Learning in RotMG

#1

Firstly, I want to address a few things before I start talking about the game.
I am not a veteran, let alone experienced player. I can’t solo Lost halls, I can’t solo Oryx 3. Hell I don’t even have a maxed character, just look at my graveyard.
While venting/ranting to my girlfriend about Rotmg, she told me to put my feedback and opinions in the forums for a discussion. (she also read through most of this and was the one who named it this title)
And finally, I don’t play production/regular Rotmg as much anymore but rather play on the testing servers because, perma-death is REALLY not my thing yet I really like to play this game.

Anyways, I want to talk about this “Curve” of “Deaths to Amount Learnt”. In the beginning of Rotmg, dying is well… Dying. Its painful, its punishing but the main point is that you learn from it. You learn firstly that dying is permanent, you then learn that dodging is fundamental in this game. You understand the game more while playing, you learn that there’s many different status effects, you learn how your class works and many more. But the further you progress in this game, the less meaning and less learnt these deaths have. Specifically these deaths start coming in the moment you start trying to max your character.

You start trying to do harder dungeons that are not at your level because you want to “speed things up” or “challenge yourself” but then you die to a random mechanic or random attack in the dungeon that kills you just because you didn’t understand/learnt the dungeon. The game actively enforces you to read up guides and then play the dungeons. While yes, it makes it so that its much more realistic to more real-life scenarios and also that it encourages u to not just stare at the game all the time. However, you’re punishing people who want to properly learn the layout, mechanics and how the dungeon works themselves. Like end-game dungeons, fine. Shatters, Lost Halls, Oryx 3, Fungal Cavern, clearly dungeons complicated and challenging to almost everyone and you should not attempt them without reading up a guide. But things like Abyss of Demons, Mad Lab. Hell even hard but “easy enough for you to leech on” (to speed up the process of maxing) dungeons like Tomb of the ancients or even The Nest. You want potions faster, you do it faster but at the same time you die more, and this dying doesn’t make u learn anything. Yeah sure, you can nexus at the right time but that’s not an excuse. You can’t blame people who didn’t know it was coming for not nexusing.

With things like that I also want to talk about the importance of visual representation in Rotmg which is something that honestly isn’t there for many of the older dungeons (I’m not sure about the newer ones). Like when I see something like Tomb, or Nest or even something as simple as the Godlands. There is no gage or no indication what attacks do how much damage. What attacks are status, what attacks don’t do much. You have these “3d attacks” with barely noticeable squares that splash and deal a bunch of damage. You have a potion in madlab, that drops itself and if you did not know that’s an attack you’re instantly dead, not to mention the tower looks the same as every other tower in other dungeons. And one of the few most infuriating and annoying are environmental hazards.

In my experience, Luckily, it wasn’t production rotmg. On the testing server, I was in Ice Cave. And of course, without much knowledge of the dungeon while sliding around, I was looking for a platform which I wouldn’t slide around in. So I stepped on this “Brighter ice platform” that looks like something u wouldn’t slide on. Didn’t give much thought, played the game. Look at my health bar… and it was an environmental hazard that was about to kill me, and because OF THE SLIDING I DIED BEFORE I COULD PROPERLY REACT. And this isn’t just exclusive to Ice Cave. Mad Lab has it too and even worse, this thing annihilates newer players. They walk in trying to dodge the projectiles thinking they would do damage. They get confused, they walk into the toxic waste. They PANIC EVEN MORE WHILE CONFUSED and then die cos the sewer waste does a more damage to players with lower health, without them knowing that the projectiles don’t do damage nor do they know it would confuse. There’s a lot of confusing things, that no one can differentiate without reading some guide or taking damage or dying for just a single bit of information.

#2

The point of games in the roguelike genre is that you die and learn and die and slowly get better. This is just how the game works. Next time you know not to step on the frost. Now since ROTMG is not a roguelike or lite in the strictest terms, but rather a permadeath game, this may be less evident. I think as an MMO ROTMG needs more beginner friendly mechanics, but as for having to read a guide before an endgame dungeon? No, the point of the game is to die a lot, not to beat something first try.

#3

I have a tough work schedule and other obligations like volunteering, startup, serving on a board, etc., so most of my time playing is when I can and by myself, so I don’t read guides or work with a group to coordinate doing things. Pretty much I’ve learned by dying, and if it’s a new dungeon I’ll use an unmaxed character with throwaway gear.

#4

Fairly long text wall BTW.

Summary

Well that’s all of us. And even pros who can solo LH or O3 were used to be like that as well.

No perma-death is only good for short term, but if you are talking about in long term, it ruins the game’s whole purpose and its health. Without dying, especially in conjuction with overpowered cheats, it can and will wreak havoc to the game balance.

For a new player, their 1st goal is to get a maxed character and keep it alive as long as they can. But yes, during the maxing process for the 1st time, they are likely to encounter increased fatality rate.

The first point you made right here, it happened to all of us and will affect future players. During O3’s 1st days, endgame players (who were experienced LH raiders) were also trying to figure out how to beat the boss, understanding the mechanics, correct ways to dodge attacks and so on. The cost however was massive, (tens of) thousands of characters were lost during the learning process.

