RuneScape Forum Archive | DevBlog: Sailing

Oct

2005

Lewis Shoot

Posts: 3,825 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Gemstone caverns seem like the main change in this dev blog so lets provide some feedback on them.

Dragon sword/limbs/warhammer - I know various dragon items don't come from quests but I'd like to see them introduced via a quest. Perhaps on zeah.
Zenyte - I like the use of onyx however I dislike that zenyte shards don't degrade. I also think the rewards they have are powerful enough without the healing effects, just think guthans NMZ.

I like the idea of gem caverns and gem creatures, perhaps not dragons because we have a lot of them but gem creatures sounds cool.
____

Finally the FAQs
You seem to be answering the questions but not actually linking the answer to the content suggested. For example

Will sailing be more like a minigame than a skill?
Not at all. Minigames are very self-contained and, outside of rewards, have no impact on the wider game. Sailing will be seamlessly integrated into the Old School world and will be a true part of the game. As you level up sailing you will unlock the ability to do more and more with the skill. This will be applicable all over Old School.

The main aspect of sailing sounds like exploration, which is very self contained.
Also of this suggestion has no impact on the wider game apart from the rewards.

Just because you say it's going to be seamlessly integrated in the FAQ doesn't make it so, especially when you read the rest of the dev blog.
____

Final words.
I suppose we'll see what happens with the poll but it clearly isn't a thought out skill, it is a very well thought out variety of content which would work perfectly in zeah and other areas of the main game. RIP Forums

Finally we have signatures in the surprise forum update. I'm Lewis, I play Old School & I've been playing since 2005.

08-Sep-2015 23:07:15

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08-Sep-2015 23:16:22

RNGreed

Posts: 332 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Dungeoneering was the ultimate in blackmail, best in slot untradables that could be used in pking and so on. Using that as an example doesn't contribute to your argument that its a good thing for oldschool. Rigour and augury are proposed content for sailing just like dungeoneering, there are too many similarities and the fact that sailing won't just gate-keep new gear but better resources and ways to train skills. It's dungeoneering squared, just because you can keep your resources you find makes me even more nervous because balancing has always been a huge issue with oldschool.

08-Sep-2015 23:23:45

Mickezy

Posts: 50 Iron Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Lewis Shoot said :

This sailing definition lacks the underlying simplicity that most skills have. Most skills have a short sentence description that explains the main way one can gain experience. Here are a few examples.
Woodcutting: Cut trees.
Firemaking: light fires.
Slayer: Kill what you're told.
Fletching: Fletch range equipment.

So I really think if you want sailing to be good, provide great content and pass the poll then you need to think what is the underlying description of sailing?

They already explained in the main post.

Sailing: Getting from one point to another

So what if there’s more than one way to train the skill. Not every skill can be like firemaking or woodcutting or fletching.

08-Sep-2015 23:26:13

Jul

2023

N0t Maxed

Posts: 576 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

The fact that people ended up grinding for it, and then ended up enjoying it, and made use of the rewards, is my argument. There wasn't even blackmail, because Jagex didn't give us an option on the new skill or not. They literally gave it to us with no reveal process. This is the opposite.

Sailing will gate-keep new items,resources, methods to train, and the like. Anything best in slot will be voted on, so I don't understand why that is your concern.

Say there was a better method to woodcut on a new island (unlocked through sailing) using teak logs, which gave better xp/hr than teaks on the mainland. The player still ends up with teak logs...not exactly the most valuable item (unless you plank make which ends up costing gp).

The skill/resources will be balanced out by our votes on them.

I do see the parallels between sailing and dungeoneering. Doesn't mean that either was bad, nor will either be "perfect".

08-Sep-2015 23:30:41

RNGreed

Posts: 332 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

The concept of adding xp to moving to new places is weak, you're just going to explore the same islands in different arrangements over and over. Or pay money and wait for ships to build which has far too much overlap with construction. It really doesn't fit the skill system of runescape, quantifying "exploring". We'll get all this cool new content sure, but they're going to stuff it down our throat thousands of times and we'll be sick of it and just want to access the higher level sailing rewards. We may get what we want, new content, but not at our own pace. It will be at an arbitrary pace that locks content behind a big grindwall.

Content that locks content from other areas of the game behind a grindwall is blackmail, regardless if we voted it into the game. The players as an entire entity aren't so great at balancing. You can decide you don't want to kill the 2 dozen slayer npcs. You're going to be at a huge disadvantage in every area of runescape if you don't want to do sailing. Rigour could be untradable just as it was for dungeoneering, and if you want to make a range pk account you're going to be at a distinct disadvantage without it.

