straw_star

How soon can we expect these changes to be live? Since the player consultation period is 6 weeks…early November? It it takes that long, a lot of “completionist” people would be close to completing the hero pass.

Also what about the repeatable task at 121? Will that also be reduced to 1k?

As there is not enough emblems rewarded throughout the track for all of the new cosmetics (and of course some of the previous ones that are included), 121 is a key aspect of the pass.

We're looking to collate feedback on the Balancing Proposals for this coming week, with the aim of implementing the week after. (2nd October)

Kyyes

Is it in the game? No, they removed it entirely and are stating they want to have a conversation about the topic.

Enough with the lies?

This is an opportunity for us to get a clearer picture on what distinguishes some buffs from others, and crystallize that feedback and ensure that we can build onwards from that in the future. The team removed the Content Buffs from Hero Pass, but want to have a conversation around content buffs in general, so the wider team can understand the situation as a whole. The dialogue here is important, and that's why it's something we want to explore with the player panels.

Kyyes

This all makes sense to me! Thanks for all the hard work.

Happy to help, have a great weekend!

Dr_Infinite_Ghost

Please let hero point drops accumulate regardless of what you are doing in game. I don't want to grind skills all the time. There are a lot of time consuming activities in game that do not award points currently because they aren't giving XP drops!

Hey - can you give me some examples? A player in the RuneScape Discord mentioned Minigames, but do you have any other examples you can give me? Thanks in advance.

mumbullz

We will have deeper conversations on the concerns with content buffs - both with hero pass and beyond it

So in essence the idea is not going away and we will be even discussing releasing stuff like this in more contained ways through TH for the right price then

Please stop trying to find ways to ease people into this idea of buying “content buffs” and scrap it ,even if you know you will find selfish people who will get behind it and others who don’t see where it is headed in the future.

Selling further intricate gameplay advantages is not fair at all gameplay wise and leads to a dead game.

I just want to be really clear that's not what this means.

We just wanted to show we recognize the conversation we've seen surrounding their inclusion and let you know we will be including it as part of this process - because it's clearly an important one to all of you. It's called out for that reason.

We understand Content Buffs created some clear concerns even beyond Hero Pass itself. We want to have that conversation, get a deeper perspective on any thoughts/fears in as much detail as possible and how we should address those concerns properly.

We do not have a plan for their future either way. This is purely about getting the root of those concerns in detail, and using that to inform us on where we go from here.

5-x

Killing bosses after you're capped on Marks of War for the hour results in no hero pass progress - it should at least count as a kill for +4 points.

Earning thaler should also trigger hero pass progress.

Yup, this is one I raised myself after hitting the cap at Hermod!

Quirky_Ice_8006

I don't want to have to provide feedback via reddit or twitter

The surveys will give you an alternative way to do this as well as we appreciate open discussion spaces aren't for everyone. Look out for those beginning in October.

Arckange

Socializing, questing and minigames should probably count.

If the devs aren't too keen on giving everyone 4 hero points every minute regardless of activity, why not making them accumulate in the background, and then give all the accumulated points at once upon doing a skilling action, killing a monster, completing a quest or a minigame? Imagine I chit chat with clannies for 10 minutes while setting my stuff to go skilling. I do a skilling action and get 40 Hero points at once cause they accumulated for 10 minutes. Big dopamine hit, and I feel like my time socializing wasn't wasted

Minigames I can understand. Questing might be a bit more complicated, probably requiring some sort of check to see if a player acquired a quest item for the first time or something similar? (RuneScript is eldritch and intangible to me, so I can't even begin to imagine how complicated it'd be.)

My personal concern is with how socialising would be implemented as a progression system. Don't get me wrong, I love the social aspect of RuneScape. Zamorak knows, the conversations that I've had at the City of Um Ritual Site will stay with me for years, but the cynical side of me worries that it would be difficult to do and not really fit the design we had in mind - that's just my opinion though, something for the more design-oriented members of the team to consider, at the very least.

mak3itsn0w

In general content buffs are amazing when done properly. Optional & earned seem to be what makes them good. The damage reduction for tokkul buff (have to grind tokkul), the totem buffs (get the 3 pieces of totem & activate weekly), even the +hp firepit at wars retreat (cost logs). All I have earned through playing the game and are just small little bonuses that are nice to have around. Hope that helps!

