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Blog written by Mod Maylea on 28th Sepember 2010 |
| Mod Maylea, one of the developers behind the new Treasure Trails update, answers your questions. |
DM Ramsey 13 asks: When you get the clue dropped from a monster is the reward already decided or are there are some other factors like speed or time it takes to complete clue, other players beating you to a clue if there is any factors that affect reward please tell me
and
Elite Clue asks: can you explain how the clue reward system works? and how rare 3rd age really is?
Mod Maylea:
- The reward for a trail is decided... When you open the casket! The amount of clues you did beforehand or how difficult they were have absolutely no bearing on the reward whatsoever. It's completely random. The only thing that does have an influence is the level of the clue, of course. That impacts on the items you can get and also on how many items you can get.
You're only more likely to get better stuff if you keep doing clues because statistics say so. There is nothing in the code that makes it that way, but that is one of the charms of treasure trails.
- Very rare. It is ever so slightly different between elite and hard, but they are both so rare you are unlikely to notice the difference. I doubt I'd get away with giving you the exact numbers, but to give you an idea, the chance is in the 6 digits.
Radical-Zero asks: What are the odds that you get a Dragon Mask? 1/1000?
Mod Maylea: The chance for those is in the 4 digits and is similar for elite and hard.
Sol Dominus asks: I personally love everything you have done with the treasure trails. I consider myself a bit of a treasure trail scholar, and I'll keep on doing them until I finally get that third age =]
But there's one thing that really bothers me. I do the trails and I never really complain about the rewards, I know how it is random, more or less, what you receive in the end. But those composite bows... What's up with them? I mean their stats arent that great, With the ability to sight mage longs now, I wouldnt even consider using a mage comp. And since their stats arent impressive maybe their look could be redone? I think the bows in Daemonheim are AMAZING!!! Maybe a take on those? But the main gist is that I believe there needs to be some feeling of accomplishment for getting them. I can be positive about biscuits, sweets, runes, and teleports. But the comp bows... =[
and
Mugless asks: Love the new treasure trails, However think maybe you could have gone further with the general rewards - most people whatever their level dont want compsite bows for example and particulary higher level players, when you have taken ages to do a clue - it is disapointing to get a rune hatchet (no. 32 in bank) and black d hide chaps (no. 43 in bank). I am not saying necessarily give something more expenisve items, just something more useful
It would be an awesome oppurtunity to help utilize some of the lesser used parts of rs
Mod Maylea: Their drop rate was completely skewed due to irregularities in the drop tables making two of them a lot more common and less in demand than the third, and the willow was actually the most expensive of the three by quite a margin. This was not what was intended for them so it was decided during balancing to try and rectify this by making them available on all three lower levels of trails. Also, we removed the really useless items like normal bows altogether to increase the incidence of more desirable items, which in the end had the effect of making them more common. And with players doing more treasure trails after the update, they became even more common and crashed.
Balancing treasure trails is a difficult task at the best of times and especially with how the market is fluctuating, it's very difficult to predict which way things are going to go. If you remove the worst items to make the clue more valuable, then add the clue drop to some more monsters, you make the clues more common, so the good drops more common, and the reason they are good drops is because they are rare, so rare items become junk and nobody's happy.
So to all the people asking if we're going to make clue more common, or if we're going to prevent NPCs that drop level 4 from dropping level 3, the answer is that we're very unlikely to do that because it's going to upset and already fragile balancing.
Rowdyrabbit asks: Why dont Dark Beasts drop the elite clue's? I mean a bronze dragon which a level 60 can kill, Dark Beasts require a high slayer which takes time and are not rewarding as the d bow is 3x less than the Whip, but the whip is dropped by a monster 5 levels lower..?
Mod Maylea: Dark beasts and abyssal demons are pretty rare slayer creatures which are already "farmed" for another unique drop, be it darkbow or abyssal whip. If we make elite clues available on these monsters, you will have people who don't do bosses but have the slayer level that will just farm these for the clues, preventing people who have a task to do it. The reason strykewyrms drop the clues is that you have to be on the assignment to fight them, so players are less likely to camp the monsters just for the clue and preventing slayers from doing their tasks.
Potentially we could only let those beast drop a clue for player who have them as a task and I'll suggest it to Mod Mark, but no guarantees :)
CSI asks: I enjoy having items for Treasure Trails in my bank, as they used to be relatively cheap and easy to get. However, the change has made items painful and annoying to get. Gnome Clothing is the main one; these were very cheap, easy to get, and took next to no effort getting to and from the bank. Now, there is Iron Boots and Splitbark Armour, obtainable very rarely. These are rather costly, and unlike Gnome Clothing, cannot be obtained easily apart from the Grand Exchange (due to Shades Of Mort'on and cutting down somewhat annoying trees, as well as an exclusive monster drop.) I am aware you can buy these by offering max price for them after a few days on the Grand Exchange, but the previous items were so easy to get.
