Sailing was polled to the OSRS community quite a while back, and although everyone seemed on-board at the time, the beta has given the players something to think about. In general, they can’t seem to agree on sailing at all.
Old School Runescape players are either excited for the addition of the skill or outright disgusted at its current state. Critics cite boring gameplay loops, mini-game-esque mechanics, and “I don’t want to level to 99 again.”
Let’s be blunt: Sailing, even in beta, is the most involved, feature-rich skill in OSRS, and by some margin. It combines the exploration mechanics of slayer, the movement-based XP rewards seen in agility, adds a new system for combat, and does it all with a job system that encourages a sea-of-thieves type of gameplay loop: Sail out, fight and collect, return to port.
But for some, these mechanics “should just be a minigame.” As one commenter on Solo Mission’s sailing video says:
…its too much, its playing like a minigame, its like dungeoneering, which i have never found an actual skill… sailing is just not a skill that should be in the game
Whether or not there’s a solid foundation to leap from “There’s too much” to “Delete the skill” remains to be seen, but the fact is that players feel seem to feel that the skill doesn’t mesh with the rest of the world naturally, or that it is overwhelming, or both.
Jagex maintains that sailing will be ready by fall. The devs have promised to take in the community’s feedback, and players can expect to see further changes and additions to the skill as time goes on.
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