Bolvaoir – The Twisted Lands

First topic message reminder :

Bolvaoir is a constantly changing realm. Shifting tides regularly engulf its lower lands, the beasts don’t stay in one place and the unpredictable weather can render rivers swollen and roads impassable.

But there’s more; something altogether more sinister. The lands seem to twist themselves, beyond what can be explained by natural forces: towns appear and disappear suddenly, caves and dungeons seem to rearrange themselves upon every visit, bridges seem to build and unbuild themselves and the trees don’t seem content with staying in one place.

The vast lands are littered with the ruins of an ancient race. Noone knows how or why they disappeared, but it seems something wiped them out extremely quickly and precisely. The few inhabitants of Bolvaoir refuse to speak of them, and no outsider knows why.

So, this is Bolvaoir, a land designed to inject some mystery, adventure and wanderlust back into Runescape. It does this in several ways:
It’s constantly changing: no two visits will ever be the same, so you don’t know what to expect when you visit
It’s vast: It’s really big and settlements (when they choose to appear) are scarce
You’re meant to get lost: the minimap fails you in Bolvaoir, and it’s marked as uncharted on the world map. Furthermore, it has features that’ll put you in unknown places – occasionally a fog bank will roll in and your lost character will emerge elsewhere, and entrances and exits to dungeons rarely seem to add up
Hard to reach areas. It’s important to have areas that can only occasionally be accessed, so that dedicated players retain wanderlust for longer
Atmosphere. One way or another, it'll have a really mysterious atmosphere

Location:

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Characters:

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Weather:

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Creatures:

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Locations:

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Technical:

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Rewards:

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Miscellaneous:

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Additional Design Notes:

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Oi. Less of that.

So, the date is set. Now I'll set the time too.

9:30 BST. Peak time.

And I don't wanna hear anyone else say "inb4 I am disappoint"

inb4 I am dissapoint



You said "anyone else"

You've caught me out on a technicality, it seems...

The OP has been updated with this:



Bolvaoir is a constantly changing realm. Shifting tides regularly engulf its lower lands, the beasts don’t stay in one place and the unpredictable weather can render rivers swollen and roads impassable.

But there’s more; something altogether more sinister. The lands seem to twist themselves, beyond what can be explained by natural forces: towns appear and disappear suddenly, caves and dungeons seem to rearrange themselves upon every visit, bridges seem to build and unbuild themselves and the trees don’t seem content with staying in one place.

The vast lands are littered with the ruins of an ancient race. Noone knows how or why they disappeared, but it seems something wiped them out extremely quickly and precisely. The few inhabitants of Bolvaoir refuse to speak of them, and no outsider knows why.

So, this is Bolvaoir, a land designed to inject some mystery, adventure and wanderlust back into Runescape. It does this in several ways

• It’s constantly changing: no two visits will ever be the same, so you don’t know what to expect when you visit

• It’s vast: It’s really big and settlements (when they choose to appear) are scarce

• You’re meant to get lost: the minimap fails you in Bolvaoir, and it’s marked as uncharted on the world map. Furthermore, it has features that’ll put you in unknown places – occasionally a fog bank will roll in and your lost character will emerge elsewhere, and entrances and exits to dungeons rarely seem to add up

I’ve already had various thoughts into the technicalities of this. Here are some of them:

• Better XP yield than the rest of Gielinor. This can be justified because it’s impossible to grind a particular skill. What you’re training on could disappear in an instant and so other more reliable methods of training will retain their niche – this sort of XP gain is more opportunistic.

• One entrance, and better rewards deeper into Bolvaoir. Exploring all the way to the far side of Bolvaoir will be tough and should be rewarded

• Safety nodes. The landscape is likely to have changed if you log out for any period of time, so unchanging points where the player avatar can be placed are needed. (I’m getting serious déjà vu now, have I suggested this before?)

• Teleports and transport. You can teleport out – this is important to avoid becoming trapped or spending hours trying to find your way out. I also want a system where you can teleport to people on your friends list, because otherwise it’ll be difficult to find buddies and do any sort of group activity (which would be a shame). To avoid abuse, the friend tele only works if both players are in Bolvaoir and has a cooldown of two hours. However, I feel teleports to fixed locations would detract from the explorative feel, so I don’t want any other teleports into Bolvaoir

• No quests set in Bolvaoir. Due to the shifting nature of the land, trying to complete a linear storyline would end up being either highly frustrating for the player, or technically difficult for the developer. If you go into Bolvaoir with one specific goal in mind, you’re likely to emerge disappointed, and this needs to be considered when making content for it

• Hard to reach areas. It’s important to have areas that can only occasionally be accessed, so that dedicated players retain wanderlust for longer

• Atmosphere. It needs to be mysterious, obviously. But how to achieve that?

