Old School Runescape Dev Tracker
I voted no. I'd love to see a new skill added to the game but with Warding, all I saw was an absolute ton of dead content on release. It was pretty much a whole skill to bridge the mage armour gaps.
That’s totally fair and I respect your opinion. Out of curiosity though, what do you deem as dead content?
Highly doubt they'd give another skill the amount of design treatment and tweaking as Warding again because that's a ton of time, effort, and money to pour into something that still probably won't pass.
One of the great learnings from this process was consistently iterating on player feedback and improving the design over a period of time. Building content with players, especially if that content is causing division within the community, is exactly what we should do.
Oh of course - and the collaborative effort on Warding was a testament to the investment that your team had in trying to bring this skill to OSRS in its best possible form.
That said, how does the result of this poll affect future resource allocation decisions knowing that despite a heavy investment of time, money, and effort on the part of you the developers there would still be a substantial chance that the skill proposal wouldn't pass? That's really the point I was trying to get at in my post.
Great question!
The result of this poll will not change how we approach conversations with players across sensitive subjects. Our aim should always be to involve the community early in discussions about the vision of OSRS as a game, where we want to go in the future and how we retain the integrity of what makes Old School, well, Old School!
The fact that a skill such as Sailing was polled which had the possibility to do the skill with my friends. Something we could all go out and do together, make money, fight "bosses", explore areas and have a good time. I don't think Warding offered this and that's why I voted no. I want a new skill, but not Warding.
That’s not quite what I was asking as I’ve seen many reasons why players don’t specifically want Warding, but thanks your insight! I don’t dispute that Warding shares a little too many aspects with other skills in its mundanity. I must say I was surprised to hear most players dislike the current skills we have in game, but at least we’ve found something out! A production skill isn’t what is wanted.
Why does Sailing need to be a skill? That’s what I find myself asking. It would make a great minigame - I’m sure of that - but what about it does it share with other skills? They’re generally a simple action repeated over and over.
The new items/enhancements that Warding introduced to the game all felt like dead conent to me. I'll just copy and paste my post from the last Blog, where I went over the rewards for training Warding, which I just couldn't see their value. Therefore I had no interest in the skill and it seemed dead content to me. I also suggested rewards for training Warding that personally interested me and seemed useful. If Warding had useful and enticing rewards/benefits for training it then I would vote yes.
Some cool effect ideas here, and I myself have suggested the effect of lowering Standard Spellbook combat spells by 1 tick a few times via a new ring.
The problem I have here with these set effects, is that they all require a helmet, that means no Slayer/PvM and no Castle Wars. Where would we use these set effects? The Thaumaturge effect is something I have wanted in the game forever, but not bound to an entire armor set.
And we aren't taking Pado's set to go fight K'ril, Sire, Skotos or Cerberus... I guess the only thing it could be good for is Barraging an Abyssal Demon task?
If I can't see uses for the new items that Warding brings to the game then I'd have to vote no.
I don't think Warding should stop at creating Magical armors, we should be able to improve certain Magical staves and other items.
Using a high Warding level we should be able to upgrade the Thammarons Scepter giving it a BUILT-IN spell using the same animation as the Undead Druids in Forthos Dungeon (or a new unique animation). This could bring the Scepter up in power/value to make it more on the level of the Craw's Bow and Viggora's Chainmace.
Using a high Warding level we should be able to merge the Void Knight Mace and the Staff of the Dead to create the Staff of Balance, giving it the same stats as Staff of Light except with the ability to auto-cast Claws of Guthix.
Using a high Warding level we should be able to upgrade our Imbued God Cape giving it a "Charge" effect so we don't need to recast the spell every 6 minutes.
Using a high Warding level we should be able to upgrade the Seers Ring giving it a special effect, the Thaumaturge effect. This could bring the Seers ring up in power/value to make it more on the level of the Berserker Ring and Archers Ring.
