of 15min timer and force logout every 5min

just be done with it

[sick light]

But again it's like the premier perks. You're taking away something that people paid for argument. When lowering xp rates accomplish the same thing

[unkempt cedar]

I just dont see why the 15 minute timer part should matter

[sick light]

It shouldn't imo

[unkempt cedar]

if xp is the issue, nerf or buff the xp where needed, simple as that, leave the afk part alone

[knotty quiver]

i think 15min is great due to different styles of gameplay, but if they keep being heavy handed etc to get us to agree then just get on over with it

[real narwhal]

Exactly I jumped through the hoops and opened my wallet for 15 mins. Lower the rate to be in line with whatever people want and let people enjoy the 15 mins. The whole point of having a 15 min timer is to afk 15 mins. Why was the timer extended if the cotent was not meant to last 15 mins. You could have taken the 5 min extension from premier like a relic if that was an recent choice to move away from

The message I'm getting since that wasn't taken away when other premier rewards are is that gameplay lasting 15 mins must be a goal?

[slender gate]

If exp was the problem then they could have just nerfed it. If the loot was the problem again they could have just nerfed it but they decided it would be better to just change the whole core of pickpocketing instead.. really weird how they actually even gave the okay to the update

[unkempt cedar]

I just want to know who thought nerfing the entire pickpocketing system itself was a good idea as opposed to just tweaking the rates

especially when theyre going to need to go back in and tweak them anyway to compensate for the overkill

[sick light]

Yea because if the goal is to stop 15 min afk across the board. Then you just make the log out timer 5 min and boom it's done.

[knotty quiver]

they dont even have to nerf loot as things will justget cheaper if there was oversupply

[stable heath]

Well they buffed pickpocketing for people without buffs like crystal mask. They unfortunately made crystal mask probably not worth the runes

[glass harbor]

so, with the old method (I think it was just a flat rate) 99% success rate would on average get you caught once every 3 minutes I think? while 100% success rate would... never get you caught?
there's just such a large gap between not having 100% success and having it

[knotty quiver]

not just crystal mask, they nerfed every thieving perk for stunning

[unkempt cedar]

Even going so far as to outright REMOVE one of them

[knotty quiver]

relic, magic, prayer, augmentation, premier pet, skilling outfit, equips

[real narwhal]

I think that's what made it feel bad. You could fail and get stunned and you can't really protect from the stun nor can you really extend the duration of not failing with bis items. It's all the things all at once.

[unkempt cedar]

Yea it was far to heavy handed, it throws all sense of achievement all those upgrades and perks brought when you got them completely out the window

Why waste runes on crystal mask when it adds maybe 30 seconds? thats insane for the soul rune cost alone
you summoned a magpie? why bother
Oh you have the ring of vitir? That 5% sure feels worthless now
Sticky fingers relic? Sure, why not just get caught even faster now instead

it all feels gross and a waste of time now0

[glass harbor]

the new system seems a bit easier to tune, without buffs suddenly coalescing into 100% success rate for 15 minutes. some of the high end stuff should probably get buffs from where they are currently, but I don't think they should just throw out the entire system

[tidal bear]

Crystal Mask also had its stun resistance effect removed, and this wasn't mentioned in the patch notes. The patch notes even state:

Effects which caused the player to evade stun damage now continue to do so, unless otherwise specified[.]
It was not 'otherwise specified' for Crystal Mask, as far as I can tell.

[rigid fog]

Yea we had it coming, cant complain tho it was the easiest 200m afk ever

[unkempt cedar]

Gonna have to hard disagree, if your issue was with the xp, then once again, nerf the xp, but theiving has its own active training methods for a reason, and pickpocketing was not one of them

[sinful schooner]

That sounds a bit weird

[tidal bear]

What about it sounds weird? You can compare the description in-game with what it was before. The 'and has a chance to protect you from being harmed by them' part has been removed.

[sinful schooner]

Oh, sorry. I was saying that it being changed without being mentioned in the patch notes sounds a bit weird 😅

[glass harbor]

I'm not on ancients to see what the tooltip says for crystal mask. was the 25% (33% light form) stun resistance removed from the tooltip? is it possible you just got bad luck?

[tidal bear]

It was removed from the tooltip, yes

[stark sundial]

"Featherfingered necklace - reduced from 21% chance to trigger to 10% chance to trigger. A charge is still only consumed on success." ---- Guhhhh we are already being caught enough. This reduction makes me not want to make them, buy them, and/or use them.

[real narwhal]

I feel like there's two groups of thought and we're talking apples and oranges. One group seems to want to make things more active and to feel earned. Another group (mine) wants something to do for fun afk not for gaining exp. I feel like that's where the misunderstanding is coming from. I'm not pickpocketing for exp I'm doing it for skilling mats. The pickpocketing update before this was the first time I actually enjoyed the skill. If you make the exp rate for afk horrible it doesn't take away from group one. These are two separate player groups if I'm understanding correctly from the back and forth the last few hours?

[unkempt cedar]

Yea and that's the problem, pickpocketing isnt really meant to be active that's what chests and heists are for.

[glass harbor]

pickpocketing only really felt good before iff you had 100% success rate.

[sick light]

Exactly

[tidal bear]

I do pickpocket for XP, but only because it is so OP. I wouldn't be opposed to a nerf.

[viscid aspen]

How is it a good design to get mats from thieving rather than doing arch?

[unkempt cedar]

With how abysmally slow the rate was on the mats themselves and the RNG of it all? Plus needing either to bank frequently or needing the 99 cape? That's a non-issue

[stark sundial]

I hated the back-to-back fail rate. It was very frustrating, not only getting caught and damaged but getting stunned that hinders getting back into the pickpocketing.

A grace period of being able to pickpocket without being caught back-to-back is great. You get that that by leveling theiving. But, I don't want to do other things like chests because the activity I want to do is pickpocket.

[sick light]

I'm fine with the arch materials from pickpocketing, but they could nerf artifact drop rate

[viscid aspen]

So the problem is the arch itself and thieving is a bandaid?

[unkempt cedar]

No? You get the mats way faster form doing arch itself, what are you talking about?

[sick light]

That's a different discussion

[viscid aspen]

But you have to use porters

[real narwhal]

If I didn't pickpocket it I would just buy from the GE? It's making me actually get involved with a skills main core mechanic? Are people out here only getting their mats from deposits? I hope not that seems like it would be unpleasant?

[sick light]

Not a big deal really

[tidal bear]

Artefact drop rate is 1/1000. I've only ever gotten one lol.

[sick light]

Oh I've gotten a ton through pickpocketing. But I think the artifacts need to be excavated. I'm fine with the materials though. It's slower, but also afk. So expected.

[unkempt cedar]

The rate and type of mats you get from pickpocketing is completely inconsequential in my opinion, even on an iron, it's just a chill way to get them at a trickle. And even IF that was a problem, just nerf the rates? Not the ability to afk to get them?

[viscid aspen]

Arch itself is afk, so why don't afk that?

[unkempt cedar]

That's kinda my whole point?

[sick light]

Agreed

[viscid aspen]

When why does thieving nerf matter? Just go afk arch

[unkempt cedar]

Cause people aren't only afking archeologists???

[sick light]

The penalty for afk arch is it takes longer. Which is fine

[viscid aspen]

Arch the skill, not the pickpocketting

[unkempt cedar]

Geobie scavengers for teci, menaphos guards for clues and reward boxes, wizards for runes and talismans? There are any number of other places people want to afk pickpocketing, why are you singling out the arch mats?

[sick light]

Yea the skill. If you're active you can move around with the time sprites. If you're afk it takes longer

[slender gate]

He's part of the Psyop

[unkempt cedar]

Rofl

[quaint maple]

What if instead of getting interrupted and stunned when you fail a pickpocket, you just get a fraction of the xp and no items?

[viscid aspen]

No, I'm just trying to understand why they are getting arch mats from thieving instead of doing actual arch? Both are afk

[real narwhal]

I like this idea as well. Plus 1 this.

[stark sundial]

are any of you guys theiving on a newbie account? I am, lvl 49 theiving. I am not getting back-to-back caught with theiving. I at least get 2 in before I do! This is faster than before!

[unkempt cedar]

Because you're robbing archeologists who are carrying them? Like, it quite literally thematically makes sense and they were designed that way

[viscid aspen]

He said " I'm not pickpocketing for exp I'm doing it for skilling mats." So why thief?

[real narwhal]

Because it's fun?

[viscid aspen]

How is it fun

[unkempt cedar]

Why is this your hill to die on?

[viscid aspen]

Why do a completely different skill to get mats instead of doing actual skill? What's the problem with arch that you rather do it by thieving

[quaint maple]

thieving for new players and new unlocks are definitely far better than before. The friction is happening for higher level people trying to pick and not having the same 5-15 minute guarenteed afk as they had before given bis geat and setup

[unkempt cedar]

People like having afk a source for things even if it comes at a trickle, and who's to say it's the mats people are after? I personally would rather pickpocket them for binding contracts cause theyre annoying as shit to make.

[viscid aspen]

"Geobie scavengers for teci, menaphos guards for clues and reward boxes, wizards for runes and talismans?" These I get it, but arch?

[stark sundial]

Gathering mats is really two ways: excavating sites that already gives you artefacts (kinda afk), or excavating from material cache, which deplete at just 1 being collected. There are no NPCs that drop materials. Material cache sites are not everywhere like trees or mining rocks.

[glass harbor]

I can't help but notice... the wildy rogues, and prif elves, feel particularly bad for exp, and about as afk/active as other similarly leveled targets?
prif elves giving 125-170 exp (before voice of seren) compared to lleyta elves giving 353 exp. and lleyta elves seeming to catch me less often

[quaint maple]

ha, getting binding contracts for free from professors is definitely a great plus
i dont care about any of the other things in particular

[sick light]

Well with the cape you can note the mats

[real narwhal]

It's just nice to have it up getting loot? Again having this as an option does not take away from heists, chests or anything else?

[sick light]

If you do arch you need porters or deposit. So pickpocketing is easier afk wise

You also get gp. The tradeoff for mats being slower than doing arch itself.

[unkempt cedar]

I answered this right before you asked, binding contracts, they SUCK to make in decent quantities, so have an alternative method of getting them is enjoyable

[viscid aspen]

So the problem is with archeology itself and it should be fixed there instead of thieving as bandaid.

[slender gate]

psyop

[unkempt cedar]

It feels like you're being disingenuous for that sake of it

[sick light]

It's not the fix to arch. But sure, but this discussion is about thieving not arch

[real narwhal]

Having different things to pickpocket for mats is a current choice and a recent update. As such I feel that it must align with the way the dev want people to play. Why would they bother adding so many ways to get mats if it wasn't good for the game?

[mental drift]

How about... just an idea I thought of... When AFK pick pocketing NPCs rather than your chance of being caught increases... It's just as simple as the XP/Action decreases? So you can afk but the Xp/Hr is low if you AFK but if you're active it is good... Kinda like Rockertunities?
So people who want to afk for supplies while at work or second screening aren't effected but it stops it being an OP training method?