Second point: There is no such thing as “pre-made” guides when a dungeon was freshly released. It’s all about players’ experiences, brainstorming possible strategies and mainly, deaths to solve the puzzle together.

Third point: When you are raiding an endgame dungeon that you are not familar with, do not expect that you will be able to walk out as one piece. Even with guides made by other players, they (the guides) only give you brief info about how does this work, how does that work. There is one thing though: personal experience is superior and it will always there to guide you.

4th point: Abby is not difficult to complete in normal speed, but rushing is quite dangerous. MLab is fine, though you do need to have a good Confuse controls, avoiding certain enemies and you’ll be fine. Actually, dying does help you to learn the process (well in some cases but they still can help). Rushing Tomb is dangerous but more forgiving than Abyss IMHO as you have more room to avoid the shots.

1st point: Hm…

2nd point: You have to take a hit or two from the respective attacks to see it yourself or you will never know. By knowing how strong the attacks are, you’ll at least try to dodge them instead of tanking them and getting clapped because of overconfidence.

3rd point: No it doesn’t. Dr Terrible does drop those nasty green potion but it is telegraphed when he is throwing one. And yes, I myself died to that Green potion one time as well. They deal 200 damage each with 6 splitting shots (in total it deals 1,200 damage). And what “tower” you are talking about?

First point: I assume that you stepped on to the Ice Hazard for more than 1 second or even more than 1 tick of the damage. If you stepped the Ice just once, you should know that it inflicts 60 Armor Piercing damage. And beside, were you using fresh level 20 character when you were exploring Ice Cave?

Second point: For me when I encountered Confused for the 1st time as a noob, it didn’t went well for me either. I do remember that when I was soloing Manor (it have enemies that inflicts Confused), the bats got me panicked as I was retreating from Ruthven. I pressed “Down” to back off but then it made me go leftward and got insta-killed by him at the end.

The 1st time I experienced that death, I was dumbfounded and shocked. Eventually, I figured out the correct way to tackle Confused: especially “Press A to go back if you get Confused”.

Third point: You do got that point there.

Lastly: While perma-death is harsh and punishing especially on a good character, it does allow replayablity and increase its longevity in the long run.

Final point: I strongly encourage you to reconsider your playing habit. Playing only on Testing means that you are severely limiting your gameplay as it is only open for 2-3 days. After that time is up, you won’t be able to access again until few weeks or months. That’s all I have to say.

#5

Honestly, what I’m gathering here is that you are a beginner with skill issues. Everyone was once a beginner with skill issues. We all thought that mad lab was a really hard dungeon once upon a time, and we all panicked when we got debuffed with confused long ago. Everything in the game was once new to all of us. You complain about many things that I did, 7 years ago. Realm of the mad god is not rocket science, and it never will be, no matter how many new dungeons are added. You either learn it and love it, or mald and rage quit. Nobody comes into rotmg as a godlike savant, everyone started as a rank zero wizard on the beach who died to a fucking hobbit mage in the lowlands. The best advice from me to you would be to just play the game and if you die, don’t die the same way again. The people who write guides on dungeons did not have prior information. They dived in blind. To me, complaining about “random mechanics” is a baseless complaint.

#6

If you don’t like roguelike and permadeath games, then stay away from Realm of the Mad God because this is a very, very punishing game. You’re going to put dozens of hours into a character and lose it to not paying attention for a few seconds. And I completely understand that this doesn’t appeal to a lot of people, some might like this and some don’t and that’s fine.

I believe testing isn’t always open, so you’ll eventually have to take a step in the real game. If you’re still willing to try out the game, I can give you a few tips.

You are talking about not many things giving an indication about how much damage something does and this is true for almost everything in the game besides exploding things. You’ll just have to learn about every enemy, dungeon, obstacle or liquid by getting hit by them. Trust me, everyone’s graveyard is a MESS when they’re first starting out.

Dying is part of the game and that’s something you have to understand in order to enjoy the game. You’re going to die, a lot. But because dying is part of the game you shouldn’t beat yourself up about it. See it as a lesson, you died to a medusa spell bomb? Well, try to be careful around medusas and dodge her red bomb as much as possible! You die to a weird patch of ice, next time don’t step on the ice.

(I’m bad at typing long texts, if you’re still reading I hope it’s readable lmao)

The next thing is the “Pay to Play/Win” aspect of Realm. Having multiple character slots and some extra vault space HELPS TREMENDOUSLY. Of course these things cost money and that’s not something everyone’s willing to spend on a free game. Especially if they don’t like perma death.

So, if you’re enjoying the game and you’re willing to “enhance your experience” or “make it a little easier”, buy that beginner pack, a character slot or vault container pack. It helps!

And finally, if you ever need help with anything or you don’t know how something works, just ask around. The community might seem a little toxic sometimes, but there’s so many kind souls playing this game that are definitely willing to help you out and answer your questions.

Goodluck!