My question in a nutshell: Why? Why did you change easily obtainable items into nightmare items?
Mod Maylea: This was part of a separate balancing project that was replacing shop-bought items which doesn't do much to help the economy, by player-made items. I wasn't involved in the details of that project so can't really comment.
Rowdyrabbit asks: Whats the rarity of elite clue scrolls compared too level 3 scrolls?
Mod Maylea: A fair bit rarer. It depends on the monster, but can go from twice as rare to 10+ times as rare.
Mr Kriminal asks: Will there be more monsters added into the game that drop elite clues?
Will you make it available for players to obtain clues with lootshare?
Mod Maylea: There is currently one monster that only drops elite clues with a chance of 1 in 20. But you can only fight it once a week, so it may still be a while before you can get your hands on one.
This is technically really complicated due to the way the lootshare/coinshare system works, in that it doesn't really let you share untradeable items. And before you ask, we're not making clue scrolls tradeable. :)
Also, it uses a certain technique to store information such as how many trails you have left to complete before the reward which makes it nigh impossible to plug into the lootshare system. We would need a complete rewrite of the core system which, although possible, would take a long time for very little benefit. The time might be better used writing more content. Sorry :(
SoulWind asks: Have you considered Treasure trail rewards with the new particle effects? Such as in Castle wars halos and the 120 Dungeoneering cape.
Mod Maylea: This is a tricky one. To make pretty graphics, we need a lot of time, and most of our graphics time was taken by Dungeoneering, so we've had to make compromises. It was appealing to create new god versions of existing items and other recolours (like completing the heraldic sets) just because the time/item was so much less than for, say, a fox mask. I can pretty much guarantee that if every one of the 150 odd new items had been unique, you'd still be waiting for the update! Maybe in future times we'll have more graphics budget, but nothing is less certain!
Juicearific asks: Any thoughts of making cool looking but fairly useless (much alike the dragon masks) armour/weapon sets that are non tradeable clue rewards
Mod Maylea: We tried that in the past with the firelighters, and it never really worked out. People who get the item and don't want it feel cheated because they cannot get money for it. If you die and lose it, you can't buy it back. And if you get more that one, you're left with one less bank space. So as for the prayer biscuits...
Huskana asks: Will there be improvements to biscuits, the amount gathered over a period of time can be easily matched by a dose or two of prayer potion and some food. The amount that you get from clues does not seem like a practical option in my opinion.
Mod Maylea: The reason they are untradeable is so people just can't buy massive amounts, then be allowed to stay in some dangerous areas of the game for hours and hours while only needing 1 stack of food. Well. We do allow players to do that, they just need to have collected the biscuits by themselves first. It's a self-balancing mechanism. We want to make them useful but not so overpowered that they ruin the game. So sadly, no, and no, at the very least until the game's balance tells us otherwise.
Lizafer asks:
- Can you confirm that the final number on our banner carriers banner is going to be XXX? Looking at the space on the walls behind the thrones under the champions guild, this seems to be likely.
- When are you intending to release more champion scrolls?
- Is it already decided what monsters will be dropping future scrolls, or will this be decided later on?
- Can you give us any hints as to what monsters may be dropping champion scrolls in the next batches?
- Do you know how many people have defeated all 15 champions so far, and is that something your willing to share?
- There is currently a list of players who have obtained the XV banner maintained by a player (thanks Ghanburi ) on a fansite, but it would be great if the amount of champions defeated was shown in the hiscores. Do you think this will ever happen? Could you make this happen?
Thanks in advance.
Mod Maylea:
- That sounds about right doesn't it? I was thinking we could have a champion of champion of champions as a final conclusion, and that beating them would unlock a special banner that's better than a number or a head. This is just an idea though, no hard plans yet.
- If only I knew. I am quite keen to finish this content though as I really enjoyed trying to come up with interesting boss mechanics and I really like the imp, and his banners, too.
- I have a shortlist I came up with when doing the last batch. Which ones get picked depends a fair bit on Mod Mark's mood.
- That would be telling. Besides, if I tell you, how much do you bet Mod Mark will pick different ones just because :)
- I would be curious to know, too. :)
- I'd have to look into it. Maybe I can get it tagged onto the next batch when there's a next batch. Assuming I get to do a next batch?
