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Poll 82 brings quality of life changes to minigames!

Everybody loves a good minigame!

Whether they're for fun, a training method, or somewhere in the middle - nothing beats enjoying a minigame with your fellow 'Scapers. It's tough to improve on this winning formula, but our latest QoL Poll details some proposals that aim to do just that.

Blog Updates - Thursday, July 18th

Hello again minigame lovers!

We've had a couple of days to go away and think about a bunch of your feedback on Poll 82 and wanted to share some of our thoughts with all of you.

To kick things off though, we'd like to chat a little about process and what goes into constructing these polls, how we decide where to 'leave it' with the number of questions and so on, since we think many of you might benefit from the extra context.

How Polls Come Together

Believe it or not, our Quality of Life Polls don't grow on trees - we've got to make them first! Every week, the team who work on these polls (alongside other things like Holiday Events) get together with the wider team to talk through Player Suggestions. Understandably, we see a lot of suggestions from you lot every single week, including many things that we'd love to do but can't realistically do without a poll or that are just too big in scope for us to do without putting the time aside first.

These backlogged suggestions come in handy when we've got another poll coming up, where we'll pick a theme and then sift through all of our backlogged suggestions that suit the theme. From there, we'll work out roughly how long each of these suggestions might take to develop, then bulk out the poll with a set of suggestions that should keep our QoL team busy for a certain length of time before freeing them up to work on the next poll or other areas of the game (like the aforementioned holiday events, or even last year's Chambers of Xeric changes).

The reason we do this is to avoid scenarios we've encountered in the past where loads of stuff passes but takes us a long time to develop, so that we can deliver a meaningful chunk of updates, but without getting stuck on just one topic for most of the year while other areas of the game that could benefit from QoL wind up neglected.

Now, why are we telling you all of this? Primarily because a lot of the feedback to this particular poll was less to do with what is included and more to do with what isn't included - which is great! All we want to do here is manage some expectations and let you know that we love everything we've seen for suggestions to Castle Wars, Fishing Trawler (special thanks to Josh Isn't Gaming, you can check out his detailed suggestion here!) and even Shades of Mort'ton. We've added a huge number of things to our backlog as a result of this feedback, but we won't be able to talk through them all in-detail and scope them out as a team in time for Poll 82.

We do still have some small 'quick wins' we'd like to add in, which we'll cover later, but we're more interested in figuring out exactly when might be a good time to get back around to all of these. On the one hand, we're in a spot where many of you are thinking about or dropping suggestions specifically for minigames, so it might make some sense for us to keep that momentum going. On the other hand, these things take time to design, communicate and develop, which could set back similar types of poll for players more interested in other areas like PvM, Skilling, PvP, or other areas of the game entirely.

We'd love to hear from you on this one with regards to what you think of these themed and focused polls - should we come back with even more minigame changes in the near future, wait until we've served some other parts of the game, or return to an older approach of trying to do 'a little bit of everything' in each poll where we could spread out detailed proposals for things like Fishing Trawler while still hitting other areas of the game? Let us know, we've attached a very short survey below to help us gauge your thoughts about which approach to this particular theme (minigames) and QoL polls in general you believe is best. If you can't see the embed below, click here.

For now, let's get back to talking about what is in Poll 82 and any changes or thoughts we're looking to share!

Wintertodt

We'll start with the elephant in the freezing cold room: interruptions. Among the most common points of feedback for changes to the Wintertodt stretching back a really long time is 'just remove interruptions entirely'. We've spoken about this at length since the initial blog release and as a team have decided that we will not look to remove interruptions entirely. Our reasoning here is that with large indicators and lower frequency for 'Todt's special attacks, removing any interruption from regular attacks makes Wintertodt a lower intensity than we'd like to keep it in line with traditional Firemaking methods on the 'effort, XP, profit' scale we often use. The aims of the Warmth Meter system are to prevent Wintertodt from feeling like something you need to frontload at the start of your journey, rather than being free to do it whenever you feel like it, and that's what we're focused on delivering for now.