So what do you guys think?

You didn't added miniquests D:

I was toying with the idea. I wasn't sure whether to reject them on the same grounds that I rejected quests for the area

I fear that the reason to go there is still perhaps a little lacking. But otherwise a nice idea.

It could almost be a Dungeoneering location, if you so wanted. (Rename the skill Exploration/Exploring already!) Then there could be pseudo-goals of killing the bosses; with all the prep required along the way if you can't take anything with you (which I'd recommend in a place where your gravestone could be deleted). As for your friend-teleport, the group stone already offered by Dungeoneering would cover that. The "safe spot" could be like the smuggler's room; a temple of sorts with powerful magic that permits the land to retain its shape. The land itself could be split into "rooms" much larger than in daemonheim (maybe temple trekking sized?), with maybe fog instead of walls... So it is essentially one large area of land.

I really don't want this to become Dungeoneering V2. I'm fine with borrowing some of its functionality, I'm fine with drawing some parallels, but I want it to stay distinct because I think incorporating it into dungeoneering would cause me too much restriction.

I'll be working on reasons to go there. I plan on having all skills trainable there in one way or another with good XP yield, but I need to work on items too, which is slightly problematic considering all my cool item ideas are being put into the Dungeoneering Planes right now... Your suggestions on this matter would be particularly appreciated (obviously, I always crave feedback, but particularly in this case)

As for the technicalities of breaking the land up into pieces, I wanted it to be smoother than the squares of Daemonheim - I think it'll benefit the atmosphere if it feels more real and the vastness of the land is more visible. I have ideas for this but they're rather complex and I need to think through how best to explain them.

I like your idea of the lore behind a safe spot. I plan on having several by the way, not just one.

I actually think this is a fine way to train Dungeoneering, not necessarily the run through dungeons idea the name suggests, but just exploring the unknown.

But how do we get to Bolvaoir anyway?

A quest.......

It's south of Feldip. You walk

Like I've said I want all skills to be tractable here without exception but I don't see how it has to be dungeoneering related. Runescape is in a sad state if anything exploratory has to be dungeoneering

Careful now, if it's south of Feldip, it's going to be awfully close to Arzonus.

Sorry, but if you look at the world map, there isn't really anywhere else to put it.

I want it to be stumbled upon, so I don't want it to be an island, but nowhere else on mainland Gielinor has space

Slayer Noir wrote:I really don't want this to become Dungeoneering V2. I'm fine with borrowing some of its functionality, I'm fine with drawing some parallels, but I want it to stay distinct because I think incorporating it into dungeoneering would cause me too much restriction.

As for the technicalities of breaking the land up into pieces, I wanted it to be smoother than the squares of Daemonheim - I think it'll benefit the atmosphere if it feels more real and the vastness of the land is more visible. I have ideas for this but they're rather complex and I need to think through how best to explain them.

I think the only restrictions calling it dungeoneering would cause are limited by your imagination. I'm having no difficulty seeing this as dungeoneering without changing anything that you've suggested at all. It wouldn't have to be squares. As you said, there is no minimap. There would be no real way to know that you're exploring an instance based area as you're doing it.

Between Feldip Hills and Bolvaoir could be a fog bank, with "explorers" making camp along the edge. The will explain what's going on here, but there's nothing to stop you just walking through (the fog would be like the "safe zone" gates in the F2P area, you don't have to click). The first "room" you should encounter should be the temple/safezone, with an explorer finding refuge from the mystery. He'll provide aid if you missed it before.

The main reason I proposed dungeoneering was to use the dungeoneering skillset. There's nothing to say that the items you find cannot be taken out. That's a daemonheim restriction: again, you can make your own rules for how dungeoneering could work here. "As you exit the fog you find yourself on the southern shore. All the equipment you made crumbles to dust, leaving you with only the -REWARD ITEM- that your prized from the -BOSS/PUZZLE-". For me, having the prep en-route is what makes dungeoneering fun and dungeoneering handles the production skills better than the mainland skills.

But you could just draw all of the parallels and not actually make it dungeoneering. *shrugs* It's still going to be an epic place even if you don't get dungeoneering experience and tokens for making it through alive.

