AMA - Mat K

[Mat K 173]

On 8/19/2020 at 10:11 PM, Vanzant said:

Hey man. I was in Df when we fell in on you for the rush in a f2p pkri. Having trouble remembering the year,  maybe 2008?

Yes I remember that, 2008 sounds about right.

Actually, I might have been in Black Knights too.... can't remember it was a long time ago,

[Mat K 173]

On 8/19/2020 at 10:17 PM, RagingPanda said:

Have you ever considered joining a Clan in the past or present. If so which clan did you consider joining and what made them so appealing to you?

Yes, very much so, I was in multiple clans in the 00s and lead one too.

[Mat K 173]

On 8/19/2020 at 10:20 PM, s-Raven said:

How was the feeling of your first runefest? hosting? did you have butterflies?

Fucking terrified.

[Mat K 173]

On 8/19/2020 at 10:24 PM, Scleritis said:

1. Do you think PVP activity being split between 3 different types (PVP worlds, wilderness and bounty hunter) should still be happening when the wilderness is as dead as it is?
2. The introduction of Clan Wars resulted in a drastic drop in F2P wilderness fights. What was the thinking behind bringing CWA in and could you ever see a time where it gets removed?
3. Do you think the Jagex staff currently is a true representation of the different types of players that play their game? In other words are skillers, pkers, pvmers iron men etc all equally represented?

Thanks for doing this ?

1. I think the right sort of PvP should be available to the right sort of PvPer. I think if there was only one type of PvP you would see less of it. I think what is missing is a funnel to get more people into PvP.

2. The aim was to get more people to PvP as it was a safe area for people to do that. If I remember rightly, overall PvP went up so it did its job, what was missing was how do we get these people to fight in the wilderness. I don't ever see it being removed.

3. I don't, I think you have hardcore players in the team or ones that focus on very specific parts of the community and the people that get forgotten are the 80% of people who just want to play the game for fun.

[Mat K 173]

On 8/19/2020 at 10:31 PM, Andy said:

Hi Mat -

do you still catch up with the Gower brothers? 

I never really knew the Gowers other than Ian, so I don't see them.

Best memory during the early years of runescape?

I think getting a dchain drop at dusties,

What are you focused on now days? 

I am still a product manager but have swapped 20 year old technology for deep tech cutting edge technology scaling processes in the cloud to make super large games.

Pineapple on pizza yes or yes?

Not a fan of pizza

Did you ever get shitty with the RS community and just think "Fuck this community" if yes, how did you deal with that / what kept you going?

The only time I ever did was when I spent 6 weeks solidly actioning reports that players sent in. When you see the dross of the community being hateful and spiteful for so long you become a bit jaded.

Cheers man, Thanks for everything you did for RS

Thank you for playing, without you guys I would never have had the experiences I did in the last 15 years.

 

On 8/19/2020 at 10:31 PM, Andy said:

 

 

[Mat K 173]

On 8/19/2020 at 11:26 PM, Kiwi said:

So I'm a Rs3 player now adays, played osrs when it was actually late 00s, like how RS3 advanced after I got used to EOC, anywho.

If you could answer, maybe  you don't know, maybe you can't say. 

-Why did Rs3 switch how they did content release? It seems years ago it was every week or two at least something came out, thus far in the year and the year prior it's gotten very little update, it feels like it's on a scale with OSRS which to my understanding as a much smaller Dev team.

I think because the updates never changed moved any of the key metrics, so they looked at ways of doing it differently

-I'm honestly shocked that OSRS hasn't integrated MTX into the game, I feel like the Chinese big brother/owner would consistently be pushing for it, how has OSRS kept it out of the game thus far. (I'm personally glad it hasn't happened, even though I don't really play OSRS anymore, I just feel it would hit OSRS pretty hard, I wish it was removed from RS3, but I know that's a pipe dream).

I spent a lot of my time resisting MTX coming into OSRS and pushing back on that. Before I left I comissioned a study to show just how bad it would be and got buy in across the senior leadership that if they did it it would be catastrophic.

-I'm sure this has been answered before, but why were previous DC rares like Phats, not added to the game in the same function (dropped once or twice and then just a DC item). 

We polled the community how they wanted them introduced and the current way was the response.

-What are the actual active player counts for both games.

Here is a good site that shows you the concurrent users, it is pretty acurate. http://www.misplaceditems.com/rs_tools/graph/

-Would OSRS ever upgraded graphics to bring it into the present, ala RS3 but without the EoC. 

It could do, although unless there is a technological solution to do it I can't see them remaking all the assets to make it work

 

[Mat K 173]

On 8/19/2020 at 11:36 PM, Ando said:

Why hasn’t there been more content added to the wilderness? (There has been some however the risk isn’t worth the pay off)

Is there a reason to why jagex have sat back and witnessed PvP clan’s dwindle away without putting any effort in to save them?

I think the answers to both these questions is that Jagex do not know what to do.

Why are most mods so distant to their players? 
I'm not sure I would agree that they are. 

And finally, why can’t jagex step in when people Dox and ddos? Surely that brings the game into disrepute when it happens.

