Sy_Accursed

Concepts? What did we see, I wasn't here for that :P They threw up some concept art at runefest

I doubt agility will happen any time soon. Construction will be next, it was meant to be 2013 and we saw concepts etc for it. Summoning, Mine/Smith and Agility have all just been mentioned with no concepts etc yet. But mods have been talking about a lot of mine/smith details on rsof so that seems likely to be apporaching dev. I doubt we'll see summ and agile this year, maybe not even next year.

'Implement it in some form' hopefully means it won't be an ability as that is a bit pointless and instead we are supplied with a 'macro' system like many actionbar combat games have where you can build routines of abilities to auto-run in combat. I certainly like the part about having it partially overridable though - would be good for example for BoE boss so you can butt in with a stun or for airut so you can butt in with rapid fire or flurry.

I'm not entirely sure I agree with this... what's so bad about it? Making items that come from ports be able to upgrade other weapons etc sounds like a good idea to me. With it coming from ports it means there's nothing really new added into the game as like a drop, and its untradeable so you can only DIY... It's not that much of a "grind" really as all you do is send ships out and then wait for them to come back... plus you could add all sorts of nuances to customize each player's weapons to whatever they like... How would this be bad? It's bad when it involves (tradeable) items that should be useful at lower levels, because they essentially stop being low-level items. Like Dragon -> Ascension crossbows: being used as a component is going to keep them out of the price range of everyone with 60 ranged, they may as well not exist for that tier. So suggesting it was a misstep on my part. While I'm a fan of ensuring that you don't just throw away your old gear when you've outgrown it, the way Runescape's market works makes it more than a bit unfeasible... Would it work better with unique quest items like the Gadderhammer or Shadow Sword? I think the logical way would require only self made items opposed to dropped or bought items. And have them have their limits eg a lvl 10 bronze item can never exceed a lvl 10 iron and so on and so forth - ensures you still need to move up the tiers but adds some longevity to gear

I'd disagree with a lot of your points there. 1) To my understanding most of HLF were quite against prestige, it is not an idea that particularly came from listening to them 2) Ports being 90+ is not a bad thing, yes much content should be open to all but we also need high end content; much of the game is sorely lacking in this department. Ports was a brilliant addition to help fixt his. 3) A string of high-level bosses to showcase new combat? Perhaps. But they are hardly exclusive. KK and QBD showcase eoc quite well and are easily dealt with by much lower levels. Equally the Ascension dungeon and Airut do a reasonable job at showing it off to those not so pvm inclined. Not to mention the mole rework mere weeks away specifically catering to lower levels. I'd agree we could do with a few more low end bosses to accompany the mole, but I hardly think they are being entirely exclusionary with showing off eoc, just Vorago and Rise of The Six out of 6 eoc coded monster/bosses fall in to that category. Of course the balance of drops and such is another matter entirely, but that is not really the point in question here.

One thing they could really change is when you try enter a friends chat too many times and it's full you get banned from trying to enter it...what's the deal with that? They should just flat out implement a lobby-style queue system really. Try to enter > fc is full > you are x place in line to enter.

It's not even really a Jagex thing is a flat out dev thing, especially a dev thing in an already massive game where projects are coded concurrently. Tech issues, road blocks and the need to shift dev focus can happen at the drop of a hat. I mean heck they even put a disclaimer on the BTS articles every month now saying that it is only a plan and that it is subject to change, yet people still go mental over the fact updates are 'delayed' when a ballpark many months away release estimate gets changed.

5k cap is only 2k dmg taken thts like 1 hit for the high end with added standing around stunned for like 4 more seconds for no reason, especially since in top end armour rejuvenation and guthix's blessing heal near the same with like 0 of the downsides. Or you could just eat like 2 rocktails for the same effect in less time. A flat cap is stupidly biased imo should be set as like 80%-90% of max lp so it scales with the user and has a pretty decent health return for the damage taken whilst stunned no matter what your gear/level. It'd still be a gamle, afterall you are risking 6 second stun, but the reward would actually be worth the risk.

No. Simply no. It is transparently obvious unless you're in some alternate universe with an alternate Runescape and alternate Jagex, that dozens and dozens of updates are being delayed, the quality and quantity of updates per month has drastically declined, and longstanding and glaring problems are being ignored month after month. They are obviously hideously incompetent or they are cutting development time, or possibly both. I can't take anyone seriously who tries to dispute the above, I simply can't. I can't take anyone seriously who cites delays as 'proof' of cutting dev costs when they have quite openly and proveably expanded the dev team and added new, costly, factors in to parts of their development. Not to mention 'dozens' is a huge overstatement we've had about 3-4 last minute delays in the year the rest of the 'delays' have simply been the shifting of estimated completions as development progress - people taking such dates too literally and getting all 'omg wtf jagex delays waa waaa' is precisely why Jagex tries to avoid giving us such dates historically. Delays happen no matter what budget you throw at stuff, some of the biggest budget games in the world have faced delays due to last minute technical issues isn't doesn't prove a thing about dev costs. Equally content decline in quality and quantity is entirely unproven - for one thing we've still had our update every week but 1 each month quantity other than 1 or 2 instances of delay. As for quality it is entirely subjective, for me most of their updates have been of great quality. Quests in particular have raised the bar this year, as have boss battles. Yes there are longterm well known issues, but this is nothing new Runescape has always had such issues so it proves nothing about declining costs; the fact they have very recently got their 'ninja team' to start purposefully addressing these issues says more about their actions and dev than the fact these issues exist when that has been the status quo for the past decade of the game.

