Post your unpopular opinions about realm here


#2223

(This post was also made in 2018, just so you’re aware. Also, Wimk hasn’t been seen on the forums for almost a year now)

Also, no, not nearly everyone has amazing pets. There’s quite a lot of the less prominent/lower leveled playerbase that isn’t well equipped, that, and pets have been side-graded since that date of posting, to boot!

Now, the Max MP vs. other stats is an opinion that can’t be solidly disputed, because it’s based purely on having different preferences and playstyles. I won’t argue with that side of things.


#2224

The drop rate for event whites is unacceptably low. Locking powerful items like Ogmur behind such a stupid wall that requires no skill but lots of luck is dumb.


#2225

They had the issue with it on release of it being spamable into itself. Even with diminishing returns on stat boosts, they don’t want you to be able to chain it together and essentially gain momentum while using it. I think they overcompensated a little bit (and that this kind of thing could be a cool), but I get it.


#2226

Here’s an easy solution: just remove the fucking calamity crab.
I don’t know which brainrotten crackhead at DECA though it’s an appropriate enemy to add in a low-mid tier dungeon. He deals more damage than spooky boi, has a worse shot pattern than spooky boi, chases more tenaciously than spooky boi, is faster than spooky boi, can’t be easly stuck on a wall like spooky boi, takes longer to kill than spooky boi takes to despawn aND HIS FUCKING SHOTS CAN STACK. In it’s current state i wouldn’t bother with ddocks even if it dropped guaranteed fucking glife.


#2227

Let’s test its strength.


Say they reduced it to 100 MP. Stacking it to max alone would cost 300 MP, but let’s consider the returns:

On a 75 WIS Pally, the first use of the seal will last 7.5 seconds, the second use would be 9 seconds, the third would be 11.5 seconds, totaling a net cost of 269.5 MP, discounted over a course of 12 seconds.

Boring Math

For the first 0.5 seconds, you have +15 WIS (+0.9 MP regained);
the next 0.5 seconds, you have +22 WIS (+1.32 MP);
the next 6.5 seconds you have +25 WIS (+19.5 MP);
the next 2 seconds, you have +22 WIS again (+5.28 MP);
and for the last 2.5 seconds, you have +15 WIS again (+4.5 MP),


Next would be to calculate the effects of WisMod on various abilities within that 6.5-second window:

Assuming the characters are just below the threshold for WisMod (which are very low for some classes)

Durations and Ranges

Most abilities with duration will last 2.5 seconds longer. +50% duration for 5-second long abilities. This affects tiered Tomes, Orbs, and Seals. Helms last 4.5 seconds, but close enough.

Relevant UT/STs with +2.5 sec durations are: Soul of the Bearer, Helm of the Juggernaut, Tome of Holy Protection, Book of Geb, Sandstone Seal, and Seal of Cubic Conundra.

Oreo lasts 0.5 seconds longer.


Most abilities with range will have an extra +2.5 tiles of range. This includes all tiered Tomes, Orbs, Seals, and Helms.

Relevant UT/STs with +2.5 tile range are: Tome of Pain, Seal of Cubic Conundra, Enchantment Orb, and Orb of Sweet Demise.

Skulls gain +1 tile healing range but do not gain a wider damage radius.
Scepter of Fulmination gains 4 more targets, +80%. You can reach a whopping 10 targets on a maxed Sorc.
T6 Scepters, Cnidaria Rod, gain 2 more targets, +40%.
Scepter of Devastation gains 1 more target, double! The same goes for the Grotesque Scepter, missing 2 WIS for an extra target.


Heal, HP, and Damage

T6 Tomes heal 75 more HP, +47% to base;
T6 Seals add 50 extra Max HP, +71% to base;

T6 Scepters deal 200 extra damage on their first hit, +66% to base;
Scepter of Devastation deals 250 extra damage, +30% to base;
Cnidaria Rod deals 125 extra damage, +83% base damage to the first target;
Grotesque Scepter deals 150 extra damage, +16% to base;

T6 Skulls will gain +100 damage, +56% to base;

Tome of Pain deals 175 extra damage, +35% to base;


Note about the WisMod Formulas

I’m using the WisMod formulas provided on each item’s page in the wiki. Some values I’m getting from the individual pages don’t seem to correspond with their descriptions in the ability pages.