[unkempt cedar]

You have an afk alternative, but the trade off is it comes slower, that's like core to the ideology of the game, it's quite literally baked into how rs3 is played.

[viscid aspen]

But arch itself is afk

[real narwhal]

I like GnomeScape suggestion as well. That could also be nice

[sick light]

Yea we talked about that earlier. Make it like smithing where over time the xp rate decreases

[stark sundial]

if I could AFK agility, I would. low exp high interaction, little awards.
I would theive for some agility exp

[slender gate]

ragebaiting psyop

[unkempt cedar]

You are intentionally missing the point. Arch is afk if you want it to be, but some people like to do 2 things but slower sometimes. Ever heard of zygomite carestyling?

[viscid aspen]

What do you mean if you want it to? Following the sprite isn't worth it, so it's just staring at progress bar and clicking space once it fills in, that's such an active gameplay.

[unkempt cedar]

I mean, that's arguably not true, but we are talking about thieving, not arch? You get mats from archeologists significantly slower then you would doing arch itself

So I'm still not understanding why this seems to be your hill to die on

[sick light]

Correct

[viscid aspen]

How is it not? If you follow sprite you only get more artifacts and you're mainly limited because of materials, not artifacts so following sprite isn't worth it.

[sick light]

I also don't understand why make an augmented skilling item for perks, just for the stun to nerf that?

[viscid aspen]

What hill? He said he does thieving to get arch mats, and he doesn't care about thieving xp. So my question was why do thieving instead of arch the skill itself when they both are afk.

[sinful schooner]

Why are we talking about arch?

[iron thicket]

Because you could get mats from thieving

[sinful schooner]

Well, you can get many different resources from thieving, why should arch be different?

[unkempt cedar]

That's what I'm trying to figure out

[sick light]

He wants to know why people pickpocket archeologist if arch itself is afk in his opinion

[shut jasper]

Ive been focusing on getting all thieving bonuses and after hours of questing and leveling and millions of gold spent Im not in a much better position than someone who just got to level 99.

[lean plover]

pickpocketing archaeologists was a mistake

[sick light]

Exactly that's the problem

[viscid aspen]

If he said that he wants materials for doing arch the skill, but is thieving to get them and doesn't care about thieving xp, so why wouldn't he do the arch the skill itself instead of thieving? That's it. I just wan't to know WHY.

[lean plover]

now everyone is just afking at digsite instead of going to the spots they should be going to

[viscid aspen]

What is it so bad about arch that it's better to do thieving for it

[unkempt cedar]

I've said it before, if your issue is with the mats, nerf the mats, if your issue is with the xp, nerf the xp, but why was the very core of how the pickpocketing system functions what they went after instead

[sick light]

Because afk arch isn't putting gp in my pouch

[lean plover]

thieving is just the strongest "gathering" skill now across the spectrum

the loot tables are way too strong for straight up afk gameplay

[sinful schooner]

Tbh, I feel like it makes sense for there to be some kind of alternative source for arch mats, since that's the case for other skills? Makes everything a bit more intertwined?

[viscid aspen]

Do arch and sell excess materials?

[iron thicket]

Because the early game was made better. Lategame was just an unintended casualty

[viscid aspen]

I don't have problem with it, I just want to understand if you don't care about thieving xp and you want mats to train arch itself, when why just don't do actual arch.

[unkempt cedar]

And that should never be the case, that's the whole argument
Earlier game could have been adjusted without anything touching the end game

[shut jasper]

I dont see how this wasnt intended. Otherwise it shows a massive level of incompetence.

[lean plover]

the last thieving update was just emblematic of the imbalanced skipscape shit that we need to step away from
instead of fixing arch, you just afk archaeologists. instead of fixing early rc, you just pickpocket tower wizards

[real narwhal]

I think the devs cooked with the previous thieving update and I enjoyed farming mats with pickpocketing as I generally did not interact with the skills so I was disappointed when today when I couldn't go 15mins. As previously stated I think it's good to have a way to afk and enjoy thieving which encourages you to do other skills with the mats. I've already stated several times I find it enjoyable. Asking me again will not change the answer. Plus it's filling the feedback chat with clutter friend.

[unkempt cedar]

They could have buffed early npc success rates, buffed loot or xp, but they literally went after end game content while they were at it. What does crystal mask have to do with early game? Or the oblivious perk? Why were these ever touched?

[lean plover]

doing thieving opens up so many loot tables you just would not be able to get access to as iron that skips so many other skills

[viscid aspen]

What are your thieving and arch levels, if you don't mind answering.

[real narwhal]

105 arch and 104 thieving

[lean plover]

it's doubly problematic because thieving is so absurdly fast as well compared to any other gathering skill

[iron thicket]

Its jagex. Enough said about competence 🙂

[viscid aspen]

And why do you enjoy thieving more than doing arch?

[unkempt cedar]

I'm 120 in both, so neither of these even impact me, but I'm not a fan of kicking the ladder out behind me either

[lean plover]

pickpocketing should mostly give coins if it's going to be afk exp. the loot tables need to be moved onto active methods

[sinful schooner]

Please don't

[real narwhal]

It's giving me mats I would otherwise just buy in the GE and not interact with the mechanic at all? I have mentioned this before? It was a good change for thieving?

[viscid aspen]

But doing arch gives mats, so why don't do that?

[unkempt cedar]

Because who cares which they choose? They like being able to steal the mats, why is this something you are so adamant about sticking to?

[real narwhal]

Because I don't want to? I feel like you're doing this intentionally. It's not adding to the discussion friend.

[sinful schooner]

This isn't going anywhere, so it's best to drop it, please

[rigid fog]

Question: say for example you activate crystal mask and ~30 picks later activate it again does it re-boost you?

[royal rover]

A scapers personal preference for how they play the game isn't relevant to the discussion for feedback to Jagex about the thieving rebalance. Please let it go

[real narwhal]

I like the suggestion someone* had about making it like rocks. Where you get less if you don't click. I think that could be an interesting middle ground? Maybe change the cape bonuses for that?

[glass harbor]

crystal mask is a 5 minute buff, giving the +15/+30 for its entire duration. recasting it would only refresh the duration I'm fairly sure

[real narwhal]

There's already a rockertunities mechanic in game so maybe something like that may be easy to code in?

[viscid aspen]

How is it not? Why add wc/mining spirits instead of actual ores? Why get mats from thieving instead of actual arch?

[stark sundial]

JaGex, regular farmers getting low level seeds and Master Farmers getting mid-high level seeds is awesome! I love that

[shut jasper]

Rockertunities wouldnt work because most of the locations only have one npc. The mechanic of having to switch npcs with the lockout of movement when the animation is going and the lack of options wouldnt work

[slender gate]

What does this feedback thread have to do with arch in the slightest? If you have a problem with arch then go post it elsewhere psyop ragebaiter

[unkempt cedar]

I just didn't understand why multiple late game abilities and unlocks were touched with this update, crystal mask and the oblivious perk are anything but early game

[sinful schooner]

Guys, please (Not you Jim)

[shut jasper]

Me?

[boreal ember]

My feed back from thieving vyrelords

1. The changes has made Crystal Mask and Light Form pointless to use. I'm still getting hit albeit less but with the timing of the thieving time out its basically on par to just not using.
2. The time out for pickpocketing is way to short.
3. • I'm sorry but at 120 thieving, master camo etc pickpocketing should not be so active. I might as well be engaging in Heists. Pickpocketing has now become 100% active. I cant even walk away and make a drink and expect to still be thieving.

[sinful schooner]

No, not you either 😅

[real narwhal]

Fair point I forgot about some spots with only like 1 mob. Yeah you're right it would have the same problem as right now. Maybe they could change the mobs at each location two have at least 2 in each spot? That could also help the current state in the mean time as well.

[viscid aspen]

I don't care about arch at all, just want to know why do it via thieving instead of actual skill. If base arch is so bad then improve it instead of using thieving as a bandaid.

[sinful schooner]

Drop. It

[shut jasper]

I like the fact that there are multiple ways to get matts. It gives player choice on how to progress and adds items to the market that players wouldnt interact with otherwise

Not everyone wants to interact with every area of the game and that is okay

[stark sundial]

I wish the Ham members, while the level can be combined, the loot should have been split. Women have ore and wood spirit and the men would have actual gears/items.

[shut jasper]

😭 why wouldnt the evil women have weapons and only craft suplies?

Making it so only guys have armor and gear seems like misogony lol

Oh here is an idea if you want to do that make the guards have the gear and the normal members have other supplies. That makes more sense anyways

[stark sundial]

That's a good idea

[sick light]

Yea that's the problem. It's 100% active now

[royal rover]

I like that we are more likely to succeed on pickpocketing mobs the level they are unlocked without requiring any additional gear besides the level requirement after this latest update this morning. This leads to less weird gameplay loops where we would be tempted to pickpocket the same type of mob for X+ levels, and does not feel fun, or good. Having a "next level" to work towards for a tangible benefit is a nice dopamine hit.

I would like to see afk pickpocketing put back in the game. XP / GP being reduced is OK, as the cost of being able to afk longer

If there is a mechanic which requires us to switch targets to not be caught or reduce xp / gp rates, there should always be 2+ mobs of the same type that can be pickpocketed within 10-15 tiles [arbitrary representation of a reasonable distance]

Last, but not least, I think that the nerfs to hard-earned rewards in the end-game were heavy handed, and devalues the time invested by many scapers. There should be some positive benefit, such as counteracting the rates at which xp / gp is reduced

[shut jasper]

Very well said

[unkempt cedar]

I still say they could have easily buffed xp or success rates for lower level content without laying a finger on the higher level stuff

The high level rebalance is not supposed to happen till later on this year, this update was supposed to be "EARLY GAME"
It never should have touched late game abilities

[royal rover]

I agree with you here, but we have no idea what level of spaghetti code that was hiding behind the early game rebalances. Some level of impact to end game is probably unavoidable. I would have preferred if they had cooked more, and then overhauled everything at once

[unkempt cedar]

Yes but they DIRECTLY changed how both crystal mask and oblivious work, that's in no way early game content

[boreal ember]

Jx is notorious for releasing updates/changes without proper testing. I feel this year is going to be rocky.

[unkempt cedar]

I'm trying to avoid ragging in jagex, cause they do genuinely seem to care and be trying lately, but this change seems to have no real for testing or thought put into it.

[royal rover]

That's true. They set a clear set of expectations that only early game would be impacted, and it was false. I'm honestly thankful that I hadn't gotten the oblivious perk yet, because it was next on my list! Now, it would have been a complete waste of money and time. I do not want to spend GP for 5 seconds extra afk time. That is silly and useless to me

Agreed that Jagex seems to care. We'll need to see what they come up with tomorrow based on all our feedback. I hope that there are no more surprises at the level of this morning

[unkempt cedar]

Yea and thats part of it in and of itself, im already 120 thieving, i have everything i could have really needed or wanted from thieving over the last few months, but i hate the idea of pulling up a ladder behind me, it doesnt feel right that in the higher level stuff, newer players or people who havent reach that point yet will now have a significantly worse time with it then i did.
And sure even something as simple as an xp nerf would still do that, but not even close to the severity this change has made

I said it earlier, but it kills the thrill of finally unlocking certain things, oblivious being a good example, now that theyve basically ruined how pickpocketing worked

It makes stuff like oblivious, and even more so crystal mask, feel ike a waste of time

[boreal ember]

I 100% agree.

