Hey, I'd just like to add a disclaimer for those who see this thread and peruse the slides.
These were given as part of a presentation on our 'Discord Stages' today which included a lot more detail than is written on the slides from design philosophy, further explanations etc.
We'll release a blog next week with a more full-on deep-dive and a lot more information on this, so keep your eyes peeled!
I think a way around this would be to allow the hiring of crew. You can have a NPC crew-member steer the ship, while freeing the player to move around on the deck and interact with other objects such as cannons. The player “gives orders” to the npc navigator by pointing and clicking on the ocean tiles.
Having an NPC crew is something we absolutely would like to have as part of the skill! The idea that you can level them up, train them, scout them out is an exciting idea especially for allowing solo players to control large/colossal ships
Honestly I feel like we entirely skipped over what should be the first step of designing this skill, which is figuring out why moving across water tiles is fun and engaging enough to be a 1-99. Obviously navigation is a big component towards the core identity of the skill, but I want to know what that core gameplay is before making decisions on the more specific details.
Yeah, that was my thought too and why I initially pitched us touching on the core gameplay loop section first and then navigation second.
However, when we released our refinement schedule to the players there was a fairly loud demand for us to tackle navigation first as players didn't really see if it would even be possible to navigate a ship at sea in a way that felt oldschool or wouldn't be incredibly janky.
Ultimately they both go hand in hand and you won't really have the full picture until both are fleshed out and designed. So watch this space! Core Gameplay & Mechanics coming to you soon!
Requiring you to lock yourself in place to navigate is a terrible decision. The navigation mechanics as shown in the demo video worked so well because it was seamless, you can click and go both on your boat and on the sea. You even say it you4selves in the blog, it's just less convenient, and the reasons for doing so are flimsy at best. Preventing misclicks? Showing who's controlling the boat? It's weakening the fundamental mechanics substantially solving non-issues or issues with easy alternative workarounds.
I would highly recommend to at least develop a prototype with both control schemes and see how they play out. I think after getting your hands on it you'll see just how much of a difference it will end up making.
I'd be curious to hear your easy alternative workarounds and how you'd suggest the issues we outlined be handled instead. Then we can have a discussion about the pros and cons of each approach because I don't believe them to be "non-issues"
But yeah, fundamentally if something feels bad once if we get to a stage where they are more fully developed we're absolutely open to changes. It's just that we have to make design decisions now based on what sounds correct.
I think not enough people are talking about the movement speed. I understand large ships take a while to get going but how was it not immediately addressed to have a ship not move slower than running speed let alone walking speed for the entire time? There should be a ramp up sure but for the love of all that is good don't make it walking speed or slower.
Copying my response from above
Numbers are placeholder currently and just to show our design intention. Specific variables such as how slow a ship moves or turns are things we really won't have a good handle without being in full-fledged development tweaking the numbers ourselves to see what feels best.
Also as you mentioned these numbers were envisioned to be for the base speed of a colossal ship and doesn't take into effect things like wind, currents, ship upgrades etc.
The navigation system outlined in the blog is significantly better than I expected based off the options shown beforehand.
One thing that sticks out to me as bad, however, is that .5 tile per tick base speed of the Colossal ship type. Walking speed is abysmal in this game, and I never want to move at a speed half that. Large ships with a base speed the same as walking also sounds terrible. Even if these rates are only for basic unupgraded ships, it needs to be possible to upgrade that speed right away because I do not want to be spending any amount of time moving that slowly.
EDIT: The 0.5 tile per tick speed in the graphic is incorrect. The base speed of the Colossal ship should be 1. I personally think that walking speed is still too slow, but at least it's not half that like I had thought.
Numbers are placeholder currently and just to show our design intention. Specific variables such as how slow a ship moves or turns are things we really won't have a good handle without being in full-fledged development tweaking the numbers ourselves to see what feels best.
Also as you mentioned these numbers were envisioned to be for the base speed of a colossal ship and doesn't take into effect things like wind, currents, ship upgrades etc.
