devtrackers.gg
Part of me will always envy the amount of quests they were releasing back then. Still, quantity isn't everything. One thing I'm immensely happy with is the quality of the quests we've been releasing since the start of Old School (though I am of course going to be biased on that). I'd take one good quest over ten Ratcatchers without hesitation.
Although I know it'll obviously end up differently, I'd love to do more quests in this version centered around finishing up the Mahjarrat quest chain. I'd actually be interested to see where it leads, because obviously we're not going to kill off Guthix and start the 6th age in this version.
Of the questlines we haven't touched yet, Mahjarrat is definitely the one I'd like us to work on the most.
The saddest thing to me is the focus on zeah when runescape lore in rs3 is absolutely amazing. Zeah is cool and all. Bur the mahjarrat, gods return, and dragonkin quest lines are superb.
Dragon Slayer II was a dragonkin quest and it had more time spent on it than every quest in the Kourend storyline combined so I wouldn't say there's actually too much of a focus on that storyline. It's also worth remembering that the creation of that storyline was in direct response to the feedback that Kourend had little to no storytelling compared to the mainland.
As for Mahjarrat and gods, I hope to deliver some Mahjarrat stories in Old School soon. However, to be honest, I'd be disappointed if we ever went down the god route in Old School. Don't get me wrong, that storyline in RuneScape 3 is incredible, but the lack of gods is key to so many stories in Old School. To change that would be a negative for both games in my opinion.
I'd take one good quest over ten Ratcatchers without hesitation.
100%. I wish Jagex (or whoever's in charge of this over there) would put more resources towards quest development, though. I'd love to see a 'bigger' quest every couple months.
If we could deliver more quests while maintaining the quality I'd be thrilled. That said, variety is important and if we started making more quests it would inevitably mean making less of a different type of content.
Tbf ratcatchers has like 5 or 6 music tracks, five new areas (including jank castle), a minigame and useful rewards. A quest that is easier to mass produce and still is full of charm is... don't hate me... One Small Favor.
Small, short quests with few specific areas and npcs can still be very effective. Hand in the sand is effective and rememerable and is both short and sweet.
Could there be more balance to that?
If one good quest is equivalent to 10 smaller ones, I'd love to see a mixed bag of 11 quests over a year rather than two good quests or 20 small quests.
It's a fair consideration. However, the biggest request by far when it comes to quests is to continue old storylines. Those storylines are all in a place where they need medium to large quests to be continued. Making more smaller quests would allow us to deliver narrative content more often, but they'd mostly be standalone rather than continuing existing questlines.
Why can't we have our cake and eat it too? Is there anything stopping you from introducing those different types of content through quests that unlock it besides dev time?
We do this quite often already. See Sins of the Father unlocking Darkmeyer for example.
No matter what you lot will likely eventually have to touch on the gods in runescape. Either returning (physically like in RS3) or returning via "avatars" as some sort of magic loophole formed because of a spell.
Because correct me if im wrong, but a majority of the Mahjarrat's lore has to do with the gods themselves, and it would be pretty hard to do Mahjarrat's without them actually trying to do things for their gods.
Also GWDII just sounds like low hanging fruit waiting for you guys to port over. Just like (going off what the Wilderness questionnaire made it sound like) you guys are itching to lay the groundwork to restore dungeoneering.
I don't think it's inevitable that we'll have to go in that direction. Mahjarrat lore is closely tied to the gods but that doesn't mean the gods themselves ever need to appear. We can instead do things like what we did with Song of the Elves where we quite intentionally focus on telling stories about what happens in a world where the gods have gone.
Speaking of RS3 and OSRS lore, I've been wanting to ask what your thoughts are on the Eastern Lands. In RS3, they are just the Wushanko Isles shown east of the desert. But the Ghosts in Port Phasmatys claim that Dragontooth Island is between them and the Eastern Lands, implying there is something more to the east of Morytania. It probably is not a big priority for OSRS to head that way, but do you think there are more to the Eastern Lands than just the Wushanko Isles to the south? Or did the Ghosts in Port Phasmatys confuse Zeah (or Varlamore) with the Eastern Lands?
I wasn't a fan of where the Wushanko Isles were put. If we do them I'd like to move them further north to match where they were always implied to be.