Vader Jacob asks:
- Why are the bonuses for the new Prayer books so low? They are barely different when compared to the Guthix book, yet much more expensive. Any chance of improving these? (Like, 5% magic damage for Ancient, +5 or +6 Strength for Bandos...)
- The Saradomin armour and Armadyl armour look extremely similar (except the platebody). Any chance of making the difference more noticable?
- In addition to Pepper Bif*'s post on page 1, Royal implings would be a good candidate for level 4 clues, perhaps Dragon/Zombie implings too (but only the ones you caught yourself, perhaps?).
- Are the expensive rewards from level 4 clues more common than level 3 clues? All of the items obtained from level 4 clues are cheaper than level 3 clue rewards (except the Druidic Top in some cases), which is pretty strange imo. :P
- General question about Prayer books, why does it take special "attack" energy to preach?
- Another question about Prayer books, if you chose the wrong book at Jossik, you first have to fill the book before you can receive another one. This is quite a pain, especially if you accidentally choose a more expensive book. Perhaps the dagannoths below the lighthouse could drop empty books?
- Don't know if I can ask but, could you tell us minor stuff about the Ritual of the Mahjarrat quest? (MOTM5)
Thank you for taking your time to answer this. :D
Mod Maylea:
- We had a good discussion during balancing concerning what the stats of these books should be. I wanted them to have +8 across the attack style of the god they related to, but because they have targeted attack and corresponding defence, it was decided that +8 was too much and it was reduced to +6. Some attack bonuses were proposed on a few items like the cat staff, but discarded during balancing because inconsistent way of handling bonuses (via stats, via hidden boosts etc) just make balancing a living nightmare. It's the kind of things you don't want to risk getting too wrong, so I leave the final decision in the hands of our balancer, and in the end I still think those prayer books have something going for them.
- Possibly not without upsetting quite a lot of people :/ What sort of difference would you suggest?
- We were keen on making Elite trails the trails you get from fighting boss monsters. By extension it became tough monsters as well as boss monsters, but there is an emphasis with combat. One of the problems with treasure trails is that they drop in addition to an existing drop, but don't drop if you already hold one. Implings only drop one thing really. Adding it to any impling would mean you'd have a chance of not getting anything if you already have a clue. and if you give an alternate drop, then if it already exists in the drop table, it will be more common, and if it doesn't, it will be rarer, but it involve changing an existing drop rate which just involves more balancing. It's never that simple sadly... And I'd have to do the whole summoning charm trick all over again, too, because they're untradeable.
- They are slightly more common I believe, just on the basis the clues themselves are rarer in the first place. But by default it still very close to the drop rates of the hard clues - Took me long enough to make sure that was the case.
- Good question, I wish I knew that one but it was already like that when I started working on the project. I didn't see why I should make it inconsistent and have it any different for the new ones.
- You can only have one book at any one time. I'm not familiar with the reasoning behind it, but I can foresee the nightmare if I provide extra drops. I had to write quite an interesting bit of code to handle giving back all the possible combinations of completed and uncompleted books that you've lost, as well as allowing you to buy one of the ones you haven't started.
- You can ask, but I'm not going to tell you. If only because I don't have the faintest idea and I don't really want to know because I hate spoilers :) I need to do the quests that come before it, first.
X Fido X asks: Are you/Jagex planning to create more clues?
Mod Maylea: There isn't anything in the works at this very moment in time, (and to be fair, we've only just released one) but I would be very surprised if there wasn't another one some time in the future. They're too popular for that.
XpowergamerX asks:
- Will cow masks ever be a TT reward? ^_^
- Are you going to make some kwl reward that you couldn't make before z-buff?
- Will there be cryptogram puzzles?
- In the future,would there be a slight chance of getting a *insert mod name* doll as a reward? hee hee :P
And have you do all matters of voodoo stuff on us?
- Why is it impossible to get a clue scroll from killing guards? :\
Thanks in advance.
Mod Maylea:
- This is interesting. There is a cow outfit that was a reward of a never released AME - Never released for a reason, it was judged too "gruesome". We'd need to know if it's going to be reworked to make it releasable or if we can just use the rewards for something else...
- When Dungeoneering is complete? To be honest I don't know. I should ask someone in graphics, but they've all long gone home tonight.
- We're trying to pick clues which are difficult for players to use fan sites for. Although I can see one way to make cryptograms random, at the end of the day they would only point to so many coordinates, and players would be able to identify the sentence by the spacing of words/letters without having to translate the cipher themselves. And translation will hate us.
- How about no? :)
- I'm pretty sure it isn't. Try the right guards and get lucky?
Sorry I couldn't be more helpful...
