Post your unpopular opinions about realm here

[Twitchystr]

I predict Fungal Breastplate beeing the new ‘meta’ armor in place of Mercy’s Bane/Breastplate of New Life. That said, is DECA planning on nerfing it?

[Seelpit]

Not afaik!
Which means that, while (in? idk how to properly preface it) OoC, a petless Knight wearing just the Fungal Breastplate as vit-boosting equipment, will get an absurd regen of (1+0.12*135)*2 = 17.2 * 2 = 34.4 HP per second. That’s faster than with Healing, nearly a third of a Divine pet’s regen (which is honestly quite a feat, considering that’s just petless).

[Puffagod]

hmmm… perhaps I have some unpopular opinions… :3

• The lore you can read in the cursed library is… pretty lifeless and underwhelming.

• The sloppiness of the flavour-text in so many newer items is an underrated factor in the game’s increasing aesthetic and thematic decline.

• Player skins are more often than not a terrible eyesore. So many truly bad or ill-fitting sprites have slipped through the cracks. The same goes for pet skins. I wish I could turn both off.

• Oryx’s Sanctuary, while cool in itself, is entirely the wrong direction to take the Oryx 3 fight - or at the very least the wrong location. For all intents and purposes the Sanctuary is a slightly cooler Oryx’s Castle. Notice how charming the transition from Oryx’s Chamber to Oryx’s Wine Cellar (of all places!) actually is… the bathos is so fantastic. I’d even go so far as to say that the Oryx 2 fight is more thematically and (dare I say) emotionally exciting than what I’ve seen of the Oryx 3 fight - because Oryx is so cornered… There’s wine on the floor and a drunken mess of monsters crowding around him, he’s so desperate… he’s truly mad. This, to me, feels like a unique and creative design choice. Meanwhile, Oryx 3’s arena is sterile and Oryx himself shouts a lot of bombast but otherwise presents as a consummate warrior. Each of the mini-bosses have a million times the amount of personality that Oryx 3 has - and what personality he acquires by becoming ‘exalted’ during the fight, I’d argue, is entirely misguided. Oryx should DESCEND into utter mania, not ASCEND into a white-armoured, flame-sworded celestial avenger. He should shoot bizarre multi-coloured fire instead of bland white slashes, he should pull every dirty trick in the book to stay alive - and most of all he should be as terrified as you are. As someone who has been quite invested in the idea of Oryx 3 for many years now (see my earliest dungeon idea) I have to say, while it ticks its own boxes perfectly, there’s maybe a bit of a missed opportunity for something truly engaging to happen in this fight. Sorry for the wall of text… I had to try and put that into words

I’ll see if I can think of some more later!

[MechmanZ]

default skins are the best skins for most classes.

Its harder to find people with default skins then people who don’t. its kinda weird now.

lost halls discord runs are the most fun aspect of the game and are extremely positive for realm.

I strongly disagree, I think having dps blobs isn’t good for the game. I also don’t like how doing pub halls is basically nonexistent.

ppes are mundane and overrated. it is much more fun to play on normal main characters.

I agree on mundane. Its boring not being able to use your ability. PPE is nice because you know that all the gear you have is earned and not given.

idlers/movers manipulating spawns in fame trains should not be bannable

I think fame should be rewarded as you play your character. Not just after you die.

deca is slowly ruining the game with too many chest events making uts to sell for money(sts)

Inflation is probably the biggest flaw deca has on realm. But in the grand scheme of things, deca has done a lot of good.

pets ruined the game in many ways. not only because they made gameplay to easy and boring

With older dungeons, absolutely. But with newer, end game dungeons. You are almost forced to use a good pet unless you either in a discord, or have very adept knowledge of the dungeon. It’s frustrating to feed my pet because the majority of the loot I get are cyans…

UTs should be unsoulbound regardless of the duping situation

Some UTs just need to be soulbound. Items like the prot, jugg, or oreo shouldn’t be very accessible. I think having a set day to trade UTs would be really cool like what kabam did with UT weekend. But increasing the drop rates on certain UTs may only destabilize the economy.

[Cornchips]

When I said PPEs are boring and mundane. I meant PPES alone. Mundane is a great fame bonus and an easy one to have. Nothing against mundane. Also not sure what you mean by pub halls being nonexistent they do runs 24/7.