Now onto things that I like! I do like the idea of having all of the Elemental tomes. I like the Large Rune Pouch very much, I often find myself needing 4 Rune slots rather than 3. I really like the Fused Rune Pouch, this should make Runecrafting much less tedious to train, however I hate that we need 85 Runecrafting to make it, I feel like 70 is more than enough.
‘Dead content to me’ is what I’m not understanding. Just because you don’t personally have a use for a thing mean that it’s dead content, there are other players playing the game too of widely varying levels.
As for making things useful, well, the first blog was filled with quite useful items, but they were met with incredible negativity. Perhaps if they were nerfed they may work, but it’s doubtful now they’ve been associated with Warding :P
As for the faster elemental spells on a ring - that’s a difficult thing to get to pass! Mixed with the tome of fire, it would be devastating, so that (if reduced to a single item) would need to be something wielded in the offhand slot. Something like a new book I can see working.
Thanks for the insight, it’s good to know there are a few redeemable ideas that may yet be salvaged (once the hubbub has died down, of course...)
From what I've seen, I think players want to take the "simple action repeated over and over" less directly in future skills. Sailing and Dungeoneering both have repetition in a similar way to Slayer; you can summarize Slayer with "you do a task, then you do another" much like Dungeoneering is "you clear a floor and kill the boss, then you do another". But while there is a sort of repetition, the repetition isn't as frequent as "you mine a rock, then you mine another rock" or "you put an orb on a staff, then you put an orb on another staff"; in the time you clear a dungeon or complete a slayer task, you would have mined 100s or rocks or made 100s of battlestaves.
In addition, each dungeon and task can differ enough from the previous to make it feel less repetitious even if it is the same general concept repeating. With Sailing, I think players are looking for a similar experience to those. Some versions of the skill can be directly compared to those repeating cycles; something like "you set out to explore the open sea for treasure and challenges, then you do it again". Also, for what it is worth, I believe GentleTractors old pitch did have a more standard repetitive action with mapmaking.
I understand that, but completing a floor of a dungeon is hardly a simple action, it’s hundreds of different skill actions all strung together. What I don’t understand is why players want a minigame labelled as a skill when we can just make a minigame instead.
Imagine if LMS was a skill, I can’t imagine that being received well. Players just want PvM as a skill and that’s confusing to me, although I understand why. I know that’s a contradiction 😆
If the repetitive action is ‘mapmaking’, that skill isn’t sailing, it’s mapmaking.
Either way, we’ve polled a support skill, then a minigame skill and finally a production skill. I’m doubting a gathering skill would be more interesting and a combat skill would be... poorly received. Unsure what we can do other than another minigame skill, however much I disagree :P
As for the faster elemental spells on a ring - that’s a difficult thing to get to pass! Mixed with the tome of fire, it would be devastating, so that (if reduced to a single item) would need to be something wielded in the offhand slot. Something like a new book I can see working.
What about a 2H Staff instead? It would limit your choice of staff, but it may be a neater way to go about it than another book. With a book, it feels like it would too directly try to rival the Tome of Fire. But perhaps if we did see an Elemental Staff from merging all the combo staves, in addition to providing all elemental runes and giving the Smoke Staves 10% Accuracy and Damage, it could make Elemental Spells cast a speed quicker at the cost of being 2H?
Interesting, that could also work! Unsure about offering all elemental runes though as it would devalue many things :P
While you’re here and gathering feedback, my 2 cents:
Magic is the least used combat style due to both the cost of runes, and the limited monsters/bosses it’s actually useful against. As a mid-high level player, the only places I use magic are Zulrah, bursting dust devils/nechs during slayer, and barrows. In the case of the latter two, magic is only viable because the monsters have such low magic level you’ll pretty much never splash, and you’re better off using melee/prayer armor since there’s no need for magic accuracy.
Since I almost never care about magic accuracy, a skill based around crafting equipment for it feels like a significant effort towards content that would be used so infrequently. If magic was in a better spot, I’d be more excited about warding.
Even disregarding the state of magic, I don’t see the tank oriented sets ever being useful. Low level players never use splitbark/lunar/skeletal over alternatives now, so I don’t think higher level players that are consistently prioritizing dps over survivability would be enticed to use new sets just because they’re there.
