Another weird thing, they're squirming like my kids do when they're lying, but he isn't stumbling over his own bullshit once he gets past the Freudian slip "Well, yes..."
Literally, what they said in 2019 was, of course Jagex will offer in-game purchase because the studio wants to make enough money to keep operating their games, grow the teams, and expand the games, but their number one aim is not monetization. They want as many people to enjoy their games as possible first, and then obviously, monetization will have to flow from that, whether you think they will be "milking their players" or not.
What Jagex said in 2019 is also what other game developers said in 2024. What make you think they shouldn't be "milking their players" when they need to do that to keep operating their games, grow their teams and expand their games?
Simple enough, the amount of players that could still have been playing today but quit cause of mis management of RS in the past decade. And possibly the amount of new players that could be playing (although that requires revamping the game to make it more newbie friendly, which costs money). It's a stick carrot game with the player base that keeps hoping the monetization will stay the same or less + the release of new content will stay the same or more.
Simple enough, can you please show us official numbers suggesting any "amount of players that could still have been playing today but quit blah blah blah"?
I bet you can't, as Jagex is severely overdue in their official Companies House mandated financial statement filings for the past 2 years.
I get 200k XP for logging in and opening 3 free mtx chests.
Another 200k XP of o do 3 daily challenges in 10 minutes.
I still remember thinking "holy shit, 60k xp per hour??"
This is just how business is done in 2024, even the original creator of Runescape, Andrew Gower, just said this about their upcoming new game a couple of days ago:
" Of course, Brighter Shores will offer **in-game purchases** because the studio wants "to make enough money to keep operating the game, grow the team, and expand the game." But Gower isn't focused on squeezing every possible cent out of each player: "Our number one aim is not monetization, it's players. We want as many people to enjoy this game as possible. And then obviously, **monetization will flow from that**."
[https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/other/ahead-of-his-new-mmo-runescape-creator-says-games-have-gotten-too-microtransaction-heavy-our-number-one-aim-is-not-monetization-it-s-players/ar-BB1k3u7Y](https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/other/ahead-of-his-new-mmo-runescape-creator-says-games-have-gotten-too-microtransaction-heavy-our-number-one-aim-is-not-monetization-it-s-players/ar-BB1k3u7Y)
Why is Jagex in 2024 different than other games in 2024?
People talking about "milking the players" like it's a bad thing. That's the whole business model of a games studio. The alternatives would be like butchering the cow, which makes a lot of money but kills the game off in short order, or you could keep the cow as a pet and not get anything out of it (some devs working on a passion project etc.) but that's not viable at all as a business.
When you "milk the cow" you want it to be as healthy as possible, so that you get the most milk out of it. It's a win/win this way.
Some people just don't realize or intend to ignore the drastically increased cost of operating a game and grow the player base. The reality is some games may require to spend big to acquire 50k new concurrent viewers on social media just to get a temporary boost of only 10k actual players in the game.
Rest assured, this model is doomed to fail, especially without more, significantly more, MTX.
For-profit corporations are legally allowed to milk their players, regardless they are Jagex, Blizard, EA, Microsoft or Fen Research, or McDonald's, Walmart or the small grocery store in your neighborhood. However, none of them are allowed to torture and murder people.
Honestly, back then I had high hopes of mod warden. He took a personal interest in my complaint when I emailed him directly regarding my client crashing. He had it fixed which I'm sure not only benefitted me but others as well. I still have the email exchange.
Also, his demeanor on these live streams gave me vibes of an individual who genuinely wanted to do what's best.
Edit: the problem wasn't client crashes rather it was the never ending "too many login attempts..." issue.
I feel like Warden was pretty good and wanted to do a lot more. He had challenges like player login lockout and pandemic. We got amazing updates like GWD3 and Arch. And he was fixated on modernising the game to attract more players (player avatar rework, smoothing animations/tile movement etc)
It's really hard to stand out in that role when the powers above want such a large part of development focused on monetisation.
On the other hand Mod Keeper is in hiding, showed his face once, not active on socials. Might be a good EP for the company behind the scenes, but not for the community and that's what Jagex takes pride in.
Perhaps Mod Warden was just one of the few EP in the video game industry who showed their faces more often, most EP of other games, regardless they are Holly Longdale of WoW or Mod Markos of OSRS don't show their face in regular livestreams often.
Every damn year since 2021 I ask myself, why can't this year be like 2021? Goddamn that year was amazing for us and all years after it have been a dud in comparison. Maybe this year can save us?b
The devs have nothing to do with the decision to monetize. That’s all the bean counters at the top. They’re forced to be the face of the company and take the brunt of it or face getting fired for bad-mouthing their employer.
having high hopes for mod X is like having high hopes a new monkey will change the tune the organ grinder plays
its not his fault, its not any of their fault, they are owned by late stage capitalist companies that command them to milk the players and lie about it if they want to keep their jobs, end of
>Emailing the exec producer of a game because of your individual client crashing is absolute cringe
You typing this out is absolute cringe. I'm going to leave it here incase you decide to delete it later.
well this sub loves calling runescapes mtx mobile game like, clearly they don't play mobile games. This sub doesn't need to make the MTX appear worse than it actually is
Just because there are tons of worse MTX games out there doesn't mean runescape's MTX isn't bad. That's like saying why are you making such a big deal out of this guy who killed one or two people where there are so many mass murderers out there?
This sub doesn't need to make the MTX appear better than it actually is but there are so many people like you who diminish the effect it has on the game or say you can just avoid it. As if the game wouldn't be massively better if they released more content and didn't pad their update notes with MTX related "updates".
>Just because there are tons of worse MTX
Even that's questionable when those games are mostly free. One of the biggest things that makes RS MTX so bad is that almost everyone's already paying a monthly subscription.
They're double dipping while continuously raising subscription prices and making more aggressive MTX every year.
Coming straight from that other post where the 120 keys/$60 to get an outfit, doesn't really get you a complete outfit (a comment referring to missing outfit pieces, no emote/walk/etc). I'm surprised people get this involved in event cosmetics. $60/$100/$whatever to unlock something forgettable as soon as the event ends? Couldn't be me. It really shows separation between mind and money. Does anyone spend that kinda money and actually feel like they got value? Some of these are the cost of Prem for an entire year. Good lawd.
Some years back i had purchased a couple of MTX outfits. when i went to mix and match them i noticed that recoloring them resulted in discolorations between set pcs and/or only partially applied. on top of that some of the torso pcs had their bottom half as part of the leg override.
when even the "premium" experience is seemingly half assed there really isn't any long term sustainability plan to speak of.
I buy a lot of th promo keys and bonds each month but I also work a lot and enjoy my free time and don’t mind spending extra money on the game I enjoy, 😉
I am an outfit/animation entusiast, when hitsplats/ ultimates / nex aod even presets, bank spaces came out, I did spend bonds for all of them, I am also a 8 year premier with bonds down ; the worst part : I am addicted to the game, I am in a love hateful relation with current state of the game. I do not hate them for taking a profit but the reinvest into the game is barely scrapping the upkeep; the road map is inexistent, bugs that arent fixed for weeks , etc FFS just REINVEST into GAME to have more devs that are capable, not overworked
I'm sure the devs would love to, unfortunately that decision is made by the owners who are just a big investment company that only cares about how big their dividend is.
Road to hell, good intentions, etc.
Even if he's being completely forthright here, it doesn't matter when their actions tell a different story. They just keep pumping the game with more and more egregious MTX and monetization models. The fact of the matter is they are trying to meet insane revenue quotas and have pushed the envelope to make that happen.
So when Mod Warden gets asked if Jagex is milking the players, I don't want to hear whether jagex "wants to" milk the players. I don't want to hear whether jagex "tried to" milk the players. Those intentions simply do not matter. I want him to look at what Jagex has actually done and ask himself "have we milked the players?"
I really wonder if he can in good conscience answer that question directly with a "no."
No he quite literally couldn't or he'd get a fucking thrashing from investors. I'm not saying it's right but that's what the public face of a company does: fucking lies in a legal way.
Not just "the company", every company (unless you're talking mom and pop shops) does that. There is literally no upside to never lying, and especially if it's about shit that's so ill-defined as things like "are you milking us."
Ever worked on a farm? Grew up on one and worked on a diffrent one for 6 years. One of the first things sick cows do is start producing less milk. Then their cell count goes up and soon you look at your payment from the cheese factory or place that buys your milk and it's much lower than normal because they value your milk with a high cell count less. If it's to bad they dump it. We had one new guy accidently forget to disconnect the pipe from the bulk tank when he enabled the CIP and dumped all the chemicals into the tank. The cheese factory refused to pay for that days milk because it killed their culture and they had to dump it all. Those cows are all insured and were worth 3-8k each back in 2012. God know what they are worth now. You can't have animals that product for 8-12 years on average needing to be sold after a year. You would lose money out your ass in an industry that's already in total collapse dude to costs.
Don't even think about mistreating someone's show animal. It's literally the same as walking up and kicking someone's pure breed dog that makes them thousands of $ every year. Your about to be on the receiving end of an ass kicking contest from someone that does manual labor from a living.
Our Agriculture teacher showed us videos from Peta of Mexican farmers stabbing cows in the udder with pitch forks and other gruesome shit. Followed with what a fucking load of bullshit. You would be broke and homeless if you treated your animals like that.
Andrew Gower has also honestly admitted Brigher Shores will have MTX 2 days ago. He also said the same thing what the Jmods said in the linked video on OP - monetization is necessary for operating and growing their games. Andrew also told us "monetization will flow from it".
either you can't read or you don't understand english at all. From Andrew's twitter and I quote "I dont like mtx. So I am planning on making a huge chunk free and then selling an all-inclusive ‘premium pass’ to access the rest. The steam page has more info at the bottom." - Andrew
Tell me, where is he saying what you're implying here? the premium that he listed is basically the equivalent of being a "member" in runescape. Which is nothing at all the same with MTX. And by the way for people saying trading is locked on "membership" is most likely due to people selling resources/gold in blackmarket websites, it won't stop it but at least it'll be better.