[Seelpit]

That’s only unpopular because lore is second to gameplay.
No matter how thematic it may have been, O2 was a terrible joke of a bossfight.

[MechmanZ]

I mean people that do halls that drop from lost sentry.

[Megayeah]

I don’t mean to offend, but barely anyone cares much about the barebones lore of a pixelated MMO with no real immersive factor, character depth or detailed worldbuilding, really, the gameplay and visual quality are all that matter for most of the playerbase, and on the gameplay front the entire Oryx Castle and Wine Cellar fall flat on their faces.

(It’s still fine if you care, but the vast majority doesn’t really play with any of that in mind)

[Xaklor]

The lore you can read in the cursed library is… pretty lifeless and underwhelming.

I very strongly agree with this. I, along with many others, thought the sheer amount of lore provided by the realm eye was super cool when it first came out, but upon reflection it reads like a hamfisted attempt at conjoining bits of setting that were never intended to go together in that way by the kind of person who’d normally be stuck writing mid-tier fanfiction. I feel that this is at least partially due to the setting and tone of the realmeye’s dialogue being completely unrepresentative of the rest of the game as a whole. for example, the plight of thesssal’s reluctant treaty with oryx to secure protection for herself and her mermaids isn’t visible at any point in the game. there’s room for a certain depth of character for someone forced into that position, but thessal doesn’t have any character whatsoever when you meet her face-to-face.

it’s sorta like constantly being told that you live in a grim depressive dystopian setting, but you never see any of it happening and the few people you interact with seem perfectly fine and sometimes even a bit cheerful. the world as you experience it compared to the world as you’re told how it is don’t match at all, and so one of the two is inevitably going to seem hollow and/or faked.

[Novachiz]

Kinda sucks they did away with the ability for people to make their own lore. I once started handwriting a story of how the nexus and real came to be, and was going to explore the simplest quest monsters like dreadstump and goblins, all the way up to what was currently the hardest enemy, the forgotten king. Now that the lore is handed to us, even though players can generate their own stories, people rarely feel inclined to do so as the official lore is given to us

[Backpedal]

LH is unfun and discord raids are the worst way to play the game

Which is exactly why attempts to make the game more difficult ultimately make the game less fun.

More difficulty -> Harder to do content alone -> More discords -> Less fun

Some players on this forum just don’t seem to understand. They’re off in lala land and log in once in a blue moon to do a four man void with their closest friends.

[Endertimes]

Which is exactly why attempts to make the game more difficult ultimately make the game less fun.

The thing is, at the start the game was supposed to be a hard bullet hell game. The fun in this kind of game is to get gradually better at dodging difficult attacks and being able to do harder and harder fights. Pets were the first step that made many challenges trivial, but I’m glad that more difficult fights are added to the game, as we’re comming back to the original idea of the game.

I do believe the discords are not a fun way to play those new dungeons, but they’re very doable as a solo player, as long as you take the time to learn the patterns, understand how the fights work and get better at dodging them. If you don’t have fun in discords, just don’t use them and go practice by yourself or in small groups.

As the game became easier over time, another kind of player arrived and now there’s alot of them : the players that aren’t here to play the game of shoot and dodge, but rather the game of shoot and… that’s it. Those players don’t want difficulty, but only a braindead game to grind for rare items and do not want to invest time into getting good at the game. I’m kindof sad that this is the case, but if that makes them happy and I can have my difficult challenges in the game, then I can’t complain too much about those players. I will, however, complain if these people argue about the game being too hard, when it is the litteral point of the game.

[Xaklor]

challenge is what makes games interesting. it’s where the fun part of the game is at. if you remove all challenge you quickly lose all meaning the game had and you’re left with nothing, which is exactly what has happened to rotmg. raiding discords are boring because they remove all challenge from the game. what you’re describing is not an argument against the reintroduction of challenge, it’s an argument in favor of why I believe the problem is unfixable.

bringing back challenge is necessary for bringing the game back to life since its removal is what killed it, but the playerbase of addicted zombies has mechanisms in place (raiding discords, key mobs, etc.) to bypass any attempts deca could ever make at reintroducing the challenge the game has lost. and if they can’t bypass it for whatever reason, they’ll abandon the whole thing entirely. they’re too conditioned to sit in their little prize box pushing the loot button until something interesting happens. they will either continue to do so forever until their box is taken away from them and they disinterestedly leave forever, or until they snap out of the trance and realize what a trainwreck their beloved game has become.