My question was more along the lines of "why don't updates like Tempoross, the Nightmare, or Forthos Dungeon (that one had a miniquest but you get my point) gets released with a quest that accompanies it?" Like I mentioned, I guess it has something to do with the additional effort to put into the content that might delay its release, but I honestly think the quests give a concrete reason to explore the lore of the game.
Ah I see. Yeah in those situations it's often just the unfortunate reality that the time needed to make a quest would take too many resources away from the main update. Instead we try to prioritise quests for the updates that will benefit from them the most.
Makes sense. I am not sure how canon that RS3 map is so making them between Mory and Zeah would be a good way to fix it. Since they are canon for OSRS, it would be nice to go there someday. Though since RS3 already started on them it may be a bit questionable to beat them to the punch.
It's likely a long way off anyway. We have Varlamore and the Kharidian Desert to finish before we start looking for somewhere new to go.
Just stop f**king up old content when you make new quests please.
Song of the Elves was kinda a doozy because of that.
Are you talking about the character models? If so I'd like to think we haven't done anything like that since.
To be fair, though, Ratcatchers wasn’t typical. I like the new quests but I would say the best writing in the game remains in quests like Monkey Madness, Desert Treasure, One Small Favour, Underground Pass, and Recipe for Disaster. Just splendid quests.
Of course. There are plenty of amazing quests from back in the day. Still, there's quite a few like Ratcatchers that aren't so great.
Hopefully, the Desert isn't too far off, but Varlamore is probably going to take a while. Also, I'm still hoping Acheron gets visited with the final Fremennik quests, so that would likely (or perhaps hopefully) come before Wushanko Isles.
I'd like to do Acheron before Wushanko as well. We haven't really thought about things that far ahead yet though.
However, to be honest, I'd be disappointed if we ever went down the god route in Old School.
This. So much. To quote myself in a thread about porting RS3 content over:
I'm pretty cool with RS3 content being ported over (as in; made fitting, not just copying it 1:1 and calling it a day), but please do watch out with major plot points. The fact that Guthix for example is killed off in RS3 genuinely disgusts me, it killed the entire 'ominous things going on in the background' vibe that RS3 had, and OSRS still has has for me by overly bluntly throwing it in the players face. It opened the floodgates for overly 'epic' quests that took out all of the wonder and fantasy for me.
I'd personally like to see the Hazeel Cult get a followup, and I'd love to see what you guys can manage to do with Elemental Workshop 3 to name a few intermediate quests.
Some of us actually made a prototype for Elemental Workshop III in our free time a while ago. Hopefully we get some time to finish it off at some point.
can u stop typing ty
No.
I really like your perspective on this. I think the gods should never come back, not directly like in RS3. Proxy wars with their generals will always be more fun. When you make everything high stakes, nothing is high stakes and it makes some of the simpler and enjoyable content seem out of place. I do hope we get more lore, and I would be fine with a return of Zaros, but not in an RS3 fashion. More like how Saradomin, Guthix, and Zamorak are now. There, but not directly.
Well Zaros is the Empty Lord. Him being absent but secretly having an influence would be very fitting.
It would also be possible to have those much larger quests broken up into smaller quests, something to string right into the next bigger part of the story. So instead of having constant escalation with the difficulty, maybe intersperse an intermediate quest in there or a novice one. For example, if the part of while Guthix sleeps has a separate quest where you gather the heroes.
It's one option. Need to be careful that it doesn't end up feeling like filler though.
speaking of porting rs3 content and quest sequels, have you guys ever considered rag and bone man 3? theres been plenty of osrs unique enemies added that I feel like we could have a strong roster of new bone droppers. I also loved killing the skelly horror for the free weekly clue
It would be a nice and easy one to wrap up, but probably not the most exciting story to finish.
Honestly, I wouldn't mind a split storyline with old-school being how the world would be if guthix isn't found and killed and the gods never return. We could maybe even have something similar to the world wakes quests where sliskes plan fails? Or maybe guthix still makes us the world guardian without needing to die because the edicts the edicts weaken and we can have storylines of stopping gods from coming back to geleinor. Who knows, but split storylines can be good, for example, the legend of zelda.
I guess it kind of is that already in many ways.
That's kinda pessimistic about your work, man. Skyrim and other games have random mini quest generators- take item to npc, get reward kinda stuff. That's filler. Imo the thing OSRS has on basically every game, are the quests. Shit's fun man. How many quests are you guys workin on releasing in the next year?
