Hey 'Scapers! I'm Mod Breezy, here once again to welcome you to our 4th design blog in the Road to Restoration series! In these design blogs we share information on upcoming updates that are part of the Road to Restoration roadmap. We've covered a lot of topics already and have been keeping an eye on your discussions and feedback so far as we continue on this journey together.
The Road to Restoration roadmap aims to address integrity and game health, and has multiple goals as we shape the future of RuneScape. In case you haven't read the first blog, we covered what we want to achieve in our direction for RuneScape, you can check out that blog here.
Today's blog will cover the Aura Overhaul update. For this update, the following goals have guided our approach:
- A game that's easy to understand, but still full of meaningful choice and depth.
- Play because it's fun, and not because you feel like you have to.
- A meaningful journey, no matter when you start.
In this blog we're going to outline the problems we've seen occur with Auras and how we're designing the solutions to them according to the goals above. Let's begin!
The Problems with Auras
Auras and the Aura system have, for a long time, presented a variety of gameplay issues as well as obstacles for players who are looking to engage with RuneScape on their own terms - both of which you have expressed over the years. The issues with them are as follows:
- Their acquisition is time-gated, requiring lots of real-life time to obtain. You can't speed this up in any way.
- This can leave you in a spot where you feel under-powered compared to other players until you're able to acquire them.
- Their timed nature and cooldowns place time-locks and time pressures on you and your gameplay.
- They aren't "earned" through gameplay. They're direct buffs that don't need you to do anything in-game to earn them.
- Most Auras are 'miscellaneous' buffs that don't actually add any real depth to your gameplay.
- They add an extra system to micromanage on top of everything else you already have to.
By now you all know and have felt these issues yourself... Auras create unhealthy gameplay as they put pressure on you to play within a certain window of time and lock your activities to (usually) 1-hour sessions, not to mention that they sometimes feed into the "dailyscape" issue. Most, if not all, Auras don't have an underlying good design reason to exist either, and don't add much to your gameplay beyond "do thing, but better". We believe that you should be able to play on your own terms, without feeling like you're losing out on precious time or having to wait for a cooldown to finish - and sometimes, you just want to boss with your friends for longer than the hour.
Note: We won't be referring to cosmetic aura-slot visuals such as gazes and particle effects (that aren't tied to auras) throughout this blog. We'll outline what happens with those and how they'll continue to work later on.
How We're Planning to Resolve the Issue
As we investigate the issues that Auras present, and consider the potential avenues for resolving them, we feel that keeping them largely in their current state would only continue to cause one or more of the problems listed earlier. As such, we're making the decision to remove Auras from the game with this planned update.
Removing Auras from the game will allow you to play RuneScape on your own terms, without time pressures, and without feeling like you're less powerful compared to your friends. No more attempting to fight a boss before realising "Oh I don't have that Aura yet...". Our ultimate goal with this is to create fairness and accessibility of content, while also supporting the game's simplicity and long-term sustainability.
We are, however, looking to maintain the most meaningful Aura effects by placing them on other items or rewards in game. There's a few things to keep in mind:
- We're being very careful to not create sudden powercreeps across the baseline of the game, be that in Skilling or Combat.
- In a world where effects are readily available instead of within 1-hour windows, we have to be conscious of introducing such powercreep in any and all aspects.
- If effects are moved elsewhere, this could result in multiple concurrent effects provided through items such as scrimshaws, potions, or other rewards, again leading to a powercreep effect.
- We have to be conscious of not creating more micromanagement.
- RuneScape already has issues with requiring lots of different items in your loadout simply to skill or do combat. We don't want to add to this complexity.
- We will be rebalancing the effects when transferring them to other items.
- Rebalance will be essential to implementation, as any retained effects will no longer be limited by time or a refresh economy.
- For example, the Five-finger Discount effect would be made available with a 5% effect (final balance pending). This potential approach allows us to maintain the existence of the effects on a permanent basis (Tier 3-5 unlocks on a permanent available would, for example, introduce unreasonable powercreep). On the other hand, 5% offers a good continuation of support for those players who were on Tier 1 and 2 of the respective aura.
With that in mind, we've come up with some ways to transfer the most important effects to other places in the game - we also have some ideas for where to transfer some of the other effects. Some of these are already existing rewards in game, while other ideas are for new rewards.
We strongly believe in removing Auras, but before we do, we want to open up the discussion to the community on the proposals below. Do you like any specific suggestions? Do you think there are other items or rewards that would provide a better host for these effects? Should we be looking to add some as rewards for the upcoming Havenhythe content? Let us know your thoughts after reading the proposals and ideas below.
Please note: With any suggestions provided we will always need to be mindful of design and balancing considerations, especially when bearing the issues and goals we outlined above in mind.
Auras with Effects We're Planning to Transfer
Combat
Penance Aura
Transfer this to one of the below...
