RuneScape Forum Archive | Great Orb Project rework D&D

Seasons Past

Posts: 559 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Leeching could certainly be an issue in multiplayer. I think your idea of adding a minimum threshold of participation for each team member would help with that.

We would also want to ensure that there would still be an incentive to score more orbs after reaching the threshold. Otherwise, some players might just afk after scoring the minimum number of orbs required to earn rewards for each round. This is one of my main concerns regarding the mechanics described in Deltaslug’s original suggestion, the other concern being that players would earn no rewards if they fell short of the threshold.

I also share your concern about points being distributed unequally across the team due to differences in skill among players. This could also arise as a result of differences in device performance and/or understanding of the mechanics. This is why I would prefer some sort of collaborative or collective scoring system over an exclusively individually-based one.

So in summary, I think an ideal rework would:

- Encourage active participation by incentivizing players to continue to score orbs throughout the entire round

- Discourage leeching by making it impossible or at least nonviable

- Employ a fair scoring system that would prevent competition for points between team members, while still rewarding individual effort, skill, and participation Spirit of Forinthry ~ Runecrafting: Magic Armour ~ F2P Extensions ~ Dragon Slayer improvements ~ New Player Experience

16-Mar-2022 21:56:46

Dec

2021

Mel 624

Posts: 744 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

The minimum participation would presumably be scaled to player count to make sure it's reasonably achievable for all players. Something to consider would be to make sure the point gaining methods are actually helping your team rather than just being spammable actions for things besides scoring the orb itself. Maybe the distance covered by orbs to or from the altar depending on which team it belongs to rather than the act of clicking them. Barrier wands would likely need to be removed if that ends up being the main measure of participation so players can't effectively stall someone else's participation.

The orbs scored by your team would be the team reward while individual reward would be from things gaining participation progress. It could be done as gradually gaining a higher percentage of the team reward rather than going from 0 to 100. So if you end up with 50% participation and your team scores 10 orbs, you get 5 orbs worth of reward instead of 10. Actions contributing to participation % could add more to your individual reward past the threshold to encourage helping your team but it wouldn't be the primary source of rewards. Maybe something like 10 actions after 100% = 1 orb.

Getting a higher score than the other team could potentially offer a bonus but without detracting from the rewards of the losing team or being so big people rig games over it. The team win or individual participation bonus would be incentive to play as a group rather than alone where only the orb based reward would apply.

It's occurred to me that reworking the minigame could potentially involve reworking the altar layouts. They could have game specific features to add variation to them depending on what gets changed about the game to modernize it and improve the experience. How to block a forum user

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17-Mar-2022 10:59:11

ironpariah

Posts: 4,519 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

+1

23-Mar-2022 01:53:27

Seasons Past

Posts: 559 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Reworking the altar layouts sounds like a cool idea. I’ve wanted the altars to be graphically reworked for a long time now, independently of any update to the Great Orb Project. I’d also appreciate an update to the music tracks that play at the altars to make these tracks sound more modern and fit into RS3 better.

I’m realizing that some of the mechanics of the minigame might have to be reworked. As it stands currently, players on the same team can sabotage each other in multiple ways, such as by attracting or repelling the same orb. When I played the Great Orb Project a long time ago, this was frequently an issue for a variety of reasons, which were not limited to intentional griefing but also included accidents such as misclicks as well as lag-related incidents.

Given these considerations, I think reworking the altar layouts would have a lot of potential, as it could pair well with any mechanical changes. Spirit of Forinthry ~ Runecrafting: Magic Armour ~ F2P Extensions ~ Dragon Slayer improvements ~ New Player Experience

15-May-2022 23:31:14

Seasons Past

Posts: 559 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Here are a few more ideas to hopefully ensure that each player would contribute to the score in multiplayer games. Although these changes would still largely depend on the current mechanics, they could probably be adapted to fit whatever new form the minigame may take in the future:

- Establish a target orb count per altar, per player, but also introduce a target number of orbs per round for the team collectively. Either or both of these targets could be scaled to the number of players on the team, although the scaling could be designed to be slightly or moderately imbalanced in order to encourage and reward participation in multiplayer games.

