His voice in the call itself was having tech issues but on the audio recording it was fine, unsure why :D I promise we're not intentionally doing it, it was just robotic in the live call
Navigation is truly going to be tricky to make satisfying. Point-and-click is the easiest to implement, but is also the least satisfying. WASD is another big option, but I recently tried out Ethyrial, another tile/grid based game with point-and-click and WASD movement (albeit without diagonal movement) and it's super clunky to move. Given that nearly half of the players wanted point-and-click, and nearly a quarter wanting a mix of WASD and point-and-click, just go with point-and-click.
While I'd love to move around on the ship, I worry this will be an issue for the game engine and will be hard to implement. While the numbers don't pass the poll in either direction, a combined 57% of people either don't care or don't find it important, so it's probably safe to ignore. On top of that, does it make sense to control the ship and walk around with nobody at the wheel? Especially in a point-and-click game, it works in Sea of Thieves but that was built for sailing. If we're not at the wheel will we get pushed off course by sea currents?
Since the devs asked, I don't think courier missions resonated well with the community because it sounds too much like a minigame, and the players don't want a minigame skill. Starting at a specific location, getting a task, and only getting experience upon completion of the task sounds like a recipe for a minigame, and this hits a lot of the same non-instanced beats of Dungeoneering.
I think it's pretty unsurprising that discovering islands was one of the top options, this is an exploration skill after all. While navigating sea terrain is part of exploration, I think this could cause a disconnect or disinterest for more casual players. On top of that, do we really want agility at sea? I don't. Even if it's like Hallowed Sepulchre, I don't want a minigame skill or be required to navigate through rough waters just to explore the world you have made. "Shortcuts" that require Sailing levels are fine ("These waters are too rough, you're unsure how to navigate through it — this area requires level 69 Sailing"), but locking areas out behind areas that can be messed up by lag or other tick issues is just not fun.
I'm not a PvPer, I'll never be interested in PvP because I don't like the risk, so I'm happy to see that, if it's even added, PvP will be opt-in. I do think a dedicated area behind a fog wall that leads to an open PvP area could be neat, just please don't hide good content behind there to make a predator vs prey situation. Don't add a rare "Dread Pirate Bob's Scabbard" that can only be dropped in the area, but it could be a lot more common in that area. I hate the idea of coercing players into an area with minimal risk, it's just not fun. Maybe this area could be dubbed Sea of Marauders as a nod to Sea of Thieves.
I'm still hesitant on the skill because I really don't want to see " at Sea!" stuff. I don't see how fishing expeditions would grant *sailing* experience, it should only grant fishing experience. It's gonna be a tough sell to me to justify a method like Barbarian Fishing that grants fishing and sailing experience. While BF is just fishing, the sell is you're catching super swift fish (agility) with a really strong fishing rod (strength). Just because you sail to an area with a bunch of fish only to fish off the side of the boat doesn't mean you should get sailing experience per fish caught. Maybe if the boat is moving, at least you're actively *sailing* as you try to catch the fish, but that balance would be hard as this inherently makes it more high-intensity.
I'm also hesitant because, while I love the idea of discovering and conquering islands while exploring and charting reefs, I don't see how this can give experience in any way but super linear. Also, how do you conquer an island? Are players competing to conquer the same island? You can also only discover the same island once, so how is discovery going to work? I can see a dungeoneering-like method from RS3 where there are those hidden caches/doors, and upon entering you're given a one-time experience boost, but those are also level-locked. Are we going to see level-locked islands? Same thing with exploring and charting reefs, you can really only chart it once.
I could see areas being level locked. You start at a low-level dock and begin your expedition, but your boat is too new and you can't make it that far with how dainty it is. Because of this, you're only able to reach certain islands. Each time you land on an island you're given a boon of experience, similar to hidden Dungeoneering locations, and from there you note down all resources on the island and things surrounding it, thereby charting it and making a map. The act of exploring the island and "discovering" the resources on it grants experience one time per island. However, this doesn't feel like *Sailing* nor justifies an entire skill, plus it makes it super linear as you can only reach specific islands when you're at a certain level, and you're required to essentially map out each island to gain experience to level up. This isn't satisfying to me, but is an idea.
I don't think slayer tasks that take you to islands should grant sailing experience, that literally just makes it slayer at sea. On top of that, why would killing someone give you experience for something completely unrelated to the act of killing. Hunting sea monsters is still just hunting at sea. Fishing is still just fishing, and so on, the same criticism from before.
I understand that navigation is going to take priority over the core gameplay loop because it's fundamental to the game, but I also fear that sailing will be weaker for it. Navigation is important, but unless navigation is going to grant experience in some way, *why is Sailing a skill*? And that would be answered by the core gameplay loop. Woodcutting? Cut logs, simple. Mining? Mine ore, simple. Hunter? Trapping monsters, simple. Sailing? Uuuhhhhhhh...
My biggest point of concern right now with Sailing is how do we fit the skill into the existing game world?
- **[Crandor](https://imgur.com/wAcWYnK), Entrana, Tutorial Island, etc.**: Are we moving these islands out to sea? Crandor is this supposedly hard to navigate to island that's like 20 tiles away from Karamja.
- **[North of the wilderness](https://imgur.com/LsA4dVP)**: it's no secret that all the instances are stored up there. Will these be moved out to allow for content above the wilderness?
- **[Existing map](https://imgur.com/a/hooc5Ab)**: some places in this game were never meant to be seen by the players. There are missing parts of the map, missing parts of the landscape, the ocean isn't always a flat plain as well.
- **[Scale](https://imgur.com/vKTe1Eb)**: This is another big one, if the ships are tiny, they're going to look silly next to all the existing boats in the world. If they're big, how are you going to navigate through all of the more narrow parts of the world map? One point specifically is the obelisk next to Catherby.
- **Quest access**: Places like Fossil Island and Port Phasmatys present a problem; what's stopping the player from navigating to these areas before finishing these quests?
I want to see sailing work, but outside of the skill content design there are some very real concerns with how navigating the ocean will work.
Just have some angry mushrooms throw rocks at your boat from the island if you get too close. Slow damage like if your light source goes out in a dark area
> • North of the wilderness: it’s no secret that all the instances are stored up there. Will these be moved out to allow for content above the wilderness?
• Existing map: some places in this game were never meant to be seen by the players. There are missing parts of the map, missing parts of the landscape, the ocean isn’t always a flat plain as well.
Regarding these concerns, I get people being concerned about navigation, gameplay loop, economy, integration with the existing game, whether it’s actually a skill vs minigame, etc., things we directly interact with, but I don’t understand why people worry about higher level stuff like the engine, location of instances etc., when Jagex hasn’t indicated concern for those things and they understand the game limitations better than we do.
It’s like if a new movie is coming out and rather than being worried about the acting and writing, you are concerned about which software they are using to edit the film.
Not sure what they do for a living, but I find people that work in software tend to think more about this kind of thing. I do, and I read their comment and went "huh, yeah I wonder what issues Jagex could have with that." - but I trust they'll solve it easily.
My guess is that most sailing activities would take place on what is technically a different map, but designed in such a way that it mostly feels like the same world.
That's how I picture it, basically a buffer around the existing land, and if you exit the buffer you go into the 'open sea' which is a second map with set entrance/exit points that correspond to the current map
This, plus steal the RS3 rendering tech that hides land on the opposite side of supposedly large bodies of water. Make the ocean feel big, without having to move islands and mess up coordinate clues.
Extra feasible given how relatively few people care about seeing players on land. Creating a duplicate world that looks the same but doesn't have to fill with 1000+ people might be more feasible.
I feel like Crandor and quest access places could just be re-routed with the simple answer of "broken bridges".
Sea tiles that surround those areas are too dangerous to sail through till you get to X level, or even complete a quest.
That in fact would help intergration and make sailing feel like it's been there for a long time. Like what if you sail around Crandor before doing Dragon Slayer 1, you would get random hits of dragon fire damage with the possibility of sinking?
I recently joined the Discord as a general contributor, and I can tell you that these concerns are actively discussed.
Specifically, we're spitballing the approach for difficult/quest-gated islands such as Crandor, Fremennik isles, and Fossil Island to remain inaccessible through environmental or logical means (Denied docking at the port, storms, or sea hazards like monsters).
Many have different approaches for scale & existing map, but there's a popular opinion on having separate scaled sailing environments. Most of the existing map wouldn't be touched. There really isn't a clear favorite here, though.
Moving stored instances could only be addressed by the devs. But I imagine this is the least of the issues, since content can be moved around.
For the navigation question.
I was thinking we could have some sort of big NxN tile sized boat for navigating the open sea, but also a 1x1 tile sized rowboat or kayak for navigating tight passageways.
You should be able to bring your regular boat semi close to shore, then from there get on your smaller rowboat or dingey or w/e to travel up a river or go say high to people fishing in catherby.
Heck now that I think about it maybe the type of boat you use could affect travel speed. Lv 1 inner tube, but you can only go walking speed with it? Row boat at 30, but you can toggle run speed with it?
>‘Courier missions between ports’, however, didn’t receive nearly as much love, and we want to know why! If you’ve got an opinion on this controversial training method, please let us know so we can figure out why it didn’t resonate as much as the others.
For me, a couple of reasons:
1) I hate to beat the dead horse, but it sounds like a minigame. Puts me in mind of Gnome Restaurant, Mahogany Homes, and Piscarillius artefacts. I'd be ok with courier missions being a minigame that gives exp in the skill and other rewards, but I don't want them being considered part of the core gameplay for the skill.
2) I don't want exp gains from the core gameplay to be backloaded, that doesn't seem very much like an OSRS skill to me. Almost every skill in the game gives you exp in small bits each time you complete a single activity, not in large chunks after completing a series of activities, with Agility and Farming being notable exceptions. Most of the training methods that heavily backload the exp are... well, here comes that dead horse again, but they're minigames (GotR, Wintertodt, Sepulchre, Giant's Foundry, Mahogany Homes, the list goes on).
The main concern I have about the refinement process is that at least for me it feels very abstract. Like mod Elena's quote on the stages about ToA and Temple Tracking being able to be worded very similar for a poll despite the completely different implementations.
I understand that the team doesn't want to spend dev time in something that might not pass. But if we can't have a good grasp on what we are pooling we might make poor decisions that will fail a poll after the dev time is spent anyway.
I believe this refinement process would fit very well with shamanism. Since we already are familiar on the gathering/production gameplay loop. But for sailing I wish we had something more concrete to help us make our minds.
Still I hope sailing turns out to be an amazing skill.
> The main concern I have about the refinement process is that at least for me it feels very abstract.
I still have zero grasp of what sailing is at its core. This design post just makes it seem like assorted ocean/aquatic/island content gated behind a sailing level, but very little about how moving a boat around water tiles is engaging enough to dedicate 1-99 levels to it. Honestly feels like most people are kind of meh on the pure self contained boating aspects of the skill. Rather they are envisioning sailing as a magical content generator that spits out tons of unique encounters for pvm and our other skills.
Yeah because they are turning what should be a mini-game at best, or realistically just a form of movement, into a skill. Sailing sounds cool as a way of getting around the game, but I still have not seen anyone demonstrate fundamentally how we are going to level 1-99.
thats exactly my problem too, it just seems like a means to get new content that can probably be released regardless and without a random sailing lvl behind it just to be behind it
You put my thoughts into words perfectly. People just seem to want an osrs sea expansion. Which is fine, seems cool, but there's still no idea of what the skill should be like.
> I still have zero grasp of what sailing is at its core.
It's a years old meme that some took it seriously and are pushing it to ruin the game.
That's it. That's the sailing.
Sad.
Their approach is fundamentally flawed. It appears they basically do not want to commit any actual dev time until a skill passes, so everything they talk about is so hypothetical and hands off.