#7

I’m not going to lie. As much as I like this game, I don’t think that I’d be as attracted to it had I not started all those years ago. I was often studious about watching others suffer before plunging in headfirst into something I didn’t understand (back then. Not anymore). However, this was still when the common population was still vastly inexperienced, and more of us were still trying to learn the game.

Hopping into Rotmg now with a bunch of existing experienced player “overlords” and, quite frankly, Discords, would probably make me frustrated as a new player, so I feel for you wanting to hurry up and get on par.

#8

This is something I must admit is a flaw in RotMG, a lack of properly, passively communicating danger to (especially new) players.
When you look at Enter the Gungeon for example, every enemy bullet is red. RotMG? Bullets range from massive firey balls to some that look exactly the same as some player shots. Yes realms bullet system is far more complex than Enter the Gungeon but danger should be obvious. There is a reason why lava is such a common dangerous liquid, it looks dangerous and is very commonly dangerous (and I still walked through it when I started).
Teaching players what is dangerous and what is not is very important, especially in a perma-death game, and realm doesn’t do this well in my opinion. I don’t see a way to change it and keep feeling similar to the way it is now though.

#9

They could showcase this in the /tutorial area which every new account is forced to do.

If they show examples of bosses, bullets, liquids and dangerous things like these it could possibly make things a little easier for beginners.

#10

Ok I need to address another thing, most of these arguments I have are directed to mid-game players, aka people who are trying to max out their first characters or a few and don’t have that much vault space or a good pet.

Next time you know not to step on the frost. Now since ROTMG is not a roguelike or lite in the strictest terms, but rather a permadeath game, this may be less evident.

Going back to the “Curve of Deaths to Amount Learnt”, deaths like that would result in barely anything learnt for the amount lost. If that was my only max’ed character, I would’ve lost almost everything for an incorrect visual assumption of the dungeon. Yes, you learn. But is it a fair amount? No. You don’t learn anything other than you goofed up and died to extremely stupid reasons.

as for having to read a guide before an endgame dungeon? No, the point of the game is to die a lot, not to beat something first try.

The first point you made right here, it happened to all of us and will affect future players. During O3’s 1st days, endgame players (who were experienced LH raiders) were also trying to figure out how to beat the boss, understanding the mechanics, correct ways to dodge attacks and so on. The cost however was massive, (tens of) thousands of characters were lost during the learning process.

Dying a lot to learn and dying a lot for nothing is 2 different things. Why die to some mechanic when you could’ve read through a guide. And more importantly, what you lose when you die is the most important factor. If you’re extremely end-game with 10 characters to spare, obviously you’d be okay with dying, but in scenarios where you only have 1 maxed character and you’re for example, leeching on Tomb and then you die because you didn’t know a certain attack would kill you. You’re not learning for the amount lost and therefore the death is unfair.

Third point: When you are raiding an endgame dungeon that you are not familiar with, do not expect that you will be able to walk out as one piece. Even with guides made by other players, they (the guides) only give you brief info about how does this work, how does that work. There is one thing though: personal experience is superior and it will always there to guide you.

4th point: Abby is not difficult to complete in normal speed, but rushing is quite dangerous. MLab is fine, though you do need to have a good Confuse controls, avoiding certain enemies and you’ll be fine. Actually, dying does help you to learn the process (well in some cases but they still can help). Rushing Tomb is dangerous but more forgiving than Abyss IMHO as you have more room to avoid the shots.

I agree with this statement (the third point), experience will beat any guide. However, the problem is that the experience is extremely hard to get for people without enough characters or vault spaces. With only 1 good character, they can become paranoid. So rather than learning they are nexusing the moment something looks scary. How am I suppose to learn something as simple as Abyss of demons when the demons are charging up at my face and dealing more than 200 damage. Do you want me to die or do you want me to die trying. And you know how I end up learning? Leeching. Hell even the testing server, I’ve never truly experienced how fun it was when everything didn’t threaten your life.

2nd point: You have to take a hit or two from the respective attacks to see it yourself or you will never know. By knowing how strong the attacks are, you’ll at least try to dodge them instead of tanking them and getting clapped because of overconfidence.

Yeah I did that for Crystal Worm Father. And Died. Twice. What did I learn the first time? “Do not go to the Dwarf Miner event ever, even if you’re leeching.” Second time? “DON’T EVEN IF YOU GOT BETTER AT THE GAME”

3rd point: No it doesn’t. Dr Terrible does drop those nasty green potion but it is telegraphed when he is throwing one. And yes, I myself died to that Green potion one time as well. They deal 200 damage each with 6 splitting shots (in total it deals 1,200 damage). And what “tower” you are talking about?

image

First point: I assume that you stepped on to the Ice Hazard for more than 1 second or even more than 1 tick of the damage. If you stepped the Ice just once, you should know that it inflicts 60 Armor Piercing damage. And beside, were you using fresh level 20 character when you were exploring Ice Cave?

Its a bit hard to know when you weren’t thinking its an environmental hazard. I’m in the mindset of finding a platform cos being in a slippery situation sucks and many other games have it that way. Who knew they were literally environmental hazard.

