Old School Runescape Dev Tracker
This thread was added on July 01, 2019, with posts from JagexSween, Jagex_Wolf, JagexJD.
It is very interesting that we get to pick the rewards, but it appears that we have little influence in which partners are selected. I would not want the Epic Games Store to be a partner, for example. Could you give any transparency on this?
The person who looks after partnerships said that this is a great idea. No guarantee, but she'll look into this.
Really cool to see a definitive stance on no MTX. I really feel like house styles such as a canifis or wilderness style should be rewarded from achievement diaries but I won't be complaining if we get them this way.
It's difficult. We know you want stuff like house styles, but purely cosmetic rewards are hard to justify in terms of developer cost. If it's part of a partnership then the dev cost is offset.
Any items that we offer will be made according to the art style of Old School and will truly fit the game's theme.
Hopefully Jagex and the community have the same idea about this one. Some of the current holiday event rewards have in my opinion nothing to do with the Old School art style (e.g. Birthday cake, Eggshell outfit, Clownoutfit).
Edit: Now or in the future.
We know the Easter stuff lately hasn't really hit the expectations of the playerbase. We got a bit silly.
I'm quite mixed with reading the whole thing including some of the poll questions, mainly the house teleport animations.
Tell me more. Genuinely curious. Why a no to the teleport animations?
Jagex you can say MTX will never come to the game until you're blue in the face - fact of the matter is we don't trust you on that. Likely never will & we won't stop being ultra-sensitive on the topic.
Also can we please be mindful of how much fun & colourful cosmetics we add to the game? Fears of MTX aside, the more you add and the more extravagant they become (inevitable, look at DOTA 2's cosmetic journey) the more cluttered and ugly the game becomes.
And that's fine, we have to earn your trust.
Any items that we offer will be made according to the art style of Old School and will truly fit the game's theme.
Not sure if I am being dense here, but how exactly does purple, orange or red skin fit the theme of the game?
I think it looks completely ridiculous. RS3 has people with huge wings and stupid rainbow effects at every bank, and OSRS is going to have rainbow coloured people at every bank.
Doesn't fit with the game at all imo
As a player I'm not particularly keen on the skin colours, but we added green, blue etc. with previous H'ween rewards, so there is a precedent for that stuff.
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It does cost a lot. Not billions, but a lot.
They don't even specify how these rewards will be obtained in game? This sounds really fishy and as the start of MTX. Remember jagex in RS3? They bullshit so much and made so many promises but they never kept them
As with the previous skin colour partnership reward (the Twitch purple skin) at the end of the promotional period, we'd unlock it for everyone.
I get the business aspect of these things, but to me oldschool runescape is supposed to be about unlocking things via in-game accomplishments. Unlocking a morytania POH theme from eg. reaching 90 construction or completing TOB feels a lot better than having it (eventually) just handed out for free.
That's not to say that we can't add these types of things through in-game methods too. My personal favoured approach would be to add a drop to NPCs in a certain region. Let's say the Lletya themed could be unlocked by 'reading' a "house schematic" which is dropped by Elfs. Perhaps it's tradeable too, so there's a new moneymaker drop.
That wouldn't be the case with that theme, but we could do something like that in future.
its these small things that build up.
i have a bad feeling where this is heading
I knew this would encourage that way of thinking, it's why we pressed for the inclusion of:
"We don't want any of you worrying that free cosmetics are in any way a step toward introducing MTX (microtransactions) into Old School – the rest of this blog will outline our commitment to you, and will show you the questions you can expect to see in the poll.
To be completely clear about this - everyone at Jagex, including the CEO himself, is in agreement that we will not add any MTX to Old School RuneScape. We understand that doing so would completely contradict the spirit of what has made Old School a success."
It's natural to be wary. You don't want the Old School you love to change. Neither do we.
Made a suggestion post on the osrs forums regarding this.
Partnerships and an effective affiliate program would be amazing.
You can see my full suggestion via the Quick find code: 322-323-184-65614746
A partner/affiliate program is something we're very keen on adding. That will inevitably fall under the remit of an incoming Head of Influencer Management (https://careers-jagex.icims.com/jobs/1602/head-of-influencer-management/job).
Thanks for the suggestion!
Mod Sween - what assurance can you give us that this is NOT the beginning of a slippery slope towards pay-to-win?
RS3's sad state didn't happen overnight - it was dozens of minor changes, each sliding the game closer to pay-to-win.
The twitch prime purple skin was the first data point - now, we have this update. Look at the trajectory you are steering the game towards.
I can only reiterate the assurances in the blog. I understand why you're reluctant to believe us.
Here are some bites from the blog:
This blog post is the most positive I've felt about a game/ company discussing their direction. I'd hesitate to call it "good PR" cause it feels so "We're in this together"
And when I heard about the Morytania house style... I was like "Man these guys know what's up" and laughed
Great to hear. Exactly the reaction I wanted.
To clarify: out of the cosmetics being polled, the plan is for some to come from partnerships and some to come from in-game methods?
No - sorry. Everything in this blog/poll would be for partnerships but if there were other themes you wanted to see then perhaps we could work it through in-game methods.
While I know Seren is one of the RS gods, is there any content built around her in OSRS? Feels like something worth exploring.
Maybe the upcoming finale to the Elf series, Song of the Elves, coming in late July will feature Seren.
Will the actual partnerships be expanded on?