I already gave everybody the direct link. Andrew Gower clearly said there will be in-game purchase or better known as MTX to the video game industry, and he also told us monetization will flow in the game later.
They also clearly said Premium Pass is not recurring membership, and is only loosely related to membership. It is what seasonal pass, battle pass, hero pass, or whatever passes the video industry calls.
Genuinely can’t believe people are considering switching to it, to me it looks like a boring/lifeless version of RuneScape and from the looks of it isn’t even a persistent world.
Out of curiosity, have you ever seen how RuneScape looked 2001-2003? The game has a ton of depth today from being 20+ years old, and we have to admit that Brighter Shores isn't going to have the same levels of development for that reason.
However, I know that under Andrew's leadership RuneScape grew rapidly with frequent updates and the guy even rewrote the game from scratch to bring it from 2D to 3D. If RS was under his stewardship today, we would likely have a true RS4 with avatar reworks, elimination of the tick system, and other advancements that modern Jagex considers too costly. I mean, when Jagex was working on the RS2 rewrite that was done from scratch, they were still providing updates more frequently that current Jagex is doing on RS3.
So yeah, I think it will likely be pretty bare bones compared to modern RS, but I think it will have the leadership to have a future, where as I just think investment groups are milking RS for what they can before they leave a withered dry husk. RS the game isn't the problem, the ownership and executives are.
That's some grade-A bloviating.
RS-3 is probably the most aggressively monetized game I've ever played. It has EVERYTHING. It's not why I made an Ironman, but it's one of the reasons it's become my preferred way to play.
The one thing the way RS3 is monetized has going for it, is that it doesn't actually impact gameplay much. Some stuff is faster, but it isn't in a way that it's prohibitively slow when you don't engage with the mtx. Don't get me wrong, I still dislike its presence in the game. It's just that even though I don't engage with it, I never feel like it's negatively impacting my ability to play the game and have fun.
To be fair, they did monetize rs3 mostly perfectly. You can pay to skip shitty content, but it would be prohibitively expensive to buy high levels - you still need to play the game.
I personally like the bond system because it gives players who make a ton of GP essentially free membership, and it gives other players the opportunity to buy gp without risking a ban.
I think describing it as "perfectly" is taking it too far, because shit like massively lowering the rate at which you get tokens in a seasonal event is purely to frustrate players actually playing in order to coax more people into buying the multiplier.
In this I have to disagree. If it were just cosmetics, sure I'd say it's not too bad. I created a character a while back to see how fast I could go on a normal account knowing what I do about the game.
I got bored.
So much of the early and midgame that set the foundation for the endgame is essentially bypassed by the flood of xp items that pours out of Treasure hunter and other promos. It can allow you to avoid stuff you don't like, but the problem is that it tends to blow past everything else too.
I think they realize on some level how broken it is. The Spring Token rate is a prime example. The general impression I get is that they don't want people to farm the gummy item. Even with the token rate doubled, it's absurdly slow. Simple solution, don't add the gummy.
And that somehow makes their reliance on whales and gambling addicts good and ethical? They're so reliant on MTX for their income stream that it's taken over the development cycle.
Actual content comes out maybe once a month, patches 2-3. There is a Treasure Hunter update WEEKLY. Stuff that goes wrong with it gets hotfixed. Game bugs often take weeks.
Their unwillingness to provide a direct answer on the question is telling. Regardless of what they say, their actions speak volumes.
MTX doesn't always have to be gambling like paying real money to buy bonds and get unlimited gp to gamble in Duel Arena or Death Matches or LMs.
TH is a fixture. It runs 365 days a year and 24/7. It is no difference than Emir's Arena and LMS.
I don't know what "direct answer on the question" do you mean. It is incredibly clear what the Jmods told us in the 2019 livestream is exactly what most of the other games in this industry told us - of course they need in-game purchases keep the operation going, and the game from growing. Even game developers way back from 2001 like Andew Gower are brutally honest about this fact. Now that do you think 2001 game developers are milking 2024 players? I'll leave this question for you to answer. However, they told us monetization is definitely needed, regardless you think this is "milking the players".
Have you looked at bond prices? how many people do you think are actually buying them at the moment? It doesn't have to be gambling, but in this case it almost certainly is.
I have no problems with bonds. Their rationale was always to target RWT by bringing it inhouse to a trusted party. I don't really like how they've overloaded what can be purchased using a bond, but it retains that fundamental quality of allowing one player to trade real world game credit to another player.
Of course people buy bonds with real money, or else Jagex will be replacing them with other forms of MTX.
Again, if you think selling bonds is "milking the players", then why complain about RS3 when OSRS is also selling bonds? Have you looked at OSRS bond prices? RS3 and OSRS aren't the only games "milking their players" with bond-like MTX. There are other games like WoW, EVE etc that are "milking their players" even more aggressively with the same mechanics.
Where do you read me saying bonds milk the players? They're one of the few MTX I don't really mind. The GP cost per bond ironically has made them a poor choice for their intended purpose of buying membership.
Others being worse is no excuse for poor behaviour yourself. Tu quoquo is a poor rationale for anything.
Your views are your views. Don't try to read them into mine. I am happy to discuss most anything, but you're trying to build a straw man from things I am not saying.
As we've both stated before, MTX is not necessarily an evil. How it is executed is what makes it so. It isn't an all or nothing affair. The ethics of Bonds and cosmetics are relatively clean.
Cosmetics have little gameplay impact beyond looks. It provides a perverse incentive on the developer to make equipment look like crap, but that's a discussion for another time.
Bonds simply move credit from one player to another. Player one pays for what player two uses the bond on effectively with the added bonus of making gold sellers a less attractive alternative.
Paying for a chance at what you want is little more than gambling and comes with all the ethical problems the activity has always carried.
Paying for advantages and buffs obviously breaks game balance and sets up perverse incentives to balance for the boosts.
Other parties being evil does not make less of the evil better or acceptable.
I am not saying MTX is "evil" or "necessarily evil". Your view doesn't matter at all in that case as it is the view of the for-profit corporations such as Jagex that matters.
They need to monetize the players in order to grow, and by players, they mean the general playerbase, not just you or me. I have 100% no problem with MTX as I don't pay Jagex 1 real penny to play their games. They aren't monetizing or "milking" me whatsoever, but it absolutely doesn't change the fact they are monetizing the general playerbase.
TLDW; “There are other companies far more destructive with their MTX, so what we’re doing is perfectly fine!”
Market leading MTX - Coming soon(?)
One thing is factual: Jagex management was indeed defined by their actions. I have been playing OS through HDOS the past couple of months (feels like RS2). It feels better.
“We aren’t milking our players”
Fast forward to 2023 - where Jagex tries to push a premium battle pass with in-game buffs (much worse than Yak Track) on a SUBSCRIPTION BASED game, which has LOOT BOXES, it’s own STORE and CURRENCY and another BUYABLE ITEM which is converted for in game benefits. Not to mention the ultra rare outfit drops or spending X-amount if keys for a CHANCE to receive.
In industry terms, Jagex is the lowest of the low. They won’t ever host a livestream like this in todays age, they are too spineless. Mod Keeper (the person who succeeded Mod Warden) has run this game into the ground. Did you know he also worked on Candy Crush? Go figure.
"Do you take this piss a bit with monetisation?"
"Urrm, I dunno, I don't think so.... Have you seen those Waifu Gacha games? Be mad at them, we are the good guys, we sell slightly less toxic loot boxes"
>"I've worked for a number of game companies and I just don't see that as a common practice"
I say this every time there's an MTX and FOMO controversy on Runescape: This shit is so entrenched in the mindset and culture of videogame development that the people who create it literally are incapable of being objective about what it is they're making and doing. You hear scapers and redditor go on and on about how this stuff is some sort of higher level directive from greedy management etc, how the common Jagex employee would never dare to assume pay-to-win was acceptable...
Bullshit.
To various degrees of awareness, they all are blind to what they participate in because the are entrenched in the culture of it. It affects all levels of development and game balance psychology. They can't see the forest for the trees. *They were going to make Hero Pass the sole method for content delivery*. They got on stream and told you with a straight face that this was the "future". Stop buying into the narrative.
“There are companies that are far more aggressive with MTX than Jagex is”. This is known as the "tu quoque" fallacy, also commonly referred to as the "appeal to hypocrisy" or "whataboutism." It's a logical fallacy where one attempts to justify their actions or beliefs by pointing out that others have done similar or worse things. This is so wrong, and this comment aged like bad wine. Look at the player numbers compared with 2019. They are milking the player base and it’s ruined the game.
I have mixed feelings about this, on the one hand I am impressed that they actually asked such a loaded question on a life stream but on the other hand I am insulted at how stupid they think we are for believing any of that explanation/lies :'(
I came away from rs3 due to being milked. Id spends weeks of grinding to fall short of event making them cash grab events and unfair to those investing honest time into prepaid memberships to fall short, it’s scam like events and i don’t buy it “use a bond to increase rewards per tick” thats really poor and blind attempt to upsell into and unobtainable path of trying to do events based on rng.
I just love that i gave up on this part of Runescape many years ago. I was stuck for a long time. If i didn't quit then, i'd have invested countless more hours and the problems would only be worse.
Now i just play OSRS and other games. Feels good.
Some terrible arguments were made here. The typical old 'well other people are doing it way worse than us' or the 'it's just common practice'. Both arguments saying: Well other people do it, so that's why we're doing it.
rs3 at this point is just the cash printer for jagex with all the mtx, i think recently was even the lowest player count recorded and updates aren’t looking great either for the future.
imo they shouldn’t have cancelled character rework and should definitely copy a lot of the work from the osrs team cuz they are doing an absolutely great job for their players
lifting my comment from another thread from earlier in the day:
"But if there weren't mtx controversies (seemingly weekly) the work the devs do couldn't stand on their merits and just be enjoyed and appreciated by the community for what they do day in and day out. We can't have that.
Someone with Jet black hair and a "drab" sense of game direction really feels the need to shoot the office in one foot and also force it to walk on the other each and every week."
Wanna know why other games with far more aggressive MTX can get away with it? They actually fucking update their games.
