Thank you for this comment, because you are correct. This nerf was made because of repeated requests from players for a nerf. Here is a cursory glance at reddit to demonstrate just a handful of the many posts we've seen about it (and the multiple comments therein):
https://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/asq0is/playerowned_farms_are_to_farming_what_sinkholes/
https://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/b41rkb/pof_in_a_nutshell/
https://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/btlsjp/next_skill_to_nerf_xp_player_owned_farms/
https://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/blx8qo/since_were_into_nerfing_i_think_its_only_fair_to/
https://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/bzww2m/can_we_please_nerf_pof_exp_rates_they_should_be/
https://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/chfsrd/unpopular_farming_opinion/
Naturally these exclude the requests for nerfs via discord, twitter, forums and indeed even face to face feedback players have given me (and other staff members). I've heard these concerns a lot, particularly in the last few months.
If you look at the suggestions the general suggestions are MUCH more drastic than we're going for here. However, the reason we put the newspost out (with the big bold section) is exactly to gather feedback on what is important to change and what is seemingly a sticking point for change.
We've already agreed some changes internally which will address a lot of the concerns yet keep the much needed reduction in xp. I would list them, but we need them set in stone before we can discuss them, however it should address most of the issues raised whilst still allowing for an overall improvement in the health of the game as a result of player owned farm.
To address OP's comment, this argument makes no sense at all. Even if someone were trying to shut down RuneScape for some reason, why on earth would they try and push players away? We want players, we want as many as we can get and we want them to love our game as much as we do and be happy here. It makes literally no sense for a games company to not want our players to be happy. However sometimes we have to make decisions which offer a short term negative response for a long term positive, this is where game health comes into play and the reason why sometimes we have to nerf content.
So let's address a little of the reasoning for some of the elements in the nerf to see where we're coming from.
XP - This is a no brainer really, this feedback largely comes from you guys. You've said repeatedly in multiple formats that the xp is too high. You've proposed dropping it to 10% (or less) of it's current value. That's excessive. The problem appears to be that it's too much xp for such little effort, which leads us to...
XP based on happiness and health - This change encourages you to engage with your farm if you want to get the best result. To feed the animals, give them honeys and flavoured milk and try and breed traits like jovial and immune for the most efficient method. It's asynchronous gameplay, but it's not completely afk, it takes time to set up to get the best results. It means if someone really wants to no effort it, they get a much reduced rate of xp, but someone who enjoys the farm and wants to do it properly can come off really nicely. It should reduce the zero effort problem, whilst not requiring a constant amount of focus. The problem here is that a well looked after farm should be a good place to churn out animals to sell to other players to get the best rates, so that the farm can feel like a good money maker for someone paying attention. However there are just far too many animals coming in at the moment due to the breeding in other pens (also a concern raised repeatedly by you guys) which leads us to...
Reducing the breeding in non-breeding pens - This puts the focus back on concerted effort for breeding. The players set up their best breeding pairs, carefully manage traits and produce offspring. With the right farmhand they can sell animals to other players to make some decent money. The other pens churn out fewer animals, meaning that animals bred properly are more valuable creating a healthier market. This does endanger the use of non-breeding pens to try and get shinies to tick off achievements though. Which leads us to...
Improved traits - We're upping the hereditary nature of traits so it's much easier to breed the traits you want into progeny. This will make it easier to get the shiny producing traits into progeny boosting your ability to make shinies. We've also double the effectiveness of the shiny boosting traits, so now it's easier to make shinies. The pens produce less animals, but the animals they produce are more likely to be what the farmer is looking for. This means that the non-breeding pens will produce less but they'll produce more shinies, shinies are good for beans which will offset some of the beans reduction from the reduced breeding. However this requires people to engage more regularly with the farm, which leads us to...
Increased food consumption - This appears to be the biggest sticking point and we are definitely discussing this right now. However the idea behind it was to encourage players to visit their farm more regularly, to touch base every day or so and help keep their farm maintained. It would encourage more efficient xp gain (because you'd check the smaller pens which generally would have baby animals or harvestable animals each day rather than the weeks of dragons) which would help keep the farm feeling powerful given the xp boost above.
All of the nerf plans are to try and improve overall gameplay and the health of the game.
Now, we admit, we may have gotten overzealous on some of these numbers and we're addressing that. There's also a neat little bonus buff we're planning to add as well. I'd love to tell you these now, but we're going to hold off communicating changes until we've had a deeper discussion. I believe Shauny is planning a livestream soon where you can get a bit more detail. But I thought it might help to see where the decisions for the changes have come from and the motivations behind them.
Hope this wall of text is interesting.
= Raven =
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