This is very helpful, and the sort of thing we want to be able to collate so that we can pass this up the chain to the team.

auringineersanon

Wouldn't you just need to look for Quest Complete notification and/or quest point gain?

Alternatively, look for anything that gives Runescore, so achievement hunting in general contributes to the pass. Rewards players for hitting milestones and automatically includes both quests and miniquests.

Quest Points and Runescore both sound more tangible as metrics to track. I'll put that forward as well, on Monday.

Minimum-Order-8013

No buffs behind MTX pay walls, gambling, or FOMO.

Aka what we've been saying from the beginning. That's the fewest amount of words I can summarize it in.

So something like the Golden Cape Hunt - in your eyes, is that none of those? Is that FOMO or not? If the time window given to engage with something is accommodating enough then does that still quantify?

Californ1a

Personally I think the golden cape hunt (and the associated porter buff) went over much better than the hero pass (and associated buffs) largely because the tasks and goals were very clearly defined at the start. Everyone knew for sure there's 10 total tasks for the entire thing (which awarded 11 shards) and you only needed 8 shards to finish it. We knew that immediately as soon as the event went live - here's all the possible tasks and your goal task count. Hero pass is in a very different place, where we have no idea how many special tasks there are, and the progress on it is kind of obscured behind the whole hero points system with different tasks giving different point amounts so you've got to calculate it out, it's less clear, whereas the golden cape hunt was 1 shard to 1 task (aside from jagex account giving 2).

It was much easier to know what you needed to do to finish the golden cape hunt. That helps alleviate FOMO quite a lot when you can plan accordingly right from the start ("I'll do the combat and bossing tasks today, the clue one this weekend, then have enough to afford the 25m buy task, and do gathering next weekend" etc.). You can't do that with hero pass at all since we don't know the special tasks, and you can miss dailies and weeklies if you can't play on a specific week. The shards for the golden cape hunt were always available throughout the entire event's duration, you couldn't miss any of them by skipping a week.

Also, only 1 of those 11 shards were from spending any kind of irl money; you couldn't pay to skip tasks or gain extra progress, you just got an extra shard if you were a premier member. That made it not feel like mtx or a cash-grab like an entire separate premier track does, it felt more like just a small extra bonus thing if you were already premier but it wasn't required to get any of the rewards from the event at all, buff or cape. I understand the separate track for cosmetics, but it doesn't make sense for buffs.

IMO, the buffs themselves on hero pass weren't really a problem, if they had come from different content people probably would have liked them, but it's the task structure leading to them, and the whole gaining extra charges thing, that are the bigger problems. If you joined the last week of the golden cape hunt, you'd still be able to get enough shards and benefit from the porter buff for a little bit, but if you join too late for hero pass, there's no way you're getting enough hero points for the levels needed to get enough charges on those buffs, let alone have enough time to actually finish the track for the cosmetics (which you couldn't do anyway if you missed too many daily missions regardless of how much time you put in if you're late).

This is a very interesting write up and gives me lots to think about, thanks for this. I'll be sure to put these ideas (shortened, if you don't mind) into a roundup for the team today as a point of comparison.

Hsr_plox

will the feedback be via reddit or a submission page posted in a news update? or is that up in the air?

As a comment under this post is fine, or in the Discord, or on Twitter if you're on there. Just somewhere where you can reach us JMods and we can get the feedback about the proposals outlined in the blog above.

ItsWatkins

Expanding the time window makes it worse unless it's a buff where you have (for example) 20 hours of the buff to use up in 30 days (similar to how bxp weeks work I think)

I'm not sure I understand this comment - so, 20 hours of buff in 30 days is ok, but expanding a time window where something can be used is worse?

So it needs to be a limited time, in a very large timeframe? (20/720 hrs in your example).

I'm conscious that putting a time limit on it could also then just be labelled FOMO though, so where's the line? Happy Cake Day!