A ring and a cape no-one cares about... unless you fall in to the crowd that has the logic to realise all existing capes and rings, despite having no level reqs have stats akin to MUCH lower lvl items, therefore logic would dictate the new ring and cape have a high chance of being best in-game, heck they even stand a chance of being substantially better than existing options. People are all to happy to throw negativity on something before its even out despite the fact the parameters we have for it suggest it is quite likely to be pretty good. Also console games and mmorpgs are a very different market, most of the mmorpgs require much more time than the 15 hour console servings for the main campaign. Equally yes many won't complete those console games, but just as many will milk them to 100% with every ounce of side content and achievement going. Just because one part of the market does something does not mean the other part should be entirely ignored. Yes there are mmorpgs designed for you fly through to the end-game and be done, but there are others that are not; both serve a different market. Also it is utter nonsense to claim they are cutting dev costs they have actively expanded the team and added in more high-end features (orchestral musics and voice acting); there is no question on that matter we've seen it happen they are spending more on dev than ever before. I'd also disagree with the idea they aren't at least trying to do things for player retention - they have focused on high level content pretty solidly for a whole year and are doing so more in 2014 (apprently) and decided to make their 'ninja team' popular fixes a more regular fixture. Both of these moves are clearly catered towards player retention

Maybe that is what they should do? Start focusing on updates one/two at a time and bang them out with a high regard for quality instead of stretching everything/everyone so thin that we get stuff like Birth Right of the Dwarves? A slower update cycle would translate into higher quality content both in terms of game play and Q/A Testing. In this context focussing on the two would do nothing for quality. Doing two big updates in tandem thus making them both twice as long or doing both in the shorter timeframe but doing nothing else would do nothing to their quality. Either way they both get the same amount of dev budget, it's just a difference of two big projects deving for 6 months with most of the staff on them or 2 big projects devving for 12 months with around half the staff on them. As for the idea of a slower update cycle I disagree, it's not like most of the updates we get aren't good quality updates now and trying to slow the update cycle will just cause people to rage and kill off one of the factors that still makes runescape a dynamic and unique experience compared to most other big mmorpgs.

Does it really count as delayed (from our perspective) when we were never given an expected time frame in the first place?

I'm happy they are doing it but it's a bit of a meh fix in my book. The helms stats should be set to scale either with your defence lvl or to the level of the body armour worn. Their way just leaves the top end players with a helm that whilst better is still a fair bit worse than their normal gear and for the midrange lvls has the same issue.

Indeed it is rather shocking how they can't find much dev time at all for updates for people who don't pay their server upkeep, utility or staff costs...it's almost as if they are trying to please the people who earn them profit and afford them continued employment. Because not making sure new players have a good first impression of the game is great for the game's longterm health, am I right? This argument was okay in 2006 when every multiplayer game required a subscription except for Runescape. It isn't now, when subscription MMOs are dying (If not already dead) and the industry standard is freemium. Because there is so little to do in free to play that Jagex needs to regularly update it, am I right? The people who constantly whine here about a lack of free to play updates aren't worried about newcomers, they're freeloaders looking for more free stuff. That's fine, don't expect Jagex to listen or care about the opinions of the "pure f2p 4 lyfe" crowd. Yeah its not like f2p gets absolutley nothing they tend to get 2 or 3 updates a year that are actual new content, plus all the graphics and reworks and events that filter through to f2p as well. Heck half their stuff has had more updates and reworks and reskins to it than 90% of the members world has ever seen combined. So what if 1 month has nothing for them? They already have a massive demo to play plus the ongoing world event content.

Indeed it is rather shocking how they can't find much dev time at all for updates for people who don't pay their server upkeep, utility or staff costs...it's almost as if they are trying to please the people who earn them profit and afford them continued employment.

Both aren't at the same time because there are limits to human capability and dev budgets, clearly they have planned out their dev budget in such a way that allows 1 to have the resources necessary for a july/august release whilst the other while likely still in dev can't have that many resources until later on. They could do both, but two such big updates in such a short time frame would mean waving goodbye to nearly every other update planned in the dev budget for that time period - so they aren't doing that. For both to come out at the slated july/august makr they would've needed to have been in tandem dev since like august this year or we'd be waiting til 2015 opposed to 2014.