You make a valid point. I guess I've often been somewhat critical of my work.
As for how many quests we're working on, I guess that depends what you class as working on. There's not too many in development right now but we have designs for a huge number of quests.
Sorry but how is releasing 1-2 quality quests per year (and the rest 5 minute novice quests) regarded as overall quality?
While stuff like DS2 is obviously higher quality than quests in 2007, I'd say the overall quality back then was better simply because it wasn't a sea of Novice quests with the very rare DS2 or SOTE popping up.
Of the last five quests, two were Master, two were Novice and one was Intermediate. That doesn't feel like a sea of Novice quests to me. In fact, when you look back, most quests released in 2007 or earlier were either Novice or Intermediate. Master quests were a rarity back then and Grandmaster quests didn't even exist.
Also, to be fair on my original comment, quality and length are two very different things. A quest can be high quality without being very long.
this is sorta what i was getting at with my "avatar" analogy.
The gods would though a Marjarrat ritual be able to have "avatars" or generals walk on the planet due to a spell causing a loophole in the edicts. Edit: The god wars generals don't count. As they are all literally just commanders meant for a holy war and nothing else. They (to OSRS knowledge) don't serve any other purpose. I mean "generals" as in right hand men/women.
The gods not being allowed to directly interfere with the world, but be able to directly whisper in their ear of the "Prophet" of each god.
Either that, or each god getting "reincarnated" in a signficantly weakened form, fighting to find a "long lost Mahjarrat spell" that will enable them to reconnect with "mother" (again, assuming OSRS sorta follows RS3 with the elder god lore, if at all.) and reclaim their original power.
Instead of having all gods, in their full power just casually strolling around Gillenor f**king shit up
Ah I see what you mean. Yeah that sort of thing seems quite reasonable. Kind of like the ending of Temple at Senntisten.
Really don't mean any disrespect here but would like to start a meaningful discussion - we've had, what, like 22 new quests since OSRS released right? Aren't over half of them (12 by my count) novice difficulty and short in duration? The occasional difficult, lengthy quest we've had has been amazing (MM2, DS2 etc) but if we're looking at all the new quests hollistically I think there's still a lot to be desired.
To dampen my own point, I think some of those novice quests were well done (Below Ice Mountain had a little variety in it and a neat cutscene) but the novice quests that are literally "talk to X then talk to X" are not what I'd call quality. And unfortunately there's been more of those than full length challenging mid-game/late-game quests.
According to our official categorisations (which admittedly I don't actually think are visible anywhere in game), there have been 20 quests released since the launch of Old School. Of those 20, 6 are Novice, 7 are Intermediate, 1 is Experienced, 3 are Master and 3 are Grandmaster.
There's definitely been a bias towards lower level quests, but that's not too surprising considering lower level quests are generally shorter and therefore quicker to make. That said, I don't think a shorter quest is necessarily of lower quality than a longer quest myself. Length and quality are two separate things.
What are your thoughts on releasing a quest with every major piece of content released? I definitely think Tempoross and the Ruins of Unkah should have been behind a quest. There is so much lore potential there and I really enjoy the idea of unlocking content like this behind a story. This is why I am so on board with story mode for ToB (and all future raids going forward please). Edit: also wanted to mention another good example that I know cannot be done now, but Wintertodt being locked behind The Forsaken Tower would've made a lot of sense in hindsight.
I don't think every piece of content needs locking behind a quest. In fact, in some situations it would actually be a bit odd from a storytelling perspective to need to do a quest first. That said, I'd love to one day be in a place where every big update has a quest attached to expand upon the lore. A Taste of Hope is a nice example. It wasn't required for the Theatre of Blood but it still came out a similar time and had some tie-ins.
You guys do have extremely high quality new quests coming out, I will say that much. Your modern quest design is very clearly a thousand times better than many of the quests from RS past. I do wish that they come more frequently, but only if it keeps this kind of higher effort that has been consistently applied these last few years.
If we could deliver more quests whilst retaining the quality I'd love to do so. Nothing comes for free unfortunately though and we only have so many resources.
Absolutely, that's understood. Unfortunately, RS3 gets to put an MTX shop button right where the chat button used to be on mobile because that makes money while OSRS quests don't get that kind of attention from the higher ups. It is frustrating to see Jagex operate in such confusing ways.