- When the target orb count for the group is reached, the round would immediately end, and the team would progress to the next altar. Each member of the team would receive some sort of “bonus” after each round for which the group target is met.

- Each round would have a time limit as it does currently. There would be no penalties for failing to score the target number of orbs for the team by the end of the round; however, rewards would be given in proportion to the number of orbs scored, so scoring more orbs would yield greater rewards.

I imagine these changes being applied in the context of a multiplayer game mode with a single team. Admittedly, I’m unsure as to how the changes would work in a game with multiple teams. These changes would also apply in a single-player game except that there would only be one target orb count, as the target for the individual would be synonymous with the target for the team in that case. Spirit of Forinthry ~ Runecrafting: Magic Armour ~ F2P Extensions ~ Dragon Slayer improvements ~ New Player Experience

15-May-2022 23:35:04

Oct

2013

Rikornak

Posts: 9,169 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

I got to agree with the others, the d&d mechanic is not enriching at all - it's possibly not worse than status quo, but I can't see any benefit by restricting how much you would be able to play.

In general I would

- Cut the team mechanic - it really doesn't fulfill any purpose in here.
- Significantly increase the amount of currency obtained, maybe even considering consolidating the currency with runespan points into let's say wizard tower tokens, with GOP offering higher rates if done right. Master runecrafter is so insanely overpriced, if you're trying to get it via GOP instead of vic, thalers or especially runespan.
- Significantly increase the experience and runes gained. Guardians of the rifts would be a roughly fitting guideline for that aspect.
- Rather than awarding rune essence for a finished round, players would receive runes and experience for each orb scored. In order to prevent players to wildly interact with any orb in their environment, any orb scored would count so if they scored something themselves in the past 20 seconds or so. Improvements: Tooltip / (F2P) QoL v2
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17-May-2022 07:33:43

Yusou Bhoroi

Posts: 8,551 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Profiled - not read full thread, yet (will do so after work, and edit my post, accordingly), but I'd definitely not recommend using such low targets.

It's easy enough, if you're at all familiar with game mechanics, and have decent enough equipment (computer/whatever), to average around, or even above, 40 orbs, for soloing Air altar.

I'd therefore differentiate it a little more, and ad a duo mode, with at least 60, for the higher end target (it's possible to duo above 70).

I'll respond to the rest, when I've read fully, but I'd still rather they kept it as a playable Minigame, and fixed some of the issues (the number of orbs scored not being linked directly to reward, being the biggest one), and expanded it a bit - however, I wouldn't mind them adding a D&D version of it, if the reward is linked to the score (I'd make it more graded, rather than full cut-off points, for scores, though).

I'll likely be creating my own thread (or reviving one of the old ones, if I've still got any around), which covers an updated position on how GOP can become relevant, networked, and active, again, but this thread does bring up some interesting ideas, even if I have disagreements with them.

Edit: Having now read the thread (replies included), I am pleasantly surprised that there was general support of the idea of keeping the Minigame community-oriented. I agree that that is a big aspect of the game, and that it would lose that, if entirely D&D-based.

With regards the other issues, I'd like to give some input, but it's more than I can fit into this post, so will start another:

16-Dec-2022 17:56:44 - Last edited on 16-Dec-2022 20:58:02 by Yusou Bhoroi

Yusou Bhoroi

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While it's important to insure reward is linked to play (linking the tokens/currency received, directly to the number of orbs scored in the game, is paramount), I'd like to point out that most methods for ensuring individual participation have to be very complicated, in order to work (there are holes in pretty much any method).

