Principal Content Developer for
@RuneScape
| Designer of Combat, Skilling and Reward systems | All comments and opinions are my own and are not those of Jagex.
Nothing set in stone but I’ve been looking at all things ‘Conjures’, and as part of that I whipped together a potential new ability.
‘Conjure Undead Army’ which allows you to call upon a group of spirits.
I’ve added 3 action bars (15->18) and 50 bank spaces with the Necromancy release.
Thanks again for the feedback, it’s much appreciated and helps make our game the best it can be!
Follow up from the Necromancy Q&A livestream.
I mentioned that there are no plans to add more actionbar/s, HOWEVER this doesn’t mean that things can’t change. I will discuss and investigate further.
What are your thoughts on a 'Chanelling' bar?
Combat systems in other games commonly have one and it's something I've been considering, to help with the readability and clarity of channelled abilities in our game.
Video example is a work in progress (i.e ignore the text below).
Need to see what materials your storage container holds while out at a dig site? You'll soon be able to straight from your handy journal! Also, you can open it AND keep it open without disrupting your excavation.
#RSArchaeology
How would you feel if we considered updating existing bosses to follow a similar scaling system to Raksha? Where the number of players in the instance determines the boss’s HP, and those players all receive a drop.
E.G. 5 player Vindicta - 1m HP awarding everyone loot
1/2
A couple of work in progress changes that will go into the next beta:
- Channel bar for better visual clarity
- Melee channeled abilities allow movement within attack range of target
- Channeled abilities can be cast when out of range
A number of other changes under the hood!
What are your thoughts on these 120 Max/Comp/Trim cape concepts? Fun fact; the artist who drew these, also drew the originals in 2011.
DISCLAIMER: I asked the artist if they could mock something up for me in their spare time, there are no plans currently to actually create them.
It would nice to investigate the removal of tele block within most boss encounters as having to die or log out to wipe/restart doesn’t feel good at all (both for the player and in terms of design). It feels even worse in group encounters too.
Andddd it's done! 200m Archaeology achieved and back to having the max XP at level 3!
I had a blast developing this skill and a blast training it. This is definitely a bittersweet moment for me.
Thoughts on a second boss portal that resides in Death's office, where access is earned via boss kill achievements? The portal would have a similar 'attune' feature and the max guild portal would not change. I imagine we'd also want an office teleport on the gem or journal too.
As I’ve seen it asked a number of times now, I just want to confirm that we are looking into making the Essence of Finality amulets recolourable. It’s not yet ready for release so please be patient.
This one means a lot to me, after spending the last 18 months pouring my heart and soul into the project. Achieved the big 99 tonight with
@JagexErator
and
@JagexShogun
!
I’ve played A LOT of RS over the holidays with
@JagexRamen
@JagexIago
and
@JagexBreezy
.
While playing, we’ve been taking lots of notes on pain points and improvement opportunities. Looking forward to getting back and writing them up!
Took a moment between meetings to debug and fix some core action bar issues that caused bad visual clarity or unnecessary noise.
See before and after clips.
1. The ‘Global cooldown’ rotation was showing for things it shouldn’t (e.g bottom row teleports such as ‘War’s Retreat’)
Yesterday I spent some time investigating inventory interactions. With the next update you'll find that inspecting a damaged or restored artefact, and filling or inspecting a soil box will no longer interrupt your current action, allowing you to continue excavating uninterrupted.
This morning I made a couple of tweaks to the tetracompass. One to note is that I’ve added an ‘Inspect’ option to each of the pieces so that you can see what is required without the need to run to the workbench!
#RSArchaeology
What blocks you or stops you from starting/defeating certain boss encounters?
- Scared/worried?
- Struggle to stay alive? (explain)
- Can’t handle a certain mechanic?
Tell me!
(This also applies to those who are super experienced too. What is stopping you climbing enrage, etc)
Hopped on to my combat account and picked up 7 Raksha kills with a nice Fleeting Boots split!
In 2021, I want to learn the ins and outs of combat from the players point of view so that I can utilise that knowledge to better my combat designs in the future. Very excited for it!
Seeing all the positive responses to the Sanctum of Rebirth and Hard Mode Nakatra in particular has been wonderful.
However, it’s making me think about what I might do for the next boss I design and develop, but that’s not something I can work on right now. AHHH!
Out of curiosity… if we were to create a reserved area on the buff bar where very specific buffs are contained, what would you expect to see?
See my image for a super quick visual example.
(Aside from this, we should be removing a number of buffs and grouping others together)
Pitched this today and got approval to put something together!
The plan is to replicate Necromancy’s damage potential, critical strike changes and increased hit cap.
Will there be issues? Absolutely. But it’s a great way to get it into your hands for a fun sandbox experience.
What would you like to see from the 4th conjure?
This will round out the 4 basic conjures. After this we have thoughts on conjures that take up more than 1 slot.
E.g. You could have a Skeleton Warrior and a Skeletal Dragon which take up 1 and 3 slots respectively
As 2020 comes to a close, here are my player-facing RuneScape updates from the year in a single shot:
- War's Retreat (PvM Hub)
- Archaeology
- Penguin Hide & Seek
- Alchemical Hydrix Jewellery
- Elite Construction Outfit
- Raksha, the Shadow Colossus
The removal of the teleport restrictions within boss encounters is the first of many changes we’d like to make as part of our aim to reduce the friction within your day to day endeavours.
Hopefully we can share some other ideas that are in the investigation/approval stages soon.
Myself and
@JagexSponge
are working on rewriting all* abilities to better support changes going forward.
This foundational work will allow us to iterate more quickly with you in the upcoming beta!
We’re excited, and we hope you are too!
