Og Blog: Evolution of Combat

[Lt_Wolfe]

Hi all,

 

Im sure that, by now, all of you who are reading this Og Blog have heard that we are working on a brand new combat system. Over my 9 years at Jagex, there have been plenty of things that weve just wanted to pull out and rebuild from the ground up, but its always been easier to invent new things than to go back and fix older content, especially when dealing with something thats integral to the game that you guys know and love. You deserve the best, though, so were taking the bold(and scary!) step of starting again and designing a system thatll take RuneScape charging forward teeth bared and scimmies brandished!

 

With a strong desire to add new equipment and combat abilities to the high-level parts of the game, and a team of amazing developers clamouring to take on the challenge, weve got something were very proud of. In fact, its almost ready for our best and toughest reviewers - you - to put it through its paces. So, whats it all about? Well, for now Id like to list the challenges we have set ourselves to overcome, and in later blogs from me and the team well be explaining how weve met them:

 

Refocus combat to be more about player skill - Combat should be an opportunity for you to use your skills as a player. That means making it more about mastering techniques, rather than navigating interfaces at speed.

 

Encourage variety in combat equipment - We want you to be thinking carefully about the equipment you choose for any given situation, tweaking and making alterations according to your enemys strengths and weaknesses. The problem is, at the moment, there aren't many reasons to change from your favourite weapons or armour. Wed like to give you those reasons.

 

Make it fun! - Theres room in combat for situations that require a greater deal of attention and skill to overcome, hopefully making it more fun. In these situations, you'll be rewarded for your efforts with more XP. In-game combat - particularly training on standard enemies - currently involves clicking on a creature and waiting. We'll do a whole lot more to make these situations challenging, rewarding and - ultimately - more fun.

 

Make it easier to access - Several combat options (special attacks, combat styles, spellbooks) are tucked away, hard to access, or on various different interfaces, so were planning to bring all those options together.

 

Give rangers and mages a fighting chance The combat triangle can be less of a triangle and more of a pancake flat and a little out of shape - with melee dominant in training and PvP situations. Lets put rangers and mages firmly back on that triangle.

 

Fill the gaps in existing equipment tiers Weve got an opportunity with the Evolution of Combat to plug holes in the tiers of combat equipment. Magic 'armour' is rare, and generally caters for a small level bracket, while melee and ranger sets are missing gloves, boots, etc.

 

Encourage challenging fights - Wed like the most challenging, rewarding and fun creatures to also be the most efficient creatures to fight. At the moment, it can seem more efficient to train on creatures that deal little damage and go down without a fight.

 

Fix the relationship between Defence, life points and damage outputs Your ability to heal damage, through food or similar mechanics, should be comparable to how much damage you receive. Thats not quite true at the moment, and wed like to address that.

 

Allow players combat levels to truly represent their ability The combat level calculator is complicated and encourages players to not train certain skills in an attempt to create a false impression of their damage potential (pures).

 

Simplify the code and balancing We want to add more high-level (85+) equipment to the game, but the existing system can make this extremely difficult. Flexibility would allow us to even add more combat styles in the future.

 

Be brave, but be traditional where possible - We are a game with a proud heritage and a player base with clear expectations of the game they want to play. We dont want to make a game that we cant even recognise anymore.

 

Of course, thats just the tip of the iceberg, but youll have to wait a little longer to hear full details of what we have in store for you combat fans. I know there are several big pieces of news that will excite you all!

 

No doubt, some of you are apprehensive what were planning to do. After all, its a game many of us have played for 10 years or more, and this is the biggest, most fundamental change in its history. As always, we only change things because we truly believe they need to be changed; every single update has strong reasons to exist, and this is no exception. With your feedback and your help, though, we can make this the best update yet, and one thats as much yours as it is ours.

 

During the Beta, we will be on the forums every single day, reading your posts and starting conversations with those of you pushing the combat system to its limits. Even though we have a team full of experts with thousands of game hours between them and more 99s than you could shake a completionists cape at, we realise that we cant cover everything, and thats where you come in. Between us, we can make an update thats fantastic for everybody!

 

See you in the Beta worlds I'll be the one getting pwned. In the meantime, enjoy the QBD!

 

Mod Mark (Og)

RuneScape Lead Designer

[Lt_Wolfe]

Allow players combat levels to truly represent their ability The combat level calculator is complicated and encourages players to not train certain skills in an attempt to create a false impression of their damage potential (pures).

Anybody else really interested in how they're going to change pures and their combat levels? I have a defense pure, and this could really mess me up.

[muggiwhplar]

They made it sound like you're just gonna be screwed if your stats aren't very balanced. Defense is almost mandatory to survive apparently

[Lt_Wolfe]

That's what I'm thinking. But on the other hand, they have to know they have a huge pure community... they wouldn't want to throw that away so easily. It'll be interesting to see how they change the formula.

[Mercifull]

The age of the pure is dead. Long live defence :D

[brunokiller]

What ages of pures? Mains have always been able to defeat pures.

[Sy_Accursed]

'they wouldn't throw that away' lol

 

Yeah that's the attitude Jagex has I mean it's not like every time pures whine about not being able to do certain quests etc for cmb gear due to reqs/rewards or certain bosses Jagex has just come back and said 'we aim the game at players who train everything, if you limit yourself it's your problem'

 

Main bit that intrigued me is the comments about combat level being reworked so you can't hide your true power. I'm guessing strength is going to be foregrounded a bit with defence and attack probably factoring in a bit less.

 

A move I'd personally like to see is remove attack from the melee skill spectrum a bit, make it so that it's like:

str, mage, range - dictate the damage potential for their respective classes.

att - dictate accuracy for all 3.

 

Would certainly allow them to un-hide power in the combat formula and make it so that all 3 classes can reach max combat (opposed to mage n range comb lvls capping out lower than melee)

[999134]

lawl if that happens, summoning tanks/pures becoming even more stupid.

[Platinum_Myr]

It really depends on what they've modified. I would love if attack affected all combat styles (and maybe renamed to accuracy) and then the main skill affect DPS and what weapons of that skill you could use (requires moving all requirements of attack onto strength). This would balance out the skills in a new way because attack is now the thing determining accuracy instead of mage and range also doing that, (or in addition.) There is a lot of things they have to account for that could be very difficult.

[Logdotzip]

Pures were never really good, they were designed to take on low-level mains, and other pures., who never dropped much good shit anyways. Congrats on your full adamant and d scim, or on your initiate and g maul.

 

Though I wish a mod would combine all these threads into one, there's like 8 combat threads going on.

[la la la]

Pures were never really good, they were designed to take on low-level mains, and other pures., who never dropped much good shit anyways. Congrats on your full adamant and d scim, or on your initiate and g maul.

I've always thought pures fighting pures was silly. Maxed combat is obviously the way to go now.

[stonewall337]

Making harder fights more efficient? I like. I'd prefer there to be something genuinely difficult in RS, not just hard because you need to have good gear or because the fight requires stupid tactics (Nex cough).

[Jolletzu]

Cool how mod mark started to npc name OG which was based on him lol