[2019] I'm a new player; just finished Architectural Alliance in Great Kourend. The Favour system seems like a brilliant "Mini-Skill" system, and I hope Jagex uses that design space in future content!

If you think about it, the 5 houses are sort of like 5 secret "mini-skills". They have a lot in common with skills:

• You earn XP (favour %) for doing tasks.
• As you level up, you unlock new tasks which also award XP (and other useful rewards)
• Your XP Level (Favour %) can be used as a prerequisite for unlocking quests.

The only difference from a "real" skill is that the time to max level is significantly shorter, and that the tasks they can perform are limited to very small areas. Although it's not all that different from something like Hunter or Runecraft, where there are a limited # of locations to train those skills. Some of the favour grinds are unique tasks which award no XP to "real" skills (administering medpacks to Shayzien soldiers, for instance) while others interact with the "real" skills in interesting ways (Mining for sulphur).

I feel like a lot of the fully-fledged skills which have failed to pass polls may have done a bit better as favour-style context-sensitive systems. You can still give the reward loop of something-like-XP with breakpoint grinding without intruding on the existing skill system, or needing to justify 99 excruciating levels of content. I think it'd also let Jagex add a good variety of grinds -- not everything needs to be as short as the Shayzien favour grind at under ~3 hours, but you could have a bar that takes more like 40 hours to fill. Still less than 99 in a skill, but possibly interesting!

TL;DR: Jagex snuck 5 mini-skills into the game with the Zeah continent, and they are a potentially cool future way for them to structure skill-like content without conforming to the restrictions of "true" skills or XP tables.