For example, if the morytania house theme requires you to join a Settled Patreon and it won't be free to the community for two years I think that would be important information for us to have.
We can't give specifics, but think stuff like Twitch Prime. If you're a Twitch Prime member then you'd get the PoH theme. Similarly, I'd expect the amount of time it takes to become free to vary according to the partner. It definitely wouldn't be two years.
If you guys are such great Twitch partners, then you need to have them step up on taking down fake phishing streams. With a steady flow of new players coming to the game, these phishing streams are more potent than ever, as new players are going to be less wary, especially when it appears the Jagex staff themselves are the ones streaming.
You're quite right - the phishing streams are hugely damaging. But recently we've rolled out our own method of taking the streams down far quicker than ever before and it's been extremely successful. I understand that Twitch are continuing to work on their own methods to prevent them from appearing in the first place.
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Different models/races would be a huuuuuge undertaking. That's definitely out of the question for now.
We aren't keen on having exclusive items, so how would you suggest making the loyalty cosmetics freely available?
If we give the go ahead on this, they will push this further than we want. Im voting no.
We aren't planning to push further with anything - that's why we're offering so much at once. If a lot passes, then that's a lot of partnerships in the future that are covered.
Why is there no option to vote on free memberships? Wouldnt it be fair to vote on every promotional aspect, not just cometics?
Typically we've only ever offered poll questions which cover in-game content, and membership doesn't quite do that.
Do you think that needs to be polled?
Definitely better than last year's promotion, but I still strongly do not like these partnership promotions.
There are various reasons that I am worried about.
- Slippery slope to slowly adding MTX.
- Feeling 'forced' to participate in the promotions.
- Security & Privacy concerns.
- The Poll.
- What is the point?
1. Slippery slope to slowly adding MTX.
This was one of the major concerns last time. Back then we suddenly got this Twitch Prime promotion out of nowhere. A promotion with an exclusive reward. Something that I still find unnecessary, but more on that later.
Thankfully Jagex listened to their community. Now they're informing us in time, allowing us to give feedback and even poll the changes.
2. Feeling 'forced' to participate in the promotions.
Yes, I know that Jagex says that the items "will be available for all members at a later date". The question is; when is this "later date"?
If I recall correctly Jagex isn't exactly trust worthy with dates.
They could, theoretically, delay it indefinitely. I've seen it happen with other companies where they kind of just forgot about it.Hopefully we can get this cleared up. Otherwise people might feel 'forced' into participating, when they actually don't want to.
3. Security & Privacy concerns.
I'm sure that Jagex will do its best in this regard, but what guarantees their partners to be trustworthy? Both in terms of account security and privacy.
Currently we can link our RuneScape account with Twitch, Google and Facebook. What exactly does Jagex share with those companies? What do they receive back? How many companies will Jagex share information with?
Many people are already worried about their privacy especially when it comes to companies like Facebook and Google. Will RuneScape players now receive (more) personalized advertisements because they linked their accounts with Facebook for example? Chances are they'll receive (more) malicious advertisements as well.
On a side note, I find it interesting that Jagex claims its partnership with Twitch as a success. I don't see it that way, because Twitch pretty much ignored Jagex's requests to do something about phishing streams. But hey, if you call that a successful partnership... Same thing with Facebook, they also seem to be lazy dealing with phishing advertisements. I've heard that they even decline the reports and say its fine...
4. The Poll.
First off, it certainly good that we can vote on the rewards.
What I am worried about is that it may be confused with a regular poll. There needs to be a clear statement somewhere, preferably in the question itself, that it is (A) for a promotion and (B) may not end up being implemented.
I can see rewards being delayed indefinitely for some future promotion that will never come.
5. What is the point?
What even is the point of having a temporary exclusive item promotion?
Why can't Jagex just make it available for everyone once the promotion goes live?I suppose Jagex's marketing department want to trick people into 'Fear of Missing Out'. Which I doubt will work, unless Jagex forgets to mention it is only a temporary exclusive item...
Who would even start playing a game because of a purple skin or some Player-Owned-House decoration? Do they even know what a Player-Owned-House is? Let alone how to obtain it and where to use the house decoration when they literally just started the game. By the time they figured it out, the promotion ended and (hopefully) becomes available for everyone else. So again, what is the point?
#1 - We've given assurances and a list of promises in the blog, and I don't think we can do anymore than that. I understand why players feel uneasy.
#2 - I can't tell you a precise length of time when items will be freely available, because it'll likely vary according to the partnership. Nobody here wants to make you wait, though. The purple skin was partnership-only until September 19th. It became freely available to all players on September 20th.
#3 - We don't give away any information, and unless you agree to receive their marketing materials, you won't receive any. I'd expect these partnerships to be given a minor feature in our monthly newsletter emails, sure, but that's the extent of it.
#4 - The beginning of the poll questions section is the introductory text for the poll, in that it clearly outlines that the additions are initially partnership-only. If a lot of the content passes, then it's possible that some of the stuff might take a long time to be added, if that's the case then I think it's safe to assume that we'd add it 'normally'.
#5 - We talk about this in the blog - '... the more we offer, the greater the encouragement for Twitch and other partners to promote the game, and the more incentive there is for new players to try it. And sometimes that's what it's all about - the tiny little things that get a partner that bit more excited or get people to go that extra step and click play. '
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I think Sween has answered this in a response above. We've recently rolled out a new internal system, which has been extremely efficient in getting them removed almost instantly.
Please let us know though if you continue to see them though.