[devout flint]

I have a suggestion for the pickpocketing.

Can you please add a UI icon that shows up when you are vulnerable to getting caught?

It would be an excellent indicator to remind the player to switch targets as necessary.

Also notify the player in the chatbox with a colored message telling them the same thing, saying:

"You've been pickpocketing for a while, you may get caught if you continue to pickpocket the same target."

Reasoning for this suggestion:

It would be good for accessibility and remove the frustration factor of guessing when it would be a good time to switch targets.

[wanton shard]

I completely stopped pickpocketing at level 117 thieving. Heists are the only good source of xp with this update. I didn't mind getting slower xp pickpocketing archeologists [regular, not professor] because I could afk it and do other things around the house, or focus on a different task all together. Afk pickpocketing is a must for higher level gameplay, I really don't care if I only get 30 xp/pickpocket, I want to be able to not have to pay attention to getting hit at this level. It's the whole reason I pushed thieving as far as I did on ironman [IronSlyRam].

Tldr: without being able to afk, pickpocketing is dead entirely to me now, as there are way better methods if I have to pay attention.

[sick light]

Yea my tldr is the same. If I have to active play pickpocketing, I'd rather active play a different training method.

[jaunty tusk]

new update sucks.. change it back

[unkempt cedar]

The only thing i even still wanted out of pickpocketing myself was extra fine sand from menaphos guards honestly, but this update made it to that just normal mining and telekinetic grind went back to being the easier option

[sick light]

I agree Jim

[real narwhal]

Do we have a list of all the item changes updated with the found undocumented ones? I know mask had something, and I swear mushroom bag was mentioned. Oblivious perk I think was mentioned? An amendment to the post somewhere would be helpful. Comparing rates with my clan.

[swift yarrow]

#bug-reports message

[olive sorrel]

From the perspective of an Ironman, I am not a huge fan of jagex removing sources of adren crystals, putting them on a new pickpocketing mob and then subsequently gutting pickpocketing.

[swift yarrow]

I assume it is not a design as it is too far to get between those two rooms

[river merlin]

I think a better balance would be similar to rockertunities - Keeping semi active will allow you to pickpocket better rewards & xp - more afk = less xp and rewards. Do away with the stuns altogether imo, it doesnt add anything. Especially if you consider after 99/120, you are an expert pickpocket - so why keep getting stunned?? Expert pickpockets don't get caught, end of. Lazy pickpockets don't get naff all for their effort.

[runic flame]

The loot obtained per hour from pickpocketing is largely unchanged.

[olive sorrel]

yea but its an absurd pain in the neck now, id rather it be slightly/moderately reduced if GP/h is a major concern. Even if that comes with a max 5min CM afk timer

Also im totally fine with them appropriately nerfing the XP/h.

Having AFK options with appropriate xp/h is good for the game. The people on reddit chomping at the bit to make afking as unfun and tedious as possible clearly want a different game than some of the rest of us.

And to be entirely transparent I would happily take an absolutely massive XP/h nerf if it let me have reliable 5min (preferably closer to 8-10) AFK and 75-80% of the current GP/h output

[sick light]

Yea both active and passive play styles are vital for the overall health of the game since the player base is so broad

[olive sorrel]

Almost wonder if they'd drop a relic that lets you sacrifice even more XP to prevent the success chance degradation.

[sick light]

I think most of the people from today's discussion would just like to see xp/gp/hr rates decrease and leave the timer alone

[olive sorrel]

Id be fine with that, and also for Jagex to of listened to the feedback from a week ago. Lots of ppl (myself included) said that this change was very bad.

For whatever reason Jagex is pushing content updates at a blistering pace and not really stopping to wonder how it actually effects the game.

[devout flint]

They're not only ripping off the bandaid, they're also reopening the wound simultaneously.

I really wish that Jagex listened to everyone who said this was bad. I'm almost a thousand percent certain that at least 4 out of 5 people didn't ask for this.

[olive sorrel]

I really just want to understand WHY they feel the need to rush these updates out. Not to get too off topic but the item regounding update is a similar situation that they have thankfully taken a step back from.

[frank plover]

you misunderstand their re-evaluation

Feedback before an update is not as valuable as feedback after an update, and where the numbers fell after the update went harder than they intended any way

[devout flint]

If they really want what's best for the game, Jagex needs to sum up every point the players are making, and accommodate the roadmap to the players. OSRS backpedals on everything players mass-complain about because they know that players will be so petty as to quit over such matters. Why can't RS3 be the same?

[frank plover]

OSRS doesn't have one year to get things done

[olive sorrel]

Okay sure, but I dont think this applies here. The end game nerfs smuggled into the early game rebalance did not need live testing to figure out they're bad.

Edit: Also, they clearly hid the oblivious nerf intentionally until the last second, which very much makes me not trust them.

[quaint wind]

i guess that's double true for this specific update since they didn't even mention the changes to oblivious in the blog, which probably would've made feedback even more negative ahead of the update

[devout flint]

Yes, but the demonic skull thing was quickly reversed. This is very different yet also almost the same.

Oblivious being nerfed needed to be communicated. If this was a decision made behind closed doors, then I can't defend anyone.

[frank plover]

Depends on what you mean by bad. Less afk? yes, but that's what they intended

[sick light]

Why not just do a beta with changes like they are doing for combat? That way people could play it and give feedback before rolling out ideas

[devout flint]

This!

[olive sorrel]

But it is also CLEARLY an end game targeted nerf being smuggled into the early game rebalance. IMO this could have waited until the end game rebalancing pass later in the year. And would've given them much more time to test the changes (assuming that even occured)

[frank plover]

running a beta takes more resources and time than spending an extra week to tweak numbers

[devout flint]

No one asked for the timer to be cut that much though.

[frank plover]

No one would ever ask for that, that's why they didn't ask you

[sick light]

It makes sense for pvmers to play the combat beta because that's their thing. They know a ton about it. Skillers are very knowledgeable about skilling content. So a beta for skill changes just makes sense to me

[olive sorrel]

Also them hiding the oblivious nerf until the last minute is a bad sign to me as a player. I do not trust Jagex to be transparent with these updates anymore.

[devout flint]

Then what I said about decisions that negatively impact players being made behind closed doors not only still stands, but only proves that I can't defend the actions being made.

[olive sorrel]

Having known the oblivious nerf was coming would've drastically increased the concerns about the update in the week of feedback they supposedly listened to.

[frank plover]

The RS3 playerbase has proven since time immemorial that they should not have a big part in the decision making process when there are updates being made that negatively impact them. I'd much rather trust jagex to tweak numbers until they fall into the right place

[sick light]

It's not a simple timer reduction. It's taking an afk activity and making it active. Except it's not as good as active methods. Making it essentially useless.

For high lvl players. For low and mid lvl the update works out well

[olive sorrel]

Sure and that's why they're currently people so upset that its forcing jagex to completely re-address an update that they rushed out the door.

[frank plover]

I don't think they're "completely re-addressing it" as you're hoping

[devout flint]

Yes, they tweaked the timer and changed Oblivious but they failed to communicate these changes properly. That's the problem.

[olive sorrel]

Sure I doubt they'll change things in a way that i'll be completely happy, but its a bad look when they release something and immediately have to make a post about how they missed the mark (again)

[frank plover]

I expect them to just tweak numbers to bring the afk timer up to 6 or so minutes then nerf exp to compensate

[devout flint]

My point is still valid. Why not do it that way from the start?

[frank plover]

That's literally the name of this entire year, that's the point of these changes, that's the point of the rebalances.

You do realize that previously, such changes would take months or years?

My point is still valid. Why not do it that way from the start?
The numbers went harder than they intended

[sick light]

But why toss the 15 min? Many other skills are 15 min. Unless the idea is to remove them all. If so, then why not drop the log out timer to 5 or 6 min and catch all afk activities in one swing

[devout flint]

Disclaimer: I'm not trying to flame Jagex or cast hate on anyone.

What I am saying is that communication is king, and it's the most important avenue through which to address changes like this.

[olive sorrel]

I figured the point of the updates was to listen to the players and improve the game. Not smuggle end game changes into an update targeted at early game.

If they want to address end game problems they should do so in an end game rebalance blog.

[frank plover]

Also, Breezy shared some comments that basically explain that they thought nerfing the exp would get more backlash than nerfing the afkness.

[olive sorrel]

Maybe they should've asked the players? In a blog post?

[sick light]

I saw. Which points out the people care more about the afk aspect than the xp itself

[devout flint]

Unfortunately, in my opinion it's backwards.

[stable heath]

They accomplished making pickpocketing less painful for those without the unlocks. Its just those unlocks ended up being a casualty and didn't benefit the new system much

[frank plover]

You're talking about something else now. My point is the back and forth and "walking back" or "missing the mark" is the point, and they address concerns quickly unlike every other year of the game

[olive sorrel]

"Hey guys we're thinking we want to make this end game change here, what are your thoughts on A vs B vs C? Let us know on reddit/social media/discord"

[sick light]

So just put the timer back for 99+ lvl players and nerf the rates. Issue resolved

[olive sorrel]

Fair enough, jagex is addressing it much faster. But if they weren't so hell bent on pushing more content rebalancing out in a month than they did in all of 2025 then they might not be struggling as much.

[unkempt cedar]

Thats a completely tone deaf thought process though, sure there would have been complaints about the xp, but most people dont even camp those npcs for xp, they do it for the loot

[devout flint]

XP nerfing is fine for 15 minute AFK since it's low intensity - the lowest, in fact. I agree that that's the way to go about it.

But the fact that the rebalance affected the late game far more than it should have is a failure of communication.

[olive sorrel]

No one is demanding they push updates out this fast and without properly discussing the changes. ESPECIALLY not hiding nerfs (oblivious) until the very last second.

[unkempt cedar]

I said it before, it didnt just "effect" late game, they DIRECTLY targeted oblivious and crystal mask

[olive sorrel]

Oblivious is borderline not even worth the divine energy it costs you now.

[devout flint]

The problem with the communication here isn't what Jagex said. It's what they didn't say. Lies by omission.

[frank plover]

No current player would ever demand that, these are standards they set for themselves. It's a year of fixing the game and a marketing window to drum up interest in it, the opinions of current players are frankly rather low priority

[olive sorrel]

Awfully bold statement to make without anything to back that up.

[devout flint]

Also, exploiting vagueness in written words is disgusting. Niantic is horribly guilty of this in Pokémon GO.

[frank plover]

idk what you mean by that

[olive sorrel]

If they didnt care about current player opinions the entirety of the PVME discord having a feed back suggestion for end game combat would not exist

I am saying that I dont think you have the evidence to back up the claim they dont care for current players opinions.

[unkempt cedar]

Yea, but to quote protoxx in one of his lately videos, they need to ask themselves WHAT theyre fixing

[frank plover]

This is what I expect, and if things fall that way then this entire debacle will have lasted a week.

