Feedback: Gamelab's Minescape Vs. Minescape.me

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Feal33

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This is a post in response to Gamelab's own "history" page, where they claim that they're the only legit Minescape and all others are simply copycats.

I've played both and have wrote down below my experience on both games and how despite GM being the "first" Minescape, it is nowhere near the best.

tl;dr at the bottom

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My first Minescape was the Gamelabs version. While the architecture of Gamelab's Minescape (I'll refer it to GM from now on) reminded me of RS3, I still opted to give it a try after watching a video showcasing the server's features.

Before I even took a single step, I was assaulted by this obnoxious mishmash of random noise. I didn't know what it was for a second until I realized it was Newbie Melody, recreated entirely out of noteblocks, subjected to server lag, and then fed through to me the end user mangled and unrecognizable. Needless to say I slid the jukebox slider all the way to the left after that.

Then began my journey through tutorial island. I loved how the inventory system worked and how trees were gone after one log, just like in Runescape. I caught shrimp, cooked them, mined bars, smelted them, and made daggers. Everything was familiar and natural. Then it was time to fight the...chickens? I remember the pits being filled with rats, not chickens. Whatever, maybe it was a joke since the game is Minescape, not Runescape. I equipped my bronze sword and clicked on one. My character attacked it, dealing a little damage...then nothing happened. Why did I stop attacking? Did I lag? No, the game just doesn't have an auto attack feature.
Combat in GM is not Runescape combat. It's entirely active. This was red flag #1.

Okay fine. The first enemy I fight may not have been a rat, and the combat may not have been what i'm used to, but there was more stuff in that video I wanted to check out. Fishing and Woodcutting are just like the real game, and I was excited to see what else the server had in store. After being given a wand that had infinite casts of Wind Strike and fighting another chicken and being disappointed yet again that I had to spam right click to keep casting spells, I was teleported into the main game and saw...this.

Yea. That's Lumbridge castle's gate. I didn't know what it was at first because of the two giant (fountains?) to the left and right of me. This structure was not...great. It looked like block vomit, like an AI was given a scan of RS3's Lumbridge and told to remake it using vanilla blocks. That NPC you see back there is a cash-shop vendor. It sells XP boosts and XP Lamps. Guess architecture wasn't the only thing they got inspired from RS3, but the monetization too.

Eughh...alright. It's bad. But I knew this going in that they weren't going to be true to OSRS. I already knew that they borrowed from RS3 architecture, so I shouldn't be so JESUS CHRIST THIS IS AL-KHARID???

THIS IS WEST VARROCK BANK? THIS LOOKS MORE LIKE A BANK HEIST FROM PAYDAY2

Hey look I found a "rat"

Alright. This was bad. I don't recognize any of these buildings. I can't tell where I am in town just by looking around. But I have 20k GP from thieving some men outside of lumby so let's go to GE and buy some starting...gear...
What the shit is this.

Lemme give you a rundown of how GM's GE works. A seller wants to sell some Steel shields for 2.5k each. He goes to GE, clicks "sell items", and clicks the stack of shields in his inventory to sell. An icon then appears on the "buy" portion of the GE for anyone looking to buy Steel shields. The problem is, every single icon you see there is a different offer. Every one of those items is someone listing something at a random amount, and then setting a price for each item at a random amount.
This isn't GE, this is an auction house.
There isn't even a search bar.

At this point I was starting to get nervous. I was starting to think that the devs' intentions weren't exactly to stay true to Runescape. Nevertheless, I spied in chat that someone was complaining about going dry on a high-kc from Infernal Mages. Infernal mages? That's in the Morytania Slayer Tower! Slayer is one of my favorite skills in Runescape!

Excited, I hurriedly scoured through listings to buy a set of iron, and rushed over to Kharyll, only to discover that I wasn't eligible to slay. Why not? It couldn't be a members restriction because I could thieve men as soon as I teleported into Lumbridge. It couldn't be a level restriction either. It's because Slayer is locked behind a custom quest.
What the actual fuck.
Why on earth are GM's devs locking SLAYER of all skills, behind some arbitrary quest? Maybe Slayer is so fundamentally different in GM that it needs a custom quest to properly explain how to train it?

