Great read, something caught my eye though.
When asked about the Drop rate buff, Husky says "But do note that something being in the Misthalin section doesn't mean it's restricted only to creatures in Misthalin - we just decided to add them to the areas which seemed to make sense to add them. "
Does this mean that the visage buff from Karamja applies to ALL monsters that drop a visage, IE Mith Dragons or only to monsters that drop visages in Karamja?
That is a correct interpretation. All sources of the visage are buffed this League
does this mean that dragon boots in wilderness don’t get their drop rate boosted unless you also unlocked asg?
Nope, it means Wilderness d boots are unlocked for everyone since it says all sources
Very cool post. A couple things I would love to see are weekly tier placing updates and a cost list for the league points reward shop.
https://twitter.com/JagexHusky/status/1329849292819996672
I just tweeted the cost list if that helps. We missed them this week but we should have the tier placings next week!
When can we expect to see the price of the items in the trailblazer shop?
Just tweeted it a moment ago! https://twitter.com/JagexHusky/status/1329849292819996672
Was torn between Misthalin and Karamja in the beginning. Looking at the stats, glad I had picked both.
Thanks, this made me laugh more than it should've haha
Did they change the clue scrolls yet? I just did a few and got heaps for Wilderness and Priff.
We did change them, we just changed your progress to not be reset when getting a new one. So if you drop a 2 step clue, get another it will still be at 2 steps!
there are none, because jmods don't understand DPS vs max hit. if you go morytania to get a sang staff or nightmare staves, you can't compete with the other relics and don't get any VIPs, even with desert
i'd love to see any magic user get a 1 minute vorkath or 0:42 zulrah. it's a terrible relic and does not compete with the other choices.
I spent a couple of days in a modified dps calculator to take into account relic effects then another couple of days testing in the live-game. I was able to get both a 45s Vorkath and a 42s Zulrah with mage (in near-BiS with heart yes). These are possible but mage is weaker for those.
Magic is never the best in a lot of places but it's globally pretty decent in a lot of places and doesn't have that many weaknesses outside of bosses with stupid high magic def like Nightmare
I've seen a lot of comments talking about contradictions between what we have changed and what we haven't and you guys are absolutely correct, I cannot deny that.
I hope I can shed a little more light on the discussions we've had internally even if it won't really make the players who are unhappy suddenly happy about it, maybe they can understand where we're coming from and why we've made some of the decisions we have made.
So I kind of touched on it in this blog but let's break down some of the things we first changed and why and have a look at community reactions to them. I also want to stress that this is all my own personal perspective on all of this and it doesn't represent everyone on the team even if all of the decisions made below were made as a team.
Fluid strikes adjustment so that the damage reduction happens after determining if you die or not. This one was pretty much just an unforeseen bug that allowed players to never die against some bosses special attacks if they had I think it was around 8hp or less. Clearly abusable, we had to fix this immediately through a hotfix when we found out. We then later did the correct fix to it once we had the time to investigate it more thoroughly and more important issues had been found. The community complained about this one but mostly because from what I can tell they didn't understand the severity of the bug but it seems that everything is ok now and I believe it's been appreciated that we took the time to re-address it.
Double Cast being nerfed (originally) so that the ice spells no longer had 100% accuracy. This one was a clear bug, it wasn't in the relic description and it wasn't intended behaviour. Unfortunately we caught it really late when people had already built around it and shared the information to others resulting in lots and lots of players being really annoyed that we ruined their build. Only because we caught it really late and that it was really significant to specific builds (combat styles are a HUGE part of this league) we decided to proceed with a soft-nerf instead. I still generally disagree with this choice personally (we have lots of opinions on the team) but the community seems to have received this rather positively stating that it was fun and leagues are supposed to be fun so let's keep it.
And lastly, let's talk about clue scrolls. The idea behind the change to clue scrolls was not to make a balancing change to make US better late-game or to try and buff TS. It was to make a piece of content which was really not fun and quite tedious to do more enjoyable for everyone generally. Again, this does hurt peoples relic choices and players who picked TS generally felt like they lost their late-game advantage.
So when we're making sweeping changes like these and "making exceptions" it can be really hard for players to understand why we won't do really minor changes like Burning amulet being affected by Eternal Jeweller or glass making being affected by Production master or adding box traps to the Wilderness.
The honest answer is that we still stick by what we originally said, we don't want to make any changes where possible to anything unless we absolutely have to.
And well... That's where the issue is right? Everyone has a different perception of what we have to change and what we don't have to change. Even internally we are slightly conflicted over this and have to go with the majority. This is something which I deeply regret considering that we have previously mentioned that we won't change anything once it's live.
I'd honestly quite like to go with "whatever is in the relic descriptions is law" but then we have cases like with double cast which I described above in which we were praised for going against that so perhaps there is a line with what is acceptable to change and not.
I can at the very least promise you all that this is something we are going to take more seriously going forward. We are going to discuss this in review of the League and try to decide what our stance should be going forward and then come back to you all before the next League so that you guys are all aware where we stand about changes made post-league launch.
