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So is the actual sailing part going to be instanced? I don't see how this is going to work with multiple ships in the same area at once without it looking like an absolute mess
Hey Plebsaurus, I love your name btw!
We know that players really resonated with Sailing being NON-instanced as a skill, like most other skills are, so that it feels like it's part of Gielinor and not a minigame or silo'd off. The development team would like to re-affirm that it's non-instanced much as possible.
We mentioned having time-based challenges, like Barracuda Trials, for Sailing and those absolutely need instances where it makes sense as players would experience griefing if they are competing for a certain time.
The "mess" part is harder to answer with absolute certainty at the moment. We're not far enough in development yet but certainly we'll be looking to limit the amount of ships that are visible in an area at a time to avoid those problems.
I really like the idea of uninstanced sailing
I don’t mind seeing boats clipping all that much, it’s worth it to me to get to feel like the ocean is alive with other explorers
Agreed. We already see everyone clipping in every skill. There is no reason why sailing should worry about “mass pileups”
Yeah, we do this with banks and no one cares.
This is one of those places to really lean into scale theory. No of course the boats aren't stacked on top of each other! It also doesn't take 5 minutes to sail the world. Dozens and dozens of ships can be very close together in the water. It's probably not a big deal.
Honestly I think it would be hilarious if ships could death dot for pvp. imagine if you are a lone ship trying to pk another ship, then a CLAN of ships pop out and tries to pk you.
Sailing to me doesn’t need to be pristine realistic sea of thieves gameplay. Clipping and jank is part of old school. Let them cook
I don't mind seeing boats clipping at ports and points of interest, as long as the open ocean is big enough for all of us
The area between musa point and mudskipper point would likely get very crowded. Right now, all the existing landmasses are much closer together than you'd expect.
A "mess" is classic Runescape though, Varrock and Fally pre GE were a "mess", what about the mess of people dueling in Lumby or the mess that the GE is today.
If it aint janky it aint OSRS. That is part of the charm.
Wintertodt is another good example. Literally hundreds of people and clipping. I think it makes the game feel alive.
Considering we already dont have clipping for our characters when moving throughout the world, of warc... i mean runescape. I don't see any reason to complain if you guys just make the ships able to clip and park on top of each other, etc. The it doesn't matter how many people are enjoying the content in the same areas on the oceans. Whatever gathering resources you guys add out on the sea will be susceptible to the same scarcity that resources in land are already susceptible to so no issue there.
Is separating the "sailing ocean" from the "walking world" instancing even if every player in the ocean can see each other? If you can scale the ocean such that each tile in the world map covers a larger area while sailing, you could do away with clipping while also letting ships move at more expected speeds. If one ocean chunk = one world map tile and ships within the same chunk showed as 1x1 ships to people on land, it would probably greatly limit interaction between the two spaces(if there is any planned direct interaction) but it could let the ocean movement feel good even in tight spaces?
one thing people should keep in mind is that after the first few weeks or months or so, sailing wont be as chaotic as it will be shortly after launch. it's going to be an absolute zoo at first, but it will slowly go down to a less crazy level of engagement
In the same way having a bunch of players and pets and stuff in one space can feel crowded. It's part of the old-school jank feel
Well I’m definitely going to check out the technical alpha, and it’s sounding pretty good. I’m particularly glad that the Cursed Archipelago will be visitable at some point, since the Lassar Undercity’s Black Stone content really jumpstarted interest inXau-Tak .
But there’s one detail in here about the islands that I wanted to comment on:
With all due respect: I really think that Sailing does need some completely unique experiences and resources that can’t be found anywhere else. A special top-tier reward perhaps, something that is useful outside of Sailing but can only be obtained via Sailing. Because, otherwise, what really is the point in getting to a high Sailing level, if all the rewards can be found elsewhere?