Having said that, we get it, high randomness and variance can be frustrating, and Wintertodt can feel pretty egregious when you're being peppered constantly and unable to do anything, or when you're paying less attention and struggle to notice that you've not fletched a log in a little while. Therefore we'll look to increase the immunity timer a little more than we'd initially intended so that you'll definitely be able to fletch a couple of logs between interruptions, rather than just guaranteeing the one. On top of that, we'll look to add some kind of visual indicator so that it's easier to make clear exactly when you've been interrupted and know that it's time to get clicking again.

We understand that a number of you might not be the biggest fans of this change, but removing interruptions entirely shifts Wintertodt into a more low effort activity than we'd be comfortable with given its output (in both XP and GP) compared to other Firemaking methods, which isn't something we're looking to compromise on for the time being.

Beyond that, we've been looking into whether or not we could offer up 'Quick-start' solo instances similar to what's being offered at Tempoross. In Tempoross' case, the boss is already an instance, which makes this 'Quick-start' functionality incredibly simple. Conversely, Wintertodt is not instanced and being able to convert it into an instance is no small feat - so we won't be offering this feature for the time-being, but if the demand is still there in the future then we'll look to make it a reality!

Finally, we saw a number of questions around how items like the Hitpoints cape or Regen bracelet might interact with the Warmth system, or common high-level tactics like Redemption usage and Heal Other alts. We'll be keeping all of these in mind during development if the Warmth Meter is something you vote for, and will look to run a Beta before releasing the system into the game so that any niche use-cases or methods like this can be tried and tested - we don't want to release a brand new system which results in a loss of function for existing methods!

Everything Else

On other topics, we've got less to go into in any detail, but we're looking to add some extra questions in to the poll to represent the following changes.

• Reduce variance of Abyssal Pearl gain at Guardians of the Rift, perhaps by reducing the range for the number of pearls you receive (e.g. 14-16 as opposed to 10-20).
• Add a 'Big-Search' option to Tempoross, to loot five permits at once.
• Adjust the Zerker mode at LMS to be 50 Defence (up from 45) and add Perilous Moons armour sets there instead of the Maxed-med bracket. We're especially keen to hear from any PvPers (particularly Zerkers) about this one before implementing so please get in touch and let us know!
• Add a 'Preferred Contract' option to Mahogany Homes so that players can right-click and instantly receive a contract of their desired tier without navigating excessive dialogue. 'Queue' the tea-drinking in Mahogany Homes so that you'll drink the tea even if you click out of the dialogue - you've got homes to refurbish after all!
• Adjust Amy's Saw, Bruma Torch and the Imcando Hammer (not mentioned in the original blog) to have a 'Swap' option that lets players choose between a main-hand or off-hand version. We saw a lot of debates on both sides about wanting to be able to use these in conjunction with the Imcando Hammer but wanted to go a step further in just letting players choose how they'd like to lay these out.
  • Note: our line-in-the-sand here is Skilling inventory space savers. So don't go asking for the likes of an off-hand Dragon Scimitar, you've got RuneScape for that!
• Allow Blighted Supplies to be used in Clan Wars, Castle Wars and Soul Wars.
• All of these have been added as new questions for you to take a look over, we'll be opening the poll on Monday, July 22nd and letting it run until Friday, July 27th!

We're extremely grateful for all of the feedback and suggestions you've left for us so far and we really want to reiterate that we're more than happy to continue tweaking minigames in the future, so long as we're able to get through everything that's already included in this poll.

Thanks to all of you for reading, keep the suggestions coming and make sure to get voting next week!

 Wintertodt

Here's a picture of Wintertodt taken from the West side, which is the best side. Discuss in the comments!

We’ll start off at the Pyromancers’ stronghold. The Wintertodt’s frozen prison is a second home for most of you, since the way damage is calculated means that it’s currently optimal to try and knock all your Firemaking XP out here while you still have 10-17 HP. This massive advantage means that the early stages of a new adventure can turn into a real grind and feel far too restrictive.

