View source for Forum:Structuring the Optimal Quest Guide

{{Forumheader|Redwood Grove|name=Structuring the Optimal Quest Guide|subject=Restructuring OQG|notes=|closure=allow|archive=true|date=00:54, 1 September 2021 (UTC)|user=Spineweilder|type=Content}}

The past week, some extensive discussions have been held in the Discord about the recent changes to the [[Optimal Quest Guide]], and future plans restructuring it to be more optimal. Because there is not really one definitive "optimal" way to obtain a quest cape (due to different players having different play styles), there are some decisions that need to be made when deciding on an order and general strategy. There are also some decisions that need to be made when it comes down to which types of grinds will be included.

With thanks to [[User:Luna Lana|Luna]] for stepping in and telling us to move the extremely lengthy discussion away from the discord, onto a much more structured medium like the RG, I'll just present a list of the questions that should be answered, regarding the OQG. I'll also include what has been the status quo on the guide so far, so that people will have something to compare it to. Below ''that'', I'll include a possible approach(es) on how to answer this question, if the status quo is generally not ideal (all based on the Discord discussion). I'll try to limit the inclusion of my opinion in this proposal part of this thread.

# Which skills do we use our skill XP lamps on?
#* The status quo is to use the lamps basically on whichever skill is the first upcoming grind.
#* The suggested approach is to only lamp slow or expensive skills, and prioritise skills that have a high requirement to get the quest cape. Examples would include 69 Slayer and 70 Herblore, but could also include 43 [[Prayer]] early on in the guide. The main question for this approach would be: what system would be used to determine which skill to use lamps on?
# Which Achievement Diaries get included?
#* The status quo is that diaries with requirements ''lower'' than the [[Quest point cape]] requirements (see that page for a table) are included, and their lamps are subject to the above decision-making.
#* Alternative suggestions in the Discord have been to either exclude diaries altogether, or to extend the OQG to the Optimal Trimmed Quest Cape Guide. Generally, I believe most people prefer the status quo, but feel free to discuss.
# Do we include recommendations on how to train skills?
#* The status quo is that some important recommendations such as getting full Graceful are mentioned, but this is kept to an absolute minimum
#* Another approach could be to include tips to do Farm / Bird House runs occasionally, to actively grind out Fossil Island Fossils, and possibly more.
# To what extent do we include and specify non-questing content in the guide?
#* The status quo is to include grinds that unlock prerequisites for quests, such as Kourend or Tai Bwo Wannai Favour, and building of necessary POH furniture.
# How much do we micro-manage the guide
#* The status quo on the guide is to limit micro-management to ''only'' tips that really don't fit in individual quest guides, and a notice at the first few quests informing people we won't be drawing much attention to micro-management. Admittedly, that's only after I have recently gone through clearing out a lot of this, though.
#* Possible approaches could be to (A) cut out all micro-management (even if that makes the overall guide less optimal) or (B) include tips on when to collect items in advance for future questing.

If I've missed something that would need to be discussed, please leave a comment about that. For now, I think that if we can reach a consensus about these five main questions, we can actually be a bit clearer in how we want to format the OQG.

==Discussion==
'''Bheep''' - With regards to the first question, I would prioritise whatever results in the biggest reduction of time spent training. For example, putting ''some'' XP into Runecraft before doing the Arceuus Favour grind will greatly improve XP rates from these books, so it can be worth putting an 1k XP lamp onto that at the start. Getting prayer to 43 as early as possible will also speed up a large amount of quests, which in turn makes the guide overall more efficient, so putting some lamp(s) into that also makes sense. After that, only lamping skills that otherwise waste a lot of time makes sense. This ''can'' include buyable skills such as Runecraft, in my opinion. I think the time spent making money '''plus''' the time spent training should ''both'' be taken into account in this overall consideration.