Interesting list, clearly been thought through in more detail than I had really considered. Hopefully, as it was a response to Mod Jack's question in the first place they actually take heed; I mean how much coding can it really take to copy and paste the flashback message thing on to more quests? Though we can hope they replace it with something more substantial later on.

I'd hope they have made them t80 (there is a tiny bit of wiggle room in the way they worded it, not much but its there), but given jagex logic... I mean t80 would make sense it'd give us a complete set for the t80 tier (not complete in the sense of 2h and dw options, but all the weaknesses covered at least) T85 would just leave us with a hole in t80 still and begin a whole new weapon tier... But anyway all in all sounds like a good month; I wonder if the seafaring 'fix' made it in to this ports update? The fix being equalising at least the last hulls and adding in a ram/figurehead equivalent for seafaring allowing those missions to be brought on par with the rest.

They certainly could've made the flashback thing more dramatic/clear. I agree there, but I don't think they have missed that many that ought to be flashbacks now or are flashbacks when they needn't be. Certainly some quests that link to 5th age quests aren't 5th age quests that perhaps you could argue ought to be, but I can't think of any such that cause an actual plot/continuity issue with when events occurred instead they are just arbitrary reqs to do with game mechanics (eg priest in peril being on most mory stuff due to the old need for entry, restless ghost being on stuff with a ghost to talk to etc.). I mean it's not like the list of 5th age quests is extensive you just have the mahjaratt quests, the cave goblin quests, the world wakes and the char one and missing my mummy and tail of two cats. Tail of Two cats is problematic because it of course follows on from Icthalrin's Little Helper storywise which follows on from the two Ozan quests and of course Missing My Mummy shares similar reqs (plus the golem). That line is a bit of a mess; storywise I don't see any reason why those two need to be 5th age and equally storywise theres no reason icthalrin and the golem and the ozan 2 can't be fifth age. They require Gertrude's cat by proxy as well but as that is a game mechanic req opposed to a story req I don't view that as an issue - lore wise there's no reason we can't have a cat pre-Gertrude's cat it is instead just a game function requirement. It probably would've made a lot more sense if they had simply flat out applied the 5th age banner to every quest that existed at the time (plus the two ozan quests later on due to where they fall storywise), but chronologically I don't see many issues at all with those labelled vs those not.

That's the problem with an mmo where a game constanly evolves as opposed to a regular game where sequels are launched after a certain amount of time to continue on the story. The story/lore of Runescape has become so complex that only the experienced players have a clear understanding of what comes before an what comes after 'the world wakes'. implementing a big change (5th age -> 6th age) in a regular game is quite easy. implementing the same change in an mmo is practicly impossible due to the ever changing player base. (tl:dr : new players have a very hard time understanding the story/lore of runescape.) I don't think anyone with half a brain has trouble understanding what comes after the world wakes - everything that comes before outright tells you it is a flashback of the 5th age before it lets you begin the quest. If anything more experienced players have a harder time placing these events precisely because we already did them and thus only know they are 5th age from an arbitrary list jagex gave us not from memory or experience of playing the quest in the frame of a flashback. Also I think new players get it much easier than experienced players ever did as Jagex are quite consciously putting the lore front and centre and simplifying things. In recent months players can learn from a single quest lore details that it took us experienced players like 15 different quests, 3 easter eggs, 5 mod osbourne faqs/interviews and a sprinkling of logic based joining together to work out.

2nd age not 3rd. That is why it is special - virtually nothing from 1st and 2nd age still remains due to the events of the 3rd age.

That could work, but I think they are too smart to try it. It's one thing making a story arc leap the 5th-6th age boundary allowing the later parts to not require the early parts to play when it is one of the grander stories spread across a number of quest lines; but to do it with a single coherent a-b quest line I think they'd be hit in the face with masses of rage if the finale suddenly did not require all the preamble. To me there are only 2 logical routes: 1) Elf series is entirely sixth age with the finale unlocking the city - essentially keep it simple son. 2) Elf series is entirely fifth age with the finale 'saving' the city - opens up the option for Jagex to open the city (and elf lands) for all and thus allow Seren to get more in the mix for sixth age story and maintains the story concept of the elf series; just played in flashback.

I think it will be gotten from such things...but only after Jagex make the entire elf series a flashback 5th age quest line so we can spend a few months listening to npcs allude to how we saved them before we actually get to play the saving of the city.

It was only a couple of months ago Osbourne mentioned reading mod dylan's notes on the rest of EW and that it was really fleshed out - seems like a project that can quite easily be handed off to another jmod with little to no detriment or lost direction to the series.

^ Of course my point was mainly that requirements don't make a hub high-level, the content there does. And equally the quest series won't make it high level either (if needed) because to be high level does not mean you are a quester and, in equal measure, the elf series does not require high levels to complete.