The changes we’re presenting today aim to make Wintertodt feel like a fun activity at every stage of account progression, and less like something to get out of the way early.

Warmth Meter

Our first change replaces your Hitpoints with a Warmth Meter, which serves as an alternative resource for the Wintertodt to damage and for you to upkeep.

With the addition of the Warmth Meter, the Wintertodt will damage your Warmth instead of your HP. For example, if you're wearing warm clothing and have three or more braziers lit, you'd suffer 6 - 12% Warmth reduction from the Wintertodt's regular attacks, equivalent to 0.6 - 1.2 damage for a character with 10 Hitpoints under the current system.

This lets us standardise the experience for players of all Hitpoints levels, while also giving us greater granularity, allowing us to make Firemaking levels more impactful at more regular intervals.

To keep warm and stop the cold from seeping further into your bones, you'll have two options available: Food and Rejuvenation Potions.

If a bite of food provides 4 HP or more, that bite will restore 35% Warmth. This also applies to potion doses, like the Saradomin Brew.

This allows players of all Hitpoints levels to use something like Cakes as their food source, rather than having to switch to vastly more expensive food items at higher levels.

Meanwhile, we’re also enabling players to use the Rejuvenation Potions they’d normally only use for healing Pyromancers. You have been healing the Pyromancers, haven't you?

By converting them into 4-dose Potions where each dose restores 30% Warmth, we’ll give them greater utility within the minigame, and hopefully encourage you layabouts to give those poor Pyromancers a sip if they need it.

To further encourage players to engage with this mechanic, we’ll add some sprouting roots to the lobby and allow you to brew Rejuvenation Potions between games.

You'll want to do everything you can to keep your Warmth topped up, since fully depleting your Warmth meter will result in a death. Sorry HCIMs, you're still not safe here - eyes on the screen!

Since these potions would have a left-click 'Drink' option if this change goes through, we'd look to add a left-click 'Heal' option to any wounded Pyromancers to save you having to right-click the potion every time.

*A system like this is a bit of a shift, so we'll look to run a beta before releasing this into the game if it makes it through the poll, which will serve as a great opportunity to mess with more niche methods like Redemption or Heal Other and see if we can make them play nice with Warmth!

Other Wintertodt Changes

The idea of being able to sustain yourself without having to Bank sounds appealing on paper – but what are you going to do with all the Supply Crates filling up your Inventory?

We’d like to give the Wintertodt’s rewards a Tempoross-style makeover. Rather than obtaining a Supply Crate after every game, we'd like to make a massive pile of crates that the Pyromancers will graciously let you pull from. This doesn’t change the amount of rewards you actually obtain. 13,500 Points will still score you 28 loot rolls. We’re just optimising how the Crates are stored so you can clear up your Bank and still do a grand opening whenever you’d like.

On the topic of rewards, we’d also like to move the Bruma Torch to the off-hand slot, allowing players to equip the Torch and an axe at the same time. Not only does this feel more natural, it also frees up another Inventory spot.

Lastly, we’d like to add a short invincibility window between the Wintertodt’s ‘normal’ attacks so that players are guaranteed to get at least one Fletching action in before being interrupted again. The question remains "why fletch?" but at least you'll be able to fletch in the first place!

Guardians of the Rift

Guardians of the Rift (GOTR, for short) has been with us for some time now and serves faithfully as everybody's favourite Runecraft minigame. Admittedly it's the only Runecraft minigame, but there’s no denying that it’s boosted Runecraft up the favourite skills ladder.

That said, it’s not entirely without issues. For example, GOTR tends to be tackled en masse on specific worlds, which can lead to games ending prematurely when players do the bare minimum required to get the XP drop before standing AFK and watching the world burn.

To fix this, we want to change how GOTR scales, in an effort to reduce the impact of people who aren’t actually contributing to the total score.