The rest of the questions are easier to answer so I'll share my opinion in one go: '''2.''' I think the status quo is perfect. Including the trimmed QP cape would basically make this a "just max" guide, and excluding all diaries would make the overall guide less optimal. '''3.''' I think limiting this to the bare minimum is good, but I think including a recommendation for time-locked activities (such as bird houses and tree runs) could be helpful too. '''4.''' I think the status quo is fine. '''5.''' Perhaps a few things in the current version of the guide could be cut out, but generally I think this level of micro-management is good. Including more would just make the whole guide a lot more cluttered. Just using the OQG as a reference on which ''order'' to do things is ideal, in my opinion. It shouldn't be necessary to have three windows open at the same time (the OQG, a quest guide, and your game) and have to check back and forth which of the OQG's micro-management you might be forgetting. {{Signatures/Joeytje50|2}} 18:00, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

'''Almost status quo''' Being the main culprit for the rewriting of the guide, I support largely the status quo, with two exceptions:
* I am working on a new order at [[User:Nickanc/Sandbox]] that will put the karamja lamp from fishing to Slayer and other changes to lamps. the changes I have yet to complete writing are oriented at the following lamping strategy which differs a bit with the current one: use lamps to make quests with no prayer requirements but rewarding prayer available early on, until the player has 43 prayer. Since these sum around 20k xp below 43 prayer ([[swan song]] is not included due to too high requirements) we lamp OSF there and use various other lamps to achieve that. After prayer 43 all protection prayers are available, questing thus becomes safer and easier, hence faster, so is slayer training, prayer training in the wilderness, etc a lot of training activities improve. After that point, the only lamp-worthy skills would become agility and slayer. Currently instead the status quo after 43 prayer aims much more at agility than slayer and lamps herblore and smithing too, the latter of which is a relic of the previous guide, not something as slow to train as agi and slayer imho;
* I would actively suggest players about bird house runs and farm runs, because otherwise the experencied player has to read the whole guide and plan the points between quests when doing such runs, probably they would like to put less thought on that, whereas the newbie has absolutely no clue.
* Micromanagement: I would micromanage until Lost City/first Varrock Museum visit because the list until that point is something that absolute newbies would do, then the rest of the list status quo with an important exceptions: the guide has to list all boosts it wants to use and how to obtain them.--[[User:Nickanc|Nickanc]] ([[User talk:Nickanc|talk]]) 19:58, 1 June 2021 (UTC)


'''Permanately enraged god of wrath''' As much as I am sick of reading, thinking, or actively avoiding discussion about this damn quest guide here is my thoughts on this forum. 

* Point 1. Mostly towards slow skills, but going towards medium speed skills in the next grind may or may not be okay.

* Point 2. If the diary lamps are faster than normal training then I guess? But I would not be in favour of a trimmed Quest Cape guide. If there is that much remand, make a guide about Achievement Diaries

* Point 3. Status Quo. Graceful, sure maybe. But in general should just like to the specialised skill training pages

* Point 4. Stabious Quiche. Not that you presented an alternative 

* Point 5. Statis Qho. Keep micromanaging to a minimal, it should just be a quest order

I look forward to forgetting this ever happened {{User:Luna Lana/Signature}} 20:10, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

'''Yes''' - it needs restructuring. My two cents:
* 1 - I think we should go in this priority for experience lamps used: slowest skills first, expensive second.
* 2 - No. While some of the Diary rewards are beneficial, it's not relevant in my opinion for an optimal ''quest'' guide. Diaries are not quests. Perhaps make a '''Optimal Quest and Diary Guide''' for that instead?
* 3 - I don't mind light recommendations but it shouldn't be emphasised too much. Makes more sense to go for farm and birdhouse runs as opposed to graceful due to direct experience than less chance to fail obstacle / run lasting longer.
* 4 - Eh not really. Unless you're an ironman you can just go to the POH world and use every facility. For me it doesn't warrant mentioning to build unless its absolutely essential like the Clockwork Bench in Cold War to make the suit.
* 5 - Quest order please. No need for micro managing.

