TruthScape.com  9  TruthScape Special Reports - RuneScape News and Reviews       9  TruthScape Special Reports - Understanding the RuneScape Assist System

TruthScape Special Reports - Understanding the RuneScape Assist System The RuneScape Assist System - Requesting and Offering Assistance

Let’s start with the most general information on the new Assist System (AS). I’ll begin with an introduction to the system and discuss what I feel Jagex’s motivations were for it. Then we’ll look at how the system works and what its limitations are. I’ll also explore the impact of this change on scamming—both positive and negative.

One of the more positive aspects of the RuneScape community is that experienced players are often willing to help out those who have lower levels in certain skills. For example, someone with a high Herblore level might agree to identify… er… clean herbs for someone; a high-level smith might forge bars into a high level armor item, or someone with 99 Fletching might fletch a magic shortbow.

Player assistance has always been somewhat of a double-edged sword, however. The usual way in which the examples above were accomplished was via a trust trade. If I wanted someone to make me a rune battleaxe, for example, I’d give three rune bars to a high-level smith. He or she would then make the battleaxe and return it to me.

In most cases this would work fine, but there is always an inherent chance of being scammed when doing a trust trade, because the higher-level player could just choose not to return the finished item. Sure, no high level smith would risk his or her account to steal a few rune bars, but what about a player asked to make a piece of jewelry from an onyx gem, or to smith a dragonfire shield? It was not always easy to differentiate legitimate helpful players from scammers.

Safe trust trading is possible in most cases, usually by trading raw materials for a finished product rather than doing a trust trade. This is not always possible, though, because the high-level player might not have the finished item on hand. Suppose, for example, that I have an onyx gem and want a high level crafter to make a Berserker Necklace for me, but he doesn’t own one. Then what?

The new Assist System appears to be designed specifically to address the problems of trust trades and player help. Using this system, a lower-level player can receive help in getting items by effectively borrowing a higher-level player’s skills, instead of trading items to that player and hoping they get back the finished goods. The person assisting still gets all of the XP for the use of the skill, while the person getting assistance receives the items and never has to trade away his or her raw materials.

Jagex has gone beyond just replacing trust trades, though, because the new system enables some types of assistance that were never possible before. For example, you can now help someone plant seeds that are above their Farming level, or let them make furniture above their Runecrafting level.

My guess is that reducing scams associated with trust trades is one reason that Jagex implemented the system, but not the only reason. I think this update is also consistent with the company’s recent emphasis on teamplay and cooperation. To the extent that it lets players interact and help each other more safely, I think it’s a win in that regard. There are still some bugs and problems to be worked out, though, as we’ll see later on.

Here’s a rough outline of how the AS works; I’ll provide more details in the next topic on requesting and offering assistance.

In addition to the usual “Walk here”, “Follow” and “Trade with” options, every player also now has a new one: “Req Assist” (see Figure 36). Selecting this will send a request for assistance to the player chosen, who can either accept or decline the request. There is also a button on the controls interface that allows players to decide if they want to allow assistance requests from anyone, only from friends, or not at all (just like the chat and trade buttons.)

If the person from whom assistance was requested (the “assister”) accepts, a small animation appears that seems to show a “ghost” of the assister passing over to the one being assisted (the “assistee”). You can see what this looks like in Figure 37. The assistee then gains temporary access to the assister’s skills. The assister must choose to turn on whichever of the 13 skills that he or she wants to offer for use; others will remain unavailable. The skills supported by the AS are Construction, Cooking, Crafting, Farming, Fletching, Herblore, Magic, Runecrafting and Smithing. The skills Fishing, Hunter, Mining and Woodcutting were also part of the system for the first week but were then removed (since resource skills don’t need to be on this system anyway, and it was leading to abuse.)

Once the assister enables the appropriate skill sharing, the assistee will find that he or she has access to the assister’s skills, enabling smithing of armor or weapons, crafting jewelry, making potions and so forth; an example is shown in Figure 38. A small “handshake” icon appears in the bottom right of the screen to indicate that the AS is active. The assistee must remain within close physical proximity of the assister, and there are other limitations on what can be done with the skills, which we will explore shortly.