[devout flint]

That's all I want too. It really isn't that hard to comprehend.

[olive sorrel]

Also, if they are setting unrealistic standards and floundering then maybe its time to rescope the project

[frank plover]

You completely misunderstood, I'm talking about the "rushing" comment. They have a year. They gave themselves a year. They aren't going to listen to you telling them to slow down except for things that are lower priority like the outfits

[unkempt cedar]

There was nothing wrong with the way pickpocketing itself functioned, the problem was their rates, low level was to low, high level was to high, btu completely destroying a subset of a skill and the way it functions is NOT how you fix a problem like that

[frank plover]

Runescape has a year to redeem itself in the eyes of people that aren't currently playing

[sick light]

Agreed

[frank plover]

(to focus on redeeming itself)

[olive sorrel]

I do not think this is true, and them rushing to get everything out the door in a year and fundamentally alter an MMO that has existed for 20+ years in less than 1 is going to cause more harm than good.

Changing the game is fine, but they should set realistic expectations.

[devout flint]

It's unhealthy for players to be too active while playing. It can lead to eye strain and mental burnout. And that's where the pickpocketing changes fall flat.

[stable heath]

Breakneck pace is pretty new and refreshing compared to what people might be used to

[olive sorrel]

Also, do you think they were planning to have this update set the community on fire with anger and have to spend the majority of the work week on fixing it? AND push back the aura blog again?

The aura blog that may ALSO piss off a bunch of ppl?

[frank plover]

You've said this many times now but I'm going to explicitly say that you characterizing it as them rushing things out the door because it didn't turn out how you wanted is disingenuous

Getting things "wrong" doesn't mean they were rushing it.

[devout flint]

And while I'm at it, triple the Agility XP rates, please. Taking 250+ hours to go from 1-99 isn't healthy for the player to experience and will be a serious demotivator. And this is coming from someone who went 30-99 mining in OSRS purely from the MLM, which was at best 60k XP per hour and I only got 20 seconds of AFK at a time.

[olive sorrel]

I for one love most of the changes they did (even the nerfs). But the thieving changes are half baked at best and clearly needed more time to cook. And should of probably been slated for the END GAME rebalancing blog

But sure things aren't being rushed, they're totally not having to spend most of the work week with unplanned reworks / meetings / adjustments.

[unkempt cedar]

I agree, "most" of the changes hit the mark pretty well, but this thieving one is not one of them

[devout flint]

I will stress this one more time: Communication is the most important aspect of implementing changes to the game.

[olive sorrel]

And not hiding nerfs until the last second 🙂

Nerfs that definitely would've driven a lot more conversation about the changes.

[devout flint]

Where was it mentioned that Oblivious would be changed?

[olive sorrel]

In today's blog only

[frank plover]

number tweaks aren't having the entire staff on deck bro

[devout flint]

It's a lie by omission then. This change should have been addressed, not just mentioned this late.

[unkempt cedar]

Dont forget the removal of the monkey ability

[olive sorrel]

Where did I say the entire staff bro? I said that they're having to spend time changing an update they pushed that they, supposedly, thought was going to be great for thieving.

[unkempt cedar]

or the removal of stun resistance from crystal mask, they were also other things that were hidden from us before the update

[devout flint]

Mention the changes before implementing them, not when implementing them. Otherwise, you risk backlash like this.

[olive sorrel]

Any amount of man power being spent over the next few days making "number changes", assuming that is the only thing that happens and they don't change Crystal mask in some fundamental way or change something about Pickpocketing behavior is more than they expected

[devout flint]

Also, the wiki pages related to pickpocketing, especially the later leveled npcs added in November, fail to mention any of these changes.

[olive sorrel]

But at no point did I say they had to engage their entire staff in this endeavor.

[frank plover]

then why continue to overplay how much extra work it's creating?

Any way, I wish they would just nerf pickpocketting exp to the ground and elevate pyramid plunder massively to compensate

[olive sorrel]

Yeah I dont think we're going to have any type of constructive conversation at this point Eiki, good luck.

For the record I dont think that I ever attempted to overplay the amount of work it's creating. Other than the fact that it's a non zero amount.

[quaint wind]

has anyone even mentioned how weird it is to have nerfed crystal mask and oblivious in the EARLY GAME rebalance?

[unkempt cedar]

I have, multiple times actually, lol

[frank plover]

a lot of the thieving changes were made game-wide during a gamejam, they just packaged it with this update

[devout flint]

Doom and I may be a bit more vocal about things since we're both ironmen. But it's necessary since thieving is integral to irons. Making things harder than they need to be isn't healthy.

[unkempt cedar]

Yea, and they were told since those changes were announced that the switch to guaranteed catch was a bad idea, but they didn't listen

[olive sorrel]

Just as an aside, I am a bit extra spicy at times because it irritates the hell out of me that there is a way too large # of ppl who lack critical thinking / reading comprehension at times. This is not directed at anyone talking here at the moment.

[quaint wind]

i don't think the gamejam considered the changes to basic pickpocket mechanics and just caused this to be even worse

[devout flint]

The early game being buffed and the late game being nerfed simultaneously makes it incredibly awkward for mid-level thieves. Especially between 75 and 105

[olive sorrel]

Tbh with changes of this scale they should've had a beta world, even if just for 1 day.

But then again that wouldn't fit the narrative that this is an "early game change"

[devout flint]

OSRS has beta worlds for all kinds of newly added content.

[unkempt cedar]

I just hope they reverse course on this, or most people will just simply avoid pickpocketing again where they can help it and just do safecracking again

[devout flint]

There's a reason they exist - it's so that players can test the changes before they're properly implemented into the full game.

[olive sorrel]

For irons, thieving becomes a dead skill once you finish getting heist drops, currently at least.

[devout flint]

I've mostly done wizards' tower mages for my pure essence, as no other source is as effective or easy

[olive sorrel]

Irons MAY brute force their way through vyres and mages for adren/essence. But that's because they're the only semi decent way of acquiring them on an iron.

But honestly that sounds miserable as is.

[devout flint]

There are definitely ways Jagex could have gone about this better. We can all agree on this.

[unkempt cedar]

The teci from geobie scavengers was fantastic for irons, and so was getting a soul talisman from those wizards, but now it's gonna be so much more of a headache

[devout flint]

It's the communication where I'm the most upset. As someone with autism, I need that direct, forward communication that's clear, concise, and with no strings attached.

The anxiety levels I experience from information I do not know about are indescribable, and they do not feel good.

[unkempt cedar]

Hey, as someone with ADHD, I'm right there with you

[devout flint]

I have ADHD too. I can be very good at focusing on things for longer periods of time.

But suffering from both of these? I guarantee you it's not fun when things get tough.

[olive sorrel]

It should've been an update that was tied to the end game blogs. Also they needed to actually announce ALL of the changes leading up to it so that it can be appropriately discussed and feedback can be given. Lastly, they really could've taken a beat to re-evaluate the changes, now they get to spend an unspecified amount of man hours "fixing" a new update.

[devout flint]

Tbh they brought it upon themselves. Jagex needs to realize the error of bad communication and the effect it has on development.

[unkempt cedar]

I just hope, at the VERY least they take crystal mask, and give you catch immunity until the timers up

[devout flint]

I love RS3 from the bottom of my heart. My criticism comes from a deep, vast compassion for the game. I've played for 16 years.

I never get this vocal about something unless it affects me directly. And this update is by far the biggest violation of my belief and trust in the game.

[olive sorrel]

Last time I go off topic tonight, I wonder what happened to Mod Anvil, the lead community manager? They seem oddly missing in today's issues.

[devout flint]

This conversation was well worth the extended break at work. I feel much better.

[olive sorrel]

If they dont somehow tie to the seren prayer we could see ppl just stop running the prayer entirely.

[devout flint]

I should be going back to work now. Thanks for letting me communicate my opinions and feedback on the matter.

[unkempt cedar]

I agree, but the light form still needs to "buff" crystal mask somehow, not just work in tandem with it, cause that was quite literally it's whole point

I just simply can't understand why any of the late game stuff was touched for something that was supposed to be an early game rebalance.

[olive sorrel]

Gonna have to wait and see what Jagex is willing to let us have. I'm hopeful that they'll strongly adjust XP/h and let us have afk with decent non xp reward.

And ya Idk either, its bad PR/comms from Jagex. Its not like they couldn't of adjusted early pickpocketing and left end game alone

and at least waited until the appropriate blog to bring up changes to the end game, even if it would still be nerfs.

[unkempt cedar]

Yea I've been saying that all day, there was no reason they couldn't simply have tweaked early game success rates, xp, and loot, and left the core system alone. There was zero reason for them to change it the way they did that I can wrap my head around, and especially zero reason to touch any end game perks, spells, or abilities

[olive sorrel]

The way this update was handled makes me wary of their future plans for balancing the game.

I hope i'm wrong and they approach the future blogs with more caution.

[unkempt cedar]

Yea, i understand that sentiment, especially when it seems like we are moving in the correct direction

Cause ive said it before, most of this update felt solid, it felt like proper improvement, but this thieiving part was soooooo disconnected and tonedeaf, the end game portion especially had NO place being part of this update

[stoic wave]

2¢, complaining about a skill not being fully afkable is strange.

[unkempt cedar]

considering no one is complaining about a SKILL not being afk, but a specific subset of said skill designed to be afk, while there are other active methods of training that skill, id argue that 2¢ isnt really valid

Cause last i checked, the skill isnt called "pickpocketing" its called "thieving" which encompasses things like chests, safecracking, heists, lockpicking, and yes, also pickpocketing

technically 3 of those things are the "same" thing, but the game considers them different actions, so thats more semantics

[lean plover]

some things should be 100% success rate but the new thieving update added a lot of really broken loot tables that are a bit too generous. as mod breezy said they were avoiding tuning down loot/exp in favor of making it less afk but because thieving already has strong active options but no afk options, they'll look at turning down the loot/exp instead

[fathom dust]

the loot's fine, IMHO. the gp/hr prior to today is pretty much in line with some other AFK methods out there and it makes endgame pickpocketing actually interesting. the XP is was wildly overtuned and can easily be reined in a fair amount though.

[unkempt cedar]

I agree with this 100%

Ive said it earlier today though, if theres a problem with the xp rates, nerf them, if theres a problem with the loot rates, nerf them to, but they never should have touched the core system or messed with the end game abilities the way they did, especially for an "early game" rebalancing

[stiff hull]

Like how they touched the core system of thieving by making it auto-pickpocket instead of having to spamclick?

[minor lintel]

**What feels like a step back for pickpocketing gameplay, outside of XP and balance? ** I don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but pickpocketing the dead legionaries in Vault of Hereditas is horrible today. Getting more than 2 loot per attempt is incredibly rare, and disturbing the spirits happens much more frequently. It's added around 60 seconds to a run due to having to open extra chests.

[lean plover]

archaeologists are giga broken at my level right now at least
I can basically 3-min afk at 83 thieving and could not do that before the update

[storm ivy]

admittedly, i haven't played since pre-120 thieving update and thus haven't tried the new vaults etc.. but i don't really see a difference with the pickpocket gameplay tbh; idk where y'all have had 100% success rate and could afk for 15 minutes before, but from what little gameplay i've had post-update the only big change i can see is i can't die from afk'ing anymore..

like.. i still gotta keep my prayers up and crystal mask and whatnot; and siab lasts for a minute anyway..

