On the State of RotMG: My Personal Thesis

#1

After 3 long months, I’ve finally finished writing my RotMG thesis on the current state of the game. This document attempts to cover common issues within the community, some ideas of how to fix them, and some personal opinions on the state of certain mechanics.
BEHOLD!
I would greatly appreciate any sort of feedback.

The discord/accessibility problem could easily be solved with a group finder
#2

Honestly made some good points.

Love the pet tasks idea btw

#3

Can’t finish the whole thing in one sitting, but from what I’ve read, this is a well thought out explanation of the problems with Realm, and I think you did a great job with it.

#4

Lots of things I agree with and good ideas, but I just wanna nit pick about ninja real quick

I personally think that the stars are well designed for ninja. The star helps cover Ninja’s weakness of being short range, if there is a particularly hard phase you can just spam stars and stay out of danger.

I’m honestly surprised you didn’t put Ninja under the underpowered classes section considering you put Sorc there, since I think that Ninja and Sorc are in the same position. When considered alone, they are quite good classes, but when considering other classes, they are overshadowed by Warrior and Summoner. Warrior can do ALMOST everything ninja can do but better. Considering all items, warrior has a better armored ability that can stack with speedy or curse, AND you get berserk. With ninja all these effects are exclusive to one another; you can’t stack them. The berserk star actually even applies a slow to you! Not to mention the armored shuriken disables your MP regen and consumes an absurd amount of mana- AND you don’t even get as much value out of the effect due to Ninja having a lower defense than Warrior.

There are only two situations where I find ninja to redeem itself. Stunning with the ballistic star is something Warrior can’t do, and also going invisible with turncoat. The ballistic star is honestly just a bad Escutcheon too, but it is still a very powerful tool to have at the very least. Turncoat turns ninja into a VERY safe class to play.

Anyway, some more feedback

Evasion for rogue is a good idea, as I think that Rogue should be the tank/survivalist of the dagger classes. I’m not a fan of removing invisibility, however.

The proposed party system isn’t good IMO. Sounds like playing with some guildies but you have some over complicated system distributing loot for you instead of just trading your friends. I get the feeling like you are missing out on loot if some randoms crash your dungeon, but honestly I think they speed up the dungeon fast enough that it is worth it. Especially if all players split up in the dungeon, you can find Trooms faster and more often which makes it worth too.

Endgame loot/soulbound - making the fight end faster in of itself is enough reason to continue shooting the boss. increasing the soulbound threshold/making an adaptive system that rewards DPS is just going to make the DPS meta that much better. I’m not against adding a level requirement to end-game dungeons though so level 5 PPEs don’t go in and hit the boss a couple times.

O3 Runes- this has been an issue for a long time, with no really clear solution. I have a new idea though. Each player must use a rune to enter the sanctuary. This would make sure that the players who enter are capable since they most likely did end-game dungeons for the rune. Of course, you would have to SERIOUSLY increase the drop rate of runes since now instead of 3 runes granting up to 85 players access you would need 85 runes to achieve the same thing. Runes would need to be dropping like candy

Exaltations- I agree with you, the current exaltation system really limits the design space for future end-game content. I have some personal gripes with exaltations too. I like to play a variety of classes, but exaltations reward you for playing a certain type of class. This makes me feel like I am missing out on potential loot or wasting my time by playing a variety of classes. Why exalt my ninja and then my archer when I could exalt Samurai instead and get +25% loot boost? Anytime I play a class that is in a different weapon tier I feel like I’m stunting myself. I think exaltations shouldn’t discriminate based on the amor or weapon type you have; drop rate and IC/OOC reduction should be achieved through TOTAL exaltations across all characters. This also fixes the “issue” where the drop rate exaltation feels wasted as by the time you get it you are ready to move on to the next weapon type and not get any value out of it.

#5

Your idea “Algorithmic Shot Generation” sounds interesting, I haven’t really seen it done much before. Maybe I missed something but I’m curious to know your thoughts around the bullet hell design of RotMG and where it should be going other than that method, contrast and accessibility, and the ways players interact with instapops, status effects, etc

#6

That’s MBC right here. You might have a lucky Survival when there are not a lot shots to dodge or really unlucky that you would yeet yourself to Nexus.

#7

Sorcerer: As someone who enjoys Sorcercer (despite of maining on Samurai), I dare to say that he is balanced. He may have somewhat pitiful DPS stats comparing to Summoner, though one of saving grace is his 75 Vitality cap (especially for IC/OoC) that is on par with Knight and Warrior but for a long range. But if you insist, I would buff his Dex and Wis cap to 70 to be on par with Ninja.