Good luck to those actively participating in editing the guide <tt>:)</tt> [[User:Ozank|Ozank]] ([[User talk:Ozank|talk]]) 20:46, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
::On point 4 to avoid misunderstanding, it seems you, I and Joey say the same thing with different wording: we tell the player to build the facilities to make tea and make the clockwork (boosting with tea). I think no one even remotely thinks to ever tell anything else.--[[User:Nickanc|Nickanc]] ([[User talk:Nickanc|talk]]) 22:31, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
:::Agreed. [[User:Ozank|Ozank]] ([[User talk:Ozank|talk]]) 12:44, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

'''Another wall of text''' - So far, so good.
I think the OQG has always been a valuable resource, and a perfectly ideal "fresh account to quest cape" guide is extremely difficult-to-impossible to nail down. That said, the recent work to improve it has been awesome- having tried to do something similar but unrelated myself, this level of routing blows out in complication very quickly. At the risk of sounding like an elitist/high-level player, I do think instilling good (dare is say, efficient) mindsets and play habits is a fantastic idea. In general, this guide should aim to present the most efficient route from a fresh account to an account that has the quest point cape, that is, the route through the quests and skilling necessary to achieve the cape using the least amount of logged-in active play time. Because of this, I'm a proponent of choosing ''only'' the slow skills with exp choices, that being slayer or in some cases agility. Opportunity cost should be considered by players, so using a 20k lamp on prayer instead of 120k coins and 5 minutes of chaos alter seems a poor choice, in my opinion. We also shouldn't pay any attention to subjective qualities like percieved click-intensity, AFKness, cost, or relative enjoyment of given skills. Some people like runecrafting & agility and dislike slayer, despite the memes.

Specific points:
* '''1. Lamps:''' Pretty much exclusively slayer, maybe an early couple on agility to start. My ''real'' answer is "whichever skill grants the most efficient hours played (EHP) to the player at the time it is consumed", it just so happens that is almost always slayer. The 69 slayer requirement for MM2 should not be taken lightly given slayer the slowest skill to level ''even assuming max gear/perfect blocks/efficient slayer'' (which a player following this guide would be far from). Anything that can mitigate the terrible exp/h should be leveraged or we risk adding anywhere from 10 to 30 hours of slayer training at the end of this guide before they can complete MM2.
* '''2. Diaries:''' I think using diary lamps from diaries the player would have all requirements for as part of this guide is fair and even preferable, many quest guides on the wiki point out opportune moments to complete diary tasks so often there's only a couple of tasks left to finish a diary and get a lamp and it's efficient to use them to save skilling time early. A similar guide for "achievement diary cape(t)/quest point cape(t) from scratch" would be interesting in the long run, but for now I think should be considered out-of-scope.
* '''3. Skilling methods:''' I don't think so aside from maybe providing links to the specific leveling pages on this wiki, which should have features for the fastest exp/h methods to direct the player. Mentioning when to start doing farm runs to attain which level for a future requirement is fine, mentioning that once Bone Voyage is done that bird houses are a good way to train hunter at basically every level is good too.
* '''4. Non-quest tasks:''' I think what we have now is good- Kourend favour is mandatory for quest requirements and the incidental experience gained might as well be accounted for as a part of this guide.
* '''5. Micro-management:''' As much as is reasonable to get to the goal state of "fastest QPC", an example of this would be grabbing extra gout weed the first time you get it, mentioning some quest sections could be intertwined etc. ''as long as the base page guide still has one quest listed after the other'', I don't think we want to mess the flow up too much. A perfect "speed run" full of micro-managed multi-questing again sounds awesome but shouldn't be within the scope of this guide.