Farmerbros asks:
- How have you judged the success of the new elite clues both from the puzzles and the rewards aka how they've changed the market or the way people play?
- With the nice introduction of sara,zammy and guthix god bows is there plans to add in the other 3 bows (zaros,bandos and armadyl) or will they be making an apperance in future "Super elite clues"?
- What is your though on clans and communities using 5-man teams designed to lose on purpose to help aid thier other players on getting stealing creation points faster (good/bad/meh)
- Is there any plans for new stealing creation items/reward maybe to help in other skills?
just to add a foot note, TYVM for SC helped me like so many others on skills like smithing crafting and construction
Mod Maylea:
- I've looked at the player response on the forums and seen the items move in the grand exchange. They certainly show that there's a keen interest in the trails, so I'm pretty happy. I know it can't all be positive but with a game as wide-reaching as RuneScape, you pretty much can't release anything without annoying some people. Unless it's a lily of the valley maybe...
- I haven't thought that far, although I probably wouldn't make an ancient or bandos bow. Not making any plans on that one though, this would be a different project altogether :)
- Meh :D
I like the fact that the game creates communities. I like how non-combat stealing creation is a challenge in itself, as communities gather and organise themselves to flee from aggressive players, I think this is in the spirit of the wilderness it was based on. If some people decide to donate their time to allow other players to get points faster, it's not ideal but we can't really prevent it from happening either, so you know... Meh.
- Not as far as I know.
Vince asks: Is there any chance that the drop rate for Champ Scrolls will be improved? I don't mind it being rare, just not stupidly rare. Maybe make it the same, if not slightly more often, then an Abyssal Whip?
Thanks if you could answer that. I won't hate you for it if there is nothing you can do about it :P
Mod Maylea: We discussed the drop rate with Mod Mark when I was writing the last update, and what came out is that this is a very special game with very set rules, and although the idea of having varying drop rates for example, was not a bad idea, it wasn't for this project. It does make that game for the elite of the over-patient, but the rarity of the drop rate makes the achievement worth more to those who've achieved it.
Luckstrong asks: Hello Mod Maylea!
I have a few simple questions.
- Was there any rewards removed from the rewards last minute due to the Z-buffering problems?
- (If you knew) Where you surprised when some of us figured out the Celtic Knot Puzzle before it was even released?
Thanks for your time!
-Luckstrong
Mod Maylea:
- No. There was an issue with the trim of the god platelegs in the inventory icons, and quite a few other items... Long story short, it'll be fixed soon :)
- It's fortunately not the most difficult concept to grasp ever. What makes it so special is that it has quite a lot of random parameters, but is still always completable! Sometimes when you've matched two rings the third one never matches, and that's because some rings match in more that one way. Hopefully that way it won't get tiring too quickly.
Thermidor asks: I was wondering has the 100% chance of clue item changed the rarity of any of the old items in any way. I seen you say each item has a % chance of being given so did all old item keep this precentage after update and is the 100% clue specific reward only applying to the one time use items such as biscuits, meerkats, teleports etc.
Mod Maylea: No, I've spent quite a long time adjusting all the rates to make sure that despite adding new items (even despite adding new rares to existing rare tables, like the dragon masks) the rates of all the rare items remained unchanged. It makes the code look funny, because instead of the old (and this is not actually taken from the code, it's just an example to give you an idea) 1/20 chance to branch into this subtable, you now have a 60/1000 chance to branch into this bigger upgraded subtable, but the individual chance of each item in the drop table remains the same. You should have seen the spreadsheet :P
LordofTrust asks: Hi! I hope i am not too late, accidently went and pwned -died- on Arcanists for a few hours!
Well, here are my questions, i'll keep them short and simple!
- What inspired you to create this new brand of Treasure Trails? I thought it was ending at Hard, i wasn't expecting this at all!
- If you could have introduced just one more item, what would it have been?
- What made you create a new range of Godly Armour? Seeing as Bandos and Armadyl armour exsist allready, surely we are to expect Saradomin and Zamorak stuff too!
Thank you if you answer any of my questions, i know you are probably starting to get tired at this time of night, so you don't have to answer!
Also, you did work on Stealing Creation?? -HUGS-
Thanks!
Mod Maylea:
- The treasure trails were due an update, and there were many reasons to create a new level of trails
- We wanted to reward the Boss fighters out there.
- We wanted to add new challenges, and retrofitting it into the other levels of trails was going to take too much time. Besides, it was nice to just offer a pretty new trail experience. I was keen on my celtic knots (still am!). I wanted to create a new puzzle which contained something I like, you see.