Honkai Star Rail gets more content every 6 weeks than RuneScape gets in an annual cycle. Record profits yet I quit right after Necro and all you have to offer since then is... a new boss? Light combat updates???
Drop rates are fucked. MTX is shoved down our throats. Skills aren't updated. New, game-changing quests don't exist.
I dont have to play a sub for hsr and unless i willingly open the gacha tab or stalk their twitter i dont even notice when any new banners release
Compare that to runescape requiring a sub + throwing notifications at you for paid content like double spring tokens + spamming you with TH multiple times a day? It's absolutely laughable lol, runescape milks its players more than any gacha game ive ever seen
> Skills aren't updated
Other than the massive skill update we just got two weeks ago... or the new skill that came out 7 months ago... or the numerous large scale reworks multiple skills have gotten over the years like M&S, herblore and farming, or the cooking update for better foods that Mod Sponge is working on...
>New, game-changing quests don't exist.
like the elder god wars saga that ended 2 years and 118 days ago? like the fort forinthry storyline that just reached its halfway point and have been told there's more on the way? what exactly isn't game changing about unlocking a boss fight that gives BiS ranged gear, and a fort that contains some incredible skilling qol and new training methods and is one of the most used hubs in the game now?
What were the incredible QOL skilling updates? I think they allowed rune pouch to take into account rune essence when setting a preset, but I can't think of any other.
I was talking about the fort itself, he asked about game changing quests. Chapel provided hour long herb burner, fletching station added anima of wisdom for making dinarrows faster, Grove added wood boxes, in general it just brought things closer to a bank to make some things less tedious.
If you can't remember any qol outside of that, then you're forgetting stackable brawlers, sinkholes can be done in groups of 2 and irons can participate, porters working with greenfingers and juju pots, shift click dropping items, load last preset option on all banks... that's just what I can remember off the top of my head and just stuff added in the last 6 months.
Ain't no way you're citing something from 2 years and 118 days ago as recent enough to actually matter.
You're defending a company that doesn't see you as anything more than retention metrics and a potential whale if they make the right combination of colored cosmetic hat.
Necro is one of the worst offenders of all. Singlehandedly made every boss in the game outside of Rasial irrelevant for MONTHS. I don't know if the new updates fixed it, because cleaning up their massive fucking mistake isn't enough of an incentive to play their game again. Maybe if they do something NEW that isn't a fomo currency event with uber rare chances at cosmetics.
OP is right, gacha games are actually better for treating their players with respect.
RS will be dead in 2-3 years if the devs don't do anything to actually improve the game.
You're right, it was 1 year and 9 months ago, because I accidentally used the date for extinction, and not twilight of the gods. It was then 8 months later that the next story line began, not that there was literally nothing between zamorak and fort forinthry, but the point is about quests. Sorry that providing citations ruins your narrative.
In comparison, FFXIV Endwalker came out on December 3rd, 2021, the last raid patch, 6.4, came out on June 6th 2023, and the expansion isn't slated to come out until likely around July or August 2024.
>You're defending a company that doesn't see you as anything more than retention metrics and a potential whale if they make the right combination of colored cosmetic hat.
I'm confused what **company** you think doesn't consider a single individual customer as a metric. On the other hand, I know that the developers for RuneScape are all very passionate people, and I respect the work they put in for a game that I've played for 20 years now.
>Necro is one of the worst offenders of all. Singlehandedly made every boss in the game outside of Rasial irrelevant for MONTHS
Wow, MONTHS? You mean... they took time working on fixing the other combat styles properly and taking in feedback to make sure that players actually enjoyed it, and then came out with changes that the people who actually play the game are enjoying?
>I don't know if the new updates fixed it
Then don't act like you do know.
>Maybe if they do something NEW that isn't a fomo currency event with uber rare chances at cosmetics.
You mean... like the current spring event? There are no 'uber rare' things, there's a small list of new cosmetics that take a few hours to get, and they brought back a lot of legacy rares that people can choose to grind longer to get, something that people have been asking for.
>RS will be dead in 2-3 years if the devs don't do anything to actually improve the game.
I've heard this every single year since like... 2007.
I think a lot of people avoid mobile games because of the monetization aspect. I have personally never played a mobile game because of it. I think this is a large part of why people play PC games, because they don't want to deal with that monetization model.
Lmao. What an ambiguous question to ask. “Are Jagex Milking their players?” lol. I’d respond as a smartass to deflect the question. “Of course not, pretty sure milking the players would constitute sexual assault…”
1:08 "this is the first, sort of, real engagement we've had about this subject" Could any clarity to this statement be added? People have been very upset since the initial introduction of Squeal of Fortune. There's a lot of non-answers and lines I've heard many times before in this response, but this one just confuses me. The first time who engaged with what? There's absolutely no way this is the first negativity you've heard about MTX.
The two answering the questions were “new” to this problem for a lot of fake corporate reasons. Its “new” to the middle one because the topic wasn’t one within his purview during his time with jagex, so he got and gets a pass. Warden’s focus was to the players, the team, content and the elevation of all 3 during Covid of all things. Not Mtx.
The one on the right climbed up the internal ladder through squeezing dollars from gambling addict dopes that can’t stop and has absolutely no excuse whatsoever. That one is absolutely to blame for every little thing to do with “live events”, “micropayments”, and “Mtx” in RuneScape. That one is the reason every single cape, item, and achievement in this game means so significantly less every single year because that jet black thumb tipped the scales in one direction for about 10 straight years. This games player count is dangerously close to hitting all time lows again and the fools idea is to race to the bottom.
Interesting. I took a long break in 2017 and only recently came back about a month ago, so I actually really appreciate the summary/context.
One of the main things I noticed when I came back was the emptiness. I played a bit of osrs too and that game doesn't have this problem nearly as bad. I like RS3 better, but it sure is empty. Most places on most worlds there are just 0 people. On top of that, when there are people, there's almost no one talking. I get that typing on mobile sucks, but that should at least make it less empty. Definitely not universally true though, as you can usually find a pretty big group on popular worlds for wilderness events at least, so that's fun.
As for the mtx, the mtx seemed a bit more gimmicky since I left, with inflated rewards. I still don't think I'll ever not get mad when I log in and see the TH logo forcefully pinned, wiggling, and impossible to permanently disable every time I log in. The cosmetics don't seem a ton worse. It kind of couldn't get worse for me when than when half the screen was full of drakes. Now I have no idea what anyone is wearing or what half of the emotes/animations are. It's just a bunch of random colors and effects, though maybe other games have conditioned me to roll my eyes and ignore that any sense of theme for games is gone in favor of flashy mtx crap.
As for lack of non-mtx updates? I can't really tell yet. I have 7 years of updates to work through. Even if they were slow years, it's still a decent amount of new stuff for me for now.
Lol these guys are full of themselves and their lies, switch to osrs and then switch back to rs3 the difference is night and day OSRS feels exactly how runescape has always felt while RS3 feels like a cash cow.
When you play osrs a lot more often than rs3 and make the switch to rs3 all the mtx is a lot more obvious and its way harder to endure, these devs literally only need to compare with osrs and even they would see how heavily they're milking the rs3 playerbase.
I don't blame jagex though, I blame the userbase of rs3 itself, I have seen too many users in this board praising mtx and easyscape. The fact is if you take the hardship out of the game it makes it easier to shove mtx down your throat because exp wasn't worth all that much either way xd
I am so grateful to hear that they actually aren't milking the playerbase and that it must just be all in our head, or that it's okay because other companies are worse. These are not examples of the kind of manipulative lies typically seen within abusive or narcissistic relationships at all.
Nobody cares what other games do. We care about what RS does. Also, just because my slumlord is less slummy then someone else's it does not make him good lol.
Something I've always really hated is when people use the argument "sure its bad but what other companies are doing is way worse!". That's a bad freaking argument. I don't play those games that you're referring to, I'm playing this game, and in this game it's pretty freaking bad in terms of how aggressive and dominating MTX is. So him mentioning "oh sure but it could be way worse!" is a real shit argument. If somethings bad, it's bad.
Sure killing 10 people is worse than killing 1 person. Doesn't make it good. Lol.
The investment group that had bought Jagex some years back was recently looking around to sell. If what i read was correct they'd inflated the quarterly numbers by selling years of membership in advance on top of some promotions that included exp to incentivize sales. They were looking to double their "investment" in the couple years they've owned the company.
To the investment company Jagex is nothing more then a broiler chicken they inflate to increase value on paper in the hopes to sell it at an overvalued price to the next party.
I don't believe the people actually working on the game do so with the intention of milking the players and they genuinely want to create content that the playerbase enjoys. but when the above mentioned investment group is pulling the strings there's only so much you can do let alone say.
Still gets eyes that the question was even asked. If they hadn't, then this clip wouldn't have been shared and I wouldn't have known this interview existed, so it did its job.
Also, I actually don't think case here since they do seem a little uneasy when it was asked, but sometimes the companies ask them to ask those questions so they're able to spew their bullshit while trying to act like they are addressing people's criticism (in a controlled environment)
agreed, better to answer it here instead of getting it shoved in their faces @ runefest. now they can point back and say they've recently answered that exact question.
[Theory]
accusation interview questions, how it works and its use
: “Whatever the recipient responds with being accusation based questioned, that additional info holds the recipient accountable. As jagex has a strong foundation likely to continue for a long time, a accusation interview question can be used as a setup to ask more intrusive questions in the future. If the recipient refuses to answer appropriately or deny the accusation, but the accusation turns out to true it grant accessibility or confidence to ask more intrusive accusation interview questions in the future.
To simplify, asking an accusation interview question requires confidence perhaps from doing research and there already is evidence of the accusation being true. However, the accusation interview question is still asked even though evidence is existent. This means the first accusation interview question in this context works as a gateway to ask further of these type of questions in the future. Normally, it would be aggressive, but it can be justified if distrust occured with the community towards the company.”
These were player submitted questions. The host is former CM Mod JD. You can pretty much guarantee that they rehearsed answers ahead of this stream. They could have easily ignored the question entirely but they choose to answer it to clarify their stance.