Overall I super like the direction this is going and massive props to nickanc and Joeytje50 for what's been done so far. [[User:Cerpin Taxt|Cerpin Taxt]] ([[User talk:Cerpin Taxt|talk]]) 01:55, 3 June 2021 (UTC)


'''[[User:Nickanc/Sandbox|Proposal]] to reach a consensus''':
# I moved all lamps to agility and slayer, as it seems there is consensus for, except
#* OSF one to prayer (slayer uneligible for the lamp that early and the player unlocks the protection prayers in this way, which stops the player from losing fight in quests and wasting time, less time wasted is a gain).
#*Some early on for mining 37-40 which unlock Watchtower and Lovakengj favour, Watchtower in turn unlocks a huge magic xp reward that make the player skip a lot of early magic training and allows telegrabbing, hence darkness of hallowvale and the giant dwarf become possible that early. the giant dwarf unlocks another slice of h.a.m. with the ancient mace and a prayer reward, so I believe that saved up time is very justified.
#*Some for runecrafting to boost the rc experience from arceuus favour, but they can be moved to slayer, just note that rc lamps are worth more xps before getting arceuus favour.
# I believe there is some consensus towards allowing the inclusion of diaries only if they are spent on slow skills and/or the xp lamps drastically improve some skills and if they do not force the player to train above max quest skill requirements (so most hard diaries and all elite ones are excluded), so in the proposal diaries are all spent on slayer which is the slowest skill, except for the early mining ones discussed in the point above, so I believe on this side of things the proposal is agreeable,
#*In the proposal, around grandmaster quests, there are some "optional" hard diaries which require a few xps more to train out of max quest skills but give 15k xp lamp to slayer and other training boosts, but result in a net gain of time. For instance, i believe prayer 50-52 training and completion of the varrock diary (which yields also mining boosts) is faster than not do that and have to train 15k xp on slayer. So, they are included with an "optional, but recommended" warning, but we can easily eliminate them with a click.
# I am not sure of the consensus here on that point, i kept graceful and birdhouse runs. To put a proposal that can be more agreeable, there is no suggestion on farm runs, but i think telling the player to do them when the player does garden of tranquility there has to be some note for farm runs because from that point onwards farming is not trained via quests only.
# We seem to all agree that telling the player to acquire favour (kourend or tai bwo wannai) is good because eventually the player will do that as a quest requirement so we take that exp into account, while, on the construction side, the proposal tells the player to build facilities for tea and clockwork (boosted with tea) because there is cold war quest to do. No further traning suggestions.
# Micromanagement: the guide tells at the beginning that if they want the first quests micromanaged, they shall go to f2p guide. Then there is no micromanagement in the guide: some notes on boosts and items, usage of xp lamps and a note to get 3 dramen branches during lost city, which probably seems agreeable by all the parts here.
I believe hence that this proposal is at the very least closer to a consensus here than the current [[OQG]], but I wait for feedback to push it and/or to make an even more improved version.--[[User:Nickanc|Nickanc]] ([[User talk:Nickanc|talk]]) 15:10, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

'''This is my answer''':
* 1:Slow skills > large grinds between next steps > all else
* 2:If the diary can be completed on the way to the point where the lamp can be utilised and players do not need to go out of their way and it is faster than just training the skil then I would say, mention task # next to/near the quest and thats it. The goal should be to optimise quest cape and if that can be done with diary lamps and it is actually faster do it.
* 3:Per luna, mainly graceful, otherwise I cannot think of other times where it would be needed.
* 4:Minimise non-questing content, however, there are things that should be mentioned at the very beginning to 'warn' plays about long grinds with time-gated activities to alleviate grinds where short time periods actually 'solve' it. Players should be informed that farming/birdhouses should be run as often/comfortably often as possible considering how time-gated those actions are it is important. I don't know if hunter and farm do actually need constant grinds, but it shouldn't be noted in the body.
* 5:There are some points at which to micro-manage, specifically goutweed. I'm not sure of other things but that one in particular would be time consuming to run back later for a 2nd or 3rd, this should only really be done for difficult to obtain items, untradables, or something similar.