[storm ivy]

from what i've discovered i can't always 3-min afk at 113 thieving(archeology professors), it's up to chance how long and what procs and what dosen't proc for me 🤷‍♂️

[lean plover]

400 chronotes, 110 sand and 3-4 invs of mats in 40 mins at 83 thieving
why even bother doing archaeology

[fathom dust]

maybe my perceptions are colored by being 120 arch for so long but that sounds way worse than just doing archaeology proper

400 chronotes won't even let you activate the font of life relic

[unkempt cedar]

I mean, Im playing a group iron, so leveling all the way to 120 is still somewhat fresh toe, and it STILL sounds terrible

[storm ivy]

besides me testing the same method i did last time i played, switching to arch professors, tried goebies for a hot minute, testing my chance at the common man and now back to arch professors, i've gotten like roughly 1m xp in 2 hours which isn't half bad tbh for pickpocketing

[unkempt cedar]

Fair point, but purposely making it harder benefits no one

[unkempt cedar]

That's not the problem though, people aren't worried about the xp and loot rates, they're worried about taking an afk method, and making it significantly more active.
I don't think I've seen anyone really argue in favor of the xp or gp per hour, if anything, the general consensus is "put the pickpocketing back, nerf the xp and gp where needed"

[storm ivy]

right, but between the last time i played(i logged in for the first time in 103 days to give some perspective) and now, the pickpocket loop hasn't really changed a whole lot in my opinion.. besides the new higher level spots, and me not dying because i wasn't stunned, it's the same amount of afk from what i've seen

i don't know how people have had 100% success rate and never failed a pickpocket or died while afk..

[unkempt cedar]

Even still though, as others have mentioned, the gp per hour is roughly the same as other similar afk methods, the main issue is purely the xp being WAY over tuned for such an afk method

[neat drift]

the looting from npcs is trash for 90% of the areas. like how is rogues den not filled with a chance for rares never used before

[fathom dust]

trying to phrase this more clearly but failing so I'll take a stab at it anyway - it sounds like you're on the reverse end of what many others have described: you haven't really engaged with all the extras that the game gave us to boost success rates to get 100%, so you aren't noticing their newfound lack of impact as a result of the changes

is that fair to say?

[storm ivy]

i grinded master camo outfit, used the light form/cm, magpie and "all the other tricks in the book" to try and stay afk for longer; but because i tried to also get the best xp/hour even with theoretical 100% success rate, i was dying because i afk'd too long anyway or stunned

if the new found 15 minute without dying afk was introduced with the 120 thieving update with insane xp rates i can understand it, but from what i can see, the pickpocket loop isn't changed a whole lot, as i didn't play right after the 120 update but before it

and if i have to juggle a soul that vanish after a minute, keep an eye on prayer as it diminishes quickly and my health because i'm never stunned, i'm active either way yk

[unkempt cedar]

To be fair, no one really included that soul in a box is most methods, its was severely reliant on stuff like crystal mask and light form

also, the thieving outfit didnt help for pickpocketing success rate unless you had gotten the exoskeleton outfit from priff iirc

[fathom dust]

was your previous experience pretty much with prif elves then?

[glass harbor]

camo set has 5%, or 7% for master, to avoid the stun while pickpocketing. not useful if you were over 100% chance, but was useful without 100%

[unkempt cedar]

Sorry, we were discussing 100%, which was what i was getting at, thats why i edited that part in to correct it

But 100% success chance wasnt something you could just "do" it takes a decent amount of stuff depending on what your pickpocketing and what level you are

[storm ivy]

nope, i did the crux eqal knights as they had a higher xp than the dwarf traders; i didn't wanna do elves as i couldn't be arsed to hop from clan to clan

post 99 thieving with the full exo suit and black ibis and ardy 4 cloak

[unkempt cedar]

Even at 120, menaphos guards still need at minimum the exoskeleton/gloves of silence, or camo outfit while owning the exoskeleton, the ardourgne achievements completed to the right level, a ring of vitur, and a magpie to be able to maintain 100%

Mind you, you could swap out a few things, but the wiki had developed guides specifically to explain what was needed at various checkpoints to make it to 100, anything below 110 basically required crystal mask and light form

[storm ivy]

yeah, again, last time i did this was before the 120 thieving update

[unkempt cedar]

I know, im explaining this for your benefit*

[storm ivy]

ah i see

[unkempt cedar]

Im just saying that, while yes, a lot of the new stuff was busted, it wasnt exactly easy to get to those breakpoints either

[fathom dust]

roger, just trying to get more context. thank you.

[storm ivy]

iirc lf&cm + master camo w/black ibis&exo owned + ardy cloak 4(or thieving cape iirc) and whatnot was the "best" gear either way before the new stuff, but the new stuff might have had such a over tuned xp/hr with those boosts(that didn't really guarantee a success on the older methods) that they decided to change it under the disguise of low level rebalance once they looked at the code behind it all?

[lean plover]

Well if pickpocketing xp and loot gets nerfed to accommodate AFK maxers, I'm going back to safecracking

Today's changes actually make pickpocketing surprisingly viable for midgame

[storm ivy]

i mean, theoretically it's still viable for end-game too with less xp/hour like it used to be :x

[unkempt cedar]

What was the name of this rebalance again?

[storm ivy]

early-game rebalance iirc

[unkempt cedar]

Not mid game, not late game, but early game right?>

Thats the crux of the problem. They didnt JUST deal with early game, the functionally changed how a specific skilling activity worked, and as part of that, also DIRECTLY targetted end game things, like crystal mask and oblivious

[storm ivy]

well, they changed some early-game stuff and sneakily nerfed oblivious to the ground, the loop of the activity is the same, but you can thiev for longer in the early game and not get unlucky or lucky based on chance, but get x thiev activities more based on how many levels above the target you are, but at a certain point there is a diminishing return so the chance goes down after x activities..

the entire scale got changed, yes, but its not like its still better than it was back in the day..

[lean plover]

In any case people are saying they care about the afk more than they care about the loot and xp, guess we will find out how true that is

[minor lintel]

Just curious, since there's been no comment on my post about Vault heist... has anyone else noticed the crappy dead legionary?

[real narwhal]

It's been mentioned a few times earlier in the day. They notice quicker so it's been adding extra time to people's runs. I don't think any suggestions were made to fix it since it's a consequence of failing and the timer

[unkempt cedar]

I know i saw it mentioned earlier by some others as wll

[real narwhal]

The problem is that you have to search in the beginning for the seal. Heists makes use of all the thieving mechanics so the average experience may need to be tweaked to reflect this? I hadn't really considered this side myself. And how do you refresh? I don't think the first section has 2 if I'm remembering correctly. Maybe a second legionary?

[minor lintel]

It's mitigated somewhat with stamina potions, but that just adds another thing to manage to something that is already pretty hectic. And Arsenal heists aren't affected, which seems weird since Vault heists are meant to be lower level, and this update was meant to help lower levels. I only play heists for the fun, and the fun is trying to beat my best time. Today was completely deflating, please think about changing this.

[lusty cosmos]

Bring back 100% afk pickpocketing. Master farmer and other pre-120 thieving pickpocketing NPCs were already well balanced pre-120 and don't need to be nerfed. New 120 thieving pickpocketing NPCs give way too much xp and loot. If you half the rates on both it's still ok. Maybe give it a curve that has the effect of halfing yield unless the user clicks once per minute, with master farmer & other old NPCs getting the old yield but double yield when you actively click.

[minor lintel]

Also it's not just the fails which waste time, it's the low loot that that means you may need to do 1 or 2 extra chests to get 500 loot. That's the biggest time suck.

[flat raptor]

Low effort - low reward - low xp.
High effort - high reward - high xp.

Quests, unlocks, and outfits Bridge the gap, slightly. Get rewarded for working and unlocking things.

[shrewd cosmos]

Speaking on behalf of clan mates on forcing the game to be less AFK in general is not ideal we all have jobs and a lot just afk grind while doing other stuff including work so they can send there actual active game play time doing things they enjoy in game

[soft stag]

game shouldnt be balanced around people playing at work. That's just a perk of your job imo

[minor lintel]

I think you're referring to under 6 minute speed runs for the achievement. Those aren't affected at all by this update. You still clear 1st 2 sections and run to the rare chest. Still very simple to do that, I'm talking about full 500 loot runs.

[flat raptor]

Absolutely. What about those that work out in the field or don't have the luxury of working from home or being able to afk on a phone while at a workplace. Do we make AFK go up to 12 hours for them?

AFK methods should be very low XP, very low reward.

[thick rampart]

how about you bring back my premier artifact that i paid $100+ for thanks

[unkempt cedar]

But also still possible, thus the problem with the update

[shrewd cosmos]

Well that's how it has been balanced for years and years now. Fully alienating that group of players by going "hey you're no longer welcome to play the game like that anymore" has happened in RuneScape with EOC and we all saw how that worked out in terms of overall player count and game health.

Every job has its own individual perks while I'd be more than happy to go back and forth on that side of the argument this isn't really the place for it.

@flat raptor Id support that timer very low rewards for very low input is fine as while nerfing the reward rate your still leaving that avenue open to players via in-game methods over pushing for a return of 2011 era bot levels.

[formal quarry]

or just make spamclicking not reduce pickpocketing chance

[lean plover]

God you people are so dishonest lmao, comparing going from 15 min afk to 5 min afk to EoC

[sullen cove]

im not sure why we're acting liker rs3 doesn't have activites that are 2nd monitor activites. people who are for this update 100% no questions asked all parrot the same talking points "found another one that doesn't want to play the game" when i can pull literal hundreds of osrs players that prefer afk methods on their grind to max.

[lean plover]

Thieving feels so much better in the early/mid game because you're no longer getting chainstunned, which is exactly what they were aiming for, and they already said they will be tweaking rates to allow for some more consistency in max gear

[unkempt cedar]

Generalization of a single persons opinion comment does not help make a point

[sullen cove]

not that its 1:1 a straight comparison. this update can set a precedant that a good chunk of players dont want

[minor lintel]

This right here is probably the best comment in this discussion. Please stop making the game into something that plays itself. If you want rewards (xp, drops, etc) play the game, actively. If you just want to afk grind, without actually grinding, get way less rewards. Don't break the game for active players to satisfy the afk crowd that really doesn't give a damn about playing the actual game.

[shrewd cosmos]

Here's a thought, both of those things can co exist it's not one or the other.

[flat raptor]

Yes, it's been balanced that way for years and years, and then the game nearly died. Also due to MTX, i will concede that, but making this into a idle clicker because people got jobs is absolutely ridiculous.

A small minority of players, a loud minority mind, want a afk idle second screen game. Majority of players don't want that, hence why they left and player count dropped off a cliff to nearly 10k. They don't really have much of a voice because they simply stopped playing, but they are coming back. Because your life changes and things happen, it doesn't mean the entire game should change to suit you. Its an MMO RPG, not an idle clicker.