I would say for a good model of how Sailing rewards should ideally work is Dungeoneering and Chaotic weaponry from pre-EOC RS. Would so many have trained Dungeoneering if it wasn’t for the reward of a chaotic at the end? I’m not saying Sailing needs something as powerful as a Chaotic weapon, but I do think the reward space needs to be more unique like a Chaotic was for Dungeoneering. Because right now it seems like, as promising as islands are, they are essentially the same as training Dungeoneering just for the resource dungeons.
In general I’m a bit worried that it seems right now the best Sailing rewards only benefit Sailing. I can’t imagine not “getting something” out of a skill. Like, could you imagine if Herblore’s reward was simply the ability to level Herblore better?
I had the same thoughts.
This reads like they're deadly afraid of making the rewards actually GOOD and pissing off the vocal minority that screeches if a new method is 1k xp/hr than the previous best one. Worrying.
"This reads like they're deadly afraid of making the rewards actually GOOD and pissing off the vocal minority that screeches if a new method is 1k xp/hr than the previous best one."
Ah, so the very thing they themselves have proven they are terrified to do in the already released "project rebalance" updates this month. Extremely worrying indeed.
In the full context, it seems more like they were saying "we don't want to say Sailing is good because it unlocks X reward, but have players think Sailing is good and it also unlocks X reward". The full paragraph for context:
So more of a "we want to focus on making it a good/fun skill to train now and not get bogged down by talking about the rewards until later".
The full paragraph for context:
I get you were focusing on that line since it does come off a bit like they don't want to give sailing good rewards, but in context it comes off differently. They are more saying they want to focus on making it a good/fun skill to train at this stage than getting into the rewards. Sailing will have things worth unlocking; they just don't want to detail the navigation discussion by going too into it right now.
I think you misread something there. They aren't saying you don't need to train the skill to get rewards. They're saying getting the rewards isn't the entire point of the skill and the training is tedium on the way. You're supposed to like training the skill and the rewards are the cherry on top.
I think a comparison would be killing bosses (even if you don't like them) because you want the reward, vs killing bosses because you enjoy killing that boss and the reward is a bonus.
you need 95 rc for wraths, or vorkath. it's an alternative but a shit one. might be what they mean.
tip for irons, if you want wraths to do like demonic offering you can use the scar ess mine, and stew at lvl 90 to get 95 boosted. the ess mine lets you craft 5-6k runes/trip and u can get like 2 trips in with a stew.
I think this sentiment is fine overall. But right out of the gate, it does make sense that upon launch. The main benefit of sailing is rewards for sailing. It does not however, mean that it's the only content we'll get and there won't be any overlap in the future. I think focusing on the solid foundation and loop for sailing itself is most important from the get go. With juicy expansions and bigger rewards down the line.
Agreed. The best part IMHO about the Runescape 3 new skills is exactly the thing Jagex seems to be afraid of here: Regardless of being a main or ironman: you want peak efficiency? Better train those skills. You cant just summon any summon at lower level summoning, you cant get anyone else to augment your stuff, best you can do with Arch is boost it so you can get relic powers faster ( which is still level 112 at worst ). You even have to mix overloads yourself.
Worst thing about skilling that you have little actual incentive ( as a main ) to train past Quest requirements. I know some people will need those levels to craft those weapons and whatnot but still. Idk why is it such a sin to give good rewards to at least skill capes if not filling up the 80-99 bracket with some good stuff.
Echoing others but:
Please do take all the time you need with this. If it comes out 2026, I'm not complaining as long as it's good. We've had tons of fantastic content and rebalancing updates lately, I don't think many folks are screaming for this ASAP.
I'm really not sold on the scale of things. As others have said, I'm a bit concerned that the size of the boats will make hotspots completely impossible to actually see anything in. In places like Wintertodt it's generally not a big deal since everyone piles into a few tiles, but for instance in WoW, Blizzard was forced to basically make it impossible to mount near key NPCs because otherwise it rapidly became impossible to see them due to the size of mounts. The collision here makes it different, but I think it shares the same root problem of actually being able to look at the viewport and know what's around you.
