[2023] Why people specifically care about the FSOA nerf; a response to the March 23 stream.

Every time Jagex ignores player feedback and suggestions, or even better handwaves it with comments about 'we are looking at the bigger picture' without explaining what that bigger picture IS, they are damaging the player base's willingness to engage at all

This is a very fair point, but I hope it'll be of some reassurance to know that we aren't handwaving the feedback away (and I don't think that was the intention of Jack's mention on stream last night).

Your feedback on FSOA absolutely HAS made a difference. Sponge is on holiday for a bit and owns these changes primarily - so it'll be a little while before we give a firm update - but before he left there's already been things put in motion to react to it.

Rebalancing FSOA is still important to the team, but the way in which we do it will change based on the feedback we've received. We would love to share more details right now, but with Sponge out at the moment, it's too early to share those thoughts just to make sure we represent the proposed changes when they are fully formed rather than initial concepts.

Just wanted to make that super clear - if we open these opportunities for feedback, we will provide follow up either to explain aspects of feedback that conflict with design intent (and be clear on that bigger picture) or how we're adapting things based on your feedback (which should be the more common of the two!).

If this tweak was made before the end of 2021 I would’ve still been content with it but it’s been way way too long for any reasonable person to react positively to it. It’s what I really despise about modern developments going on at jagex, they’re super hesitant to do knee jerk reactions but then take far too long to implement tweaks or changes

This is something we're trying to change as a team all-up at the moment - we want to be more reactive (at the right times) to things like balance or community feedback.

It is very important to allow things time to settle - though we're talking weeks/months on that, not years. Initial reactions can sometimes not be the same as the long term reaction, and that time also provides enough space for a quality set of data that can provide additional insight.

In terms of doing these things over a year later, I think I speak for the team in saying that's not our ideal timeline either - but the important thing is getting these changes going now to solve the design problems they cause rather than just leaving them forever and working around them.

That means at the moment there's some more long-standing issues we're addressing that do cause this "Why now?" frustration. What we hope is that you'll see how your feedback has shaped these changes and through a dialogue we can land somewhere where it makes sense for everybody.

(And just to be super clear, we aren't just going to be out here looking for feedback on long-standing issues - this is part of our work as a whole to have more direct discussions on potential changes ahead of time rather than just taking your feedback in after the fact!).

One of the key notes we took from the feedback is exactly along these lines.

No commitments or promises for this happening, as it may not be possible to do right now and will instead need to be something we look at future proposed balance updates for other things, but we are discussing if a Beta server is possible to get the V2 Proposed Changes for FSOA into your hands for further feedback.

I think we're less concerned about that than we used to be - in the sense that having any sort of open dialogue can cause that reaction, just like a Beta. We've even had small indications we've given on stream impact the market.

It's something we're sensitive to for sure - we absolutely won't ever disregard it - but the priority for us right now is making sure we do a better job of being open and bringing your perspectives into more of what we do ahead of a release.