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undo quest requirement updates

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Immortalized
Mar Member 2006

Immortalized

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for over 16 years of runescape you could boost skills to complete certain quests

a few quests had hard requirements that would not let you boost to start it

then on November 17, 2017 some jmods, who I assume never even heard of boosting and should never have been in a position that lets them change such behavior, removed this ability in the quest rework interface. now all quests require you to be the minimum level in order to start it.

to one that does not play runescape that might sound convenient, why let you start a quest that you cannot actually finish. but to an actual player that is probably the worst update in the history of the game.

for example, access to fairy rings was granted during "A Fairy Tale II - Cure a Queen" and did NOT require you to meet the skill requirements. this is a huge advantage as it grants the player a huge transportation network they did not have before. now you need to have the minimum reqs to complete the quest, a pointless requirement added years later in an update for something totally unrelated. this is just one of many quests.

this is unfair for many reasons:
- you have access to content locked to a completely identical account based on start date
- skiller feats, e.g. skiller who started Family Crest before update kills chronozon with death touched dart to bypass magic req; new skiller must train magic to start

some accounts are "luckier" than others. a skiller account that started the quest before another skiller has access to cooking gauntlets when other cannot. some accounts have fairy rings and others do not.

quest requirements should NEVER change. never. ever.


a jmod recently did this again updating azzanadra's quest to require battle of monolith, locking "late" skillers out.

restore quest requirements to their original update. jmods designed such quests with boosting in mind, why should jmods 16+ years later break this intentional gameplay in one poorly thought out update? it's offensive Buy Zemomarks / Chromatic Partyhats safely here

24-Mar-2023 16:01:42

Bertel62
Aug Member 2023

Bertel62

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My take on this is that a game should be designed the way the designers want it to be designed, regardless of how many people have already played it. If the game had originally been released with these requirements, then everything would be ok. Therefore it should also be ok to change it now. To me there is no difference. Make the game the way you want it to be. The fact that some people have already played it is irrelevant.

28-Mar-2023 14:30:03 - Last edited on 28-Mar-2023 14:30:48 by Bertel62

Immortalized
Mar Member 2006

Immortalized

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what you say is a contradiction. the designers wanted it designed so you could boost and start quests without the requirements. it's only years later a different designer decided that was not appropriate. so I agree with your statement that the game should be designed the way designers want it to be designed, not by how employees over 10 years later have changed it.

jagex's recent actions to make family crest startable without the magic req is a step in this direction, acknowledging the issue. now family crest stands out as an oddball, because many other quests should be the same way but only this one was specially adjusted to remove the hard stat requirement. Buy Zemomarks / Chromatic Partyhats safely here

02-Apr-2023 18:15:03 - Last edited on 02-Apr-2023 18:16:24 by Immortalized

Rikornak
Oct Member 2013

Rikornak

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I generally am all for adjusting quest requirements whenever it makes sense. This goes in both directions though. A lot of quests have rather random requirements without any relation to the quest at all (for that matter you just need to see what was cut from WGS a few years ago), but that also goes into the other direction (see the requirements that were added to the very same quest).

In general I am not super fond of pure's behaviour to get requirements cut left and right to fit the game so they can do whatever content with their self-restricted account builds - both for restricting how creative a developer can get, but also by extremely diminishing reward space - just look at what Stu did to those movement abilities to make them available, he basically gave them to every account a few minutes after account creation - but it made sense to get rid of the magic requirement for family crest, since it wasn't a hard one - you usually are required to use those spells - unless you find a way around it - which basically the new text will tell you. And this in general - if abilities somehow can be substituted - should be taken into account. If a skill isn't actually featured in the quest - either regular or as a quest exclusive action that can be identified fittingly (even something as esoteric as defence for king's ransom, since you're acting as an attorney) - cut it. Improvements: Tooltip / (F2P) QoL v2
Quick Fixes: Invention