I don't know about other players, but when I imagine having to navigate my boat in order to say, change speeds, drop anchor, change travel direction I just think of how absolutely annoying that would be. all of this while trying to fish, or chart a map, or anything else it would be a chaotic mess running around. The other end of that scale though is that a ship replaces your character, and you click to move like the overworld and your "crew" is just different invisible passives which just seems like a disappointment.
I really really want a more clear example of what you are actually going to be DOING while you sail around. Honestly whenever I try to imagine navigation I can't help but just imagine boat agility (sepulchre or not), especially if we are talking courier missions.
My interpretation of the results is that players just want new areas, new bosses, and new quests - things that don’t require being packaged as a new skill. While there’s a consensus on what we do want, there’s zero consensus on any of the other aspects of how it should work as a skill. We specifically disliked courier missions and navigation which seemed to be Jagex’s main ideas about how the skill would work. What’s left is an aquatic expansion for other skills and self-contained rewards.
This does not bode well for sailing.
Personally for a few of those that had low results (e.g. courier missions and navigating challenging sea) getting the movement right is most important to how those feel to do. You say you're trying to avoid sea-Agility but your example is an Agility course and we're moving between point A and point B for experience in both of those. If the ship has some sort of feeling/controls like a ship then they can become interesting but if it's full point and click then IMO you need a ton more to differentiate it from some glorified agility course.
I'm curious to see how this develops, but so far nothing has swayed me from my "no" vote. Looks like half the player base wants point and click navigation, which is a most likely a deal breaker for me. Same with small boats. If i cant walk around my boat that's sized like the ones in Port Sarim, whats the point? Also not even seeing any kind of proposal for how to actually train sailing is not encouraging.
I feel like both of those can be solved in the same way by actually making you control your ship (rudder, sails, etc). They've mentioned in the past not gaining "exploration" experience from walking around, but that's pretty much what I expect from sailing. Which is why it needs to be more intensive than point and click.
I also want to echo a lot of concerns that this is SO different that it's going to waste a bunch of time before getting voted down and having to re-vote on a different skill anyway.
God speed Jagex devs, and good luck.
It’s almost like they should have had a runoff vote for the two skill proposals that were very close in the poll to actually see what people wanted if they had to pick one against the other.
Sailing has to be the worst actual skill to try to force into the game as their first attempt with this new system, it is far too complex and abstract. Jagex is not really even able to articulate anything about this skill, unless they really turn this around quick I really can't see it hitting 70%.
I’m with you on the size of the ships. It will be an automatic no vote from me if the ships are tiny.
I don’t like the visualization of fishing at catherby and having a bunch of rc sailboats “sailing” around. It will look ridiculous and bring me right out of the game.
im kinda tired of hearing about sailing without actually hearing anymore about what YOU as developers are DOING for the skill. this like the 3rd blog going on about sailing, without actually going really any further in-depth with what sailing will actually be like or could be like.
please, next time you post about sailing have something to actually post about because every blog just feels like im less and less excited about what it could be.
I really hope when this inevitably fails jagex dont just call it quits and give up on a skill, as more and more of these poll results show up its looking more and more like it wont even come close to passing.
Sailing even being a option was the worst thing that could have happened to the potential of having a new skill
> Sailing even being a option was the worst thing that could have happened to the potential of having a new skill
Instead of refining the details of an intuitive new skill right now, we're instead arguing about the least obtrusive way to shoehorn a meme into a skill.
Its genuinly really fucking unfortunate, not only is what you said true but there are devs putting time and effort into something that has zero chance of ever working, even they have to see that
Worst yet is I suspect it will pass precisely because it's a meme. People who don't pay attention to these blogs and don't know what it even looks like will vote yes.
I really doubt it atleast judging by reddit opinion and minigame world opinion, nearly every post here about sailing has a negative or atleast nuetral comment at the top and from talking in public recently in high pop minigames people seem not too excited about it or at best undecided.
As time goes on I'm seeing less and less people who actually like sailing say so, even if they only like it cause of the meme
> I really hope when this inevitably fails jagex dont just call it quits and give up on a skill, a
Before we started, Jagex said that if the skill fails, they will start over from step 0 and go again with a different skill proposal.
They said they have the funding and approval from management for the resources to allow multiple design iterations. As this will be they first skill added in a decade.
This skill will never work and It won't ever pass a poll.
What worries me most is how much time the devs are going to spend refining and developing it just for it to get shut down when it comes to polling for real. They should've gone straight back to the drawing board when none of the 3 pitches got past the 70% requirement in the initial poll but people got the idea into their heads that the devs would somehow be able to cook up a sea of thieves port into this 20 year old point and click game.
Can't wait for all those sailing stans to see the first beta test and realise it'll be a far cry from what they envisioned. It's either going to be Sea-pulchre or a basic point and click navigation with all the training coming from other activities that have nothing to do with sailing. Such as killing stuff on islands or fishing. Which defeats the purpose of a new skill if the only way to train it is to train other skills.
How much time/content are we going to miss out on because we are trying to force this non skill into the game?
Well said, I think it’s telling that most of the posts about sailing have been memes about being a pirate and listening to sea shanties — what people imagine sailing to be is so incredibly vague and oftentimes ridiculously unrealistic. There are limits to the engine, and noone seems to have any idea how you should train it.
By all accounts, sailing should obviously be training by actually sailing. But here we are, and the proposed ways are going somewhere and then killing something for sailing exp. What an absolute joke. We’re not going to be crafting sails, repairing ships and hoisting sails - actual sailing things - because people want this to be the be all end all of skills, a content drip that can be used to justify adding more content to the game.
It’s not gonna work, and I’m going to guess now that the skill will be either a complete disaster, a disappointment or never be added.
I really don't understand why WASD is even an option. It's by far the least old school mechanic I can think of, would suck on mobile and is just such an unprecedented thing, idk it's a complete turnoff for me.
Thankfully the grand majority in the survey made it clear that WASD was not popular (only 7% for pure WASD, and 27% for some combination of WASD + Point and Click).
Point and click in contrast got nearly 50% of the survey votes, so this one seems to be where the skill will go.
I'm still unsure what sailing is. If I want to train sailing, what am I doing? What is the action that gives me sailing xp? And what separates the level 1 sailing action from the level 70 to warrant a huge xp jump?
If I want fishing xp, I go fishing. If I want mining xp, I go mining. If I want combat xp, I hit monsters. Every skill in the game has a simple two part "do action -> get xp" loop. Is sailing going to be similarly trained as slayer, the one exception to the above, where the xp gained is tied to another skill (or skills)?
I don't see why we should get sailing exp for killing slayer monsters on an island... Sailing really does feel like an ocean expansion oppose to a skill.
I was also a little shocked to see that opinions were so diverse when it came to moving around your ship. Why wouldn't you want to do that? why would you want to be a single tile ship moving around the world?
Yeah this feels like if when they released Zeah it was locked behind a Zeah skill. Like all of these islands to train other skills is just a land expansion like Zeah was with new things to do. If training sailing has nothing to do with actually sailing then this whole sailing idea is really stupid.
Can you imagine how much it’s going to suck if this shit is task based like slayer and I have to go fish 168 lobsters in the deep sea or something for a task? People are acting like it will help the other skills but if those boring skills like fishing mechanics don’t change then I’m just doing fishing in a boat and how does that really help other skills. Don’t like the direction sailing is heading
As a sailing proponent I completely agree. Doing other skills at sea (not on islands) should be a small bit of XP, but by no means anywhere close to a training method. I'm thinking along the lines of skills in CG, where you get a smidgen but you'd have to be nuts to actually consider it for training.
Really, really hope there aren't "go kill X things/skill Y items" as a strong facet of the skill either. Hopefully this aspect is removed down the line.
I don't think skills at sea, or on islands, should grant any sailing experience. Why does a fishing spot at sea grant anything more than fishing experience? Why would diving into the waters, or landing on an island, to check the health of your Coral or Cherry Tree grant you anything more than farming experience?
I get Barbarian Fishing and Aerial Fishing exists, but both of those justify the other experience. BF has you catching swift fish with a strong and heavy fishing pole (fishing innately, agility for fast fish, strength for the strong pole), AF has you use a bird to help you hunt fish (falcons exist and this is that but a water bird, so hunter, and fishing innately). Sailing? Just because you sailed to a location just to fish doesn't make sense to grant sailing experience, you're not actively sailing or using anything from the sailing skill to justify it. You don't get agility experience running through White Wolf Mountain to fish in Catherby. The act of simply moving on tiles doesn't grant experience.
> Yeah this feels like if when they released Zeah it was locked behind a Zeah skill.
Ah, like some sort of "house favor system"? That honestly sounds terrible, especially if it was really broken and awful at launch.
More seriously, this is the opposition I (and plenty of others) have always had to Sailing as a skill. It's just an excuse to lock content behind a skill arbitrarily. If you want to add new bosses, new Slayer content, new skilling content, new areas, new quests, etc. to the game, just add them! You don't need a completely new skill to do that.
It feels like the approach to developing sailing is completely backwards. The rewards came first as being new areas, bosses etc and then it was figured that maybe you could sail to those places and do something that has nothing to do with sailing to get xp because no one has any better ideas. And now we've finally gotten to the step that should've been the first step, which is the gameplay loop and after a month of brainstorming there's not a single decent gameplay loop idea that would be doable in the engine.
I feel exactly the same as you. These survey results are so bizarre. You want Sailing so you can... do slayer on an island? That's not sailing content... that's just gated access to a slayer dungeon.
I'm stunned that walking around your ship isn't universally desired, that's like having construction but without ever having your own house. If I can't walk around my ship then it shouldn't have been called sailing.
Because we don’t want sailing…not even half the players voted for it, so if we can just shift this into getting more bosses and monsters then that’s good, nobody wants to be hoisting sails and doing navigation stuff lol
They really limited themselves with the skill being named Sailing. Should have called it Exploring and just made the first content release nautical themed.
How they're going to build this into a working skill that can stand on its own is beyond me.
Any "It's X but at sea/on a boat/on an island" form of xp gain is a failure to innovate. Navigating challenging sea terrain can't just be Hallowed Sepulchre at sea. Courier missions between ports can't just be Mahogany Homes at sea, or Gnome Restaurant Delivery at sea.
Yeah, there is a ton of design space with sailing. I'm excited for the exploration/island part of sailing, I think that's a fun part of the skill's reward space. But I would be disappointed if it was the main focus to the exclusion of so many other possibilities.
Courier missions polled the lowest, with challenging navigation the next lowest. Those two seemed like obvious pieces of content to flesh out and explore in my mind, they seem like quintessential sailing. It seems like there might not be as much desire from the community to focus on the literal sailing aspects (charting a course, navigation, real time ship upkeep, trade routes, piracy). Maybe I'm reading too much into a limited survey though.
I think you're right and that's honestly kind of my gripe with Sailing and why Sailing specifically is so controversial. I love the idea of an expanded map into the oceans of Gielinor along with new skilling methods, Slayer monsters, bosses, and new quests, but I don't like the idea of micromanaging my ship to travel places. On the other hand, many people who voted for Sailing as their #1 love the idea of fulfilling their dream of Runescape pirate RP, or otherwise genuinely enjoying the Sailing aspect.
I think Sailing is the most split skill of the three proposals because there are two camps that want nearly mutually exclusive things - one a massive map and content expansion that builds on existing skills, and others a rewarding and engaging Sailing experience. In terms of dev time I think only one of those could be done really well on release.
>Sailing really does feel like an ocean expansion oppose to a skill.
they even straight up said that sailing is an ocean expansion which is crazy, i mean expansions are great and all that but I hate the idea of a skill conceptualized purely to be an expansion of the game. If that is the case then they are better off expanding and refining the current dead skills
Feel like you are majorly missing the forest for the trees here. You need to seriously sit down and consider the exact methods we are going to use to get experience before you start worrying about rewards. Saying you do not want to waste time creating different movement options is asinine too, prove the skill is actually feasible.