For me, I think I'd expect the smallest boat to be a small fishing boat that's ~3 tiles of walkable space (1 bench with oar for navigating, 1 open tile, maybe with a sack or chest hanging off the side, and then 1 space for the most basic facility like a crane or fishing pole or whatever), and then that would scale up to the size of the small boats you guys have shown off.
I haven't seen it mentioned in other comments, so I'll throw my hat in here:
Please, for the love of Guthix, make sure that sailing isn't 90% "do things you already do in the mainland, but on islands a, b, and c." It really takes away the feeling of sailing being a unique skill. If sailing is just going to be an avenue to introduce new areas where we partake in activities otherwise completely unrelated to our maritime abilities, then sailing will function only as a skill about slowly teleporting to places.
I guess what I'm saying is, please keep in mind that if the only majorly unique/new thing about sailing is going to be the islands, then why can't the islands just be released without adding a new skill?
this was one of my main complaints in the beginning...i now want sailing to succeed but i agree this is still a potential problem... the sails luffing and you having to trim them is a great little thing that shows mod elena is trying to make the actual act of controlling the boat into a training experience, which is promising. i want more stuff like that, and stuff you can do on the water (like salvaging).
That's been my major issue with Sailing from the start. It's not a skill; it's just content. And content can (and should) be added without tying it to a completely new skill that otherwise only exists for its own sake.
im really trying to not hate on sailing, but the more they go into the more it feels like theyre just slapping xp on to it for the sake of having a new skill. which was the big thing most ppl didnt want for a new skill, a new skill for the sake of a new skill.
I dont see how they successfully pull this off as anything besides transportation + ship battle mini game
Arc movement and having to enter/exit "navigation mode" are two instant turn offs and completely ruin the skill, imo. They are clunky, awkward interactions that just don't mesh with OSRS movement. Very disappointed that they seem to be key additions to the demo. The very first tech demo, where there was a simple click to move on both the ship and map (to move the ship) was the only time that I thought that sailing might have a chance. I really hope that the alpha testers are able to test it out in more intensive encounters beyond "open seas", as well as solo play, because these issues are going to become far more apparent when trying to move precisely and mange different tasks rapidly.
I really feel this entire skill is being over-baked. It feels like you're trying to make a full game within a single skill, trying to integrate all these different "roles" and making simply moving the ship an entire process. It's just making playing "OSRS" more annoying, being filtered through a layer of "sailing", and I think it's going to sink the skill. Keeping it as simple as possible, and as in-line with all the other OSRS engine mechanics is the best chance for the skill to succeed, and it looks like every update to the skill is moving away from that.
Please please please take you're time getting this right, the game has been such a good place the last few years, it better for sailing to take a long time and come out right then to come out in a way that negativity impacts the game
This. Rather it come out in late 2025 than rush and have it come out like varlamore just came out, no part 1 part 2 part 3 just all in 1 batch then a whole month dedicated to patches and qol for it
I can tell from this you know very little about software development, so I'll elaborate. With large pieces of content like varlamore and sailing. This is the better way to release the content. No amount of QA is going to clear this of bugs, especially with something the size of osrs and the amount of intricate interactions it has. If they try and package a TON of content into one update. The chance of larger game breaking bugs becomes more and more possible to slip through. Rolling it out in small batches allows for targeted bug fixes with less possibility for game breaking issues. They get batch 1 fixed. Roll out batch 2 and see what breaks from interaction with batch 1 and bugs within itself. They get that fixed and roll out batch 3. You roll all 3 out at once and you get game breaking rollback requiring stuff that pushes it out of the main game and back into development.
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I could be alone here, but I feel like the ships are too big. When the models reach a larger size, turning looks super clunky (especially when staying on one tile and turning in place) and visually off without some sort of tweening or animation smoothing. Given the current scale of the world (distance between continents), it doesn't seem like there's enough ocean to maneuver around in, either- I believe this point was already brought up in a newspost, though.