Lol no. The quest involves running back and forward from Varrock castle to Kharyll 4 times. That's from the slayer master hut in Kharyll, up the stairs of Paterdomus, down the slope towards Varrock, into Varrock castle to talk to King Roald, back to Kharyll and repeated FOUR TIMES to unlocked skill that was never locked in either versions of Runescape.
In fact, what are all these other quests? I recognize Cooks Assistant, but Marriage delivery? Lumbridge's Runner? These don't sound like quests from those games either.

With the temple trek out of the way, I headed over to the...tower...


Jesus christ why is it so DARK?
Didn't think I needed a hack client with Fullbright to slay...

Despite the lack of brightness, the dungeon was more or less the layout of the actual Slayer Tower, and I was excited to grind up some good ol' Slayer XP.
My first task was Cave Bugs.
Huh. I don't remember cave bugs being in the Slayer Tower. Do they mean Cave Crawlers?

Nah. It was Cave Bugs. Also, that's straight up a Cave Spider from Minecraft.
 
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I pulled out my iron scim and proceeded to whoop some bug ass. After downing a few, I realized the combat system is even more custom than I originally thought.
In actual Runescape, damage is randomized. You effectively roll two dice with every attack, one that determines whether you hit or not and another how hard you hit.

I noticed that every two swings of my Iron Scimitar, I bring a bug down to exactly 10 hp. Every. Time. The damage I deal is always set at a predetermined amount related to my strength bonus and actual strength. There is no dice roll for hits.
Also enemies will hit you almost every time as well. It seems armor in GM offers damage mitigation instead of Runescape's chance to hit. I did notice blocked attacks every now and then but all-in-all, they've removed most of the RNG from fighting.

I was no longer playing Runescape. Here I was, clearing unfamiliar hurdles, to train in an unfamiliar tower, fighting unfamiliar mobs, with an unfamiliar combat system. Clearly, they took more liberties than just the architecture. Despite the problems, my monkey brain was still having fun watching that number climb. It wasn't too long before I reached 10 slayer then 15, and then I got a task to kill Crawling Hands. There I saw it.

Oh gods is that...a CUSTOM MODEL???

By Guthix, it's beautiful. The way it moves, the way it attacks with its index finger...it's perfect. So GM DOES have artists after all! Excited, I continued to slay. I can't wait to see their rendition of other slayer monsters! If they nailed the Crawling Hand, surely they've put in the same effort with other slayer monsters?

Lol no.
Here's a banshee wielding a 2h sword. https://puu.sh/Fk4Mr/0a2a974660.jpg
Ankou. (they could have left the weapon out of this one and it would have looked more like the original) https://puu.sh/Fk4NL/f06fce689c.jpg
Hey look a Cave Crawler. Also I just remembered they aren't suppose to be in the tower either. A bit more gelatinous that I remembered... https://puu.sh/Fk4X3/1c37e78316.jpg

At this point I stopped slaying. Too much has deviated from the original to really convince me that I was playing Runescape. It felt more like another MMO inspired from Runescape. A spiritual successor maybe. A spinoff at best, but definitely not the Runescape I know and love.

Back in lumby, I figured since I already got this far, I might as well see what 8+ years of development on this server has to offer. The next couple days I spent learning the mechanics and for better or for worse, the changes that GM implemented differently from Runescape.

Here's a short list:

- Agility. Think Elder Scrolls. You gain Agility from simply running around in the overworld. Because it's constantly being trained without you thinking of it, it may be one of your highest level skills just from running around playing the game. It almost reminds me of Silverhawk Boots from RS3.

- Prayer. You get bones from everything, except imps and demons which drops demonic ashes (you can scatter them for XP like burying bones). In SM however, there isn't a delay on burying bones, since all you have to do is look down and drop them to the ground. This means you can instantly unload an inventory full of bones by looking down and Q spamming all the bones, machinegunning them into the ground like you're shift-dropping fish in OSRS.

- Mining and Smithing are relatively the same as Runescape, but there are some differences. Iron straight up does not have a fail chance to smelt. You get 100% of the iron you smelt into bars, meaning it's incredibly easy to train smithing and mining.