You guys just keep doing what you're doing with the quests though. I know you don't get a say in that kind of stuff. Hopefully the good stuff shines through and eventually gets the attention it deserves.
When I first joined the team quests were considered a complete waste of time. We've come a long way since then. Even if we don't do as many as I'd like, at least we're now in a place where the quests we do make are given the time and effort they deserve.
I definitely agree with you there, which is why I brought up variety. Where this MMO really shines next to others is that our quests typically aren't just "talk to X then turn it in" or "kill X of this creature". Quests like Bone Voyage are a great example of an easy quest done right (the boat steering section was awesome). Misthalin Mystery is another goodie.
However, I feel that some have sailed pretty close to the wind as far as lacking any sort of interesting gameplay goes and that's what I'd like to see less of going forward if the trend of favouring development of novice/east quests continues.
I think it's less about lower level quests being favourable and more about them being easier to make. If we took all six of those Novice quests, the combined time needed to make them all would still be considerably less than the time needed to make one Grandmaster quest. If it was a choice between six Novice quests or one Grandmaster I'd go with the Grandmaster myself in most situations. However, the actual choice was six Novice quests or nothing much of note. At that point it's a pretty easy choice.
As for gameplay, it's inevitable that smaller quests won't be as exciting compared to the larger ones. That said, I still think they have interesting stories and are of a good quality for what they are.
Honestly, I am not sure if every major update should get a quest. At times it feels like the community wants quests so badly they put them where they don't belong. For example, while I don't think it was a terrible addition, I can't say Fossil ISland really needed Bone Voyage since it already had its own unlock mechanic in Kudos and the quest didn't add much lore-wise that dialog couldn't have. Back in the day a lot of things were just added with no rhyme or reason; now the community expects a quest from those sorts of updates. I think it is perfectly valid to give the lore for updates in ways other than quests. Like I wouldn't want everything to be told in lore books, dialog, and the like, but if that suits the content then there is no reason to squeeze a quest out of it when there are other stories more deserving of quests yet to be told.
Yeah maybe saying every big update was a bit much. A lot probably depends on what the update actually is.
I do very much enjoy exploring different ways of telling stories and there's definitely other ways of doing it that don't involve a quest. The books I did for the Theatre of Blood will always be a personal favourite of mine.
I agree with you but the quests don't need to add much to the game, just expand to lore a little bit, give a couple QPs and give a small exp lamp or something.
With that being said I absolutely love the quests you've worked on, they're all top quality and unlike some of updates in the OSRS, they are just as good if not better than the original quests. The best part about them is for the most part they feel like they belong in OSRS.
Thank you for the kind words. If we can keep the quality, I'd of course definitely love us to do more quests.
Please, yes. Nomad and mahjarrat i want to see touched apon more than any other storyline.
Well we have Nomad in game now so hopefully we can do something with him at some point.
I'm always surprised how not standardised old quests were and also like how cobbled together they feel. From surprise stealth mechanics, weird interfaces to unique quest minigames and obscure agility mechanics. Can never be angry about quality going up, moreover when the mechanics keep appearing as well.
You should see the code behind some of them. It's amazing half of them even work at all. Game development was very different back then.
I remember as a kid being stoked for those big rushes to hit new quests. Fremmy trials day 1 was incredible with more people than you could shake a stick at, all striving for that sweet horned helmet
When I was younger I primarily played for the quests. Nothing beat playing a big quest on day one.
The books I did for the Theatre of Blood will always be a personal favourite of mine.
And a bane for any noob trying to fill the bookcase in their POH =P Though I suppose this will become a lot easier with Story Mode. But I think the lore books were a good way to handle Raids, even if that is changing now. I guess the main thing I worry about is needing everything to have some explanation or be gated behind a quest. A lot of the old bosses just sort of showed up (quite literally for Chaos Elemental) so the whole "it doesn't make sense to just appear; there was no quest" for stuff like Nightmare, Corp, Raids, etc has always felt a bit out of place. And using Nightmare as an example, I think that boss is explained pretty well despite not having a quest about it/to unlock it so I am not sure what a quest really would have added to the update.
And a bane for any noob trying to fill the bookcase in their POH
Sorry about that.
