Behind the Scenes - BTS#4 Combat Buffs & Weaknesses and the Crucible

Behind the Scenes The Crucible and The Evolution of Combat
Coming up in this week's RuneScape Behind the Scenes,
Mods Chris L and Hunter take us through
the Evolution of Combat's new Buffs and Weaknesses.
But first, prepare to see Bounty Hunter like never before
as we delve a little deeper into Runescape's upcoming "Crucible" update.
Located far beneath the wilderness,
the crucible is a cavernous area that's home to an elite group of rogue warriors.
It's here that players over combat level 60
will be assigned specific player targets
and charged with bringing them down in bloodthirsty battle.
Targets are assigned based on combat potential rather than pure combat levels,
meaning that you can be sure that you and your opponent will be well matched.
You're going to need to hone your skills before battle
as the winner of each fight gains ALL drops from their opponent.
Thankfully, there's a grace period at the end of each encounter
you can leave the action, bank your loot then re-enter the fray.
You'll also gain ranking points each time you win a battle
which you can spend on unique death titles and taunts
for you to enrage your fallen opponents.
They're also used to determine the crucible's 'Supreme Champion'.
This champion gains access to a host of new combat items
designed specifically for the crucible.
Warriors can brandish "Annihilation",
rangers wield "Decimation"
and mages harness the dark powers of "Obliteration".
There are more crucible-only items to be found by looting corpses between kills,
including powerful combat gloves which offer a healthy Life Point boost.
Brave players can look forward to some of the most brutally intense
and rewarding combat yet seen in RuneScape
when the "Crucible" arrives shortly.
Behind the Scenes - The Crucible and The Evolution of Combat
Now it's time to join Mods Chris L and Hunter
for another peak at the Evolution of Combat.
This week, we're taking a look at how Buffs and Weaknesses will work.
Hi guys, Mod Chris L with Mod Hunter,
talking about the Evolution of Combat again.
We're going to go over the side-panel which is the thing you just showed there.
It's not like that, I promise - it's sort of still attached to the tab;
we've just made it clearer to see in this video.
Yep, so we're about to look into the sub-tab which controls the XP.
In live, currently, you can equip a two-handed sword,
switch to a crossbow and you're in defence mode.
Loads of people don't like that,
so we're letting you chose what your XP goes into.
Yep, we're back on the main tab here now,
so this is the thing we expect people will be using the most.
You've got your "targets" information at the top - that can be an NPC or a player
- it's our faithful "punch-bag" NPC for now.
And the bottom bit is... I think this was me in this video!
If you had a chat-head, you'd see it in the top-left, we're working on that,
and this guy suffers a lot for our trials.
We also got the buffs and the effects running - red is bad, green is good.
Yep, so you've just seen the Defence and Magic icon come onto the character there.
That was because potions were drank which boosted stats,
quite simply, so green means "good - your stats are higher than normal".
The other icon there is for Protect Melee,
which you'll notice is a new icon as well.
Yep, we've also set the guy on fire,
so you can see he's got that effect running on him at the top -
and it's just ran out, so you know you're good to re-apply that now.
He's also got vulnerability he's suffering from there.
Yeah, he's also now "chocked" as well,
which is an icon on yourself as well, to show that you're doing that attack
and you can't do anything else at the same time.
Yeah, and now he's bleeding out, so that's that icon.
It relates to an ability that you'll find out about in due time, I'm sure.
Yeah - which is an awesome ability as well!
And we've also changed the "hit marks", haven't we?
Yeah, we have. So the one without the
red background is auto-attack damage, which comes all of the time.
The red ones are ability damage, which occur on top of that.
Yeah, it's just about giving feedback so even if you miss an animation
- and there are a lot of new animations -
it's just to show that if you see the red, you know it was
a specific ability that dealt that damage,
rather than just someone hitting as normal.
And you probably heard the sounds are in now.
These are all work in progress again, but, it's coming together.
The Audio guys are going through a lot of sounds, reworking them all
for the new abilities and attacks that are all going to be
fully synced-up and sounding good by release, we hope!
Yeah pretty much every team is going through a lot,
just like the graphics last week.
Yes, you can see over time this guy's health has gone down.
He's got a lot of health - he's got like 10,000 life points
because we just wail on him every day, the poor guy!
I think someone just spotted on the forums that he's got
a Dragon Defender in his right hand.
As you can see, he's just an NPC we built
and he's got weird configs. Like he's got the old
Bandos gear, hasn't he?
Yeah, but he is a good guy to punch -
he just never likes to go down!
And finally you'll see we've got a little combat display.
Obviously we haven't touched on that yet -
his combat level is only 2, poor guy!
But ours is... er, I can't quite make out that number, can you?
It looks a bit like an 8 I think, doesn't it?
Not quite, but maybe we'll go over that in the future!
That's all from Behind The Scenes this week.
Join us next time for a bumper combat edition of Behind the Scenes
as we take a look at the Action Bar
and a new feature that's still under wraps!