None of these changes are easy and we don't make them lightly, we're just trying to ensure that you all have a great time playing the League but whether we make changes or not, we'll never make everyone happy. Make the changes and upset people who want no changes, don't make the changes and upset people asking for them. It's a very tough line to walk and one we definitely want to get better at.
Anyway, if you've read my long-winded answer.. thanks! I know some people are going to disagree with me and I know others are still going to be annoyed at me but that's fine. All I can do is try to promise to get better at this moving forward and to try and be as transparent as I can with you all in an attempt to reach a mutual understanding.
Perhaps you should release tasks and relics more than 2 hrs prior to league release. That way, all your oversights that end up punishing players can be attempted to be fixed before the holy start period that (sometimes but not always) prevents you from making any changes.
Edit: I know you guys are hesitant to do that to prevent "meta" strategy from dominating, but as it is now, people who pick the meta strat are conferred the most benefits with regards to changes anyways (you admitted yourself that ultimately you "have to go with the majority")
Anyways, on a more positive not (eventhough I cant hide my saltiness regarding TS) this was an incredibly good, inspired update for runescape. I am greatly looking forward to the future!
It's an interesting idea to release them earlier but honestly it would have to be 2-3 weeks early to make any real difference. Even 2 days earlier it's hard to make significant changes because we aim to have the release in a stable state with no more development work on it for at least a week beforehand sometimes more (unless any major bugs are found)
Silent hotfixes are not the way to go in this gamestyle. Most people will plan ahead with some degree so changing stuff on the fly so constantly can really be off putting. Anecdotal experience comes from the double cast change. As you said, it was an obvious and clear bug. Many players such as myself were waiting for it to be addressed but all we received was a silent hotfix. So that was enough to say "desert is not good for my relic anymore, lets go somewhere else"
Some other mod said I should have been patient and waited for real news. But its not like the bug was not known for a while. And it being a bug was enough of a reason to wait before picking a potentially game ruining area for a bug. The silent hotfix, normal to how problems have been handled, should have been the end of it. However, when you start silent hotfixing things, then reverting it and not explaining anything throughout, it can be really difficult to not get upset.
Still upset you guys have not addressed how inferior you have made regular magic spells with this change as giving 100% accuracy to a specific type of spell and leaving the other lackluster just feels bad for getting caught in the web of confusion brought on by these snap decisions.
#AllDoubleCastersMatter
The double cast one was an interesting case, we did not intend to be malicious or stealthy about it. The bug was brought to my attention at around 11pm at night and I called another dev with hotfix permissions to get their opinion on whether or not we should change it and they agreed we should since it was very powerful.
It didn't seem necessary to call out a CM just to notify players of it at that time at night so we decided we would do so the following morning. However, upon starting work that morning we had a follow up meeting with more members of the team and decided that due to the backlash we would partially revert the change, we then of course had to wait for that dev work to be done properly and tested (and to ensure we could do that) so that we could communicate accordingly.
All in all, it was addressed within around 12 hours of the hotfix. I still personally disagree with us reverting it but that's why we make decisions as a team. We are never going to be unanimous with so many viewpoints so we have to discuss the pros and cons of each and come to an agreement based on what the majority of us believe and I fully stand by that, I'd much rather have an opinionated team who discuss things and fight for their viewpoint than not.
At the end of the day, yes magic was going to be weaker than melee/range at the top end but even without the bug existing it was still pretty decent at a lot of places even if it was never the top dog anywhere and was very viable at places like NM, most GWD bosses etc. once you got mage gear with high accuracy and powered staves.
I do regret that keeping this bug has made it worse for players who would've picked Desert if the current relics effect was known from the start but that's on us to have caught this bug before it went live and to have actioned it sooner than we found it.
Hey Husky, loving the league!
I'd honestly quite like to go with "whatever is in the relic descriptions is law" but then we have cases like with double cast which I described above in which we were praised for going against that so perhaps there is a line with what is acceptable to change and not.
I think this stance creates problems for you because it completely handcuffs you guys in terms of fixes. I totally understand that you want to preserve the competitive integrity as much as possible, but you've already made two pretty substantial changes to the league (GWD KC and clue scrolls) and the second in particular has a huge impact on relic balance (I think you guys 100% made the right call and I'm a TS picker). This is only the second league you've run and you're forcing yourselves to try and balance the relics perfectly from the start. Give yourselves a bit of wiggle room to change relic descriptions to fix oversights and perhaps even major balance impacts. We're all learning together as we go through these leagues and we understand that you're dealing with spaghetti code, I think you have more leeway from the players than you think you do. Give yourselves permission to make small fixes/buffs and it will help everyone out!
Yeah I agree it hand-cuffs us a little bit, as I said though that's my personal opinion that relic descriptions are law but it does have it's downsides.
Another way to go about it is to leave the relic descriptions slightly more open, for example Eternal Jeweller could've said "All jewellery" and then if we missed any we add them later mid-league
I still don’t think they should make any nerfs mid-league. If you see other people abusing something that seems broken, you should be able to too. All jagex has done with these nerfs is punish the people who are playing at a more casual pace. The people who jumped ahead early and exposed these “bugs” both benefited from them the most and probably influenced others to follow the path they chose - only for the followers to get screwed by the nerf. All of my time in this league was spent getting ahrims (~200 chests) and ice barrage because I saw what other people were doing with it. Obviously, now my build is way less powerful than I expected and I essentially wasted a bunch of time.