When I think about doing a quest alongside more big updates I don't think they need to actually be hugely tied to the update itself. Just something to add life to any new area. Imagine a Getting Ahead style quest set within the Sisterhood Sanctuary for example to go with the Nightmare release.
Nomad’s Requiem type of quest?
Would be interesting to see if people would prefer a remake of Nomad's Requiem or a new quest involving him.
I'm really curious about what you'll be doing with that quest line and if there will be similarities with the original one. Ritual of the Mahjarrat and the quests around it were awesome!
Potentially something similar to what we've done with the vampyres and elves where it takes inspiration from the original quests but adds some elements unique to Old School. That said, considering where the Mahjarrat story ended up in RS3 (RIP Guthix), we'd probably end up diverging a bit more heavily than we have before.
I get it 100%. I've already gotten mqc in rs3 so I don't need osrs to follow the same story. Mm2 and ds2 are absolutely fantastic quest lines. I love how osrs has approached their own grandmaster quests. But I do have a soft spot for rs3 entering a new age. Feels cool having your character be alive during massive changes.
I do hope that with zeah existing, eventually a grandmaster quest revolving around xeric may appear.
Osrs has enough to worry about like menaphos and zeah instead of bringing the gods back to life.
Regardless, I love what you have created Ed.
I do hope that with zeah existing, eventually a grandmaster quest revolving around xeric may appear.
That's the long term plan. Hopefully by then we'll have finished off many of the older storylines as well.
I'd take ten mid-level/nostalgic-based quests such as Shilo village, Ghosts ahoy, Holy grail, Fight Arena, Nature Spirit, etc, rather than one Song of the Elves/DS2 or other long grandmaster quests. Probably a very unpopular opinion.
Well that's just the thing. In a game like OSRS, there's lots of differing opinions. That's why when it comes to quests, we try to delivery a variety. Every quest might not appeal to every person but hopefully at least one of them does.
I feel like it's always going to be the case that people, in the abstract, would request continuations of current storylines over new quests. But in the case of specific new quest ideas being introduced (Misthalin Mystery, Kourend quests, etc) the reception is generally very positive as well. Could this just be a case where in the abstract people like familiar lines they associate with quality but in reality like interesting ideas and quests, standalone or otherwise?
I suspect for a lot of people it's a case of liking the standalone quests but wanting the same love to be given to the old iconic storylines.
If you're looking for places to go, something I don't see mentioned basically ever but think would be really cool is a continuation of the Path/Prisoner of the Glouphrie storyline that's been a cliffhanger in rs3 for over a decade and would eventually let us into Arposandra.
Yup Arposandra is definitely on the list.
Why do you have to copy entire quest designs and in some cases dialogue from RS3? It would have been cool to see a different approach to Plagues End/SoTE but you essentially copied the entire plotline, that's so disappointing to me, it seems like you guys will cut corners anyway.
I can assure you we don't just copy entire designs from RuneScape 3. If you play through Song of the Elves and Plague's End, you'll see that they are very different quests. They have similarities in many places of course. That shouldn't be too surprising considering they both follow on from the same set of quests and as such are ending the same storyline. They still end that story in different ways though.
Yeah but it took 1 year and 7 months for those quests lmfao.
Sote was #6 in July of 19
X marks spot #7 at Feb of 19. Quality is cool and all but at this rate these quest lines won’t be finished ever.
Song of the Elves started development as soon as X Marks the Spot was finished. Such a big quest was always going to take a while to make. We could have made it smaller and released it sooner, but I'm sure plenty of people wouldn't have been happy to see us rush it out just for the sake of having more quests in a year.
The reclaiming of West Ardougne, overthrowal of the king, awakening of the clan leaders in much of the same locations with much of the same methods, both fighting the dark lord... but taking the dark lord mechanics out and replacing him with budget nomad really didn't sit right with me. It would be really cool if you guys took a bit of initiative and wrote your own stories rather than piggy backing off RS3.
While Guthix Sleeps and Dragon Slayer II ect, just kind of annoys me. Adding Corp without the accompanying quests (Summers End being one of the best written quests in RS3 to this day) you could have added a really really cool interpretation as to how corp got to the wilderness but you decided to not do ANYTHING. Lore in OSRS seems to be an afterthought, just tacked on with the quests that people want without any real consideration.