• It cuts social cohesion to the ground, no one talks or communicates, because they're not even at their pc or phone.
• Markets get flooded by materials because they're so easy to gather and skilling as a money maker, is completely useless. This is why bossing became the main and only really viable money maker.
• Meaningful progression is completely undermined.

These are some of the core aspects of an MMO RPG.

I was being sarcastic, 12 hour afk timers would be ridiculous, it was just challenging your logic.

The resolution for both;

• If you want AFK for 15 minutes so you can do other stuff, you should gather xp and materials at a significantly reduced rate.
• If you want to actively play, you should be handsomely rewarded.
• Doing quests, getting unlocks and outfits, should somewhat bridge this gap, but not entirely.

[minor lintel]

I don't think i said they couldn't

[lean plover]

There are no shortage of profitable afk activities in this game. Most of this game has turned into AFK slop of some sort. Yet when they go after one particularly egregious case people start screaming bloody murder. So actually no, I don't think these two things can coexist

[sullen cove]

runescape 3 has always had semi-AFK skilling as part of its design. bonfires, seren stones, corrupted creatures, divination wisps, etc. The game evolved into something that fits modern adult schedules. Pretending it’s meant to be high-APM gameplay across the board ignores how the game has functioned for years.

[shrewd cosmos]

Even in classic it wasn't exactly an intense gameplay experience

[sullen cove]

yeah i didnt play that far back lmaoo

[unkempt cedar]

Once again, if people are worried about the excessive xp, or loot, nerf them as needed
If your worried about early game success rates, buff them accordingly
But changing the skill how they did, at its core disproportionately effected end game players ability to interact with END GAME content.
Remind me what this update was called once more? "Early-Game" rebalance?
So why were end game abilities effected? And in the worst possible way?

[iron thicket]

Just saying that just because things have existed for years doesn't mean they shouldn't be touched. I'm not against afk gameplay but 15 minutes for 1 click feels to long. But aslong as xp/gp get nerfed into the ground for the fully afk methods i guess it's fine for those that can't be active at all

But i also feel like the same people that say that nerfing xp/gp is fine would then complain about it beign nerfed so idk🤷‍♂️

[lean plover]

I am old enough to remember when they nerfed goebies and fairy traders in november of 2025 without touching the xp rates or the afk timers and people were sobbing uncontrollably. But now as Mod Breezy pointed out, they thought it would be okay this time to hit the afk timers without touching the loot

[minor lintel]

Um what, you're old enough to remember 4 months ago?

[viscid aspen]

Revert the changes, make auto pickpocketing 80% slower so that nerfs both loot/xp and gives a choice for player to either afk for those rates or do as it used to be for decades and spam click to get better loot/xp so it gives 'active' gameplay and less mentally demanding compared to heists. Could also make npc wander less.

[lean plover]

And keep in mind all of this is over 2-3 min afk timers which is going be go up to 5 minutes after jagex revises the numbers a bit, while also creating massive benefits for the early and mid game as intended

Now exp and loot is going to be nerfed for the people this change was supposed to benefit so people can have their 15 minute afk since 5 minutes just isn't good enough

[unkempt cedar]

you really just like to argue dont you?

[lean plover]

Am I not allowed to voice my input as someone who has been playing since RSC?

You have been in here typing just as long as I have?

[minor lintel]

he's a cat, i'm a dog, we both have superior intelligence

[unkempt cedar]

Fair point

[minor lintel]

jk btw

[unkempt cedar]

To be fair im just running pyramid plunder while my kid sleeps, and talking about this while doing that

[lean plover]

have they fixed fail rates at PP? they should do that too

[unkempt cedar]

What they NEED to fix in pp is the obnoxious light beam acting like a wall

[clear rivet]

Please adjust the pickpocket time or create a buff time/indicator like those used in mining and smithing to prevent stuns, because it's really annoying to keep getting hit and not be able to do anything about it or see when you're being hit.

[steel plover]

You are talking as if they removed AFK completely out of the game. It's just one skill, and even then you get like 2 mins of afk for insane exp and loot.

[sullen cove]

nobody said it shouldn’t be touched just because it’s old if it was overtuned then nerf the xp or gp that’s normal balance

the issue is removing the 15 min window entirely instead of just adjusting the rates that’s not tuning numbers that’s deleting the playstyle

and you keep assuming people would cry about nerfs when they’ve literally said they’re fine with lower rates they just want the longer afk option you’re arguing against a hypothetical reaction instead of what people are actually saying

[lean plover]

It's hard to keep the 15 min timer for endgame players without basically undoing the purpose of the buff for midgame players. Which honestly is not thaaaat big of a deal because safecracking exists and is stupid strong up until the point of heists... but I do understand the general worry of the number of endgame methods that are getting hit left and right not just in this skill when people work towards the gear needed to make those setups work

Thieving is probably the most "successful" nerf because it actually brings pickpocketing into a really nice spot for early progression, but the same cannot be said for the farming and prayer changes which were just huge nerfs with very little if any benefit added back

[fresh wigeon]

I think a simple solution to this would be adding a stealth mode to the camouflage sets like the consume option on the shark set. It would enable 100% afk pick pocketing but be very very slow because you would be more careful or just do it normally and get caught every few minutes.

[unkempt cedar]

I know i keep popping back in to argue, but this update was not intended for mid game players, or end game players. It is supposed to be exclusively addressing EARLY game content, it wasnt really supposed to have an impact on the mid or end game stuff like it did, that was the whole point of the roadmap in the first place

At at this point, im not even concerned about the 15 minute timer, as i am with the completely unknowable current timers

[lean plover]

Sure, but early game is very short and the road to 99/110/120 is really long. Just need to remind jagex to be more careful with the collateral effects because it will affect people for a very long time

[shrewd cosmos]

Lmao "it's just one skill" it won't be just one skill this is just the first skill on the list

[unkempt cedar]

theres is now no way to determine your current catch rate, if anything the 15 minute afk was more about consistency and predictability

[sullen cove]

yeah rn im full on playing fallout new vegas while mining seren stones

[lean plover]

It's one of the awkward things about thieving in this regard. If success rate falls even to like 95% the consistency basically goes poof when you are doing attempts every 1.2s

You either have no consistency or full 15m afk unless they put in some hard timers to keep success rate from dipping under 100% until a certain amount of time has passed

[still helm]

Guys, please don't attack each other and keep things on the topic of the Thieving rebalance

[sullen cove]

who got attacked?

[unkempt cedar]

Thats part of the thing though, you had to EARN the ability to have that 15 minute timer for most end game stuff, it was just "go to npc and click" you need various upgrades, gear, abilities or summons to make that 15 minute timer work

[steel plover]

Why did you delete my comment? Some guy was complaining about things that never happened and I called them out and you delete my comment?

[sullen cove]

oh lol

[still helm]

Because this isn't the place to attack others

[soft stag]

I dont like the pickpocketing change because it makes it harder for me to get 120, however, thieving has bonkers alternative and active methods to train anyway. Its not like this was the ONLY method to train the skill and now its gutted forever.

The whirlgigs changes were way more detrimental to a skill (hunter) but you guys are just upset the free exp/money machine got switched off for the good of the game.

[steel plover]

Where was the attacking though?

[still helm]

In the message I deleted. Keep things to the topic of the Thieving rebalance, not ad hominems

[steel plover]

So they can attack jagex for things that never happened but apparently it's not allowed to call out bad faith arguments? 🤣

[foggy mulch]

Yall

Stop

Oranges was polite about it and I’m going to be mean about it. If the arguing continues, people will be timed out. This is not the space for that

Take it out of this server

This thread is for feedback so there’s no need to even respond to each other. Just post your thoughts and move on

[unkempt cedar]

Oblivious requires invention unlocked, which itself also requires 3 skills to 80, as well as having leveled enough to discover the manufactured comps
Crystal mask requires the light within, you need 80 in multiple skills to do that, and even 89 crafting on an iron
On top of this, light form makes you either deal with a constant prayer drain you need to refill, or mitigate it with a dark face of grace, which both requires either a large chunk of gold for non-irons, or a minimum of 93 with an extreme invention potion, or 107 invention without to make the grace, and dont even get me started with the tool seeds
Its all super high investment end game content, and it was not only disproportionally effected by this update, but even directly targeted and changed.
This is my biggest gripe with the changes to pickpocketing, more so then the timer itself

[foggy mulch]

Don’t call people out please but just in general

[elfin bay]

yeah, the worst part is the update was completely not needed.

All you needed was to nerf xp a bit and nerf loot. Instead of trying to rework and remove afk rewards for end game skilling content.

It seems like an unforced error as they try to rush out content post th removal to kind of ride the wave of positivity.

Just copying mining stamina would have been easier

[fresh wigeon]

For early to mid game levels without the camouflage set and other thieving buffs they should just put a suspicion bar above all npcs heads while pick pocketing. Picking a new target or stopping would drain the bar but if it gets full getting caught would result in much harsher punishment like a longer stun or 5 minutes lockout period for that area.

[gray relic]

My feedback played for couple of hours
Positive:
Low level pickpocketing is way better (NO AURAS), thieving ELVES is now way better at the level they are unlocked (NO AURAS).
Ibis skilling set - drop rate changes were amazing

Negative:
No indication when your pickpocketing goes under 100% and you just have to guess when to pickpocket again
Hunter whirligig xp is too low for the destruction of your wrists

[clear rivet]

In theory, semi-AFK is possible.

A buff timer/indicator could be added based on your current level.

I think the most frustrating thing currently is the unseen stuns, where you lose time because you can't do or see anything, while high-end players currently have little to improve.

If this could be made visible, as you also have with mining, for example, you could implement it as follows:

Buffing based on your level & supplements, such as outfits/prayer/spell, skillcape, etc.

This should then work based on what you've unlocked and your setup. You can increase this by using the +% buff in the timer by increasing or -% decreasing if you have nothing.

The +/- XP rates gradually decrease by time, and you run the risk of being stun if you stay AFK for too long or haven't clicked yet.

Make it more accessible to prevent stuns, and you could be semi-AFK. this would give crystal mask and all your supplements a reward again and on top of that by the amount of time in +% increase on your buff timer and xp rates and of course your level will matters.

[unreal shard]

Things id like to see

Status bar or hover over examine box success chance XX.XX%
Xp nerf with 10-15 afk returned (loot adjusted)
Crystal Mask nerf reverted or timer increased to 10-15

[bright python]

This would make me so happy as an iron if those were mid level hiests with a way to earn the rewards the minigames had

[halcyon venture]

It will never be enough though. The problem is our community always has such a knee jerk reaction. You would think from the response from this update Jagex is removing all AFK when the game, imo has too much AFK in it all ready. Pickpocketting should have the lowest rates of xp and the lowest amount of loot with a reasonable afk timer that already fits what most afk methods are in the game. There should also be a chance to stun from any NPC. From the lowest to the highest with a rising percentage chance of failure based on the level of the NPC. If you’re 120 and pickpocket a man in lumbridge it should be almost impossible to get caught but there should be a small chance you do get caught. A lot of people especially on Reddit love to guise this idea of AFK as “well we got older and have responsibilities” Okay so what? That’s life. That doesn’t just apply to RuneScape. As a community how do we ever expect to attract new players to the game if we turn it into an idle clicker where you are rewarded for putting in minimal effort? The game has always been grindy it’s what it’s known for.