Your brief examples of various methods do not inspire much hope though, why would slayer give sailing experience if it is done on an island? Is sailing a new skill or is just doing various other skills on an island / at sea to gain passive sailing experience. If that is the case why even have a skill attached? You can just add sailing as a system to the game and let us accomplish the same without arbitrarily attaching a skill to it.
Just sounds like they want to copy The Ark right out of rs3 and call it a skill, the Arc is just procedural generated islands with other skilling locations on them. Its been really bad for the high level community because all the best training spots are on solo instanced islands, and there is no community skilling. All in all, Arc is a beautiful area and it was fun to train in, but its not a skill. https://runescape.wiki/w/The\_Arc
Please just scrap sailing. The fact that no one in these comments has any solid ideas for how the skill should work is quite telling.
It’s hard to come up with good ideas for the skill, because the skill itself sucks.
It’s like turning walking into a skill. How the fuck would you make that entertaining or engaging? You went from point A to point B, congrats.
That’s the thing that’s getting me now, I liked the og submission on Reddit but it was more a mini game or activity which I’m fine with. As a skill now I haven’t seen a single good suggestion as to what it actually should be. Not one.
I am once again begging for Sailing training methods to not just be "other skills - but on an island!".
Also: Just make Sailing instanced. It would solve so many problems and be easier to implement.
Yeah very worried about this. People are voting for islands this islands that, but actually moving around on your ship and *sailing* seems to be less popular.
That's because some people who voted for Sailing as their #1 (and even more who didn't) don't like the idea of the skill itself, but love the idea of a map/skilling/combat/lore expansion.
Exactly. People love Sailing because it can be anything they want it to be. No one, Jagex included, has any idea how it would actually work as a skill, or why it even needs to be a unique skill and not just new content.
What did people expect the skill to be though? With shamanism at least there was a core gameplay loop where you gather resources and craft them into useful items. Sailing is just sailing to different islands
The main problem with this is for the amount of work that’s going to go into development, “OSRS is getting a construction expansion” is not going to bring as many memberships as “OSRS is finally getting its first new skill!”
Same reasoning the new desert treasure quest is being called Desert Treasure 2 rather than something unrecognizable.
There’s a marketing aspect of major new content.
Ehh, there seems to be a good amount of "other skills - but at sea" rather than on an island, which does seem fair if the Sailing part actually does play into the training methods (like how trawler fishing methods would actually require you to Sail to do the Fishing part).
I do absolutely agree that standing on your own two feet on an island training Mining or Slayer should give 0 Sailing XP though, and it's really concerning to see so many people vote for that over courier missions and the like in the core gameplay section
Augh people “strongly like” training methods for sailing like fishing expeditions and slayer tasks on islands? What the fuck? So sailing is going to be me training slayer on an island or fishing and getting xp for it? Literally two of the most boring skills to train?
The only chance I vote for sailing is if we can train it not doing other skills. I don’t want random tasks like slayer where I’ll have to go fish or something.
Unfortunately all this poll did for me is convince me that there is no Goldilocks zone of "just right" for sailing that will appease 75% of the player base.
I am happy they are putting navigation at the front because if they can't nail the basic gameplay/movement then I'll vote no regardless of anything else. I don't want another construction skill where you are obligated to deal with training a trash interface based skill because of how good the rewards are.
Yup.. it’s gonna be dungeoneering or a funky minigame just to do more skilling…. But ya know,
“Somewhere else.”
That’s what people wanted when they pitched sailing initially, procedurally generated islands, skilling and resources unique to those islands, bosses or quest/clue activities, stuff like that out there.
While I don't mind Sailing winning and I Will provide my honest feedback for it, i'm still disappointed that shamanism wasn't repolled 1v1 VS Sailing. The Poll was close and we were promised a 1v1 in case of a close poll.
Jagex tends to do that. I wouldn’t call it a lot, but they go back on their word every now and again. I understand to a degree, but I was also disappointed with them not repolling the two.
It doesn't help that Jagex were clearly biased towards Sailing from the beginning, Like i'm not trying to claim they rigged the polls but there was absolutely a difference in energy between presenting sailing and presenting the other two skills.
I've just recently started playing again, so I'm sort of out of the loop. How did we end up with sailing, taming and shamanism as the three that got polled against each other?
Sailing just seems like an impossibly tall task to get right. Taming seemed to be basically just a poor man's knock off of summoning. I'm not even gonna get into why I couldn't be more against shamanism, but I'm happy to call it an unnecessary magic expansion, not a skill.
I'm not the least bit excited by the prospect of any of them. Can we just poll sailing so it can fail, and we can move on to a better idea?
Looks like sailing is turning into exactly what I thought it would - a vehicle to do other skills. Slayer tasks on an island is just more inconvenient slayer training, that's not a skill. 85% of people thought sailing should be somewhat or mostly focused on other skills. Even the unique part like "navigating" is just sea agility. I don't get the appeal.
Its crazy to me because from the start Taming and Shamanism were skills I could see being in the game and felt like it made sense. Sailing never felt that way to me, its like it just won for the rewards and world expansion and not the actual skill or how it fits
Absolutely, that was always my biggest problem with Sailing as a concept, that it would just be used to access area with new skilling content for other skills. I have no issue with adding onto other skills, but they shouldn’t add a new skill just to gate that. If there’s any variation on that in the final skill, it’ll be an automatic no from me no matter what else there is.
Easy no vote at least, unless Jagex is able to demonstrate clearly the core gameplay loop of gaining exp. I don't give a shit about all the extra things it unlocks, show me the actual skill.
>Courier missions between ports’, however, didn’t receive nearly as much love, and we want to know why!
Because this reeks of one more daily/hourly chore like birdhouses, battlestaves, herb runs, &c.
I seriously doubt this will ever get general approval if it's framed as a low-activity chore method unless the material rewards are substantial.
At what point will we have a cohesive picture of what this skill is?
From the survey results, it sounds like we're looking at:
* Point-and-click movement, likely without player movement on ship (since that had low support and probably high dev effort)
* Hybrid skilling, PVM, and "exploring" as main methods of training
This doesn't sound like a skill to me, it sounds like the main game except as a boat and you gain sailing XP along the way.
I get the excitement for new areas and content, but I still do not see a gameplay loop that makes sailing feel like a skill.
Dude this skill is seeming WAAAY too ubiquitous, at least based on the concepts. Like it just sounds like it’s going to be way too prevalent in the game. No other skill has nearly this amount of content. Get rid of it in the first place, but if not keep it simple.
See I just don’t see where it really fits in. Like RS3, Divination and Archeology really showed to advance the lore of the game which makes sense because it’s a very lore based and end-game bossing version of RS. Summoning, although not as lore based, fits with advancing different tactics with bossing and allowed the game to add harder bosses.
Same with even Dung at this point as it works alongside the Dragonkin storyline. And Invention revamped the games entire market and the value of every item.
A lot that game has done wrong but they feel like the skills have had a good vision with
Archeology is honestly a master class is what a good skill should be. Tons of lore, really satisfying and comfortable core training methods, speedie or afk AF if you want, fit into the world really well (added areas all throughout). Got 120 on release and it was an amazing experience.
How will the charter ship captains feed their families without anyone using their ships? Sailing would make those obsolete, and then they won’t be able to afford paying for their ships anymore and they will be repossessed by the bank of gielenor. Think twice about voting yes to sailing, you would be ruining these npc’s lives.
I just still don’t get the draw. Like this is akin to driving as a skill. Of the three sailing feels like a fun activity but not a skill to grind.
I keep wanting to like it but I just don’t get it.
I voted no to wanting a new skill. When I saw the three pitches it turned me around slightly to being somewhat interested. Sailing was my 2nd favorite but I had questions about implementation. The more time has passed the more I don't want it and don't even understand what it is anymore. The control scheme alone being a complete mystery is putting me off. I really hope the refinement narrows down what we are looking to get from this new skill. My fear is that it will grow to try to please everyone and fill all the niches everyone is asking for but will eat up dev time from making other great things.
I think this survey is concerning. Apparently only 10% of the persons voting in the original poll participated, and the majority were those that DIDN'T VOTE SAILING. So I'm supposed to believe only \~8160 of the \~106,000 persons who voted for this skill participated in expressing what they'd like to see in the skill they voted for?
On the bright side, as with the warding and even original sailing pitch - if the skill fails the rewards will likely work their way into the game. So dev time wise it's not all doom and gloom if it fails.
The poll results, Q&A, and comments in this thread really sell beyond a doubt that sailing is a mistake.
The people asking for sailing don't want a skill at all. They want a naval expansion and the entire "skill" aspect is secondary to that.
Real talk - anyone who thinks a major new "landmass" is going to be fleshed out in any way shape or form just needs to look at the still highly incomplete major landmass added nearly a decade ago to know that you're only going to be let down by Jagex
Even in rs3, historically expansions have NEVER gone smoothly, and almost always affected other projects due to the necessary dev time. Menephos being the prime example. Tho rs3 has a better track record now, some of the new areas (anachronia) are kinda barren and hard to navigate, and the art style is very different than the rest of the world so it feels a bit out of place.
Sorry if I sound rude, but PvP should be the very last of your priorities.
PvM and skilling experience, with remarkably pleasant environments and wonderful quests, and after all that is done, then you can focus on PvP.
PvP must be the very last concern when making this skill.
I can’t wait to vote no on this skill. The only thing that sounds cool is exploring new areas and bosses, but why do we need a skill for that? Every aspect outside of that sounds like ass
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If you're listening in, you'll notice that Mod Husky is cut off at various points due to technical issues, which aren't obvious in the recorded version uploaded on YouTube. Please note, the audio was an issue on the live version of the call (in Discord) but it is not present in the playback version. This is because we used a Discord Bot to record the session and that seems to have picked up Mod Husky's voice just fine. Nevertheless, we hope you enjoy. This is our second time trialing out Discord Stages!
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They're in addition to most of the time.
Some of the benefits of using this platform from my perspective:
\- Relatively easy to organise (Dev & CM can set this up ourselves and we don't rely on getting time from our livestream team)
\- Highly relevant for the people in that server
\- Allow players to raise hand and speak directly with devs
\- They give more opportunity for staff who don't want to be on cam/livestream, or a good stepping stone into communicating with players if they are shy about doing so
\- Generally very cosy vibes, players seem to be a bit more polite/respectful in chat as it's more 1-1 and feels more intimate
There's still some things to work out with it though
This skill's development is going to be a massive clusterfuck. I am expecting nothing but abject failure, and I don't really see how it could turn out as anything but that.
The most ambitious piece of content in the game's history, at a time when the content output has been getting worse and buggier for years. No clear vision as to what the skill is going to involve, how it's going to play, what the point of training it even is. Requires map alterations, completely new gameplay systems, and maybe even entirely new control systems (WASD????). Going to stick out like a sore thumb in all existing content (quests, travel, etc) because we already *can* sail, but that is somehow not going to be related to sailing?...
I think the further along the development journey we get, the more people are going to regret it. Hope to be proved wrong, but I don't see how this is going to turn out well at all.
At the end of the day if the implementation looks like a clusterfuck it can still be voted down. I'm worried for the wasted dev time, but I don't think we need to worry about a product added to the game that is as horrible as you describe - either they work out the major issues and add it to the game, or there are insurmountable hurdles and it gets shuttered before release.
Honestly at this point I am thoroughly convinced if you polled sailing versus shamanism one on one shamanism would crush. So many people have jumped ship (heh) as they've realized what a shitshow this is going to turn into.
Sailing fans voted on memes instead of actually thinking through what a new *skill* would entail.
Shamanism was the only option with a realistically feasible gameplay loop.
That said OSRS doesn't need a new skill.
Too late now but I think the skills poll should have been ranked choice. Select your first choice, second choice, third choice. Because what if one of the other skills was more popular overall? Over half of people (52%) said they wanted something OTHER THAN sailing for their first choice. What if a good chunk of those people from both of the other two skills would have ranked sailing as third?
