Update:Blog - Achievement Diary: Elite Tasks - Development
This blog was written by Mod Maz and dates to 2 September 2010.
Well, it’s been a long hard road, but we’re getting there! Development is coming to a close on the Elite Achievement Diaries. This has been completed in between me training three new content developers (Mod Raven, Mod Jack and Mod Ana), and developing Shattered Heart, Familiarisation and a couple of other projects! I’ve been a very busy squirrel.
Diary developments
When I first wrote about this project in the first Elite Tasks - Design dev blog last November, I was at the very beginning of the design process writing down what I thought could constitute the Elite diaries. This was made a lot easier, as I’d previously had a great many suggestions from you, the players, for good tasks and rewards to include. I’d say about 50-75% of the tasks we ended up using were suggested by players.
Since that blog, we also decided to expand this project by looking back at the previous rewards to make them work more consistently with each other. As most Achievement Diaries were developed by different people, each was implemented in a slightly different way. For example, some put teleport toggles on objects, others put them on NPCs. So Mod Mark and I created a set of guidelines and applied them to all previous rewards. You’ll find a lot of the old rewards now don’t require you to wear the corresponding piece of kit to receive the benefits they offer.
Kitted out
Coming up with rewards is always the hard part of an Achievement Diary, especially rewards that are valued by the player and which don’t cause problems from a balancing perspective. For example, we don’t want to ruin the game by allowing everyone with Karamja gloves to be invulnerable while wearing them. I think we have ended up with a good mix of rewards for skillers and combat lovers, and, as much as possible, themed them to the areas of the diaries.
With the release of this elite tier of diary tasks, we’ve tried to unify the look of the complete kit a little. Not so much that it all looks like it was designed to go together, but enough that it looks good when worn in full. Each piece was, after all, crafted by a completely different culture, with their own methods and tools. To do this, the legs for the kit had to be designed at the same time, but they’ll not become available until a future Achievement Diary is released (where that will be set and when it will be released is something we have yet to decide). I really like the end result and I hope you do too.
Where is it?
So, what’s next?
After development, the project went through a period of review and feedback. Multiple people played through and evaluated the content to make sure things felt and played right, and fitted in the game well. All of this feedback was collated and then I implemented the bits we all agreed on.
We’re currently in the full QA phase of the project, where the code is tested and bugs squished, and, as you may have seen in the Behind the Scenes - September newspost, we’re hoping to release this update later this month!
I look forward to hearing all of your opinions after release!
To discuss this blog on the forums, please visit the Elite Tasks thread.
Elite Achievement Diaries have been a long time in development, but it's finally nearing release. Mod Maz catches us up with the project.
RuneScape Wiki note: The links no longer work.