The best advice from me to you would be to just play the game and if you die, don’t die the same way again. The people who write guides on dungeons did not have prior information. They dived in blind. To me, complaining about “random mechanics” is a baseless complaint.

Just because you’ve accepted that these things exist and they will continue to be a thing for everyone only avoids the problem. Nobody wants to die for stupid reasons. You want to learn how confused works? Simple, make it so that you’re not instantly killed for it like in Mad Lab.

You are talking about not many things giving an indication about how much damage something does and this is true for almost everything in the game besides exploding things. You’ll just have to learn about every enemy, dungeon, obstacle or liquid by getting hit by them.

Isn’t that bad

Dying is part of the game and that’s something you have to understand in order to enjoy the game. You’re going to die, a lot. But because dying is part of the game you shouldn’t beat yourself up about it. See it as a lesson, you died to a medusa spell bomb? Well, try to be careful around medusas and dodge her red bomb as much as possible! You die to a weird patch of ice, next time don’t step on the ice.

The point of this entire thread is about unfair deaths that don’t contribute to learning and other visual errors, I obviously respect deaths that give me a lot of information. However, this “Curve of death to learning” provides issues which I’m going to address in the last paragraph.

The next thing is the “Pay to Play/Win” aspect of Realm. Having multiple character slots and some extra vault space HELPS TREMENDOUSLY. Of course these things cost money and that’s not something everyone’s willing to spend on a free game. Especially if they don’t like perma death.

That was actually originally going to be the last point but I forgotten about it.

Anyways, I want to emphasize something I did not during the original argument that made many things unclear. In this “Deaths to Learning” Curve, The more deaths you have, the less you learn from each death. When you’re trying to get to level 20, your deaths give you A LOT of information. At the end-game with many characters to spare, you can sacrifice characters just for small bits of information like dungeon learning. However, the main problem is mid-game. Essentially people trying to max a singular character who don’t have much characters slots or vault chests to depend on. There’s no throwaway gear, there’s nothing you can lose for something else.

When you get 1 maxed character, you can literally use it to max other characters, but without one, that one character you’re trying to max becomes the only thing you have in the game and this is where deaths become unfair. I lost a 4/8 sorceror to the horrific creation because my usual strat of luring it into the green liquid doesn’t 1 shot me and I accidentally goofed up because my health wasn’t enough? What did I learn, nothing. I lost a 1/8 Sorceror to a tomb attacker (honestly I don’t even remember), what did I learn? nothing. I lost an Archer to a Hermit Minion, learnt nothing. I lost a warrior to a green potion, nothing. All these deaths, I learnt nothing for so much. I don’t have any extra characters, extra gear, extra anything and my account has NOTHING as we speak. And this is why I stopped playing production realm and decided to start playing in testing servers. I don’t want to play a game that I genuinely enjoy with death looming everywhere and such a hard climb for me to even start properly enjoying it.

Hopping into Rotmg now with a bunch of existing experienced player “overlords” and, quite frankly, Discords, would probably make me frustrated as a new player, so I feel for you wanting to hurry up and get on par.

and honestly I’m happy that someone even understands this. I don’t want to be stuck an infinite loop of grinding potions and dying while grinding said potions. I want to start properly playing the game. I want to learn dungeons like Abyss or Mad Lab without dying to incredibly stupid mechanics and lose everything. Hell, one day I genuinely want to try out lost halls. But I’m never going to reach it I keep dying without learning anything.

#11

I would like to start by saying I feel you. I quit about 3 years ago because I felt I had peaked, and it wasn’t worth the effort to try and accomplish the milestones I had yet to reach (never an 8/8, maxed (at least legendary) pet, doing voids/mbcs, etc. I am by no means a pro now (feel free to peep my graveyard, I still die stupidily), but I have accomplished at least these.

Deca does seem to be working on telegraphing things like explosions and I think work is being done to help telegraph the relative danger of attacks.

In the meantime:
Regarding godlands dungeons (everything from snake pit to Ddocks/cdepths), if you are alone I’m sure you’ve somewhat figured out, but the best way to learn these is to poke and retreat, never stick yourself too far into a room. Learn what each shot and enemy does safely…
With that being said, the best way to learn almost any dungeon is with a smaller group (this scales as difficulty of dungeon increases from say 2-3 in a sprite to probably 20-30 in something like void). If you can, join a voice chat with your friends, guild mates, or a raiding discord. Even if you can’t, feel free to ask players in game what you should watch out for :slightly_smiling_face:. At the very least, try to observe to some extent what it is “the group” is doing/avoiding.

Some Qol things that might help you on your journey:

  • Turn off ally projectiles (and damage) in options. These really clutter up the screen and having ally damage off will let you know when you are hitting in order to get sb (this should be your focus over getting the most damage while you learn :grimacing:)

  • Related: turn down player opacity (you can turn it down below 50% in registry editor); maybe keep locked players/guilford in full view and lock people who you observe to be good, so you can follow/learn from them.

