Ahhhh I totally see what you mean. Yeah the whole thing with SoF going away for TH was disgusting. I don’t even consider it a change really, it’s pretty much the same thing. It still doesn’t sit right with me that they had an option to kill Yelps in a quest as effectively a scapegoat while they changed nothing.
Completely agree that MTX is out of control and badly designed. I understand why they need it, but they’re going about it the completely wrong way and monetizing the wrong things. It should only ever provide cosmetics. And Jagex is absolutely trying to get more money out of us in return for providing less.
EOC is something I’ve come to see as a mistake over time. It was way too much scope creep. They should’ve left items and armors and stats the same, and only changed how you dealt damage. Maybe introduce only a couple of abilities to augment combat instead of outright replace it, like bleeds, stuns, freedoms, etc. Plus, OSRS clearly shows that the old combat system could still do interesting and challenging encounters. And yeah PvP on RS3 is laughable and a lost cause, at least as far as the wilderness goes. The popularity of PvP in WE2 makes me think they could do something, but maybe that window has completely passed.
I don’t know that the engine criticism is fair though. The game has tons of spaghetti code that its built on. And the downside of having a custom engine is that you have to train anyone who’s going to work on it. You can’t hire someone experienced in the system.