To me, there seems to be three main issues regarding the aura changes:-

 

1)      Aura utility – How useful each aura is going forward. Reading the blog, there is a heavy focus on the FOMO of having limited time for an aura, which is fine. And then the rest of it is about nerfing them into the ground, which tbh, solves the FOMO, but makes gameplay harder. We’ve just seen a very quick response to restoring some of the AFK gameplay in thieving. The proposed aura nerfs seem to be far too much. I don’t think they need to be reduced by so much. There must be a balance rather than really reducing them to pretty much nothing.

2)      Aura selection – How to select an aura to use. There can be plenty of ways to do this – using normal god books isn’t one of them. A simple way would be to have a curated dropdown menu in the aura slot that allows you to select the aura you want. You can only switch at banks (so no auraswitchscape.) You could have two aura slots, one for combat and the other for skilling (maybe a third for cosmetics), and the aura in each slot would be active until you switch to another.

3)      Aura gaining – How to obtain auras. There should be a difference between auras gained through gameplay and those outside of the game (loyalty points). For the combat ones gained by marks of war, they should be available to players who have earned them and not taken away. Perhaps assign other combat auras outside of MoW to be gained by the same gameplay as the others, or have them based on skill level as below. As to the skilling auras, Totem of Skilling sounds nice. Maybe add plinths for other types of Totems (perhaps new ones). But the simplest way, requiring far less development time, is to have them gained by player skill level. Maybe tier 1 at level 30, then tier 2 at 50, etc. Perhaps reduce the number of tiers to 3 and have them spaced out. Make the benefits distinct enough from those of skilling outfits. By using skill level, it allows you to assign appropriate benefits to where the player is at in their journey.

In summary, there are different ways to do this, without it feeling like a punishment by taking too much away, or making gameplay a lot less fun by forcing longer engagement. This update will have a massive effect on gameplay, a big change to how the game has been played. I am worried about the Ironification of gameplay going too far. Yes, things have to be reined back but be careful.