  • Have hp bars on (for yourself at least) and when trying something new, fight the urge to focus soley on the next thing ahead of you/what you are trying to kill. Make sure you focus on the area immediately around you so you can improve your dodging and be more mindful of your hp :slightly_smiling_face:. This was a big one for me. As you get more comfortable with patterns, you can focus more on what exactly you are shooting and in turn doing things more effeciently. This would have helped a lot with the ice, for example.

So one thing to take away from this is events and godlands dungeons DO hurt if you don’t have maxed def. If you to to an event, don’t be scared to use the invulnerability you get to nexus. Sometimes people are very reckless rushing and many abuse their own invulnerability frames.

Final pont: deaths, especially on better/more maxed characters death itself does help you advance. Fame is pretty valuable in this game and contributes to the most consistent form of advancement, leveling your pet :slightly_smiling_face:

I hope this helps and happy realming :blush:

#12

Honestly, seems like you hate the difficulty of the game. But you should know two things:

Most of the things that one shot you/ shred your health are intended
A few years ago when pets were at their peak, it was pretty hard to die from normal enemies with divine pets, to a point where you can dance in a crowd of gods without worrying about your health. That’s why oryx 2’s infamous sun phase is essentially death when face tanking one big bullet, abyss and sews have armor piercing shotguns, charging enemies in the nest, shatters, and wooden labyrinth one shot, and yes, even the potions were meant to one shot you.

RotMG is insanely hard, like, ridiculously hard
Even when the game started, ghost gods still had 150 damage shotguns. Don’t expect to become a master of this game in one day like other games. This is even harder than Dark Souls, which at least has checkpoints, or Hardcore Minecraft, which doesn’t have as much bs. If you want satisfaction easily, RotMG is not the game for you.

However, I can provide some solutions I learned over the year:

Have some experience in the genre
Rotmg is a bullet hell rogue-like mmorpg. This includes dodging bullets, guaranteed death, interacting with other players, and choosing a character. Perhaps play other games of a similar genre (personally I suggest The Binding of Isaac: Repentance or Enter the Gungeon: Farewell to Arms). You will probably enjoy those more than RotMG, if you still like RotMG, revisit the game after playing less punishing games. This is because those games will help sharpen your. . .

Reaction timing
This is a major part of a bullet hell, especially one like RotMG, you won’t know when an enemy charges you offscreen, and you have to nexus. Your Hp is about to die, nexus. Nexusing is your safe haven, so use it, even if you miss out on loot. This also applies to hp pots, which you spam if you’re low on health. Reaction timing also helps figuring out boss phases, allowing you to adapt to situations. Those who have the fastest thinking and quick hands usually rush. You don’t need to rush, actually you should do the opposite:

Tread Carefully
This is probably what you need the most. There are thousands of dungeons in Realm, each with their own gimmicks, and it’s impossible to learn all of them in minutes, whether through guides or brief interactions. Thus stay back when enemies burst out of doorways, carefully inspect the suspicious piles of bones, or the group of tiles that’re colored differently (which you shouldn’t assume to be safe). The outer realms might have tiles variation for aesthetics, but definitely not in dungeons. You would’ve probably saved yourself if you backed off when the potion bomb of soaring through the air, backed off when the potion appeared on the floor, and backed off when the potion exploded. With the windup to the whole attack, don’t treat the boss like it’s an erratic treasure chest. Things that look dangerous are probably dangerous. When I fought the reworked snake pit boss, the moment I got chained hit, I freaked out and backed off. If you like speedy/permanent progression, this is also not the game for you. However, if you proceed with caution, you’ll gather up…

Experience
Not the fame, its gaming experience. Learn the dungeons, then you can clear faster, and even skip the enemies. Staying with the crowd who is experience is also “gaining experience”. Joining the clump of realmers allows you to be reckless. That Hermit Minion wouldn’t have killed you if you killed the surrounding enemies. Looking at my graveyard, I had a ton of 0/8 deaths, a couple of 4/8s, and even 4 8/8s. The death’s even the stupid ones, forced me to be less stupid. However, what if experience doesn’t help…

Play in Optimal Condition
Don’t play while late at night, or going to work. Being distracted will make you forget all prior experience, and stupidly die to the same thing.

If all else fails, quit or hate DECA for their poor programming.

#13

I want to quickly interject this to notify you that O2 was made prior to pets being the health/mana deliverers they are today. Wild Shadow’s immaculate design of “make boss always fire shotgun irregardless of health or phase” never ceases to amaze.

#14

You typed out a giant wall of text, but I do not have low attention span so it’s actually enjoyable.

First things first, early, mid, and late game in RotMG has drastically changed. I would consider maxing your first character to be part of early game, as maxing your character doesn’t particularly take a lot of skill. Before exaltations were added, maxing characters was early late game, but, well, like I said, stuff is different.

Of course it isn’t fair. I lost my first 1/8 to lag. Did I complain? Yes. Did I smash my desk? Yes. Did I quit? No. If anything, dying on a good character tells me that I have to get a better character so I won’t die the same shitty way again. Also, you might have heard this a lot: life isn’t fair. Look at this planet. You have people burning money in their fireplace, and people who eat mud because there’s nothing else to eat. Life is not fair. Life is never fair. Get used to it and mald less.