(New tool tips)
Designing for RuneScape is such a privilege and I love it every day, but damn it can be hard sometimes!
Looking forward to chatting about the Sanctum of Rebirth next week, and then a whole bunch of other combat topics going forward.
As the release of Necromancy draws closer, I’m incredibly excited, but equally fearful!
Being a creative is a rollercoaster and no matter how long you’ve been doing it, the feelings are always the same.
It’s these feelings that remind you that you’re right where you belong. 😊
PSA: In tomorrows update you’ll see some much awaited changes to ‘Dive’ targeting.
It’s a little more complex than it may sound, so I have made what improvements we can at the moment.
Dive - Can only target ground
Bladed Dive - Can only target ground, NPCs and players (in PvP)
Thoughts on all bosses having the boss health bar?
Related side thought; the loading animation at the beginning is quite slow and could be sped up or even removed.
With the TzekHaar Front release, we introduced an 'Immune' hitsplat when hitting an NPC for 0 damage.
What do you think? There are plans to roll this out to other boss encounters.
I’ve added a tick for collections that have been completed at least once. The text of a collection name still displays in white if you’ve donated this item to that collection. Hopefully this helps!
While training Archaeology I've thought about the following:
- A 'Charge' option on a worn Grace of the elves
- 'Wear' option on porters to bring up the Grace of the elves charge menu if it's equipped
I would love to spin up all the Seasonal Hiscores again to run indefinitely, allowing you to always have a shot at the unique titles.
There are no plans to do this right now, but I would be interested to know what NEW ideas you might like to see if it was ever on the cards.
What are your thoughts on adding a couple of the combat auras to the Garden of War (PvM Hub) shop? We would likely only be able to add a very specific set of them, which would mean that there might not be any that you're after. I imagine some is better than none though, right?
Does anyone have any pets named after RuneScape characters?
I’m trying to convince the other half that Raksha would be a good name for the puppy we plan to get
Generally speaking we’d love to make tweaks to some old boss encounters that have dated mechanics. Any you think are worth looking at?
Examples: P2 Vorago; QBD/Nex intro time; RotS tunnel length and/or existence; etc.
During some down time today I looked into the seemingly dead clicks that can happen at the end of channeled abilities if attempting to move. This is quite noticeable with fleeting boots as it’s common for you to try and move with them.
Spotted the issue and sent a fix to QA.
One of the things I worked on today was making it so that you can upgrade your augmented tools (dragon -> crystal and crystal+imcando -> Time and Space).
Sending through to QA now!
With all the recent chatter regarding collection log titles, it reminded me that I thought about creating this for 'All boss collection logs'. It's coming up to 2 years now since the release, but I'm still not sure if it's the right time... thoughts?
Ran a whole bunch of Dungeoneering floors last night with players I met in Daemonheim. It was pretty fun!
It reminded me of the old days when it was first released.
Dungeoneering itself doesn't get m/any updates nowadays, but what would you want to see if we were to update it?
After doing a bunch of heavy AoE combat (ED’s and Shattered Worlds), it’s got me thinking about how nice it would be to have some AoE abilities that don’t require a target, but can be cast on a specific tile/area similar to bladed dive and bombs.
88.5% of players who have logged into RuneScape this month use ‘Ability queueing’.
Does that number surprise you? It surprised me!
Knowing this, I definitely want to take some time post Necromancy to fix the existing issues with it and to improve it further.
24h+ have passed since the release of Raksha. I hope you've enjoyed it and thank you for all of your feedback!
We have been monitoring the content and are planning to have the following changes in the next game update.
We will continue to monitor the update as time goes on.
As much as I LOVE playing RuneScape all day, there is something I love doing more.
What could possibly be better than playing RuneScape all day you ask?
Designing and developing content for RuneScape.
Lately I’ve been tuning into RS streams in the evenings to just chill and chat.
Sometimes if the streamer is engaging in content I’ve made such as Raksha, I’ll ask them if they want to duo.
Seeing the positive impact it can have puts a smile on my face.
You know the issue where enriched wisp/spring cannot be interacted with? I saw chatter about it last night on the community world and said I would investigate.
Looks like it’s an engine/client issue, so we have
@JagexGiragast
on the case. No fix date but keeping you informed!
WOOOOOO! Now to wear that absolutely stunning skillcape.
Developing Archaeology was such an amazing journey, and so was getting 120. 200m, here we come!
One of the things I took some time to look into during the Game Jam today was the 'Rapid fire fleeting boots' issue where your character would get locked in place if you lose line of sight to your target.
The channelled attack will now clear when this happens.
[1/2]
Nothing too major to share regarding gamejam at the moment, but I did start to look at improving the ‘Dig coordinate’ for treasure trails, as opposed to the yellow arrow. This is for both scan and compass clues.
(Placeholder visual effect on the coordinate)
As mentioned on the recent live stream. The PvM Hub update (now known as War's Retreat), will be making the following auras obtainable with Marks of War via the reward shop:
- Vampyrism
- Dark Magic
- Berserker
- Maniacal
- Reckless
Here are a few of the visual improvements made to the collection log with the release of Archaeology.
- General layout clean up
- Better differentiation between collected and not
- Reward information for the completion of this collection
- Examine option
Follow up from the Necromancy Q&A livestream.
I mentioned that there are no plans to add more actionbar/s, HOWEVER this doesn’t mean that things can’t change. I will discuss and investigate further.
PSA: Being able to stand underneath Nakatra during her shockwave attack (P3 - Post Shadowsands) is unintentional and will be fixed in the next update to apply a 3x3 damage area at the start of the attack.
Giving the heads up so that you can practice and learn alternate methods!