I joined osrs back in 2009 under the false assumption that sailing would naturally be in the game considering it's a medieval adventure game... I was sorely disappointed when this skill wasn't in the game considering in theory it fits perfectly. tbh any skilling method that can compete in terms of resource gathering with pvm is beneficial imo weather it's via sailing or any potential skill. & lets be honest this idea that "osrs" is still old school hasn't been the case since 2013.
I've been playing since 04, (20 year cape incoming), I find it interesting how different our views are on the game. I have the exact opposite view points. Off topic though, the only thing that I want back in rs is group content. I feel like the game has been void of that for years now. It seems like everything is designed to be soloable, other than some mini games.
Aesthetics - Underrated issue IMO for old school. The rerelease of Soul Wars (look at the fornite trees) and other 2010-era content, everything update being purple and modern looking on Zeah, totally incongruous with mainland graphics. Sailing I think has more potential to look and feel old school than some of those updates, but a HUGE issue I have is how horrible it will be to look at the bright blue texture-less water for hundreds of hours... Gatekeeping - I agree with you, if we look at other things that "gatekeep" certain content, like Slayer, it is a few training methods, monsters or bosses, not entire regions or perhaps meta skilling methods for potentially every other skill. Even the level of content locked behind quests and achievement diaries wouldn't come close to sailing if there's new continents islands like those proposed (maybe Priest in Peril comes close for Morytania, or the Elf questline). Shoehorning - I just don't trust the devs to design good cities or islands. Zeah is basically barren and devoid of content and character (compared to every mainland city/region) with the exception of a few concentrated areas of shoehorned skilling methods + an OP slayer dungeon. I have an idea for sailing to be integrated as a Miscellania/mobilizing armies/player-owned ports type of real time mixed with idle minigame, where players can own a port, hire a crew, send out ships on missions, discover islands, gain resources, invest GP, etc..
The first point of a new skill being old school or not is completely irrelevant and arbitrary, the game needs new content to continue to thrive. Good content should be engaging, fun and / or worthwhile and purposeful, a new skill can potentially hit all these things if done right. When it comes to Summoning and how updates like that changed the game too much to something unrecognizable, I don't see how Sailing does that unless the argument is that if one skill passes then in the future a different skill that could be like Summoning that changes things too much has the potential of coming into the game. Problem with this slippery slope putting aside that new skills in RS2 did not lead to EOC, you can't run from the fact that +80% voted that they want a new skill and Jagex believes a new skill will be good for the growth of the game if done correctly so discussions of a new skill aren't going to go away by fearmongering about eoc or saying this isn't old school. Things aren't set in stone when it comes to training Sailing and how it could overlap with other skills in some cases but I really don't see these interactions being a problem at all when it comes to xp/rates and changing metas. As far as we know the fastest way to train Sailing will be the barracuda trials, which are suppose to be a high-intensity pathing based race probably similar to sepulchre in mechanics. Best option after that will be Port Tasks. The multi skilling methods will likely be at the bottom probably either below or similar to the afk methods like ship wreck looting. If people don't want the most efficient way to max a new account to heavily revolve around Sailing multi skilling (which is fairly unlikely to actually happen) they can easily adjust those methods to not give good xp for sailing or the other skill and mainly function as a reward that will unlock a useful item like a new fish that might not give good fishing xp but heals more. If balance is an issue the Jmods can simply adjust the numbers. It also wouldn't make any sense to gain Sailing xp for doing something on an island. The Jmods have said you gain Sailing xp for interacting with your ship at sea. There might be a hunter method at sea where you catch sea birds but that could just be made to be a bad training method for Sailing if it gives any xp at all for Sailing. Saying 50% of the game could be locked behind Sailing is insane. Really what are you talking about??? Maybe you somehow think they'd just randomly put Sailing requirements on things that you can already access that don't obviously require Sailing right now? Like sure maybe 25 years from now a quarter of the NEW content added to the game in someway might require you to have gain a few hundred K xp in Sailing, at that point thats just how the game works just like any other skill. A lot of new content isn't friendly to lvl 3 accounts, is that a major problem? Why do you need to have lvl 70 in 8 different skills on top of needing to have some decent combat levels and gear to access all the new content that Prifddinas added? Why should I have to level up woodcutting to have access to the gauntlet or zalcano? Why do I need to train Fishing to fight a slayer creature like Basilisk Knights? Why do I need to train Thieving to catch herbiboar? Why do I even need a Slayer level to attack an enemy that my character is strong enough to easily fight? Aside from a few players who decide to make a snowflake accounts where they train everything except for Sailing, I don't think this is going to be a problem. People who choose to limit their accounts might miss out on a few updates here and there but that's their choice.
