JagexHooli

There's a lot of games in the industry announcing delays or impacts to content right now. Everyone is feeling the impact.

We haven't seen that effect happen with any Double XP LIVE events so far according to the team. To your point, no-one can say for sure until we've got 4 quarterly events back to back, but it's been thought of and not something we expect to see.

Something that you may find interesting is that the burnout rate was higher for past Double XP Weekends than any Double XP LIVE - even with the first quarterly event in May.

We believe a lot of that change was due to the player feedback that led us to Double XP LIVE. It takes a lot of the intensity off it, and instead lets you balance it around your life more rather than 'now or never'.

Not sure if you caught our stream recently, but the intention of DXP Live is very much not to be a replacement of anything, but be additive on top of. We confirmed DXP Live was going quarterly back in May. We don't disagree with what you're saying on that front.

The team recognize the desire for more content and the gap that emerged lately. It was a symptom of COVID impact really knocking our productivity rates down (you can see the impact it's had on the industry a lot lately actually, a bunch of major games have shifted their game or DLC release dates in the past few weeks).

It's now something we've adapted our plans to in order to deliver content smaller in scope but targeting releasing more often, which will lead to the content AND DXP future you're hoping for if all goes well.

Obviously it's just words until we deliver, but we're making good progress - our Stream TL;DR has a lot of the details covered if you're interested in reading more: ...

Seen it brought up here a fair bit, but just to confirm, the plan is to run a Double XP Live event quarterly. We announced that with the last DXP Live in case you missed it.

The increased regularity is one of these balancing acts we face as a studio. None of us are going to pretend this thread isn't more negative - but even here, there's people getting excited in comments (and elsewhere online) about hitting the DXP grind.

This is where we face a balancing act, specifically the 'silent majority'. I'm sure many of you have heard this before, but the picture the team makes of our playerbase is a mix of extensive data and player feedback combined as much as we can.

What the numbers show is a huge desire for these events - one that didn't diminish with our first 'quarterly' follow up DXP event, even shortly after a new skill release. Of these players, the vast majority don't use all their time - in fact, the majority don't even use half of it - but they obviousl...

It is a priority, it's just engine changes take time to deliver - not only through implementation but also through testing (on any game, engine changes have a much higher risk of knock-on effects).

Progress is ongoing but we don't have a firm date to relay just yet for the exact reasoning above. As much as I know that's frustrating to hear, as I mentioned, you shouldn't be waiting too long for the first implementation targeting improvements.

Hah, now that you mention it, this is definitely something I deal with often.

We've flagged it to the Ninjas - make sure to pop it into the Dojo as well if you could. It's the best way to ensure any suggestions are logged!

Thanks! Will do if we need more info.

The team have identified a couple of things we can address to hopefully improve things. They are engine based so they'll take a little time, but the time range for deployment we have for both as it stands isn't too long.

It's a little early to share when we are targeting - stuff like this always has the potential to move if it turns out to be more complex - so apologies for the vagueness. As soon as we can be a bit more certain on timing, we'll let you know.

This refers to the current situation - we loved making something as huge and far reaching as Archaeology.

What Warden meant by that comment is that, with our current production impacts, delivering that scale of content just isn't something we do feasibly. At least not on a cadence we think any player would be happy with.

It's part of what Warden was talking about with regards to reshaping the kind of content we make in this develop-from-home world, with a focus on delivering smaller scale (but still meaningful) content more regularly.

Even if we didn't do the stream, the Q&A very much formed a lot of what we made sure to cover in here - I hope it feels like we hit all the most asked ones at a minimum even if the format was reworked to provide time for detail.

/u/JagexPoerki has also done a great job working with the team around the (virtual) studio to get answers on many of the remain questions that were asked. We'll be posting those soon as well.

Thanks for the well wishes for the team.

If my post you responded to doesn't get that across, let me totally clear - we totally agree there wasn't enough comms. That post was to explain what happened and how to fix it going forward.

This is more along the lines of where we're going communications wise.

This stream was intended to be that kind of development update in Live Stream form - what we're working on, issues, content reprioritization and so on. That's the kind of dialogue we want to have going forward.

