New Quest System? UT Exchange System? What is Mad Pass? Find out! [Production letter & Patch Notes X.32.1.2]

#62

…

Okay, I might be a little dumb…

#63

I was going to make a few points, but other replies have said most all of it. There’s nothing wrong with ignoring the Beginner Quests completely, if you consider yourself advanced past the early stages of the game.

Now this is a point. What’d be needed is a huge reduction of equipment drop rates throughout the game, to dry up the supply, force up the value, and bring the lower tiers into use again. It’s a bit shrouded in secrecy compared to the old days, so they could even be doing it and we wouldn’t necessarily know, other than by observation.

#64

As someone who remembers when used to sell for a defense potion, I would argue that for the lower tiers to be useful again, the early game needs to last longer, the market needs to be unregulated, and higher tiers need to be released.

Proposed fixes:

  • Lower EXP rates from the beaches to the mountains, when leveling. (By a factor of 4 - 5)
  • Increase and diversify the leveling quests include existing enemies and new ones.
  • A drop rate modification to prevent the SB threshold in godland, godland dungeons, or event bosses, when player level is below say, 12, or some calibrated number.
  • Even more early game dungeons to keep things exciting. Dungeons that don’t necessarily hit like a truck, but encourage dodging in a bullet hell fashion, opposed to the unpredictable shot patterns of the Queen Bee, Mixcoatl, or Mama Megamoth.
  • Unsoulbinding of T13 weapons. Release of T14 weapons. Release of T7 Abilities.
  • Eliminating duping. This issue should have been address by Wild Shadow, Kabam, or Deca asap, but the issue remains to cause the developers to instead work around it. Kabam notoriously soulbounded items “temporarily” to sort it out, only to keep the soulbound active, and passed the issue onto Deca years later.
  • Adding non dungeon endgame progression. A separate area like elder realms, an area of the map beyond godlands, or some other idea, but create tier above our current endgame, that isn’t a dungeon, so that players in godlands can be more readily weaker and considered mid game.
  • The economy needs to be inflated for lower tiers to be sold. I’ve seen the price of life fluctuate through my years, but there’s nothing to spend it on, past the duplicated Deca rings and skins if you’re into that. When UTs were removed from the economy, and STs filled their place, which could’ve been farmed from the misery boxes, the market imploded. But this isn’t going to be easily fixed. Because Deca holds many of the ideals of the previous game company, UTs are likely going to remain to be soulbound until realm is shut down. I don’t know of a solution for this. Fame no longer has a use outside of pets. Fame can no longer buy you an item that is worth a lot of life. Life no longer can buy you anything worthwhile if you have tens or hundreds of it. UTs are not going to be unsoulbound, Maybe, just maybe, with the release of T14/T7 weapons/abilities, that would fill the gap in the market, but I’m skeptical. If the upcoming fusion shard tool item from the UT exchange system is tradable, that would solve some issues, but beyond those proposals, I’m at a loss.

Honestly, if flash wasn’t dying, and I knew enough to code something like realm, I would love to just recreate the Wild Shadow era of this game. The art assets are open to the public, on the TIGsource forums… But that’s just a pipe dream. Maybe down the road when I’m 40 years old and nostalgic. Lord knows I’ll be a much better programmer by then.

#65

I somewhat agree with this, but I’d also say increase the max level cap. that’d also take revamping how stats are increased and the actual max stats of the classes themselves would have to be changed. But I think it’d make each individual “layer” of the realms feel more integral to reaching max level, instead of white space between you and the next bullet sponge to slap with your noodle sword.

I completely agree, but this would require leveling to be much more slower paced compared to the current cluster fuck that is realm today.

you mean deflate? I don’t see what good would come out of filling the economy with more op trash. But I see what you’re saying, the game really really needs new items and tiers introduced into the game, and UTs to be unsoulbounded, because it’s been the same “meta” (or what I’d like to call stagnating cycle) for several years at this point.

#66

I wouldn’t mind if they just, like, buffed the damage and health of every single realm enemy (minor for some and major for others, specifically Gods, when I am unmaxed on defense, highlands feels harder than godlands), thus making progressing through the early game a necessary process

#67

mood

Okay, to be fair, I’ve messed with multiplayer before but nothing on the scale of RotMG and I would end up making spaghetti code like Wild Shadow did but forget to add sauce or something.