- Fletching doesn't exist. It's merged with crafting. Conversely, arrows are made by using a whole log on arrowtips with feathers. Higher level logs gives more arrows when merged with tips, letting you gain an incredible amount of arrows if combined with iron bars made into tips.

- Magic doesn't have any staves. Instead, you get a wand that you can charge with any offensive spell that you can cast, and it will take the runes from your inventory to charge them. Mage armor does not exist, and you can cast magic effectively in full rune.

- Ranged is also effective in any armor set, because armor doesn't give negative stats, only damage mitigation.

- Thieving is incredibly profitable, and can be done on any NPC even if you're in combat with them. Failing to thieve does nothing but aggro them to you, and if you're already fighting them, thieving a monster has no drawback.

- Herblore. My first run in with this skill was seeing a full rune guy walking around outside Lumbridge picking up plants and not knowing what he was doing. Turns out he was training Herblore. Herbs are readily gathered outside of Lumbridge. Any flower you see out in the wild can be gathered with high enough Herblore and brewed into a potion.
Some of These potions are straight out of Minecraft (the first one you can make is a speed potion). At first I saw a full rune guy walking around outside Lumbridge picking up plants and I didn't know what he was doing. Turns out he was training Herblore.

- Farming is also gathering random plants in the overworld. Instead of flowers, you're picking wheat and apples, which all take farming levels to gather. There is no actual planting or seeds. Thieving farmers doesn't give them either. A lot of plants in the game are from Minecraft such as melons and pumpkins.

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The next week SirPugger made a video showcasing Minescape.me. The first time I played this server I was blown away by the difference.
No more silverfish rats, actual recognizable buildings, real quests, real NPCs, no P2W system, a focus on the finer details such as the delay between bone burying, and ACTUAL CUSTOM MONSTER MODELS. The faithfulness to the real game and the incredible UI made me want to cry tears of joy. All of this done in 2 years as opposed to Gamelab's 8 years. It is truly a marvel. It was plain to see that Minescape.me's devs favored quality over quantity.

GM has a lot of content. That's undeniable. But the content it does has looks terrible, is half-assed, and isn't true to Runescape.
Minescape.me is faithful to a fault, and any content it does have is executed perfectly with the original game always in mind, especially the monsters. You can go to OSRS's wiki, look up the drop table for a level 21 Skeleton in the Varrock Sewers, and not only will it be in the exact same spot, it will have close to if not exactly the same drops as the OSRS version.

If you really want an obvious comparison, just look at the two's Grand Exchanges. Minescape.me has almost perfect replica of the Grand Exchange down to not only the look of the UI but the function. GM's sorry excuse of a GE is more like a hastily cobbled-together flea market. It really makes me wonder where they get all their pride from.

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tl;dr: Gamelab's Minecraft might have been the first Minescape but it nowhere NEAR the best. Not even close. They can hide behind the legacy of their server and tout their originality, but no matter how much content they add, the foundation of their game is loose like their faithfulness to the game they claim to emulate, while Minescape.me is built on HARD QUALITY and people will ALWAYS want the real deal not the bootleg off-brand.

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Thanks for reading this massive shitpost. I'll leave you all with this nice picture of GM's rendition of...an Iceveld.

Couldn't you have least dyed it blue? What is wrong with you.
 
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tl;dr. can we get a rule about talking about the other minescape. who cares, all it does is give them free publicity
 
The games are very different. They are both unique for their own reasons. Some people prefer one over the other and that is fine. Any false rumors spread from either side is malicious and I will not tolerate it from our community. It's toxic and nothing else needs to be said. Play whichever you prefer, yes they are both very different. And no, they will not ever accept us as MineScape even though we have built everything we have from the ground up. But talking about it constantly wont change anything. This is a good analysis thread but I know how this conversation will spiral. You can talk about the other minescape all you want as long as you aren't blatantly advertising or spreading lies. There is lots of confusion around it and nothing wrong with explaining it.
 
Closed this thread. It's a good analysis but I fear it could pop back up and cause problems.
 
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