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Twitch Vod | Youtube Vod | TL;DW 507 - 20 Years Of Lore


Newsposts

Things are already in motion to improve the way we work newsposts in the remote working world. It's clear our current process and checks, while they've mostly worked so far, there were obviously flaws where things got missed, and we didn't do a good enough job of capturing every change and development.

We've got to do better and make sure that our info we are getting to you is always accurate and we are putting plans in motion already to better protect against it. The proof is in the pudding, but just know we are on it. Also we are going up our commitment to the level of detail in the newspost. We've been a little bit short sometimes, we've got to think about keeping things digestible, but really that should never be at the expense of any availability of detail. Just know we're on that too.

Next week's newspost hopefully you'll see that reflected.


Combat Q&A

The Combat Council persist of Jmods with different points of view and meet every two weeks to discuss combat and make decisions.

2020 Updates - Retrospective

  • PvM Hub - War's Retreat - One of the best PvM Updates. It opened PvM to so many players.
  • Tier 92 Viability - Remained balanced, but we want to make a few tweaks to the degrade to dust system.
    • No one on the council likes the system, but it isn't a high priority.
  • Essence of Finality - Super happy with how it sits in the meta and seeing special attacks make a comeback.
    • There are concerns with the balancing/inclusion around existing/new special attacks going forward.
  • Raksha - Happy with where it is sitting and the engagement.
  • Codices - We are aware the balancing is off and we are actively looking at and will tweak where necessary.

Combat Council Priorities

We would like to have more time allocated to be able to fix issues within combat.

Adjustments Size Comparison

  • There are fixes which can be impactful and important that you want to get them out as soon as possible.
  • QoL changes like ED, or Pi's fixes, which are more impactful to release as a whole batch as it is easier.

Biggest Challenge - Servers/Tick System

  • We are actively work on addressing the servers.
  • There have been a hundred different optimizations (small and large) in the last 2 years with more to come.
  • Reducing the tick system wouldn't solve any issues and would bring up gameplay design questions.

Combat Triangle

  • We are happy with what we've done with Melee/Range.
  • Mage is not in a good place currently. I'm not including 4TAA. It is major non-intended niche.
  • Not all 3 styles need to be equally balanced as long as it is for a short period unlike Magic's dominance before.

Death Costs

  • We aren't happy with the state of death costs and want to address it at the top end and find the best way.
    • Do we implemented a system that considers consecutive deaths?... etc...
  • The past week has provided a lot of data/proof:
    • With no death costs players are more motivated to learn/experiment in PvM without breaking the economy.

Narrative/Lore

  • Recent push in narrative in the last 5 years. (Raksha/Elite Dungeons).
  • Showing that narrative rather than telling it through books is awesome.
  • It's clear who the villain is by their look or actions, if you can't tell then we've done something wrong.

Powercreep

Current Problem

  • Players have so much power but not enough content to utilize that power.
  • In the last 2 years it is beyond a level I'm (Orion) am comfortable with.
    • 2 years without a new PvM encounter, but 3-4 large impactful powercreep updates.
  • It's on us to release difficult stuff, design on good principles, and get players to answer questions.

General Approach

  • Create a challenging encounter but future content makes that challenge more accessible.
  • Creating content that can indefinitely scale upward (Telos) where we can see a player with that power they've got to the test.
  • We have a self-fulfilling prophecy of when we release a challenging boss we will release respectively powerful rewards from it.
  • There are other ways to deal with powercreep than to utilize hard timecaps (lower damage/raise hp).

Content Balancing

  • Old content doesn't need to remain relevant, we should reinforce the system we already have.
  • I hope the upcoming Ninja updates in Q1/Q2 will turn the tide a little bit in terms of reinforcing existing systems.
  • When we take something away from players we need to give them something in return.

Edgecases in Combat - Switchscape, Stalling, 4TAA

Contrast of Opinion

Pi:

For me I like it as a reinforcement of the thing that makes RS combat special in that you can be everything. We always balance so that you do not need switch scape. The mentality is that I must be the best, so and thus it becomes a necessity. I like the fact players use it as a flex. Provided it is always flex, I'm happy about it.

Orion:

I'm not a fan of switchscape for 90% of its implementations/interactions. There are some exceptions, one of those exceptions, is doing something in a more skilled manner. There are some cases where it becomes the meta in order to accomplish something extraordinary (achievements). There's also the issue of it working disfunctionally with things in the game like stalling. I'm not a fan of these for a majority of the users. The game doesn't teach you these things, the community does.

Switchscape in its most basic essence where you switch combat styles (combat triangle) is fine. There's all these edge cases where you could stall 5 different attacks because of it, where I'd like eradicate that from the game completely. Because of these edge cases it's really lumpy and then really really high, I prefer a smooth learning curve. With that being said this is not a major problem but I'd still like to iron it out.

Skill curve

  • Beyond a certain point the best way to learn combat is to read guides from PvME.
  • Our in-game on boarding is not where we want it especially for the end-game.
  • We either need to make it established or deal with it. There's stuff we could better telegraph it in game.

Other

Upcoming/On-Going

  • Elite Dungeons - Changes are coming and are best released as a batch. No ETA.
    • Combined lucky charms into a single item.
  • Vorago - We are looking into shortening the length similar to Araxxor p3. No ETA.
  • Combat Achievements/Feats - Plans to do more, (No diaries).
  • Mod Pi fixes - Looks good for Q1 (no set date).
  • Spellback Swap bug - The FPS drop issue has been fixed and is awaiting release.

Consideration

  • Staff of Sliske - Sits in a strange place now, we have ideas but nothing guarantee.
  • Dual-Wield Special Attacks - Won't retroactively add them, but we will consider it when adding more.
  • Adrenaline Bar - No reason to not add decimals, it's already in the code.
  • Boss Quests - I don't have a problem with a colossi quest or an anima guardian quest that involves solak, etc.
    • Araxxi quest was fully designed in gamejam but doesn't fit in the current roadmap/story plan we have.
    • It's better to make future bosses lore heavy or utilize existing ones in new stories.

No Plans

  • Ring of Vigour stand on Anachronia - No plans as it would cause players to want more similar benefits.
  • Archaeology Relic balancing - Not our jurisdiction.
  • Solo Solak - Won't happen.
  • Omni-Spellbook - No plans, it would just be another powercreep.
External link →
about 3 years ago - /u/JagexOrion - Direct link

Originally posted by DonzaRS

Would be great if Dagganoth kings got a hardmode.

I'm sure this could work into the anachronia. Something like since the return of dinocity the DKs have gained ancient power and mutated. blah blah story and now we have a hard DKs fight. Would love to see them charging around the arena firing off beams.

oh boy