#68

Honestly, I could whip up a functioning version of realm in python or java, but it’s the server component of running an online game that I would fail to uphold. It’s expensive to even remotely host a tenth of the playerbase realm has. Not that I expect my project to instantly get that many players, but it’s an issue nonetheless. Nothing’s worse than a laggy game.

#69

I’d wager that I’ve been gaming longer than you’ve been alive, and I do writing and game design as hobbies, but don’t let that stop you from insulting me for disagreeing with you.

It is amusing however reading replies that make half a dozen contradictory points and don’t even hold to a thesis, such as the person who said lower tier items are oh so important but tops are so worthless that nobody even bothers to pick them up to sell. Aside from the fact that I can pop in to USW2 and prove that wrong any time, those two statements are absolutely contradictory. If people just leave tops sitting in the bag, what does anyone think happens to t10 and below? Moreover, if even tops are such garbage that nobody that isn’t a noob even picks them up then why the resistance to adding old tops to lower level drop tables and weaker chests and eliminating useless gear that isn’t worth the time to even pick up? As I said, what exactly is the point of having ten gradients of garbage?

The devs, and some players, have seemed to not noticed the power creep and its effect. Early game no longer rewards anything useful to tackle harder content with, and you need to tackle said content to get the gear to tackle it with. It’s a ridiculous catch-22 and how anyone can justify it is beyond me.

As typical though, comment sections on this game are dominated by the elite few who typically run hacked clients and / or members of high level guilds that pop keys all day and rush bosses without playing 90% of the game and thus have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about. This game is a clusterfuck and it won’t change so long as the conversation is dominated by a small group of whales who farm serial dungeon bosses in 80 man groups with guild keys and the devs cater to them because they buy those keys in large numbers.

Such short term thinking is profitable for now, but is unsustainable. You can’t grow a playerbase that way, or maintain the one you have either. Attrition is inevitable, the existing whales will reduce in number over time due to various inevitable factors --some will lose interest due to burnout, some will switch to other games, some will get married or get a demanding career or whatever, hell some of them will die. None are being replaced, because there’s little to no incentive for anyone who’s not already one of those hardcore few to play and grow an attachment to the game that might tempt them to spend. Instead this game is actively player hostile, especially to those without OP gear and the large guilds to help them get it.

But hey, I suppose we’ll see huh? If I’m right and nothing changes, the game won’t be here in a few years for this discussion to be revisited. At that point the answer will be clear, if the way it is is the way it should be the game will still be around and if I’m right and major reform needs to happen which does not happen then it will be dead. I’m betting on the latter.

#70

If this proposed list of yours is the design philosophy that would inform the game you’d program, I wouldn’t bother. No one would play it, because your changes wouldn’t address what is really frustrating and would only increase the frustration factor that already exists meaning that the already ridiculously high ragequit factor of the game would get worse not better.

You see, the way it stands now is level 20 is really level 1 from a practical standpoint. Advancement in this game doesn’t truly begin until you begin using stat pots --THAT is the real character progression, that and gear acquisition. There just aren’t enough interesting things to do on the main map between the beach and the godlands, and what you propose would keep people stuck there longer before even getting a shot at the more interesting content which is all centered in dungeons. We’re talking about content most players already skip, and you want to force them to stay there longer, and still force them to do it over and over again due to having no intention of changing the permadeath mechanic. It’s like you want your playerbase to ragequit en masse!

Clearly you have no conception how a roguelike is supposed to work, and neither does Deca because they’ve allowed this game to drift from the formula to the point the permadeath mechanic that is a core of the roguelike experience is an overwhelming negative rather than a normal and painless part of the game. Your proposals make the existing drift to conventional MMO mechanics without eliminating the roguelike death barrier worse instead of better, and you’d make the problem of ragequit that is already this game’s achilles heel ten times worse.

Let me lay it out for you: In a roguelike, death is quick and life is cheap. The whole formula is about multiple successive runs, each one ends in quitting or dying and you restart and take another run. The way to progress is to get better stuff and bank it so you can use it for the next run and do better next time, hopefully snagging some better stuff so you can do even better the run after that, and the cycle continues. Luck and skill are both factors, but regardless the odds are against you and you ARE going to die. It’s not a matter of if, it’s when.

RotMG retains the initial roguelike aspects of permadeath and unforgiving mechanics that can kill you at any time in pretty unfair fashion, which was fine in the early days when there wasn’t a lot to do but run through the realm and fight until Oryx spawned, which was a quick and dirty bossfight that happened frequently and nearly at random. There was no dungeon surrounding him, just the bossfight and it had the same high risk high reward formula as the rest of the game. Levels and gear were only so important, as really they just gave you a little better chance to get a little farther, you were still almost certain to blow through characters rapidly. They were expendable.