Scaling & Player Caps

If this change were to be instituted, when a game has more than 20 players, every player beyond the 20th would result in a 20% scaling penalty. The assumption is that not every player will contribute fully to the game.

For example, 100 players in a game after this change would scale components like number of Abyssal creatures to 84% of the current behaviour. The first 20 players give 1% each, but the last 80 players give 0.8% each, totalling 84%.

If a game starts with fewer than 100 players present, the game will remain locked after starting. This prevents strangers from joining a small-team GOTR run while it's in progress.

If a game starts with more than 100 players present, players can enter and leave the game at will, rather than accidentally clicking on the barrier at the start of a game and having to wait over 10 minutes before they can get into another one.

Additionally, the Great Guardian will dynamically re-calculate the amount of charge it currently has and how much more charging it requires whenever a player enters or leaves the minigame, so you shouldn't even notice things changing around!

By assuming some players will not contribute, we should be able to reduce their impact and see fewer games ending early as a result. Additionally, it will become much easier to get into a game on the dedicated worlds, even if you miss the start by a few ticks.

Cells, Barriers & Guardians

Outside of how the minigame scales, we've got some changes to how you use your cells to fortify Barriers or create Guardians.

Currently, you can use your cells (ideally charged by high-tier Runecraft Altars) to build Elemental and Catalytic Guardians (up to a cap of 10 in mass worlds) or charge the Barriers surrounding the Great Guardian. To charge a Barrier, you either need a higher-tier Cell, or for the Barrier to have taken some damage beforehand. This leads to either waiting around and hoping you're the first to use your cell, or simply not using them in the first place.

The following changes incentivise players to make use of their cells.

To begin with, we’ll allow players to build Barriers and Guardians in-between games. This activity doesn’t award XP and is primarily intended for players to give themselves some extra leeway in the early stages of the game. This would only let you make 'weak' or 'Tier 1' Guardians/Barriers using the Cells on the table. We'd still wipe your inventory at the end of a game, but allow you to build these during the game start-up without losing out on precious time spent mining Guardian Fragments!

Players will now receive XP and Catalytic or Elemental Energy regardless of whether the barrier was at full HP, meaning you won't have to wait for a shield to have taken damage before being able to get XP from your cell.

Players can receive up to 2,500 Runecraft XP and 450 Energy per game when using cells to strengthen barriers, recharge barriers, or create guardians. The cap still rewards players for using their cells but is low enough that they’re encouraged to keep actively crafting Runes rather than running cells the whole time. We'll be keeping a close eye on these caps and might look to reduce it if we feel it's encouraging unhealthy gameplay patterns - we still want to see players actually crafting runes!

Our next change swaps the cost of repairing Barriers from 10 Guardian Essence to 12 Guardian Fragments. This simply makes it easier to repair Barriers, while also keeping the focus on crafting Runes from Essence, instead of using it on other parts of the minigame.

Rift Choices

Lastly, we want to adjust the Rift Choice for the very first round of the game to introduce more variance. This is particularly relevant for small teams (a fascinating strategy which you can learn all about in this wonderful guide from he box jonge). For small teams, the choice between a weak elemental altar (such as Air) and a weak catalytic altar (such as Mind) can be a rough start to the game, especially if the second wave also leaves much to be desired. So, we’d like to adjust the first wave’s behaviour to guarantee at least one medium-tier altar to choose from, effectively by re-rolling Air into Water if your starting wave would have been Body/Mind paired with an Air altar.

Rewards

First, we'd like to add a 'Big-Search' (it's a working title...) option to the Rewards Guardian so that you can spend 5 Points at once. This isn't exactly a game-changer but will help you make a quicker dent in your Point stockpiles. It’ll also allow us to future-proof the minigame for temporary game modes like Leagues, where we might offer more Points per game. Theoretically.

If you'd like to put 'Big-Search' to the test but don't have loads of Points, you might like the option to trade-in 25 Abyssal Pearls for an extra search from the Rewards Guardian. This is effectively a bonus roll for everyone who’s got their Raiments of the Eye already, or anyone chasing the pet!

