Setup

RuneScape (also known as RuneScape 3) launched its Fresh Start worlds almost two months ago. These limited-time servers feature boosted experience rates and other benefits, designed to create a nice jumping-on point for new players before sending them off to the real servers. 

Unfortunately, these servers didn’t attract any new players at all – if you ask Reddit, at least. I’m not quite a new player either, but a “lapsed” one who last played in 2017 (for like 5 minutes), and in 2011 prior to that. I was pumped to dive head-first into a modern RuneScape with even less integrity than usual!

Less than a month into my new adventure, a meta-breaking update hit the scene: Wilderness Flash Events. After recently turning PvP into an opt-in affair, RuneScape was revitalizing the PvP area of the wilderness with hourly group events. These events have few-to-no requirements, and they reward players with significant experience and hundreds of thousands of gold pieces. On a server of fresh accounts in a fresh economy, Wilderness Flash Events are extremely popular. 

Some might consider these events overpowered, but RuneScape is pretty much at the stage where if everything is overpowered, nothing is. This is fine because the game is designed to be a jungle gym.

See?

However, no playground status can excuse the motivation mismatch that players experience at these events. A group effort should consist of everyone working in harmony toward a common goal, but these events routinely foster animosity between players for multiple reasons.

So How do the Events Work?

A Wilderness Flash Event. Players need to collect kindling and burn down the Evil Bloodwood Tree.
Ignore the Dragons. And that guy typing.

Each Wilderness Flash Event consists of completing X activity a total of Y times across the group of players within a 5 minute time limit. If the completion requirement isn’t reached in time, players miss out on all item rewards. Tasks are simple, from mining rocks to killing hellhounds. Combat tasks can be difficult for low-level players, but skilling tasks can be completed by anyone as they do not take the player’s skill levels into account.

In addition to the group completion requirement, each player possesses a personal contribution score. Even if a group successfully completes an event, players lacking in personal contribution receive neither experience nor items. Group completion requirements scale dynamically based on the number of players in the area, making the events non-trivial but realistic to complete at any group size. (We’ll come back to that later…)

What’s the Mismatch?

Okay, so the group needs to hit a threshold to succeed, and everyone needs to contribute to get credit. So what’s the issue?

Well, it comes down to the numbers. The personal contribution requirement is low enough that, were each player to contribute the minimum required to receive personal credit, the event would fail as a whole. In the case of an “Evil Bloodwood Tree: Burn” event, using the event scaling formula pulled from the RuneScape Wiki, we see:

“In total max(40,45 – N) kindling must be burnt personally to succeed in the event, while 50 + 55N kindling burnt by all the players participating collectively in the event is required, where N is the number of players involved.”

This means, for example:

Number of players present: 75
Kindling Requirement (Personal): 40
Kindling Requirement (Event): 4175

In this scenario, each player contributing exactly 40 kindling does not result in event completion.
(75 x 40 = 3000 out of 4175)

Therefore, completing the event requires some players to go above and beyond. Everyone wants to see the event completed because everyone wants item rewards, so this should be fine. However, this situation presents a turning point at which players become divided for one crucial reason:

There are NO personal benefits to going above and beyond. The experience and item rewards for event completion do NOT scale with personal contribution in any way.

This means that anyone going above and beyond is doing so for the good of the group. The majority of players are fine with this, since they themselves are a part of the group. Continuing to contribute still benefits them by improving the likelihood of successfully completing the event.

However…

There are some players who are not so motivated. They instead see an opportunity to stop “working” to complete the event objective while still receiving a full reward, thanks to everyone else’s selfless efforts.

“Leeching”

In the center sits a burning tree, with most players chasing fire spirits that roam nearby. On the right sits a freeloader, checking their phone while they wait for everyone else to finish up.

Despite this non-contributor’s presence, it’s highly likely that everyone else will complete the event with time to spare. So from the non-contributor’s perspective, further contribution offers no additional benefit.
(Technically their help would cause the event to be completed slightly faster, but this benefit is minimal at best compared to all of the clicking required.)