How is it completely irrelevant or arbitrary whether a skill is oldschool or not? Its the exact opposite of that. Its extremely relevant and not arbitrary whether a skill is oldschool or isnt. This is not to say that in all cases its easy to solve whether something qualifies as a skill or not, but its definitely not arbitrary or irrelevant, its important. The reason meta changes and multi skilling isnt a problem on your view is probably because you dont care about things not be devalued. Like I said with the training methods, we dont know what it will end up as, Sailing will change a lot from how it releases and 3 years from its release date, it will undergo so many changes. "Can simply adjust the numbers" thats what I fear they wont do which is the entire concern. Care for integrity goes flying out the window in these cases. There will obviously be an expansion of the map, we dont know how much of the map will be locked behind sailing and how much wont. It will be a significant degree, unlike SOTE which is limited to a restricted area that already existed but players didnt have access to, with Sailing its unlimited. The skill restrictions that youre talking about are natural. Being able to cut a log to being gated behind a woodcutting lvl is exactly what woodcutting is there for. Its a subtle and minimal skill that does its job.
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That skinning idea is solid though and I would vote for it.
ravine lamble
I joined osrs back in 2009 under the false assumption that sailing would naturally be in the game considering it's a medieval adventure game... I was sorely disappointed when this skill wasn't in the game considering in theory it fits perfectly. tbh any skilling method that can compete in terms of resource gathering with pvm is beneficial imo weather it's via sailing or any potential skill. & lets be honest this idea that "osrs" is still old school hasn't been the case since 2013.
I've been playing since 04, (20 year cape incoming), I find it interesting how different our views are on the game. I have the exact opposite view points.
Off topic though, the only thing that I want back in rs is group content. I feel like the game has been void of that for years now. It seems like everything is designed to be soloable, other than some mini games.
Aesthetics - Underrated issue IMO for old school. The rerelease of Soul Wars (look at the fornite trees) and other 2010-era content, everything update being purple and modern looking on Zeah, totally incongruous with mainland graphics. Sailing I think has more potential to look and feel old school than some of those updates, but a HUGE issue I have is how horrible it will be to look at the bright blue texture-less water for hundreds of hours...
Gatekeeping - I agree with you, if we look at other things that "gatekeep" certain content, like Slayer, it is a few training methods, monsters or bosses, not entire regions or perhaps meta skilling methods for potentially every other skill. Even the level of content locked behind quests and achievement diaries wouldn't come close to sailing if there's new continents islands like those proposed (maybe Priest in Peril comes close for Morytania, or the Elf questline).
Shoehorning - I just don't trust the devs to design good cities or islands. Zeah is basically barren and devoid of content and character (compared to every mainland city/region) with the exception of a few concentrated areas of shoehorned skilling methods + an OP slayer dungeon.
I have an idea for sailing to be integrated as a Miscellania/mobilizing armies/player-owned ports type of real time mixed with idle minigame, where players can own a port, hire a crew, send out ships on missions, discover islands, gain resources, invest GP, etc..
So they wanna add boats for crying out loud but not horses.. lol.