Although we dropped quite a lot of specifics - as we know many of you had felt in the dark for quite a while by this point - we should be able to keep you informed and connected to the studio regardless on if we have anything to confirm or announce by name, so to speak.

We agree. I said this in another comment but to repeat here, it basically came down to uncertainty. Hopefully we can shed a little more light on this.

Shortly after Archaeology shipped, the impact of lockdown started to rear it's head - longer term stuff like childcare, less than ideal working from home environments, difficulties coordinating bigger projects remotely while being flexible to employee needs etc. We talked about that a bunch on stream so I won't go into that too much more here.

What that generated was a lot of uncertainty and unknowns around how long content would begin to take. When it became apparent that production impact was significant (at least 30% down according to our last Wellness surveys and Producer estimates), the team began looking at how we could adapt to it - which is this new plan - while continuing on course with DM, Ninja etc.

That process took around two months in total (you have to not only come up with a new approach, but s...

I mentioned this in another post, but Mod Warden is a big believer in community comms. Since I joined 6 weeks ago, I can speak to how he's been pushing us on additional things he'd like to see from the team too.

The issue everyone raises is, in actuality, a couple of miscommunication issues. It's no reflection on anyone to be honest - especially when it comes to intent - but just a casualty of the times we've faced.

Warden very much inherited the Roadmap announcement at Jagex, which is why he referred to it coming later in his opening statement.

As a new EP for the product, Warden identified our not-so-great 'hit rate' on announcements and wanted to spend some time assessing why that was and, in turn communicating cautiously. While that makes sense, it was never clearly stated or explained to you as players (I believe it was mentioned very lightly once on a stream IIRC).

Just before Archaeology left the building, COVID also arrived and, retrospective...

Honestly, we went into this stream knowing there would be doubt to anything we say. And that's totally okay.

This stream wasn't meant to change minds, but to bring you closer to the development. We hope you now have a better picture of what we're doing as a team and how we are adjusting to our new production impact rather than being in the dark.

Trust is earned, not told. If you are sceptical today, keep on it. Hopefully, through both our actions and keeping you better informed, we can win that trust back.

It was something we had planned to cover. As I've said elsewhere, Mod Warden was a huge part of why this stream even happened and he wanted to answer questions like this.

The only reason it was raised at the end was due to me monitoring what major community questions we hadn't covered. We all went into this stream wanting to talk about the Roadmap and I just made sure we didn't miss the chance to get you an answer on it.

There's been some issues with our communications this year, but it shouldn't be taken as a reflection on Warden's stance on communication at all. It's more a reflection of trying to achieve that new balance and, as a team, overcorrecting on the cautious front during a time of massive uncertainty (COVID impact).

RIP my sleep?

Exactly. The main thing we hope you all took away from yesterday is a better understanding of where we are development wise, what our challenges are right now, and some key things we're working on.

The goal for us as a team is to find a better balance in our communication so you feel this 'in the know' every month without stepping into announcing things too early territory. It's why there was no big Roadmap Post instead.

What matters to us is the continued conversation from this point, not the result of one stream. It may take some time, we may make mistakes along the way, but we'll get there.

Legitimately had no idea where the haunted comments came from all stream. Was my curtain moving or something?

Honestly, I'm fine with that if it did sound a little PR'y because they really are throwing themselves at it to be honest.

A team actively look to react and find opportunity in a situation that impacts production output is very rare in my experience. It would have been easier from a development standpoint to stay the course and just accept the slower delivery cadence - and many teams would pick that option and throw out the COVID excuse.

Speaking as a witness to it, pivoting direction is no small task. There's a huge knock on in so many areas - brainstorms upon brainstorms, scoping, reformatting teams, working out how to make meaningful content on much smaller timeframes and so on. That all takes time, effort and a lot of coordination - and then you have to go execute on it. But, ultimately, the hope is that this is the right way to go to deliver more additive content and prevent big gaps.

On the WFH front, your case is the same for some others here at Jagex...

That's exactly where we want to be - having these conversations early, frequently and honestly.

We consider this stream a new starting line for our approach to how we talk with all of you, but it's about how we do that consistently over the years ahead that matters.