It’s a shame the work went to waste, but I didn’t see either leveling the skill or the rewards as exciting content and would’ve preferred to see the dev effort elsewhere.
Fair enough, entirely understandable :)
The reason those sets aren’t used is also because they fail in everything, they have bad magic stats and poor defences. I suppose there’s a bigger question about magics usefulness (especially accuracy) but the whole idea of the skill was to make it a more useful combat style, which would’ve required prototyping, which would require it passing a poll.
Thanks for your feedback!
Also, I really don't think Thaumaturge effect will be a hard thing to get to pass honestly. Everybody knows magic is by far the weakest of the combat triangle in terms of PvM(not only the weakest, but super expensive) and even changing the attack speed to 4 ticks on the Standard spellbook would still have it being weaker than Ranged and Melee.
But this would REALLY spice it up! This Thamaturge effect is something you should push on imo.
Definitely my favourite part of the design! I can see it passing the 75% mark if it isn’t tied with Warding and can’t be combined with the tomes damage bonus.
You could say the same for Slayer being more of a complex action than a simple action, especially if you consider say a Hydra Task with the boss. Though I would agree that dungeoneering floors can be fairly complex, but other skills wouldn't need to be that level of complexity.
I think it depends on where you draw the line of minigame. I'd say it has to do more with how you present the content than the core mechanics. For example, if Dungeoneering didn't earn reward tokens with all its rewards in a reward shop and it was trained in multiple locations round the world instead of just one central location, it would feel a lot less like a minigame even if it was still a game within a game in a sense. Slayer is pretty close to a minigame with how its reward points and shop work; just remove the levels and make the new monsters unlock with points after X tasks and it could be a minigame. Yet despite this, it still works pretty well as a skill.
As for why players may rather that style of content as a skill rather than a minigame, I think it has to do with progression. With the above example, you could imagine how Slayer could work as a minigame, but doing 300 tasks and spending 1K points to unlock Abyssal Demons wouldn't be nearly as good as the current system. You couldn't boost creatures since they wouldn't be tied to levels. And instead of factoring tasks by quick points, profit, and exp, you'd only have quick points and profit. It is also a lot easier to create depth with 99 levels as opposed to a minigame reward shop. For example, if Sailing were to have ship upgrades, do you think a Minigame would offer as many as a Skill and as meaningful as a progression to unlock them? And ironically, I think one of the criticisms of Warding is why players may prefer Sailing or such as a skill than a minigame; skills tend to tie into the wider game while minigames tend to stand alone. While that may be a negative for gameplay you dislike, it can be a positive for gameplay you do like.
Anyway, upcoming surveys will likely be able to answer it better than I can. But I wouldn't say the repetitive action has to solely define the skill if it posseed other actions that were more dominant. Also, you could try another support skill that isn't minigame-like... Both Artisan and Sailing kinda fall in that camp, though I doubt another Agility or Thieving would go down great either.
I think slayer is riding the line personally because, as you said, you do multiple repetitive actions before getting a chunk of xp and potentially some points to spend in a shop. It’s still far fewer actions than dungeoneering though. Perhaps if xp was slowly gained throughout the dungeon, the rewards were more integrated with the content and it wasn’t done in a single hub, it may seem more fitting.
I think the surveys will certainly help guide our future plans for a new skill, that’s for sure :) as always, it’s great discussing things with you! Have a good night.
It probably would devalue some things, but not many are coming to mind. Also, I should clarify that by "merging all the combo staves" I meant require Lava, Steam, Mud, Dust, Mist, and Smoke Staves to make it, probably with some new additional item. The Combo Staves wouldn't be devalued since they are required to make it. The Tome of Fire would lose a bit of utility since it can be used with Combo Staves to give 3 of 4 Runes, but its buff to fire spells keeps it more than relevant. And in most situations, a Dust, Mist, or Mud Staff with the Tome of Fire would cover all the spells you need anyway.
Ah, I see what you mean! That makes sense :)