[Urgle]

And that’s WHY tomb runner and abyss runner events were introduced. I am struggling to rush abysses on melees, and even more without a pet.

I trained myself for 1 hour, and in that 1 hour i felt the challenging, risky aspect of the game. And it was beautiful. Not until my knight almost died though…

[Backpedal]

I do believe the discords are not a fun way to play those new dungeons, but they’re very doable as a solo player

I want to see a video of you clearing a halls on your own.

If they nerf pets and make rushing impossible, I fully expect to see you clearing on your own.

I will, however, complain if these people argue about the game being too hard, when it is the litteral point of the game.

Here’s my unpopular opinion: I personally think the game is fine exactly how it is. Is it perfect? No, of course not. But I don’t think for a second that Deca can make it perfect. And all the people complaining are free to use whatever pet they desire and whatever weapons they desire.

it’s an argument in favor of why I believe the problem is unfixable.

Yes. But that’s just it. Players right now have the ability to handicap themselves and “fix” the problem for themselves.

The core of the problem is, in ROTMG, hardcore challenges mandate hardcore grinding.

I’m sure there are lots of players in the game with real life obligations.

Take this death for instance. Do you know how many hours it takes to get a full st set necro? I know it takes a ton.

If you play for 30 minutes to 1 hour a day this is a huge setback.

So people will ultimately decide to run away from the game if it becomes too hard.

It’s not about the skill, it’s the fact that recovering can take months for a casual gamer.

And if you’re going to argue they don’t need the ST necro set to complete the game (which is true) the game implodes. There’s no reason to grind for loot.

People who aren’t in it for the loot will “one-and-done” O3.

[Seelpit]

challenge is what makes games interesting. it’s where the fun part of the game is at.

Counterpoint: differs from game to game, but in the case of Realm, does ought to bee the defining part due to the permadeath, has indeed beecome lost with all the possibility to make it endlessly easier.

[Xaklor]

The core of the problem is, in ROTMG, hardcore challenges mandate hardcore grinding.

if that is the core problem you believe to have found then I would argue you need to dig even deeper.

I would argue the core of the problem is that rotmg is inherently flawed in concept. it is an mmo with all the addiction black magic associated with it, and it is shackled to a game mechanic from a wildly different genre of game: permadeath from roguelikes. these two not only don’t get along now, but they never can at any point in the future because they’re almost complete opposites. permadeath turns the already toxic relationship of an addicting mmo grind into an outright abusive one as it decks you in the face again and again and again every time you make a small mistake while still demanding you stay hooked with its strange inexplicable allure.

mmo is built on hardcore grinding, progress taking months if not years to come without the power of meaty whales, while permadeath only works in a setting where progress is relatively easy to regain. this disconnect can never be addressed without dramatically altering the structure of rotmg as a game. this is why everyone systematically removed challenge from the game in the first place, on some level they understand this is an unfair expectation. but the result is not a game, it’s a skinner box. I know that’s a common phrase to use against these sorts of games, but rotmg is frankly the scariest one I’ve ever seen.

And if you’re going to argue they don’t need the ST necro set to complete the game (which is true) the game implodes. There’s no reason to grind for loot.

correct. however I would say this is a different, parallel problem in the tangled disaster that got us to this point. rotmg is just way too shallow for a proper mmo, which makes the addiction state all the more frightening once you realize you’ve wasted so much of your life making essentially no progress because there never was any to make in the first place.

[Megayeah]

the playerbase of addicted zombies has mechanisms in place (raiding discords, key mobs, etc.) to bypass any attempts deca could ever make at reintroducing the challenge the game has lost. and if they can’t bypass it for whatever reason, they’ll abandon the whole thing entirely.

I don’t wanna be unrealisticly optimistic, this is just a grey area between totally giving up on any hope for improvement and taking improvement for a given.

