Why was bard not a consideration?
We considered it and had at least one question for Bard in the survey we sent out, which 44,000 players completed. It wasn't popular enough in the survey to warrant us recommending we re-visit/pitch it as a new skill.
Would the spirit realm be like the upside down from stranger things?
From the wonderful Art team...
We'd gone quite psychedelic in our first experiments into the spirit realm, which have since been reigned in but it will certainly be something 'other worldly'. Probably not quite as grim and dark as the Upside Down in stranger things.
It would be nice to perhaps explore the spirit world itself having multiple biomes for lack of a better word , to give it different emotional vibes . We imagine upside down is a bit much, but having the contrast between a happy spirit realm and a sad/darker one would be cool.
Once we have a better spec of what happens there during refinement we'll have a better idea of what we're designing for. Deffo can't go wrong with a emotionally versatile setup!
Hope this helps!
Firstly, great job on all three skills. Even if the community doesn't end up going for them, i'm sure we all see the potential and the effort put in to making sure they could be a good fit.
My question is on Sailing: I would be worried that a lot of content would be directly locked behind Sailing including new areas of the map, is the idea that players would be able to sail nearly everywhere at lvl 1 (but perhaps slower, or unable to take shortcuts etc) or is the idea that you can go further out to sea with ship upgrades that you unlock at certain milestones.
If the latter, what would you comment be on concerns that this could lock more content behind a skill than perhaps anything else the game has seen.
If we don't lock content behind Sailing it feels a bit boring and not viable to train. During community consultation we got the impression that the community wanted some pieces of content/areas to explore which were locked behind the skill. The existing map is also locked off in some ways through quests and other requirements.
Sailing isn't supposed to be Agility on Water so we're trying not to treat it as such. We're instead looking to create content on water and make you feel good about training the skill so you can venture into deeper and more dangerous areas. The idea of having lands that have never been stepped on and feeling good about your ability to traverse more territory seemed quite appealing from what we can see. I would hope that we could keep content exciting enough and enjoyable enough to train so that it would feel great when you get there. :D
Can't we just add all 3 skills in?
You can vote that you liked all three skills in the multiple choice question as that will really help us in the long term understand community appetite
What do JMods feel about the new skill going to 120?
General feeling is no from the team after I asked. The reason is that going to 120 doesn't feel Old School, especially for only a single skill and not others
Missed opportunity.
Milking the blood of a hellhound maybe? Shamanism update?
Why was the community suggestion for the milking skill not included in the poll
Missed opportunity.
What happens if the Skills fail the poll after all this process? or is that impossible? This is relevant due to the quality of the skills you guys are offering
Mod Ayiza created an 'explainer' video back in December & mentioned it on the Winter Summit but the TLDR is that we can go back at any stage of the process before a skill is locked in at a 70/30 vote. Once it's locked in - if at all - we will continue to work with players during a beta and beyond on fine details. We want a skill that works for you and makes you excited.
Depending on your feedback at ANY stage before locking it in we may go back to Community Consultation and/or presenting entirely new pitches based on your feedback. We hope that we've been able to offer you something that appeals. If your favourite ...
Read moreWould you all consider a new equipment slot for shamanism like a totem? Could be a spot for skilling or combat buffs
Everything is on the table during refinement, at present our design doesn't offer this but we'll be sure to keep community suggestions in mind if it was the one that proceeded through! The main thing we've done is kept things super open-ended because we don't want to sink too much dev time into the top-level concepts and instead let the community decide on what they want. Skilling augments are potentially a middle-ground where players aren't as cautious in comparison to Combat related augments
Is there any scope to move forward on parts of a skill without incorporating others? For example, the idea of Shamanism is compelling and could fit into OSRS, but the idea of “augments” to items feels out of place.
Perhaps being able to cast rituals out of combat which offer small passive effects could be a new direction and fits better thematically?
Great question! Refinement stage means everything is on the table to be discussed with the community. We mentioned in the pre-recorded Q&A that augments may be completely removed from the skill if players preferred it that way.
A lot of players vibe with the thematic but may not see augments as a reward space. It's important to keep in mind that you're voting on top-level concepts - the augment side of things would be something we'd consult heavily with players on, and if most players want us to remove it, we absolutely can. We can also look at augments just tou...
Read moreI love the skill idea and thematic of Shamanism. However, I feel that Mysticism or Ritualism seems to be a better name. Would you consider changing the name from Shamanism?
The general feeling here from the team is yes, everything is on the table to be changed during refinement. If Shamanism was the concept players wanted most, but the community has an issue with the name - we would absolutely consider changing it. I don't doubt that.
The interesting part to remember is a name is tied to a thematic - Mod Husky talked about this a bit during the pre-recording here. If players really like the thematic of the Spirit Realm does the word Mysticism or Ritualism work? If so, great.
During community consultation we recocmmended ...
Read moreWill sailing be instanced? /s
No it's an open world expansion :P (responding to the easy ones first)
Will you share the questions before releasing the poll ingame?
We've done that in the blog! You can check it out here although we may be removing Question #3 as we're about to hit our limit on survey responses :D
Was there a 4th skill pitch you had in mind?
Hey there! We discussed many options and ultimately combined all the 'good' ideas into the ones that we had. We discussed all the Community suggested pitches and tried to incorporate the positive elements into each of our concepts. The one community-suggested pitch that stood out above all the rest was 'Exploration' and it told us clearly that players really desired to reach and unlock new areas.
The Shamanism pitch I guess was the wildest concept of the three. That one underwent loads of changes as we found out more from players during community consultation. We wanted to make something that was familiar (Production & Gathering) but also be interesting enough to catch peoples' attention!
Welcome gamers! How are you all doing!
To bring you even closer to the development team, we'd like to invite you to our AMA on the New Skill Pitches!
You might have questions about some of our concepts or the process of adding a new skill in general. Use the next few hours to submit your questions for us and we'll try to answer as best as we can.
To manage expectations, please remember we are very early in the process of design so we won't have answers on every detail. Nevertheless, we will try as it's important for us to make you feel as close to the dev team on this journey as possible.
We'll be active until the end of the working day today, so we'll answer for the next 3-4 hours.
Please keep your questions relating to the New Skill rather than General Q's. You can submit questions for General Q&A's when we do plan a General Q&A livestream - likely in a few weeks' time. Depending on your feedback for this AMA this may open up...
Read more External link →Looks like links to jcw and he box jonge's finales are missing in community achievements
https://i.imgur.com/kiov5Kw.png
Thanks for posting these, great way to spotlight some lesser known creators!
Thank you for picking that up! It may be that you can't see the YouTube embed. I've added links in in case it's not showing up, can you confirm if that's worked?
We'll keep this in mind moving forwards so we ensure links are always included if the embeds don't show
Keep up the great work jmods, we love u
thanks for all the positivity - the team has really noticed it and appreciates it a lot :)
Oh I don't blame Husky at all, this isn't meant to be an attack of any kind, more playful about the debate around taming. I genuinely love you guys and don't envy the position, I just thought this was hilarious because it shows to me that it IS fundamentally summoning (or shares far too much with it at least) in everyone's mind, not just the community's.
I did watch the video(s) in depth and I don't agree that it was differentiated from summoning enough to make sense in old school.
Nothing to forgive, it's not a blame, I don't see it as a personal thing in the design phase. I loved how you guys presented sailing and shamanism in the pre-recorded and am looking forward to the more live Q+A style.
In the survey, the idea of animal companions was quite well received. Are the issues you have with Summoning fundamentally issues with animal companions or something else to do with the skill? Be great to hear your thoughts!
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