Road to Restoration – Aura Overhaul

Introduction

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. Todays blog will cover the Aura Overhaul update. For this update, the following goals have guided our approach:

1. A game that's easy to understand, but still full of meaningful choice and depth.

2. Play because it's fun, and not because you feel like you have to.

3. 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