New player here. I’ll share my experience.
Definitely the new player tutorial could be improved. It took me like a week to learn you can teleport, and while I generally didn’t understand the game loop and how I should progress, I learned by trying new dungeons and getting creamed sometimes. The godlands were a fearful thing until I realized it was better to wait until level 20.
Also, marks are confusing because you feel like you should keep them but you quickly run out of room. It especially stinks when you have to get rid of a mark from a difficult dungeon. Now I’ve realized that I should just do the Run the Table quest for the treasure map and then use that when the quest for the golden effigy mark is available. Otherwise I mostly only have time and space for scouting missions. I agree with others that getting rid of marks in inventory or at least letting them stack would be a huge improvement.
The discussion about Discord is really strange to me. I don’t really engage with game communities much (I do creep forums a lot) because I play at odd hours and the vast majority of game communities tend to be extremely whiny and negative. I’ve only read a few posts here on realmeye and I keep seeing doom and gloom stuff about how the game has gone downhill, the devs don’t care, mindless discord dungeon raiding is ruining the game, etc. I’m not saying these opinions are without at least some basis (particularly for veterans who know how the game has changed throughout its life), but it’s so pervasive here and in other communities that if I actually took them seriously I would practically play nothing.
Anyways, I haven’t noticed the discord raids as affecting my personal play. I mostly solo or have one or two people randomly accompany me at times. Sometimes a large group of people (Discord?) start entering the realm saying “taken?” and then pretty soon the realm gets cleared and I finally get to do an Oryx run (although I’ve done O1 solo a couple times which was a nice learning experience). I’m starting to like Oryx runs now that I understand them better. A big group is a bit too easy and it’s hard to tell what is going on, so it is a bit boring. But now that I understand that it’s a competition to get SB damage and to try to get the most damage on O2, it has become a bit thrilling in its own right. I do like the rush of charging the castle and making it to the guardians first, and the scramble to do damage to O1 in time. I like trying to dip in and get enough damage to achieve SB on O2, and look forward to when I become skilled enough to deal the crucial damage. I’ve done the first half of O3 but have never managed soulbound damage and only tried and died to O3 once. I wish there was a way to solo so I can learn those fights better!
I recently learned that I can switch servers when the one I play on is dead. Wow, what a new experience! On my server there is normally just a few players when I am on, and I get to experience one or two raids maybe. On USwest and EUwest the action is almost nonstop! It’s a little boring doing Oryx 1-2 constantly, but I’ve been doing it for 2 days because the increase in my rate of earning Bxp is so dramatic. I wish I had found this out sooner because I could have done most of the battle pass in just a couple of weeks. I’m too late to get the coveted vault unlocked but oh well. Also, it is nice being able to run pretty much any dungeon I want. Before this it could take me like a week to complete my godlands collection because library, puppet, or mad lab wouldn’t drop. In the busy servers, dungeons are constantly being called.
Overall, Discord raids don’t really interfere with my gameplay and I’ve never been asked to leave a dungeon because I don’t meet “reqs”.
Lastly, the only main complaint I have about RotMG is that I find the chat absolutely shocking. I’ve never played a game with such a confluence of inappropriate usernames and foul language in chat. Is there literally no moderation?? Also, I find it discouraging that if someone dies that several people will laugh and call them failures. Maybe it is supposed to be funny, but it makes me feel wretched knowing that so many people will call me a failure if I die.
On the flip side, there does seem to be a decent amount philanthropic players who are nice to beginners. Two different times when I was a beginner, another player gifted me nice items unprovoked. Someone gave me a T6 ring, how nice!
TLDR: The tutorial needs to be improved, marks need to be improved, I wish there was a way to practice O2-O3 with less people so that you can learn the fight, and there needs to be better moderation of chat because currently it is appalling.
PS: While I think that a lot of the store prices are ridiculously high, I am pleasantly surprised by the fact that this game doesn’t feel pay-to-win at all. In just two months I’m almost ready to fuse the perfect pet to legendary, thanks in part to the absolutely generous login rewards.