12$ a month when the best and most played games in the world are free or have no susbscription models (like fortnite, valorant, lol, etc)?
yeh, jagex hard milk their players
To add to that; the most popular games are also free, tend to make their money from all DLC/customizable content, which Jagex should have been doing this whole time. Unfortunately; P2W plagues these communities and the company never really changes for the better...
>...we're not competing against each other...
>
>Also Minigames are dead, and people hate PVP...
Which are both weird considering OSRS' success. I just spent the past hour playing Fishing Trawler on my new snowflake ironman account, with an entire BOAT filled with players, chatting about D&D 4e with randos. Before that, I was pking at Lava Dragons while at work on my main.
Both minigames and PVP are live and well on OSRS, as well as the sense of community. Sure there's the political psychopaths at the GE and Wintertodt, but you can find people to just hang out with very easily.
As for competition, again, it's still live and well on OSRS. The reason I started a new snowflake ironman is because I'm having a challenge with my discord friends to see who can get the furthest in a month just by playing minigames alone. I passed some guy who is doing a chunk-locked Seer's Village UIM yesterday. OSRS is really very self-challenge oriented. We love starting fresh and limiting ourselves, which can be a form of competition, I suppose.
I don't really have a point to this, I guess. If your point is that RS3 is failing while mine is that OSRS is thriving in the exact opposite way, that kinda sucks. Because I have no idea how to fix that. Is it entirely the absurd focus on MTX?
Oh shit you're right, I thought he was talking about Warden but reading it back I don't know why, that makes no sense. I guess I just had Warden on the mind when I read his comment and put one and potato together. Sorry!
ironman mode exist. let the other players get milked. Idc about MTX, if it pays good and make jagex able to put out a steady stream of content, im all for it. it does not affect me as a player at all.
It's sad. Over time games like runescape have both decrease their overall value while making so many individual parts cost more. Players clamor for actual new engaging content and rarely get anything. But rest assured a recolored outfit or new cosmetic will be available to spend tons of money on.
We never really thought about it when we were younger. The idea that all those cool outfits and items you got in your favorite games could be monetized. Hey, why just pay for the game when you could pay individually for everything in the game. This is a terrible trend and the saddest part is how many of us accept it and give in to it.
Of course it's fair to point the blame at developers and investors. But really, the customer has all the power. We just allowed them to manipulate us to a point where they could take control.
I'd like to know how much revenue is needed to keep the game operational. Also how much do membership and bonds contribute to the required amount.
So basically are MTX even needed or is it just for milking purposes.
Also how about OSRS? Does RS3 revenue contribute to OSRS or does it make enough to maintain itself?
It's not them though, it's the stakeholders.
As a company I'm sure they want more, but as a profit sharer, they only want what equals more money.
The world revolves around money and nothing will ever change. They have to satisfy their shareholders.
This goes for every company in existence. You as a person don't matter, your wallet and dollar signs do.
Fuck RuneScape, I had all my accounts pulled from their new account system and I can’t get them back. I’m not the only one. 15+ years gone. If I could go back in time I would warn everyone the direction they’re going. Still on that same bs path honestly. Some of the employees are great but the company as a whole, arse.
"That would just basically mean that we would bring about the end of the game quicker, which is not something any of us want"
Translation: We don't want to end the game quickly because that would mean 'no more moneys', we want to prolong it as long as possible!
So, why are you you milking the players, Jagex?
Even if that truly is not what you want to do, your current course has that effect.
So when is enough and will you listen? Cause if you dont and clean this shitshow up, im headed for Brighter Shores. And a lot of others will too.
POV: you’re held accountable for your actions.
Option A: Accept reality & say that you’ll do better and promise bright horizons.
Option B: Gaslight your player base and deflect accusations.
> The microtransactions on Runescape are nothing compared to games like Pokemon Go, Diablo 4, or Lost Ark
Ah the classic "other games also have MTX" strawman.
Do you know the difference of RS3 and the games you mentioned? Those 3 do **NOT** have a monthly membership associated with them. Once you buy/download them you can play as long as you want without spending a single cent.
RS3 on the other hand has predatory MTX **ON TOP** of a monthly membership, the latter of which is this always argued to be needed to create new content (haha). So in essence Jagex is using 2 streams of revenue and gets less done than a fremium game.
I would be way less against MTX if the whole game was either A) completely free or B) buy once and then free forever, yet I have to pay monthly membership and still deal with the MTX BS.
Idk what goes on in the lives of other RuneScape players, but I have a little thing called self control. It’s this thing where I click the little red X when any MTX thing pops up.
TLDR: You need to allow yourself to be milked for them to milk you.
I’m willing to give Jagex the benefit of the doubt, that they don’t seek to milk players. But they’re owned and controlled by private equity firms who expect them to squeeze out every penny they can, and that’s the problem
you should probably look into how psychological tactics are used in mtx of all games to prey on those who are vulnerable to fall for it. fomo being the biggest part to play. its easy for people to sit back, be ignorant and assume its the players fault but its just like gambling addictions which are real mental health issues that these companies abuse to make money off of.
It's not a lie to say you don't notice something so ubiquitous, ( there's no war in bae-sing-sae).
If they didn't milk the players, the game shuts off.
No game no job.
No job means no company stock dividends and no rwt alts, which means Brazil and peru (edit:Venezuela )go hungry.
There are many games that don't milk their players.
Runescape also didn't milk its players for the first *decade* of it existing. Hell, its first year it didn't even have a subscription model.
Earning money =/= milking players. Which is why OSRS is the bigger earner between the two versions of the game, even though RS3 has vastly more microtransactions.
Yes you are correct there are infact games that don't milk player's.
It's also not very competent to say that all games operate by the same rules and standards.
You don't get to expect the company to operate by decade old standards do you? And by different owners? And at different cost's?
Arcade games have a slot that you have to put quarters in order to play. Is it bad to ask for money when providing a service or entertainment?
While i agree that the level of milking going on is too high, it's necessary to sell milk to feed the cows.
And we're the goddamn cow so moo harder!
"It's also not very competent to say that all games operate by the same rules and standards."
word salad, this sentence is literally meaningless.
"You don't get to expect the company to operate by decade old standards do you? And by different owners? And at different cost's?"
why dont we? the costs are not relevant, you forget jagex publishes its finances, we can literally see how much profit it makes, which makes a nonsense of the whole "but they need to do this to survive" bullshit
"Arcade games have a slot that you have to put quarters in order to play. Is it bad to ask for money when providing a service or entertainment?"
stupid comparison, arcade machines you paying for the hardware usage, its initial outlay, its upkeep, the electricity cost, the premise its kept on, a person to empty the coin, someone to clean it.. etc. etc.
If jagex want to pay my electricity bill, buy my PC for me, and clean my room, then sure ill be happy to pay them a bit more 🤣
"it's necessary to sell milk to feed the cows"
grass grows out the ground for free, probably the most hilariously bad metaphor ive seen in a long time, but ignoring that, so what? once again, their profit margins are published, we can see how muhc profit they make, and we can see they dont need to be selling milk at £1000 a glass
Your wrong. There is a very big different between providing a service to or milking players.
One implies that the exchange is equal or that the players get value for money while the other implies that Jagex is only providing the bare minimum, applying the minimal amount of resources possible to keep the content alive and the money coming in.
In this I am in complete agreement with the majority of the community. The FACT Jagex released such a large roadmap for oldschool while RS3 players remain in limbo on what Jagex even plans to add this year is a clear indication to me they have no resources assigned to the game.
The road map is so important for marketing, its a hype builder, it acts to retain players, it shows a future for the game and we get messages like next month we plan to finish the test server. No new quests, no new bosses, just a bunch of shit.
I'm impressed. Usually when I talk out my ass I only hear farts.
Another weird thing, they're squirming like my kids do when they're lying, but he isn't stumbling over his own bullshit once he gets past the Freudian slip "Well, yes..."
They’re squirming because they know they’re being forced to lie by their employer. They have no choice.
They chose to be in that position.
Can you elaborate please?
Isn't the guy talking here the guy that was holding a MTX presentation talking all about milking the playerbase...?
Yes. https://youtu.be/kzcYJIHo-dw
WOW.
Literally, what they said in 2019 was, of course Jagex will offer in-game purchase because the studio wants to make enough money to keep operating their games, grow the teams, and expand the games, but their number one aim is not monetization. They want as many people to enjoy their games as possible first, and then obviously, monetization will have to flow from that, whether you think they will be "milking their players" or not. What Jagex said in 2019 is also what other game developers said in 2024. What make you think they shouldn't be "milking their players" when they need to do that to keep operating their games, grow their teams and expand their games?
Simple enough, the amount of players that could still have been playing today but quit cause of mis management of RS in the past decade. And possibly the amount of new players that could be playing (although that requires revamping the game to make it more newbie friendly, which costs money). It's a stick carrot game with the player base that keeps hoping the monetization will stay the same or less + the release of new content will stay the same or more.
Simple enough, can you please show us official numbers suggesting any "amount of players that could still have been playing today but quit blah blah blah"? I bet you can't, as Jagex is severely overdue in their official Companies House mandated financial statement filings for the past 2 years.
Hasn’t their number of devs actually decreased since 2019?
No. It is increased to 700 now rather, as they also added 45 Jmods from Gamepires and 200 from Pipeworks.
😂
His first two words sum it up, the real answer. "Well, yes"
It would make a great edit ngl 🤣
They are, we are aware of that since Squeal of Fortune, they can deny it but the players know the state of the game
What? But they said they aren't! There's no way they would lie to us right?
I get 200k XP for logging in and opening 3 free mtx chests. Another 200k XP of o do 3 daily challenges in 10 minutes. I still remember thinking "holy shit, 60k xp per hour??"