But saying that things can’t improve for realm because most of the playerbase would quit relies on the assumption that the current lootbox discord meta being a bad thing is an unpopular opinion, which, judging by the polls on very relevant topics to this, is most likely even with only a very slightly lower amount of pro-change, a percentage that, because of a number of factors has alot mode potential to increase than decrease if Deca’s mechanical changes this side wants are carried out, you could say this is because most discord users are experienced players bored with the state of things, but that doesn’t hold true since the discord has tens of thousands of people in it, nearly anyone active that didn’t quit the game uses discord for it, these polls were completely open so, statistically speaking, most people voting on them are not veterans, and so more likely than not generally not a sample more biased than average for change, you could also take into account that every time you point out things are terrible (usually also saying they can’t change), the response is overwhelmingly positive, near zero people disagreeing, very high likes. It’s also not fair to assume (not saying you did) that everyone in the biggest discord (PubHalls, to a lesser extent Shatters discord) is in there because they like discords, and not out of an almost requirement to get the things in that dungeon, just look at how many people are in the Halls discord or Shatters one, yet last time i checked most of them aren’t in say, the Nest or Fungal Cavern discords, dungeons much more feasible to do from realms.

So with more numerical evidence for a fairly even split i find the pro-change side being an unpopular opinion too reliant on (potentially biased, harder to prove) assumptions.

(There’s also the fact people aren’t robots and if change ends up happening not everyone who was against it will adamantly keep hating it, of course a few people who are in favor of it can also become against it, but if the tables turn it’s only natural it increases the numbers of the side they favor, atleast relatively speaking.)

[Xaklor]

there’s another, more subtle thing going on here that muddies the picture quite a bit when it comes to gathering data like you mention here: being a single person in an ocean of other players does things to your mind that aren’t so obvious. it brings things out of you that you didn’t see coming and it can also silence certain thoughts you might have if you were thinking on your own. obviously everyone here still retains their critical thinking ability and is free to talk about bigger picture things as we’re doing here right now, but when you log in to the game and join the masses something strange happens and none of those thoughts have any impact.

backpedal’s constant use of the “well if that’s the case then how about you actually do it then?” argument isn’t entirely wrong, though it is a bit needlessly pointed. it illustrates that there’s a disconnect happening between what we say out here and what everyone’s behavior is in-game while their heads are actively in the mind fog enveloping the game.

seriously, try it. go out into the game and see for yourself what’s actually happening in practice. you and I both know from the conversations held here and from your data on those polls that there are people out there who would be interested in playing the game as a game for once. try to convince them to do something the “normal” way without keys or discords. see how many people actually look up from the masses and follow. I won’t bet that no one will join you, but I will bet that the vast majority of them would rather be stuck with their random prize box in the dark brain fog with the rest of the masses.

you’ve seen me argue against this type of behavior several times before here, but back when I actually did play the game even I was powerless against this stuff when I was actually in the game. no one would really play the game “normally”, the realms were all basically empty, if you wanted to get something done you’d probably have to do it with keys or discord. I was fully aware at the time that it’d be much more interesting to solo/small group my cults/nests/etc., but I could also tell that it’d be vastly more effective to wait until the masses brought out the keys and then zombie along with the rest of them. and I couldn’t really do anything about it, so I reluctantly went along with it until I came to the conclusions I’ve been sharing here and quit forever. this is the story of many veterans who have left the game a long time ago, never to return, though I doubt many of them share the same level of sheer nihilistic despair towards the game that I do.

the precedent for this kind of game-smothering grind gameplay has already been set and everyone’s gotten a long good taste of it by now. and whether you got hooked on the taste or left in disgust, it’s extremely difficult bordering on impossible to go back when you’ve experienced this version, even if you are fully 100% aware that it’d be for the best. the genie won’t go back in the bottle, it’s out and everyone knows about it and they’ll never forget.

mob psychology is a very powerful frightening monster.

[Megayeah]

the “well if that’s the case then how about you actually do it then?” argument isn’t entirely wrong, though it is a bit needlessly pointed. it illustrates that there’s a disconnect happening between what we say out here and what everyone’s behavior is in-game while their heads are actively in the mind fog enveloping the game.

try to convince them to do something the “normal” way without keys or discords.

but back when I actually did play the game even I was powerless against this stuff when I was actually in the game. no one would really play the game “normally”, the realms were all basically empty

I know i can’t really statistically prove this and don’t know which time and circumstance you’re referring to exactly but active servers’ realms are far from empty now and for as far as i can recall, it’s always been extremely easy for me to get into a full realm going to an active server especially with the new queue, i don’t have to “convince” anyone to play normally because plenty of people already do, if they didn’t i wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere since i avoid discords.