A true prospective from a die hard fan

Hi, I've played runescape since 2003, I have a max cape on OSRS, and have been a huge fan of Dragonwilds with hundreds of hours. I think it's time we address the elephant in the room about the 1.0 update. While I think it's great that the game is cross platform, and combat is FINALLY less annoying, I do feel things are lacking and want to open a serious dialogue about the 1.0 release. I realize there is some confusion on similar posts. This is not a critque of the game as a whole, and I think many will enjoy it on console as first time players. To that, it's a big win for Jagex! However the 1.0 CONTENT was kinda scuffed.

I just finished the content and the Kuldra saga, repeated it for my gear farming like a good gamer, and finished my dragon set in 13 kc. Here are my thoughts on why people are frustrated.

1. Somehow people cant read that the new zone would not be a new zone, but a raid.

To this, I say, yes im okay with change, I didn't mind the format, until I realized the content was a linear walking simulator labeled as a "raid" which does not even reset upon completion, just the waypoints. Everything I killed the first time remained dead for the 13 "runs" i did. The "raid" has no randomization for replay value, no additional thinking after the first completion. Just repeating the walking component until exhaustion for the gear. Each clear resets the waypoints, so you walk through the empty rooms (because you cleared the mobs) and you walk past the puzzles (because you cleared the puzzles) until you get back to kuldra to run it back. This was not play tested, at the very least the rooms should reset consistently. I say consistently because sometimes a room resets, but not often. It was very common to just run through it all again like a walking simulator with no interactions.

2. The "raid"

I think everyone expected a challenge, maybe even a Co-Op experience. The fight caves in the Umbral Sands set high expectations. That was a challenge and nice to see. This "raid" lets you die, respawn, come back, kill 2 mobs, die again, come back, and pickup where you left off. It's not a raid. It's just an extended vault with nice graphics. This is fine but the calling it a raid is a tad overboard.

3. The boss.

Kuldra is watered down as "do the puzzle and don't get knocked off the platform". Even in T7 gear, the microdragons do hardly anything damage wise, The only reason I would die is because I was trying to be mobile with THE NEW AGILITY SKILL AND NEW MOVEMENTS jagex implemented. If you put your back to a wall and just cast on the microdragons, you're at zero risk of death besides the occasional food, i completely ignored the anti-poison and whatever anti dmg mechanics potions that were added and it was fine. When you add a "Raid" or any "Endgame" content, back it up with a challenge. The most challenging thing of kuldra is waiting on the orb dispensers and not getting knocked off the platforms. We've had harder bosses in Dragonwilds (At the time with the gear we had). Implement actual fight mechanics. The best example I have for Kuldra right now, is how Monster Hunter World was highly acclaimed, but the most hated fight was Zorah Magdaros. The Kuldra fight took that recipe of high theatrics, but just filling cannons and swatting flies, and triple downed on it. This is fun for a one time story experience but not a repeating fight for gear, and certainly not an "endgame" i would be excited to play.

While I can appreciate the 1.0 creating accessibility to gamers of all platforms, theres still much lacking on the final content. On top of that there's much lacking across the board. We were told skills would be filled out to 99 as far as perks, but they were just modifier adjustments to existing mechanics. I think 4 spells were added when we expected finished skill trees? I had hopes that the gear would be reworked a bit, why does T1 mage gear give the same passives as T8? The list goes on. I know Jagex isnt finished with this game, but this is just a progress report of constructive criticism.

IS IT DOOMED?

No, I think Dragonwilds is a great game and needs to lean into it's strengths. It's a Co-Op survival for MMO fans. It needs to lean into the MMO mechanics a bit to stand out from other games. Meaningful grinds, bug fixes, why do people have gear tiers higher than availible in game? why are people dupeing items? These are basics that should be fixed and reset.

While not everything I am saying was promised to us, these were the unspoken expectations many had ON TOP of fixing the janky combat and closing out the saga of kuldra, and unfortunately this update missed its mark. I only give critical feed back so the devs can see and grow with the next updates, and we can have the best game it can be. I really do love the game as with all jagex games, and hope this can be a constructive thread.