Since those days, however, the quick restart that a permadeath roguelike needs to go with its quick and easy permadeath has been eroded away. Now, lvl 20 is just the beginning, what you really need to get farther is a bunch of stat pots and good gear, which you have to have to tackle the stronger content. HOWEVER, that takes many hours because it’s based on random drops and you have to farm that shit. So, if you’re lucky, 18 hours later after your last quick and shitty death you’re back where you were and ready to start another run! Aaaaaannnnnnnnnd 5 minutes later you get popped. Back to the 20 hour stat pot grind for a small chance of completing a dungeon that actually rewards anything AND a less than 1/100 chance of it dropping. Welcome to a treadmill of agonizing frustration seemingly designed specifically to torment players. It’s like the game was designed by demons for maximum frustration for minimal gain.

Faced with this, players started seeking workarounds and they found two effective ones: hacked clients with autonexus, and guild group key runs where a rogue rushes to the boss, everyone ports to him, and then everyone stands in a group firing until the boss is dead. That isn’t even playing the game, it’s just maximizing the amount of rolls you get against the drop table looking for the rares. That’s the primary way most of the endgame players operate, they skip 95% of the actual gameplay with workarounds because it’s that damned unrewarding. And the players doing it are so bored with it they advocate for random cheap death mechanics to add some excitement. And they get it, and in so doing they make their tactic of skipping 95% of the game more and more mandatory as it grows more and more impossible to actually play the content in a normal fashion. Obviously, this is unsustainable, but Deca makes a killing selling keys to these people so they keep it going --at this point they’re not running a game, they’re running a slot machine. Buy a key and spin the wheel, actually going through the motions of skipping to the boss and shooting it is a mere formality. Hell some of the newer endgame dungeons are just a boss room! The newer instapop mechanics just add a “kill” space to the slots, that’s all, to spice things up a bit. It’s still a damned slot machine masquerading as a game.

The other route people use is the hacked client, which eliminates the permadeath mechanic that is left over from when this was a roguelike and makes it play more like a traditional MMO --or at least, a bullet hell shooter MMO which is a pretty unique concept. Too bad the only way it’s worth playing is if you do what Deca refuses to do and get rid of permadeath. So long as that mechanic remains, you’re looking at 20 hour investment to begin a short run against the odds that is going to send you back to the start with nothing. Again, roguelike death mechanic, without the rapid restart that makes a roguelike setup viable and tolerable.

People who don’t do one or the other are basically shit out of luck --the game is structured for maximum punishment and minimum reward. It’s a ragequit generator. And anyone who says anything against it is shouted down by “git gud noob!” trolls who are 99% doing one of the two above cheat mechanics or even both. Neither actually play the game without such shortcuts and workarounds, but they condemn anyone who wants the game changed so that it’s possible to enjoy without them. And since they’re the only ones not running head first into the frustration generating meatgrinder machine, they’re the only ones who stick around and thus they’re the only long term playerbase. Everyone else goes through the “tries game, realizes it’s a rape machine, tries suggesting changes and gets shouted down, ragequits” cycle and is soon no longer a player.

The fact is, due to a combination of all these factors, this game is in a terminal death spiral and unlikely to change. There’s a reason I hardly play, even though I want to since I really like the concept of a top-down MMO shooter with bullet hell aspects. Unfortunately, this game has shot itself in the foot so hard it blew its entire leg off, and refuses to admit it even has a problem as it slowly bleeds to death.

#71

B> Omni for 5 void quivers @ArkRumierA

this patch in a nutshell

#72

image

#73

git gud noob!

joking, have to outright mention I’m joking since you seem like the type of guy who takes everything seriously

You bring up points that I can’t honestly disagree with, given that I myself don’t play the game, but replying to HeyItsWii feels more like you’re trying too hard to contradict him when in fact your reply doesn’t really address his point at all

#74

Yes, but also no one is going to do the beginner dungeons 4 times unless they’re an absolute noob or doing an npe.

Having no trade value and being useless are two very different things. The reason why nobody uses t8-t10 isn’t that its useless, its because they can easily afford something better.

