27 Oct 2014 - Broken Home & Guthixian Caches

[helring]

I'm not a programmer/coder, so I don't know the ins and outs. But is it really that time consuming to add a book with words to the game?

 

I mean, they obviously have a book template and font for every book in the game - wouldn't it simply be a case of pasting or typing the text onto the template? That would take like, what, 20 minutes at most?

 

Rediculous that they have a 'lore book budget'.

 

Its not a "lore book budget" its a translation budget. Everything they write in-game needs time to be translated and coded into the other languages that runescape is available to play in (With Spanish going away, there's still French, German and Portuguese). They probably only have a couple devs that do the translations.

[helring]

So, make a small and very delicious sandwich in a short enough of time, with enough time and care taken to ensure it is a superb sandwich, or, decide to make a huge dinner for twenty in the same amount of time, but with several things not fully cooked, and bringing back the still molten chocolate cake at the end and say "THIS IS EXTRA!!!"

 

Bad decision. Bad leadership decisions.

 

I disagree, I think the quest turned out really well, regardless. I've never really considered horror games as something that needs a full explanation for every little thing. It was enjoyable to me as a puzzle quest without any combat, which we don't get nearly enough of. I'd rather have a decent sized quest with a few things that can be filled in later by player theory or dev questions than a small throwaway quest thats too short and boring.

[Sy_Accursed]

 

So, make a small and very delicious sandwich in a short enough of time, with enough time and care taken to ensure it is a superb sandwich, or, decide to make a huge dinner for twenty in the same amount of time, but with several things not fully cooked, and bringing back the still molten chocolate cake at the end and say "THIS IS EXTRA!!!"

 

Bad decision. Bad leadership decisions.

 

I disagree, I think the quest turned out really well, regardless. I've never really considered horror games as something that needs a full explanation for every little thing. It was enjoyable to me as a puzzle quest without any combat, which we don't get nearly enough of. I'd rather have a decent sized quest with a few things that can be filled in later by player theory or dev questions than a small throwaway quest thats too short and boring.

 

 

The thing is though no-one is asking for explanation for every little thing or saying that it wasn't a good quest.

 

There's a difference between leaving a few mysterious details untold to leave questions like the asylum register, the trapped thief, the unopened room, the room of skeletons, what the heck that glass wall room was meant for  or what exactly was in Nabor's notes or why the boy is so beat up etc.

And leaving out a large portion of the plot that fills out at least some basics on the horror's origin - the way the story plays at present in-game the kid and his dad are pretty much superfluous as everything appears to come back to the monster. The only indicator this isn't the case is the opening giving us the context of the mythos of the house, but without the follow up plot to fill out that mythos it feels unresolved and swept aside with the monster, instead of being a twist with an extra layer of horror and mystery for the house, just becomes deus ex machina to tidy up the haunting issue we learnt nothing productive about.

[essiw]

Also so by leaving out such big clues of the storyline you get the idea that they leave it out for a reason, to make a sequel or something. I even thought that was the plan a few pages ago, seeing the book they were planning to release makes me think that this is a standalone quest with no sequel (the "see you soon" is probably just referring to the repeatability). I hope they include the book in the future, for other players who will do the quest.

[Arceus]

 

I'm not a programmer/coder, so I don't know the ins and outs. But is it really that time consuming to add a book with words to the game?

 

I mean, they obviously have a book template and font for every book in the game - wouldn't it simply be a case of pasting or typing the text onto the template? That would take like, what, 20 minutes at most?

 

Rediculous that they have a 'lore book budget'.

 

Its not a "lore book budget" its a translation budget. Everything they write in-game needs time to be translated and coded into the other languages that runescape is available to play in (With Spanish going away, there's still French, German and Portuguese). They probably only have a couple devs that do the translations.

 

You're right, never underestimate the difficulty of translating 20 words...It could be lethal!

 

[spoiler=Sorry for the awful quality ._.]

 

[essiw]

Ok... so they have updated the FAQ on the runescape forums to include questions about the quest. Which shed more light on why there are so much things left untold: cuts cuts and more cuts. I don't get why the maker of the quest thought that it was a wise idea to make a big quest when having a budget for a small quest... -.-" Personally I would rather have a small complete quest than this...

[helring]

Ok... so they have updated the FAQ on the runescape forums to include questions about the quest. Which shed more light on why there are so much things left untold: cuts cuts and more cuts. I don't get why the maker of the quest thought that it was a wise idea to make a big quest when having a budget for a small quest... -.-" Personally I would rather have a small complete quest than this...

 

I still think the quest was rather complete. There were a few things left out, but none of the things people are pointing out seemed too major to me, just something nice to know. I never expected to really be able to save a faceless person, at that point I just assumed they were pretty much gone. A lot of the stuff we never found out had to do with stuff that realistically people may never have found out anyway. Leaving questions isn't really a bad thing. Our job was to enter that house, save anyone we could, and end the haunting. We did that and it was enjoyable. I'd rather have something like that where they test out what they can do mechanically, than some small holiday tie-in that's relatively forgettable.

 

Most of the stuff that needed to be known was there. The son died, the father blamed himself for the death and needed to be put to rest or destroyed. Whether the father actually was blameworthy for the son's death is nice to know, but no needed. Whether it was the demon or the father that killed all those people this time and last time is again nice to know, but unneeded because we know both were killing or trying to kill people, and both needed to be stopped. We knew Nabor's notes on insanity were helpful to the spell, knowing exactly what his notes said is not needed but would be kind of cool.

 

As far as mechanics go, I think the mechanics they had were pretty decent for the time they had to do it in. The dangers worked well enough to add a bit of an edge to the puzzle solving, but they didn't really need a bunch of other dangerous things.

[Peronix]

I didn't think they could throw anything at us that would be even remotely scary to an adventurer that literally eats demons for breakfast.

 

But then it turns out to be a freaking SHOGGOTH... GG Jagex, GG.