Feels less like a skill and more like a minigame
Thank you for engaging with us on this. Would you be able to tell us a bit more about whether this is due to the rewards blog that we just published, or more just a general feeling through refinement? Also, what aspect of refinement so far has you feeling like this? I'd love to put forward suggestions about anything that could we do to help refine the skill further away from a 'minigame'!
Will we be able to attack monsters from our boats with ranged/mage in addition to cannons?
From Mod Elena, this would probably depend on what you're fighting. We imagine you'll primarily want to use ship combat unless someone is on your ship or you've left your ship to go on an island or something similar. Hope this helps!
Excellent incorporation of other skills, they fit perfectly from a gameplay/logic point of view.
I do kind of feel this is swinging more towards minigame/activity territory than a stand alone skill but I'll wait for the final product before judging.
Thanks for that feedback, we really appreciate it. Have you got anything I can pass on to the team about what is swaying it into minigame territory? Would be keen to recommend changes if this is an area we can improve.
I've only known Floopa for five minutes, but if anything happened to her I would kill everyone in this thread and then myself.
More seriously, how viable would it be for the in-game world map to have a 'fog of war' effect over these new ocean areas? Obviously players could just pull up the wiki map instead, but it could help the sense of exploration to have our map be filled in as we explore
The survey data we had from what I recall seemed to really favour the idea that the map would become populated after you've charted it. I asked your question to the dev team and they said they really like the idea, not opposed to it, but we can't promise anything until we've done a proper investigation of the tech work involved in making this happen.
Seeing as lore is the only thing left, I’ve decided I’m voting yes on it. Looks like it’d probably be one of my favorite skills.
I am so happy to hear that we have your support so far! Throughout refinement you all have given great feedback and suggestions, and we look forward to working with you if the skill passes 'lock-in' even further. :)
These maps seem rather small?
If the ships were traveling any faster than our run speed we'd probably reach the islands in a few seconds? Is the plan just to make the world map larger? Or instancing the ocean with other players to simulate a sailing "route"?
I dont see how a map that densely populated is possible without tedious obstacles or literally sailing in circles...
As mentioned by some other gamers in the thread, we included these community examples to give you an idea of where the skill is heading but they don't take into account stuff like Colossal sized ships which would need more space. At present we haven't had enough design time to work out a new map for you so we decided to include these images in the blog as what direction we are thinking of heading in if the skill passes 'lock in'.
Skillcape would look better if it was distinguished from fishing a bit, a deeper clue like this
That is so pretty! As mentioned in the blog, we've committed to a competition to decide on the best cape/icon if the skill passes 'lock in' as we want to make sure that the community feel as involved as possible on the skill.
Everything looks great except the skillcape colors imo
Not a problem at all, we've committed to running a community-voted/player design compertition if Sailing passes 'lock-in' for the cape aesthetics! :)
Will sailing include a skilling pet in its rewards?
Yes, I think it would be weird not to, however I think this is something we've decided to look at if the skill passes 'lock-in'. Unfortunately as it's so early in the design process we didn't have the info yet on what that pet would look like, we've made some suggestions in the Office but not had a proper decision yet! Also curious to know how much info players want about it, or how much should be kept a mystery!
Alongside these more esoteric types of ammunition, we’d like to allow players to smith Cannonballs from Steel all the way up to Rune, with Dragon Cannonballs available as a drop from monsters introduced through Sailing.
This is a really interesting thing to see.
Will these be usable the the dwarf multicannon? Gotta imagine some kind of rebalance would have to take place.
We've discussed this in the Discord Stage call for Rewards and at present we're not looking to make changes to the Dwarf Multi Cannon. It's already really strong and we didn't feel like a buff to it was entirely necessary to be honest. There's also some lore reasons that we discussed which justify that stance, to do with Dwarven cannons not being suitable for the types of cannons you'd find on Ships made by humans.
I would say one thing that concerns me is the use of cannonballs. Would it be a separate cannonball to the one used by the dwarven multicannon? I would prefer a different type of cannonball personally which would give another item for the drop table of slayer monsters/bosses
Yes, the cannonballs would be separate from the Dwarf Multi Cannon - we didn't want to indirectly buff it as we don't feel it needs buffing currently.
Are there any less "minigame" ways to level up the skill (For the people that care, I like it the way it is), such as constructing and deconstructing the cannons on the ship, or areas with high mob density to "burst" sailing exp with the cannons, or sailing contracts, etc...?
For me, I like it the way you guys have showcased so far, looking forward to trying it!
There will be a bunch of ways to level up the skill, as outlined in Core Gameplay blog as it's important that every type of player can feel engaged. Unfortunately, building ship upgrades is considered Construction (not Sailing XP), but check out the secondary training methods listed as well as Ship Combat to see if they appeal more to you. We're not sure which secondary activities will make their way to launch of the skill but we'll try to include as many as we can!
I think for many (including myself) the vote will depend on the beta. The reasoning being that so much of Sailing relies on the act of sailing feeling good and fun to do.
I love what's planned for the rest of the skill, but if the core movement feels clunky or frustrating then it could sour everything else.
I'm optimistic though given what the OSRS team has done before with the strange 0.6s teleportation movement system they were stuck with.
I am so happy you're optimistic and engaging with us on this. I totally agree that an Open Beta will be vital for ensuring that the community is happy with the skill. To be honest, there is really nothing quite like a beta in terms of feedback gathering. Betas allow you to get your hands on the content and gives us THE best quality of feedback to make changes.
We can't work on development for an Open Beta unless the skill passes 'lock-in'. The overall process was explained in this video from Mod Ayiza. Our reasoning is that we require the community approval before we invest valuable development time/resource, as part of our new Polling process.
Should the skill pass lock in, you can still expect changes to happen, based on whether it feels 'clunky' or 'unfun', as that's the whole point of an Open Beta. I hope this helps but essentially just wanted to outline that we require the 70/30 approval before a Beta can happen.
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