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Rondstat

Rondstat

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It's time to talk about Menaphos quests. Hoo boy. This is a long one.

I feel this requires a preface, because I'm about to get pretty critical. My thought are in no way a condemnation of Menaphos as a whole. In fact, I think most of the aspersions leveled against it have been pretty ridiculous, and are almost exclusively the purview of myopic endgame players.

Menaphos is perhaps the most fully realized single content release Jagex has ever done. It is fantastic in its variety, the number of different activities and distractions, both high and low impact, AFK and focused, appealing to nearly all goal orientations and interests. Between the soul obelisks, scarabs, winkingly meta city quests, surprisingly engaging shifting tombs, scavenger hunts, and all the different skilling methods, I rarely found myself doing the same thing more than a few minutes, and was never bored. The number and layout of amenities is perfect – this is exactly the midlevel hub Jagex needs to help retain newer players longterm, and the “grind” so many people gripe about will surely be perfectly manageable, and probably organically completed, by players spending their 40-70 with the city as a home base.

More than that, I appreciate all the detail that goes into it. The shameless punnery. The unique dialogues (even if they're a single line). The touches that make it a living city – the stevedores transporting goods from the ports to the shops and storehouses, the merchants hawking their wares, the guards on patrol, the loafers having casual conversations, the beggars, the street performers, and countless others. I'm also impressed by how the graphics tell a story – the sunken buildings and broken walkways indicating some natural disaster, the abandoned Sophanem buildings and quarters, the lush, ornate imperial terraces against the more utilitarian port or decrepit slums. And so many surprises discovered naturally through play – the bard songs, the slayer pyramid, the library sundial, etc.

27-Jun-2017 13:48:22

Rondstat

Rondstat

Posts: 2,770 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
But, graphics and skilling aren't what keep drawing me back to the game. It's story and quests. And this is where Menaphos drops the ball.

There was a point during Our Man in the North where I stopped in a sort of shock at Jagex's changing quest priorities. This quest reuses a few sequences from Stolen Hearts – the agility course and some voiced dialogue. This is fine – these mechanical callbacks can actually be pretty fun. But, in this case, it just highlighted how stark a contrast exists in the resources and effort allocated to the questing experience. In addition to its (excellently) voiced dialogue, the Ozan double bill reworked Al Kharid and the northern desert. Not just to make them pretty, but in a way that was immediately relevant to the story.

There are a dozen unique animations as we Assassin our way across the rooftops. And we're not just running through generically appointed rooms. We run past unique tableaus – the clothing scattered about a washroom, the giant spit of half-cooked shawerma, the smoky bedroom with its ornate screens. Busting through what are, essentially, mundane scenes from nameless NPCs' lives makes it more than a random agility sequence – it makes it cinematic, pieces of an adventure flick where the contrast thumps a comedic beat (just look at the lady screaming for us to get out of her house).

And here's the core of it: Stolen Hearts came out at a time when there was an impetus to design quests as a player's primary means for discovering the gameworld. Gielinor was a place with a rich story, and its environment was a backdrop for our experience of that story. Al Kharid didn't become any more or less functional after its rework. But it went from being the place for sorceress garden or KQ prep, to the seat of the Emir, the Northern capital, a place defined by its story rather than its function. At its heart, the rework to the city, and the assets – mechanical and graphical – that went with it, were done to support this new identity.

27-Jun-2017 13:48:53

Rondstat

Rondstat

Posts: 2,770 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Not so the Menaphos quartet. These quests don't just feel rushed. They're not merely underbudgeted. They're an afterthought. They feel like the final detail, tacked onto the city out of obligation more than a drive for an expanded narrative or an intriguing experience. I look at some of my least favourite quests – Missing Presumed Death, Salt in the Wound. For all their flaws, I am certain that the developers were excited about what they were doing. I do believe they thought they were making something interesting, something they believed in. I don't believe that's the case here. To return to Our Man in the North, where the gameplay and immersion of content cribbed from a 5-year-old quest far exceeds anything created for its beneficiary, it begins to look less like a callback and more like cashing in on the older design's legitimacy.

There's a carelessness to the development of these quests. They're certainly far below the standard of anything released post-2010, and of a lesser scope than many of last year's tales/miniquests. Which, could maybe be excused if these were part of some less narratively-anticipated piece of content – say, the Skull Archipelago or the Undiscovered Continent. But not when they're the continuation of a story whose next chapter we've been waiting to see since Dealing With Scabaras in 2008. It's even more troubling when you factor in how much story/characters were used to promote the Menaphos expansion (look at that header image and tell me how relevant Ozan, Het, or the corrupted workers actually were).

