does this mean you will be revisiting old polls that meet the new 70% threshold and seeing how they hold up to the game now?
It's something we're still to discuss and decide on, as we wanted to gauge community reception to the changes first.
I imagine a re-poll of near miss polls at an absolute least would be a possibility.
Extremely well-explained article detailing the why and the how of the potential changes
I think a lot of the proposed process is how many players think the process already works, I.e. work doesn’t start in earnest until it passes a poll
I (excitedly) believe this all sets the stage for a new proposed skill in the next 1-2 years. A skill built from the ground up with devs working very closely with the community to get that “perfect” OSRS skill. Likely to begin with the conceptual poll of “do you want a new skill added to OSRS?” and build up from there
We're really excited to follow the new approach. I think you're right on how players perceive the proposed process being how it has worked all along, hopefully this gives some clarity and reasoning as to why the change is needed :)
I’m glad you’re updating the process. It always seemed backwards for you to put a lot of effort into something before a poll even starts. Conceptual polls will help get initial thoughts without wasting too much dev time if it fails.
Exactly! This means we can poll more content and get a LOT more input from the community along the way.
Dropping it to 70% is great. Shouldn't really affect bad poll questions as they tend to lose by a pretty large amount but I've seen enough good things barely miss cut off.
Great minds think alike :)
Seems great, looking forward to the future
nice
You won't be polling how things look before adding it to the game? Item, enviroment and character models are a huge part of the game and the art style oldschool has is too. It may be a time consuming process to poll it but you've proved before that you can get the artstyle completely wrong and try to add some ugly items in the game. I think the players help a lot in the direction of how they want items and in-game assets to look.
We fully intend to continue showing designs off early and working with the community to make any changes that might be needed, just that the final design won't be subject to a poll.
You're definitely right, players help a lot in the direction of how they want items and in-game assets to look and that's not something we want to lose.
These look very good. I've always thought the polling system had a number of flaws and these seem to address those.
Another thing this doesn't address that RS3 polls used to have in the past is questions with many options that ask "What kind of content do you want next".
The current situation is the dev team decides what they think players want, pitch an idea, and see if it sticks, however if they keep pitching pvm content and more players want quests or skilling reworks then players will still be unhappy or just less enthused by updates because while they think your pitch is a good idea, it's not really what they wanted most added in the game.
In the past, the way RS3 handled this was by saying they're going to have the community pick a large scale, medium scale, and small scale change, and each they would have polls asking what kind of content they want focused on, with options such as Quest, Skilling Rework, new Group boss, new Solo boss, new Skill, etc, and whichever one polled the highest numbers would go on to have further polls deciding further specification (for example, if Quest was most wanted, they'd poll what questline players most want).
I think this definitely gives a lot more control to the players than the current system because it actually allows the players to choose what content they want most rather than the devs deciding and only allowing the players to upvote or downvote their ideas.
This is a really good point and something I'd love to see us doing more of.
We kind of do it already, just not via an official poll. If you've filled out the Annual Survey you'll note we ask a bunch of questions there about future content. Typically we'll use the results of that alongside player habits and feedback we've gathered over the year to guide us on what content to offer.
Will this new 70% be applied retroactively or just moving forward? I’m definitely on board lowering the yes votes as 70% majority seems more than adequate.
It'll be just moving forward, but I imagine we'll see a poll for near-miss questions in the future!
we need this change 5 years ago. extremely excited to see the beginning of osrs2 - 'mods unleashed'
polls have been holding the team back for a long time
osrs2 - 'mods unleashed' is one heck of a title... love it!
If you want to increase turnout give us a 1/5000 chance of getting a polling pet when we vote
10k RC XP for each yes vote!
On a real note though, I wonder how people would feel about incentives to voting.
For me, I've always wanted votes to feel genuine and come from the best interest of the players. By offering an incentive to vote I think it increases the potential for players to just vote blindly, which I'm not really sure is better than having a lower turnout.
I'm quite surprised only 6% of players actually vote on polls. Didn't expect it to be anywhere near 100% but damn
It was a ShockedPikachuFace.png moment for me when I put it into perspective
My one question is, does this mean new items, like masori and torva which have started with a design the community didn’t really like, won’t receive visual reworks
No, there will absolutely still be visual reworks. There’s no point in us adding content that players don’t want.