Otherwise I'm sort of worried about maintenance long term, but I dont know if that is solvable. {{User:Fjara/Signature}} 20:37, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
:Regarding #5, I agree the goutweed thing is a good tip to give people. However, I personally feel like it's a better idea to give these types of useful suggestions on the relevant quest pages, not on the OQG. Even people not following the OQG should be advised to do these kinds of things, so the quests themselves should list this information anyways. I then don't really see the advantage in ''also'' listing these tips on the OQG itself. The way I see it, it shouldn't be necessary to keep a tab with the OQG open in another window, while questing. Any info relevant to the quest itself should not be on the OQG. I'm curious what you think about that approach. {{Signatures/Joeytje50|2}} 22:42, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

'''Reworking the [[User:Nickanc/Sandbox|sandbox]]''' Insofar, it seems to me that there are deep questions we need to address to form a consensus on that:
# What assumptions do we do on the {{plinkp|coins}} wealth of the player, after the first quests? Do we consider {{SCP|Prayer|link=yes}} a buyable skill or not? Can we assume the player uses sb else's gilded altar to train? Do we think usage of the GE should be explicitly assumed or not?  (note: if there is a concern about a missing ironman guide, the ironman guide has not yet been (re)written but i can fork the sandbox now, add many notes like the current IM guide, and it would be a working ironman guide, likely better than current ironman guide) If we do, the lamp of OSF on prayer (both in the current guide and the sandbox) becomes non sensical, we can just add links to moneymaking guides after the stronghold of security (most mmgs require an input above zero gps, that is why I am concerned with the stronghold of security) and tell the player to earn money to buy bones and find a friend with a gilded altar and boom prayer 43.
# Training tips: we seem to agree on telling the player they have to do crop runs and bird house runs once these activities are unlocked, but what about telling the player they can 0time fletching while running or they can set up a dwarf cannon in falador earning ranged exp passively while doing all early quests there? See [https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/User:Nickanc/Sandbox?type=revision&diff=14096744&oldid=14096736 this edit].
# On usage of quest items after the quest: Goutweed or dramen branches bear sense to be mentioned only in the quest guide, even if I would tell twice, but the sandbox brings a strength potion for [[Darkness of Hallowvale]], it saves training a prayer level by using the [[ancient mace]] for [[making Friends with My Arm]] and a mining level by using the [[dwarven stout(m)]] provided in [[Forgettable Tale...]], would you mention this too in the specific quest guide instead of in the OQG? I think I would keep mentioning this as it is an overarching strategy outside the single quests.
# I would keep saying that since this [https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Optimal_quest_guide?type=revision&diff=14095812&oldid=14095131 needed edit] the OQG page is non optimal even to its original principles, this discussion made it consensusless and while I stand that replacing it mid-discussion with the sandbox is better than now, it seems that nobody wants partial closures instead wants a single definitive edit on the main page. While I respect the unwillingness to push something mid discussion and then updating it another time, it keeps bothering me any second we are keeping a broken guide online, especially given that it is our most visited page.
--[[User:Nickanc|Nickanc]] ([[User talk:Nickanc|talk]]) 15:52, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Given there are a number of money-making methods that can be done with 0 requirements, and the player should have a few basic quests done and skills leveled by the time they have to make some money here, I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume the player will be able to make some basic gp. This is even more so the case when it comes to later quests requiring some basic-to-mid-level combat gear to defeat bosses. We don't explicitly tell them to make money to buy these basic items, we just assume it- I think that's a good way to go about it for things like skilling training too, prayer included. Prayer specifically, we don't need to rely on them using any other players (nor need friends, though it is quite useful to do questing on a POH world to get free access to restoration pools, teleports, etc.) because the Chaos Altar in the wilderness is the best choice- it saves 50% of the cost of prayer training and isn't much slower- especially given how quick and easy 43 prayer is.