I know that I'm not alone on this, as somebody with multiple quest capes on both games the fact that whenever a major quest comes out in OSRS I know I'm in for replaying the other quests equivilent with slight changes is really disappointing.
I totally appreciate that you have a strong opinion on this and that I'm not going to change that. Unfortunately we're never going to be able to create something that makes everyone happy.
That said, while you can sh*t on us for so many things (and believe me, you'd be totally right to do so), one thing you are wrong on here is the suggestion that we'd ever treat any aspect of the game as an afterthought or that we'd cut corners. That's not how the Old School team works. I've never known a group of more passionate individuals. Every person on the team truly care about both the game and the players.
I know but let’s extrapolate that into finishing out the other quest lines. I know you guys have big plans, the grandmaster quest for morytania is probably on the road map already. But by your own admission, quests don’t get the love they deserve. One thing I will commend you for is adding replay-ability to quests. This makes the dev time spent a little more “worthwhile” I think this sentiment is shared by you guys and players. You guys are basically stuck between a rock and a hard place. I wish you guys got more support from the higher ups.
I’m just upset cause I love quests and there’s soooo much left untold, and I know some of those quests won’t ever get looked at, or put at the bottom of the list ad nauseam.
We get a lot more support from leadership for quests than we used to. Obviously I'd move for them to come along and tell us to make more quests but I totally get why they don't. They want us to focus on other areas because that's what large parts of the player base want as well. Sure, we could develop more quests, but to do so would mean fewer PvM updates or something similar. That wouldn't go down well with a lot of people.
I remember when Elemental Workshop 2 came out. It was magic.
I beg you, please can we have more self guided adventures in the workshop?
Elemental Workshop III is definitely one of the quests I want us to do the most.
I mean yeah but it’s not like we’ve had a lot of pvm releases. Tob hard mode will be done by a fraction of players and that took 3 years. Story mode will be good to bridge the gap but it’s not like people get into end game pvm by learning tob first. There’s a decent flow of “climbing the pvm ladder” which usually has tob at or near the end. So while it’ll be nice and new and shiny, ultimately I don’t think story mode will stay popular for long. As for hard mode, I’m curious to see what kind of complexities you’ve added. Hoping it’s a hit, and that you’ve learned from CM CoX. But at the end of the day, it’s still tob.
6 jads is fun, Nightmare is cool, and had some unique mechanics. Gauntlet is prob one of my fave pieces of new content.
I feel like the dev team is gearing up towards Leagues being the new face of osrs. They’re fun, span a decent amount of time, and the possibilities are endless.
But going back to tob, it was 3 years between tob release and hard mode. What does this spell for raids 3? Will it even get a mention at runefest? I know you guys started to do some groundwork and got some info/questions from the oblv boys. But idk if people can make it another 2 years before raids 3. Maybe if you keep tying them over with leagues, who knows.
Anyways thanks for taking the time to reply to me, didn’t think this would actually happen.
Well as you’ve rightly pointed out, there hasn’t been too much PvM content lately anyway. If we were to do more quests, we wouldn’t have room for any PvM content at all.
Everyone can be passionate and lore can still be an afterthought. The OSRS cut corners when adding the corporeal beast because it did not add any quests accompanying it, plonked it down in the wilderness without explaining anything. You can say what you want but in that circumstance you definitely did cut corners.
You cut corners with Song of the Elves in that the framework and design of the quest was almost to the letter of Plague's End, and a similar thing happened (though not to the same extent) with Dragon Slayer II and While Guthix Sleeps, and also with Branches of Darkmeyer/Sins of the Father. Boss mechanics are mixed and matched (a nomad mechanic has been in every major boss fight in a quest) and what is too hard is just left out. Look at the super cool puzzles that were in the Drakan questlines in RS3 - you might not have had the engine work to employ that cool ring puzzle that was seen throughout the series but my god adding a Kakurasu puzzle was so uninventive. OSRS quests are absolutely watered down versions of their RS3 counterparts, even those that were ingame pre-eoc, While Guthix Sleeps was so f**king groundbreaking, did so much storytelling and had a really cool story arc, I haven't seen anything like that yet. I really wish you guys would do better.
