Thank you all for the feedback you've shared with us so far on the new Hero Pass feature. There's a lot of it to process - some of it simple to implement, some of it more complex. One of the highest priority issues raised is feedback that looks something like this:
- "The total amount of hours to reach 120 is too high."
- "The hours per day to reach 120 is too high."
- "It's not fair that most players probably won't reach 120."
We'd like to sort this out as soon as possible, because while the wider consultation coming up will help to redesign Hero Pass in the future, the balancing of Hero Pass: Underworld is still affecting everyone right now.
At the same time, we don't want to make a kneejerk change without discussion. The aim of the consultation is to work with you to fix things. In that spirit, here's a proposal for some simple (but big) balance changes to Hero Pass we can make right now.
What are we proposing?
- Reduce the Hero Points needed for levels 100-120 from 3000 to 1000. This reduces the total Hero Points required to get to 120 from 160,000 to 120,000.
- Increase the total Hero Points awarded for Daily Missions from 375 to 1050.
- Reduce the total time taken to complete all Daily Missions from around 40 minutes to around 30 minutes (15 with the aligned skill).
- Increase the total Hero Points awarded for the Weekly Hero Point Mission from 1250 to 2000.
- Reduce the total time taken to complete the Weekly Hero Point Mission from around 7 hours to around 2 hours.
What does this mean?
The main difference here is the total time to reach level 120. These balancing changes bring the time to complete down to around 40 hours, depending on how many missions you complete.
A core intention of the project for us was to reduce the 'dailyscape' need to log in every day. From your feedback, it's clear this isn't the case and you're feeling even more pressured. With these changes, depending on your playstyle you can miss around half the basic missions and still reach 120 without going out of your way.
For example, if you only play Runescape every other day or so for about an hour each time (our data shows the large majority of our players are at least this active), but you complete all the special missions, you'll reach 120 without needing to go out of your way to grind hero points.
We want you to be able to play Hero Pass however you want. Basic missions, general missions and just earning hero points through play are all now options you have, rather than all feeling mandatory.
Players who don't log in very often and don't complete the special missions won't just automatically get to 120. It does take some work, but looking at the data it seems like the majority of you were well on track even before the changes.
Why isn't this live already?
We want to know if these changes will make the Hero Pass more enjoyable and fair for you right now. Assuming the response is positive, we'd look to get these changes live in October (alongside the return of daily challenges) as we kick off the larger consultation.
Is this the balancing for all future Hero Passes?
Not necessarily. These changes are simple so that we can implement them now. What future Hero Passes should look like is something we'll explore more with you during the consultation.
Why aren't you polling these changes?
You've been loud and clear on this topic, and the priority for us now is to fix it. A dev blog is a good compromise in making sure that we're still checking back with you that we're doing the right thing.
Rather than just yes/no, we want to hear your thoughts. Is this what you want to see from the balancing? Is it hitting the right areas?
Why aren't the changes addressing other feedback?
Our aim here is to propose something we can get into the game quickly by changing numbers. We're not ignoring the other feedback, but a lot of it would require fairly in-depth changes which probably can't be made in time for this Hero Pass. We'll discuss this feedback as part of the consultation process.
Specifically, what about Ironman daily XP rewards? We don't get the reward lamps.
So far our investigations with the Ironman community have been inconclusive. Some want to see the daily XP return and some are happy it's gone. When daily challenges return, the XP from them will be available to ironmen as well as it was before. We will work with ironmen to get a clearer and more consistent approach to this sort of issue during the consultation.
How can I share my feedback?
You can share feedback with us on social media.
@Runescape or @JagexJack or @JagexBreezy on whatever Twitter is called now.
If you want to talk to JMods directly, the easiest place to do that is the design channels on the Runescape Discord