# I think it might be a good idea to mention somewhere in a more "general tips" sense, that 0-time training options exist for fletching, magic and ranged and can be employed to avoid manually training those skills later in the guide if the player so chooses. Some will still opt to fletch bows and sell them for money, and that's up to them to decide.
# I think it is only important to do this for items the player cannot get back very quickly, or via the Grand Exchange. It doesn't matter if the player sells their dwarvern stout (m) when they obtained it as a reward if they can simply choose to buy it back later ''if they require the boost''. This means those who aren't relying on the boost can enjoy the gp gained from selling it. If boosts are necessary to do something in the guide, mention it and the suggested way to do it, but I wouldn't force people to hold on to items from earlier in the list if its optional.
# This page is a bit of a work in progress and as such some things might get a bit broken and need fixing later. Not sure how others feel but I think getting the sandboxed page up to scratch, then merging it over in one go is probably good to avoid irritating users further who find they need to keep re-checking boxes etc. but I don't have strong feelings on this one. 

[[User:Cerpin Taxt|Cerpin Taxt]] ([[User talk:Cerpin Taxt|talk]]) 21:30, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
:I honestly don't think any of these concerns should really matter at all, on the OQG. The way I see it is that the OQG is the page you check if you want to do something useful or to progress your account, and you want to see which quest would be optimal for you to do. It then acts as a kind of hub, directing you towards the individual quest pages where the relevant information is listed, such as the strong recommendation to get two additional dramen branches/goutweed. I'd say it's fine to have a ''few'' of such comments (like these two specific examples), but recommendations to keep mature stouts, or convoluted ways to get a fruit blast, are just outside the scope of the guide, and would only make it a lot more cluttered, I'd say.
:I also think training methods such as reminders to do farm/bird house runs are outside the guide's scope. A notice at the very top with general tips could mention the recommendation to do regular farm runs, and the Bone Voyage quest could mention that this quest unlocks bird houses which is the best hunter training method available, but other than singular mentions of time-gated things like that I wouldn't even ''mention'' skill training strategies such as 0-tick methods, or cannons in Fally. For all I care a player crosses the Falador west wall to get level 70 agility; all I want is for the guide to be easy to follow and clear to use, without too many extra things to keep in mind. I'd be surprised if there are many people who ''literally'' follow the ''exact'' order of the OQG; most people will very likely have trained this or that in between doing the quests, which would only mean they just get to ignore the notices that tell them to train that skill. There's nothing bad about having those types of notices, since they're very easy to ignore for people who have the necessary skills already.
:I definitely agree with Cerp that doing the merge in a single go is a much better idea if we want to avoid irritating a lot of users. Doing necessary maintenance (like that edit Nick linked, or the edit right before the linked diff, or the edit right after the linked diff) is of course always a good idea, so I completely agree that it would be bad to be "keeping a broken guide online". However making necessary edits to things that are currently wrong on the page is ''completely'' different from overhauling it mid-way through a discussion.
:PS: RE: [https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Optimal_quest_guide?type=revision&diff=14095812&oldid=14095131 nick's edit summary]: going by the fact that (within a single day after that edit) you yourself had enough to say on this thread to post another comment, I assume it's clear to you as well that this discussion has not at all died down yet, so closing this thread right now would be very premature. Only once the relevant discussion has died down, would it be a good moment to close the thread. I would personally like to ask you to stop requesting in multiple places for this thread to be closed. Once the discussion has died down, I'm sure there will be an admin who will close it, so you won't have to worry about that. {{Signatures/Joeytje50|2}} 22:31, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

'''Another sandbox''' - I've spent some time to write up an alternative to Nickanc's sandbox, since there are some significant aspects where I disagree with his approach. You can see [[User:Joeytje50/OQG]] for my draft of the guide. My version of the guide goes back to the approach used in what was basically the [https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Optimal_quest_guide?oldid=3100099 first version of the guide], which featured practically no micro-management whatsoever. I've built this structure based on a few goals:

The first goal I had is reducing micro-management as much as possible. Some very important notes such as the [[dramen branch]] and [[goutweed]] spares, or the recommendation to use bird house trapping, are things I did keep in. Other than that, I mentioned important unlocks from some quests, so people can see which quests might be interesting to prioritise based on non-skill rewards. And with that I've left all of the micro-management to the individual quest guides, since I believe it's way outside the OQG's scope to give tips on methods for training skills, collecting items, making money, and which specific strategies (like flinching or cannoning) should be used during certain quests.

