Sailing is missing one simple thing...

You cannot sail directly into the wind.

I'm a sailor, it's the first concept of sailing... If the wind is coming from the north, you can't sail directly north. Depending on sail trim, boat type, speed, you can sail within 15-45 degrees of the wind direction, but if you point into the wind the boat stops (It's called irons, dk why).

To go north when the wind is coming from the north, you go northwest, then "tack" (change directions through the wind direction) to northeast. When this happens, visually the sail could switch sides.

I think if jagex made it so you can sail any direction but north (where you just stop moving), it would make the gameplay more realistic AND more fun, it would add a layer of tactics to the movement/navigation. This is a great way to add another active training method EXP, rahter than waiting to click every 30 secs. Every time you tack you have to manually click on your character to duck under the sail and switch sides, giving you the exp drop. Sure you could spam tack all the way north, but eventually you'll have to go south before you can start again - this is how you teach kids how to sail, you set a course and they do this until they're hungry and want to go home.

You could even do this for gybing, which is like tacking but you're headed away from the wind.

Thoughts?

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I was really an advocate for exactly this when we were in the concepting stage. Wind direction, wind speed, tacking, gybing and avoiding the boom - there's something about it that feels like it could have the same cosy feel as learning that copper + tin = bronze, while also providing interesting gameplay. Wind is an extremely fundamental part of IRL sailing, so that should be reflected in-game.

The problem is that OSRS needs to have a simple baseline. For an action to feel "old school" it needs to be dead simple, and these kinds of mechanics put a barrier up that makes the baseline gameplay just a bit too complicated. Moving my boat from point A to point B should be as intuitive and simple as we can make it, and then we can layer more simple mechanics (like the gust of wind) to add to the fun and thematics. Realistic wind and sail mechanics sadly require a bit too much thought from the player to exist as foundational mechanics in OSRS.

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Sailing is missing one simple thing...

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