Not sure if you read my post, but when a dungeon is first released, even people who had played the game since the God Whip was still a thing would have to learn it for the first time. Additionally, RotMG is not a game with a bunch of mechanics that are hidden under variables. You dodge the bullets, you shoot enemies, and you get white bags. Now you might say that I have a blasé attitude because I have played this game for a long time, but even 8 years ago, I did not complain about “mechanics”, because the mechanics are extremely straightforward. Your complaint is extremely baseless and if anything, shows a lack of common sense. Also, just wanted to say that I did not have a second or third character slot until earlier this month.

Abyss of demons is an extremely easy dungeon that I can clear on a fresh level 20. Also, no enemy in the abyss of demons has a projectile that can do 200 damage. You are way too stressed about a low tier dungeon, no wonder you complain about dungeons that are slightly more difficult.

That is RotMG. You can spend a year to build the best character in the game, and die in under a second when you looked away. My priest today almost died to a garnet statue because I stood too close to it when it charged at me. If nothing were able to kill you, the game won’t be fun and there would be no point in playing.

When I first returned to the game last year, I went to that event and I actually was like “holy shit what the fuck” and actively avoided it for months. Now when I see it, I just dodge. I get hit sometimes, but not enough for me to panic and nexus. Fungal caverns? No sweat. Crystal caverns? Just don’t get popped by bats and you’re ok. Pretty good loot, actually.

And when is a death fair? Do you think that my 8/8 trickster that died to a fucking library bookwyrm was a fair death? Cause I certainly didn’t. Oh, but did I post a baby rage thread about it? No. I just made another trickster and played like normal. Now my trickster is close to hitting top 100, sorted by base fame. I also had to suicide my 8/8 huntress, all because I wanted to play archer instead and didn’t have another character slot. Is that supposed to be fair? Well, it ain’t, but I swallowed it and moved on.

If this is true for you, you are just dying in the same way over and over again, which means that you have actually never learned a single thing. When my 8/8 trickster got popped in lib, I learned to not walk on library bookwyrms, because they can, and will, kill you instantly. And I never sat on one ever again. You see, even a boomer like me can learn something. And I didn’t learn less from that death, I learned something completely new.

It can make you feel inferior, but who gives a fuck if somebody has better characters or whatever the fuck? Focus on yourself and making your shit better. People can flex their stupid shit on me all they want, I don’t give a fuck how many crowns they got. I don’t even have a single one. I want one, but being jealous isn’t going to get me one. Getting flexed on isn’t going to get me one. The only way to get one, is to fucking get one. And for you, complaining about not having a maxed character isn’t going to get you a fucking 8/8 character. The only way to get an 8/8 is to fucking get an 8/8.

I’m going to be real with you, Hellblabe. You have skill issues. Learn the game and play the game like everyone else that is a “good player”. You can’t be a good player without being a bad player first, but you can’t be a good player either if all you do is complain about “random mechanics” and “unfair deaths”, because guess what? Every single fucking RotMG player has experienced “random mechanics” and had “unfair deaths”. And to be quite frank with you, some of your complaints are things that I never thought people complained about, quite literally because it’s common sense. You complain about abyss of demons, which would’ve been a fair complaint before DECA remade it. You complain about Dr Terrible’s potions and turrets, but to be frank with you, that’s not even a good complaint. If a boss throws down something, you wouldn’t expect for it to be beneficial for you, would you? You complain that beginners aren’t given note of environmental hazards or enemy projectiles, but when I played this game, back in grade five, I didn’t complain about either of these. If a medusa shot me or bombed my ass, I took note of how much damage it does, and I took note of what shots I’d rather tank and what shots I should dodge. I would sometimes go “wow that does a lot of damage,” but I didn’t complain about how I didn’t know. You don’t have to know. it’s a fucking bullet hell. Dodge the bullets.

Here’s a tip for you: play Touhou. See how much damage any of the bullets do.

#15

Small misunderstanding. While there’s no such thing as a 200 damage projectile in Abyss, OP is right about a demon that charges at you doing over 200 raw damage. Brutes shoot a 3 bullet shotgun that deal 100 damage each, usually coming in groups. A player that lacks dps, survivability or piercing can’t charge in (I assume Hellblabe does that, considering his deaths), and has to circle/retreat.

#16

The old O2 still terrifies me every time I see him in Battle for the Nexus. I love what they did with the rework. I remember back when I started the game I wasn’t even confident enough to get a spellbomb to hit, let alone anything else. And even then there were some legends who would go up and sun him… Unreal.

