Producer's Letter: Part 1

#22

the only thing “youthful” about the argument “discord bad” is that it is poorly defended, so allow me to elaborate:

dissecting the phrase “this genre” already yields contradictory results that may illustrate something important happening here, because rotmg is a tone-deaf clash of 3 very different types of games. if we ask the question “is organized raiding a major facet of this game”, the following genres produce these answers:

  • mmorpg: yes, of course
  • roguelike: hell no
  • bullet hell: absolutely not

that alone should illustrate that there’s room for people who don’t want this aspect depending on what they expect to get out of rotmg. if one only cares about the roguelike/bullet aspects and is generally antisocial because they’re not big on all this mmorpg stuff, then introducing content that’s entirely dependent on raiding discords is nothing short of a nightmarish gatekeeping imposition.

it’s also probably worth mentioning that the “cooperation” of the old days is not quite the same thing as the soul-crushing sheep simulator that is the current raiding discord setup. you don’t “cooperate” or “strategize” with anyone, you sit down, shut up, and listen to the raid leader like a good little drone or you get kicked for breaking the rules. this isn’t healthy. voice channels and heightened levels of necessary communication aren’t inherently a bad thing, but the ones rotmg is currently stuck with are really really bad for player engagement, because there isn’t any.

lastly, as an aside on game design because I know that’s a thing you’re into, it’s a shame you chose the cube god as an example of “good” game design because it and skull shrine are probably the worst designed bosses in the game (at least now that feargus has been fixed anyway), because they don’t really have any design. it’s just a wall of bullets.

“attacking and dodging” is the core loop of rotmg, it is the fundamental action one performs on a second-to-second basis upon which the entire rest of the game is built. so introducing something that blandly spits out walls of bullets between itself and its vast minion array that can’t be avoided doesn’t mesh with that very well, now does it?

arguably one could further argue that things like the skull shrine and cube god encouraged the development of the current meta built upon facetanking rather than engaging with the aforementioned primary loop. sure it was pets that ultimately made it possible, but something like the cube god’s unavoidable bullet storm at least put the concept into their heads.

#23

First of all, I’m not entirely sure what begets exactly means in this context. Since the word appears to literally mean, bring (a child) into existence; I’m not sure whether you’re accusing me of how young I am or for how long I’ve been playing this game for. I’m going for the assumption you’re accusing me for how young I am. I will say right now that I first started playing the game in 2011, before grave looting was removed. You seem to be implying that I’m unaware that there have been programs like Discord before Discord existed. The fact is, I am aware. I knew of two programs before Discord that are both VOIP’s, Skype and Teamspeak. Skype was what I used before I started using Discord once it was created. I never used Teamspeak and I highly disliked its interface. Skype is bad now too, now that Discord exists.

Now, I’ve only ever had 2 friends to play Realm with. Those two being my brother and cousin. I’m aware that you have a whole powerhouse of a guild to run through Lost Halls with, however. But. until Lost Halls existed, I was never forced to use VOIP’s to access any of Realm’s contents. I was never forced to make friends. Without a guild to run them with, I was stuck with my only option being dungeon discords. I, personally, view dungeon discords as absolute garbage and fun-suckers. They’re bent on running the dungeon as fast as possible, with as little fun as possible. They order you around every few seconds, because maximum efficiency is key. It’s like you’re sheep in a herd, being herded towards the loot. Instead of fighting your way through a dungeon together with friends, slowly making your way towards the treasure; but the real treasure being the friends we made along the way. This absolutely sucks, and destroys anything bullet hell about Realm. Which is, in my opinion, its best aspect. It’s a shame it’s lumped in with mmorpg.

My point above I personally feel is weak and I probably could have conveyed it better. Given I had the time or will. But Xaklor just finished her post and that explains everything well. So I’m gonna leave that above paragraph like that.

Also, your Cube God point sucks. That thing moves way too fast to even bother trying to dodge anything. If you want to get close to a Cube God, hope you can tank or you’re mobile. It’s designed so that you need a group of players and that one single person doesn’t just kill it. That’s irrelevant now. Cube God sucks. There’s nothing bullet hell about the Cube God, it’s just bullet.

#24

Hahaha, no.
No, it won’t.

#25

I concede that my tone may have been rude. I apologize @RareMeat

I don’t exactly agree with the aforementioned points, but all the responses were well phrased, and respectful. Despite my seemingly unpopular opinion, I stand by it. I do not see organized play as a negative. I do quite enjoy the bullet hell aspect of the game, though I haven’t truly felt that impact in the game since pets… everything leads back to pets.

I know, I know, I can’t keep using pets as a final defense for all my posts. Alas, I have nothing left to say on the matter. Cheers.

#26

Just do giant blanket bans duh dummy dummy :yum:

that’s never backfired silly willy :blush: :blush:

And @Kalitaio, its not that organized play is bad as a whole, its when it becomes the only viable way to do dungeon runs or events is when it becomes bad. WoW’s guilds are much more refined, and are given some importance to doing dungeons/raids, making it very viable without the need for 3rd party software like Discord, though they make communication during raids a lot more reliable and easy to do.

that’s about all I have to offer on this conversation though

#27

The main problem with realm is they won’t implement A BASIC MMO FEATURE - party systems, out of some bullshit notion this game still remotely resembles a roguelike.

#28

The bot problem can’t be solved easily
How would you solve it without impacting real players?

#29

You don’t need to join raids to run these end game dungeons, you just need to try a different approach.