Our final proposal gives the Colossal Pouch a use for players before they hit 85 Runecraft. While you still need to hit the level requirement for it to be a proper upgrade, we’d like to let players fortunate enough to snag an Abyssal Needle get some use of it.

To do so, we’d effectively scale the quantity of Essence the Pouch can store depending on which other pouches you can already use. This ultimately means a little less clicking while you're on your way to 85 Runecraft, but the Colossal Pouch still requires 56 Crafting and a Small, Medium, Large and Giant Pouch to create. Here’s how much extra essence we think you’d get:

Current Pouches:

• Level 1 - 2 extra essence (Small Pouch)
• Level 25 - 7 extra essence (Medium Pouch)
• Level 50 - 15 extra essence (Large Pouch)
• Level 75 - 26 extra essence (Giant Pouch)
• Level 85 - 39 extra essence (Colossal Pouch)

Proposed Colossal Pouch change:

• Level 1 - 2 extra essence (Small Pouch)
• Level 25 - 7 extra essence (Medium Pouch)
• Level 25 - 7 extra essence (Colossal Pouch) - (Capacity of 8)
• Level 50 - 15 extra essence (Large Pouch)
• Level 50 - 15 extra essence (Colossal Pouch) - (Capacity of 16)
• Level 75 - 26 extra essence (Giant Pouch)
• Level 75 - 26 extra essence (Colossal Pouch) - (Capacity of 27)
• Level 85 - 39 extra essence (Colossal Pouch) - (Capacity of 40)

This number comes from taking the number of Essence the pouches can store, then subtracting the number of Inventory spaces the pouches take up. For example, a Small, Medium and Large pouch can store 18 total Essence but take up 3 Inventory slots, resulting in 15 extra Essence.

Now it's time for the GOTR questions!

Miscellaneous Minigame Changes

Temple Trekking

• Remove the infamous bog section.
• Increase the quantity of Nail Beast Nails dropped by Nail Beasts.

Ugh... the bog section. This area takes significantly longer to traverse than the others when completed as intended, so many Temple Trekkers have resorted to using third-party plugins to trivialise it. This section is so universally disliked that we feel the best course of action is to remove it altogether. We plan to replace future bogs with zombie lumberjacks, which has the added side effect of making it easier to obtain the Lumberjack Outfit!

Moving on, we have what might be the loudest NPC in the game: nail beasts! These noisy creatures are an uncommon sight when trekking, so we’d wager most of you are unfamiliar with their signature drop: Nail Beast Nails. These nails are used in the creation of Sanfew Serums, which means they’re particularly valuable.

Since it’s rare to even encounter a nail beast in the first place, we propose increasing the amount of Nail Beast Nails they drop. This makes it a bit more viable to make your own Sanfew Serums - have fun gathering your own Snake Weed!

While we're here: should we make them a little quieter? Let us know!

Mahogany Homes

• (Unpolled) Remove the delay from the tea-drinking dialogue after finishing a contract.
• (Unpolled) 'Queue' the tea-drinking after finishing a contract so that Energy is restored even if you click out of the dialogue.
• Allow players to swap between two versions of Amy's Saw, one for the main-hand and one for the off-hand slot.
• Add a 'Preferred Contract' option so that you can right-click and quickly accept a new contract without navigating loads of dialogue.
• Remove the 'Furniture Selection' interface from contracts if you already have the necessary supplies.

We think the first two points here speak for themselves, so we’ll move onto the fourth. For more info on the Amy's Saw change, you can find a small write-up in the blog update from Thursday, July 19th.

The Furniture Selection interface is a core element of traditional Construction training. In Mahogany Homes though, you only ever have one option to choose from – so we could save everyone’s time by assuming that’s the option you’ll pick and forgoing the traditional interface.