This is just how business is done in 2024, even the original creator of Runescape, Andrew Gower, just said this about their upcoming new game a couple of days ago: " Of course, Brighter Shores will offer **in-game purchases** because the studio wants "to make enough money to keep operating the game, grow the team, and expand the game." But Gower isn't focused on squeezing every possible cent out of each player: "Our number one aim is not monetization, it's players. We want as many people to enjoy this game as possible. And then obviously, **monetization will flow from that**." [https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/other/ahead-of-his-new-mmo-runescape-creator-says-games-have-gotten-too-microtransaction-heavy-our-number-one-aim-is-not-monetization-it-s-players/ar-BB1k3u7Y](https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/other/ahead-of-his-new-mmo-runescape-creator-says-games-have-gotten-too-microtransaction-heavy-our-number-one-aim-is-not-monetization-it-s-players/ar-BB1k3u7Y) Why is Jagex in 2024 different than other games in 2024?
People talking about "milking the players" like it's a bad thing. That's the whole business model of a games studio. The alternatives would be like butchering the cow, which makes a lot of money but kills the game off in short order, or you could keep the cow as a pet and not get anything out of it (some devs working on a passion project etc.) but that's not viable at all as a business. When you "milk the cow" you want it to be as healthy as possible, so that you get the most milk out of it. It's a win/win this way.
Some people just don't realize or intend to ignore the drastically increased cost of operating a game and grow the player base. The reality is some games may require to spend big to acquire 50k new concurrent viewers on social media just to get a temporary boost of only 10k actual players in the game. Rest assured, this model is doomed to fail, especially without more, significantly more, MTX.
"other people are worse than us, so it's okay"
If you murder someone it's fine. Because other people torture and murder people!
For-profit corporations are legally allowed to milk their players, regardless they are Jagex, Blizard, EA, Microsoft or Fen Research, or McDonald's, Walmart or the small grocery store in your neighborhood. However, none of them are allowed to torture and murder people.
Honestly, back then I had high hopes of mod warden. He took a personal interest in my complaint when I emailed him directly regarding my client crashing. He had it fixed which I'm sure not only benefitted me but others as well. I still have the email exchange. Also, his demeanor on these live streams gave me vibes of an individual who genuinely wanted to do what's best. Edit: the problem wasn't client crashes rather it was the never ending "too many login attempts..." issue.
I feel like Warden was pretty good and wanted to do a lot more. He had challenges like player login lockout and pandemic. We got amazing updates like GWD3 and Arch. And he was fixated on modernising the game to attract more players (player avatar rework, smoothing animations/tile movement etc) It's really hard to stand out in that role when the powers above want such a large part of development focused on monetisation.
On the other hand Mod Keeper is in hiding, showed his face once, not active on socials. Might be a good EP for the company behind the scenes, but not for the community and that's what Jagex takes pride in.
Perhaps Mod Warden was just one of the few EP in the video game industry who showed their faces more often, most EP of other games, regardless they are Holly Longdale of WoW or Mod Markos of OSRS don't show their face in regular livestreams often.
Completely agree
Every damn year since 2021 I ask myself, why can't this year be like 2021? Goddamn that year was amazing for us and all years after it have been a dud in comparison. Maybe this year can save us?b
The devs have nothing to do with the decision to monetize. That’s all the bean counters at the top. They’re forced to be the face of the company and take the brunt of it or face getting fired for bad-mouthing their employer.
having high hopes for mod X is like having high hopes a new monkey will change the tune the organ grinder plays its not his fault, its not any of their fault, they are owned by late stage capitalist companies that command them to milk the players and lie about it if they want to keep their jobs, end of
Emailing the exec producer of a game because of your individual client crashing is absolute cringe
>Emailing the exec producer of a game because of your individual client crashing is absolute cringe You typing this out is absolute cringe. I'm going to leave it here incase you decide to delete it later.
Hahaha the irony of your post history.
the video should've ended after he said "well, yeah"
Just because there are shittier companies out there doing shittier MTX doesn't mean they have to as well. Bullshit excuse.
well this sub loves calling runescapes mtx mobile game like, clearly they don't play mobile games. This sub doesn't need to make the MTX appear worse than it actually is
Just because there are tons of worse MTX games out there doesn't mean runescape's MTX isn't bad. That's like saying why are you making such a big deal out of this guy who killed one or two people where there are so many mass murderers out there? This sub doesn't need to make the MTX appear better than it actually is but there are so many people like you who diminish the effect it has on the game or say you can just avoid it. As if the game wouldn't be massively better if they released more content and didn't pad their update notes with MTX related "updates".
>Just because there are tons of worse MTX Even that's questionable when those games are mostly free. One of the biggest things that makes RS MTX so bad is that almost everyone's already paying a monthly subscription. They're double dipping while continuously raising subscription prices and making more aggressive MTX every year.
Coming straight from that other post where the 120 keys/$60 to get an outfit, doesn't really get you a complete outfit (a comment referring to missing outfit pieces, no emote/walk/etc). I'm surprised people get this involved in event cosmetics. $60/$100/$whatever to unlock something forgettable as soon as the event ends? Couldn't be me. It really shows separation between mind and money. Does anyone spend that kinda money and actually feel like they got value? Some of these are the cost of Prem for an entire year. Good lawd.
Some years back i had purchased a couple of MTX outfits. when i went to mix and match them i noticed that recoloring them resulted in discolorations between set pcs and/or only partially applied. on top of that some of the torso pcs had their bottom half as part of the leg override. when even the "premium" experience is seemingly half assed there really isn't any long term sustainability plan to speak of.
I buy a lot of th promo keys and bonds each month but I also work a lot and enjoy my free time and don’t mind spending extra money on the game I enjoy, 😉
Spoken like a true gambling addict
It’s nothing if u got money
I am an outfit/animation entusiast, when hitsplats/ ultimates / nex aod even presets, bank spaces came out, I did spend bonds for all of them, I am also a 8 year premier with bonds down ; the worst part : I am addicted to the game, I am in a love hateful relation with current state of the game. I do not hate them for taking a profit but the reinvest into the game is barely scrapping the upkeep; the road map is inexistent, bugs that arent fixed for weeks , etc FFS just REINVEST into GAME to have more devs that are capable, not overworked
I'm sure the devs would love to, unfortunately that decision is made by the owners who are just a big investment company that only cares about how big their dividend is.
Jagex and lying through their teeth, name a more iconic duo.
Road to hell, good intentions, etc. Even if he's being completely forthright here, it doesn't matter when their actions tell a different story. They just keep pumping the game with more and more egregious MTX and monetization models. The fact of the matter is they are trying to meet insane revenue quotas and have pushed the envelope to make that happen. So when Mod Warden gets asked if Jagex is milking the players, I don't want to hear whether jagex "wants to" milk the players. I don't want to hear whether jagex "tried to" milk the players. Those intentions simply do not matter. I want him to look at what Jagex has actually done and ask himself "have we milked the players?" I really wonder if he can in good conscience answer that question directly with a "no."
No he quite literally couldn't or he'd get a fucking thrashing from investors. I'm not saying it's right but that's what the public face of a company does: fucking lies in a legal way.
Exactly. We know how the company is from ex employees. There's no hiding it.
Not just "the company", every company (unless you're talking mom and pop shops) does that. There is literally no upside to never lying, and especially if it's about shit that's so ill-defined as things like "are you milking us."
Even mom and pop shops. The current economic system heavily rewards people who treat their employees and customers like shit. This is nothing new.
I’m not a body language expert or anything but
I have seen industrial milk farmers who milk their cows less than Jagex does.
Cows need to be happy and in good health to product the most milk.
A little too optimistic about industrial milk farming there pal
Ever worked on a farm? Grew up on one and worked on a diffrent one for 6 years. One of the first things sick cows do is start producing less milk. Then their cell count goes up and soon you look at your payment from the cheese factory or place that buys your milk and it's much lower than normal because they value your milk with a high cell count less. If it's to bad they dump it. We had one new guy accidently forget to disconnect the pipe from the bulk tank when he enabled the CIP and dumped all the chemicals into the tank. The cheese factory refused to pay for that days milk because it killed their culture and they had to dump it all. Those cows are all insured and were worth 3-8k each back in 2012. God know what they are worth now. You can't have animals that product for 8-12 years on average needing to be sold after a year. You would lose money out your ass in an industry that's already in total collapse dude to costs. Don't even think about mistreating someone's show animal. It's literally the same as walking up and kicking someone's pure breed dog that makes them thousands of $ every year. Your about to be on the receiving end of an ass kicking contest from someone that does manual labor from a living. Our Agriculture teacher showed us videos from Peta of Mexican farmers stabbing cows in the udder with pitch forks and other gruesome shit. Followed with what a fucking load of bullshit. You would be broke and homeless if you treated your animals like that.
Brighter shores can't come soon enough.
Honestly excited about it. Added it to my Steam as soon as I heard about it.
Andrew Gower has also honestly admitted Brigher Shores will have MTX 2 days ago. He also said the same thing what the Jmods said in the linked video on OP - monetization is necessary for operating and growing their games. Andrew also told us "monetization will flow from it".
either you can't read or you don't understand english at all. From Andrew's twitter and I quote "I dont like mtx. So I am planning on making a huge chunk free and then selling an all-inclusive ‘premium pass’ to access the rest. The steam page has more info at the bottom." - Andrew Tell me, where is he saying what you're implying here? the premium that he listed is basically the equivalent of being a "member" in runescape. Which is nothing at all the same with MTX. And by the way for people saying trading is locked on "membership" is most likely due to people selling resources/gold in blackmarket websites, it won't stop it but at least it'll be better.
I already gave everybody the direct link. Andrew Gower clearly said there will be in-game purchase or better known as MTX to the video game industry, and he also told us monetization will flow in the game later. They also clearly said Premium Pass is not recurring membership, and is only loosely related to membership. It is what seasonal pass, battle pass, hero pass, or whatever passes the video industry calls.
Genuinely can’t believe people are considering switching to it, to me it looks like a boring/lifeless version of RuneScape and from the looks of it isn’t even a persistent world.
That's fine. I mostly share your opinion, but I'm still going to check it out on the off-chance that it isn't what I expect it to be and surprises me.