08-Sep-2015 23:30:51 - Last edited on 08-Sep-2015 23:43:05 by RNGreed

Jul

2023

San

Posts: 4,259 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Mod John C said :
Popped back in to the office to answer some of the questions.

Thanks for your reply, here's my feedback on your responses.

1) I don't really mean the random events, I get their purpose. It's more about the resource islands I presume there will be. Like, say, an island with a few magic trees on it. Surely, repeatability is key to sailing as a method of skilling. If somebody wants to sail off, cut magic logs, fill up their cargo, go back to port and repeat, how can they do that if they don't know the island will be there when they get back? In that case, there's not much reason to use sailing for helping skilling. That would probably require new content to encourage skillers to use sailing, and that'll surely be a lot harder to get passed a poll.

2) Is Pay2Leech the best way to go? I don't think it was too popular with dungeoneering. What are the other reasons there will be?

3) Okay, this is fair enough. Although, if boats can only travel so far, why use them for transportation when we have charter ships? I think it's best to focus sailing on the exploration side of things, rather than as transportation between points on the mainland for this readon.

4) Also fair enough. I hope it will be the case.

5) I know they're not going to be colossal, but if the boats are sailing the actual sea then there are quite a lot of areas that would be tricky even for moderately sized ship. I mean, the boats have to be big enough to do stuff on, so I'd say something like 3x5 is pretty small to do much on but stil big enough that I don't see how it could navigate round tricky little islands. Sailing

08-Sep-2015 23:31:36

Jul

2023

N0t Maxed

Posts: 576 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

I don't know what you mean by the first sentence. The navigation/exploration is randomized. If you're talking about visiting an island you've unlocked over and over, then why wouldn't you if you wanted to?

Paying money for the ships is a gold sink, and overall ineffective to train. Actually doing the skill is much faster experience and profitable. There's some overlap with construction, but ultimately you are not the one building the ship, NPCs you pay are.

Don't know what you mean by the last sentence.

08-Sep-2015 23:41:37

RNGreed

Posts: 332 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

N0t Maxed said :
I don't know what you mean by the first sentence. The navigation/exploration is randomized. If you're talking about visiting an island you've unlocked over and over, then why wouldn't you if you wanted to?

Paying money for the ships is a gold sink, and overall ineffective to train. Actually doing the skill is much faster experience and profitable. There's some overlap with construction, but ultimately you are not the one building the ship, NPCs you pay are.

Don't know what you mean by the last sentence.

We may get all this cool new content, but they're going to force us to repeat it over and over until we get sick of it. That's why people payed money to leach dungeoneering, exploring as an xp system gets boring because it may be in different arrangements but theres only so many rooms. If they introduced this content naturally we could explore it at our own pace, and not be driven to do it over and over to justify making it a skill.

Gold sinks are great and OSRS needs them. A FAR greater gold sink would be not introducing this disgusting amount of gold in the first place, there are way more effective ways to handle it.

The last sentence means that you're going to be at a disadvantage to other players if you don't do sailing: train all skills slower, collect new resources slower or not at all, and have unoptimal pking setups. Rigour is a higher tier of range prayer that also has a 25% defence bonus like piety, if you don't have that in the wilderness then you're going to be at a massive disadvantage. Rigour was untradable in dungeoneering and possible that its going to be that way here too.

08-Sep-2015 23:46:26 - Last edited on 08-Sep-2015 23:52:30 by RNGreed

Jul

2023

N0t Maxed

Posts: 576 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

I fail to see any "force" here. You are NOT forced to train this skill, nor am I, nor is your friend, nor the spam bot on my ignore list. What you described is grinding, which is literally part of every skill. I have to grind out slayer to access Cerberus (not a current example), a very repetitive task. People leeched dungeoneering because they were lazy or didn't like the skill, no real argument there.

You're right, there's only so many room in dg/events in sailing. But can you create a system where every team gets a different type of event? No, it's impossible. Simply changing the order of potential events allows for a much greater variety of events to occur (as well as adding more to start with).

I honestly don't see anything bad with adding more gold into the game via sailing. First off, we don't know what sort of profit we will get (an error in my previous post). Will they be upgrades for ships or resources we can sell? Either way, it's nothing compared to the inflation from coinshare. Also, not everyone will train this skill to 99, or do it via actually exploring.

08-Sep-2015 23:53:30

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DevBlog: Sailing - An Overview