Why were Sunfire runes nerfed?

Think the feedback in this thread is fair about us being overly attached to existing meta. A general rule of thumb we think about is that it's controversial to change top end meta. We've seen that go wrong on many occasions and so there's a natural aversion to doing so. Perhaps we're a bit too conservative sometimes (though many will disagree with that too). I'll be keeping this feedback in mind personally to maybe second guess our assumptions more often.

Ultimately we were uncomfortable with how strong the method was, I don't know how accurate these numbers were for sure but apparently ~400k+xp/hr. A pretty substantial buff over the current top method (lava rune running is 280k xp/hr according to the wiki). Ignoring the requirements for lava runes, I think its reasonable to feel a 40+% buff to the top rate isn't okay.

The immediate response was to quickly address that by adjusting xp to be delivered per essence like most RC as the simplest method to fixing it. The team did this knowing we can buff it up further later and that is still being assessed for where we feel it is best placed. It is fair to say we have over nerfed it.

Lastly - on banning trading, some questions - how close to the shrine of ralos do you have to be for trading to be banned - do you now just run to the entrance to the building instead for example? That'd lower the rates, but does it do it enough?. Do we ban pure essence being traded exclusively in this area but leave other items alone? There's just enough awkward complexity that we wouldn't choose to go this route for a quick hotfix. If we don't ever do this kind of thing though, it places some artifical cap on RC methods as if we go too high with XP - runner methods get even more quick. I actually quite like the more emergent 'MMO-ey' feeling of hiring other players to 'work for you' too. I welcome thoughts on best way to handle this :).

Artificially "no interaction with these new altars within x seconds of a trade" is totally possible too. It's just weird and there's no in game explanation for it really but the game is full of stuff like that. Both yours and this solution can be applied case by case too (leaving it permitted at other altars).

It's certainly easier to forget to think about in that it isn't inherent to the content itself. That said I think this is more a case of Varlamore is huge - there's a ton of content that was important for us to get right so the small scale new RC method just doesn't get the same attention in feedback from playtests and so on. That's totally on us for what it is worth to remember these things in future.

We agree but even then there's levels to that. Is 200k xp/hr okay? Yes sure.

Is 5m xp/hr okay just cause it costs a bomb? I'd very much think no myself. Which implies there's a line somewhere in the middle.

The game is really about player achievements, we don't want to undermine player achievements by suddenly allowing people to get something far far faster than before (for the same cost as running at lava runes). i.e. pre update: 28m gp/hr for 280k xp/hr at lavas, post update: 28m gp/hr for 400k xp/hr at sunfires. Things do get faster over time but that's a hell of a jump.

I think that's fair! We'll get the xp rate right such that its appropriate for players doing it normally. We just needed to do something in the meantime.