VOD | Official Stream Feedback Thread | Design Document

• In terms of practical development we need to make progress on the project otherwise it'll never come out.
  • Some things are easy to change, others are hard. For example changing reaper takes 5 minutes to change so it being undecided isn't holding the project back. The interface for customising which benefits go on your cape is more dev-heavy and is 'as far as I can tell a non-controversial part of the update.'
  • We're getting started on development for the parts that aren't controversial but require more dev time.
• Passive Stats - The stat total in the design is currently lower than current comp cape stats and we don't want that to be the case. We can't tell you exactly what the passive stats are going to be right now. We just need to figure out how to get parity with the current system (given that Max cape is hybrid stats but kiln is better single stat).
• Reason for the rework
  • People keep saying that 'the whole point of this rework is to get rid of Reaper', or 'the whole point of this rework is to fix PvM stats', 'the whole point of this rework is because of Reddit' etc. And to everyone the reason is their own, and they think if we aren't focussing entirely on that aspect then we're missing the point of the rework.
  • There are many reasons for the rework, these are laid out in the design:
    • Forced to Comp because they only want the stats.
    • It's a problem that certain pieces of content have been put on slightly arbitrarily. Inconsistent requirements.
    • (Affects us but not compers) Players who look at comp and go 'that's just unobtainable'. That isn't to say we want to make it easy, we want to make a clearer path to get there (i.e. subcapes). So we're not looking at nerfing comp to make it easier, but we do want to make stepping stones.
• 'The complicated system':
  • This is the current system using some examples
    
    . If you categorise all the current requirements you have the structure of the rework.
  • This is the new system, it hasn't changed much from current. We're just adding a tier higher than trim and redistributing reqs
    
