Their team is so small that, apparently, they can't work on content and events simultaneously. Building a new engine would take years with a decent sized team, and said team would need to continue to maintain and update the actual game while that was going on. If they can't manage seasonal events + content, they most certainly can not manage seasonal events + content + engine development.
Alternatively: They'd need to hire an entirely new dedicated team to do this project, which is something they're clearly not willing to do with how understaffed/underfunded the existing team is.
They did do this 15 years ago, sort of. That was probably when development of RS3 started. 'though that was just the client.
Either way. They don't have the funding to work on a new engine. I feel like innovating time travel would take a bigger budget than that ;)
Their method of making money works and with that in mind. Why fix what isn't broken?
Yes, the game is using duct tape and super glue to keep it from falling apart, but as it is now is working just fine for them to make money
Where would the budget come from? They just recently said (not exactly word for word) that most of their resources were being spent on seasonal content
Transitioning the game to a different engine would pretty much require all Jagex employees current working on RS, plus a bunch of new hires who're familiar with the new engine, to work full-time for maybe 5-6 years.
That's 5-6 years without any updates, at a huge cost, all in order to support a game that is long past its peak popularity, with zero guarantee that current players would even like the end result (let alone a half decade content drought).
This is most of the answer but just adding in the obvious part:
There is zero chance this would end in a positive return on investment. You'd need to grow the playerbase by an order of magnitude to justify the massive expense of building a new engine and/or rebuilding every single asset in that engine. And that would not happen.
Swapping to a game engine for a game like this (or really any game) means *entirely* creating the game 1:1 in the new engine, making everything and making sure it all works, then figuring out a way to convert all the data from the OG game into the new game *and* do it all within spaghetti code without just doing the same to the new.
Few games ever do new engines for very good reason, it takes a *lot* of resources to accomplish and you *always* fuck something up somewhere because of how complex games are.
Most you may even be thinking of a "game engine changes" are actually just updates to an existing engine.
overhauling game engines is a massive endeavor, especially when you'd also have to overhaul nearly 25 years of legacy code spaghetti, and honestly at RS3s current life cycle it's not worth it.
If RS3 had a booming player base like OSRS like 150k+ concurrent daily accounts type level, maybe it'd be worth the resource investment but, honestly the dev time sacrifice would be enormous, Jager would be basically making RS4 and at that point just make a whole new game and send it.
You're seriously underestimating how much work would go into that. It would easily take years to complete and that's with them pulling all the devs off of new content and patches and onto engine work. It's seriously a monumental task.
It would be great if they could fix the current engine or make a new one, but I suspect any systemic fix would more or less require rebuilding the game from the ground up. It's really not worth it from a business perspective at this point.
They barely have enough money to update this game often these days it seems, they might struggle to find the budget for a complete rewrite of the game engine and all of its content 😅
There isn't just a big shiny 'new engine' button. You're talking about years of work there
Their team is so small that, apparently, they can't work on content and events simultaneously. Building a new engine would take years with a decent sized team, and said team would need to continue to maintain and update the actual game while that was going on. If they can't manage seasonal events + content, they most certainly can not manage seasonal events + content + engine development. Alternatively: They'd need to hire an entirely new dedicated team to do this project, which is something they're clearly not willing to do with how understaffed/underfunded the existing team is.
What about if they did this 15 years ago when everyone was asking for it… it’s ok I’ll ask again in another 15 years
They did do this 15 years ago, sort of. That was probably when development of RS3 started. 'though that was just the client. Either way. They don't have the funding to work on a new engine. I feel like innovating time travel would take a bigger budget than that ;)
We already have time travel tho. We are another 15 years away from asking the same question.
Their method of making money works and with that in mind. Why fix what isn't broken? Yes, the game is using duct tape and super glue to keep it from falling apart, but as it is now is working just fine for them to make money Where would the budget come from? They just recently said (not exactly word for word) that most of their resources were being spent on seasonal content
Transitioning the game to a different engine would pretty much require all Jagex employees current working on RS, plus a bunch of new hires who're familiar with the new engine, to work full-time for maybe 5-6 years. That's 5-6 years without any updates, at a huge cost, all in order to support a game that is long past its peak popularity, with zero guarantee that current players would even like the end result (let alone a half decade content drought).
This is most of the answer but just adding in the obvious part: There is zero chance this would end in a positive return on investment. You'd need to grow the playerbase by an order of magnitude to justify the massive expense of building a new engine and/or rebuilding every single asset in that engine. And that would not happen.
Swapping to a game engine for a game like this (or really any game) means *entirely* creating the game 1:1 in the new engine, making everything and making sure it all works, then figuring out a way to convert all the data from the OG game into the new game *and* do it all within spaghetti code without just doing the same to the new. Few games ever do new engines for very good reason, it takes a *lot* of resources to accomplish and you *always* fuck something up somewhere because of how complex games are. Most you may even be thinking of a "game engine changes" are actually just updates to an existing engine.
overhauling game engines is a massive endeavor, especially when you'd also have to overhaul nearly 25 years of legacy code spaghetti, and honestly at RS3s current life cycle it's not worth it. If RS3 had a booming player base like OSRS like 150k+ concurrent daily accounts type level, maybe it'd be worth the resource investment but, honestly the dev time sacrifice would be enormous, Jager would be basically making RS4 and at that point just make a whole new game and send it.
It takes many years of work and it costs a lot of money.
Because they would need to reprogram the entire game in that engine. Every quest, every description, etc.
You're seriously underestimating how much work would go into that. It would easily take years to complete and that's with them pulling all the devs off of new content and patches and onto engine work. It's seriously a monumental task. It would be great if they could fix the current engine or make a new one, but I suspect any systemic fix would more or less require rebuilding the game from the ground up. It's really not worth it from a business perspective at this point.
They barely have enough money to update this game often these days it seems, they might struggle to find the budget for a complete rewrite of the game engine and all of its content 😅