I've put together a little example to show how it might work going forward - really nothing has changed from what we've been doing recently, it's just that the content wouldn't be delayed by having to wait for a poll on the visuals to be the final deciding factor.
Hopefully that helps clear it up a little.
Will we ever see a time when ideas that are very popular here on the subreddit get shared and possibly polled for inclusion in game?
This ice giant boss post garnered 10.5k upvotes over 2 years ago. It seemed that people really loved this person's idea!
Yes! I'd love for more of this to happen. It feels like forever since we were able to actually look at community-designed content.
It's something we've talked about internally this year. Hopefully with the new approach allowing us to secure key updates much earlier in the year, we'll have better visibility on where gaps are that could be filled with this kind of stuff.
What we won’t poll
Asset Visuals and UI/Graphical Enhancements
Oh no.
Would the team still be open to giving multiple choice polls with different graphical options for items/models?
I think there might still be some instances where this could happen, if we're really unable to find agreement based on feedback alone for example.
"as discussed above, but we won’t be polling their appearance.
Please note that we want to ensure that we’re not moving away from what makes Old School ‘Old School’ – as you can see from the team’s recent work, we’re committed to hold onto what makes the game feel so special."
This is something I'm okay with for brand new items, but deeply scares me if you plan to visually rework old items. The 2012 armor rework to bronze-dragon was probably my least favorite update that hit around EOC besides Squeal. I might of been a minority but the visual look of OSRS is deeply important to me expecially with such iconic items like rune platebody. I see the temptation, but please don't go down the road of changing existing items to make them more visually similar to newer items like Masori.
Also in a similar vein this sort of goes to reworking cities. I get that newer cities like Shayzien have a very complex unique look and that's fine. But don't go and rework lumbridge/var/cath without polling that...
The reason I feel the need to post this is because I saw a question on the recent player survey that mentioned reworking old armor and I really hope y'all don't make the same mistake.
I think with something as nostalgic as the areas you've mentioned above, there's a chance aspects could fall under "Changes to existing content which will have a significant impact on players".
We certainly don't want to approach these kind of changes without serious thought and consideration.
Another change I'd like to see is moving away from "yes/no/skip" to some more specific voting options
Yes on proposed content/change
No on proposed content/change
Yes on proposed execution
No on proposed execution
As it stands there are a lot of ideas that have a lot of support when it comes to being added to the game, but I see many people saying they vote no to otherwise good ideas because they don't like how it was going to be implemented.
This is something we've been talking about internally too. With the new system, we'll have a lot more flexibility in how we poll content too, given it'll be at the start of the process rather than during development which is much riskier.
It's an exciting time for sure!
All good stuff except aesthetic.
It is such a hangup for content. I know it grinds releasing content to a halt an inch away from the finish line, but I really think it warrants it.
OSRS's longevity hinges on its extremely good capacity for welcoming back old players. This game allows you to take long breaks without feeling lost on your way back.
I myself literally got turned off from returning after seeing apalling looking content. Particulaly when Zeah released.
Stuff like Torva or the reworked elves just reeks too much of those "squeal of fortune" years a lot of players dropped out during.
We most definitely want to ensure that we’re not moving away from what makes Old School ‘Old School’ with this change. I know that doesn't do much to alleviate your concerns right now, but we've been working closely with the community for the last few years when it comes to visuals and we don't intend to change that with this new approach.
Changing features that make significant parts of the game redundant, even if the feature is popular as-is. We would commit to making such changes minimal, rather than using them to shoehorn more extensive changes into the game.
Is this a reference to blowpipe?
Not intentionally but it can certainly be perceived as being so now you've said that haha
It's a well laid out article with your reasoning explained but you don't mention how many things fail polls. The vast majority of things polled pass, it's just the odd thing that fails. I'm not sure reducing the threshold is a good idea.
I also find it a bit tonedeaf when the community is eagerly anticipating the TOA drop rate blog for you to decide to post this today
The ToA drop rate blog is due to go tomorrow, unless disaster strikes.
It was ready to go live today but I'm hopeful players can accept that something as big as polling changes has to take priority in these cases.
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