    .
  • Comp rework is a lot more simpler than Mining and Smithing. What we found with M&S rework was all the documentation looked confusing but in practice when people played it is was relatively straightforward.
  • When people say it's too complicated they mainly mean one of two things: (i) This is very confusing, they may understand it but it seems unnecessarily complex and they'd rather have something simpler; (ii) It includes elements they think are unnecessary (e.g. for those that think the rework is only to remove Reaper: 'just remove Reaper and ship it why are you bothering with all this extra stuff'; while there are other players who say 'don't take Reaper off comp, what you need to do is add in true trim, just do that and ship it.'). Everyone wants something different, and only their thing should be fixed and everything else should be left alone.
• Why aren't the requirements being determined by specific parts of the community for their subcapes? E.g. 200m all for skillers, 4k Telos for pvmers etc.
  • The audience for each part of the game is different. If we only listened to the elite PVM community for what they want, then we're ignoring the other 80-90% who are going to go for comp. If we listen to the ~540 people with 5.4b and do what they want, we're ignoring other people. On the other hand, if we listen to everyone who don't want Reaper, or group content or i't's too hard for me' we're then ignoring everyone else who does want a challenge. So it's not a case of listening to one small community, it's a case of listening to everyone, weighing eveyone's opinions and trying to find a middle ground to please as many people as possible (but not necessarily the raw majority. Balancing etc has to be taken into account. Also if you're not a comper and you don't care about comp then you're not the target audience. I don't want to see your opinion is less valuable but that is kind of what I mean. Comp cape is for a certain type of player and we want that type of player to enjoy it.
• We have received a lot of feedback that 'everyone meets the requirements for a lot of T3.'
  • The truth is most skillers do not have 120 all, most PVMers do not have 1k Telos. The 'elite' in their category have those. What they're essentially asking for the elite (500-1000 players) to get harder challenges/more things to do. They want a cape that shows they can do things other players can't do, I don't have a problem with them arguing for this. If we add those reqs to T3, then the cross section of players who have ALL for T3 comp is hardly anybody. There's nothing wrong with aspirational goals but we need to set that at a place where a reasonable number of players can go for it (that doesn't mean a majority will get T3 comp, just a reasonable amount). As developers we can't - we shouldn't - devote development time to something 15 people can do, I don't think that's a good use of our time.
  • That said, we've seen a clear desire (especially from the elite PVM community) for something that recognises their accomplishments and they're not getting that from comp - i'm arguing that we can't put that on comp but that doesn't mean we can't recognise it in other ways. It sounds like a perfectly good separate project for elite pvm achievements (can't promise it obviously).
• Reaper
  • We still don't have a final answer on that and we aren't going to for a while.
  • We've gone back and forth on this quite a lot. There's two really important arguments on this: (i) should the comp cape require you to do everything? Simple and straightforward when you put it like that (ii) The ethos of 'I'm going to complete everything' predates EOC and difficult bossing which is new to runescape (there was a point when Jad was the hardest thing in the game). The idea of extraordinarily difficult content is new to Runescape (to some people Telos is extraordinarily difficult). You are being required to do something that wasn't there when you signed up for it (difficult group bossing) and when that content was made, we made it with the full knowledge that it was effectively not for everyone. Hard bosses are there for a specific type of player. And that intersects very poorly with comp and the vision oif 'comp is for someone who can do anything'. So we have the player who wants recognition for completing everything and we have almost a different audience for whom difficult high level bossing is made for. And that's put us in a difficult position and honestly we don't have a concrete good solution to it.
  • In terms of the long term philosophy of the game, if we are going to stick with 'comp means you do everything' then we can't have content that most players can't do or things like Elite Dungeon story mode to make it accessible. That isn't something we can fix with this project but it seems to me to be the long term solution so that we can have both hard and accessible content.
• Polling
  • We plan on polling more things on the rework.
  • The thing that makes it particularly difficult for this project is 'who gets to vote?' Some parts of the comp community will tell you only compers should be able to vote. If we run a majority poll asking 'should we make comp easier?' We fully expect that to pass. The comp poll we did earlier showed that non compers consistently voted for things to be easier. On the other hand compers have already done the content. It's quite expected how the poll results would go, it's not really a question that can be solved by polling.
  • My preferred approach for when two , is 'instead of having one thing trying to serve two audience who want fundamentally different things, let's have two different pieces of content instead.' Story mode is an example of that, 'we want to make a hard boss but most people can't do it, so let's give them a story mode.'
• Concept Art
  • Initial designs > Feedback from players > Incorporate feedback into the designs > Poll the designs.
  • Each has three designs that will be polled in the end.
  • T1 Skilling Cape
    
    | When Worn
    
    | Recolourable areas
    
  • T1 Combat Cape
    
    | When Worn
    
    | Recolourable areas
    
  • T1 Comp Cape
    
    | When Worn
    
    | Recolourable areas
    
    | Recolours
    
  • T3 Lore Cape
    
    | When Worn
    
    | Recolourable areas
    
    | (QPC is T1 and MQC is T2)
  • Various recolours
    
    | Labelled
    
  • Tier Evolution Examples
    
    - We're still experimenting, we can do a lot with animated textures. We haven't got them to work in game yet but it's safe to say 'the worst' we can do is the current comp cape particles.
  • Will use the same recolour system as current max and comp.
  • We don't have the time for cape emotes. They're probably one of the worst return on investment because of how expensive they are but how little they're used.
  • We asked the tech team if we can recolour particles and they said it's low priority but if you're requesting it then we can get to it. In practice that is probably a no. We would also like to take the particle system to a new level rather than reworking our currently limited system for recolours.
    • Is it possible to take particles from one cape and put it on another? I don't think so, probably not. It'd have to be a different model. Same with turning off particles, would have to be a different model.

Stone Spirits

• Mod Shogun is now a content developer. In his content trial he designed a Thieving minigame and we demanded that he on the spot redesign it for Hunter and he did. And then we demanded that he on the spot redesign it for HP and he did a really good job.
• Mod Shogun is going to be working on Stone spirit improvements as his first content. The first step is to look at the data analytics. Find the biggest sources of them, their prices etc.
• Make them more convenient to use. One proposal is that the extra ore is automatically sent to the bank.