02-Apr-2023 20:45:50 - Last edited on 03-Apr-2023 05:40:48 by Rikornak

Rikornak
Oct Member 2013

Rikornak

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OS for instance put a quest released at a later date as the first quest of the zeah quest series - despite quite a few of those quests already existing, because it literally precedes the existing story lines. RS3 did the same thing with lore hunter, which existed for a long time, but just wasn't a quest. But in general the elder god series following the desperate times quest was a horrible mess, that the quest tree was fixed was needed - you just no longer could have justified it with - welp there's a cut after every 2 quests. No Shrike was absolutely right that had to be fixed. It must be possible to release pre and interludes. At worst they'll need to deactivate follow ups until those are completed, if newer self-restricted account builds feel penalized by this, if they can't complete a pre or interlude due to their restrictions - if new players feel treated unfairly due to this.

In general it's a good idea also, that you can't accept quests you couldn't complete for a very long time - since that basically is the behaviour for all quests released in the past 15 years or so - so why should only extremely old stuff be open that way only for players to crash into a wall then? Fairy Tale II is extremely curious for that matter, since the quest basically gives you its quest reward in the first few steps, while you'd only complete the quest itself much, much later. But generally - not a behaviour you'll see too often.

In general I would support, that if a quest was boostable in the past, that you could accept it in a reasonable range (with what you could achieve with a level adequate boost - so usually 5 levels or so). The text should also reflect this. Improvements: Tooltip / (F2P) QoL v2
Quick Fixes: Invention

02-Apr-2023 20:48:25 - Last edited on 03-Apr-2023 05:41:19 by Rikornak

Immortalized
Mar Member 2006

Immortalized

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an interesting take to allow some lower levels (-5) to start the quest. but I think we should restore the way it is, because quests can offer rewards during the quest rather than at the end like you say, and it's just not fair that an account who started the quest before requirements were flipped around should get to enjoy such reward if they never obtain the stats necessary, when another identical account cannot.

I generally agree that stats that have no relation to the quest need to be cut. for example, the tales of the arc miniquests have some stat reqs that not once even play in the quest itself. biggest example is Head of the Family with its damning 91 cooking requirement, unboostable. Guess what? You do not cook anything at all in this quest. It is a completely ridiculous lock out of content. I assume the developer thought the only way to get fish oil was 91 cooking, and yet you can acquire fish oil by various means if you actually train at the arc regularly.

fairy tale 2 is just one example, there's plenty more...

think of a quest like recipe for disaster. it requires 10 cooking to start, but is broken up into subquests. one subquest requires 70 cooking. following the spirit of this update, we should prevent you from even starting recipe for disaster unless you have 70 cooking. that would block your access to the gloves sold in the culionomancer's chest until you met these high level requirements. clearly that would NOT be the intention of the designer of this quest, and yet that has happened to literally every other quest in the game regardless of the original intent.

how about legends quest. you used to be able to start it without meeting any skill requirements. that gave you access to the kharazi jungle, a huge piece of land and content you did not have before. in turn that also gave you access to a fairy ring there. there are also clues requiring you to visit kharazi jungle. now you need all the stats to go there.

can go on, but point is obvious. Buy Zemomarks / Chromatic Partyhats safely here

03-Apr-2023 16:28:08

Rikornak
Oct Member 2013

Rikornak

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Fairy Tale II is the big exception in which you basically get a big reward (and basically the vast majority of what this quest even could offer) just for starting the quest - that never happened before in that form, that never happened again - which made sense in terms of storytelling, but was more than a weird decision in terms of gameplay - I did it a while ago in OS again - the meager xp reward remaining was no motiviation to get the skills up to complete that quest to be fair for a very long time. But do you know what - skilling herblore is no longer as awful as it historically was - not even closely - and it's not even that unlikely that a player able to complete Fairy Tale I will already either have the level required - or can at least get it within a couple of hours. Back then in 2006 - sure, it was both a huge effort for time and/or money. Unless you literally try to advocate for some herblore restricted meme account - dunno, possible I guess?