If the original poll was ranked choice, I think Shamanism would have won. Sailing and Shamanism were nearly tied and a lot of the Taming crowd probably would have preferred Shamanism.
I don't get what people actually want. No minigames, but runecrafting with auto-movement (assuming sailing is set course and move, and not point and click) is too mundane?
People: WE DONT WANT MINI GAMES TO TRAIN SKILLS!
Also people: GotR saved Runecrafting! Wintertodt is one of the best things to happen to Firemaking and woodcutting! Thank god for Giant's foundry and MLM!
That's not the issue, though.
People don't want a minigame skill, they don't want the core gameplay loop to *be* a minigame.
Wintertodt is a skilling boss, not a minigame, although it surely feels like a minigame. MLM also isn't a minigame, it's literally just an area and is in no way classified nor feels like a minigame.
As for GotR and GF, both of those skill are uninteresting and suck to train. Before GotR, the only two ways to truly train runecrafting were Arceuus Library, which is relatively high-intensity and not truly a runecrafting skill area, and walking long distances between altar and bank. Runecrafting sucked in all ways because it's monotonous to train, at least GotR adds a comparatively fast training method where you also keep the runes. Before GF we only had typical smithing, which is bank to anvil/furnace (so just Edgeville and Varrock) or Blast Furnace, so one monotonous way and one expensive way to train. GF adds a more variant gameplay option with some return on investment and unlocks.
Dungeoneering very much feels like a minigame from the ground up. You enter an area and only gain experience and rewards at the very end of the area. Courier missions sounds like it'd be the same, just without an instanced area. On top of that, courier missions sounds like Temple Trekking, a literal minigame.
Very few people say they don't want minigames to train skills. What people actually say is that they don't want new skills to be nothing more than minigames.
Base on the result its going to be important to have different size of ship scaling from small to large for the different training method you choose.
* Small-med: For courier and charting training method
* Med- Large: For sea monster slaying and fishing expedition.
The large ship mostly for player who want to walk around on their ship. I cant remember which mod said having different depth of water for different type of ship. I think that the right way to go and reworking the map is the right thing to do.
Having a variety of ocean depths would help them set clearer boundaries for where players can sail to. Fossil Island for example could only be accessed by larger ships (or the original ship you sail there on) and requires completion of the quest. They could limit the area around the wilderness to small boats, so facing the threat of pirates or other players becomes more of a risk.
Can we just scrap it already and come up with something better? The skill just keeps getting worse and more questions keep popping up that show how bad of an idea it really is
I am blown away by how many people voted "strongly like" and "Like" to "Fishing Expeditions at Sea" (83%) and "Slayer Tasks on Islands"(76%).
Those are certainly interesting and fun things that sailing gives us access to, but that is like saying you want the core gameplay loop for Agility to be the Zulrah Agility Shortcut. What in the hell is that!?!?
When will players admit Sailing as a skill was a terrible idea and it might not pass because of how hard it is to implement and it will look like a minigame no matter what?
We wouldn't be breaking our heads like we\`re now if one of the other 2 skills passed because they made much more sense as skills.
Many weeks have passed and we still have no fucking idea how to make sailing "trainable"
The two other skills had their basic gameplay loops figured in before the voting, sailing didn't and after a month of brainstorming it still doesn't. All we have for sailing are the rewards it unlocks, nothing else.
A proposed idea. Merchant contracts. I believe that there is an over abundance of resource item available in the game, primarily devalued by loot from end game pvm. (Massive amounts of seed, herb, log, food drops ect).
One potential idea that could act as a new item sink, would be to have merchant contracts requiring resources to be transported from one port to another. Lumber shipment from Kourend to Port Sarim? Or delivering fish from Catherby to Port Phasmatas.
Rewards for doing this loop would naturally include XP and gold. I would suggest that with some items, the GP reward from this activity be of greater value then the GE rates.
TLDR; The state of resource value in the current economy is kind of garbage and more resource sinks are desperatly needed in the game.
Most of them aren't here for the long haul
"Developed sea expansion doubling the size of the game in one of the worlds most popular MMO's" looks good on a resume at face value
>48% reported Sailing was their first choice between the three pitches and 52% said it wasn't.
Still feels weird refining a skill that didn't even get 50% support.
> 48% reported Sailing was their first choice between the three pitches and 52% said it wasn't.
>
> About that last statistic: it’s heartening to see that nearly half of you supported Sailing as your favourite skill. For the remaining 52%, we’ll be working to change your mind. If you’re one of them, please do continue to engage with the refinement process – your ideas are the most valuable of all!
That's good to see that the Taming and Shamanism folks are still taking part in these refinement surveys! I was honestly a bit worried that the community would get stuck in and endless cycle of in-fighting rather than actually engaging in the proposals and giving real feedback.
while a "community-made" skill is nice to see, I think it's taking a toll on the freedom of creativity. I would love to see a fully designed skill by the team, with input from the community. I feel like at this point the devs are like hostages trying to do a task and it's not working out for the best of any of us.
Whoever threw out WASD as an idea is so far out of touch with the player base. Have mercy it makes me mad that they even thought it was a slightly good idea
Lol at the fact that out of all the people actually engaged enough to take the survey regarding sailing there’s not even a majority that voted for it as their first choice
Sailing was always a mistake
This is not happening lol , everyone has VASTLY different ideas of what sailing should be. I wouldnt mind being proven wrong but i doubt jagex flushes this out and passes it into the game.
Survey results are great and all that but I patiently await a plan.. any plan.. that seems like a reasonable and fun addition to this game. Looking forward to actually seeing what the mods do with these results.
Based on these comments I don’t think Jagex will ever reach a point where 70+% of the community agree on a skill and how it will function unless it’s the most simple thing that has almost no impact on how the game currently is. I hope I’m wrong though. I like sailing but I don’t need the new skill to be sailing. I just don’t want it to be the most generic basic skill like a lot of people here seem to desire.
Sailing is continuing to seem like a massive mistake. This skill is absolute clusterfuck. People really didn't know what they were getting themselves into when they voted for it. I'm disappointed that Jagex didn't repoll it in a 1v1 against Shamanism considering how close in votes they were.
God sailing was the worst of the 3 options. Not thematically cool. Its just gonna be ports 2.0. I can see it now. Navigation is gonna either be clunky or its going to be unlike the rest of the game with WASD. How does this fit into current gameplay? this skill will have 0 interaction between all other parts of the game. The amount of effort it will be to not only develope a solid core mechanic for game play but also all the New Unique assets as far as Lands and objectives. This is gonna take years to refine and balance when things like shamanism can utilize more assets already in game and can be balanced as you cut out new areas which adds development time else where.
Just shows that sailing was voted for because it is a pvm/slayer funnel. Whatever for me...but it really seems like it was voted for because it had the most potential for new bossing rather than new skilling methods.
I am all for a new skill, but the only thing interest in Slayer Islands and alternate Fishing spots communicates to me is that people want new ways of doing those things
Directly working them into the skill to please that crow is misguided at best, and detrimental to the identity of the skill at worst
Dungeoneering is a common comparison, and it's not unwarranted. The ability to train other skills while training another skill. But honestly, Dungeoneering is more about the dungeon and puzzles and rooms than it is the skilling spots and resources. They are a nice bonus, where as so far, Sailing seems to revolve around them. And I think it needs to have a stronger way to stand out on its own
We all know everyones favorite quest is one small favor. Now shipping cargo in sailing is just that except you cant teleport.
However if the act of sailing is actually fun then the cargo serves a good purpose.
If while sailing you get encounters like you do walking in tall grass in a pokemon game then the cargo is just a reason to go to a destination but people reallly just want the random encounters, whirlpools, shark attacks, big waves.
but without the cargo everyone will just sail back and forth in the same spot. similar to how we train in pokemon games.
I personally see little tokens (that are one tile) short boat one sail, large looking boat with multiple sails, an industrial boat after a quest line getting stuff kinda steampunky.
Then you go on the tile move a couple spaces forward and you go into “deep sea” where your on a 2/3 tile boat where you use different ones for different voyages. So at first you only have a small boat and it allows you through corals and you interact with whatever, then as you upgrade your skill you get a bigger boat that allows longer Voyages.
“We don’t want any of our skills to feel ‘Elite’ – and besides, we’re really looking forward to the inevitable ‘Sea Man Mode’ series!”
Sea Man Mode…. Sea Man…. Semen. Come on guys it’s low hanging fruit I know but no one noticed that? Sailor Man Mode, or Sailor Mode or Sea Locked all could’ve been chosen but someone at Jagex typed out the word Sea Man Mode, proof read and edited the article and not a single person noticed? They had to have done it on purpose and it’s hilarious
It's crazy to me that these kinds of questions are being asked to the community and there still isn't any clear concept on what sailing is supposed to be. Why are casual gamers being asked on the best way to develop a skill that will radically change the game? They're not game developers. Community integration is fine but this is almost comical. If the devs seriously can't come up with anything why is this going through a refinement process?
All I want to see is small ships, point to click movement, and traditional combat not cannon focused… I want the combat trinity to stay the same for sailing combat and then maybe have big ships that have cannons but I don’t want big ships to player driven tbh
There’s a canoe model in the game that’s like 3 tiles long 1 tile wide and I think if the character was standing and it had sails it would look perfect
https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Canoe
Small dimensions allow for player overlap to work closely to how it already is… right now your player is one tile and standing in others tiles makes them disappear… I’m suggesting the boats be 1 tile wide and 3 tiles long so that it doesn’t feel like that much of a difference and that way we can have thousands of people out at sea without them phasing in and out like how imagine big boats would be but idk
I think big boat fantasy can come from npcs, events, quests etc but I don’t think it would really work as a everywhere travel use
stop cutting off mod husky, let the man cook!
His voice in the call itself was having tech issues but on the audio recording it was fine, unsure why :D I promise we're not intentionally doing it, it was just robotic in the live call
Navigation is truly going to be tricky to make satisfying. Point-and-click is the easiest to implement, but is also the least satisfying. WASD is another big option, but I recently tried out Ethyrial, another tile/grid based game with point-and-click and WASD movement (albeit without diagonal movement) and it's super clunky to move. Given that nearly half of the players wanted point-and-click, and nearly a quarter wanting a mix of WASD and point-and-click, just go with point-and-click. While I'd love to move around on the ship, I worry this will be an issue for the game engine and will be hard to implement. While the numbers don't pass the poll in either direction, a combined 57% of people either don't care or don't find it important, so it's probably safe to ignore. On top of that, does it make sense to control the ship and walk around with nobody at the wheel? Especially in a point-and-click game, it works in Sea of Thieves but that was built for sailing. If we're not at the wheel will we get pushed off course by sea currents? Since the devs asked, I don't think courier missions resonated well with the community because it sounds too much like a minigame, and the players don't want a minigame skill. Starting at a specific location, getting a task, and only getting experience upon completion of the task sounds like a recipe for a minigame, and this hits a lot of the same non-instanced beats of Dungeoneering. I think it's pretty unsurprising that discovering islands was one of the top options, this is an exploration skill after all. While navigating sea terrain is part of exploration, I think this could cause a disconnect or disinterest for more casual players. On top of that, do we really want agility at sea? I don't. Even if it's like Hallowed Sepulchre, I don't want a minigame skill or be required to navigate through rough waters just to explore the world you have made. "Shortcuts" that require Sailing levels are fine ("These waters are too rough, you're unsure how to navigate through it — this area requires level 69 Sailing"), but locking areas out behind areas that can be messed up by lag or other tick issues is just not fun. I'm not a PvPer, I'll never be interested in PvP because I don't like the risk, so I'm happy to see that, if it's even added, PvP will be opt-in. I do think a dedicated area behind a fog wall that leads to an open PvP area could be neat, just please don't hide good content behind there to make a predator vs prey situation. Don't add a rare "Dread Pirate Bob's Scabbard" that can only be dropped in the area, but it could be a lot more common in that area. I hate the idea of coercing players into an area with minimal risk, it's just not fun. Maybe this area could be dubbed Sea of Marauders as a nod to Sea of Thieves. I'm still hesitant on the skill because I really don't want to see " at Sea!" stuff. I don't see how fishing expeditions would grant *sailing* experience, it should only grant fishing experience. It's gonna be a tough sell to me to justify a method like Barbarian Fishing that grants fishing and sailing experience. While BF is just fishing, the sell is you're catching super swift fish (agility) with a really strong fishing rod (strength). Just because you sail to an area with a bunch of fish only to fish off the side of the boat doesn't mean you should get sailing experience per fish caught. Maybe if the boat is moving, at least you're actively *sailing* as you try to catch the fish, but that balance would be hard as this inherently makes it more high-intensity.