That aside, the exploration aspects and mixture between active and passive gameplay looks fun. I have faith that the team can make this a great skill.
I was under the impression that they would expand the distance between the continents and islands to make it more fitting? Cause I agree it would look ridiculous if it stays they same and I can basically use my ship as a bridge for some of the small gaps between land masses currently
Idk if this applies to OSRS, but RS3 Jmods said this is really hard to do since it messes up clue coordinates.
Nope they had already said in a prior blog that they are not going to be doing that. Something something to much work.
I believe they're moving tempoross a bit further south and thats pretty much all thats changing
They are moving tempoross and also moving tutorial island.
I really wish they would reconsider this, it's long overdue. Even without sailing, modern rendering distances make the scale seem crazy. Aside from work, I believe they cited ruining the OSRS feel. I believe this scaling can be done tastefully, even if it's just spreading out the islands.
Really? So we'll be taking our ships through corridors that are sometimes only a few tiles wide? I'm usually pretty Optimistic about updates, but the more I hear about sailing, the more concerned that I'm getting. Shamanism would not be this hard conceptually. Hell, even warding is starting to sound massively preferable.
They're probably going to move you into a new level of the overall world map out at sea so it's technically not instanced in the sense that you're alone but it won't be the same shape/sizes as what you're imagining. Imagine walking out of lumby and the bridge works like a super automatic ladder and it puts you in an area that suddenly got twice as wide for a bigger cow pen. You wouldn't really notice if they hit you with this on a loading line far enough out from shore where its just water in every direction and it would help them not have to actually move the continents around to get more space between them
I will preface this opinion with the stance of myself being a "No voter" who has been a part of the Sailing discord, reading it now and again to keep myself updated and leave myself open to being convinced into accepting the new skill.
However, I now believe it's time to re-think and re-poll sailing now that people have more of an idea what this "skill" is going to be. I'll share my thoughts in hopes it might help direct the development skills somewhere more appropriate before it's too late to back out... I feel genuinely bad for how much time and effort is being spent on something so lacklustre.
Sailing is a mode of transport, it has always sounded completely out of place being a skill you train up due to the pure nature of it. Thieving, Firemaking, Woodcutting, Fishing, Smithing, Herblore, Mining, Crafting, Fletching, Hunter (you get the idea) - all of these skills you train up by simply doing the activity that the skill is directly tied to. Sailing is different, you do not train Sailing by the act of sailing, and the skill would absolutely suck if you did. It's not going to be possible to make it have that connection and it's a gigantic flaw of the skill present from the very creation of the idea due to it being, as I said, a mode of transport.
Trimming the sails sounds horrible and tedious, salvaging shipwrecks is just fishing but reskinned. Ship battles will be extremely boring after the novelty wears off. The movement of the ships is never going to feel satisfying due to the clunkiness of the base game engine, and having multiple ships on the same screen is going to be ridiculously messy. I just don't see how any of these large core issues are able to be addressed and function in a way which is satisfying to the player, and it's not because I have no faith in the team, but I have no faith this skill is capable of allowing these ideals to be achieved without deviating too far from the actual action of "Sailing".
TLDR = Sailing does not work as a skill, should be converted to a minigame tied to the "Islands and points of interest" map expansion, opening space for improvements and additions to existing skills instead.
I feel it’s extremely important to constantly temper every naysayers argument with the fact that these things are subjective.
Sailing around and tending to the sails and other ship issues sounds amazing to me personally and I Lowkey with that was the primary focus of the dev time.
Boiled to its base mechanics every single skill in OSRS couldn’t be more boring if it tried
Sailing should be a skill about what it’s called: sailing. Just as every other skill is.