- Well the god bows almost didn't make it into the final batch... I had to insist to get it approved. Most of the rest made it, although a fair bit of the rewards were suggested by the previous curator of the treasure trails. Including the heraldic body and legs, the druidic robes. And Mod Mark's got a few in too. I got my fox mask, my meerkats <3, my god bows.
Do you know, I'd quite like a wolf tail. But Z-buffer or not, it would glitch with every cape ever!
- It wasn't really a new range of godly armour, as existing godly armour extended to other gods. The idea behind it is, It can be useful, it offers followers of various gods more way to express themselves, and it has a very low graphics cost - Bonus!
Golden285 asks: will there ever be treasure trails rewards for lesser gods like flamtaer, seren, or the menaphite pantheon?
Mod Maylea: Time will tell. I have the feeling it could get a bit silly if we do it for all gods, but we might just have new god-specific items for those - Although I'd hate to clash with quest storylines!
Br543 asks: Are there any plans to add clue scrolls to dungeoneering? I think it would be cool to run around down there doing special clues for, maybe, a couple more reward tokens when you finish the dungeon etc.
Mod Maylea: Technically, I can't see that happening easily but you'd really have to ask the dungeoneering guys, I think.
Master Kata asks: Will there ever be a wardrobe or chest in the Costume Room to store 'emote clue secondaries', the items required to do emote clues? Any other storage facility would do as well (e.g. an npc like Diango).
Mod Maylea: Nice idea with technical limitations - We still need space on the server to save all that data, and the more spaces we create like that, the more data we need to store. Trickiest bit is what would happen if we ever decide to change what items you need for clues again...
Elite Clue asks:
- i think ive heard something about the 3rd age druid set.. like if you wear the full druid set you get some special power or something?
- was this your favourite project at jagex? if not, what was?
- how long did it take to finish the treashure trail update?
- can you give us any nice hints about soon to come future updates? maybe a smithing update hint? :D
- what are you working on now?
- any possibility you can add frost dragons as elite dropper?
- like my awsome epic name? :D
Mod Maylea:
- You look like an ancient druid. There is no set bonus at the moment, or plans to add one as far as I know.
- It was pretty cool. I loved the celtic knot puzzle because it's a bit of my tastes in the the game. Although I still remember fondly Christmas 08 with my pesky snow imps which all had a name and talked to each other :)
- Quite a long time. I started concepting the celtic knot puzzles in December last year.
- Oh come on, you should know the answer by now! No. At least I am not telling :P
- It's secret. I can probably get away with saying it's a quest and it may or may not have anything to do with midgets. If I can't get away with saying that, well it was nice knowing you all :)
- Possible. I'd have to discuss it with Mod Mark. We'd probably do it as part of a batch of updates though, probably not as a 1-off.
- Very nice :)
Altecice asks: Why do godblessed sets of D'hide require a defense level when the normal and trimmed versions of them do not? eg, Sara chaps require 40 defense to equip yet normal & trimmed versions do not? I find this quite dumb
Mod Maylea: Good question. This existed before I took on the project, so I do not know.
Saffyre Moon asks: Why is it, when there is a wealth of different types of self contained puzzles is the only option a slider puzzle?
Mod Maylea:I had suggested a few more ideas for new puzzles, but Mod Mark was quite keen to reuse the sliding puzzles because they work quite well in that fansites can't really help, and the code for them was already all written, so I could spend more time coding other things.
Lazar Beam asks: A lot of the clues we see are very static, meaning you get the same clues over and over again. Can we expect an update in which the clues are dynamic?
For example, we know we always have to wield an uncharged glory, ring of life, and addy 2h when we dance in front of the cat door in Sophanem. I would love to see the items completely randomized to make the clues more difficult (perhaps, as a result, better rewards as well?)
Mod Maylea: This would work, too, with coordinates - there just needs to be a list of coordinates which are not reachable that we would not obtain.
I did this for the elite trails but retrofitting the system to existing clues would take an insane amount of work. Not that I'm lazy, but we do consider the time spent vs player benefit when approving projects.
Rane Sedai asks: Just a quick question that has been pestering me, and I'm sure others, since the elite treasure trails release. Why wasn't the Armadyl, Bandos, and Zar...(shhh.... I mean Ancient) rune trimmed armour released to f2p? Will it ever be or will it remain members only? The only reason I ask is because I think that many f2p players would appreciate and buy it giving more profit to members.
Mod Maylea: Well as it's been mentioned a few times, this is purely a storyline thing. Bandos, Armadyl and Ancient :P are introduced and tied to Members only quests, and therefore it makes no storyline sense to have them as F2P. And this is RuneScape. The story does still matters, sometimes!
