I have been summoned, hello and good evening!
This week's stream was just a little something I hit up Yuey about cause I wanted to show some behind-the-scenes of development of 110 Mining & Smithing because i like sharing the inner workings and showing off concepts and ideas and how they evolved, which players (including myself) always love seeing from games.
At the end of the stream i wanted to tease some 110 WC & Fletching details because why not build a little hype and tease folk. Now, i'm cautious of sharing too many details in tid-bits in different times and places because ideally most of the info would come in a more consistent manner e.g. an RCE blog (coming soon™!) but i thought it's worth addressing some of the things mentioned in this thread :)
I'll start by saying it's very important NOT to underestimate the amount of time full skill reworks take and what you're actually asking for in reality. M&S rework took ~18 months to develop (but actually longer if you were around for the first iterations of it before it became "unfinished business"). Archaeology and Necromancy also took around the same time yet those were new skills. You also need to consider that M&S are tied closely to each other and not to too much else, but WC&F are more inherintly tied to Firemaking and Construction too, as well as even Farming so a rework could go out of control really quickly. As others have also mentioned, it's probably best not to directly copy M&S' mechanics as the skills should have their own identity (but a gathering skill's a gathering skill and all that...)
That being said, with 110 WC & Fletching there will be tweaked Woodcutting and Fletching mechanics for the new Eternal Magic tree and ranged weapons.
WC will have a timer for Eternal Trees, quite similar to how OSRS did their tree-timers with Forestry, and there will also be a "call to action" mechanic like how Arch has the time sprite mechanic, Mining has rockertunities, and even safecracking has its flashing. Fletching will have an upgrading system for the Eternal shortbow and crossbow, with these tweaked mechanics themed to suit the skills accordingly.
We've also done some QoL and consistency changes for Eternal/primal ranged items too so you'll make 75 bolt tips from a primal bar instead of 50 like existing ones (matching arrowheads) and you also fletch primal arrows and bolts in the exact same way, only difference being what you tip the headless shafts with - arrow head or bolt tip!
Other things include making the same amount of ammunition per action for arrows and bolts, rather than 15 arrows and 10 bolts like it is now. We've also looked at what QoL or changes we could do to (new) bird's nests, for example. All of these additions and tweaks are only for the new Eternal "tier".
However, while that is the case... in essence i've designed it in a way for it to be a framework for which we could apply to the rest of both the skills in a future rework/refresh update should players like what we're doing with 110WC&F. If that is the case, then that's great and we go from there but if not then we've learned something but either way we're building towards an ideal. FWIW I do fully expect if we ever do a rework/refresh that we'd still make some tweaks to the above but it's a good starting point.
Because we have OCD and dislike certain inconsistencies, Mod Stu and I also used the last GameJam to work on Fletching re-tiering to make things more consistent and make sense, and we're both going to continue that work in the next GameJam next month. Maybe we can use that time as an opportunity to talk more about what we're doing with it :).
This, as well as the tweaked mechanics for 110WC&F and some other behind-the-scenes stuff we've discussed and done are ways in which we're kinda pseudo-working towards an eventual rework - in other words doing some of the thinking, design, and even dev work now to give us a head start later. (though i still don't want it to seem like reworks aren't huge undertakings :P). Last year's Grove update came with some WC changes as well which essentially acted as the part 1 for this all.
I hope this covers the concerns mentioned in this thread! I know it's hard to have a conversation without all the details but there will be more, and more detailed, information when the RCE drops but hopefully you get the gist of what it is we're striving for.
Thanks all :D
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