27-Jun-2017 13:49:25

Rondstat

Rondstat

Posts: 2,770 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
I'm almost tempted to dismiss Jack of Spades and Crocodile Tears altogether. These felt less like quests and more like showcases of all the new content the rest of the team had made. The carpet ride (which I like in principle, but is so ridiculously clunky it must have been coded in the quickest, least user-oriented way available) exists as a preview for the graphically updated desert, then the main body of the quest utilizes no mechanics – simply sending you to the four different quarters of the city (now we know where they are, yay!) for a meaningless conversation with the faction leaders before generic outfit recolour appears and disappears. The Jack character/plot itself ultimately has no bearing on the desert story (and resolves itself in the least compelling way) – it's an excuse to tour the city.

Crocodile tears does a little better, with its recycled clue scroll mechanics and sudden boss fight, but the meat of the quest is, again, just a tour of the city – this time sending us to discover all the fabulous new skilling methods introduced with Menaphos. You mean you can train hunter and woodcutting? Whodathunk!

But, even as the story finally picks up in Our Man in the North, the plethora of broken dialogue trees, sloppy mechanics, and the absence of unique sequences creates the impression that these quests were made to a checklist, rather than any sort of vision. Where in any other quest we would solve some sort of puzzle to uncover the secret book hidden in a library, here it's simply handed to us. With no fanfare, persuasion, or trickery, the loyal head of the imperial guard lets us escort an exile into the tightly closed city, for the express purpose of undermining the pharaoh.

27-Jun-2017 13:50:27

Rondstat

Rondstat

Posts: 2,770 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
When we retrieve Aristarchus, rather than make the effort to instance the NPC, or even give him one extra line of dialogue, Pollnivneach's Ari is stuck in a perpetual twilight, about to visit Menaphos and getting his things ready for all time, even as some Bizarro version makes himself at home in the Library. After the quest, we have Emir Ali referring to himself as Osman, and Senliten indicating an imminent meeting with Osman that never materializes.

And this sort of sloppiness is par for the Menaphos quests. Touches we've come to expect from Runescape's rich and unique questing experience. We interact with a number of different books. We can read none of them. When we're breaking a strike, while an older quest like King of the Dwarves would have a handful of instanced protesters, here the large-scale unrest exists only in dialogue (not to mention the riots that were supposedly rocking the Ports and Slums as mentioned in Contact). We have that farcical moment of Ehsan covering her ears and humming in Phite Club, because they could not even be arsed to create an instanced version for her being asked to leave the room. Even when the pharaoh is deposed – the figure whose shadow of fear and repression is cast over the entire city – the only acknowledgment is Hassan's insipid admission that he's “unsure” about the new ruler.

I do believe someone on the team realized this, and attempted to compensate in the dialogue. However, their efforts were, to be mild, misguided. I'm not sure who primarily developed these quests. But I cannot believe it was Rowley. The Ozan double bill was a brisk, witty, pulp-inspired adventure that could have been ripped from the pages of a vintage boy's magazine. Not to mention the rest of his portfolio – from RotM to tLoV, the guy can tell a story.

27-Jun-2017 13:50:51

Rondstat

Rondstat

Posts: 2,770 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Characters in Menaphos have some of the most absurdly overwritten purple prose I've seen (and this from a guy whose text rarely leaves the domain of deep violet). When we confront Wadud in Phite Club, I kept waiting for the comedy beat, for our character to snidely summarize his prattling in one pithy statement. But when that shoe never dropped, I realized – this dude was serious. And the stiff dialogue is all over the place, perhaps nowhere moreso than in the pharaoh's final revelation. I don't claim to be a particularly good writer, but I do know a couple of basics. One of which – if you write dialogue, read it out loud. Not in your head. Hear what it sounds like in a human being's voice, and ask yourself if any human being would ever possibly string together words in that order. This script was desperately in need of an editor. It didn't have one – and judging from rampant typos in some other past quests, I'd guess that's the standard state of affairs.

I don't have very strong feelings on the overall story trajectory. I do feel the most compelling story content in the city is the Sunken Pyramid miniquest, if you can call it that (make of it what you will). And I quite enjoy all the Magister hints. But there are many instances where the main questline's execution is not up to snuff.

