Update:Dev Blog: PvP Worlds & Poll 11



The latest developer blog is now out.

Go here to read about how we can bring back PvP Worlds and some other great updates you can vote for in the next content poll.

Dev blog: PvP worlds & Poll 11

Development work is coming to an end on the God Wars Dungeon. We've fixed a bunch of AI problems, re-shaped the boss rooms to eliminate certain safe spots, added 'Teleport' ops to the altars, written a loot broadcast system and created the Staff of the Dead and the Armadyl crossbow for which you voted.

That frees us up to think about Poll 11, and also to gather your ideas for PvP worlds. For the poll, we'd like to focus on suggestions that came in a long time ago. We didn't have the tools to do them when they were first requested, but we kept them on file, and we're now able to put them in a poll for you. We're also offering some changes taken from your feedback on the recent bank update.

Things that are not PvP worlds
Let's start with the miscellaneous stuff, for the benefit of anyone who wouldn't want to read past a wall of text about PvP worlds!

Profanity filter
In RS3, players can deactivate the profanity filter if they don't mind seeing offensive language from other players. We've recently had the ability to offer you a similar option.

This would not affect the filter that prevents players from sharing email addresses and other contact details. There are a lot of dodgy people on the internet, and we need to do what we can to help you stay safe in real life.

Jagex's rules about offensive language would not be affected by this.

Q: An extra button will be added to the options menu, allowing you to disable the profanity filter.

Anti-fire potion expiry warning
The anti-fire potion currently gives no notification when it is about to expire. It wears off silently, and the first you know about it is when you get a blast of dragon breath in the face.

Q: The anti-fire potion will give a warning message before its effect expires, and another message when it has expired.

Left-click combat in PvP
When your game client is showing an 'Attack' option on another player, RuneScape's game engine automatically makes it a right-click option if the player is stronger than you, or if they're wearing the same team cape. However, in the Duel Arena, the option on other players says 'Fight' rather than 'Attack'. This makes it always appear as a left-click option.

We can give you a toggle option to make this happen in all PvP combat, not just the Duel Arena. If you enabled this toggle, and were in a PvP area, you'd see a left-click 'Fight' option on all other players instead of the usual 'Attack' option. Team capes would no longer make a difference.

Unfortunately options on NPCs (monsters) can't be changed on a player-specific toggle like that, so we would never be able to offer you a similar option button for NPCs without requesting more work from the game engine team.

Q: An extra button will be added to the options menu, allowing you to change the 'Attack' option in PvP to a left-click 'Fight' option.

Left-click combat in the GWD
Although we can't offer you a toggle button to change 'Attack' to 'Fight' for all NPCs in the game, we can change it manually on specific monsters, like we did for the monsters in Nightmare Zone. With the GWD coming out soon, you might like us to do this for the four bosses and their bodyguards.

Q: When the God Wars Dungeon comes out, the four bosses and their bodyguards will have left-click 'Fight' options instead of right-click 'Attack' options.

Bank options
In RS3, the order of the bank options is:

Withdraw-1 Withdraw-5 Withdraw-10 Withdraw-? (the last number you typed for Withdraw-X) Withdraw-X Withdraw-All Withdraw-All-but-one

In Old School RuneScape, the order of the bank options is:

Withdraw-1 Withdraw-5 Withdraw-10 Withdraw-All Withdraw-X Withdraw-? (the last number you typed for Withdraw-X)

It has been suggested that we rearrange the options in OSRS to be consistent with RS3, and add a 'Withdraw-All-but-one' option.

Q: The bank's 'Withdraw-X' and 'Deposit-X' options will be moved below the 'Withdraw-All' and 'Deposit-All' options.

Q: A new 'Withdraw-All-but-one' option will be added to the bank.

PIN for Nightmare Zone rewards shop
Nightmare Zone's reward shop got a lot of new features in the last poll, and we're not looking to add more things to it just now. However, we could add Bank PIN protection to the reward shop, ensuring that your reward points can't be spent by anyone else who gains access to your account.

Q: Bank PIN protection will be added to the Nightmare Zone reward shop.

