I was talking to another person earlier today and he was salty that "apparently" Jagex listens to the RS Guy more than any other Player, then i told my acquaitance that it's basically RSGuy's "job" to speak on behalf of the Community as a member of this PAG.
Then he got even more salty because that somehow sounded worse, so that Made me wonder...
Do people actually remember this Group of Players and their function in our ecosystem?
External link →I think it's a bit of a misconception that we only or primarily listen to content creators. I see this come up a lot and I'm honestly not sure where it comes from. There are specific times where we've invited content creators to the studio (like the recent Necromancy visit) but they're not the only players we have in to discuss content, just the ones where talking about the experience is part of their job. We also do very much bear in mind where the feedback is coming from - one of the many great things about content creators is that we know their general thoughts on where the game should go from their content, so we can account for that.
The design channels on the official discord are open to anyone who wants to join (as long as you can behave yourself) and are a great place to talk about the design of the game - more so than the "secret content creators discord" which isn't really for that purpose.
In defence of RSGuy specifically, people seem to think that he has some agenda to push high level PVM, but when I sat and talked with him about Necromancy his concerns were all focused around the early and midgame - is this engaging and accessible for players who aren't endgame PVMers already? The others were similarly great, not looking for any sort of personal advantage or pushing their "agenda" but just holistically looking at the health of the game exactly as people are suggesting in the other comments.
For what it's worth we do also take reddit feedback (and other social media) very seriously, but as I talked about in a recent design stream, it's not really practical to discuss feedback one on one with every single player. Part of CM's job is to collate what's going on in the community and what the current mood and concerns are. Practically speaking they're not going to be able to, and shouldn't, pick out individual unusual suggestions (because there are hundreds of them every week and it would just be a whim to choose a particular one) but the devs are also always all over reddit reading everything even if we're not responding to every (or many) posts.
I feel like the misconception comes because of order of events with these things.
Content creators, on the whole for the big names, are high-end pvmers.
They comment on stuff being issues or not fun, even where the changes will hurt mid-level pvmers but they are beyond that level so it doesn't huirt them.
These proposed changes then often seem to happen because of a vocal few despite lots of feedback on other platforms (ie reddit) from mid-level pvmers being against it as it actively hurts their gameplay.
Whatever goes on behind the scenes and the final reasoning this very much then gives the impression Jagex did what the vocal few wanted and ignored the mass sentiment.
Recently animate dead is a great example - most high-end pvmers and content creators didn't find the nerf too bad. It didn't hurt them as they didn't need it to survive.
A lot of the feedback kicking about other platforms for more mid-level pvmers was more along lines of seeing that it was overpowered but concern that the nerf really hurt their chance of progressing certain things (ie solo p7 Zammy) but the changed just rolled on anyway.
I think recent comp/trim changes (and the poll stuff yet to be resolved) also speaks to this.
Penance King kill got removed with no debate because "finding a team is hard"
But adding Reaper Crew and solo 100% Zammy and other pvm based things get entertained despite being hard or requiring finding a team.
The notable thing being, from an external view point, content creators largely support the pvm requirements being added because they are in the pvm high-end and can easily do these requirements and find teams. They largely don't like minigames as its not their thing so they aren't in communities that will play the games.
Yet for a mid-level pvmer who isn't in the right communities finding a team for many bosses is just as hard as finding a team for Penance King and specifying solo 100% Zammy intentionally makes it harder to do given that Zammy p7 does not scale to solo so it is specifically a hard mode and arguably the completionist element is beating p7 so you have done the entire fight which is just as a vlidly done in a team setting.
Like I'm sure there are reasons behind these things but when these changes occur and consistently skew towards what content creators like the idea of, when they are mostly in the nich of high-end pvm which the majority of the playerbase are not part of, it very much gives the impression Jagex are giving their words more weight than the average player.
Hm. It's interesting thinking about the decision making process here, because I think we have a situation something like:
Player A supports decision A. Player B supports decision B. We go with decision A, which is what player A wanted, therefore we "listened to player A". In practice it doesn't really work like this - we don't choose between two players based on some criteria and then just do whatever they say. We'll take input from many players, and then weigh that against all of the other relevant factors as well.
I wasn't heavily involved in the FSOA/AD changes but to apply that framework, balancing is very relevant to it. To oversimplify the argument slightly, if you say "do you want to be immortal?" then some players will say yes and some players will say no, but it's not just a case of listening to the players who say no and doing what they want. There are design and balancing considerations involved beyond pure preference.
As far as comp goes, I was heavily involved with that and to my knowledge there was essentially no content creator input on the decision at all. Some creators made videos giving their opinion on the poll (which may have influenced other voters, I have no idea, but it's not like it's unreasonable to make videos giving an opinion) but none were directly part of the design process. The majority of that either happened within the team, or on discord with a lot of input from some serious achievement players (including reddit's own Follow) and ambassadors from the Achievement Help discord.
Content creators promote the game so naturally they are targeted as testers, as "advocates" but ultimately it's one hand washing the other. The PAG never was a thing and really the only major source of feedback comes from these content creators and other inner circle players of the game who've been friends with Jagex for several years. This has always been the case and always will be.
And yes, it was the reason for the major push toward PVM content in the game. That became true following Nomad's addition to the game. That's where the major shift began toward all things involving or surrounding bosses in the game, despite the fact that clearly a good portion of the player base were into skilling rather than PVM at the time.
This will all be refuted, of course, but for those of us who have been playing the game for well over a decade and a half, we've been here. We've seen the trends. We voiced our opinions but were ignored in favor of those who were more in that Inner Circle. It is what it is. I'm fine with that.
I used to worry about catching up, completing all content, about clearing lists of things I wanted to do but I've gotten over that. I just set my own goals and once those are done, I'll be done with the game. Mind you, I have never taken a serious break from the game, on the order of years at a time. The most I've ever stayed away from it were a couple of months here or there since 2008. But I could see putting it down for good at some point. Not there yet but let's not kid ourselves that whatever the majority thinks or wants will ever have a real say in this game.
This is kinda truth-adjacent but not really accurate as you've described it. You're inserting a conspiracy where none is needed - devs have visions for the future of the game and they pursue those visions where they can. They don't need to be working with a shadowy cabal of players to implement their vision.
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