I imagine we could go round in circles forever and not agree on this. That’s fair. I will finish off though by saying that while I do still disagree with much of what you’re saying, I’m not ignoring it. All feedback is important after all. Who knows, maybe in the future we’ll release a quest you’re able to get behind.
And there in lies my quarrel :(
It’s not been ideal lately I will admit. To be fair, the pandemic did properly balls things up for us. I think things would have been a lot better release wise without that happening.
True that, and I think you guys did a pretty good job all things considered. Last few releases have been pretty smooth.
There’s certainly a lot to be proud of when it comes to the small and medium projects we’ve released over the past few months. It’s just a shame we haven’t been able to deliver as many of the really big pieces of content as we’d have liked.
Are you back in the office? I’m across the pond so idk how it is out there. Also have you ever thought about sharing your roadmaps? I know you shown one on stream before but I can’t watch those often unfortunately. Just curious what’s lined up, with how you guys have your groups and everything.
We’ve been working from home since last March. Sharing roadmaps is something that would be decided a bit above me. I know it’s been discussed before, but there were concerns about causing disappointment if things needed to move or plans needed to change.
We ever gonna get a followup to sins of the father? Kick in the door? Kick drakons ass.
Definitely. I’ve already got a design for it. We’ve done a lot of Morytania stuff over the past few years though so we’ll probably work on a couple of other storylines first.
As someone who is currently grinding for quest cape (201 q p currently!) I've noticed that there's a bunch of empty space in the desert, namely a town called menaphos.
The desert is in desperate need of content. Tempoross was a good start, but a Menaphos update introduced through a quest is definitely something I could see being extremely popular.
Also, smith-able pickaxes when?
I’m sure we’ll pay a visit to the Kharidian Desert soon.
That’s understandable. I know how the player base can get. But I’m assuming you meant last March, which is crazy as the last 15 months have blended together and been a blur. Unprecedented times certainly.
Yeah it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. We have people who’ve been on the team a year now who I’ve never actually met face to face.
Would have preferred Nomad's original model/character explored further than bald dude souls lmao archtype.
The original wasn’t even unique though. It was just a copy from elsewhere. I do think such an iconic character deserves a unique appearance.
Any plans on a (grand)master quest in the desert? There is so much potential there since there is an empty city next to sophanem and right of it are plenty of black space to fill.
Desert series might need a few more quests before it’s at Grandmaster level.
Well I mean there were 11 novice quests total out of 20, that's more than half hence my sea of novice quests comment. The last master quest was almost a year ago now too.
Master quests back then were a rarity due to the playerbase being significantly noobier as opposed to today. Most of us were noobs with level 50 stats so it made sense for them to not pump out Master quests at the time. Whereas today a lot of people are capable of doing Master quests with relative ease.
People may be more capable of Master quests now but that sadly doesn’t suddenly make them quicker to develop.
Some of us really appreciate Zeah lore. I came over from RS3 and I didn't think much of it or expect to like it, but after doing all the quests and architectural alliance all in one ago alongside exploring Zeah for the first time a few months ago, I felt so immersed in the lore. I felt like a kid playing RS2 back in the day with that same sense of wonder and awe exploring a brand new world. I loved DS2, but the game is so much richer and better for having Zeah and I'd love to see more lore from there.
Also, I just want you to know that Song of the Elves is genuinely a masterpiece that I didn't expect. Plague's end in RS3 was alright but I never felt super into the elven lore after playing through that quest line on RS3. However, the writing of SotE made the conflict so much more compelling and the elves felt like they had far more human flaws. Bringing back Baxtorian and showing how many of the elves saw him as a disappointment made the motivations of the villain far more sympathetic. The plot unfolded in a way that had much more tension and suspense. The addition of Elena the way she was incorporated grounded the narrative emotionally. I didn't have high expectations for SotE, but you truly blew me away with how good it was.
I also preferred OSRS's take on the more recent Morytania series quests. The non-myreque human part of morytania is stressed much more heavily and given life. The speech in a taste of hope genuinely inspired me, and the incorporation of the theater of blood was such a great touch as it was used for a plot device on how the vampyres gave the humans hope with serafina's story. Working in things like that makes the world feel so much more alive.
I really never expected to love OSRS quests as much as I did coming from RS3 (where I did appreciate the quests too and read all the dialogue). You guys blew me away. Thank you for the wonderful storytelling.
Hopefully you enjoy A Kingdom Divided.
