Update:Blog - Design Notes: Loyalty Programme
This blog was written by Mod Mark and dates to 5 July 2011.
Now that we have launched the first batch of loyalty rewards, no doubt you're full of questions about the future. I'm happy to announce that currently we have 3 other launches planned over the next year which will not only release new loyalty rewards, but also offer upgrades to the ones previously launched.
Firstly it's worth talking about the auras. When designing these auras we've tended to categorise each aura as either 'niche' (offer a specific piece of gameplay or cosmetic benefit) or general skill auras (auras that focus on a skill and training that skill). You may have noticed that the majority of auras released in June are 'Tier 1' - all general skill auras will have versions at tiers 2, 3 and 4 with the benefit of using the aura increased at each tier. Access to the higher tiers will depend, of course, on how many loyalty points you have accrued. Were still ironing out the design on how future tiers will work, but it will all be in place before the next batch is released in October.
Eventually almost every skill in the game will have an associated aura and many 'niche' auras will exist to support your specific style of gaming.
Niche auras might also have higher tier versions offering bigger and better effects, although these are still in consideration. Some niche auras will continue to have only one tier (not necessarily tier 1) depending on their effect.
Future tiers may also have their cooldown timers adjusted if appropriate.
We're hoping that each month you'll buy something - we're balancing the points to ensure that you can, and still save up for the big rewards if it's really what you want to do. It's the main reason why the cosmetic costumes and emote rewards are considerably cheaper than the auras.
As a side note, the problems some of you had accessing the loyalty system on the first day of launch have now been addressed - we had such a high rate of applications to join the system that the web module couldn’t quite cope with the demand! The website is now running well. We've also added some more data to our FAQ thread, found here.
Thank you to all our players who have been loyal to us for years - of course systems like this always have to define a start point - as with many of our updates it's almost impossible for us to retrofit past actions into any new system, and so the start point has to be the day of launch. We truly appreciate all the months and years you have been with us. We did consider this issue carefully back in February when we first discussed this design. Was the fact that we couldn't reward previously loyal players a strong enough reason not to launch the system? It's a question we were asking all the way to the launch date. In the end we knew that launching the system would benefit everyone, and that not doing it would benefit nobody, so the choice was easy to make.
We have a huge list of ideas for the future cosmetic rewards in the Loyalty Programme. We're still adding to that list (listing things in order of 'coolness' is lots of fun to do but very controversial - everybody's sense of cool is different from mine it seems) and still trawling the forums, so if you have any 'real world inspired' costume ideas or have an emote in your head that you’d love to see added to the game, now is the time to tell us.
RuneScape Wiki note: The links no longer work.