The first point of a new skill being old school or not is completely irrelevant and arbitrary, the game needs new content to continue to thrive. Good content should be engaging, fun and / or worthwhile and purposeful, a new skill can potentially hit all these things if done right.
When it comes to Summoning and how updates like that changed the game too much to something unrecognizable, I don't see how Sailing does that unless the argument is that if one skill passes then in the future a different skill that could be like Summoning that changes things too much has the potential of coming into the game. Problem with this slippery slope putting aside that new skills in RS2 did not lead to EOC, you can't run from the fact that +80% voted that they want a new skill and Jagex believes a new skill will be good for the growth of the game if done correctly so discussions of a new skill aren't going to go away by fearmongering about eoc or saying this isn't old school.
Things aren't set in stone when it comes to training Sailing and how it could overlap with other skills in some cases but I really don't see these interactions being a problem at all when it comes to xp/rates and changing metas.
As far as we know the fastest way to train Sailing will be the barracuda trials, which are suppose to be a high-intensity pathing based race probably similar to sepulchre in mechanics. Best option after that will be Port Tasks. The multi skilling methods will likely be at the bottom probably either below or similar to the afk methods like ship wreck looting.
If people don't want the most efficient way to max a new account to heavily revolve around Sailing multi skilling (which is fairly unlikely to actually happen) they can easily adjust those methods to not give good xp for sailing or the other skill and mainly function as a reward that will unlock a useful item like a new fish that might not give good fishing xp but heals more. If balance is an issue the Jmods can simply adjust the numbers. It also wouldn't make any sense to gain Sailing xp for doing something on an island. The Jmods have said you gain Sailing xp for interacting with your ship at sea. There might be a hunter method at sea where you catch sea birds but that could just be made to be a bad training method for Sailing if it gives any xp at all for Sailing.
Saying 50% of the game could be locked behind Sailing is insane. Really what are you talking about??? Maybe you somehow think they'd just randomly put Sailing requirements on things that you can already access that don't obviously require Sailing right now? Like sure maybe 25 years from now a quarter of the NEW content added to the game in someway might require you to have gain a few hundred K xp in Sailing, at that point thats just how the game works just like any other skill. A lot of new content isn't friendly to lvl 3 accounts, is that a major problem?
Why do you need to have lvl 70 in 8 different skills on top of needing to have some decent combat levels and gear to access all the new content that Prifddinas added? Why should I have to level up woodcutting to have access to the gauntlet or zalcano? Why do I need to train Fishing to fight a slayer creature like Basilisk Knights? Why do I need to train Thieving to catch herbiboar? Why do I even need a Slayer level to attack an enemy that my character is strong enough to easily fight?
Aside from a few players who decide to make a snowflake accounts where they train everything except for Sailing, I don't think this is going to be a problem. People who choose to limit their accounts might miss out on a few updates here and there but that's their choice.
How is it completely irrelevant or arbitrary whether a skill is oldschool or not? Its the exact opposite of that. Its extremely relevant and not arbitrary whether a skill is oldschool or isnt. This is not to say that in all cases its easy to solve whether something qualifies as a skill or not, but its definitely not arbitrary or irrelevant, its important.
The reason meta changes and multi skilling isnt a problem on your view is probably because you dont care about things not be devalued.
Like I said with the training methods, we dont know what it will end up as, Sailing will change a lot from how it releases and 3 years from its release date, it will undergo so many changes. "Can simply adjust the numbers" thats what I fear they wont do which is the entire concern. Care for integrity goes flying out the window in these cases.
There will obviously be an expansion of the map, we dont know how much of the map will be locked behind sailing and how much wont. It will be a significant degree, unlike SOTE which is limited to a restricted area that already existed but players didnt have access to, with Sailing its unlimited.
The skill restrictions that youre talking about are natural. Being able to cut a log to being gated behind a woodcutting lvl is exactly what woodcutting is there for. Its a subtle and minimal skill that does its job.