The second goal I kept in mind was trying to split up large grinds when possible, and focus XP rewards on skills to reduce the length of grinds. Doing two medium-sized grinds is probably better than one massive grind, so I tried to keep that in mind. Because I wanted to reduce the length of individual grinds, this also meant I did spend some of the XP rewards on skills like RC and Herblore. This may not be absolutely optimal from an EHP perspective, but making the grinds more bearable for us amateur OSRS players is also valuable. Aside from that, these are still relatively slow skills, so this does still match the general vibe I'm getting from this thread. If literally all lamps should just be dumped on Slayer, that's something that can be changed fairly easily anyway.

The last goal I had is that I just tried to rebuild the whole guide from scratch by setting some important unlocks as a goal, and making the guide work towards completing those quests, while still minimising the grinding time. That way I think I managed to incorporate the aspect I found most important in the first bunch of changes Nick proposed for the guide, which is to prioritise unlocking fairy rings and protection prayers.

Some more remarks, aside from these main goals: I did not prioritise completion of achievement diaries, but I only squeezed them in at some point where basically all easy diaries or medium diaries could be completed in one go. It's probably possible to split up completion of some diaries at some earlier point than they are listed now, but I think that shouldn't necessarily get as much priority in this guide. Keeping them all grouped together improves maintainability as well (I think, considering it's easier to set up this way, it's probably also easier to maintain like this), so that's another reason why I like just having them all in one go. Eager "achievement hunters" will probably have completed a significant amount of these already, but in my opinion that's not something the guide should be concerned with.

If anyone has questions or feedback about this draft, I'd be happy to respond to your questions (although I will be away for the next week so I might not respond all that quickly here). {{Signatures/Joeytje50|2}} 21:58, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

'''Comments''' - Keep it simple. This guide is not (and will never be) optimal without alienating most players. I'm confident most people follow this guide because it provides a simple outline for them to follow and is beginner friendly. The original guide was mostly fine in terms of style. Most players doing this will have probably have some stats and some money, so I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to buy 43 prayer (for ex). My belief is that the more steps the guide relies on, the more brittle it will be and the more updating it will need over time. Imo, ideally this page should rarely be changed due to high traffic (and bad lighttables) and should remain fairly casual.
*1. Which skills do we use our skill XP lamps on?
: Slow nonbuyables with high reqs followed by expensive skills with high reqs. Slayer then Herb is a fine example, lamping Prayer is not.
*2. Which Achievement Diaries get included?
: As few as possible. If they have all the reqs, and it is significantly faster to do all the tasks than to train their skills for 7500 xp, then sure include a med. This is not a macro-efficiency guide.
*3. Do we include recommendations on how to train skills?
: Not in the table. Maybe mention birdhouses/farming in the prose before. Could link to the training guide instead of the skill page in the part that says "Train to level X Mining" or something.
*4. To what extent do we include and specify non-questing content in the guide?
: As little as possible. Odd prereqs and short one-offs that give xp (and save significant time) are probably fine. MM2 balloon route and museum quiz are examples.
*5. How much do we micro-manage the guide
: As little as possible. Few exceptions like goutweed would be fine. Alternatively mention this on the quest page. - [[User:Andmcadams|Andmcadams]] ([[User talk:Andmcadams|talk]]) 01:47, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

'''Oppose any changes''' - As the person who created the equivalent RSW version of this guide before one was made here (derived from a users' guide from Reddit), I'm more than aware of the difficulty of making the guide optimal for ALL players. However, as stated above, people just want something to follow and they aren't interested in it being 100% optimal. If anything, it's a rough "path" to going through the quests in the game quickly, while minimizing the time spent training skills. It does not need to be more than that.

