Livestream round-up 26-08-2020
Originele tekst
Did you miss the livestream on August 26th? You can catch up on everything you missed right here, or alternatively head to the bottom of the post to watch the entire thing!Once again, a few of our top developers appeared on the livestream to answer some burning questions from the community, including what the plans for Halloween are, what's going on with Elder God Wars Dungeon and whether any skills are going to be receiving a rework in the near future.
What's the status of content that Jagex previously announced at RuneFest that hasn't come out yet, like Elder God Wars Dungeon?
"Elder God Wars Dungeon is a thing we've talked about, but isn't something we're going to be delivering this year. We've done most of the design and planning for it, and the team is really excited. A lot of our releases for the rest of this year will be helping players explore lore and develop power through skilling. Much of these things are going to be interconnected leading up to a God Wars release. We're building a lot of lore around the dragonkin.
We've had to adjust our plans because of COVID. We're shifting into more of a monthly headline release, which started with the Alchemical Hydrix. We've just been reviewing the Orthen dig site for Archaeology, which is going to be our October release. We try and bring content to each of our player categories. We're going to do a skilling release around Construction before the end of the year. It's not a rework, but have zeroed in a lot around that skill. Another key area is questing and we're committing to releasing a new quest by the end of 2020. It won't be the same size as Desperate Measures, but it'll be bigger than some other content we've launched." ~ Mod Warden
What's the future for Ninja Strikes?
"We've talked a lot about quality of life changes. We're continuing to do that via the Ninja Strikes. We've shifted some resources around in order to satisfy that. A lot of the stuff the players don't get to see is the restructuring that's going on behind the scenes." ~ Mod Warden
What are the plans for Halloween this year?
"We've spoken before about how much we want to embrace holiday events and seasonal content. Halloween is no different. Our team is currently busy at work creating something. We want to do miniquest-style content as well as training or skilling. We tend to do 'one and done' events, but people want to get those rewards and return to those areas. We want to do something you can go back to." ~ Mod Osborne
What's is the latest status of the new Abyssal Demons?
"Three models have been created and we've been slowly making progress on them. Two sets of animation are complete. We're only missing the environment and a bit of extra animation work. They're being worked on, but they're not our top priority right now." ~ Mod Shogun
Are there any plans to rework skills like Woodcutting, Fletching or Construction similar to Mining and Smithing?
"They're still an option for us in the future. Reworking Mining and Smithing was just north of the work it took to make a new skill. We always have to balance what we are remastering or reworking versus making something new like Archaeology. What we can do is address some of the issues in the skills with updates, like the one we're doing for the Construction training method. Safe cracking is probably a good reference for the scale and style of the update we're doing for this." ~ Mod Osborne
Will the rate at which quests are released increase in the future?
"I know people put a lot of stock in how many quests we put out in a year, but I'd rather have a great narrative told through solid quests with good momentum. That's really what we want to do and plan to do. We have a strong story plan. We want all the content to reflect that, not just quests. A lot of upcoming content features in our story plan and they're not necessarily quests. We just want to keep that narrative going." ~ Mod Osborne
Our more recent art is described by players as bulky and cartoony. What are our thoughts on this new approach and direction?
"We've worked a lot on the stylistic aspect of our content. You see a lot of that in Anachronia and Archaeology and so on. We're far from consistent, but it takes a lot of work to update these environments. The art style we're going for today is based off a lot of research and player testing. We've looked a lot of different art styles that led us up to this point. I'd like to continue looking at it and give the new art director a chance to evaluate what we have." ~ Mod Warden
Will Invention get more tech trees added to the skill? Recently we found out that aviansies are skilled inventors, as well as gnomes and elves. It's been a while since the skill's release and that part of it has not been touched.
"There are so many tech trees we could include. Invention was such a fertile soil for doing something like that. In our view, the skill doesn't need the work right now. That's why we're looking at Construction and why we might look at Agility in the future. That's not to say we won't touch Invention. It's getting some love in the next couple of months, but there's nothing in the tech tree area I'm afraid." ~ Mod Osborne
Do you think we'll ever see the next region of the Eastern Lands, the Skull?
"The Arc had a decent response and it's grown a cult following with the Uncharted Isles, so it could happen. But there are other areas of the game outside of landmasses. Anachronia and Menaphos have pointed us more towards skilling or combat inclusions in the near future rather than just bringing out a landmass. We want to invigorate the core game rather than just strap more stuff to it." ~ Mod Osborne
What was the rationale behind making the new Essence of Finality repairable using an Alchemical Hydrix instead of a regular hydrix? Did fortunate components need more of a sink than they already have?
"Keeping demand on fortunate components is always one of the aims with regards to any alchemical item. None of the new Alchemical Hydrix items would have sunk fortunate components regularly if a normal hydrix would have been required, and if it was just charged using fortunate components then regular hydrixes would have not had a sink either.
There is also the point that this is such a powerful piece of equipment that it should have a slightly higher upkeep cost then perhaps would have been expected. There isn't much room for PvM equipment in the necklace slot, if any, after this release, and therefore it warrants such an upkeep.
We did listen to feedback about the original upkeep cost and did reduce it before release. We will continue to monitor it going forward but it is unlikely that we will go back to using regular hydrixes to repair the Essence of Finality." ~ Mod Hooli
The RuneScape Team