Damn, I always sound angrier than I am when I watch these back (maybe it's just the Scottish accent), genuinely just happy and excited to talk about the new skills after being away for 2 weeks!
FWIW Different people have different opinions and different reasons for them and I'm not bashing opinionated people. All I was trying to get across is how much is still undecided and to make a case to remain open-minded about the skill during refinement even if it wasn't your first choice!
Hope that makes sense
Completely unplayable, smh $11 :crab:
Sure
Your idea may be better than you think it is. Make sure you are one of the 1000s to post a skill suggestion today.
(And the OSRS Team are always looking for inspiration, there's no such thing as a bad idea!)
External link →Grats! UwU
This was a fun thing to work on :)
Grats! UwU
This was a fun thing to work on :)
I understand in that last QnA Arcane said there wasn't really a timeline for when you guys would release rates. With that being said, has there been any further discussion on this? Weeks/months? I wasn't playing when CoX/ToB were released so I'm not sure how it went with releasing drop rates for those raids.
I believe he also said on that same QnA that he didn't want it to be as long as you guys waited for ToB and that he would want to release them eventually.
Droprates are a strange and difficult thing because we do change them and we need to be able to change them as we observe how players are interacting with the content. If too many of an item are coming into the game and prices plummet to the point that the content doesn't feel worth doing then that's a bad thing. On the flip side if they are too rare and no one is enjoying doing the content and don't feel rewarded for doing it then that's also a bad thing.
There's a lot of talk about whether or not they need to be hidden but the truth is that even small changes to the drop-rates can upset players (as we've seen since ToA has launched). Maybe we just release them anyway and tell the players to deal with it? I don't know which approach is better but I can certainly understand why there is a desire internally to keep...
Read moreIf the team didn't like what "Mod Arcane was doing" then we would be pushing against that. I think he has some very good points and his opinion is completely valid. That said, it's a team decision and not his alone.
Even with that opinion, it would be very irregular (aside from Nex) for us to release drop-rates so soon after the release of the content.
Wonder if this is what u/JagexHusky was referring to in the final TOA stream pre-release
Yeah it was!
Fantastic.
Thoughts on leaning more towards buffs for players instead of debuffs / buffs on NPCs? Players enjoy being more powerful. Looking at the Leagues relics and developing around those as inspirations?
Would require waves to developed to be essentially impossible without the buffs though.
Generally speaking the idea is for the content to get harder over time and not easier. We want players to be considering whether they feel capable of taking the next wave on and for some players they might just be capable consistent wave 6-7 completions etc.
Giving players buffs after every wave kind of just makes it harder for us to balance the content. Instead of the existing creatures you've fought before gaining an additional mechanic it's almost like they need to scale exponentially faster than the player would need to be?
We do like the idea of buffs generally though, that's why we've included them after the bosses on waves 4 and 8 in it's initial design
Would the new creatures have the same slayer requirement as their normal versions?
"No free waves" sounds like the stronger normal enemies will appear early on, but 95 Slayer for the Hyrda is probably outside most peoples reach just after getting a fire cape.
Things like requirements are kind of later down the line to iron out the nitty gritty details, our focus mostly was on making fun content and maximizing that part of it (plus doing core systems).
My opinion right now though is that slayer level shouldn't be required to do it, you're not actually fighting a Hydra (if that's the NPC model we go with) you're fighting something which resembles one etc.
Are you thinking safe death for non group hardcores or dangerous?
Slayer requirement or nah?
Dangerous death for all types of hardcore players
Is the intention to be a more consistent, grind-able money-maker like raids? Or to continue the fire cape/inferno tradition of bis untradables? I see both options listed but they’re extremely different paths.
Or both at the same time?
We definitely want it to be a consistent moneymaker and to be substantially more repeatable for players than fight caves/inferno. The waves won't be super scripted and the modifiers which hamper you or buff the monsters should ensure the experiences feel different enough each time
Hey, I wasn't really thinking too hard and just sort of posted this after I saw your tweet because I thought it was cool. I can delete this post if you want to create a post yourself to collect feedback more easily
No no it's fine :P
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