Assassin: I happened to also enjoy Assassin and I dare to say that he is fine as it is. The Poison is essentially a free damage if you are leeching in certain boss phases. For example, if you can’t dodge well in dagger range during Miasma and Disintegrate, toss couple Poisons and focus on your character while dodging. A possible buffing suggestion would be implementing Wis-mod to him, meaning the more Wis he have, the less Mana it costs to toss a Poison (every Wis beyond 50, reduce the MP cost by 2… or every Wis beyond 30, reduce the MP cost by 1).

Necromancer: I haven’t play him for several months but it does not mean I h8 the class. The skulls themselves provide good amount of HP (if you do not know, a max HP build for Necro goes over 1k). I would crank down the skull’s MP cost depending on how many Wis (though it would be every Wis, costs 1 less Mana to use beyond 50 Wis). And increase the skull’s healing too, also depending on Wis-mod.

Archer + Huntress: I myself tried out the respective bow classes and I say they are fine too as they can shred through gods fairly well (especially with Coral Bow). Though if you insist, I would give tiered bow an option to toggle how many shots you can fire by double clicking the firing button, they will fire only 1 shot but inflicts 2x of the normal damage. Let’s say T12 Bow and I toggled to single shot, it would deal 125 average damage per hit. No, it does not render Bow of the Void useless as it still sports the highest single-target DPS.

Stats Issue: Based on the issue you are pointed out, someone in the forum made a suggestion to address it. This man right here:
Tiered Rings Rebalance - Game Discussion - Forum | RealmEye.com

MP and nature of Abilities: Uh… Should I make all ability damage scale with Wis-mod???

UB vs UT rings: Already mentioned it on Stats Issues.

Tile Snapping + Enigma of Wakazashi: Didn’t realize those exists…

Edit:

Problematic Dungeon Designing:

  • TRoom: When you mentioned about TRoom, this itself reminds me of Abby’s TRoom. Its chance to appear is somewhat low though it does give Vit and Def (mind you that Defence is only guaranteed for 1 person). The chance for UDL TRoom to appear is much higher than Abby, meaning it is much more worth to hunt for one.

  • Surprise Reward: CLib is one example. Corrupted Phantom drops Attack, just not in guaranteed rate. I think this should be implemented to Abyss Idol (buff the chance of appearing in the dungeon plz) where it is guaranteed to drop Vit but in exchange of not guaranteed to drop Defence.

  • Boss Focused Dungeons: Uh… I didn’t realized Cem was part of that. Oryx’s Sanctuary yeah…

  • Ruining a Dungeon’s Pacing:…

#8

Maybe but the phase still feels so similar every time, I didn’t even think that it counted lol. I was thinking along the lines of making a pattern be so different every time that you could not necessarily “practice” it like now

#9

Prepare for ninja rant
One flaw with the warrior is that with tiered helms you HAVE to go speedy in order to get berserk, which can backfire as one misdirected movement you would tank shots on the boss (which is precisely why there’s a Ruins UT that DOESN’T give speedy and just berserk).

Meanwhile, the tiered star with ninja can run faster than warrior (although without the defense and hp), without even worrying about losing speedy at any point from silence or timing.

Sure ninja doesn’t have the berserk for group play or the damage from sword, but it DOES have shurikens that does a direct damage from a long range, partially compensating for the katana and hide. But the problem with the ability is that spamming the stars will get you disconnected, which seriously needs to be fixed.

Speaking of direct damage, among the star UTs, I think you forgot the one and only reworked star that is decent: kageboshi. It shoots out four shots that do an average of 500 damage each, for a total of 2500 damage. Not only does it pierce, but the shots also boomerang, with all shots hitting giving a potential of 5000 damage from a click of a button. This is helpful when close to katana range, or with chasing bosses or mobs.

Even though the star of enlightenment is disappointing, another star from the very same dungeon does the ninja justice: The Kunai. If looking for a dps boost without direct damage, this star gives a temporarily +15 attack which can be stacked with other buffs, ALONG with kunai that shoot out in retaliation.

Now I’m not saying ninja is better or on par with warrior, but it’s not the worst class in dps or the highest on the list for reworks compared to, lets say, assassin.

#10

2k average damage to be exact. And boomeranged shots does not hits the same enemy twice.

#11

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