If jagex really feels the need to make changes mid-league, they should instead buff other relics to match the strength of the accidentally “broken” relic. (Or better yet catch the bugs before the league is released, but I’m not holding my breath...)
I don't agree with you for a few reasons and I'll try to explain why but we might just end up with agreeing to disagree.
First up, bugs are unfortunate and we do our utmost to catch this stuff before launch but if something is clearly bugged/busted and it is not part of the relic description then we should change it because otherwise players who picked a specific relic will feel cheated because the bugged effect wasn't known to them when they made their relic choice.
Your response to this is saying "to buff the others to match" but that's a really really hard thing to weigh up mid-league and could result in even more drastic changes, so much so that you could end up re-writing an entire tier of relics and upsetting everyone and suddenly everyone is demanding to be allowed to re-choose their relics, it gets very messy at that point. This is why my preferred stance is "relic descriptions are law" as I stated in my post above.
As I said, the biggest issue was that we caught the bug really late and that is the unfortunate part but I honestly don't believe anyone that anyone who saw that effect clearly knew there was a rounding issue or something considering that 5t is clearly supposed to go to 3t with the relic description.
All of this is just feedback for next league at this point and hopefully we can come out with an official stance on changes we believe are ok and changes we believe are not ok once this League is over
I think the disconnect on whether or not to change the burning amulet is players see the decision as a simple pros vs cons of the change, but youre also looking at how important is the change? Is it worth the dev time at this point? Its a tough question to ask because it could be worth it if the problem reaches a lot of people but it could also be worth it if the problem reaches a few people to try to spread the love a bit, but how much of that can you afford to do? I think this is probably why you set the principle of "no changes mid-league," because if you do, then youre forced to make these decisions of who and whats worth it? Sadly i think with the changes so far, people are already feeling like the changes are imbalanced which means you either can keep trying to fix these problems or stand your ground at a certain point.
There are solutions to this for future leagues though, one solution to all of this would be if there was some method of changing relics or areas which may or may not be practical, or maybe releasing a beta test which would take away some of that suprise from day 1.
Edit: theres now the post about you guys nerfing the mushroom in the wilderness? Im second guessing what i just wrote cause thats not putting your foot down on doing no updates plus its a really weird allocation of dev time to get on that before burning amulets
It's less about the dev work and more about "do we really have to change this? or is it just part of the league". For example, not having access to an item because you didn't pick regions which gave it just feels like a natural part of the league rules and part of the planning and that is far more subjective to us changing it at this point.
The issues we did change I've described above and hopefully explained why even if you disagree.
I briefly heard about the mushroom issue yesterday, It seems people are taking it as kicking the mushroom pickers while they are down but that wasn't what we were doing. I don't honestly believe anyone who sees that the mushroom can bypass teleport checks/restrictions such as teleport blocks would expect that to be intended behaviour especially when the relic doesn't have that in it's description.
Also, the things that players are not seeing about the mushroom is not having those standard checks actually causes a lot more potential issues because there is a lot more in there that it is checking for than simply teleporting in the wilderness.
Thanks for always giving your insight even if I do completely disagree with you, you always have said “we don’t want to many changes where possible to anything unless we have too”. I recognized juggling clues would be a pain, I picked my areas and TS around this since many points are locked behind clues, then you go and make the auto juggling so that US gets to complete clues without having to stack superiors. Just absolute bullshit in my opinion.
Yeah I completely understand where you're coming from, it's a valid way to feel given the situation and it's something I'd strive to avoid going forward if I could.
It's just really hard to deal with because not everyone in the community agrees and perhaps there is a line we need to find where there are acceptable changes and not acceptable changes. I want to explore this further into the future before the next league
Honestly it was shocking to me that you chose 'no changes whatsoever' stance. What good can possibly come out of it? is it your way of trying to preserve game/league integrity? you should always strive to make *good* changes, no matter what.And what's more shocking is that apparently majority of Jagex thinks it's a good decision.
That is my personal stance and it's shared by some other employees, and less so by others.
This post was trying to stress that even though I feel that way, in reality there is probably a line between acceptable changes and not acceptable changes and I want to find that line and have discussions with the team about that for the next league so that we can present that to the players clearly before it starts.
Lots of us internally have differing opinions on things and honestly I wouldn't have it any other way
Disagreements and differences aside, thank you so much for all the community interaction, the changes are not ideal for me but I could not imagine the frustration of going through this without hearing from you guys and not being given the insight of your thought process.
All in all trailblazers has been a breath of fresh air and a blast in these harder times, it’s just as a competitive person and probably the only time in my life I’ll be able to put in the hours to compete for dragon it just felt bad to have these changes where one relic is clearly buffed over the other. I know there’s no easy answer but I do want to make it clear that I am very grateful for having mods like you all.
Completely understandable and no problem! I'm not trying to make everyone see our way of thinking. Just trying to be transparent and involved because even if we don't make any changes, I might get some good ideas to use for the next one!
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