Last Man Standing

• (Unpolled, still under heavy consideration) Adjust the Zerker bracket in LMS to 50 Defence, add Perilous Moons Armour sets to the Zerk bracket.
• (Unpolled) Increase the speed at which Fog spreads during a game.

Ooh, new stuff! We’re always keen to mix up PvP minigames, and adding the Perilous Moons armour sets to Last Man Standing seems like a no-brainer. If there are other items you’d like to find in chests, let us know, and we’ll make it happen. That said, Zerker's typically sit at 45 Defence and these armour pieces have a 50 Defence requirement - we're keen to hear from PvPers and LMS enjoyers as to what they'd make of a change like this!

Increasing the Fog’s speed will stop bad actors from dragging games out by hiding in the far reaches of the map while the legitimate players kill each other off. They’ll be forced to move in more quickly, where they’ll cross paths with real players, and hopefully perish before they can earn as many Points. The added benefit is that it will take less time for players to get into games they’re actually trying to win!

Everything Else

• Adjust the Soul Wars mapping so that the Blue-side Avatar cannot be safespotted by Red team players.
• Give players more Pieces of Eight for actively making Rum inside Trouble Brewing.
• Allow Bounty Hunter rewards to be used in PvP minigames.
• Add a 'Quick-start' option to Tempoross for players looking to jump back into solo kills.
• Allow players to use Blighted supplies in all PvP minigames.
• Allow players to swap between an off-hand and main-hand version of the Imcando Hammer.

Rounding us off are four changes that don't fall into a neat little segment. Pesky buggers!

The first change here is about making the game more fair. Currently, it’s possible for Red players to safespot the Blue team’s Avatar, which means they don’t need to use Protect from Melee and gain an advantage in any subsequent scuffles. We’ll adjust the map to give players an even playing field. Job done!

Back in May, we made some changes to Trouble Brewing that actually incentivised players to do some brewing, and turned Pieces of Eight into a variable we store on your character rather than a physical item. We'd like to go one step further and consider offering more Pieces of Eight for each bottle of rum you brew in the minigame.

Currently, you're awarded two Pieces of Eight per bottle, which doesn't do much to encourage a would-be Collection Logger to actively participate when they could just AFK and not miss much. We're looking to increase this value to ten Pieces of Eight per bottle brewed. This means you can still just AFK if you're looking for some laid-back Collection Logging, with the option to speed things up by actively participating.

Bounty Hunter has a whole host of PvP-oriented rewards restricted to Bounty Hunter itself. We'd love to give players the option to put them to use inside the likes of Clan Wars, Soul Wars and Castle Wars to give communities actively running games in these areas a few more setups to experiment with.

Last on the list is a change to Tempoross. While most players opt to take Tempoross down en masse on appropriately-themed worlds, some brave souls are out there doing it solo. This method is incredibly deterministic and generally offers more Permits per hour. Annoyingly, the best way to move from one kill to the next is to use an alt account to start the ‘countdown’ timer on another world. We’d rather people weren’t doing this, so instead we’d like to add a Quick-Start option that would let solo players throw themselves right back into a Tempoross instance without waiting around. Fetching jar-shaped helmet not included.

But wait... there’s Varla-more!

This last change isn’t related to minigames at all, but we do want to run it past you all before our next Varlamore update.

If you’ve taken on a few sulphur nagua in Neypotzli, you may have scored a set of Sulphur Blades. The next part of Varlamore will introduce ice nagua, so we’d like to run a Crush-focused alternative past you: the Glacial Temotli.

The Glacial Temotli are a pair of double-hitting, tier-55 Crush weapons whose stats otherwise mirror the Sulphur Blades. Here are the stats:

The double-hitting nature of these weapons makes them particularly strong against nagua, who use a flat Armour system slightly different from typical NPC defences.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on these off-theme beauties!

This time for real: that's a wrap! Let us know what you reckon in all of the usual places so that we can make any necessary changes before the polls open later this week!

That's everything for this week's game update. We'd love to hear your feedback so please let us know what you think on the 2007Scape Reddit, or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel.

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