RuneScape Q&A: Further Answers

The official press release is as below:

Many of you will have read Mark Gerhard's newspost last month in which he invited you to ask us questions about the company and our games. The response was fantastic, and thousands of you sent in your questions. Today we are posting the latest installment of RuneScape questions, which have been answered by Paul Gower, myself and Mod Roderick.

A big thank you to everyone that took the time to post a question on the forum or email one in; we have really enjoyed reading your comments, and we hope to run further Q&A sessions in the future.

Following on from Mod MMG and Andrew's Q&A posts, Paul, Mod Mark and Mod Roderick answer some more of your questions.

Q) Mainiac97: You should put maps for caves and such on the world map.

A)Paul: I agree.

Q) Da usc90: My concern is that this blurb would make it seem that Jagex is shifting its concerns to the free:to:play population (FTP), rather than paying members. If you continue to upgrade FTP, then what use is there to being a member?

A) Paul: I wouldn't say the focus is free:to:play rather than members. I'd say the focus is free:to:play AS WELL as members. Don't worry: it'll continue to be more than worthwhile being a member. Members already have a lot more content than free players and we will be continuing to release lots of members:only content.

Mod_Roderick: Attracting more free players to the game can also be an advantage for members. For example, my main skills are Fishing and Cooking, so the more people I have to sell lobsters to, the better.

Mod Mark: It's easy to forget that most of us started as a free player. The free game needs lots of attention, but it doesn't mean that we will stop making members' content : far from it.


Q) Dark armor14: Are you planning on making any more changes to Summoning? I would really like to see more popular combat places like the lesser pit in Karamja Volcano, Brimhaven Dungeon and other single:way combat areas open to familiars, as I feel the combat aspect of the skill is grossly neglected.

A) Paul: I'd also love to see the combat familiars able to be used in more areas. Allowing familiars to fight in a single:way area has some technical difficulties, though. Switching some areas from single:way combat to multicombat is a possibility, but would have a bunch of other gameplay side:effects such as making the areas more dangerous.
Since Summoning, most of the new monster training areas are multicombat training areas that are suitable for bringing familiars. We plan to continue in this vein and add more such training areas.

Mod Mark: That will also include adding new and interesting ways of getting charms, like the recent Soul Wars minigame.


Q) Acejesse13: Most of the skills end at lower levels than 99, and there is not really any point to raise them any higher.

A) Paul: We do plan to fill in the gaps for higher level skills over time

Mod Mark: Paul's right. we all dream of a day where every time I go up a level I get something new and exciting I can do, rather than just doing something better.

Q)Lalala7324: Now, for the community tournaments mentioned, will those be combat:based like the Duel Tournaments, or will they be more minigame:based such as Trouble Brewing, Stealing Creation, etc?

A) Paul : I'm sure we will aim to do a variety of community events. Feedback on the sorts of things you would like to see on this front would be great.

Some of them could be competitive tournaments, some could be other things. Some of what we do could be staff:hosted, while we could also be adding items and features to help players run their own events.

Tell us what you'd like!


Q) Nokama889: I think that you should release an Achievement Diary cape.

A) Mod Mark: The plan with Achievement Diaries is to eventually release a full set of equipment, making up the "Achievement Diary set". Similar to the Barrows gear, the full set will give you access to some special abilities. It may well be that the final piece of equipment is a cape. So, yes, there will be an Achievement Diary cape but it won't be like the level 99 capes.

Paul: I would prefer to keep our options open for now. If we ever wanted to put a "very hard level" of achievements into a diary, that could be a much more sudden jump in level requirements than the smoothly increasing level requirements we have on the quest cape.


Q) Eirikjoh: Will there be new skills by the end of 2010 and are you working on one at the moment?

A) Paul: Yes

Q)Kiwi Bahamut: Players like skills. That's what we do in order to do quests or prepare ourselves for pking, etc. Is it possible for the development and programming team to even release a new skill annually? From a player's perspective, it's hard to know how easy or difficult it is to implement a new skill into the game. So is it too much to ask for a new skill every year or so?

A) Paul: New skills are a lot of work to develop. Recent skills like Summoning and Construction have had more work put into them than any other project. They're the last type of project I'd like to constrain ourselves to a regular release schedule for, as they're important to get right. I feel that Summoning actually got a little rushed to be released for a specific date. Then we spent 3 very hectic months after release trying to get it to be the skill we wanted it to be. Not Ideal!

We will continue to release new skills, but releasing a skill every year seems too often to me right now, when there is still quite a lot we can do to improve many of the existing skills.
We could probably get some skills with a low number of features out in a short time period, but wouldn't players be disappointed if we released another Firemaking:type skill?

Mod Roderick: It's worth pointing out that with every update RuneScape becomes a bit more complex. This means that the technical and balancing challenges get harder with each skill that gets added, as well as player expectations increasing.