I like your idea of the lore behind a safe spot. I plan on having several by the way, not just one.

I was going to suggest more than one.

See, I there are two three things that bother me

1. You're not working towards a goal like you are in Dungeoneering. In Daemonheim, you know there's going to be a boss at the end, and you're looking for it. In Bolvaoir, you're wandering around to see what kinda cool stuff you come across. Killing a boss won't end your travels here either. It's not really about "making it through"

2. If everything is separated by fog, how can I have shifting weather?

EDit: 3. I don't like the idea of borders and the like. I'd rather this wasn't as segregated from Runescape as dungeoneering is. And you are right, I could still have players bringing in and taking out items and the like even if it were classed as dungeoneering, but soon people will start to question why it has to be dungeoneering, and I don't think I'd have an answer...


I was also hoping this could be achieved without instancing. It could be ever changing, yes, but so long as it's current state is the same for everyone, there's no need for an instance, right?


As for the starting area - do you think it retains wander in/stumble across the area value? I was hoping to have minimal barriers to entry whilst still making sure unsuspecting players don't get destroyed

Have you tried west of Pischatoris?

Rellekka is in the way...

He probably meant west.

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1) I think without a goal you'll struggle to attract a lot of players. Even obtaining loot is a goal. An area where you might get bonus experience won't be used if it's still more efficient to get slower experience at a place you can grind.

2) I only meant the "mainland" and Bolvaoir would be separated by fog. If handled correctly, the dungeoneering-like "rooms" could generate before you get to them. As I said, how much this feels like dungeoneering is down to how much you make it feel like dungeoneering. But the fact of the matter remains you've got a pseudo-room "dungeon" system with what you hope will be skill/combat related challenges in an unexplored area...

The weather could be a skybox that is unrelated to the rooms. Or have triggers in each room. It's now snowing... all areas come pre-programmed with the capacity to look snowy. Doesn't matter what "room" it is.

3) Dungeoneering has its own goal, and the lore behind no-items-in-or-out is down the Fremennik's restrictions. In Bolvaoir the equipment disappears as part of the mystery, bar what it lets you keep. Assuming that what you keep isn't dungeoneering equipment, but rather area-specific loot, I don't see any issue. The Frost Dragon drop a unique loot that you can keep.

But I won't persist if you're adamant against it. Like I said, the main reason I think it'd be a good idea is the pseudo-goal and need to prep to complete it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you are pushing something even if I really don't want it. It's helping me to define how and what I want Bolvaoir to be, and it's much better to get it now, from you, rather than the merciless RSOF later.

As for goals, I may give Bolvaoir it's own currency. Collectable from killing monsters or selling items you chance across, it could then be spent in the randomly appearing shops. And I don't want items to disappear upon leaving Bolvaoir, so what players find in there can be used in the rest of the world (I don't want to call it mainland Gielinor because Bolvaoir is meant to be part of the mainland). But trust me, I plan on having plenty of decent items available from Bolvaoir along with the decent XP rates. I'm sure I'll be able to attract people there.

Simple solution to Morbius' desire to not move, and your desire for Feldip Hills:



(You better be marveling at my l33t paint skills.)

Soul Wars doesn't even have to be on the map.

...and the R got cropped off the name. >_<

Could work. I'm not THAT fussed about it being in the Feldip Hills though.

I think I'd rather have added remoteness of West Piscatoris (or, to just accept that two suggestions could be in the same location, but I'll be realistic here ). But it would end up being a rather odd shape, as I'd like to avoid it touching the top of the not-fully-released Elven Lands. Are you just print screening and drawing in paint, 3mpty? I may give it a go...

Yup, that was a printscreen in paint. Hence "You are here".

I always wanted a place called the Great North. Unlike the Wilderness, it was lush and fervent, but survival was based upon being able to collect resources. The Wilderness has become too tame nowadays. You train dungeoneering by exploring the land and constructing resources. Since most of the resources are unique only to the land, you level up Dungeoneering as you manipulate your surroundings to you will.

Ultimately, Dungeoneering becomes a different name, Survival. The better you can learn to survive, the further north you can go. No banks, no shops and no coins, players survived by sharing what they had or bartering. Some smugglers existed, but they would only reduce the prices of their stock if you had a higher survival skill and needed it more.

In my original idea for a "Great North" (which was scrapped), I always felt this music had the right kind of feel.

Oh my god. Why does everyone think this needs to be dungeoneering???



In other news, I have decided on placement for Bolvaoir