Tomes for example:
image
This formula results in 235 HP yet in the Tomes page this appears
image
image
I believe the general ability pages are merely outdated.


WisMod classes tend to have +10 to +25 WIS above the threshold at max anyway, so percentage values may matter less than the raw boosts.


To me, a cost of 269.5 MP for a +25 WIS buff that lasts about 6.5 seconds still seems rather high, considering spamming the ability all three times requires you to really wait things out if you have an MP boosting ring or to have a very good pet to even perform.

Of course, to make things a lot simpler, DECA could simply give the item a buff to its Wisdom boost to +20 or +25 and introduce a cooldown, as you suggested. Even then, I’d still lower the cost to about 120 MP. That way, you can still use another Seal once.


#2228

Lemme add a few cents to this argument.
I made a post a year ago in ‘Some design lessons from realm’
where i compared the design philosophy of the 3 different developers over the years.

Old bosses like the tomb trio had extended fights due to a combination of static HP bars, low regen for the players, invulnerable phases and more than liberal use of quiet and weaken shots throughout the entire fight, along with boss HP healing being present (tomb trio, O1, stone guards).

after pets where introduced the old bosses of the Wildshadow era became absolute jokes, as none of them where made with perma-stunning or ridiculous HP/MP regen in mind. Kabam noticed this and promptly made most of their later bosses stun-immune to prevent complete steam rolling and as such most of their bosses relied on extreme damage and invulnerability phases to extend the fights.

Early on, Deca relied on those same tactics. but was quick to implement some sort of player-measuring system. as per example we have the MBC 1.0 who had HP Regen based on the amount of people present.
unlike kabam Deca wasn’t also shy of spamming weak/quiet. unfortunately pre-nerf puri existed back then which, along with the Mseal. compromising such designs.

It wasn’t until the Vital combat update that the super-tanky immortal deathball meta was addressed and promptly dismantled. in its place rose the DPS meta, since HP scaling stopped being linear and became quadratic instead. so the mentality of [group tank and heal to win] became [DPS until next HP threshold]

most invulnerable phases are a result of 1: a mechanic, like towers in O3 and coin / cores in MBC, 2: a ‘cutscene’ / major phase change, 3: a safety net to prevent the fights phases being skipped (some bosses also heal up back to the threshold to prevent instakills)

i will be honest in saying that i dislike ‘cutscenes’ and HP threshold time-wastes, they are however a necessary evil to ensure fight play out in a predictable and stable way. a good example where this doens’t happen (and quickly can go wrong) is the forgotten king.

personally i would like to see some love toward the older dungeons (something they are actively working on) and a fixing of realm’s (general) economy. this last one is especially difficult due to guaranteed drops from certain locations (looking at you, Osanc.) which are again, a nessecary evil due to the scarcity of the dungeon and as an incentive to actually run it. (as far as i know, void suffers from this in the opposite, being mostly run for the exaltations instead of the loot.)


#2229

honestly, i really like the crab. Sure, its threatening and if not careful can stack up and trample you. However, he is very vulnerable to proper circling, once you find a good couple rooms open he can be looped pretty easily. Also spooky is slower but also is relentless (constantly teleports and chases until despawn, crab will lose aggresion if everyone gets out of its aggro), and crab can certainly be killed well before spooky despawns. crab is really just threatening at first, but once you figure out how to lure him and realize moving straight forwards from him is almost never a good idea except in his attack changes, he gets to be well managable and worth the effort.


#2230

Crab > Spooky all day long.

Crab can be physically killed, and spawns only once. this means you can ‘just get rid of him’ by cheesing him in one of the many ways that exist (all of them a 100x more safer than circling him.) he even drops loot as a reward for dealing with him. and has (admittedly exploitable) fail safes so he cant just run into the boss room.

Spooky, on the other hand kinda sucks. like you said once encountered he WILL be someone’s (read: yours) problem for the next 45 or so seconds. where the most you can do is get him stuck on a wall or perma-decoy him. and in case you cant do these things your kinda boned. (lets also not forget spooky 1.0 who would straight up sit on you)

All-in-all fighting the crab feels infinitely better than waiting out a truly invincible and unstoppable spooky Boi. if only for the satisfaction that you have dealt with him and that he wont show up again.


