devtrackers.gg
Annual Survey
- It's going well with 40,000 respondents so far.
- Results will be displayed at Runefest or streams after Runefest.
- Reiterated points made last week.
Upcoming Updates
- Player Owned Farm Nerfs: Newspost: Sept. 11th | Update: Sept 16th
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Slayer Log: Update: September 23rd
- It was initially planned for next week however we delayed it to incorporate the feedback provided.
New Player Experience/Mobile
- From the data we've seen it's gone really well.
- It appears to be retaining more players than dropping them off and letting them go.
- Currently it stops in Burthorpe/Taverly, but the aim is to do more in Lumbridge and release them from there.
Weapon Diversity
- Cancelled in its current design.
- The benefits were more DPS modifications than utility benefits.
- This means players would likely select weapons with the best DPS regardless.
- We've taken the time to elaborate on the methods we've taken in the project and why we made this decision.
- We don't make almost finalized updates, put them on a beta, just to cancel them out of no where.
- We do a lot of prep work (Surveys, internal play-tests) that players don't see which is designed to make us fail earlier.
Other
- We will be releasing the modified numbers for combat pets.
- The gizmo calculator will be put on the wiki in the future but it will take some time.
Designer Diary
- Goal: Be more transparent on what we are doing.
- Future Diaries probably won't be as long as the first.
- Recently there were changes made to our teams and the problems they are trying to solve.
Teams
- Episodic Content Team - Content you play: Quests, Bosses, Dungeons, Landmasses, skills, etc.
- LiveOPS1 - MTX Team
- Core Game Experience - Mysterious team (more at Runefest).
- Mobile Team
Problem 1: There is too much content is in the game making it hard to pick up!
- No one's arguing against this, the game has been out for 18-19 years where we've updated mostly weekly.
- A lot of content is not very good or used and we want to remaster it.
Remastered Content
- Remastered - It's everything you've loved about that content in a package in a new form with new content.
- We want to remaster iconic content as it markets well with returning players.
- Example: God Wars Dungeon Remastered
- Same bosses but with new mechanics new loot, t92 godswords
- With new content such as an elite dungeon, a new quest, or skilling content.
- They don't have to be the ones we gave examples for. Another good one would be to remaster the ZMI Altar.
Other Content
- Desire to update places no one goes to and where there's nothing of value at its core.
- We'd rather remove it than rework/remaster it.
- Examples: Familiarization, Mobilising Armies, Ratpits, Conquest.
Problem 2: We are trying to do too many different things at once.
- This is more of a message to us as a development team.
- Previous iteration of episodic content was temporary content, more system to engage with things, doing huge quests, etc.
- We are damaging our ability to serve players who love a specific type of content since we are doing too many things at once.
Content Types
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The following content types will be focused on in the short term.
- Bosses, Encounters, Drops, Asynchronous Minigames (Ports).
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People are thinking we are going Player-Owned Crazy, but we are more likely to plug into existing content.
- Out of all the categories, the Async minigames will be the least updated.
- We are likely to do a Remaster for Managing Miscellania.
- We aren't going to do these every month.
Problem 3: Wall with Dead content.
- Dead Content: Content players don't use or don't value, specifically dead on arrival updates.
- We do survey work on every update, and every single time we are told the rewards aren't too rewarding.
- Even if the reward from a number point of view are worth it, or even with POF, people still say this.
- Previously: We tried to not out-mode any of our previous rewards.
- We try to make sure every piece of content is still relevant.
Future Design Model
- "We won't be releasing more dead content, ever again."
- The content released will be better than any previous content (within it's own bracket).
- Remastered/Exisitng content are the planned future content.
- We won't be safe-guarding older content as much as we have in the past.
- If we release something OP, we won't be afraid to take it down if it is not fit for our players.
- But we will be more generous than in the past 6 months.
- It's going to be thought out and measured. (We aren't releasing t99 weapons at once.)
- Managing XP Curves properly and how we are acceleration each of those main points.
Skills going to 120
- One of the things that we like about Runescape unlike OSRS, is that we grow. There are new challenges
- We grow by extending, expanding, and enriching skills.
- We think by doing it in the skills people know and value, it's the right direction.
Problems
- When we did things like M&S/Big Game Hunter/Bank Rework, people pop in to see it, play for a bit, and leave.
- If you have the motivation for unlocks (things to get off that content), it keeps people playing.
- More people playing must be a good thing.
- M&S was fantastic, but for 2 years of dev players left since they already had 99s/obtained items they wanted.
- I'd love to give people other reasons to stick around and get other things.
Future Plans
- We will be focusing on 120 skills AND remasters/reworks.
- We are currently working on 2 skills to go to 120 which will meet the following Objectives.
- Objectives: Unlocks at all levels, New ways of training, worthwhile unlocks/key milestones, and a form of grace-period.
Deciding Which to Do
- There are different ways of approaching whether to do a remaster/120.
- Example: Construction
- Priority 1: Construction needs a rework.
- If we had more time/resources, then add more training methods, and new unlocks beyond 99/add 120.
- It makes sense to raise it to 120 if we put in the effort to rework it.
Raising Past Update Skills to 120
- There is an argument around Mining, Smithing and Hunter to 120 with their respective updates.
- We considered raising Hunter to 120 with Land Out of Time.
- We didn't have the time/resources, and couldn't hit the beat with what we wanted to do with 120s.
- We don't want to throw 120s out, we want to do them right.
- Slayer & DG - Slayer is being filled out already and DG is filled out.
- There is an argument that Elite Dungeons are diminishing DG content.
Mobile
General
- We overhauled the interface.
- Players can hide interfaces as they see fit.
- The Activity Tracker interface is toggled using the flag icon on the left.
- Toggle between the combat loadout by clicking the Weapon icon.
- There's an interface with action bar numbers if you wish to switch to a different action bar.
- The Spell book/Ability book allow you to expand/collapse tabs.
- Menu change was overhauled.
- We can relook at the buttons on the side to make sure 2 don't take you to the same place.
- Players can drag items to the action bar by unlocking the action bar (Press and hold an icon to see the option).
To Be Added
- The HP/Adren bars will have number added to them.
- New Worn Interface look (which can be seen in the images).
- Quickchat never worked properly on mobile, and has been disabled.
- We plan to look into the future so players can make use of it.
- One button gameplay doesn't work in mobile but it will be brought back eventually.
Issues
- When in an instance the clickbox is funky and this is a known issue we want to sort.
- In some cases the Ribbon icons look bad over the desert.
Decisions
- We may look at image buttons instead of text buttons.
- We wanted to keep away from the scroll-bar on the inventory, but we could re-look into it based on feedback.
- We are looking at mobile as a test for the new layout/color-scheme and plan to move some of it to desktop.
- Questions we ask ourselves: Does it look right? Does it feel right? Are the players happy with it?
- Runefest will provide more news for mobile.