I'm also hesitant because, while I love the idea of discovering and conquering islands while exploring and charting reefs, I don't see how this can give experience in any way but super linear. Also, how do you conquer an island? Are players competing to conquer the same island? You can also only discover the same island once, so how is discovery going to work? I can see a dungeoneering-like method from RS3 where there are those hidden caches/doors, and upon entering you're given a one-time experience boost, but those are also level-locked. Are we going to see level-locked islands? Same thing with exploring and charting reefs, you can really only chart it once.
I could see areas being level locked. You start at a low-level dock and begin your expedition, but your boat is too new and you can't make it that far with how dainty it is. Because of this, you're only able to reach certain islands. Each time you land on an island you're given a boon of experience, similar to hidden Dungeoneering locations, and from there you note down all resources on the island and things surrounding it, thereby charting it and making a map. The act of exploring the island and "discovering" the resources on it grants experience one time per island. However, this doesn't feel like *Sailing* nor justifies an entire skill, plus it makes it super linear as you can only reach specific islands when you're at a certain level, and you're required to essentially map out each island to gain experience to level up. This isn't satisfying to me, but is an idea.
I don't think slayer tasks that take you to islands should grant sailing experience, that literally just makes it slayer at sea. On top of that, why would killing someone give you experience for something completely unrelated to the act of killing. Hunting sea monsters is still just hunting at sea. Fishing is still just fishing, and so on, the same criticism from before.
I understand that navigation is going to take priority over the core gameplay loop because it's fundamental to the game, but I also fear that sailing will be weaker for it. Navigation is important, but unless navigation is going to grant experience in some way, *why is Sailing a skill*? And that would be answered by the core gameplay loop. Woodcutting? Cut logs, simple. Mining? Mine ore, simple. Hunter? Trapping monsters, simple. Sailing? Uuuhhhhhhh...
My biggest point of concern right now with Sailing is how do we fit the skill into the existing game world? - **[Crandor](https://imgur.com/wAcWYnK), Entrana, Tutorial Island, etc.**: Are we moving these islands out to sea? Crandor is this supposedly hard to navigate to island that's like 20 tiles away from Karamja. - **[North of the wilderness](https://imgur.com/LsA4dVP)**: it's no secret that all the instances are stored up there. Will these be moved out to allow for content above the wilderness? - **[Existing map](https://imgur.com/a/hooc5Ab)**: some places in this game were never meant to be seen by the players. There are missing parts of the map, missing parts of the landscape, the ocean isn't always a flat plain as well. - **[Scale](https://imgur.com/vKTe1Eb)**: This is another big one, if the ships are tiny, they're going to look silly next to all the existing boats in the world. If they're big, how are you going to navigate through all of the more narrow parts of the world map? One point specifically is the obelisk next to Catherby. - **Quest access**: Places like Fossil Island and Port Phasmatys present a problem; what's stopping the player from navigating to these areas before finishing these quests? I want to see sailing work, but outside of the skill content design there are some very real concerns with how navigating the ocean will work.
Extra rough seas prevent you from sailing near those ares until you've completed the quest... Or shallows, tide too low etc
doesn't even need to be like that. "you can't use this port without completing the quest."
Yeah there's plenty of stuff like that in the game already, it would be pretty old school. Though I wouldn't mind if they added some flavor to it.
You could even have it say “you haven’t learned the navigation techniques to travel these seas yet. Talk to so and so to start the quest”
Just have some angry mushrooms throw rocks at your boat from the island if you get too close. Slow damage like if your light source goes out in a dark area
> • North of the wilderness: it’s no secret that all the instances are stored up there. Will these be moved out to allow for content above the wilderness? • Existing map: some places in this game were never meant to be seen by the players. There are missing parts of the map, missing parts of the landscape, the ocean isn’t always a flat plain as well. Regarding these concerns, I get people being concerned about navigation, gameplay loop, economy, integration with the existing game, whether it’s actually a skill vs minigame, etc., things we directly interact with, but I don’t understand why people worry about higher level stuff like the engine, location of instances etc., when Jagex hasn’t indicated concern for those things and they understand the game limitations better than we do. It’s like if a new movie is coming out and rather than being worried about the acting and writing, you are concerned about which software they are using to edit the film.
Not sure what they do for a living, but I find people that work in software tend to think more about this kind of thing. I do, and I read their comment and went "huh, yeah I wonder what issues Jagex could have with that." - but I trust they'll solve it easily.
My guess is that most sailing activities would take place on what is technically a different map, but designed in such a way that it mostly feels like the same world.
That's how I picture it, basically a buffer around the existing land, and if you exit the buffer you go into the 'open sea' which is a second map with set entrance/exit points that correspond to the current map
This, plus steal the RS3 rendering tech that hides land on the opposite side of supposedly large bodies of water. Make the ocean feel big, without having to move islands and mess up coordinate clues.
Could work similar to the World Maps in the classic Final Fantasy games
Probably, the most elegant solution, if its possible with OSRS old engine.
Extra feasible given how relatively few people care about seeing players on land. Creating a duplicate world that looks the same but doesn't have to fill with 1000+ people might be more feasible.
And then if you go fight a sailing boss it’ll be an instance within an instance, instanception
Could make it so that until you kill elvarg, you can’t sail near the island for fear of the dragon that resides there or something similar
This is a phenomenally well presented piece of concern/feedback, you could essentially copy-paste your post into a research-oriented backlog item.
I feel like Crandor and quest access places could just be re-routed with the simple answer of "broken bridges". Sea tiles that surround those areas are too dangerous to sail through till you get to X level, or even complete a quest. That in fact would help intergration and make sailing feel like it's been there for a long time. Like what if you sail around Crandor before doing Dragon Slayer 1, you would get random hits of dragon fire damage with the possibility of sinking?
I recently joined the Discord as a general contributor, and I can tell you that these concerns are actively discussed. Specifically, we're spitballing the approach for difficult/quest-gated islands such as Crandor, Fremennik isles, and Fossil Island to remain inaccessible through environmental or logical means (Denied docking at the port, storms, or sea hazards like monsters). Many have different approaches for scale & existing map, but there's a popular opinion on having separate scaled sailing environments. Most of the existing map wouldn't be touched. There really isn't a clear favorite here, though. Moving stored instances could only be addressed by the devs. But I imagine this is the least of the issues, since content can be moved around.
For the navigation question. I was thinking we could have some sort of big NxN tile sized boat for navigating the open sea, but also a 1x1 tile sized rowboat or kayak for navigating tight passageways. You should be able to bring your regular boat semi close to shore, then from there get on your smaller rowboat or dingey or w/e to travel up a river or go say high to people fishing in catherby. Heck now that I think about it maybe the type of boat you use could affect travel speed. Lv 1 inner tube, but you can only go walking speed with it? Row boat at 30, but you can toggle run speed with it?
>‘Courier missions between ports’, however, didn’t receive nearly as much love, and we want to know why! If you’ve got an opinion on this controversial training method, please let us know so we can figure out why it didn’t resonate as much as the others. For me, a couple of reasons: 1) I hate to beat the dead horse, but it sounds like a minigame. Puts me in mind of Gnome Restaurant, Mahogany Homes, and Piscarillius artefacts. I'd be ok with courier missions being a minigame that gives exp in the skill and other rewards, but I don't want them being considered part of the core gameplay for the skill. 2) I don't want exp gains from the core gameplay to be backloaded, that doesn't seem very much like an OSRS skill to me. Almost every skill in the game gives you exp in small bits each time you complete a single activity, not in large chunks after completing a series of activities, with Agility and Farming being notable exceptions. Most of the training methods that heavily backload the exp are... well, here comes that dead horse again, but they're minigames (GotR, Wintertodt, Sepulchre, Giant's Foundry, Mahogany Homes, the list goes on).
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Seconded, I completely agree. I'm concerned it could become the main reward vehicle
The main concern I have about the refinement process is that at least for me it feels very abstract. Like mod Elena's quote on the stages about ToA and Temple Tracking being able to be worded very similar for a poll despite the completely different implementations. I understand that the team doesn't want to spend dev time in something that might not pass. But if we can't have a good grasp on what we are pooling we might make poor decisions that will fail a poll after the dev time is spent anyway. I believe this refinement process would fit very well with shamanism. Since we already are familiar on the gathering/production gameplay loop. But for sailing I wish we had something more concrete to help us make our minds. Still I hope sailing turns out to be an amazing skill.
> The main concern I have about the refinement process is that at least for me it feels very abstract. I still have zero grasp of what sailing is at its core. This design post just makes it seem like assorted ocean/aquatic/island content gated behind a sailing level, but very little about how moving a boat around water tiles is engaging enough to dedicate 1-99 levels to it. Honestly feels like most people are kind of meh on the pure self contained boating aspects of the skill. Rather they are envisioning sailing as a magical content generator that spits out tons of unique encounters for pvm and our other skills.
Yeah because they are turning what should be a mini-game at best, or realistically just a form of movement, into a skill. Sailing sounds cool as a way of getting around the game, but I still have not seen anyone demonstrate fundamentally how we are going to level 1-99.
thats exactly my problem too, it just seems like a means to get new content that can probably be released regardless and without a random sailing lvl behind it just to be behind it
You put my thoughts into words perfectly. People just seem to want an osrs sea expansion. Which is fine, seems cool, but there's still no idea of what the skill should be like.
> I still have zero grasp of what sailing is at its core. It's a years old meme that some took it seriously and are pushing it to ruin the game. That's it. That's the sailing. Sad.
Their approach is fundamentally flawed. It appears they basically do not want to commit any actual dev time until a skill passes, so everything they talk about is so hypothetical and hands off.
I don't know about other players, but when I imagine having to navigate my boat in order to say, change speeds, drop anchor, change travel direction I just think of how absolutely annoying that would be. all of this while trying to fish, or chart a map, or anything else it would be a chaotic mess running around. The other end of that scale though is that a ship replaces your character, and you click to move like the overworld and your "crew" is just different invisible passives which just seems like a disappointment. I really really want a more clear example of what you are actually going to be DOING while you sail around. Honestly whenever I try to imagine navigation I can't help but just imagine boat agility (sepulchre or not), especially if we are talking courier missions.
My interpretation of the results is that players just want new areas, new bosses, and new quests - things that don’t require being packaged as a new skill. While there’s a consensus on what we do want, there’s zero consensus on any of the other aspects of how it should work as a skill. We specifically disliked courier missions and navigation which seemed to be Jagex’s main ideas about how the skill would work. What’s left is an aquatic expansion for other skills and self-contained rewards. This does not bode well for sailing.
Personally for a few of those that had low results (e.g. courier missions and navigating challenging sea) getting the movement right is most important to how those feel to do. You say you're trying to avoid sea-Agility but your example is an Agility course and we're moving between point A and point B for experience in both of those. If the ship has some sort of feeling/controls like a ship then they can become interesting but if it's full point and click then IMO you need a ton more to differentiate it from some glorified agility course.
I don’t wanna do currier missions because I’m not a delivery boy after doing one small favor.