#17

Just note: I think its better I reply with 1 huge post regarding the general topic than every single reply

Not everyone can take as much loss as someone like you. You have to understand that this isn’t just me “complaining cos I died”, I’m saying this because I’m tired of people who just say “If you don’t like this, beef up or just quit.”, “How about you stop complaining and just quit the game. Its clearly not your type.”, “People like you who can’t tolerate any loss are not welcomed in this game”. I like Rotmg, I like its unique RPG style, gameplay and everything. I like its world, I like its dungeons, I like quite a lot of concepts. However the community has an obsession over dying. Wherever I go, Whenever I go. There’s always someone who is super supportive of permadeath and that it is a flawless mechanic. While yes, Permadeath is essential for this game to survive but when its pushing players away from the game, with the community’s support AT THE EARLY GAME (you said maxing your first character is early game). The game actively pushes early-game players like me away from Rotmg and so does its Community. And what I cannot tolerate is that members of this community acknowledge absolute flaws in game design as something that is beneficial or traditional for the game.

Life is unfair, but games shouldn’t try to be unfair, ESPECIALLY NOT IN THE EARLY GAME. By being unfair, you’re actively pushing away players like me. I genuinely enjoy the game but the climb becomes so ridiculously hard and painful that its not worth it. In late game, you decide to play unfair with your pet stasis and armor breaks. Fine, these are people pushing the limits of the game and will stop at nothing.

When I mean you learn less the more you die, I mean that you’re trading hours spent into a character for a simple sentence like “tearing frost is an environmental hazard”. The people who were figuring out how Oryx 3 works didn’t have much to lose in the first place. But Early game isn’t like Late game or mid game even. Early game is meant to learn as much as you can about the mechanics and everything. But when that process involves unfairness and consumes A LOT OF TIME, do you really think players can deal with that non-stop? You can swallow extremely hard, but most can’t and the community needs to accept that. Even the late-game players can quit after losing a few super rare UTs.

And I am not without reason too, (sadly I couldn’t add this paragraph cos I didn’t felt it was right to talk about it for some reason) there are many problems that can be identified and solved. Environmental hazards being too deadly and visually confusing? Retexture and make the damage percentage based rather than an actual number. This would make it so that early-game environmental hazards are not an extreme threat to players but they will still act as a nuisance and also it can sometimes force risk taking, A level 20 archer gets slapped into the toxic waste of Mad Lab won’t kill them instantly but it gives them enough time to quickly get back on.

You want to introduce new enemies or new mechanics? Make them appear in early game or make an “Introduction room”. Example Madlab does this somewhat well. It forces everyone to step in the blue liquid regardless. Ice cave absolutely did it the worst due to mindset. In Ice Cave you would want to find a non-sliding platform to stand on so when you see something that is differently textured you’d think that way because that was how other games did it. But no its an environmental hazard. Hell even give them a signal that they are walking on an environmental hazard, health is important but dodging is much more important than staring at the health bar 24/7. I look at it once I get hit, not when I’m trying to dodge. And if you want to make new enemies or new mechanics that haven’t been explored until late game? Make players encounter them through easier dungeons or even the realm.

Something that I realized is that you’re not really encouraged to do dungeons in the early game. The game doesn’t reward you for doing early-game dungeons almost at all, and you’re not even encouraged to do them when you start. And to counter that, you can put more of those enemies in the realm. Honestly the overworld has a lot of enemies that teach you quite a fair bit. The Dragon, The Sludge, The Swarm, The Bees, Deathmage, Greatcoil snake, Lich, Ent. But despite this, there’s still a huge gap between what Abyss throws at you versus what you learnt from the realm. And honestly, make dungeons more rewarding. Make it drop generally better gear, hell I’d argue that the Hive is literally one of the worst dungeons to even start playing, Forbidden Jungle being better but not very good and with the new snake pit. I think that its doing quite a good job at teaching new players.

If you want to punish players using rushing enemies such as in Abyss of Demons, you need to consider what the player loses and if they have learnt previously. You shouldn’t say and enforce “Death is the way you learn.” You should rather say “Death is the punishment of not learning.” and actually implement it. If there’s a way to prevent someone from dying while still learning, it should be implemented. This community actively encourages people to die and I honestly am sick of it and I want it to change, because this is more than just a complain. It is a potential reason why we don’t have more players. If so many players are leaving in the early-game, what’s the point? “Eliminating the weak and letting the strong to play”? Comparing this to TouHou is comparing an Onion to a Potato. They’re both vegetables, but they don’t taste, look or even cook the same. Tou hou is single player which has no harsh punishment for losing or dying. You just simply lose the level and try again. There is a lot of psychology to it that makes TouHou quite popular. Unlike Rotmg, TouHou’s movement is 20 times easier to control since its usually done with a mouse (sometimes keyboard but mostly mouse). It is single player, and whenever a true-bullet hell moment happens, usually its just "find the right spot to dodge, and dodge extremely carefully and slowly with abilities that help clear the screen. And one final thing is that Touhou has different difficulties. Playing Touhou and playing Rotmg is so different that you honestly can’t compare it. It looks the same but fundamentally they are not.