#2231

Do any of you remember the original idea for Spooky Boi? I seem to recall reading in the idea for the Lost halls years before it’s release that after a certain time limit, the player spawn room would seal up and fill with lava (to prevent leeching, even from pausing techniques… you know, back when that was a thing lol), then you ran around this “maze” with hallways that were more narrow, and Spooky was supposed to be this permanent feature acting as a sort of singular “PAC-Ghost” entity, forcing crowds of players in a certain direction if they were unfortunate enough to cross paths.

There was another well thought out dungeon with a similar concept to LH that I read at about the same time, so I may be confusing the two. I’m positive this was it, though


#2232

Yeah i remember that version of spooky boi. you can still find in in the original design documents

The idea was to have the spectral sentry on a invisible set of ‘rails’ which he would constantly patrol.
This version of the LH also had a 25 player limit, the aforementioned anti-leech mechanics, respawning enemies and a ‘blind’ map (the map didn’t show anything) and all the hallways are narrower as well.

The Agonized titan acted as a regular Troom boss by dropping the entire LH loot pool and void was only accessible like 5% of the time.


#2233

Hah, the calamity crab must have been developed off of that idea then


#2234

He actually is.

trough observing the crab I’ve managed to figure out how his ‘patrol’ function works.
basically:

  • All rooms have invisible ‘nodes’ that tell the crab how he should move / where he should move to.
  • once it reaches a ‘node’ it will randomly choose a nearby ‘node’ which he will then travel to.
  • If he is aggro’d he will ignore nodes until all player are outside his detection range for a certain amount of time, once he no longer chases anyone he will attempt to locate the nearest ‘node’ and resume patrolling.
  • In the off-chance that he does not find a ‘node’ in his vicinity (this can happen in certain cases, like dragging him between the rocks and Bilgewater’s ship) he will instead keep circling on the spot until a player approaches him and aggro’s him. this behaviour will repeat unless he finds a movement ‘node’.

All in all this gives the crab probably one of the most sophisticated movement programming in the game.


#2235

This version of the LH also had a 25 player limit

Reminds me of those old 140+ person LH runs…I completely understand why they lowered the portal cap so severely and changed it to entering rather than loading in, but damn if I don’t miss feeling like I was truly raiding the dungeon with more than a hundred other players.


#2236

MASSIVE lag spike intensifies.


#2237

Correct! An entirely new behavior was written specifically for this purpose.
I’m not 100% sure how the Crab uses it, but I do know that this Patrol behavior is definitely less :crab: to use than any previous method, since it can remember previously visited nodes.

Gonna bee fun once LH 3.0 drops in 2143 >u<


#2238

Ok Wow. That’s some amazing stuff.

And that also opens up a ton of new options for different enemy types, since the system can work in modules. i can already imagine a agent-of-Oryx type dungeon where you sneak around instead of head-on fighting to get to the boss. and if a lone enemy sees you, he runs away and rings a alarm which then activates more patrolling enemies.

There is still the issue of the enemy getting stuck / failing to find any movement node which breaks the AI, tough Im sure this is either too rare to really be a detriment or there might be another simple workaround.


#2239

Hmmm… expanding on that, having a lower max-player capacity dungeon where most players start at different points and are assigned on a stealth mission to meet an end objective sounds pretty cool in writing. You could try to muscle your way through some of the enemies of the dungeon, but enough noise would alert nearby forces, minimum. (Perhaps that could be a brave strategy to divert the attention away from your comrades? :thinking:)

Anyway, before I go on some creative rant (because my mind is now flooding with ideas that would probably require enough uncouth programming to noticeably lower the lifespan of the devs), having a singular dungeon that is more focused on the rogue-like aspects of the game would be awesome, even if it wasn’t as fancy as more advanced games more oriented for stealth (like Assassin’s Creed, or Metal Gear Solid).


#2240

As someone who played Bully and Hotline Miami, if there is gonna be a Stealth section in a non-Stealth game, make sure it’s GOOD. The stealth sections in those specific games were easily the worst part of those games.


#2241

What if it was some kind of like minigame dungeon where you go in there with no loot, so you have to sneak around until you find some to beat the boss.


#2242

A forced semi-PPE dungeon? It sounds good in theory at first, but the loot would have to be ridiculously common to progress, else the dungeon be far too lengthy, and by proxy, tedious. Also, what would be the max cap for existing gear? Depending on how high that is, that would also effect the dungeon. Just a couple of thoughts.