Invention - What to expect

 
Invention – What to Expect

If you’ve been following Invention, you might be wondering whether it’s a skill or not. It was announced as a skill in a Player Power poll, before we talked about breaking it up into smaller chunks at Runefest, making it an addition to multiple existingskills. There has been very little information since, and we want to change that. 

First things first: Invention has not died or been forgotten. In fact, things have been accelerating in the past month. We’ve settled on what parts we intend to keep, and how it slots into our release calendar.

The biggest thing we want to answer is the skill question: is Invention a skill or not? Over several meetings, we have unanimously agreed thatInvention should not be a new skill. We firmly believe that it should be an update across several skills, introducing rewards and training methods to high-level bands (80-99). 

We have come to this decision after starting completely afresh with the Invention design, forming a list of what we intend Invention to achieve:

To see players using, wielding and wearing a greater variety of itemsTo provide a greater variety of items, to allow for more strategy when choosing what to usePlayers should feel a greater bond between themselves and their itemsPlayers should be able to manufacture items for themselvesPlayers should have a greater ability to personalise their appearance and items
As we discussed these points, it became clear that we were creating benefits for high-levels. For example: the bulletpoint ‘To see players using, wielding and wearing a greater variety of items’ is there because, at the highest levels in the game, a player will only use a few optimal items if they want to be efficient or successful. As a counterpoint, lower levels will tend to level-up quickly and regularly, often changing their loadout in a single play session. The greatest benefit of an array of items to choose from, therefore, is for the higher level players.

The same is true of the other bulletpoints. For example: ‘Players should be able to manufacture items for themselves’. Players currently have little reason to make any items for themselves in the higher-level game, whether they are combat or non-combat items, and consequentially don’t feel a great sense of pride in what they make. Part of this is an issue with how Smithing, Crafting and other manufacturing skills work (something we plan to address in future content), but realistically it’s much easier to buy the gear you need, which doesn’t forge a bond between player and item. Invention would provide benefits to items manufactured by the player. Perhaps, we could even allow high-level players to level-up, grow or evolve items they have made. 

But, if we make Invention a skill, we will not be focusing on high-levels. Instead, we will have to spread our focus across all levels, from 1 to 99. We would be ensuring that there is content at low levels as well as high, and we would need to spend time and resource on engaging methods for training that skill. Bluntly, we would not be focusing our efforts and resources on what made us want to make Invention in the first place.

There are other benefits of making Invention a cross-skill update. We want the player to feel like they are a pioneer, meshing together some of the most advanced technologies in the game: Dorgeshuun’s electricity, Keldagrim’s gunpowder, Divination’s energy and many others. Thematically, we want Invention to feel like a player is accumulating knowledge to make things that no one has ever made before. It feels like a culmination of all of the player’s efforts, rather than the efforts of someone just starting out. Thematically, Invention better suits higher levels.

Invention also doesn’t feel as new or impactful as a standalone skill – not in the same way that Dungeoneering or Summoning did. It overlaps thematically with Crafting and Smithing. It’s important to note that, even though we’re not releasing Invention as a skill, we’re not against making a skill sometime in the future. We simply feel there are better choices for a skill. 

We also feel that we can bring a sense of progression to Invention, similar to a skill. While you will not see Invention on your skills tab, we will still design it with unlocks in mind. For example, a max player will not immediately jump into the top-end of Invention and make the best items. They will have to work for it, and will be rewarded for doing so. We might even consider hiscore tables to retain that feeling of chasing first place.

As an update to multiple skills, aspects of Invention can also be released earlier. Dungeoneering took over a year to develop, Summoning almost ten months. We can start work on Invention earlier and focus on getting you some of the core components within a shorter period of time. By reducing the size of the update, but not sacrificing its appeal, we can be sure that we’ll get you Invention updates within a year. 

But what might Invention include? You can expect blogs, livestreams and polls over the coming months on that very subject. We’re also planning to release a Player Power poll next week. We’ll want you to tell us which avenue of Invention excites you the most. We’ve certainly got big ideas for each of these options: 

Non-combat Inventions
– Create inventions that fine-tune your tools and give you new methods of non-combat training.Customisable appearance
– Personalize the look of your gearFine-tuned stats
– Create a greater degree of variety within YOUR equipment stats and player abilities.Level stuff up
– Level up things other than yourself - like weapons, gear or followers.
We’ve laid out our thoughts, and now we want to hear yours. We’re eager to hear your feedback, so make sure that you post your thoughts on this thread.

Thank you

The RuneScape Team

Will be seeing alot of bots doing divination is my guess...

Will be seeing alot of bots doing divination is my guess...

Free hunter xp if thats the case

Will be seeing alot of bots doing divination is my guess...

Free hunter xp if thats the case

That's a positive way to look at it.

I don't know what I think about Invention yet. I'm just going to let it happen and then see what it brings. I'm sure there will be some cool and useful things that will be worth doing the required work for. Let's just hope that required work isn't too much of a pain in the behind.

There's something cool they could do with it, in my opinion, and that is not going for the level 80-99 range, but expand all skills to 120 and make the new stuff for level 100-120. If they're going to add new stuff for a lot of skills anyway, why not take that chance to make all skills go up to 120. Anyway, it's just an idea that seems cool to me. I'm very sure a lot of people would not like it. One main reason I can think of is that 200M xp would become to easy and then they would have to change that as well. That would have a big impact on the game. But at least that could mean those first 15 something people in the highscores would have something to do again.