"We prefer to fix underlying issues.."
Then can we fix aurascape please? :) A rebalance to relic style buffs you choose to activate, for free or with vis wax for example, until you change would be ideal. Then rebalance bosses to fit, although something tells me an accuracy rework is coming at the end of FSW.
Auras is on my list. No quick fix for auras unfortunately.
I'm not sure if "RS3 should be RS2 like you remember it" is all that true or realistic. When I remember RS2 back in 2007/2008, I remember the game being fairly basic, yet fun. RS3 is still fun, but it's far from basic. Embracing the change and progression whilst still respecting the original source material seems like a more accurate statement
Yeah this might be a better way to put it.
PR department got some new hires huh?
Underrated comment.
Read moreMy biggest gripe with the exp scaling currently (as an Ironmeme having to engage with all sorts of odd content from release)
Theres just simply no reason for everything to be better. Rewards get people to go there, the exp rates should be a reason to stay there for a while longer.
There would absolutely be no difference in ed3 engagement (full clears) if you literally x0.1 the exp rates. By having newer content offer insane exp rewards (we're talking 1 kill = 1 hour over in osrs) it just nukes any other content with some cool rewards.
Hunter got an integrity change for being too busted when it was a high input method that made those rates achievable, now we have full AFK methods that blow that out of the water.
Why did you guys go from 100k exp/hour to 200k to 500k to 1m+/hr instead of just going with 100k -> 120k -> 150k etc etc. This also frees up plenty of reward space in TH as it doesnt have to compete with absurd exp rates to warrant the purchas...
Yeah I pretty much agree. This is partly an example of escalating methods without new goals and partly an example of what I meant by making radical changes by accident.
My worry is that your design vison is not good for helping the game grow going forward, but rather aims solely at retaining current players.
Runescape at its core is phenomenal, but things like poor UI & confusing in game systems are huge barriers to new players and often serve as deterrents.
Your vision for the future should absolutely include addressing these huge problems.
Yeah I get where you're coming from. I think the danger we've seen in the past is that in chasing new players, we've sometimes rejected what RS is in favour of more widely appealing trends.
That said the issues you raise aren't just new audience issues, they affect everyone. I wouldn't consider "bad UX" to be part of RuneScape's identity that we need to preserve.
I really appreciate the transparency of these streams, it's super interesting to hear about the thought process that goes into the making of RS, and what the arguments for and against various things are.
Looking forward to, hopefully, many more streams like this in the future. It's proper sit-under-a-blanket-with-a-cup-of-coffee content. :)
That's good. FDR is my streaming role model.
I feel like I just read a sprint planning overview.
Lets do more of this. I like it.
Let's get professional.
We do not need to imitate competitors.
What was EoC then?
I talk about this exact point on the stream.
I livestreamed a presentation about my design vision for Runescape. You can find the full VOD here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1647927837
The summary misses a lot of nuance, so I would recommend watching the full thing.
Vision
Be Proud
What is RS?
Sorry you had that experience. Elvarg is not a trivial fight if you're not already an expert at the combat system.
That may be the case if you own the blacksmith gloves, I can’t attest to that as I do not currently own them. But, the smelting gloves did used to give the xp boost of blacksmith gloves without the ownership of blacksmith gloves. I thought maybe I was just misremembering cause it had been a few months since I was doing any smithing, but the wiki does state they “grant the wearer the same 1% experience boost as the blacksmith’s gloves, and also count towards the set bonus even if the blacksmith’s gloves are not owned”, so I was unsure if this had changed in a recent update.
AFAIK no changes have been made to this since the M&S rework.
Isn't it the other way around? Wearing the set gloves gives the smelting boost if you own them? I may be misremembering.
I just want some quests where we get different choices with different endings yakno?
Like the one where we chose the zaros light or dark body but in the end it doesnt matter and it made me sad
Have I got a link for you:
I'm having a hard time remembering but are there really any quests with alternate endings? The only one I can think of that sort of does that is Temple of Ikov, but again storywise that makes no difference.
I'm not even saying that's a bad thing, in fact i prefer it, but doesn't the fact that you don't really control what your character does stop him from being a blank slate character?
Hazeel Cult would be the biggest one, but ultimately there are no choices in RS which have an impact on the world or story. I did a talk about this recently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cx3vleHMDw
In terms of being a blank slate I wouldn't say so no. "Extreme choice" is my category for where the player has a lot of freedom to define who they are through their actions and moral choices. By blank slate I more mean it literally doesn't matter who you are, the identity of the character has no bearing on the story at all. This is the default for e.g. an out of the box D&D adven...
Read moreIn a way, you don't even have to make the dialogue lines have impact on the actual end goal. Whether you are stoic or goofy can be just your role play without it impacting the quest. This way you can have many options for roleplaying without increasing dev time because now you have to have 5 quest endings or whatever.
Yeah absolutely. That said it's not quite as easy as just writing three lines of player dialogue instead of one - this is the problem Fallout 4 has. Because the conversation has to proceed the same way regardless, you're choosing between four choices that basically all have to say the same thing. You end up with the meme options like:
"Hero will you go on this quest?"
Honestly this is a difficult problem in game writing. I did a talk about this a while back... I arbitrarily divided game protagonists into a bunch of categories along an axis from "less strongly characterised" to "more strongly characterised":
The reason I say it's difficult is just that different players have different preferences. Some players much prefer something like Bayonetta where you have a strongly defined character who makes decisions and who you watch...
Read moreThe year is 2040, Jagex has been doing live reddit Q&A non-stop 24/7 for the last 10 weeks. Reports are coming in of a mountain of pizza boxes piling up around Jagex HQ.
The only question being asked is plastered across every monitor, line after line of text mockingly demanding: "Why isn't Jagex doing more to communicate?" Blood dribbles from their eyes.
The subreddit mods have been working hard to try remove the really toxic stuff that we've seen in the past. Toxicity induces low communication which induces further toxicity which induces even lower communication. Hopefully we can turn that negative spiral into a positive spiral instead.
As a fellow developer I do get that stance towards "just being a dev who shares things" but if you use the account that identifies you as an official developer instead of a private account, you are publicly seen as someone representing the company, whether you're meant to or not. It's the difference between Jagex Jack, the Jack who works at Jagex and has the name to show it, and someuser_named_Jack_420 who seems to know what's up on the developer side of things. JMOD may be an archaic name that doesn't properly reflect what you do, but it does bear the company's signature.
Maybe I'm comparing things to my own company too much but if I had the name of the company in my name online I'm sure I'd get PR all over me making sure I'd be representing the company correctly.
I'm not denying that we're representatives of the company. You won't (or shouldn't) find us out here posting spicy hot takes or insulting players. However there's a difference between behaving in an appropriately professional manner while representing the company, and being harassed by customers for not providing the specific service that they wanted. It's essentially analogous to fixing people's account support issues.
The point I'm trying to get across is that if you expect everyone you interact with to be a trained customer rep, all that's really going to happen is that people won't put themselves in situations where that can happen. That's how most game companies work.
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