PvP worlds
Now on to the big stuff: PvP Worlds. For the benefit of anyone who wasn't around before 2011, these are worlds where PvP combat is possible almost everywhere in the game world.

PvP worlds were launched back in the times when RuneScape had a trade limit, restricting the amount of loot that could be transferred between players. That meant it was not possible to let PKers take the items dropped by their prey. Loot had to be randomised between players, which made PKing less rewarding than it should have been, and offered more rewards to people who'd not really earned it.

Fortunately, we don't have a trade limit in OSRS, so we don't need to contend with those restrictions. It will be possible to let PKers collect loot dropped by their prey; we would like this to work in much the same way as the Wilderness does.

Instead, the PvP worlds had an artificial system that tracked how much wealth you were risking, based on the Grand Exchange prices of the items you were carrying, and awarded you Earning Potential (EP) if you spent time in the PvP worlds carrying enough stuff. This rewarded players for carrying over-priced junk and hanging around obscure areas waiting for their EP to increase, so it inevitably led to an insane amount of wealth coming into the game.

We would prefer not to do that in Old School RuneScape, so there will not be an EP system. Furthermore, since the game doesn't have a GE to track the values of items, any EP system we tried to write would be extremely flawed. Nevertheless, we'd like to offer some extra stuff as a reward for successful PKers, along with the loot they get from their prey. Suggestions include degradable high-level armour and weapons, or XP-boosting gloves.

When awarding extra rewards to "successful" PKers, it is necessary to avoid players killing each other repeatedly to farm the rewards. We could do this by awarding points to a PKer for each kill they get; the number of points would be calculated off their victim's combat level, but would be reduced if the victim has already been PKed recently. So if players try to kill each other repeatedly, they wouldn't actually get many points for each kill unless they waited a very long time between kills (outside safe areas).

Reward items
We don't have the models originally used for the ancient warriors' equipment (Vesta's, Statius', Zuriel's and Morrigan's) but would be able to create similar degrading equipment by re-using existing graphics. The high-level gear lasted 1 hour of combat before disintegrating, whereas the level 20 gear lasted 15 minutes.

When awarded, the items would be tradeable, so players would be able to sell them on. After they'd been used, they would change to a degraded form which would be untradeable. However, while the degraded form could not be traded through the trade system or drop-traded, it would be awarded to a PKer if dropped on death. We'd need to prevent players from discarding these items during combat as a method for cheating PKers out of their loot.

These items would be polled separately to the PvP worlds; if PvP worlds pass their poll, but these items don't get enough support, we would not create them. In future polls, we'd look at alternative reward items to offer instead.

Here are the stats for the level 78 gear. We could do the level 20 gear too if required.

Brawler gloves would similarly be made by re-using existing glove models. They could give a +300% XP bonus for training in the Wilderness, or a +50% XP bonus for training elsewhere. Again, these items would have their own poll question.

Rules of Engagement
Banks and respawn points would be designated as safe areas. The same would apply to various quest-specific areas, player-owned houses, random event areas and most minigames. Combat would not be permitted in these places under any circumstances; a player reaching a safe area would be protected from attacks, just like a player who escapes from the Wilderness.

Combat-based minigames, such as Barbarian Assault and Castle Wars, would simply be disabled on PvP worlds.

Throughout most of the world, players would be permitted to fight anyone whose combat level is within 15 of their own level. If the players are inside the Wilderness, this range would be increased by the Wilderness level of their position. So in level 40 Wilderness players would be permitted to fight anyone whose combat level is within 55 of their own level.

Players dying on a PvP world would act like players dying in the Wilderness, keeping 3 items by default. On attacking another player, they would gain a PK skull - again, like in the Wilderness - and would keep zero items until the skull wears off.

Getting more people onto the PvP worlds
We may need to offer some incentive for people to visit PvP worlds as prey for the PvP enthusiasts.

One suggestion is to offer an XP uplift for training outside safe areas on PvP worlds. The player would be required to spend 2 minutes logged in outside the PvP world safe areas before this bonus would take effect, so that they can't gain the bonus if they're logging in and out whenever they see a PKer coming. Certain activities, such as alchemy, would be excluded from this uplift because they can be done in too many obscure places.