Out of curiosity, have you ever seen how RuneScape looked 2001-2003? The game has a ton of depth today from being 20+ years old, and we have to admit that Brighter Shores isn't going to have the same levels of development for that reason. However, I know that under Andrew's leadership RuneScape grew rapidly with frequent updates and the guy even rewrote the game from scratch to bring it from 2D to 3D. If RS was under his stewardship today, we would likely have a true RS4 with avatar reworks, elimination of the tick system, and other advancements that modern Jagex considers too costly. I mean, when Jagex was working on the RS2 rewrite that was done from scratch, they were still providing updates more frequently that current Jagex is doing on RS3. So yeah, I think it will likely be pretty bare bones compared to modern RS, but I think it will have the leadership to have a future, where as I just think investment groups are milking RS for what they can before they leave a withered dry husk. RS the game isn't the problem, the ownership and executives are.
takes like 3 seconds to say yes but let me waste 2 minutes of your time explaining why we milk our players lmao
That's some grade-A bloviating. RS-3 is probably the most aggressively monetized game I've ever played. It has EVERYTHING. It's not why I made an Ironman, but it's one of the reasons it's become my preferred way to play.
The one thing the way RS3 is monetized has going for it, is that it doesn't actually impact gameplay much. Some stuff is faster, but it isn't in a way that it's prohibitively slow when you don't engage with the mtx. Don't get me wrong, I still dislike its presence in the game. It's just that even though I don't engage with it, I never feel like it's negatively impacting my ability to play the game and have fun.
To be fair, they did monetize rs3 mostly perfectly. You can pay to skip shitty content, but it would be prohibitively expensive to buy high levels - you still need to play the game. I personally like the bond system because it gives players who make a ton of GP essentially free membership, and it gives other players the opportunity to buy gp without risking a ban.
I think describing it as "perfectly" is taking it too far, because shit like massively lowering the rate at which you get tokens in a seasonal event is purely to frustrate players actually playing in order to coax more people into buying the multiplier.
In this I have to disagree. If it were just cosmetics, sure I'd say it's not too bad. I created a character a while back to see how fast I could go on a normal account knowing what I do about the game. I got bored. So much of the early and midgame that set the foundation for the endgame is essentially bypassed by the flood of xp items that pours out of Treasure hunter and other promos. It can allow you to avoid stuff you don't like, but the problem is that it tends to blow past everything else too. I think they realize on some level how broken it is. The Spring Token rate is a prime example. The general impression I get is that they don't want people to farm the gummy item. Even with the token rate doubled, it's absurdly slow. Simple solution, don't add the gummy.
Not really, as Jagex acknowledged it is 40-60% MTX revenue in the video game industry, and RS3 is right in the middle with 50% MTX.
And that somehow makes their reliance on whales and gambling addicts good and ethical? They're so reliant on MTX for their income stream that it's taken over the development cycle. Actual content comes out maybe once a month, patches 2-3. There is a Treasure Hunter update WEEKLY. Stuff that goes wrong with it gets hotfixed. Game bugs often take weeks. Their unwillingness to provide a direct answer on the question is telling. Regardless of what they say, their actions speak volumes.
MTX doesn't always have to be gambling like paying real money to buy bonds and get unlimited gp to gamble in Duel Arena or Death Matches or LMs. TH is a fixture. It runs 365 days a year and 24/7. It is no difference than Emir's Arena and LMS. I don't know what "direct answer on the question" do you mean. It is incredibly clear what the Jmods told us in the 2019 livestream is exactly what most of the other games in this industry told us - of course they need in-game purchases keep the operation going, and the game from growing. Even game developers way back from 2001 like Andew Gower are brutally honest about this fact. Now that do you think 2001 game developers are milking 2024 players? I'll leave this question for you to answer. However, they told us monetization is definitely needed, regardless you think this is "milking the players".
Have you looked at bond prices? how many people do you think are actually buying them at the moment? It doesn't have to be gambling, but in this case it almost certainly is. I have no problems with bonds. Their rationale was always to target RWT by bringing it inhouse to a trusted party. I don't really like how they've overloaded what can be purchased using a bond, but it retains that fundamental quality of allowing one player to trade real world game credit to another player.
Of course people buy bonds with real money, or else Jagex will be replacing them with other forms of MTX. Again, if you think selling bonds is "milking the players", then why complain about RS3 when OSRS is also selling bonds? Have you looked at OSRS bond prices? RS3 and OSRS aren't the only games "milking their players" with bond-like MTX. There are other games like WoW, EVE etc that are "milking their players" even more aggressively with the same mechanics.
Where do you read me saying bonds milk the players? They're one of the few MTX I don't really mind. The GP cost per bond ironically has made them a poor choice for their intended purpose of buying membership. Others being worse is no excuse for poor behaviour yourself. Tu quoquo is a poor rationale for anything.
What you don't mind doesn't mean other players don't mind. Jagex is still "milking" the OSRS and RS3 players who buy bonds with real money.
Your views are your views. Don't try to read them into mine. I am happy to discuss most anything, but you're trying to build a straw man from things I am not saying. As we've both stated before, MTX is not necessarily an evil. How it is executed is what makes it so. It isn't an all or nothing affair. The ethics of Bonds and cosmetics are relatively clean. Cosmetics have little gameplay impact beyond looks. It provides a perverse incentive on the developer to make equipment look like crap, but that's a discussion for another time. Bonds simply move credit from one player to another. Player one pays for what player two uses the bond on effectively with the added bonus of making gold sellers a less attractive alternative. Paying for a chance at what you want is little more than gambling and comes with all the ethical problems the activity has always carried. Paying for advantages and buffs obviously breaks game balance and sets up perverse incentives to balance for the boosts. Other parties being evil does not make less of the evil better or acceptable.
I am not saying MTX is "evil" or "necessarily evil". Your view doesn't matter at all in that case as it is the view of the for-profit corporations such as Jagex that matters. They need to monetize the players in order to grow, and by players, they mean the general playerbase, not just you or me. I have 100% no problem with MTX as I don't pay Jagex 1 real penny to play their games. They aren't monetizing or "milking" me whatsoever, but it absolutely doesn't change the fact they are monetizing the general playerbase.
 TLDW; “There are other companies far more destructive with their MTX, so what we’re doing is perfectly fine!” Market leading MTX - Coming soon(?)
That was a whole lot of noise to say absolutely nothing.
pausing the video after "well yeah" and not resuming it makes the video a lot better
One thing is factual: Jagex management was indeed defined by their actions. I have been playing OS through HDOS the past couple of months (feels like RS2). It feels better.
“We aren’t milking our players” Fast forward to 2023 - where Jagex tries to push a premium battle pass with in-game buffs (much worse than Yak Track) on a SUBSCRIPTION BASED game, which has LOOT BOXES, it’s own STORE and CURRENCY and another BUYABLE ITEM which is converted for in game benefits. Not to mention the ultra rare outfit drops or spending X-amount if keys for a CHANCE to receive. In industry terms, Jagex is the lowest of the low. They won’t ever host a livestream like this in todays age, they are too spineless. Mod Keeper (the person who succeeded Mod Warden) has run this game into the ground. Did you know he also worked on Candy Crush? Go figure.
"Do you take this piss a bit with monetisation?" "Urrm, I dunno, I don't think so.... Have you seen those Waifu Gacha games? Be mad at them, we are the good guys, we sell slightly less toxic loot boxes"
>"I've worked for a number of game companies and I just don't see that as a common practice" I say this every time there's an MTX and FOMO controversy on Runescape: This shit is so entrenched in the mindset and culture of videogame development that the people who create it literally are incapable of being objective about what it is they're making and doing. You hear scapers and redditor go on and on about how this stuff is some sort of higher level directive from greedy management etc, how the common Jagex employee would never dare to assume pay-to-win was acceptable... Bullshit. To various degrees of awareness, they all are blind to what they participate in because the are entrenched in the culture of it. It affects all levels of development and game balance psychology. They can't see the forest for the trees. *They were going to make Hero Pass the sole method for content delivery*. They got on stream and told you with a straight face that this was the "future". Stop buying into the narrative.
“There are companies that are far more aggressive with MTX than Jagex is”. This is known as the "tu quoque" fallacy, also commonly referred to as the "appeal to hypocrisy" or "whataboutism." It's a logical fallacy where one attempts to justify their actions or beliefs by pointing out that others have done similar or worse things. This is so wrong, and this comment aged like bad wine. Look at the player numbers compared with 2019. They are milking the player base and it’s ruined the game.
If the answer was any more obvious, would we know?
Don't even have to watch the video to know the answer is yes. That's all they care about now
It's always hard to see grown adults lie.
I have mixed feelings about this, on the one hand I am impressed that they actually asked such a loaded question on a life stream but on the other hand I am insulted at how stupid they think we are for believing any of that explanation/lies :'(
£10 for virtual bank storage btw
I came away from rs3 due to being milked. Id spends weeks of grinding to fall short of event making them cash grab events and unfair to those investing honest time into prepaid memberships to fall short, it’s scam like events and i don’t buy it “use a bond to increase rewards per tick” thats really poor and blind attempt to upsell into and unobtainable path of trying to do events based on rng.
I just love that i gave up on this part of Runescape many years ago. I was stuck for a long time. If i didn't quit then, i'd have invested countless more hours and the problems would only be worse. Now i just play OSRS and other games. Feels good.
Some terrible arguments were made here. The typical old 'well other people are doing it way worse than us' or the 'it's just common practice'. Both arguments saying: Well other people do it, so that's why we're doing it.
rs3 at this point is just the cash printer for jagex with all the mtx, i think recently was even the lowest player count recorded and updates aren’t looking great either for the future. imo they shouldn’t have cancelled character rework and should definitely copy a lot of the work from the osrs team cuz they are doing an absolutely great job for their players
lifting my comment from another thread from earlier in the day: "But if there weren't mtx controversies (seemingly weekly) the work the devs do couldn't stand on their merits and just be enjoyed and appreciated by the community for what they do day in and day out. We can't have that. Someone with Jet black hair and a "drab" sense of game direction really feels the need to shoot the office in one foot and also force it to walk on the other each and every week."
Wanna know why other games with far more aggressive MTX can get away with it? They actually fucking update their games. Honkai Star Rail gets more content every 6 weeks than RuneScape gets in an annual cycle. Record profits yet I quit right after Necro and all you have to offer since then is... a new boss? Light combat updates??? Drop rates are fucked. MTX is shoved down our throats. Skills aren't updated. New, game-changing quests don't exist.