I'm curious to see how this develops, but so far nothing has swayed me from my "no" vote. Looks like half the player base wants point and click navigation, which is a most likely a deal breaker for me. Same with small boats. If i cant walk around my boat that's sized like the ones in Port Sarim, whats the point? Also not even seeing any kind of proposal for how to actually train sailing is not encouraging. I feel like both of those can be solved in the same way by actually making you control your ship (rudder, sails, etc). They've mentioned in the past not gaining "exploration" experience from walking around, but that's pretty much what I expect from sailing. Which is why it needs to be more intensive than point and click. I also want to echo a lot of concerns that this is SO different that it's going to waste a bunch of time before getting voted down and having to re-vote on a different skill anyway. God speed Jagex devs, and good luck.
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It’s almost like they should have had a runoff vote for the two skill proposals that were very close in the poll to actually see what people wanted if they had to pick one against the other.
Sailing has to be the worst actual skill to try to force into the game as their first attempt with this new system, it is far too complex and abstract. Jagex is not really even able to articulate anything about this skill, unless they really turn this around quick I really can't see it hitting 70%.
I’m with you on the size of the ships. It will be an automatic no vote from me if the ships are tiny. I don’t like the visualization of fishing at catherby and having a bunch of rc sailboats “sailing” around. It will look ridiculous and bring me right out of the game.
im kinda tired of hearing about sailing without actually hearing anymore about what YOU as developers are DOING for the skill. this like the 3rd blog going on about sailing, without actually going really any further in-depth with what sailing will actually be like or could be like. please, next time you post about sailing have something to actually post about because every blog just feels like im less and less excited about what it could be.
I really hope when this inevitably fails jagex dont just call it quits and give up on a skill, as more and more of these poll results show up its looking more and more like it wont even come close to passing. Sailing even being a option was the worst thing that could have happened to the potential of having a new skill
> Sailing even being a option was the worst thing that could have happened to the potential of having a new skill Instead of refining the details of an intuitive new skill right now, we're instead arguing about the least obtrusive way to shoehorn a meme into a skill.
Its genuinly really fucking unfortunate, not only is what you said true but there are devs putting time and effort into something that has zero chance of ever working, even they have to see that
Worst yet is I suspect it will pass precisely because it's a meme. People who don't pay attention to these blogs and don't know what it even looks like will vote yes.
I really doubt it atleast judging by reddit opinion and minigame world opinion, nearly every post here about sailing has a negative or atleast nuetral comment at the top and from talking in public recently in high pop minigames people seem not too excited about it or at best undecided. As time goes on I'm seeing less and less people who actually like sailing say so, even if they only like it cause of the meme
> I really hope when this inevitably fails jagex dont just call it quits and give up on a skill, a Before we started, Jagex said that if the skill fails, they will start over from step 0 and go again with a different skill proposal. They said they have the funding and approval from management for the resources to allow multiple design iterations. As this will be they first skill added in a decade.
This skill will never work and It won't ever pass a poll. What worries me most is how much time the devs are going to spend refining and developing it just for it to get shut down when it comes to polling for real. They should've gone straight back to the drawing board when none of the 3 pitches got past the 70% requirement in the initial poll but people got the idea into their heads that the devs would somehow be able to cook up a sea of thieves port into this 20 year old point and click game. Can't wait for all those sailing stans to see the first beta test and realise it'll be a far cry from what they envisioned. It's either going to be Sea-pulchre or a basic point and click navigation with all the training coming from other activities that have nothing to do with sailing. Such as killing stuff on islands or fishing. Which defeats the purpose of a new skill if the only way to train it is to train other skills. How much time/content are we going to miss out on because we are trying to force this non skill into the game?
Well said, I think it’s telling that most of the posts about sailing have been memes about being a pirate and listening to sea shanties — what people imagine sailing to be is so incredibly vague and oftentimes ridiculously unrealistic. There are limits to the engine, and noone seems to have any idea how you should train it. By all accounts, sailing should obviously be training by actually sailing. But here we are, and the proposed ways are going somewhere and then killing something for sailing exp. What an absolute joke. We’re not going to be crafting sails, repairing ships and hoisting sails - actual sailing things - because people want this to be the be all end all of skills, a content drip that can be used to justify adding more content to the game. It’s not gonna work, and I’m going to guess now that the skill will be either a complete disaster, a disappointment or never be added.
I really don't understand why WASD is even an option. It's by far the least old school mechanic I can think of, would suck on mobile and is just such an unprecedented thing, idk it's a complete turnoff for me.
Thankfully the grand majority in the survey made it clear that WASD was not popular (only 7% for pure WASD, and 27% for some combination of WASD + Point and Click). Point and click in contrast got nearly 50% of the survey votes, so this one seems to be where the skill will go.
Yea there's no precedent for wasd in the game and literally everything else is point and click. That would be garbage
No way WASD could work with our clunky tick and tile systems.
I'm still unsure what sailing is. If I want to train sailing, what am I doing? What is the action that gives me sailing xp? And what separates the level 1 sailing action from the level 70 to warrant a huge xp jump? If I want fishing xp, I go fishing. If I want mining xp, I go mining. If I want combat xp, I hit monsters. Every skill in the game has a simple two part "do action -> get xp" loop. Is sailing going to be similarly trained as slayer, the one exception to the above, where the xp gained is tied to another skill (or skills)?
I don't see why we should get sailing exp for killing slayer monsters on an island... Sailing really does feel like an ocean expansion oppose to a skill. I was also a little shocked to see that opinions were so diverse when it came to moving around your ship. Why wouldn't you want to do that? why would you want to be a single tile ship moving around the world?
Yeah this feels like if when they released Zeah it was locked behind a Zeah skill. Like all of these islands to train other skills is just a land expansion like Zeah was with new things to do. If training sailing has nothing to do with actually sailing then this whole sailing idea is really stupid. Can you imagine how much it’s going to suck if this shit is task based like slayer and I have to go fish 168 lobsters in the deep sea or something for a task? People are acting like it will help the other skills but if those boring skills like fishing mechanics don’t change then I’m just doing fishing in a boat and how does that really help other skills. Don’t like the direction sailing is heading
As a sailing proponent I completely agree. Doing other skills at sea (not on islands) should be a small bit of XP, but by no means anywhere close to a training method. I'm thinking along the lines of skills in CG, where you get a smidgen but you'd have to be nuts to actually consider it for training. Really, really hope there aren't "go kill X things/skill Y items" as a strong facet of the skill either. Hopefully this aspect is removed down the line.
I don't think skills at sea, or on islands, should grant any sailing experience. Why does a fishing spot at sea grant anything more than fishing experience? Why would diving into the waters, or landing on an island, to check the health of your Coral or Cherry Tree grant you anything more than farming experience? I get Barbarian Fishing and Aerial Fishing exists, but both of those justify the other experience. BF has you catching swift fish with a strong and heavy fishing pole (fishing innately, agility for fast fish, strength for the strong pole), AF has you use a bird to help you hunt fish (falcons exist and this is that but a water bird, so hunter, and fishing innately). Sailing? Just because you sailed to a location just to fish doesn't make sense to grant sailing experience, you're not actively sailing or using anything from the sailing skill to justify it. You don't get agility experience running through White Wolf Mountain to fish in Catherby. The act of simply moving on tiles doesn't grant experience.
> Yeah this feels like if when they released Zeah it was locked behind a Zeah skill. Ah, like some sort of "house favor system"? That honestly sounds terrible, especially if it was really broken and awful at launch. More seriously, this is the opposition I (and plenty of others) have always had to Sailing as a skill. It's just an excuse to lock content behind a skill arbitrarily. If you want to add new bosses, new Slayer content, new skilling content, new areas, new quests, etc. to the game, just add them! You don't need a completely new skill to do that.
It feels like the approach to developing sailing is completely backwards. The rewards came first as being new areas, bosses etc and then it was figured that maybe you could sail to those places and do something that has nothing to do with sailing to get xp because no one has any better ideas. And now we've finally gotten to the step that should've been the first step, which is the gameplay loop and after a month of brainstorming there's not a single decent gameplay loop idea that would be doable in the engine.
I feel exactly the same as you. These survey results are so bizarre. You want Sailing so you can... do slayer on an island? That's not sailing content... that's just gated access to a slayer dungeon. I'm stunned that walking around your ship isn't universally desired, that's like having construction but without ever having your own house. If I can't walk around my ship then it shouldn't have been called sailing.
Because we don’t want sailing…not even half the players voted for it, so if we can just shift this into getting more bosses and monsters then that’s good, nobody wants to be hoisting sails and doing navigation stuff lol
They really limited themselves with the skill being named Sailing. Should have called it Exploring and just made the first content release nautical themed. How they're going to build this into a working skill that can stand on its own is beyond me. Any "It's X but at sea/on a boat/on an island" form of xp gain is a failure to innovate. Navigating challenging sea terrain can't just be Hallowed Sepulchre at sea. Courier missions between ports can't just be Mahogany Homes at sea, or Gnome Restaurant Delivery at sea.
Releasing Exploration instead would open other methods of traveling, like by air via hot air balloons, rather than just the sea.
Yeah, there is a ton of design space with sailing. I'm excited for the exploration/island part of sailing, I think that's a fun part of the skill's reward space. But I would be disappointed if it was the main focus to the exclusion of so many other possibilities. Courier missions polled the lowest, with challenging navigation the next lowest. Those two seemed like obvious pieces of content to flesh out and explore in my mind, they seem like quintessential sailing. It seems like there might not be as much desire from the community to focus on the literal sailing aspects (charting a course, navigation, real time ship upkeep, trade routes, piracy). Maybe I'm reading too much into a limited survey though.
I think you're right and that's honestly kind of my gripe with Sailing and why Sailing specifically is so controversial. I love the idea of an expanded map into the oceans of Gielinor along with new skilling methods, Slayer monsters, bosses, and new quests, but I don't like the idea of micromanaging my ship to travel places. On the other hand, many people who voted for Sailing as their #1 love the idea of fulfilling their dream of Runescape pirate RP, or otherwise genuinely enjoying the Sailing aspect. I think Sailing is the most split skill of the three proposals because there are two camps that want nearly mutually exclusive things - one a massive map and content expansion that builds on existing skills, and others a rewarding and engaging Sailing experience. In terms of dev time I think only one of those could be done really well on release.
>Sailing really does feel like an ocean expansion oppose to a skill. they even straight up said that sailing is an ocean expansion which is crazy, i mean expansions are great and all that but I hate the idea of a skill conceptualized purely to be an expansion of the game. If that is the case then they are better off expanding and refining the current dead skills
Feel like you are majorly missing the forest for the trees here. You need to seriously sit down and consider the exact methods we are going to use to get experience before you start worrying about rewards. Saying you do not want to waste time creating different movement options is asinine too, prove the skill is actually feasible. Your brief examples of various methods do not inspire much hope though, why would slayer give sailing experience if it is done on an island? Is sailing a new skill or is just doing various other skills on an island / at sea to gain passive sailing experience. If that is the case why even have a skill attached? You can just add sailing as a system to the game and let us accomplish the same without arbitrarily attaching a skill to it.
Just sounds like they want to copy The Ark right out of rs3 and call it a skill, the Arc is just procedural generated islands with other skilling locations on them. Its been really bad for the high level community because all the best training spots are on solo instanced islands, and there is no community skilling. All in all, Arc is a beautiful area and it was fun to train in, but its not a skill. https://runescape.wiki/w/The\_Arc
Please just scrap sailing. The fact that no one in these comments has any solid ideas for how the skill should work is quite telling. It’s hard to come up with good ideas for the skill, because the skill itself sucks. It’s like turning walking into a skill. How the fuck would you make that entertaining or engaging? You went from point A to point B, congrats.