You can easily get sb on most bosses with a t6 weapon nowadays and like I said earlier, the difference between t8 and t13 is so small that if you can beat a boss with wc/new tops, you can also do it with godlands gear

How do you do 80 man guild runs when guilds are limited to 50 people? :thinking:

#75

first time someone’s coherently put the fate of this game in words ngl

#76

I have never previously spoken to you in my life, and the very first thing that you introduce yourself with, is claiming age superiority, and that I will ad hominem you because I may disagree if your points.

Before I waste the next half an hour dissecting your points, get it through your head, that unless I am directly insulting you with words of contemptment, where some cultures may refer as such as cursing or swearing, I am not, infact, insulting you. If you are insulted by my opposition to your debate, I cannot help you.

I have not made these points. Nothing you have mentioned pertains to me. You should have replied directly to the individuals involved, instead of replying to me.

Instead of eliminating earlier tiers, the game should be further developed to expand the early and mid game. You don’t just delete early progression because the end game is more developed or has more depth.

Early game is fun, it teaches you the fundamentals of this game, and offers many experiences that players will always remember. That, is the reward of the early progression. Power creep was obliterated with the addition of pet abilities. It has taken years to get the game into the state it is now, and there’s still plenty of work to be done. The upcoming changes to pet healing is a major resolution by DECA, which I am a huge proponent of. Harder content should not rely on the gear that the aforementioned content provides, but the tiers directly below it. You don’t need an omni ring or breastplate of life to readily defeat the Lost Halls, etc. Your catch 22 argument seems flat, without your actual input of examples where this can be observed.

As someone who has interacted with the forums extensively over the past few years, I’m going to disagree with your blanket ignorance on the matter. Your forum account is too new to justifiably trust your opinion, and you haven’t provided evidence beyond hearsay. Unless you have changed your IGN, I have not recognized your username on the Wild Shadow or Kabam forums. Furthermore, looking at your account, you haven’t even experienced much of the end game content of this game to its fullest extent.

You’re so disconnect from reality, reveling in your ignorance. You have made stereotypes of individuals who communicate in the forums, and have not paid attention to the expansive outreach and interaction with the community that DECA provides. You know not the radio silence of Kabam. The way realm felt when it was truly dying.

Yes and no. Most of my friends no longer play this game. Yet there are tens of thousands of new players in their stead. Your continued name calling of players will not be tolerated, and this is the last time I will address you on this matter. The playerbase is significantly less friendly after pets, but we’re no league of legends or fps game. I still see players helping strangers, and new players banding together. I see honest advice in playerchat, and even better advice in the forums. All communities die, but I scoff at your sentiment that realm has stopped attaining new players.

In 5 years I’m going to track your internet presence down if you haven’t changed your IGN, and we will see what you think of the matter.

#77

If you read the forums in a chronological manner, you would find much to your surprise, that the list of proposed changes were addressing Realm of the Mad God’s current game state, and that my quip about programming a Wild Shadow era Realm of the Mad God occured after the fact. Also, if you haven’t noticed already, my opinion is 10:1 more positively received by the public, than your argument.

Manual stat progression is not where the game begins. I would continue to express further thoughts, however I am overcome by emotions due to your later statements…

  1. RotMG is not a roguelike. It is a rpg mmo shooter game. It has roguelike qualities, but that is the extent of it.
  2. How on earth did you extrapolate from my reply to how to fix the economy, that I lack basic conception of how a roguelike works. I have never spoke on the subject, and I’m seriously, seriously, starting to question your claim of age superiority, as you continue to act immature.
  3. Permadeath has ALWAYS been a core part of the game. Back when this game was a contestant on the TIGsource forums. Back when Wild Shadow was churning out enemies and dungeons on a weekly basis, back when Kabam bought the game, and sundered all the UT items into soulbound “temporarily”, and when DECA acquired the game, all through every companies’ development cycle, permadeath has always been a core part of the game.

Obviously I see you would both hate and suck at a game like Darkest Dungeon.

I’m starting to understand the kind of person you are. You’re inherently mad at this game because of perma death. You should stop playing if that is why your glass is half empty. When you get better at this game, you don’t really get better at not dying. You get better at accepting death, and learning from your mistakes that led up to it.

How old are you? How old do you think I am?

Do not lecture me on the basis of game design or programming from this point onward. Until you have provided me with a successful mmo that you have published, or proven your seniority, I will have none of this mightier than thou attitude from you.