Jagex cannot get any evidence to support action being taken against people doing this as it is outside the game. Therefore, they don't want to position themselves as the internet police. Both of these practices are illegal in most countries and the police forces are there to deal with this.

MAKE THE WILDERNESS GREAT AGAIN.

 

 

[Mat K 173]

On 8/19/2020 at 11:47 PM, TubeOfGlue said:

Hi there, I’m curious about the leadership takeover when you left Maxed clan and hopefully you can confirm what I’ve heard on how the next leader get the role? I heard people asked you at runefest about assigning a new leader but you didn’t realise you were still set to leader of the clan at the time. 
Also wonder what your goals/aims for the clan were beyond just a place for high levelled members of the community?  

All I did with the leadership of maxed was to hand my account over to the CM team and said, sort it out. I don't know what happened after that. The whole point of the clan was to be a stepping stone for the maxed players to see what the clan system was about. But in true maxed player style they went and took it to the top of the leaderboard. 

[Mat K 173]

On 8/20/2020 at 12:01 AM, Kenny said:

I first started playing on the same homeworld as your clan SD.

I didn't realise back then but I ended up joining FoM. I've been in a few clans with Claire however. 

It's nice to see you still interacting with fellow players & clans. My questions are:

What interested you at first in joining Jagex?

Claire told me to.

Do you miss working at Jagex?

I miss some parts (the team and community) but not others (politics)

Would you recommend Jagex to someone looking to work in the industry & how difficult is it to get a job there?

I would yes, it is very difficult to get a role there. Whenever I had a role open I had at least 50 applicants.

Were you part of the Community Management/PMod team before working with clans and OSRS? If so what was your favourite role and why?

My favourite role was Product Manager of OSRS as I could have the biggest impact on the game doing that.

What are you up too these days?

Still working, still playing OSRS, still married.

Are there any other games you play outside RS?

Yes, I play a lot of Fallout 76 and Star Trek Fleet Command at the moment.

 

 

[Mat K 173]

On 8/20/2020 at 12:16 AM, Victoria said:

This is frustrating and encouraging to hear at the same time. 
 

While I agree with your statement wholeheartedly, it appears that there is almost no motivation from the OSRS Development Team in regards to enhancing the Player Vs. Player experience. The Player Vs. Monster aspect of the game has been bolstered time and time again, almost back to back, with rather consistent effort being devoted to multi-man bosses, raids development and improvements, etc. while there has been almost no support for this community.

Your involvement in our scene has been extraordinarily valuable to all of us over the years, and I’ve thanked you personally countless times for your efforts.
 

What I want to know is, do you feel there has been a failure on Jagex’s part to provide sufficient support and suggestions to help improve the PvP dynamic of the game, and if so, what could have been done better? Do you think we’ll ever see any sort of direct 1st party/in-game support for clans? I would also love to hear any ideas you have had in this area as well.

I think there is a lack of knowledge of what to do for PvP. Different parts of PvP are looked at in isolation rather than PvP being understood and considered as a whole. Before I left I created a dashboard which showed the PvP journey for each account but I didn't get the opportunity to fully analyse it and start piecing together the user journey and what really encourages players to try PvP. I've mentioned it a few times but there needs to be a hollistic view taken and a full understanding of motivations and how to grow that portion of the community.

[Mat K 173]

On 8/20/2020 at 12:28 AM, dnd5 said:

What do you think your biggest failure was during your time at Jagex?

Not getting PvP sorted out.

[Mat K 173]

On 8/20/2020 at 12:35 AM, Vanzant said:

Have you heard of The BlacKnights?

Yes, I think I was in them once. Can't remember though.

[Mat K 173]

On 8/20/2020 at 1:05 AM, eggshell24 said:

Why did you authorize the banning of AHK when things like osbuddy and runelite are still allowed? AHK offers much less of an advantage than those cheat clients and made the game playable for people with chronic wrist pain such as myself. Although the game has made improvements to compensate for its banning, it's still not the same, and I never found your post about it to be an adequate explanation other than just pandering to the people who didn't understand it and complained about it.

It was being abused to another level which had to be stopped. We only really took action against very few extreme examples of it. Osbuddy was allowed as it was developed by an employee who had permission from the CEO and Runelite was too popular to stop. In my mind both clients make the game less fun, but that is just me.

[Mat K 173]

On 8/20/2020 at 1:33 AM, Null said:

You are a legend Mat, thanks for doing this  ?

Any cool stories of players doing things they shouldn't or getting to places they weren't meant to be that the community hasn't heard about over the years? 

There was one guy in 2008-ish who had 20 phat sets, hundreds of masks and santas and 5 crackers who got banned as he was in the trading screen with an RWTer. Bet he was pissed.

Ever been recognised in the streets by players outside of runefest and stuff? If so does it bother you or has it been a positive thing for you?

I have, many times. I think it is really cool and I always make time to talk to them as I think it is important to give a good experience.

Apart from the removal of the Wilderness, the Grand Exchange and EoC, what would you say was the most game changing update to the game before Rs3?

Summoning as that fundamentally changed how you did everything.

 

 

[Mat K 173]

On 8/20/2020 at 1:43 AM, Victory said:

The only thing that matters is do you like chicken nuggets my man

?

Not really, sorry.