To start, let's look at where this sits in the larger desert quest series. We're ushered into the lock-tight city with a handwave and an ambassadorship. Disappointing, certainly, and uninspired, but not unexpected. Was it wrong for me to hope we might operate in the city under a unique assumed identity, like in Darkmeyer?

27-Jun-2017 13:51:36

Rondstat

Rondstat

Posts: 2,770 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Emir Ali seems to do a 180 on his view of Menaphos from Diamond in the Rough, and a few Kharidians parrot some inaccurate wikia lore. Still, I suppose it's inevitable when different writers handle characters. No justice for Maisa, but at least she gets a mention. Some contradictions in Senliten's dialogue, but those can be explained away – more memories are returning all the time.

In comparison, some of the key beats are less favorable. Dealing with Scabaras and Do No Evil both make Amascut's corruption of the lesser deities/their followers a core part of the narrative, driving the story with the tragedies of their characters, their roles in the desert and their falls from grace. In the former we're treated to a tale of a beauteous red beetle who twists the Scabarites' introspective pursuits into vicious xenophobia, transforming them into monsters. In the latter we encounter the fragments of a broken god throughout the quest, turned against their once-great purpose, and their sole survivors.

By contrast, the Devourer isn't even mentioned until the end of Crocodile Tears, after Crondis just randomly coughs up an evil gator loogie and our character draws the connection themselves, with no moment of revelation or resolution. Our Man in the North is even worse, with Het suddenly appearing at quest's end, apropos of nothing, saying he was corrupted but stuff is totes great now, guys! No adventurer aid necessary.

And, where do these quests take us? With the pharaoh deposed, one of the most important desert plots is concluded. By quests' end, both the pharaoh and the head of the Imperial Guard are fully aware that the Sophanem Plague poses no threat. No acknowledgment. No resolution. Osman won't even deign to speak to us. The soul altar appears. Why? No reason. No story significance, unlike the blood or death or astral or chaos or even cosmic altars.

27-Jun-2017 13:52:20

Rondstat

Rondstat

Posts: 2,770 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
We've raised our city reputation to get to this point, but it doesn't even come into play until Phite Club – and even then, it doesn't even match the story, as the req is based on overall reputation, and not the individual esteem with each leader that the dialogue indicates (I was still at a solid 2 with the Imperial District).

I'm not actually opposed to using reputation unlocks for quests, though I do think it would have been better to have them on a staggered weekly release. But, I do think they should be story-relevant – and that was not the case here. And this illustrates part of the design philosophy for the Menaphos quest series.

Quests have been reimagined as aspirational content. They're filling up slots on a reward tree. They're asides you unlock as part of engaging with the “main” content. Sure, the story was advanced. Because that's part of the playerbase they have to appease, so it's appropriate to budget an amount proportionate to the impact those players have on subscriptions and churn it out.

But there was no passion behind it. And I know that's not necessarily the fault of the developers. Perhaps they didn't have the luxury of passion this time around. But, if this is what they had to do to get quests out, to get some story content released with the city (because a vocal minority would have thrown a fit if there wasn't any), then I'd have preferred that they not release a quest at all. For how long we've waited, how much we've anticipated, I think this may be the most disappointing quest continuation we've seen. This is below the standards of Runescape, it is below the quality we know them for, that they deserve to be known for. Part of me wonders if this is, in part, a reaction to the incredibly bold and ambitious, but undeniably flawed Endgame.

27-Jun-2017 13:52:42

Rondstat

Rondstat

Posts: 2,770 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
I know that, for how much gameplay they provide and how many engage with them, quests are likely one of the most expensive resource-to-output ratio things the team can invest in. And maybe it's unfair for me to keep expecting another One Piercing Note. But I believe there are certain things worth spending time and money on for the sake of esteem, to make something that's an achievement and not just a completion. I think it's that sort of ambition that has contributed to RS's longevity, has allowed it to branch into uncharted waters, like designing quests for Alexa.

The point of all these rambling expectorations is – don't let this become the new paradigm. I don't want to see the team pull off feats like Menaphos at the expense of what has, until now, been RS's greatest and most distinctive strength. I know the devs are capable of far better. Don't let RS stop being “your greatest adventure.”

Also, there really should have been a chocolate seller. And, of course, papyrus sedge.

27-Jun-2017 13:53:17

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