The game cannot just kill you at any time. You either have to be ignorant, or bad at the game. Very rarely is death caused by server lag. And there was still a lot of content during the Wild Shadow era, your disregard for content however, when you want to simply remove it from the game, is telling. For very early versions of the game, Oryx would announce in chat his arrival, and would spawn on the beach. This version of the game would not last long, as Oryx’s castle was one of the first “end game” dungeons added. When did you play? Because you are claiming knowledge of old, yet your current account history does not reflect that of a player who has had experience in the game since then.

You are describing progression. Items and levels are SUPPOSED to be better as you level up. This is basic game design. You should know, as a hobbyist.

People died more because the game was challenging back then. You couldn’t just walk in lava, or tank some gods.

No. This is a core feature of the game. Oryx is mad, players die, and Craig is an intern. You do not mess with something so intrinsic to this game.

You are mentioning the core game loop, but you fail to mention the part where the player learns and gets better. If realm is such a negative experience for you, I would honestly ask you to stop playing it. If you instead, want to improve your craft, and hone your skills, I recommend reading Bluenoser’s guide. It is years old now, but still relevant.

Hacks have existed since the first release of the game. Everytime a playerbase is faced with challenge, a percentage will always resort to cheating. It’s just a statistical truth.

You understand nothing of dungeons if you think:

  1. This is how it works
  2. That player organization is bad.

You clearly haven’t played a game like WoW before. Interplayer coordination is vital for any end game dungeons, regardless of the game. This is a sign that the dungeon is well designed, when players have to strategize the best approaches to running it efficiently. Furthermore, I do not know what dungeon discords you are speaking of. Shatters cannot be rushed with a rogue, and you cannot teleport to other players. A cult run of Lost Halls can be rushed, however you cannot teleport. A void run of Lost Halls cannot be rushed by a rogue, but you cannot teleport. Rinse and repeat with all the end game dungeons. It’s almost as if you don’t want rogues to turn invisible. Each player character has their strengths and weaknesses. Using rogues to map out the path of a Lost Halls is vital information for a player coordinated run.

Your ignorance is outstanding. Nothing I can variably say is going to actually help you. I give up on you.

TDLR: I’m mad because I die a lot therefore hacking is the only other option and also Deca bad.

I thought this was going to be a rational discussion. I’m clearly wrong. You are blinded by your inexperience, you fail to understand core game mechanics, basic game design, and you keep playing this game despite your strong deterrence to it.

Congratulations, you’ve broken my resolve to continue debating with you! You have not won in a logical debate. I have not won. There are no winners here. Only the need to cease communications with you.

I have been alive for 22 years. I do programming, hacking, writing, gaming, hiking, digital art, and reading as my hobbies. I have been formally trained in Web Development. I am currently in school for a career path in Computer Science and Nuclear Physics. My passion lies in physics, but programming has always been a hobby of mine, and so I’m using it to pay the bills down the road, as programming significantly pays better than being a researcher. I most commonly used Python, Java, React Native, JavaScript, and MEAN as languages, however I do know some other languages and frameworks such as VB.NET, Powershell ETS, BASIC, TypeScript, and Assembly. I’m currently learning C and C++. I have familiarity with the Windows, macOS, and Linux based operating systems, though I’m currently learning the linux side more in depth, concurrently. I also boast hardware familiarity, and I’m currently also in the process of improving my soldering and welding skills, learning Arduino, and electrical engineering, for fun.

#78

Quality over quantity as well, you might be older, but I am just as familiar with older games as you may be. I grew up with retro systems and computers. Despite my age, I used MS-DOS, I had a Nintendo Entertainment System, and I have untold hours of retro game knowledge, trivia, programming, and the ilk, that I have experienced in my lifetime. I may not have grown up in your era, whatever era that may be, but you cannot simply discredit someone because you managed to be born before someone else. You CAN correct any ignorance I do examplily, but you may not label my words on such a short term basis of age alone.

#79

lmao hacking not even a degree in programming with a minor in cyber security lol just nuclear physics and programming what can you hack?
Make a rotmg hacked client… lmao thats not hacking as you are not actually injecting commands and are not actually controlling the severs.

If you are so good at hacking then tell me my password lmao
and also tell me my ip adress without asking the admins of this forum. Then you would prob proceded to claim that with it you can dox me but in reality with my ip you can do NOTHING(ddos attacks can be avoided via vpn)
How about you stop threatening to dox ppl (which is against this forum rules)
@moderators please close this there was already a new patch notes

#80

From this point onward consider yourself blocked, child.

I never threatened to dox anyone, you bloody fruit shop owner.

#81

is this not doxing?