[winter kernel]

We’re rewarded with unlocks and meaningful rewards as we progress along our way. You can’t AFK for long without unlocks like Ardougne hard and elite diaries, Light Form prayer, Crystal Mask, Master Camouflage, and so on. These are hard-earned rewards that make our gameplay easier over time.

I do agree that 15 minutes of AFK was probably too much. But the Crystal Mask nerf was unnecessary. Being able to AFK for around 5 minutes with all of the above unlocks is well deserved (duration of the Crystal mask).

It’s crazy when you look at the 100+ picketpocketing targets, that players without these unlocks feel buffed, and players with these unlocks feel nerfed. After putting in all that effort to obtain these unlocks, we only get slightly more AFK time than players without them just because they want to rebalance the early game.

I'm all in for this new direction Jagex is heading and I hope we keep on seeing the player base growing with these updates. But they should reconsider nerfing things for early game balancing.

[pastel oracle]

By contrast: How do you expect to keep existing players?

[signal bone]

That would be my proposed intent!

[halcyon venture]

I agree with your point that the rewards should have meaning and should contribute to how well you do in the skill. It just needs to make sense is all.

[storm ivy]

i don't get the logic behind the arguments about the core gameplay of thieving has changed; when it hasn't. if anything they made the core gameplay flexible and more rng based and not a fixed value.
you couldn't afk for 15 minutes 4 months ago(you'd die before you hit 15 minutes); i dont see why you should be able to afk for 15 minutes, its ridicilous. if anythis this gives us a good starting point to rebalance things, things were overturned after the 120 update, now they are a bit nerfed. i'm sure we can find a middle ground

[silver granite]

proposal to rebalance pickpocketing afk-ability

1. change multiple loot to be an active mechanic

• instead of being an always-on passive that further makes a full-afk pickpocket too strong, change it into an active mechanical buff that requires players to click on it to get the multiple loot for a short duration (think of rockertunities, or lumberjack's intuition)

2. full-afk (100% success rate) should still be possible, but strongly tied to buffs or equipment to attain it at higher levels

• additionally, there should have a soft-cap of 90% success rate when player's thieving level is +30 levels above the NPC's unlocked level
• meaning, at 120 thieving, without any buffs or equipment, i should have 90% success rate for traders and below (NPCs from level 1 to 90)
• and at 120 thieving, vyre consumers only being able to full-afk with maximum buffs and gear

**3. reduce loot and exp for pickpocket across the board **

• this is a simpler fix to combat the xp and gp imbalance of pickpocketing compared to other more active methods

[storm ivy]

so you want to nerf even more, getting rid of a fixed reward that comes with leveling that's been in the game for ages(comparable to doubling of runes for instance) and then a soft cap of success rate, which wouldn't really do much and nerf loot/xp?

or is the soft-cap without any items/boosts, which is sort of what we have now, where at higher level there's a cap

[fringe vessel]

Is there any blog/direction stated defining what is viewed as 'integrity' going forward in the road to restoration?

i think at the core this update is causing people to fight over what is integrity? maybe im oversimplifying...
it seems mostly people are agreeing that some afk is okay, (not just okay but good even)

are there like 'pillars of restoration' that jagex sees as healthy for the game so we can go back to those on each update to explain reasoning?
perhaps this is too difficult:

1. we are okay with 15 min afk (or not)
2. afk will always be worse xp/gp than active

etc?

i guess in a game this size it would be difficult, maybe its already done and im just missing it

also im an idiot and not a game designer, just my 2 sense cents

[iron thicket]

Pretty sure one of the first blogs had this
https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/a=13/road-to-restoration---what-we-want-to-achieve

[silver granite]

the soft cap is to lean into requiring buffs and gear to reach 100%.

i was looking through traders for example, where it is not possible to reach 100% either (for whatever reason) with max buffs and gear

so, i was thinking across the board for high-end especially, if having 100% success rate via thieving levels alone was too strong

then, i thought about (future) reward space for thieving gear and buffs, if it made sense to have 100% success rate for high-end pickpocket as well

i conclude then that it is better to not have 100% success rate for high-end pickpocket, and leave room for buffs and gear to allow reaching 100% success rate instead

i also do acknowledge that it would mean you can't get full afk for anything below either, and still have to rely on buffs and gear to reach 100%

but i think that's a fair trade-off than not at all having full afk

[fringe vessel]

i wonder if it is possible to take statements like We've leaned a little too much into "second screen" gameplay where AFK content dominates.
and actually give it concrete meaning?

perhaps not given the vastness of the game

[iron thicket]

They won't remove afk. but it won't be the best thing ever to have existed

[fringe vessel]

just my opinion that, that is still relatively vague and leaves room for fighting in future updates 🙁

[iron thicket]

LIke you guessed it. Pickpocketting was too good in every way being 15minutes of afk with good xp/gp

And most skilling updates recently have only been adding afkscape and not something actually active to do. heists being the only exception

[fringe vessel]

just a thought, i believe no matter what we will end up with a better game for these discussions 🙂

[storm ivy]

i somewhat agree? you shouldn't have 100% successrate without boosts(this is how i've always known thieving)

thing is though, that's what we have now.

at 113 thieving with boosts etc etc you can afk a man(lvl 1 thieving) for quite some time(ubtil cm runs out etc) and then you'll eventually be caught.

the different items etc have a % chance to proc different things, from my limited testing it feels like they aren't doing much, and overlapping the items dosen't really work. i think the rebalance is a slight step in the right direction, but we'll have to fine tune the different boosts and buffs and whatnot, because w/cm/lf/magpie/soulinabox/elite aura or without it, on average i can thieve the same amount of time being afk*

(* note: my equipment is master camo(and i own exo&black ibis), featherfingered necklace, the ring of virtue and i have hard/elite ardy completed, i mentioned a few of the buffs that needs to be refreshed at certain intervals)

i propose we make the % that a soul in a box will distract 100% but have x amount of pickpockets within the timeframe its active, so within the 1 minute it's active, say for 100 pickpockets(just as an example) regardless of the target you're pickpocketing, you will have 100% success rate

[naive oar]

I very, very much hope they don't sloppily just nerf XP/Drops at thieving and bring back the 15 minute AFK.

I would love for the semi-active style that they pushed through with this update to still provide the good XP/Drops they currently do, and just lower XP/Drops the longer you AFK instead like mining for example.

[storm ivy]

when the elves were released, they introduced actually afk pickpocketing, but it was never endlessly afk, you'd get caught at some point, and the caveat is that once caught the clan dosent let you pickpocket them for x time, which is a good balance mechanic tbh.

i never experienced the 15 ninute afk thieving craze, but it would be busted regardless on how you look at it. before the 120 thieving update with maxed out thieving gear/buffs you only afk til you die or lobby, and more often than not you'd lobby due to being afk due to dying.

i'd be happy if they gave oblivious back, where you 3x the damage and you dont get the stunned effect

[clear rivet]

@naive oar i agree with u about this 😊

[naive oar]

Full support!

[silver granite]

my proposal is somewhat different

the core of it is to bring back full-afkability, but at a cost / trade-off

i'm creating a Trilemma design - which is the same used for pretty much every activity - that is balanced on 3 points: afkability, profit (gp) and experience (levelling)

however, afkability uses up 2 points instead of 1 for profit and experience, making the design for afkability activities to have greatly reduced rewards

e.g. you want pickpocket? you get 10/10 points for afkability, but 2/10 for profit and experience... whereas you want chests? you get 4/10 for afkability, but 6/10 for profit, and 10/10 for experience

[bright python]

I wonder in which thread we should give the feedback that poh altar shouldn't outclass fort altar.
poh altar with lit burners: requires 75 construction and can be shared with others, 350% xp
fort altar with lit burners: requires 90 construction, can't be shared, and has a bonus of 10% of used materials are saved, 300% xp?

why in these early game reworks do you KEEP nerfing the late game? what's the point of grinding skills if we're going to be punished for it in the endgame?

[solemn token]

#1472914812165029991 Probably best to post there

[storm ivy]

yes, i did comment your proposal with some questions in the previous comment.

nerfing the xp rates to the ground because someone wants 15 min afk is silly to me, it's partly why the prif elves have the drawback that they have, because it was in line with the other fully afk activities, but not endlessly afk.

just because the game now lets you stay logged in for 15 minutes dosen't mean you have to fully afk for 15 minutes imo, at that point you're not playing the game, you're just clicking once every 1/4 of an hour..

5-7 minutes, if one is blessed with the RNG is balanced imho 😭

at 113 thieving with all the bonuses etc, i have a 97% success rate at archeology professors due to the hidden 22 level boost, and after atleast 10-20 pickpockets, depending what procs and what dosen't, my successrate will decrease by 1 every additional pickpocket or until i switch targets or fail

[silver granite]

in that case, i wouldn't mind if they applied the priff elves mechanic as the default hard-cap with max buffs and gear

but i personally dislike the 5 minute timer, since that means there's no point having a 15-minute timer for the game at all...

i would prefer if afk activities can at least be extended to 10-minutes, if 15-minutes is seen as too 'powerful'

[storm ivy]

there are or used to be activities that would continue until you lobbied, even proteans have a cap of how many you do pr click

the reason for the 15 minute window is incase you're doing something that lasts almost that long or longer(i dont have a good example rn outside of combat related stuff, im getting ready for work irl) or, if it dosen't last that long, but its rng based, you can basically click once, open the front door and get the pizza and get back without being lobbied and having to enter your bank pin etc all over again.

i get what jagex is trying to do(i hope); they're trying to engage with the players without completely removing every afk able activity.

having an prif elves effect everywhere would be bad as it would barr you from pickpocketing the archeology professor at the exam centre for instance for the time period(i think its 1 hour, im not sure on that so dont quote me) while now all you have is a stun that lasts 4 ticks or w/e, which is nothing really imo

[lusty cosmos]

Getting stunned in pickpocketing is one of the most jarring / least satisfying experiences in the game. It's not a good idea for jagex to triple down on it and make it mandatory. My OSRS friends frequently talk about thieving being one of the most annoying skills to train so this is not one thing that anyone wants to be more like OSRS.

[sick light]

I think the poh altar was done as part of making poh relevant again. Which is a focus this year

[bright python]

maybe it should be given buffs rather than nerfing the lategame option then

[silver granite]

stuns are equally hated in pvm, when it can't be calibrated to avoid.

i think if skilling were to have a stun-like mechanic, it should be one that is telegraphed and allows players to avoid

and i think it still shouldn't affect the flow of pickpocketing, rather, only briefly interrupts, but you get right back to it after

additionally to my above proposal, i think oblivious should've been the default mechanic for pickpocket, and not gatekept behind invention so late

[iron thicket]

Part of balancing is not just buffing everything to become stronger everytime

[runic flame]

Yep. Not the goals of he Early/Mid game rebalance. They're trying to flatten the mid-game progression curve, not accelerate end-game xp.

