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I have a lot of sympathy for the perils of game development. Chief among them is the terror of having to not only get feedback, but filter it: Getting into spats over balance tweaks, the difficulties of community management, and sometimes dealing with actual threats that need police intervention. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
While keeping in touch with a community is part of the job, it’s not an enviable one even if said community’s full of good eggs—even Baldur’s Gate 3’s had its woes. Which is why I’m not surprised to see that, after re-releasing beloved RuneScape quest chain While Guthix Sleeps, the devs at Jagex have had to put their foot down.
First, some context. While Guthix Sleeps is a quest chain that eventually puts players in touch with Tormented Demons. The loot tables, rebalanced by Jagex for the modern OldSchool Runescape audience, do appear to be rather hellish, as one player breaks it down on the game’s subreddit:
“For context, the original tormented demons back in 2008 dropped claws at a 1/256 [drop rate],” the present drop rates, by comparison, are 1/637, “[that’s] effectively 5x the kills, for a worse set of claws, not to mention the demons have more HP now than they originally had (somewhat counteracted by better gear) and the regular drops are even worse.”
This led to its fair share of criticism—and sure, on the face of it, it all seems rather irritating. Players routinely bring up Zombie Pirates who, by comparison, were extraordinarily generous before nerfs, and far easier to access than these infernal anti-loot pinatas.
As Jagex lays it out in a news post: “we opted for a more cautious loot table than an overly generous one—this has worked well for us (and the health of the game) and is something we’ll continue to do. That being said, we hear you loud and clear—the Tormented Demon loot tables need some work.”
Regrettably, however, players have been laser-focused on making specific devs enemy number one—enough that Jagex feels a need to call it out:
“Please stop targeting or singling out individual developers while providing your feedback. In many cases, the developers being targeted aren’t heavily involved with the content that you’re criticising. In all cases, loot mechanics and tables are passed around the team and reviewed—we succeed as a team and we fail as a team.
“We’re more than happy for you to be critical of our work as a team, but the repeated targeting of individual team members needs to stop.”
It really is a rock and a hard place—don’t listen to players at all, and you’re doing game development wrong. Give them a target, though, and a loud minority will make you their personal antichrist. Here’s hoping (against hope) that this nips it in the bud.
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