TRICKSTER ABILITY USABILITY FIX:
In the current state of the game tricksters are really fun. Unfortunately, they are also incredibly frustrating to play. Trickster’s clones run the direction you were moving when you teleport, but because of latency this can often be quite buggy and in the heat of battle you may send several clones the wrong way because you didn’t run forward long enough for the server to receive your current direction. Instead, prisms should send a clone to direction the camera is facing. This would make trickster much faster paced, easier to play and more responsive.
HP/MP POTIONS FROM GLANDS:
After playing an npe account, I realized that godlands and many dungeons drop hp potions far too infrequently. Gods should drop hp/mp potions in public bags with relative frequency. Running sprite worlds I found I soon had no health potions. I had to join my guild to fix my potion problem by bugging Guill for pots. New players often don’t know about Guill, and often know nothing of guilds in general.
LEVELING:
I have been leading a guild in which I teach new players how to max 6/8. Like I was serious about taking in completely new players, 1 star off the beach. In my time with them I have learned that the two main barriers for new players are how long it takes to level to 20 after each death (especially without armor) and how long it takes to recover after taking damage.
First, I will address leveling. Leveling in ROTMG is an artifact of bad game design. This game was designed for a contest and as such there are design elements we must out-grow. When I first encountered ROTMG 8 years ago, leveling to 20 WAS endgame. There were no stat potions at all. With the addition of maxing, leveling became redundant. The item crawl alone is enough of a growth mechanic that doing away leveling entirely would hardly be changing the game. Even for “pro” players rolling is just annoying, hence XP potions. It also frustrates me to realize that 95% of the map is used for 5% of the game while you either level or chase down events in lowlands. With leveling removed, perhaps players could spawn in only one section of the map (as opposed to all sides) and events could own sections of the map, which must be cleared to go to oryx. Only some events would spawn randomly. There could be areas of the map other than godlands that are actually worth playing in. Think of the possibilities!
And yes, I am totally OK with level 20 players spawning on beach, and crawling to godlands by virtue of gear alone. I’d love to let people play the game instead of forcing them to spend most of their time trying to get to level 20 so that they can actually go to godlands.
The only difficulty would be with the current implementation of quests. This could be solved by introducing kill quests that would direct players steadily towards harder areas. Stuff like kill 5 Elf mages. Highlands are scary, level 1 or level 20.
Let people play the game instead of forcing them to spend most of their time trying to get to level 20 so that they can actually go to godlands.
I had several people quit the game before they ever even made it to 20. Incidentally, most of my real life friends I have introduced to ROTMG have quit before hitting 20
as well.
VIT/WIS CHANGES:
Before pets were introduced, vit and wis had their effects doubled. This was a godsend. It used to take 8 minutes to heal, and priests in the godlands could earn pots simply following small groups and healing them. People would donate out of gratitude. We all had hotkeys to ask for HP. This is not the game we are playing today. We are not on an even playing field anymore.
Unfortunately this makes being near players with strong pets incredibly dangerous for new players. It also makes it difficult for them to learn how to play. We naturally learn by watching others. If you follow a pro player and try to do what they do, you will die. New players also do not have the support networks of constant healing they would have had in the old days to learn harder content and godlands. The game has become a fast paced place in which players don’t need healers for most dungeons.
Vit and Wis need to be re-evaluated. It’s OK if their increase makes players with pets OP because They already are OP. We need to focus on how to capture new players for the game.
At 75 vit, the current rate is 10 hit points per second. This means that it will take a minute for players to heal 600 on a maxed knight. However, when they’re playing an unmaxed rogue with 25 vit they will heal 4 HPP/s (Health points per second). It will take them almost 3 minutes of standing still to heal fully. This might sound reasonable, but for a new player it might mean that their ratio of playtime vs down time is ridiculous and boring.
This becomes more obvious with an example:
If a new player takes 10 seconds to clear a room in an abyss and there are 20 rooms in an abyss,
but must heal a modest 300 health per room traveled, they must heal a total of 6000 health to complete just the rooms leading to the boss. If they are an unmaxed knight with 40 vit it will take 1034 seconds of healing. That’s 17.3 minutes of healing compared to the 200 seconds or 3.3 minutes of actually playing. That’s a 5:1 ratio of downtime vs playing time.
This is even more of a problem before level 20, which may be relieved by adding a higher straight bonus to the vit calculations. (It is currently HPPS = 1 + 0.12 * vit) If it were 4 or 5 + 0.12 vit, that may be enough to solve the problem by itself. Experiment. Though, keep in mind you also want vit to feel substantial when you drink it. If the initial value is high, vit/wis will feel watered down and less necessary. Wis following suit at half the speed of vit feels about right.
Cronus/bulwark buffs:
Neither of these weapons do as much damage as they should. They are both cool and incredibly rare. They should both do the most damage available for their respective weapon classes, as dagger classes currently lack an EP/Dblade/bulwark/void blade style weapon.
Etherite is tradable, and should not do more damage than the cronus. Bulwark is incredibly hard to use and would benefit from both a boost to it’s damage
and usability by removing the rotating bullet spawns. Either way, boost the damage. It does less damage than the new flower wand, which is ridiculous.
Guild Vaults:
Guild vaults need to be implemented. In order to avoid the potential abuse of being used exclusively by one player, they should be very fame intensive. Roughly a year and a half of heavy guild membership of high fame individuals has left my guild with nearly 1,000,000 guild fame (920,000.) If chests cost 50,000 fame, they will be hard to achieve by solo players using them as a way to avoid buying vaults, while also allowing guilds with lots of players to buy them slowly. Experiment, look at your data for how much fame guilds have. Maybe wait until fame changes are released.
Guild training rooms:
It would be a huge boon to the community if guilds were able to run all of the dungeons without the potential of death or loot. It would allow for us to train new players and learn new content as a unit, unafraid of death. I’m imagining the danger room from X-men. A holographic training chamber where all of realm’s baddest dungeons or enemies can be fought for fun and knowledge. Perhaps these rooms would require some sort of trinket acquired within the dungeons themselves or large quantities of guild fame to acquire a training room and unlock new dungeons for the training room.
Guild pets:
The guild should be able to have a pet yard of it’s own that players within the guild can use that maxes at uncommon. This would aid us in helping new players. It would be nice if they could all use the same pet, but this might be too much to ask.
A new, pay to play legacy server:
As a legacy player, it would be amazing to be able to play a set amount per month to support you at DECA, while also playing on a server free from spammers, bots, duped items and pay to win mechanics. No buying keys, items or pets. All dyes, skins, pets (with no skills), vaults and character slots should be available for free to all players. Brand it as a new, high quality server for hardcore players. Hold events exclusive to the hardcore server. People will SWARM this server. I’ll post this idea on reddit as well.