- Existing Reward:
- Powder of Penance - High level, can be costly, and also harder to maintain for Ironmen.
- Penance Blood Essence - High requirements (Vampyre questline), could tweak with some QoL.
- Saradomin's Book of Wisdom (god-book) and Illuminated version - Could replace the current effect. We'd need to consider page acquisition.
- New Reward
- Archaeology Relic - Could be made as a new relic reward as part of the upcoming Havenhythe digsite, useful for mid-levels.
- Or another new reward.
Vampyrism Transfer this to one of the below...
- Existing Rewards:
- Scrimshaw of Vampyrism - Comes from Player Owned Ports. Could be tweaked to work on all styles instead of just Melee.
- Vampyric Blood Essence - High requirements (Vampyre questline), could tweak with some QoL.
- Zamorak's Book of Chaos (god-book) and Illuminated version - Could replace the current effect. We'd need to consider page acquisition.
- Or a new reward.
Equilibrium Transfer this to one of the below...
- New Rewards:
- New Invention perk.
- Or another new reward.
Skilling
- Focused Siphoning - Buff Runespan success chance on nodes and creatures.
- This would be a simple balancing change, not requiring the player to obtain a reward or activate anything.
- Surefooted - Decrease failure chance on all agility courses.
- This would be a simple balancing change, not requiring the player to obtain a reward or activate anything.
- Greenfingers - New Dungeoneering Scroll from DG reward shop.
- Five-finger Discount - Unlock scroll from Thieves' Guild.
- Enrichment - Buff Divination success chance (already implemented for low Divination levels as part of Early Game Rebalance).
- Call of the Sea, Flameproof, Lumberjack, Tracker - Replace Anachronia's Totem of Auras effect, and rename it to "Totem of the Skiller".
- Daemonheim - The majority of effects are already passive, so we'd just leave these be. The activation effect could be made permanent with some rebalancing.
Auras We're Planning to Remove Without their Effects Transferred
Combat
- Reverence
- Corruption
- Harmony
- Salvation
- Poison Purge
Note: The following combat Auras are already planned to be disabled with the Combat Modernisation update as they directly impact player-power with that update. With the changes coming with Combat Modernisation, much of the value of these auras has been shifted to the player's default accessibility to power. Auras that don't affect player-power with that update, such as Vampyrism, will remain until being addressed with the Aura Overhaul update.
- Knock-out
- Brawler
- Runic Accuracy
- Sharpshooter
- Ancestor Spirits
- Berserker
- Maniacal
- Reckless
- Dark Magic
- Regeneration
- Aegis
- Mahjarrat
- Inspiration
- Invigorate
Skilling
- Dedicated Slayer
- Quarrymaster
- Jack of Trades
- Wisdom
- Illumination
- Resourceful
Other / Miscellaneous
- Dwarven Instinct
- Friend in Need
- Festive
- Oddball
- Desert Pantheon
- All other discontinued Auras
Addressing Other Content
There's a handful of other content related to Auras which we'll be tweaking too.
War's Wares and Aura Refreshes
- As Auras will no longer exist, we'd remove the "Unlocks" tab in the War's Wares shop.
- The "Aura Aura Aura!" achievement will be removed from the game.
- The "War. What is it Good For?" achievement will no longer require the above achievement.
- Aura Refreshes will be removed from the game as they'll no longer have a purpose.
- We'll also remove these from the War's Wares shop.
The Aura Slot
- We'll be removing the Aura slot from the Worn Equipment UI.
- The Aura slot would continue to exist in the Wardrobe UI to allow you to change cosmetics appearances such as Gazes and cosmetic auras (such as the Devourer Aura).
- We're planning to rename this slot to "Visual Effects".
Daemonheim Aura
- The Daemonheim Aura will no longer continue to exist, but as the majority of its effects are passive they'll simply continue to work.
- The effects would still require the respective tiers of Daemonheim area tasks to be completed in order to benefit from them.
- The activation effect for burying bones could be made passive with some minor rebalancing.
- We'd love to hear suggestions for how this could work otherwise.
Totem of Auras
- The Totem of Auras on Anachronia will no longer serve a purpose. As mentioned above we'd look to transfer a handful of Skilling auras over to it and rename it to something like "Totem of Skilling"
A Note On Loyalty Points and the Loyalty Store:
We know that many players have asked the question as to what will happen with the loyalty store and its associated points once the Aura system has been removed from the game. While we don't have those answers today, we'll have updates as soon as we can.
What's Next?
That's everything we have for Auras today, thank you for taking the time to read. As we move forward with the removal of Auras we'll be making your gameplay sessions and the ability to access the most important effects a much more friendly process, placing agency in your hands! We'd love to hear your feedback and ideas for the above, and we'll be keeping a close eye on the conversation - see you there!
Looking to discuss this topic? Head on over to the official threads on Discord and Reddit and get involved in the conversation!