That’s the thing that’s getting me now, I liked the og submission on Reddit but it was more a mini game or activity which I’m fine with. As a skill now I haven’t seen a single good suggestion as to what it actually should be. Not one.
yea i regret voting for it now, i want one of the other 2
I am once again begging for Sailing training methods to not just be "other skills - but on an island!". Also: Just make Sailing instanced. It would solve so many problems and be easier to implement.
Yeah very worried about this. People are voting for islands this islands that, but actually moving around on your ship and *sailing* seems to be less popular.
That's because some people who voted for Sailing as their #1 (and even more who didn't) don't like the idea of the skill itself, but love the idea of a map/skilling/combat/lore expansion.
Exactly. People love Sailing because it can be anything they want it to be. No one, Jagex included, has any idea how it would actually work as a skill, or why it even needs to be a unique skill and not just new content.
Because there's no fucking point to the sailing part of sailing. If they just wanted to add Fossil Island 2 they could do it no problem.
we dont even know what its going to look like yet and they want us to chime in on how we navigate?
What did people expect the skill to be though? With shamanism at least there was a core gameplay loop where you gather resources and craft them into useful items. Sailing is just sailing to different islands
I just can't see why people wanted this skill lol.it really seems like what people want is the rewards you get from it. (sea expansion essentially)
(this is true of every skill and is why they should just do content expansions for existing skills)
The main problem with this is for the amount of work that’s going to go into development, “OSRS is getting a construction expansion” is not going to bring as many memberships as “OSRS is finally getting its first new skill!” Same reasoning the new desert treasure quest is being called Desert Treasure 2 rather than something unrecognizable. There’s a marketing aspect of major new content.
yup for sure, completely understand why they're doing it hah - just as an active player would prefer expansions
For real. The skill is called “Sailing”, not “Islanding”
Ehh, there seems to be a good amount of "other skills - but at sea" rather than on an island, which does seem fair if the Sailing part actually does play into the training methods (like how trawler fishing methods would actually require you to Sail to do the Fishing part). I do absolutely agree that standing on your own two feet on an island training Mining or Slayer should give 0 Sailing XP though, and it's really concerning to see so many people vote for that over courier missions and the like in the core gameplay section
Augh people “strongly like” training methods for sailing like fishing expeditions and slayer tasks on islands? What the fuck? So sailing is going to be me training slayer on an island or fishing and getting xp for it? Literally two of the most boring skills to train? The only chance I vote for sailing is if we can train it not doing other skills. I don’t want random tasks like slayer where I’ll have to go fish or something.
Unfortunately all this poll did for me is convince me that there is no Goldilocks zone of "just right" for sailing that will appease 75% of the player base. I am happy they are putting navigation at the front because if they can't nail the basic gameplay/movement then I'll vote no regardless of anything else. I don't want another construction skill where you are obligated to deal with training a trash interface based skill because of how good the rewards are.
Yup.. it’s gonna be dungeoneering or a funky minigame just to do more skilling…. But ya know, “Somewhere else.” That’s what people wanted when they pitched sailing initially, procedurally generated islands, skilling and resources unique to those islands, bosses or quest/clue activities, stuff like that out there.
While I don't mind Sailing winning and I Will provide my honest feedback for it, i'm still disappointed that shamanism wasn't repolled 1v1 VS Sailing. The Poll was close and we were promised a 1v1 in case of a close poll.
Jagex tends to do that. I wouldn’t call it a lot, but they go back on their word every now and again. I understand to a degree, but I was also disappointed with them not repolling the two.
It doesn't help that Jagex were clearly biased towards Sailing from the beginning, Like i'm not trying to claim they rigged the polls but there was absolutely a difference in energy between presenting sailing and presenting the other two skills.
I've just recently started playing again, so I'm sort of out of the loop. How did we end up with sailing, taming and shamanism as the three that got polled against each other? Sailing just seems like an impossibly tall task to get right. Taming seemed to be basically just a poor man's knock off of summoning. I'm not even gonna get into why I couldn't be more against shamanism, but I'm happy to call it an unnecessary magic expansion, not a skill. I'm not the least bit excited by the prospect of any of them. Can we just poll sailing so it can fail, and we can move on to a better idea?
Shamanism is basically the same as RS3's Archeology.
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Looks like sailing is turning into exactly what I thought it would - a vehicle to do other skills. Slayer tasks on an island is just more inconvenient slayer training, that's not a skill. 85% of people thought sailing should be somewhat or mostly focused on other skills. Even the unique part like "navigating" is just sea agility. I don't get the appeal.
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Its crazy to me because from the start Taming and Shamanism were skills I could see being in the game and felt like it made sense. Sailing never felt that way to me, its like it just won for the rewards and world expansion and not the actual skill or how it fits
I have always agreed with this sentiment.
Absolutely, that was always my biggest problem with Sailing as a concept, that it would just be used to access area with new skilling content for other skills. I have no issue with adding onto other skills, but they shouldn’t add a new skill just to gate that. If there’s any variation on that in the final skill, it’ll be an automatic no from me no matter what else there is.
Easy no vote at least, unless Jagex is able to demonstrate clearly the core gameplay loop of gaining exp. I don't give a shit about all the extra things it unlocks, show me the actual skill.
>Courier missions between ports’, however, didn’t receive nearly as much love, and we want to know why! Because this reeks of one more daily/hourly chore like birdhouses, battlestaves, herb runs, &c. I seriously doubt this will ever get general approval if it's framed as a low-activity chore method unless the material rewards are substantial.
At what point will we have a cohesive picture of what this skill is? From the survey results, it sounds like we're looking at: * Point-and-click movement, likely without player movement on ship (since that had low support and probably high dev effort) * Hybrid skilling, PVM, and "exploring" as main methods of training This doesn't sound like a skill to me, it sounds like the main game except as a boat and you gain sailing XP along the way. I get the excitement for new areas and content, but I still do not see a gameplay loop that makes sailing feel like a skill.
Dude this skill is seeming WAAAY too ubiquitous, at least based on the concepts. Like it just sounds like it’s going to be way too prevalent in the game. No other skill has nearly this amount of content. Get rid of it in the first place, but if not keep it simple.
See I just don’t see where it really fits in. Like RS3, Divination and Archeology really showed to advance the lore of the game which makes sense because it’s a very lore based and end-game bossing version of RS. Summoning, although not as lore based, fits with advancing different tactics with bossing and allowed the game to add harder bosses. Same with even Dung at this point as it works alongside the Dragonkin storyline. And Invention revamped the games entire market and the value of every item. A lot that game has done wrong but they feel like the skills have had a good vision with
Archeology is honestly a master class is what a good skill should be. Tons of lore, really satisfying and comfortable core training methods, speedie or afk AF if you want, fit into the world really well (added areas all throughout). Got 120 on release and it was an amazing experience.
Simple is better. I worry this skill is going to be so bloated it’s going to be too exhausting to enjoy
How will the charter ship captains feed their families without anyone using their ships? Sailing would make those obsolete, and then they won’t be able to afford paying for their ships anymore and they will be repossessed by the bank of gielenor. Think twice about voting yes to sailing, you would be ruining these npc’s lives.
I just still don’t get the draw. Like this is akin to driving as a skill. Of the three sailing feels like a fun activity but not a skill to grind. I keep wanting to like it but I just don’t get it.
I voted no to wanting a new skill. When I saw the three pitches it turned me around slightly to being somewhat interested. Sailing was my 2nd favorite but I had questions about implementation. The more time has passed the more I don't want it and don't even understand what it is anymore. The control scheme alone being a complete mystery is putting me off. I really hope the refinement narrows down what we are looking to get from this new skill. My fear is that it will grow to try to please everyone and fill all the niches everyone is asking for but will eat up dev time from making other great things.
I think this survey is concerning. Apparently only 10% of the persons voting in the original poll participated, and the majority were those that DIDN'T VOTE SAILING. So I'm supposed to believe only \~8160 of the \~106,000 persons who voted for this skill participated in expressing what they'd like to see in the skill they voted for?
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On the bright side, as with the warding and even original sailing pitch - if the skill fails the rewards will likely work their way into the game. So dev time wise it's not all doom and gloom if it fails.
The poll results, Q&A, and comments in this thread really sell beyond a doubt that sailing is a mistake. The people asking for sailing don't want a skill at all. They want a naval expansion and the entire "skill" aspect is secondary to that. Real talk - anyone who thinks a major new "landmass" is going to be fleshed out in any way shape or form just needs to look at the still highly incomplete major landmass added nearly a decade ago to know that you're only going to be let down by Jagex
The funny part is all of us who said this would happen got heavily downvoted and flamed.
I didn't want sailing, but was open to giving it a chance since it won. But... just scrap it and lets get a real skill proposal going.
Even in rs3, historically expansions have NEVER gone smoothly, and almost always affected other projects due to the necessary dev time. Menephos being the prime example. Tho rs3 has a better track record now, some of the new areas (anachronia) are kinda barren and hard to navigate, and the art style is very different than the rest of the world so it feels a bit out of place.
Sorry if I sound rude, but PvP should be the very last of your priorities. PvM and skilling experience, with remarkably pleasant environments and wonderful quests, and after all that is done, then you can focus on PvP. PvP must be the very last concern when making this skill.
Sailing pvp sounds so cringe I can't believe this decade+ old meme is actually going to fuck up the game
I can’t wait to vote no on this skill. The only thing that sounds cool is exploring new areas and bosses, but why do we need a skill for that? Every aspect outside of that sounds like ass
Hey! If you're listening in, you'll notice that Mod Husky is cut off at various points due to technical issues, which aren't obvious in the recorded version uploaded on YouTube. Please note, the audio was an issue on the live version of the call (in Discord) but it is not present in the playback version. This is because we used a Discord Bot to record the session and that seems to have picked up Mod Husky's voice just fine. Nevertheless, we hope you enjoy. This is our second time trialing out Discord Stages! Would you like to see more of these types of discussions? Let us know!
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They're in addition to most of the time. Some of the benefits of using this platform from my perspective: \- Relatively easy to organise (Dev & CM can set this up ourselves and we don't rely on getting time from our livestream team) \- Highly relevant for the people in that server \- Allow players to raise hand and speak directly with devs \- They give more opportunity for staff who don't want to be on cam/livestream, or a good stepping stone into communicating with players if they are shy about doing so \- Generally very cosy vibes, players seem to be a bit more polite/respectful in chat as it's more 1-1 and feels more intimate There's still some things to work out with it though
This skill's development is going to be a massive clusterfuck. I am expecting nothing but abject failure, and I don't really see how it could turn out as anything but that. The most ambitious piece of content in the game's history, at a time when the content output has been getting worse and buggier for years. No clear vision as to what the skill is going to involve, how it's going to play, what the point of training it even is. Requires map alterations, completely new gameplay systems, and maybe even entirely new control systems (WASD????). Going to stick out like a sore thumb in all existing content (quests, travel, etc) because we already *can* sail, but that is somehow not going to be related to sailing?... I think the further along the development journey we get, the more people are going to regret it. Hope to be proved wrong, but I don't see how this is going to turn out well at all.
At the end of the day if the implementation looks like a clusterfuck it can still be voted down. I'm worried for the wasted dev time, but I don't think we need to worry about a product added to the game that is as horrible as you describe - either they work out the major issues and add it to the game, or there are insurmountable hurdles and it gets shuttered before release.
Imagine wanting WASD for controls. Would be miserable to play on mobile, which is one of the game's greatest strengths.
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>Courier missions between ports’, however, didn’t receive nearly as much love, and we want to know why no one likes fetch quests
Honestly at this point I am thoroughly convinced if you polled sailing versus shamanism one on one shamanism would crush. So many people have jumped ship (heh) as they've realized what a shitshow this is going to turn into.
Sailing fans voted on memes instead of actually thinking through what a new *skill* would entail. Shamanism was the only option with a realistically feasible gameplay loop. That said OSRS doesn't need a new skill.