The likelihood of any update being made (in addition to general game development-plan conformity), is very dependent on how easy it is to create (through all stages of development), how low the likelihood is of it glitching out (either in itself, or other content), and how easy it will be to add to/adapt the code, for later updates.

Therefore, I'd recommend that instead of developing a convoluted system, which lowers that chance, and may well have an exploit loophole, which will kick up problems, in the future, that we aim for something very basic, which addresses the main issue affecting the game - people being directly incentivised by a broken reward-currency allocation-system, to not play the game, and to disrupt those who are attempting to play.

To fix that, you only need to link the tokens to the score, in a simple way - such as X-tokens per orb scored by the team; with perhaps additional increases in the X multiplier, for any orbs scored past set targets.

While you've rightly pointed out that this still risks rewarding people who don't contribute, it at least ensures they are incentivised not to be disruptive (as that would decrease their rewards), and also incentivised to help, or employ those who are willing to carry them.

Elements of that are (to my mind) negative, but they do allow a similar economy to Bosses (another area of active content), and means there's pressure to ensure consent, and gives some skilled players a floating source of additional income, linked to the value they can provide (a handy reward option, which doesn't require continued development input).

16-Dec-2022 21:08:42 - Last edited on 16-Dec-2022 21:24:56 by Yusou Bhoroi

Yusou Bhoroi

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Options which link to individually scored orbs, encourage people to steal orbs, from others, and prevents efficient, total-score-oriented play - as often effective strategies rely on some players scoring more than others, simply because that's more tik-efficient (whether that be in terms of ensuring everyone is actively moving orbs, in an efficient manner, every tik of the game... or in terms of general spawn distribution being weighted to one side of the map, thus making it more efficient for the person on that side to feed them close to the Altar, for others to score).

This part of play (getting the highest possible score) is the main driver for continued play (both competitive against other players, and on an individual basis, against one's own maxes), past current rewards, and it would be a shame to change the aspect of the game which has proved the most enduring, and successful.

That's also the reason why I'm not in favour of making it an activity with a limited score target, after which the Altar ends; doing so would remove much of this, and hinges around a more nebulous, and less reliably countable factor, of number of tiks taken, to get that score. While that seems a similar game incentive, it actually causes a subtle change which removes much of the existing motivations, and achievements.

With that in mind, I'm against updating the existing Altar Maps (unless they are adding more variations, as an extra - so that you can play on several different versions of each altar, but preserve the current ones). I very much support the addition of more altars, and play options, as those are key areas which have proved popular, with communities which developed their own version of GOP (and even on RS, in terms of the play options -which are currently player-run, and could benefit from mechanical selection, so that they are more known about, and easier to stick to/track officially).

My other input is less directly tied to the thread, so will be elsewhere.

16-Dec-2022 21:09:12 - Last edited on 16-Dec-2022 21:21:34 by Yusou Bhoroi

Seasons Past

Posts: 559 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Yusou Bhoroi said :
[...]The likelihood of any update being made (in addition to general game development-plan conformity), is very dependent on how easy it is to create (through all stages of development), how low the likelihood is of it glitching out (either in itself, or other content), and how easy it will be to add to/adapt the code, for later updates.

Therefore, I'd recommend that instead of developing a convoluted system, which lowers that chance, and may well have an exploit loophole, which will kick up problems, in the future, that we aim for something very basic, which addresses the main issue affecting the game - people being directly incentivised by a broken reward-currency allocation-system, to not play the game, and to disrupt those who are attempting to play.
I think this is a good way of looking at it. Since we don't know exactly how the technical details will need to be changed in the event of a rework, it's better to focus on the concept rather than specifics. (It brings to mind the Good Suggestion Guide.) This also leaves more room for adjustment later while mitigating wasted time and development resources. Spirit of Forinthry ~ Runecrafting: Magic Armour ~ F2P Extensions ~ Dragon Slayer improvements ~ New Player Experience

17-Dec-2022 04:43:16

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Great Orb Project rework D&D