Now there are all kinds of reasons one might need to step away from their computer, even in the middle of an intense gaming moment. This player could have a good excuse. But there’s no excuse for this!

Lovely money!

This player is not away from his computer. He’s performing an action called “alching” (alchemizing items into gold pieces) instead of helping with the event. This player believes that, since the event is likely to succeed without his further input, he might as well spend his time doing something that benefits him directly while he waits. Is he wrong? Let’s analyze further.

Such leeches regularly draw the ire of contributing players, leading to discussions like this one:

Orange here is being matter-of-fact in explaining that they are meeting the game’s defined minimum contribution. What’s wrong with that? They’ve done enough. It says so in the UI.

Blue and Green are taking a more common sense approach that Orange’s behavior is parasitic. If everyone did the minimum as Orange did, no one would get any reward. Blue and Green are doing their part regarding what is actually required rather than what the game states.

So who’s right? In my opinion, both parties. Blue and Green are correct that Orange is not contributing a fair share compared to everyone else, and Orange is right that ultimately, you shouldn’t hate the player. Hate the game.

These players shouldn’t have been put into a game system that pits individual and group benefits against one another.

Let’s Fix That, Shall We?

Solution 1: Increase individual contribution requirements based on the group requirement

Make individual contribution requirements a simple calculation of:

Individual req = Total req / number of players

This way, the event is guaranteed to be completed if everyone achieves the minimum personal contribution. Leeches are a thing of the past. The event can still fail, but there is no longer a discrepancy between doing the minimum and doing your fair share. The earlier argument between Blue, Green, and Orange will no longer occur.

Unfortunately, there are issues with this approach. These issues have to do with players joining events halfway through. Take another Bloodwood Tree: Burn event for example. Currently, the group requirement of 50 + 55 * number of players scales up at any time as people join. However, the individual contribution requirement calculation of max(40,45 – number of players) keeps the requirement stagnant after more than 5 players are present. 5 is a very low number, so individual requirements are practically static at present.

If individual contribution scaled up as well, a player could suddenly lose out on meeting their individual requirement if others joined near the end of the event. This creates a new form of anger against “late” players, which isn’t great. These late players would also have a tough time meeting their own higher individual contributions compared to the current game, where stumbling across an event-in-progress often allows one to join in and comfortably meet one’s individual requirement. 

Because of these issues, I opt for an alternative solution.

Solution 2: Scale personal rewards with personal contribution

If someone contributing 60 kindling receives more experience points than someone contributing the bare minimum of 40, animosity towards those who stop at the minimum should decrease. A contributing player might still blame a leech for a failed event, but the feeling that the leech is freeloading should be otherwise reduced. Leeches are still doing less work, but they are receiving lesser rewards. On top of that, additional work never feels “wasted” as it currently is. Every bundle of kindling earns you something.

This change would significantly reduce anger between contributors and leeches, making wilderness flash events more fun for everyone. But for now this happier world is only a dream. The world I’m stuck in is Fresh, and I need to get back to it before I miss another wildy event. See ya!

P.S. – “Hopping”

So in Solution 1 I mentioned the group requirement scaling up at any time, right? Well in RuneScape, players can hop between servers, called “worlds”, whenever they want. Servers with lower populations often finish flash events before more crowded ones. Due to this, some players have tried to quickly hop to other worlds in order to complete an event twice, for double rewards! This is doable with the low individual requirements that currently exist. However, too many people joining the more crowded world close to the end of the event can balloon the group requirement to unreachable heights, failing the event for everyone who worked hard the entire time. This has created another schism between crowded server natives and “hoppers”. Sigh.

This divide is harder to fix than the contribution one, as the scaling system that makes up its foundation is also what makes the events at all challenging in larger groups. All solutions involving locking out late players or freezing the requirement with a certain amount of time remaining feel arbitrary and exploitable, so I’m not sure about this one. Still, an inability to totally fix flash events shouldn’t stop Jagex from improving them to some degree.

But seeing as the Evil Bloodwood Tree notification message is still missing a period weeks after release, I’m not too hopeful…