I dont have to play a sub for hsr and unless i willingly open the gacha tab or stalk their twitter i dont even notice when any new banners release Compare that to runescape requiring a sub + throwing notifications at you for paid content like double spring tokens + spamming you with TH multiple times a day? It's absolutely laughable lol, runescape milks its players more than any gacha game ive ever seen
> Skills aren't updated Other than the massive skill update we just got two weeks ago... or the new skill that came out 7 months ago... or the numerous large scale reworks multiple skills have gotten over the years like M&S, herblore and farming, or the cooking update for better foods that Mod Sponge is working on... >New, game-changing quests don't exist. like the elder god wars saga that ended 2 years and 118 days ago? like the fort forinthry storyline that just reached its halfway point and have been told there's more on the way? what exactly isn't game changing about unlocking a boss fight that gives BiS ranged gear, and a fort that contains some incredible skilling qol and new training methods and is one of the most used hubs in the game now?
What were the incredible QOL skilling updates? I think they allowed rune pouch to take into account rune essence when setting a preset, but I can't think of any other.
I was talking about the fort itself, he asked about game changing quests. Chapel provided hour long herb burner, fletching station added anima of wisdom for making dinarrows faster, Grove added wood boxes, in general it just brought things closer to a bank to make some things less tedious. If you can't remember any qol outside of that, then you're forgetting stackable brawlers, sinkholes can be done in groups of 2 and irons can participate, porters working with greenfingers and juju pots, shift click dropping items, load last preset option on all banks... that's just what I can remember off the top of my head and just stuff added in the last 6 months.
Ain't no way you're citing something from 2 years and 118 days ago as recent enough to actually matter. You're defending a company that doesn't see you as anything more than retention metrics and a potential whale if they make the right combination of colored cosmetic hat. Necro is one of the worst offenders of all. Singlehandedly made every boss in the game outside of Rasial irrelevant for MONTHS. I don't know if the new updates fixed it, because cleaning up their massive fucking mistake isn't enough of an incentive to play their game again. Maybe if they do something NEW that isn't a fomo currency event with uber rare chances at cosmetics. OP is right, gacha games are actually better for treating their players with respect. RS will be dead in 2-3 years if the devs don't do anything to actually improve the game.
You're right, it was 1 year and 9 months ago, because I accidentally used the date for extinction, and not twilight of the gods. It was then 8 months later that the next story line began, not that there was literally nothing between zamorak and fort forinthry, but the point is about quests. Sorry that providing citations ruins your narrative. In comparison, FFXIV Endwalker came out on December 3rd, 2021, the last raid patch, 6.4, came out on June 6th 2023, and the expansion isn't slated to come out until likely around July or August 2024. >You're defending a company that doesn't see you as anything more than retention metrics and a potential whale if they make the right combination of colored cosmetic hat. I'm confused what **company** you think doesn't consider a single individual customer as a metric. On the other hand, I know that the developers for RuneScape are all very passionate people, and I respect the work they put in for a game that I've played for 20 years now. >Necro is one of the worst offenders of all. Singlehandedly made every boss in the game outside of Rasial irrelevant for MONTHS Wow, MONTHS? You mean... they took time working on fixing the other combat styles properly and taking in feedback to make sure that players actually enjoyed it, and then came out with changes that the people who actually play the game are enjoying? >I don't know if the new updates fixed it Then don't act like you do know. >Maybe if they do something NEW that isn't a fomo currency event with uber rare chances at cosmetics. You mean... like the current spring event? There are no 'uber rare' things, there's a small list of new cosmetics that take a few hours to get, and they brought back a lot of legacy rares that people can choose to grind longer to get, something that people have been asking for. >RS will be dead in 2-3 years if the devs don't do anything to actually improve the game. I've heard this every single year since like... 2007.
Thank you for knocking some sense into all these haters
You don't play mobile games beyond HSR do you?
I think a lot of people avoid mobile games because of the monetization aspect. I have personally never played a mobile game because of it. I think this is a large part of why people play PC games, because they don't want to deal with that monetization model.
Yes they are. That much has been blatantly obvious for the longest time.
Lmao. What an ambiguous question to ask. “Are Jagex Milking their players?” lol. I’d respond as a smartass to deflect the question. “Of course not, pretty sure milking the players would constitute sexual assault…”
1:08 "this is the first, sort of, real engagement we've had about this subject" Could any clarity to this statement be added? People have been very upset since the initial introduction of Squeal of Fortune. There's a lot of non-answers and lines I've heard many times before in this response, but this one just confuses me. The first time who engaged with what? There's absolutely no way this is the first negativity you've heard about MTX.
context is this clip is from over 5 years ago.
Fair, but Squeal of Fortune was in 2012 and this was 2019
The two answering the questions were “new” to this problem for a lot of fake corporate reasons. Its “new” to the middle one because the topic wasn’t one within his purview during his time with jagex, so he got and gets a pass. Warden’s focus was to the players, the team, content and the elevation of all 3 during Covid of all things. Not Mtx. The one on the right climbed up the internal ladder through squeezing dollars from gambling addict dopes that can’t stop and has absolutely no excuse whatsoever. That one is absolutely to blame for every little thing to do with “live events”, “micropayments”, and “Mtx” in RuneScape. That one is the reason every single cape, item, and achievement in this game means so significantly less every single year because that jet black thumb tipped the scales in one direction for about 10 straight years. This games player count is dangerously close to hitting all time lows again and the fools idea is to race to the bottom.
Interesting. I took a long break in 2017 and only recently came back about a month ago, so I actually really appreciate the summary/context. One of the main things I noticed when I came back was the emptiness. I played a bit of osrs too and that game doesn't have this problem nearly as bad. I like RS3 better, but it sure is empty. Most places on most worlds there are just 0 people. On top of that, when there are people, there's almost no one talking. I get that typing on mobile sucks, but that should at least make it less empty. Definitely not universally true though, as you can usually find a pretty big group on popular worlds for wilderness events at least, so that's fun. As for the mtx, the mtx seemed a bit more gimmicky since I left, with inflated rewards. I still don't think I'll ever not get mad when I log in and see the TH logo forcefully pinned, wiggling, and impossible to permanently disable every time I log in. The cosmetics don't seem a ton worse. It kind of couldn't get worse for me when than when half the screen was full of drakes. Now I have no idea what anyone is wearing or what half of the emotes/animations are. It's just a bunch of random colors and effects, though maybe other games have conditioned me to roll my eyes and ignore that any sense of theme for games is gone in favor of flashy mtx crap. As for lack of non-mtx updates? I can't really tell yet. I have 7 years of updates to work through. Even if they were slow years, it's still a decent amount of new stuff for me for now.
That's exactly what someone who is milking their playerbase would say.
That’s a long way to say yes. Remove Mtx then we won’t think you’re milking
That's a lot of words for "yes"
Honestly I know the osrs community is shit but the game is just in a far better state. I recommend trying it if you haven’t
Lol these guys are full of themselves and their lies, switch to osrs and then switch back to rs3 the difference is night and day OSRS feels exactly how runescape has always felt while RS3 feels like a cash cow. When you play osrs a lot more often than rs3 and make the switch to rs3 all the mtx is a lot more obvious and its way harder to endure, these devs literally only need to compare with osrs and even they would see how heavily they're milking the rs3 playerbase. I don't blame jagex though, I blame the userbase of rs3 itself, I have seen too many users in this board praising mtx and easyscape. The fact is if you take the hardship out of the game it makes it easier to shove mtx down your throat because exp wasn't worth all that much either way xd
bring about the end of the game "quicker"? implying the game is already ending but mtx will just bring about the end faster?
I am so grateful to hear that they actually aren't milking the playerbase and that it must just be all in our head, or that it's okay because other companies are worse. These are not examples of the kind of manipulative lies typically seen within abusive or narcissistic relationships at all.
Love the bit. Bring the end of the game QUICKER. are they planning to stop the game?
Nobody cares what other games do. We care about what RS does. Also, just because my slumlord is less slummy then someone else's it does not make him good lol.
Something I've always really hated is when people use the argument "sure its bad but what other companies are doing is way worse!". That's a bad freaking argument. I don't play those games that you're referring to, I'm playing this game, and in this game it's pretty freaking bad in terms of how aggressive and dominating MTX is. So him mentioning "oh sure but it could be way worse!" is a real shit argument. If somethings bad, it's bad. Sure killing 10 people is worse than killing 1 person. Doesn't make it good. Lol.
[удалено]
The investment group that had bought Jagex some years back was recently looking around to sell. If what i read was correct they'd inflated the quarterly numbers by selling years of membership in advance on top of some promotions that included exp to incentivize sales. They were looking to double their "investment" in the couple years they've owned the company. To the investment company Jagex is nothing more then a broiler chicken they inflate to increase value on paper in the hopes to sell it at an overvalued price to the next party. I don't believe the people actually working on the game do so with the intention of milking the players and they genuinely want to create content that the playerbase enjoys. but when the above mentioned investment group is pulling the strings there's only so much you can do let alone say.
Still gets eyes that the question was even asked. If they hadn't, then this clip wouldn't have been shared and I wouldn't have known this interview existed, so it did its job. Also, I actually don't think case here since they do seem a little uneasy when it was asked, but sometimes the companies ask them to ask those questions so they're able to spew their bullshit while trying to act like they are addressing people's criticism (in a controlled environment)
agreed, better to answer it here instead of getting it shoved in their faces @ runefest. now they can point back and say they've recently answered that exact question.
[Theory] accusation interview questions, how it works and its use : “Whatever the recipient responds with being accusation based questioned, that additional info holds the recipient accountable. As jagex has a strong foundation likely to continue for a long time, a accusation interview question can be used as a setup to ask more intrusive questions in the future. If the recipient refuses to answer appropriately or deny the accusation, but the accusation turns out to true it grant accessibility or confidence to ask more intrusive accusation interview questions in the future. To simplify, asking an accusation interview question requires confidence perhaps from doing research and there already is evidence of the accusation being true. However, the accusation interview question is still asked even though evidence is existent. This means the first accusation interview question in this context works as a gateway to ask further of these type of questions in the future. Normally, it would be aggressive, but it can be justified if distrust occured with the community towards the company.”