Yeah generally - legends' quest and random requirements: Family crest quest - no relation at all neither in terms of gameplay, nor story - and that random quest requirement back then prevented doing that quest in OS league 2, since you only were able to unlock 3 additional areas and required 4 for said quest - you basically were forced to unlock kandarin + fremmenik lands to access the guild. Mildly sure it has more stuff that doesn't belong there, but that quest requirement kept in my mind for that specific issue. But also in here again: It's not really hard to get the skills completed from heroes' quest onwards - we are no longer in 2004 - it's a more than deliberate decision to not get them in order to unlock the jungle. And it's not like you'd suddenly ruin a account, you wouldn't have ruined back then. Improvements: Tooltip / (F2P) QoL v2
Quick Fixes: Invention

03-Apr-2023 19:17:27 - Last edited on 03-Apr-2023 19:31:12 by Rikornak

Rikornak
Oct Member 2013

Rikornak

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RfD really isn't a good example, since you just outright ignored the fact that it - alongside with DoS - as the now disfunct 'special' quests does not work like any other quest would - since you literally said it - it is composed in sub quests, which basically are different stories targeting players of different levels with both requirements and rewards.

A more logical approach would be splitting it into actual individual quests, since what exactly would be the difference to a quest series that is organized in 1 -> 2A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H (with each of them having different pre-requisites) -> 3 by now? Maybe they should do that, since quest difficulties are no longer a thing. And it's certainly better visible, than keeping that relic for a difficulty system that does no longer exist.

But in here again - if newer restricted account builds feel unfairly disadvantaged they simply could disable quest rewards for existing ones no longer meeting the requirements. Nasroths' stat wipe basically works the same way. You wipe your stats and you lose everything related to quests or content needing those stats. Not ideal, but it probably would be fairer.

And yeah - stu generally is going through old quests to adjust requirements for instance - be it ones that never made sense (I really wouldn't want to go through all that stuff for that matter) or ones that potentially are not even always needed. What lies below once had had a hard requirement of 42 mining - it somewhen was changed to a recommendation, since it's only needed for one of multiple solutions. I am sure there are other quests that feature something similiar - and for that matter how quests behave should be consistent - not by restoring some RSC mechanic, that was abolished for good reasons. Improvements: Tooltip / (F2P) QoL v2
Quick Fixes: Invention

03-Apr-2023 19:22:54 - Last edited on 03-Apr-2023 19:38:46 by Rikornak

Immortalized
Mar Member 2006

Immortalized

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RFD is a great example of the general issue. It is the greatest proof that Jagex wants you to be able to start a story, even if you cannot necessarily complete the entire story yet. Just because they broke it up into subquests does not detract from it, the entire ordeal is still fundamentally one long quest. What's more is you can boost for RFD, or at least you used to be able to, I have no idea if that is possible now but would be a great thing for someone to confirm.

Just because you can level skills up easier now does not make it ok. One of the easiest ways to level up is to use your credit card and buy a bunch of keys on an xp lamp promo. Does that mean it's ok to remove boosting?

I think the introduction of pulse cores is probably what might have caused this update. Pulse cores are broken content in my opinion. Being able to boost +11 is way beyond what was ever possible outside of herblore potions (which are usually for combat, but now we have things like extreme invention, so you could argue otherwise today).

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A more logical approach would be splitting it into actual individual quests, since what exactly would be the difference to a quest series that is organized in 1 -> 2A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H -> 3 by now? Maybe they should do that, since quest difficulties are no longer a thing. I would support splitting quests up but it's also a redundant effort. Just let players start the quest when they want to and let them get blocked when they hit the skill requirement they do not have. Or let them dunk a pulse core and bypass it. Just blocking them from starting is nonsense especially when the quest itself can be completed without the skill requirement (eg Chronozon via DTD).

Locked content in this game is fuzzy and inconsistent. Ironmen are locked due to real requirements to obtain items they cannot simply trade. But they otherwise have access to content up to that point. Same should be for quests, as they originally were. Buy Zemomarks / Chromatic Partyhats safely here

03-Apr-2023 19:35:38

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