About ~6 months back there was something like a "porting content" survey that mentioned some 2007-2011 era content, like Soul Wars and Shooting Stars, but also quests like Chosen Commander. Has there been any more discussion of porting quests from that era since then?
There’s been some discussion but nothing decided upon. While it would allow us to release quests a bit faster, there’s important considerations on if OS should just follow the same stories exactly or if we should diverge more. If we we’re to do any we’d probably start with Land of the Goblins or Path of Glouphrie as we have partially finished versions of them in the original backup from 2007.
DS2 had my favorite storyline for sure. I would love to continue it a little, or perhaps branch from it. Why did Robert the Strong reincarnate as Bob? Could we perhaps help perform some kind of ritual to bring him back again, maybe with the help of the sphinx? Better yet, cross it with the Mahjarrat concept and link the two together to start a whole new, end game storyline. I know we got a very slight sneak peak at Bob's story during Halloween, so I would like to hope that there may be intentions of bringing that to light.
One day I’m sure.
Have you thought of making a poll for reworking the not-so fun quests?
Don’t think it’s ever been considered. While some of them aren’t great they are quite iconic at this point. It would also take time away from making new quests.
How quick is soon? <6 months?
I wouldn’t want to make promised I’m unable to keep. Will just have to leave it at “soon.”
Do people not like Ratcatchers? It has the classic Runescape humour and unique mechanics (personally love the sneaking through the garden/mansion bit, and wish it were extended to a new type of thieving.), although catching rats themselves is a bit tedious with the failure rate and delays.
I can see why it has charm for some people. It’s not very well made though.
I just wanted to say your work has been astounding. A Taste of Hope, Sins of the Father, and Song of the Elves are runescape monuments, their depth and lore could be turned into their own games. I'll never forget the first time I read the Old Diary. Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you, you are a legend ✊
Thank you. Hopefully you enjoy A Kingdom Divided.
Hey, thanks for the reply!
It's been a long time since I actually got the chance to play that content (and I honestly don't remember what I did and didn't get around to), but IIRC it's a bit of a mixed bag for sure. Land of Goblins and Chosen Commander are pretty good and wrap up the Dorgeshuun line nicely; on the flip side, I don't think you'd get much value out of just porting something like Elemental Workshop 3 and 4...
There’s definitely some that I think we’d have a better time of doing it with than others. The Goblin quests were of a consistent high quality so would work quite nicely with minimal changes. The Sea Slug quests on the other hand, not so much.
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The Chosen Commander is one of the best quests released in either game in my opinion. If we were to backport one quest I'd probably pick that one.
7 intermediate quests? Now I'm curious, cause the wiki only lists Bone Voyage & Getting Ahead as OSRS-exclusive intermediate quests, and afaik most quest release updates actually list what difficulty each quest has.
The five Kourend house quests are all listed as Intermediate on the backend.
Well, that's odd. Is this something that has changed lately or have they always been classified as intermediate quests on your end? Take Tale of the Righteous for instance:
Poll blog: Should a new novice quest, 'Tale of the Righteous', be added to the game?
Release post: Tale of the Righteous is a brand-new Novice level quest, unveiling more of the lore of the Kingdom of Kourend (...)
I could see why they are considered intermediate quests since they are all sequels to Client of Kourend. But I get why some say over half of OSRS quests are novice quests and are mildly upset about that, since they've always been pitched to us as novice quests and we have no reason to believe otherwise.
Don't think it's something that's changed. I'm guessing there was a miscommunication somewhere and as you can't actually see the classifications in game, no one realised.
Good to hear they are official Intermediate. When the polls said Novice, I questioned that since their reqs felt more Intermediate. Maybe someday we'll get a quest journal rework with new sorting and filtering with an option to sort by difficulty. Also, I'd love to see the starting screen reworked to list difficulty, length, etc and keep that info after you start. Hopefully, with the focus on new player stuff such a rework is being considered. Bit off topic now, but I think some of the issue with things like the skeleton in The Restless Ghost, which was polled to be made lower level, is that it only warns you about a level 13 monster before you start the quest. So if you chat with an NPC, accept the quest, and then check the journal, you currently miss those warnings, which is not ideal.
We did some behind the scenes improvements to the quest system earlier this year. That work should make it easier to add sorting and filtering now.