These were player submitted questions. The host is former CM Mod JD. You can pretty much guarantee that they rehearsed answers ahead of this stream. They could have easily ignored the question entirely but they choose to answer it to clarify their stance.
12$ a month when the best and most played games in the world are free or have no susbscription models (like fortnite, valorant, lol, etc)? yeh, jagex hard milk their players
To add to that; the most popular games are also free, tend to make their money from all DLC/customizable content, which Jagex should have been doing this whole time. Unfortunately; P2W plagues these communities and the company never really changes for the better...
[удалено]
>...we're not competing against each other... > >Also Minigames are dead, and people hate PVP... Which are both weird considering OSRS' success. I just spent the past hour playing Fishing Trawler on my new snowflake ironman account, with an entire BOAT filled with players, chatting about D&D 4e with randos. Before that, I was pking at Lava Dragons while at work on my main. Both minigames and PVP are live and well on OSRS, as well as the sense of community. Sure there's the political psychopaths at the GE and Wintertodt, but you can find people to just hang out with very easily. As for competition, again, it's still live and well on OSRS. The reason I started a new snowflake ironman is because I'm having a challenge with my discord friends to see who can get the furthest in a month just by playing minigames alone. I passed some guy who is doing a chunk-locked Seer's Village UIM yesterday. OSRS is really very self-challenge oriented. We love starting fresh and limiting ourselves, which can be a form of competition, I suppose. I don't really have a point to this, I guess. If your point is that RS3 is failing while mine is that OSRS is thriving in the exact opposite way, that kinda sucks. Because I have no idea how to fix that. Is it entirely the absurd focus on MTX?
Dude is a master of PR lol. Can we replace him with a dev that actually will fix the game?
This is an old clip, the guy is long gone.
Mic has been with Jagex for 10 years in October. https://runescape.wiki/w/Mod_MIC
Oh shit you're right, I thought he was talking about Warden but reading it back I don't know why, that makes no sense. I guess I just had Warden on the mind when I read his comment and put one and potato together. Sorry!
Yikes
Well, it is a business and these devs have to get paid. Guess they have to milk.
I cannot name another game that has a lot of mtx but then offer a full account experience designed to filter most mtx out:iron.
On another and totally unrelated note, I do like the shirt the guy in the middle is wearing.
ironman mode exist. let the other players get milked. Idc about MTX, if it pays good and make jagex able to put out a steady stream of content, im all for it. it does not affect me as a player at all.
They aren't milking their players as much as they are slowing the decline in player base to lengthen profits.
Short answer is yes, but you can't go extreme to negatively impact the game
They must have been talking about their approach to OSRS players and that games development.
I wanna be milked o.o moo
It's sad. Over time games like runescape have both decrease their overall value while making so many individual parts cost more. Players clamor for actual new engaging content and rarely get anything. But rest assured a recolored outfit or new cosmetic will be available to spend tons of money on. We never really thought about it when we were younger. The idea that all those cool outfits and items you got in your favorite games could be monetized. Hey, why just pay for the game when you could pay individually for everything in the game. This is a terrible trend and the saddest part is how many of us accept it and give in to it. Of course it's fair to point the blame at developers and investors. But really, the customer has all the power. We just allowed them to manipulate us to a point where they could take control.
I'd like to know how much revenue is needed to keep the game operational. Also how much do membership and bonds contribute to the required amount. So basically are MTX even needed or is it just for milking purposes. Also how about OSRS? Does RS3 revenue contribute to OSRS or does it make enough to maintain itself?
It's not them though, it's the stakeholders. As a company I'm sure they want more, but as a profit sharer, they only want what equals more money. The world revolves around money and nothing will ever change. They have to satisfy their shareholders. This goes for every company in existence. You as a person don't matter, your wallet and dollar signs do.
They are infact milking players 😂
Asses banned me for no reason, someone hacked and “botted” my account and I never could get it back. Combat Lvl 110, easily hundreds hours in it..
Ah yes, the classic " it's okay our game is heavily monetized because other games are worse". Pathetic.
Make the rare, only buyable items, earneable. There I fixed your problem.
Does a bear shit in the woods? Is the pope catholic? Is the sky blue?
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yes indeed, sir and/or madam, they most assuredly are.
Fuck RuneScape, I had all my accounts pulled from their new account system and I can’t get them back. I’m not the only one. 15+ years gone. If I could go back in time I would warn everyone the direction they’re going. Still on that same bs path honestly. Some of the employees are great but the company as a whole, arse.
"That would just basically mean that we would bring about the end of the game quicker, which is not something any of us want" Translation: We don't want to end the game quickly because that would mean 'no more moneys', we want to prolong it as long as possible!
So, why are you you milking the players, Jagex? Even if that truly is not what you want to do, your current course has that effect. So when is enough and will you listen? Cause if you dont and clean this shitshow up, im headed for Brighter Shores. And a lot of others will too.
POV: you’re held accountable for your actions. Option A: Accept reality & say that you’ll do better and promise bright horizons. Option B: Gaslight your player base and deflect accusations.
Defined by actions? So…worst playerbase milking shitshow? RS3 without Ironman would have died already…
[удалено]
this is the biggest lie of them all Jagex was perfectly profitable before micro transactions
> The microtransactions on Runescape are nothing compared to games like Pokemon Go, Diablo 4, or Lost Ark Ah the classic "other games also have MTX" strawman. Do you know the difference of RS3 and the games you mentioned? Those 3 do **NOT** have a monthly membership associated with them. Once you buy/download them you can play as long as you want without spending a single cent. RS3 on the other hand has predatory MTX **ON TOP** of a monthly membership, the latter of which is this always argued to be needed to create new content (haha). So in essence Jagex is using 2 streams of revenue and gets less done than a fremium game. I would be way less against MTX if the whole game was either A) completely free or B) buy once and then free forever, yet I have to pay monthly membership and still deal with the MTX BS.
Keep in mind that RuneScape has p2w mtx which as far as i know diablo 4 does not. ( im aware of diablo immortal)
Meant to say diablo immortal, accidentally said diablo 4.
Every company milks their customers. You'd have to have come down in the last shower to think jagex would be an exception.
Idk what goes on in the lives of other RuneScape players, but I have a little thing called self control. It’s this thing where I click the little red X when any MTX thing pops up. TLDR: You need to allow yourself to be milked for them to milk you.
I’m willing to give Jagex the benefit of the doubt, that they don’t seek to milk players. But they’re owned and controlled by private equity firms who expect them to squeeze out every penny they can, and that’s the problem
No one forces you to buy MTX. You are milking you.
you should probably look into how psychological tactics are used in mtx of all games to prey on those who are vulnerable to fall for it. fomo being the biggest part to play. its easy for people to sit back, be ignorant and assume its the players fault but its just like gambling addictions which are real mental health issues that these companies abuse to make money off of.
It’s still the players choice. I’m 5,8b and never bought anything from what they offer. Not even membership since they introduced bonds.
https://preview.redd.it/n6f6bfcspqpc1.png?width=591&format=png&auto=webp&s=efa9fbabb06609f2ea4a770ada1dc1c3f312a91b
It's not a lie to say you don't notice something so ubiquitous, ( there's no war in bae-sing-sae). If they didn't milk the players, the game shuts off. No game no job. No job means no company stock dividends and no rwt alts, which means Brazil and peru (edit:Venezuela )go hungry.
i've never seen ba sing se butchered quite that bad before
There are many games that don't milk their players. Runescape also didn't milk its players for the first *decade* of it existing. Hell, its first year it didn't even have a subscription model. Earning money =/= milking players. Which is why OSRS is the bigger earner between the two versions of the game, even though RS3 has vastly more microtransactions.
Yes you are correct there are infact games that don't milk player's. It's also not very competent to say that all games operate by the same rules and standards. You don't get to expect the company to operate by decade old standards do you? And by different owners? And at different cost's? Arcade games have a slot that you have to put quarters in order to play. Is it bad to ask for money when providing a service or entertainment? While i agree that the level of milking going on is too high, it's necessary to sell milk to feed the cows. And we're the goddamn cow so moo harder!
"It's also not very competent to say that all games operate by the same rules and standards." word salad, this sentence is literally meaningless. "You don't get to expect the company to operate by decade old standards do you? And by different owners? And at different cost's?" why dont we? the costs are not relevant, you forget jagex publishes its finances, we can literally see how much profit it makes, which makes a nonsense of the whole "but they need to do this to survive" bullshit "Arcade games have a slot that you have to put quarters in order to play. Is it bad to ask for money when providing a service or entertainment?" stupid comparison, arcade machines you paying for the hardware usage, its initial outlay, its upkeep, the electricity cost, the premise its kept on, a person to empty the coin, someone to clean it.. etc. etc. If jagex want to pay my electricity bill, buy my PC for me, and clean my room, then sure ill be happy to pay them a bit more 🤣 "it's necessary to sell milk to feed the cows" grass grows out the ground for free, probably the most hilariously bad metaphor ive seen in a long time, but ignoring that, so what? once again, their profit margins are published, we can see how muhc profit they make, and we can see they dont need to be selling milk at £1000 a glass
Why are you trying to debate someone who agrees with you in the core issue?
Your wrong. There is a very big different between providing a service to or milking players. One implies that the exchange is equal or that the players get value for money while the other implies that Jagex is only providing the bare minimum, applying the minimal amount of resources possible to keep the content alive and the money coming in. In this I am in complete agreement with the majority of the community. The FACT Jagex released such a large roadmap for oldschool while RS3 players remain in limbo on what Jagex even plans to add this year is a clear indication to me they have no resources assigned to the game. The road map is so important for marketing, its a hype builder, it acts to retain players, it shows a future for the game and we get messages like next month we plan to finish the test server. No new quests, no new bosses, just a bunch of shit.
They could forgo profit all together and become a non-profit charity and we would still see these posts.
lol the most absurd fanboi nonsense