Not happening lol
Also you completely misunderstand the training methods of sailing if you think "you do not train Sailing by the act of sailing" so much for being an open minded individual who keeps up with the Sailing discord
So, the primary objective of Sailing is to use sails to propel a craft using wind. Implemented in OSRS, this would be a boat. Other than the tedious sounding design of having to trim your sails every x amount of time, what other actions are you suggesting involve the act of "sailing" are included in the primary EXP gain? Interacting with cannons is combat, interacting with dredging and salvaging are both reskinned fishing and the deliveries just require a mode of transport to complete.
Please enlighten me if I missed something which was confirmed via the blogpost!
I have no big opinion on whether sailing is good or bad. But it's a bit complicated for a skill, right?
It's shaping up to be the biggest update osrs has ever had, but a majority of our current skills are very simple by comparison. Thieving = you click to steal stuff lol. Firemaking = you burn logs to burn more logs. Fishing = click the water and get fish.
Our most complicated skills are probably runecrafting, construction and farming, and even those seem drastically less complex and expansive than sailing. Sailing almost seems like a game within a game, not necessarily a minigame or something like dungeoneering, but something much bigger than a typical skill.
Tbh I think that's a problem with the simple skills. Like firemaking is just a joke
Yeah I don't see a problem making the skill more in-depth than fire making. Like we always see people say "fire making wouldn't pass polls if it was released today" so they kinda have to add more meat and potatoes to a skill else it'd seem like a waste of effort.
People wanted a skill with depth. I'm sure there will be multiple training methods, even for firemaking is cremating shade remains a straightforward gameplay loop?
I disagree, I think a lot of the scope here is behind the scenes work and engine updates. Yes, they're technically for sailing, but they'll be able to use the improvements for other parts of the game too. The actual skill itself seems fairly straightforward.
To be fair, the community didn’t vote on a gathering skill like the ones you listed as examples. This is definitely a more Slayer type skill or Construction like, which is what we voted for and the community wanted
There's complicated parts of most skills. For all we know going to a salvage and afking might be solid exp and then it's essentially just shooting stars for sailing.
When I voted for Sailing I was fully believing it would turn into “Water Dungeoneering.” So far it seems to be shaping up that way, and I’m happy to
seasea it.It’s going to end up being an overly ambitious project I fear, they gotta stop advertising things before knowing how feasible it is.
Unnecessary complexity is a game killer over time
That's why I'm still chopping logs in the WC guild. +7 boost instead of potential +10, but I click tree, I get log. Simples.
Bark bark!
I have found the following J-Mod comment(s) in this thread:
JagexHusky
Yes, you'll currently have to click the tille...
Yeah it's on the radar for sure....
What are your thoughts on the points I touche...
Perhaps I've just mis-spoken but the intentio...
JagexLight
Hey Plebsaurus, I love your name btw!...
Last edited by bot: 05/21/2024 08:43:07
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I"m predicting as we get closer to the release of sailing the playerbase is going to split in half and it's going to be like a civil war
Just another week on this sub then lol
where have you been? The playerbase has been passionately split on this since it was a meme.
Gonna look absolutely comical with multiple ships in the same area lol
Imagine the bots lol
Bo(a)ts
Makes me feel like I'm playing osrs tbh
As a OSRS and Sea of Thieves fan, it's interesting to see the overlaps and adapting Sailing to this game. Hope the Jmods team continues to take some inspirations from other games to make this a fun gameplay loop within this game and themes. I think Sea of Thieves has a lot of lessons learned throughout their development and post-launch that overlap with some of the challenges (design and technical) that Sailing seems to also be presenting. Specifically the Rare Team have and are still putting in ensuring the ships feels good to navigate, upkeep, and use reminds me a lot of what the Jmods are working thru right now. Wish Jmods could get a call or collab with the team at Rare on this new skill! Keep it up Jmods team!
Please I need Rare to focus on fixing SoT not more collabs, don’t give them any more crazy ideas :(