#18

Permadeath is what is unique about rotmg, and from my experience it isn’t what pushes players away but what makes them sure they keep coming back for more. I hate to be that guy but if you just spend 30 minutes reading the wiki about some dungeons you should be fine. I’m sorry you died in an ice cave, and believe me, deaths hurt. 4 years ago when I was 8 I would cry over every death and “quit the game” for a day or two each time. But the permadeath aspect is what kept me coming back and wanting to do better. You just gotta get used to dying and you will be in a much better place. Now whenever I die or even get I white bag I don’t really care, I just say “oh that’s a bummer” and move on.

#19

I get it, this game isnt all too fair as others gave said. Bogus deaths suck, but you are really making a mountain of a molehill here. Unless you turned off damage indicators, then damaging terrain should have plenty of notifying when you are on it. Abyss is also probably the hardest non epic glands dungeon, and it takes after some of the others. Learn sprite/snake, then udl/mwoods, then lib/sew, and lastly theatre/abby. Death is really not much of a punishment early game either, at worst its no more than an hour or 2 of progress. Gear lost is usually little, and maxing can suck, but as around for people to help maxing and you may get some people to join dungeons, sometimes even giving you their pot drops if they are generous. The game will feel unfair, and in sone regards it is, but as you play more and get better, looking back you’ll realize how big a deal you are making over this essential step of progression in skill.

#20

Actually, you’re wrong. None of my characters are replacable. I’m not a super fucking rich player who has 600 dupes of every item in the game. I play carefully and try not to die and lose my shit.

And you’re wrong again. I met a random blue star a couple weeks ago and I didn’t have vault space, so I gave him some random tops. Added on discord and stuff like that and played with him. Now he has like, 2 8/8 chracters and shit. Maxing is not a monumental task. If you’re really seriously that shit at maxing a character, DECA has provided you with instant max candies.

Enough with the environmental hazard complaints. I’ve never heard anyone complain about fucking damaging tiles because everyone fucking notices that you take fucking damage when you step on the motherfucking tearing frost, except for you. When I came back to play, ice cave was reworked. And I stood in the tearing frost, and immediately told my friend that “these damaging tiles are so fucking dumb”. Even when I was 10 years old, I noticed my stupid shitty character taking damage when I stood on the water in DD. Nobody complains about the environmental hazards because it’s so obvious that you’re taking damage from them.

Stop dying. Did you unbind your nexus key? You don’t always have to die to learn, you can save your ass, nexus, and understand why you nexused. You said yourself that nobody blames people when they nexus, so why the fuck do you choose death over nexusing?

No. I dont know if you’re playing on some dead server like USE4, but people always call dungeons, there’s a good chance that a group of ppl clearing the dungeon or that a rusher is rushing. And you either go with the group or leech the rusher. Tp to the boss, fucking hit the boss, and get your white bag or whatever. Even me 7 years ago knew how to do this. The realm really does not teach players anything. Really, the most punishing place in the realm is the glands, where red stars die level 1 to a medusa bomb every day. And yes, early game dungeons are not rewarding, and that’s not okay, but at the same time, you can just leech gland dungeons. I’m not condoning leeching, I really hate them, but if you’re that bad at the game then you should just leech abyss. However, the game actually does somewhat encourage you to do shit dungeons like pcave, and forest maze via the daily quest. Obviously, the chest you get from doing these quests ain’t gonna be good, but these are ridiculously easy dungeons you can beat on a fresh level 1 with t0 gear. If people got good shit and pots from easy dungeons, the only thing that would do is fuck up the economy even more. Also, spider den drops healing ichors, which are recommended to have.

Uhhh no. In Wlab, I would understand if boss 3rd phase was chase, you didn’t know, and the megamoth instantly jumped on you and popped you, because that is an instant kill, and even worse because you did not know about it. I’ve seen 8/8’s die to that. There really isn’t a warning to the megamoth’s jump, but once you see it, You know it ain’t good to sit on. However, we’re talking about a brute of the fucking abyss. Even with 0 defense, you won’t die when it fully shotguns you for 300 damage, if you’re level 20. Once you know that brutes charge you, just fucking move backwards.

It is. If you don’t learn shit, then you are gonna die the same comedic way every time.

We don’t. We say that you should capitalize on a tragedy such as the loss of a character (aka dying), but nobody ever said “he hellblabe, go fucking get ur character and sit on a fucking crusade LLLLLLLLL”. If you even know anything about the community, you would know that RL’s usually ask people to nexus, and they are always sorry for your loss.

You really know nothing about danmaku games. Touhou movement is keyboard. Even western danmaku games like DSW uses the keyboard. Also you’re missing the entire fucking point as to why I even brought up Touhou. Really tells me something.

Fundamentally they are. Touhou and Rotmg is like Wendy’s and McDonalds.

If you’re still complaining about abyss of demons, you really just need to git gud. If you don’t want to put in the time and effort to git gud, and instead making a baby rage thread about how shit is unfair, then go play the game and get a better grasp of things. When you are a better player, look back at this thread and see how much of a noob you were.

Right now, you really need to stop trying to give replies to this post, because every single one of us that replied to you, is more or less correct. Some of us played for years, and a lot of us who are now adults, were kids when we started this game. “oh um ackshually” “but this is unfair because…” no. Just play the the fucking game and learn it Please.