Long live the Yak Track.
The Yak Track is dead, long live the Hero Pass. RuneScape players are upsetti spaghetti this week over Jagex’s unveiling of the Hero Pass, the next evolution of the Yak Track, RuneScape’s answer to battle passes. And why? What else; the rewards.
Tell me about the Hero Pass, Jagex.
Hero Pass is a brand new part of the core RuneScape experience, designed to make the game even more rewarding whenever – and however – you choose to play. Hero Pass builds on lessons of the past to bring a new integrated gameplay experience that fits into your regular play, with more unique cosmetic rewards and earnable buffs that add flavour to the gameplay.
More rewards? Cool. How many cosmetics are we talking about here?
Our first Hero Pass, Underworld, comes packed with 54 total cosmetic items that can be earned by all players and 94 total cosmetics for Premier Members – from new armour styles to pets, ability overrides to awesome variant looks for your Necromancy conjures.
So why does the Hero Pass dev diary have so many more downvotes than upvotes on YouTube?
Because of the content buffs.
Content Buffs are how we’re introducing a seasonal gameplay flavour to every Hero Pass, and they’re available to all players. As you progress, you’ll earn access to Content Buffs that provide certain gameplay benefits*, themed mostly around the latest content releases to enhance your play. These buffs can be toggled on and off at your discretion. For example, in our first Hero Pass, you can earn a buff that gives you a double activation chance on your Woodcutting Perks – perfect for those nights spent chasing Imcando Axe pieces in Woodcutters’ Grove.
Effectively players are angry over the major boost to FOMO that the new Hero Pass system threatens to bring to RuneScape, be it seasonal buffs, the cosmetic rewards, and more.
From YouTube:
Subscriptions, treasure hunter, cosmetics shops and battle passes with buyable skips. How can Jagex not see this is too much? These seasonal gameplay buffs mean players will feel FOMO if they don’t interact with it and obviously the quickest way to get them is to… pay even more money.
And also;
What is most shocking to me is none of the feedback given in this video is new. At all. The player base has spoken time and time again, clearly, that they do not want FOMO driven content, they do not want pay to win content. Yet here are both in full force. The boundary is attempted to be pushed every time and every time players make it clear they do not want it. Every time there is momentum to making the game better it must come hand in hand with making the same mistakes over again. Necromancy release, better call out the next major content release as 0 added activities to perform, aka 0 content. Communication getting better? Time to slip some crap into the patch notes. It is so tiresome.
And also;
No, this was not the way forward.
Removing the daily challenges that we get to choose & then also removing the keys as a reward from them & the weekly rewards from all the dailys.
Okay you can say how the little adventure backpacks we get give “some” of the items, but overall they are useless.You say you want to also remove that dailyscape but that challenge you give out now takes 40 minutes to get all up to tier 3?
pathetic.
You also say you want to cater towards all players but then give it a FOMO event of 3 months for 120 levels of “rewards” so the players that don’t play as much have even more FOMO….Jagex you are getting more and more delusional by the month.
There are a ton of comments similar to these. We’ll see how the community acts in practice because while outrage against FOMO in RuneScape has been heavy for years, the game continues to grow in revenue in spite of the fact.
MMO Fallout 