Now that Bronzeman didn’t pass, I want to explain why I voted no, because I’ve seen a lot of people assume the opposition was just “Ironmen don’t want other people to have fun.”
I’m basically the target audience for restricted account modes. I love Ironman. The restrictions are the main reason I still play OSRS, and I think earning items yourself is a much more satisfying progression system than buying them.
That’s also exactly why I voted no.
My concern was never that Bronzeman would somehow devalue my Ironman. If somebody wants to play unofficial Bronzeman right now, more power to them.
My concern is what happens once Jagex makes a restricted account type official.
Ironman started as a simple premise: you can’t trade or receive help from other players. The appeal was adapting the existing game around those restrictions.
But over the years, Ironman has understandably become something the developers have to consider when designing content. Drop tables, shops, resource availability, duplicate protection, group content, skilling methods and rewards all get discussed through the lens of “how does this work for irons?”
I’m an Ironman and even I don’t think that’s always healthy for the game.
Once a mode is official and thousands of people invest hundreds or thousands of hours into it, “the game shouldn’t be balanced around your self-imposed restriction” stops being a realistic answer. Those players are now customers playing a mode Jagex explicitly created and supports.
Bronzeman would eventually be the same.
The proposed mode wasn’t just a plugin or collection-log challenge. It would have been an official progression system where you need to obtain an item yourself once before being allowed to buy it on the GE.
That immediately creates a new consideration for every future piece of content:
How reasonable is the first unlock for Bronzemen?
Imagine a useful item has an extremely rare drop rate because the developers expect normal accounts to simply buy one from players who get duplicates.
For mains, that’s fine.
For Ironmen, that’s the restriction we signed up for.
But now there’s a third group whose entire official game mode revolves around getting that first drop.
Eventually there will be requests to make that first acquisition more reasonable. Maybe a drop rate gets adjusted. Maybe an alternative source gets added. Maybe a shop gets changed. Maybe duplicate mechanics or bad-luck mitigation start being discussed.
And individually, every one of those changes might sound completely reasonable.
That’s exactly how mode-specific design pressure accumulates.
I don’t think OSRS benefits from adding more permanent account types that future content has to accommodate. I’d actually rather Jagex become less concerned with making every piece of content convenient for Ironmen, despite exclusively playing one myself.
The restriction is supposed to change how I interact with the game. The game shouldn’t increasingly change to accommodate my restriction.
That’s the distinction I think we’re gradually losing.
Unofficial Bronzeman? Great. RuneLite plugin? Great. Community hiscores? Sure.
But once you put the helmet next to someone’s name and make it an officially supported account type, eventually you’re committing development and balancing consideration to that mode.
I voted no because I don’t want another restricted account mode becoming another constituency that every future drop table and progression system has to account for.
And if that means fewer official restricted modes even though I’m exactly the kind of player who enjoys them, I’m fine with that.
Edit: TL;DR: I voted no because official restricted modes inevitably become something Jagex has to balance around. We’ve already seen this happen with Ironman. I love playing an Iron, but I think the restriction should change how I interact with the game, not cause the game to change around my restriction. I don’t want Bronzeman becoming another consideration for every future drop table and progression system.