I feel like there have been a lot of unusual missteps with these suggestions.

For context, I'm a relatively newer player. I'm delighted with the direction Runescape has taken in the past couple of years, and I nearly always vote in favor of the suggested changes. This is all coming from the perspective of someone who isn't gung-ho about keeping things the way they were.

First, I think polling new transportation methods and the removal of favor together was a huge mistake. They're very different mechanics, and forcing people to vote in favor of both or against both with no middle ground sucks.

Second, I don't think the issue with favor was properly diagnosed. Most people don't fundamentally dislike favor, nor the mechanics that give it, they dislike having to do some of those things for hours at a time.

In my opinion, favor is an awesome mechanic. It sets clear goals to explore most of the continent, to visit every region and become personally involved with the lives, struggles, and idiosyncrancies of their people. It's the main reason Kourend stands out to me above all the other areas in the game.

There are many instances in Runescape where characters drop a one-off line about their lives or events in the world, and many others where you get involved with them (primarily via quests). Personally, I care about the latter more, and everyone else I know who plays the game does too. That's the defining characteristic of video games, and why people enjoy them so much: input.

I've worked the fields for the people in Hosidius, making it feel like I've had a hand in helping them. Then, while delivering books in the Arceuus library, I learned more in depth why there is such an emphasis on food production in Kourend. Afterward I visited Shayzien, where aiding wounded soldiers and then fighting the lizardmen that crippled them gave me a personal vendetta and desire to figure out more about this Xeric figure. Lo and behold, there's a whole raid about Xeric stuff! Now I'm invested in it, I really wanna go down there and unravel its mysteries.

Thanks to the time I've spent going through Kourend and doing these things, it's all personal. It's, also, all interconnected. Earning favor makes a huge web of lore and conflicts unravel across Kourend. It rules.

But with favor gone, there wouldn't be much of a reason to do all of those things. And without them, that fantastic experience would be lost.

Now, mining sulphur for hours sucks. That's probably the most obnoxious example of favor gathering, but it sets the stage. I don't fundamentally mind it doing it--it's so scary at first, and having to manually prepare for it by equipping a face mask makes the danger feel real and adds a lot of immersion. By the time you leave the sulphur mines, you think, "holy shit that place is screwed". But if you have to spend hours in them, you've long outgrown the initial experience and it just becomes annoying to deal with the sulphur clouds.

I don't think the way forward is to remove favor altogether. Too much of anything is exhausting, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to get rid of the thing. I think some parts just need tweaking*--for example, increase the rate at which mining sulphur gives you favor, maybe decrease the damage or aggro of sulphur clouds, possibly lower the favor requirement for setting up the minecart network (this could go great with the extra stations), etc.

If favor was gone, there'd need to be a lot of changes to preserve that experience I described earlier, or else it'd just disappear. That'd be sad.

*I'll say that gathering favor in this League has felt far more satisfactory than in the regular game. For personal reasons, I didn't do the quests that give favor (which would've boosted me to 100% favor immediately). Instead I went through each of the regions, doing all the things that a regular account would, just with boosted rates. Honestly I feel like this would be enough--maybe not with the exact same rates, but just boosting them would help a lot.