During the time that the assistee is borrowing skills, the assister sees a full-screen display that shows which skills he or she is assisting with, and how many experience points have been received. The assister cannot move or engage in any skill activities during this period, so it is not a way to “double up” on XP or power-train. The assister can still engage in public, private or clan chat, however.

The assister can end the process at any time by closing the full-screen display. Assistees must move out of range of the assister or log off in order to end the exchange.

The idea of borrowing skills immediately brings to mind all sorts of potential abuse scenarios—this is one reason why so many people are complaining about this update out of ignorance. Jagex appears to have thought it through quite well, however, putting limits in the system to preemptively circumvent many potential exploits that would have made it a nightmare. For example, Jagex has made it mostly difficult to abuse this system for power-leveling or to obtain items that a lower-level player shouldn’t be able to get.

Here are some of the general limits and restrictions associated with the Assist System:

• Every player can only provide a maximum of 30,000 XP in assistance in a 24-hour period. This total is across all skills, not per skill, and is measured from the time you first start assisting someone; it resets 24 hours after that point. If you hit this limit while assisting, the feature will stop working. This is in place not only to prevent people from getting too much XP while assisting, but also so low levels don’t exploit the system by spending hours and hours doing things they should not be able to.
  
  
• The assister and assistee must be within 20 squares of each other. Thus, for example, you can’t help someone mine runite and then stay in the bank while they go to the rune rocks in the Wilderness.
  
  
• The assister cannot work on skills or really do anything but chatting while the AS is active.
  
  
• No combat skills are supported by the AS. Magic involves both combat and non-combat spells, so Jagex didn’t leave it out entirely, but the combat spells cannot be “borrowed”, and in fact there are severe restrictions on what spells can be cast.
  
  
• You cannot use the AS for quest-related items or to complete tasks in an Achievement Diary.
  
  
• To use the AS for items that have a quest requirement (such as smithing darts or claws) you must have completed the relevant quest.
  
  
• You can’t use the AS to let non-members use member-only skills.
  
  
• You can’t use the feature to allow access to guilds. (Though at first you could, Jagex updated the game to fix this flaw a few hours after the AS was introduced.)
  
  
• The feature does not work for the portions of skills that involve untradeable items. For example, you can use the AS to catch implings in jars with Hunter, because they are tradeable, but you cannot catch catch imps in boxes because they are not (see Figure 39). Similarly, you cannot plant spirit seeds or other tree seeds in Farming.
  
  
• You cannot use the feature to build items in your house using Construction. The reason is that you would need the assister with you in your house while in building mode, which is not possible.
  
  
• You can’t use the AS to buy a skillcape.
  

  Figure 39: Untradeable Items Excluded from the Assist System

  I was curious to see if the Assist System could be used by people to get items they would not be able to obtain without it. Mtomali and I tried out using it to capture imps in Hunter; as you can see by the red-highlighted message, this sort of use was anticipated and blocked by Jagex.

  Note that this diagram is from the initial Assist System; Fishing, Hunter, Mining and Woodcutting have now been removed.

  
  

For more details on limits imposed on using the AS, also see the topic that explores applications of the AS for particular skills.

The Assist System definitely will help cut down on the incidence of conventional trust trade scams, so in that respect it is a success. Unfortunately, it has introduced to the game a related scam that may turn out, in time, to be even worse than the one it eliminated. While the AS was intended just to be a way to provide help, certain players are trying to use it to make money, by demanding payment in order to assist with skills.

There’s nothing wrong with exchanging payment for a service, per se, but there’s a problem in how to conduct the transaction here. There’s no way in the AS to work a payment into the transaction, so this means either paying the assister before or after the assistance is performed. If the assister is paid first, he or she could just leave without providing the service; if the assister agrees to be paid afterwards, the assistee could just leave without paying. In essence, involving payment in the Assist System devolves it right back to a trust trade, with all of the potential problems that come with those exchanges.

The solution is simple: don’t agree to pay anyone to use the Assist System. If the assister wants payment, then either find another person who will help for free, or just do a traditional safe player service exchange without using the AS. For example, if someone wants you to pay them 25k to smith 25 rune bars into crossbow bolts, then ask them to make the bolts first, then trade them 25 bars plus 25k for the bolts.

TruthScape Special Reports - Understanding the RuneScape Assist System The RuneScape Assist System - Requesting and Offering Assistance