I’ve been teaching people to run fungal caverns & crystal caverns in public realms lately. I bring effusions of dex & def & it helps people overcome the bosses big head phase & baby worm phase a lot better. I call out to people to join fungals & I tell them I have effusions to help with the boss phases, while in dungeon I teach them what to expect, after teaching maybe a dozen people over the last 2 days, I’m already seeing groups of strangers follow for crystal caverns and we’re getting these dungeons done more consistently.

Also while I might be capable of soloing caverns, I’m by no means great at them, even now I often find myself needing to nexus, but having other players join in makes it feel way less depressing than attempting to completely solo the dungeon & I hope it catches on.

Point is give it a try yourself, acquire some tinctures or effusions & try to beat these dungeons, & try to encourage and teach other players in your own server, we might persuade more players to stop relying on these discord raid channels & actually play this game.
One last thing to mention is also learning what debuffs work in these dungeons as that also can make it a lot easier for small public parties and newer players learning the end game dungeons.

#30

Low end CPU users confirmed lol. (seems like I’m one of them )
Even tho I barely playing, But I still like to ROTMG keep moving on and completely abandon flash.

#31

Cant they just add a captcha system?

#32

You don’t need them, but you’ll get loot probably 3-5 times faster in a discord.

#33

@BetaRuler probably just summed up what I love doing in this game! I’ve made it known in different threads that my guild is oriented towards that, and I try helping people out in dungeons if they care to listen. And the point of being able to solo with occasional nexusing is so relatable! XD

I have mixed feelings about some of the opinions here, but I agree with some, including a number of Xaklor’s. To the point of Discord’s vs. what gameplay style Realm is appealing to, though I haven’t been since the beginning of the game like some here, if I recall this game’s history, it was never completely meant to resemble a specific genre. I believe the point of this game was to be designed as its own thing, “to break as many traditional rules of games is its general genre as possible,” I believe was stated somewhere. I’ll have to offer sources, so take that with a grain of salt.

I think it really comes down to if the players like this game or not in the first place. Different mindsets will take different sorts of pleasure, some people like organized raids, others (like myself) don’t mind more public settings, working together, somewhat independently. :yum: I personally think that that Discord “sheep” analogy is accurate, and it quickly takes the fun out of the game for me. No funny mistakes or playful social bantering, just a mindless machine.

Unfortunately, I also realize there’s certain public traditions outside of Discord sessions that inhibit players less skilled. For instance (yes, I know this dungeon’s getting changed), the first part of the Shatters: Why on earth does everyone think we need to rush? Some skilled players go and take out the switches, and theres a fear that almost everyone will be left behind the bridge, but it’s not that hard to burn a straight line. And honestly, I see many public Shatts where everyone assumes there’s people taking out switches when there isn’t, and everyone nexuses because they dragged everything with them to the still sealed bridge. After that, clearing enemies becomes a thing again, for some reason. There’s so many dungeons I could list with examples like these historically, some of which have since been fixed through design patches, but there agonist seems to be these series of hereditary traditions burned into everyone’s minds. Rushing can be exhilarating, but it separates the playerbase.

This tangent of mine may be convoluted now, but I guess what I’m trying to say is there’s more than one way to play the game. None of them are wrong, but they all have their own disadvantages. I don’t think “Discord dungeons” are impossible, especially if you have normal guild. But unless you’re the cube god or skull shrine (which the public knows how to do), it comes down to each individual knowing how to dodge shots independent of the group with all those player piercing shots. You can have a Discord leader tell you what to do, or you can have the experience of figuring it out yourself. Your choice.

(I’m sorry all, I wish we could talk about this merrily whilst eating something delicious to lighten the mood; everyone treat yourself to a virtual cookie! :cookie: :milk_glass:

#34

There is already a party system, a lock system, a friend system, and a guild system. I have no clue what sort of thing you envision with a party system - all the trappings are really there already.

#35

Its sarcasm.

I thought the emojis and wording would make that very clear but I guess not.

#36

The three runes still have to go.

They can keep trying to shove them up our butts but I know it will never work.

Honestly they’ll have some success if there’s a campaign that gives them out, but that won’t last for long term.

I’m kinda confused why they put out a producer level since nothing has changed.

#37

honestly it’s even worse than that. probably something more like 15-20 times faster to run those things with raiding discords. and if you include practice time the efficiency gap gets so preposterously extreme that you probably just won’t get anything out of it.

it’s insane how unrewarding the “normal” game has to be in order to accommodate the extreme loot machine meta, otherwise the discord drones would run out of things to grind for in a matter of days.

#38

He was probably talking about a scenario where we have active moderation in game… Which I think, yeah, his point makes a lot of sense.

#39

The runes should all drop from things fairly accessible from a realm, DECA just screwed over all players who don’t like discords with these things

#40

Ahaha, if there’s a single thing I had to approve of with the runes, it would be that one of the places to acquire a type of rune is in The Court of Oryx, finally providing some meager incentive to take that route over Oryx! I just wish that that same rune didn’t drop from normal Realm encounters… that quickly made me sad.

#41

Okay, and how would that pan out?

Either Deca would have to hire people specifically for this, or sacrifice rather valuable dev work for it.
Alternatively, they could, of course, rely on a group of people…but if it’s small, then it won’t easily be able to do a lot over the vast amount of servers. However, with a larger sized group, it becomes more difficult to keep people in check and prevent them from abusing their powers.

Plus, that last point even goes for a small group. If they need to justify each of their actions, then that, too, costs a constant checking back-and-forth, setting up strict rules, and then there’s the absolute gargantuan amount of edge cases…

As an initial thought, sure, it may seem “obvious”. But try to see a slightly bigger picture and you start seeing where it falls short.