[storm ivy]

these new changes aims to rectify the low-level impact of stunning, which until you had certain perks or buffs, you were in a gameloop of occasional stuns when pickpocketing, sometimes often, sometimes a bit more rare. before the buffs/oblivious perk this was part of why you'd want to level thieving, so you'd have a higher chance at succeeding for a longer period of time(or x amount of pickpockets)

when it comes to post 99 balancing, it gets harder because either you have an internal timer that basically just stops you after a certain time/pickpockets, or you have the occasional game breaking loop of getting stunned.

that's the majority if identify of thieving imho; not because osrs has it, but it's been like that for forever.

unlocking or having a high chance when wearing master camo for instance, of you having a set amount of pickpockets before you have to click again(say 100 pickpockets before you stop pickpocketing and have to click again) might be a path we can take

[dreamy plaza]

"occasional stuns" (starting success rate at men was 38%)... you usually spent more time stunned than pickpocketing, by not a small amount

[storm ivy]

well yes, unless rng was on your side and you got 5 pickpockets before getting stunned for the nth time at lvl 2 🤣

point still stands even if i hide the painstaking trauma 🥲

[lusty cosmos]

I think Jagex made these changes because analytics was telling them that archeologists, wizard tower mages, and master farmers were the only NPCs getting pickpocketed by anyone anywhere 😛

The answer is not to make the experience bad for everything evenly though

[bright python]

give us a bank chest in poh. make it better. give it buffs. don't nerf the thing that takes 15 more construction levels to get to.

[tidal bear]

What does that have to do with Thieving?

[still helm]

Please keep your feedback to the specific topic of this thread: the Thieving changes introduced with yesterday's update 😅

[sick light]

If the new pickpocketing mechanics stay, it'd be nice to see some sort of bar that indicates your chance. Or maybe a chat notification. Something. Otherwise it feels too arbitrary

[devout flint]

I've proposed a similar message last night. I'd prefer to see some indication that your chance to get caught has come, whether it be a UI icon or a chat message that simply states:

"You've been pickpocketing for a while, you may get caught if you continue to do so on this target."

[iron thicket]

But people would afk to hard to see such a message

[bright python]

do they have a thread for feedback on the other changes in the same patch?

[still helm]

#1472914812165029991

[upper token]

I sold all my thieving stuff theres no point now, being maxed and constantly stunned what a fuck up. nice update

[naive oar]

Interesting crash out, they're literally going to keep updating it

[sick light]

I'm sure there will be some sort of patch based on the feedback

Master camo is being revamped to master thief outfit right? What if the 100% just moved to the outfit? What lvl do people usually get it? I have it but seems like I was around 99 when I got it. Maybe a tad higher at 100. Logically, a "master thief" shouldn't get caught. They are a master at picking thy pocket.

[iron thicket]

New blog still planned for today?

[vague coral]

just a thought here! but also to keep in thread, maybe they could add 15min afk thieving to poh. like find a way to hire certain people as in like with the maids/butlers. but this way poh would also be useful but people could also get to 100% afk for 15mins. idk just a random thought! like u would have to pay for them to visit or something!

[sick light]

Interesting idea. Especially will poh coming back into focus this year

[blissful finch]

Nearly 6pm here in UK, so either they are doing overtime to get it out or it isn't happening today. They have been awfully quiet, not seen anything on #social-feed at all today either.

[naive oar]

If they can't get the blog out today I am certain they will tell us that at the very least (hopefully not copium on my part)

[solemn token]

[sick light]

Y'all are from the future 🤪 only 12:50pm here lol but yea hopefully something comes out soon

[hasty hare]

I’d imagine they’re working overtime on getting it out today. Otherwise they would’ve notified us sooner. Don’t think they’d go silent after the outrage over the update and how well they’ve reacted to the feedback.

[blissful finch]

yeah, hopefully they aint pulling the old mtx silent treatment trick again lol

[hasty hare]

I doubt it, would not match the way they’ve been handling things

[solemn token]

Should revert thieving until a good decision is made. Pickpocketing is dead now

[alpine oxide]

u mean afk is dead

[dreamy plaza]

no

[runic flame]

Far from dead. Still very very good xp per hour, and very good loot.

[alpine oxide]

i remember when we had to actually click to pp i feel like maybe make it afk but adding actively continuously clicking makes it 1 tick faster so you have an afk or active version of it

[tidal bear]

https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/thieving-rebalance-high-level-pickpocketing-update

[solemn token]

Changes look good

[runic flame]

Poor mods working OT on British game dev wages to get this out. Bless them.

[gusty sorrel]

Pickpocketing should stay AFKable. nerfs to items, xp and gold are all fine and dandy but to reiterate what a LOT of people have stated, after crystal mask, master thief outfit, light form, getting a dark onyx core to maximize light form getting a ring of Vitur (which whats the point of it now other than hunter no aggro?????) AND leveling all the way to 120, let us have AFK thieving again. If we are at targets that require crystal mask were already clicking every 5 minutes anyhow and if we DONT have the dark onyx core then were replenishing prayer too. Every other form of thieving is active let us afk SOMETHING. If nothing else add it to the 120 skillcape if you want to keep leveling active. Once we get there though we should be rewarded for it

[runic flame]

#1473001973551857839 message Done. 5~8+ min

[gusty sorrel]

I just got done reading this actually, i wrote this before i saw the recent change post.

[sick light]

"With the changes we’re making, high-level pickpocketing will offer a guaranteed period where failure cannot occur, followed by a more gradual and visible increase in risk. This should result in AFK sessions that are meaningfully longer and more consistent than they are today, with baseline AFK times moving closer to the 4–6 minute range and aligning more naturally with buffs like Crystal Mask. For players who invest further into levels, gear, and additional boosts, that window can be extended even further."

Fantastic 👏🏼

[neat drift]

Upcoming changes are bad. Being more AFK in exchange of further gutting the loot that already is lack lustre is insane

[fathom dust]

I cannot help but wonder what will happen to the FFD aura with aura removal since they're so prominently including it in the timer table

[rotund grove]

Thieving Guild unlock from what I remember

[neat drift]

Tell me what is actually worth stealing anymore (in game only) Ironically nothing

[sick light]

I think the majority wanted lower XP / loot in exchange for longer more consistent afk time

It seems like they specifically addressed 4 concerns that I know were talked about in this thread. That's meaningful.

[neat drift]

The original AFK time was the same for several years and now we have are at this split road for trade off. If i have to sit there and not pay attention to which pockets i am targeting then there is a problem

[sour parcel]

They nerfing the xp aswell?

[sick light]

Going from 15 to min to maybe 3, if lucky, was not good. Unlocks lost all rewarding usefulness. I think this middle ground is fine. Increase the baseline to 4-6 min, with the window going up based on unlocks. That makes them relevant and useful. I think most people will accept the compromise

[neat drift]

The xp and loot is getting destroyed

[sick light]

But as with any update, we will have to see how it plays. Many things look good on paper but don't play well. And if something doesn't play well, it should be fixed. That's why they encourage the feedback.

[neat drift]

"Sorry, we know this been the meta for 10 years but take this medicine anyways"

[runic flame]

What other training method provides 1.25m gp and 375k xp for 1 click? Because that's what it was doing.

[neat drift]

Proof?

[sick light]

We know and expect that early / mid game updates will affect the end game. It's unreasonable to expect the end game not to change to a certain degree.

[runic flame]

https://runescape.wiki/w/Money_making_guide%2FPickpocketing_Menaphos_market_guards

Was 5.5m xp per hour and 1.5m xp per hour for 1 click per 15 min.

Guards weren't even the best/most profitable, bu it's what wiki has a MMG guide for

[neat drift]

So the new npcs were too heavy without risk

[runic flame]

Found TzHaar; but yeah, he newest NPCs were way overclocked from a input -> gp/xp reward perspective. https://runescape.wiki/w/Money_making_guide/Pickpocketing_TzHaar-Hur_traders

[knotty quiver]

reduction in xp is fair, but the gold is already less than 5m on maxed out everything. lvl gears etc
smithing cannonballs is gonna make more money lol
glad that the mods heard the problem and are very responsive. 5* there

[winter kernel]

Genuinely, thank you for this.

It actually feels like you listened. The main frustration wasn’t even about XP or GP, it was that high level pickpocketing stopped feeling rewarding and started feeling random. Seeing you address predictability and the safe window directly makes a big difference.

“Progression amplifies power” is exactly what many of us were trying to explain. If we push for high level Thieving, unlock Crystal Mask, Light Form, relics, cloaks and all the rest, it should matter. It should feel stronger. It should extend the window. Otherwise what are we working toward?

The guaranteed safe period and slower failure ramp up sound much closer to what high level players expect. AFK doesn’t need to mean infinite. It just needs to be predictable and earned.

Balancing is fine. Adjusting numbers is fine. But keeping the feeling that progression is worth it is what really matters.

Appreciate the response and the fact you didn’t just ignore the feedback. That goes a long way. It seems you have handled all the feedback/concerns in this post that were mentioned yesterday and today

[knotty quiver]

has it been updated? im max thieving gear on fairytraders and not using prayer/magic but i can only afk 1min

[sour parcel]

Cool

[fathom dust]

No, not yet.

[sour parcel]

This issue was adressed pretty quickly and it doesnt seems like they kept pickpocketing super op either

[knotty quiver]

ty, that explains it. time to do something else!

[sick light]

Agreed. Kudos to the entire team involved for listening to the feedback.

[civic spire]

Great article today about proposed changes.

My only concern:

If we're reducing afk-ability to 70%
XP to 70%
Loot to 70%

Is everyone agreeing this is overall a nerf of 30%?

Is everyone ok with that?

Or should we consider a true balance?
Afk-ability 70%
XP/gold 70%
Loot 100% +20%?, +30%?, +60%?

Because as it stands it will be more work for less reward.

Maybe we feel pickpocket need nerfed because citadel loot is underwhelming?

Then we have to ask ourselves, is grinding things like crystal mask really worth it for a new player? The net is only an extra minute between clicks, is that enough incentive?

[sick light]

The numbers could be tweaked in the future if isn't working out for rates. But fixing the foundation of thieving was top priority

[runic flame]

The old reward was overclocked. 4 clicks for 5.5m gp and 1.5m xp is not comparable to any other afk skilling method in game.

[civic spire]

Why does it have to be comparable?

[sick light]

It should be within reason of the other skills to keep it balanced

[civic spire]

Why does it have to be balanced?

I mean before nerf.... if the skill was so good then why wasn't a majority of players just doing thieving? (Not to include new content launch of course?)

[sick light]

Thieving did provide a sort of skip for certain content. Many people brought up archeologist as an example to bypass training arch altogether. That's not ideal. Which is why I supported nerfing artifact drops from thieving. That way you could get mats, but would still have to do arch to get artifacts.

[runic flame]

In every world every new thieving npc would always have 5+ players on it pre-nerf. It was a pretty easy to attain and lucrative method for using an alt to pay for bonds.

Over time it would have done some rough damage to the economy of the game.

[civic spire]

I agree to removing artifacts from archeologist pp, but that doesn't warrant an end game pickpocket mixup.