Everything you are proposing here seems like a waste of energy because changing this guide will just add more confusion for players, especially those who are already balls deep in going through the guide themselves and using the lighttable feature to mark off rows. Moving things around will only screw over those people, and for the benefit of basically nothing. We should not be touching this guide unless there are new quests we need to slot in, or anything like that.

Nobody haa raised objections about the state of this guide. Nobody has once said it needed to change. In fact, all I see is people on Reddit and elsewhere linking to it all the time. It's one of the most popular pages on the wiki. Let's stop screwing with things that people actually use and are fine with, and channel our energy into improving other parts of the wiki that NEED improvement. The guide is fine. Keep it how it is. {{Signatures/JaydenKieran}} 09:53, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

'''optimal or casual?''' If most of you want the guide to stay casual, why can't we have a optimal and a casual guide? Because frankly, in comparison, I find that if the first time the player trains slayer they are already Slayer 62 (see [[user:Nickanc/Sandbox]]) is an achievement that saves up countless hours and should be told somewhere in the wiki, not ostracized because "optimal should mean casual and even when we say it is optimal, we still keep everything casual".--[[User:Nickanc|Nickanc]] ([[User talk:Nickanc|talk]]) 18:54, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
:Because one guide is hard enough to maintain, if you want to create a completely optimal guide in your userspace you are welcome to. But currently the overwhelming desire is to give people a structured order of quests to do in a vaguely "optimal way". As discussions in the Discord have brought up, there has long been issues with the name "Optimal Quest Guide", however the page is simply too popular to have it's name changed. And changing it's function makes it less helpful for the majority of players {{User:Luna Lana/Signature}} 19:07, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
:whynotboth.jpg. I think the guide should be optimal for casual players (so have aspects of both optimal and casual gameplay in the same guide). I'm not really sure how your point about slayer only being trained starting at level 62 is relevant to casual vs sweaty. As far as I can see nobody is ostracising the lamping of slayer. Unless with 'ostracising' you mean the fact I put ''some'' lamps on other skills, in my draft of the OQG. In which case, I already explained that above ("Because I wanted to reduce the length of individual grinds, this also meant I did spend some of the XP rewards on skills like RC and Herblore."). PS: With 'why not both' I don't mean we should have two separate guides; regarding that point I second what Luna said. {{Signatures/Joeytje50|2}} 15:37, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

'''Please don't mess up everyone's highlights''' - This is far more impactful than specific debates about the content. Reordering shouldn't shuffle the lighttable rows that people have selected. Until we've written code to support highlights based on semantics (and migrate everyone's highlights over), any large changes (even if they are good for the content) will do more harm than good.

Regarding the main discussion, I think we should avoid micromanaging the guide beyond a quest order. That can certainly be a separate guide, but this one is currently used by a lot of people to get a high-level plan for their account progress. Let's not lose sight of that. {{Signatures/Cook Me Plox}} 15:45, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
:I'll be working on anew system that also functions as a transitional system, to make it possible to reorder the OQG page without shuffling highlights, (which could also be applied to some other pages). We discussed some possible implementations in Discord, so I'll give a short summary of that here. The conclusion was roughly that the best approach probably is to manually set a data-attribute on each of the table rows in the wikicode, and use those as indices to save the highlight state. If a table that uses the new format has data in the old highlighting system, the old system will apply its highlighting one more time, and then the new system will save that existing state in the new format (keeping the user's old highlights). From that point on, the new system will keep the same rows highlighted, regardless of shuffling the order (which means the changes discussed in this thread can be applied).
:In the mean time I think we can continue this discussion about the nature of the changes that would be made to the guide.{{Signatures/Joeytje50|2}} 00:32, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

'''Closure''' - Lack of discussion for nearly two months. If the topic picks up steam again, do make another post. -- {{Signatures/Spineweilder}} 00:54, 1 September 2021 (UTC)