An XP multiplier might be a controversial addition to Old School RuneScape, so we would poll it separately before creating it.

A more elaborate idea is to create a series of randomly-generated tasks that must be accomplished on a PvP world. For example, a player could be challenged to buy a special box from an NPC and deliver it to another NPC (without hopping worlds). If they succeed in this, they are given their money back, plus a reward consisting of some kind of tradeable resources. If they get PKed on the way, their killer would acquire the box and would be able to complete the task instead to claim the reward.

Again, we would poll this separately before creating it.

Poll for PvP worlds
Q: Two of the existing old-school game worlds will become PvP worlds, with combat rules as described in the blog.

Q: If PvP worlds are launched, the four high-level degradable sets of ancient warriors' equipment (level 78) would be awarded as rare drops for successful PKers.

Q: If PvP worlds are launched, the four low-level degradable sets of ancient warriors' equipment (level 20) would be awarded as rare drops for successful PKers.

Q: If PvP worlds are launched, brawler gloves will be created and awarded as rare drops for successful PKers.

Q: If PvP worlds are launched, players would gain 15% more XP when performing most training activities outside safe areas.

'''Q: If PvP worlds are launched, players would be invited to undertake randomly-generated tasks on those worlds in exchange for rewards. PKers would be able to intercept these tasks to claim the rewards for themselves.'''

Other updates
We know a lot of people would like us to offer alternative versions of updates that came close to passing Poll 10. Thank you for all the suggestions you've posted. We really do want to revisit the more popular ideas. However, for the moment we'd like to use Poll 11 to resurrect some older suggestions that we weren't able to offer before, and also to kick-start the PvP worlds plans that we promised back in August.

Beyond PvP worlds, there are a few other big ideas that have been bouncing around the community. We've spoken about offering a big Slayer project, maybe featuring reward points for completing consecutive tasks, and new dungeons with high-level versions of existing Slayer monsters. On the non-combat side, there seem to be quite a few requests coming in for Achievement Diaries. So far you've only got the Karamja one. We could undertake a batch of 3-4 other area diaries to make a decent-sized update, re-using appropriate graphics to construct the reward kit. Also, some of the potions we pitched as Nightmare Zone rewards might have been more popular if the ingredients came from skilling activities; if you'd like to suggest more specific ideas, we'd love to see them.

Summary
We'll be opening Poll 11 next week, featuring the following questions:

Q: An extra button will be added to the options menu, allowing you to disable the profanity filter.

Q: Players who are in the your chat-channel will appear as purple dots on the minimap.

Q: The anti-fire potion will give a warning message before its effect expires, and another message when it has expired.

Q: An extra button will be added to the options menu, allowing you to change the 'Attack' option in PvP to a left-click 'Fight' option.

Q: When the God Wars Dungeon comes out, the four bosses and their bodyguards will have left-click 'Fight' options instead of right-click 'Attack' options.

Q: The bank's 'Withdraw-X' and 'Deposit-X' options will be moved below the 'Withdraw-All' and 'Deposit-All' options.

Q: A new 'Withdraw-All-but-one' option will be added to the bank.

Q: Bank PIN protection will be added to the Nightmare Zone reward shop.

Q: Two of the existing old-school game worlds will become PvP worlds, with combat rules as described in the blog.

Q: If PvP worlds are launched, the four high-level degradable sets of ancient warriors' equipment (level 78) would be awarded as rare drops for successful PKers.

Q: If PvP worlds are launched, the four low-level degradable sets of ancient warriors' equipment (level 20) would be awarded as rare drops for successful PKers.

Q: If PvP worlds are launched, brawler gloves will be created and awarded as rare drops for successful PKers.

Q: If PvP worlds are launched, players would gain 15% more XP when performing most training activities outside safe areas.

''Q: If PvP worlds are launched, players would be invited to undertake randomly-generated tasks on those worlds in exchange for rewards. PKers would be able to intercept these tasks to claim the rewards for themselves.''

Mods Ash & Nexus Content Developers ''... with extra thanks to Mod Mat K for helping with the pictures and data table.''