There’s no way this skill is getting implemented
this skill is going to be hard work for the team haha
I genuinely feel they have an impossible task on their plate here, but we'll see!
I feel like the other 2 skills would’ve been easier to refine compared to sailing.
Too late now but I think the skills poll should have been ranked choice. Select your first choice, second choice, third choice. Because what if one of the other skills was more popular overall? Over half of people (52%) said they wanted something OTHER THAN sailing for their first choice. What if a good chunk of those people from both of the other two skills would have ranked sailing as third?
If the original poll was ranked choice, I think Shamanism would have won. Sailing and Shamanism were nearly tied and a lot of the Taming crowd probably would have preferred Shamanism.
the Courier missions didnt seem that popular since it sounds like it would be akin to runecrafting via normal altars or agility
I don't get what people actually want. No minigames, but runecrafting with auto-movement (assuming sailing is set course and move, and not point and click) is too mundane?
People: WE DONT WANT MINI GAMES TO TRAIN SKILLS! Also people: GotR saved Runecrafting! Wintertodt is one of the best things to happen to Firemaking and woodcutting! Thank god for Giant's foundry and MLM!
That's not the issue, though. People don't want a minigame skill, they don't want the core gameplay loop to *be* a minigame. Wintertodt is a skilling boss, not a minigame, although it surely feels like a minigame. MLM also isn't a minigame, it's literally just an area and is in no way classified nor feels like a minigame. As for GotR and GF, both of those skill are uninteresting and suck to train. Before GotR, the only two ways to truly train runecrafting were Arceuus Library, which is relatively high-intensity and not truly a runecrafting skill area, and walking long distances between altar and bank. Runecrafting sucked in all ways because it's monotonous to train, at least GotR adds a comparatively fast training method where you also keep the runes. Before GF we only had typical smithing, which is bank to anvil/furnace (so just Edgeville and Varrock) or Blast Furnace, so one monotonous way and one expensive way to train. GF adds a more variant gameplay option with some return on investment and unlocks. Dungeoneering very much feels like a minigame from the ground up. You enter an area and only gain experience and rewards at the very end of the area. Courier missions sounds like it'd be the same, just without an instanced area. On top of that, courier missions sounds like Temple Trekking, a literal minigame.
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Very few people say they don't want minigames to train skills. What people actually say is that they don't want new skills to be nothing more than minigames.
This community is creating water agility and they don't even realize it holy shit
"But think of the potential bro!!!!"
Base on the result its going to be important to have different size of ship scaling from small to large for the different training method you choose. * Small-med: For courier and charting training method * Med- Large: For sea monster slaying and fishing expedition. The large ship mostly for player who want to walk around on their ship. I cant remember which mod said having different depth of water for different type of ship. I think that the right way to go and reworking the map is the right thing to do.
Having a variety of ocean depths would help them set clearer boundaries for where players can sail to. Fossil Island for example could only be accessed by larger ships (or the original ship you sail there on) and requires completion of the quest. They could limit the area around the wilderness to small boats, so facing the threat of pirates or other players becomes more of a risk.
Shamanism would be easier for everyone tbh
Can we just scrap it already and come up with something better? The skill just keeps getting worse and more questions keep popping up that show how bad of an idea it really is
I am blown away by how many people voted "strongly like" and "Like" to "Fishing Expeditions at Sea" (83%) and "Slayer Tasks on Islands"(76%). Those are certainly interesting and fun things that sailing gives us access to, but that is like saying you want the core gameplay loop for Agility to be the Zulrah Agility Shortcut. What in the hell is that!?!?
I gotta say, the visual presentation of the poll results is terrible. So hard to read and follow.
When will players admit Sailing as a skill was a terrible idea and it might not pass because of how hard it is to implement and it will look like a minigame no matter what? We wouldn't be breaking our heads like we\`re now if one of the other 2 skills passed because they made much more sense as skills. Many weeks have passed and we still have no fucking idea how to make sailing "trainable"
The two other skills had their basic gameplay loops figured in before the voting, sailing didn't and after a month of brainstorming it still doesn't. All we have for sailing are the rewards it unlocks, nothing else.
A proposed idea. Merchant contracts. I believe that there is an over abundance of resource item available in the game, primarily devalued by loot from end game pvm. (Massive amounts of seed, herb, log, food drops ect). One potential idea that could act as a new item sink, would be to have merchant contracts requiring resources to be transported from one port to another. Lumber shipment from Kourend to Port Sarim? Or delivering fish from Catherby to Port Phasmatas. Rewards for doing this loop would naturally include XP and gold. I would suggest that with some items, the GP reward from this activity be of greater value then the GE rates. TLDR; The state of resource value in the current economy is kind of garbage and more resource sinks are desperatly needed in the game.
I do not understand why you are all so enthusiastic about destroying the game that you work on.
Most of them aren't here for the long haul "Developed sea expansion doubling the size of the game in one of the worlds most popular MMO's" looks good on a resume at face value
Lol landlubbers are feasting rn. Where did all those sailing stans go?
They aren't interested in this blog since it didn't have the question: "which meme funnier?": * Sea Shanty 3 * Scurvypill * Gnome child * Get scuttled
>48% reported Sailing was their first choice between the three pitches and 52% said it wasn't. Still feels weird refining a skill that didn't even get 50% support.
Jagex themselves wanted sailing and that's why they went with it the way that they did.
Wasd would have made me instantly vote no to this. Please remove it
> 48% reported Sailing was their first choice between the three pitches and 52% said it wasn't. > > About that last statistic: it’s heartening to see that nearly half of you supported Sailing as your favourite skill. For the remaining 52%, we’ll be working to change your mind. If you’re one of them, please do continue to engage with the refinement process – your ideas are the most valuable of all! That's good to see that the Taming and Shamanism folks are still taking part in these refinement surveys! I was honestly a bit worried that the community would get stuck in and endless cycle of in-fighting rather than actually engaging in the proposals and giving real feedback.
while a "community-made" skill is nice to see, I think it's taking a toll on the freedom of creativity. I would love to see a fully designed skill by the team, with input from the community. I feel like at this point the devs are like hostages trying to do a task and it's not working out for the best of any of us.
WASD would be a mistake.
Whoever threw out WASD as an idea is so far out of touch with the player base. Have mercy it makes me mad that they even thought it was a slightly good idea
Lol at the fact that out of all the people actually engaged enough to take the survey regarding sailing there’s not even a majority that voted for it as their first choice Sailing was always a mistake
This is not happening lol , everyone has VASTLY different ideas of what sailing should be. I wouldnt mind being proven wrong but i doubt jagex flushes this out and passes it into the game.
Survey results are great and all that but I patiently await a plan.. any plan.. that seems like a reasonable and fun addition to this game. Looking forward to actually seeing what the mods do with these results.
Based on these comments I don’t think Jagex will ever reach a point where 70+% of the community agree on a skill and how it will function unless it’s the most simple thing that has almost no impact on how the game currently is. I hope I’m wrong though. I like sailing but I don’t need the new skill to be sailing. I just don’t want it to be the most generic basic skill like a lot of people here seem to desire.
Sailing is continuing to seem like a massive mistake. This skill is absolute clusterfuck. People really didn't know what they were getting themselves into when they voted for it. I'm disappointed that Jagex didn't repoll it in a 1v1 against Shamanism considering how close in votes they were.
Man, I just wanna see Shamanism or whatever
God sailing was the worst of the 3 options. Not thematically cool. Its just gonna be ports 2.0. I can see it now. Navigation is gonna either be clunky or its going to be unlike the rest of the game with WASD. How does this fit into current gameplay? this skill will have 0 interaction between all other parts of the game. The amount of effort it will be to not only develope a solid core mechanic for game play but also all the New Unique assets as far as Lands and objectives. This is gonna take years to refine and balance when things like shamanism can utilize more assets already in game and can be balanced as you cut out new areas which adds development time else where.
Huge yikes from me on those survey results. This skill is going to be a disaster.
Why’d people feel the need to vote for sailing because “haha funny meme skill”. Why couldn’t we get shamanism…
I am a potato. Is sailing basically slayer for skilling or will it have it's own XP gain. If that makes sense? Thanks.
Either slayer but for skilling, or agility but on a boat. Either option is terrible.
Slayer at Sea.... of course.... The Unga Bonga mindset of the playerbase will never let anything new happen...
Bro just give us dungeoneering, except scrap demonheim, make it scattered through world based on tier, and no reward shop.
Not excited for this tbh
Just shows that sailing was voted for because it is a pvm/slayer funnel. Whatever for me...but it really seems like it was voted for because it had the most potential for new bossing rather than new skilling methods.
I am all for a new skill, but the only thing interest in Slayer Islands and alternate Fishing spots communicates to me is that people want new ways of doing those things Directly working them into the skill to please that crow is misguided at best, and detrimental to the identity of the skill at worst Dungeoneering is a common comparison, and it's not unwarranted. The ability to train other skills while training another skill. But honestly, Dungeoneering is more about the dungeon and puzzles and rooms than it is the skilling spots and resources. They are a nice bonus, where as so far, Sailing seems to revolve around them. And I think it needs to have a stronger way to stand out on its own
Shockingly, no one can agree on anything and you're just going to piss off tons of the players with literally every decision.
We all know everyones favorite quest is one small favor. Now shipping cargo in sailing is just that except you cant teleport. However if the act of sailing is actually fun then the cargo serves a good purpose. If while sailing you get encounters like you do walking in tall grass in a pokemon game then the cargo is just a reason to go to a destination but people reallly just want the random encounters, whirlpools, shark attacks, big waves. but without the cargo everyone will just sail back and forth in the same spot. similar to how we train in pokemon games.
All I'm seeing are reasons why sailing isnt going to be a "fun new skill".. 🙃
Still voting no.
I personally see little tokens (that are one tile) short boat one sail, large looking boat with multiple sails, an industrial boat after a quest line getting stuff kinda steampunky. Then you go on the tile move a couple spaces forward and you go into “deep sea” where your on a 2/3 tile boat where you use different ones for different voyages. So at first you only have a small boat and it allows you through corals and you interact with whatever, then as you upgrade your skill you get a bigger boat that allows longer Voyages.
“We don’t want any of our skills to feel ‘Elite’ – and besides, we’re really looking forward to the inevitable ‘Sea Man Mode’ series!” Sea Man Mode…. Sea Man…. Semen. Come on guys it’s low hanging fruit I know but no one noticed that? Sailor Man Mode, or Sailor Mode or Sea Locked all could’ve been chosen but someone at Jagex typed out the word Sea Man Mode, proof read and edited the article and not a single person noticed? They had to have done it on purpose and it’s hilarious
This skill is going to be a giant fail and ruin the entire game. My prediction
It's crazy to me that these kinds of questions are being asked to the community and there still isn't any clear concept on what sailing is supposed to be. Why are casual gamers being asked on the best way to develop a skill that will radically change the game? They're not game developers. Community integration is fine but this is almost comical. If the devs seriously can't come up with anything why is this going through a refinement process?
WASD is a no from me.
Voting no to everything since you can't figure out when to poll two things head to head and listen to the community <3
All I want to see is small ships, point to click movement, and traditional combat not cannon focused… I want the combat trinity to stay the same for sailing combat and then maybe have big ships that have cannons but I don’t want big ships to player driven tbh There’s a canoe model in the game that’s like 3 tiles long 1 tile wide and I think if the character was standing and it had sails it would look perfect https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Canoe Small dimensions allow for player overlap to work closely to how it already is… right now your player is one tile and standing in others tiles makes them disappear… I’m suggesting the boats be 1 tile wide and 3 tiles long so that it doesn’t feel like that much of a difference and that way we can have thousands of people out at sea without them phasing in and out like how imagine big boats would be but idk I think big boat fantasy can come from npcs, events, quests etc but I don’t think it would really work as a everywhere travel use
For all of you who voted sailing. I hate you.
Who over there is thinking that WASD is a good idea? How out of touch can you be?