Producer's Letter: Part 2

#102

Your healing is only weakened, not stopped.

#103

I was under the impression that pets still consistently healed you, but are planned to be mildly weakened as compensation. I too could be wrong, however.

#104

Tough to write all the sentiments into a concise reply but I think it gives a worse game experience overall, in the big picture, because of it. For example seeing so many dungeons be “wait for the rusher”, as new players get trained through experience that this is the default/standard way of playing, which mutates into leech so easily.

And that’s almost entirely because the endgame player w/strong pet is “too strong” for the design, letting them waltz through it with ease, so from newb’s point of view: when most of the time you get a rusher, why even bother trying, just TP to the rusher, or leave if none.

A smidgin of pet stasis &/or silence on minions could do wonders for the older dungeons, to rebalance them for current Rotmg, and make it not such a cakewalk to rush, but still fun to try. But it’s difficult to get right as we’ve seen in the I-think-fair-to-say unloved cem rework. And all balancing is easier to do when the diversity of the players is narrower. That’s what I’m trying to get at, the wider the gap between 0 and maxed, the harder it is to get a satisfactory outcome, because what is calibrated well for a 0/8 is very easy for an 8/8.

#105

In Combat: Vit/Wis regen is normal. Heal/MHeal gain +3 seconds to cooldown.
Out of Combat: Vit/Wis regen is doubled. Heal/Mheal is normal.

As a result, you can’t tank forever, but if you stopped taking damage for 7 seconds (or less, depending on the class’ Vit-mod + equips), you will recover extremely fast.

#106

I got the wis/vit concept already. So it sounds like the pets have a cool down time, then?

#107

Something like Thessal’s tweaks (extra status effects) might work, but I think that IC will help in slightly lowering the stomping of earlygame dungeons by endgame players (less pet healing) while helping earlygame players (higher natural regen). It’ll be interesting to instead put in some armor pierce, so that even high-def classes won’t escape IC, rather than full-on pet stasis - as much as I notice you advocating it, I find it to be a rather arbitrary solution.

It’s admitting that pets are already too powerful and require a near-constant disabling of them for a challenge - which, though it works for Encore, is still a bit of a…what’s the word…“meh” solution?
(Admittedly, putting 15 damage armor pierce shots is as well, but hey, now you can alternate between them!)

I think we’ll have to see the full effects of both IC and OOC on reducing the stomping of earlygame content. I do agree that some of it requires polish - Abyss and UDL lack attack/move animations, for instance. (While the Imp of the Red Demon does have animations!!! Ridiculous!!! They’re the same sprite!!!)

#108

There’s no clear goal here.

-If they wanted to help early players they would not have removed consistent >900 feedpower items.

-If they showed a consistent plan to ease progression from noob to endgame by making character slots and vault slots obtainable without logging in for months on end, I would be much more willing to accept their logic.

-This campaign for instance is extremely noob unfriendly. To successfully complete it you need to survive hundreds of nests.

-In fact, basically every event deca creates is noob unfriendly. You’re a new player. You log into the game. You see how hard it is to complete events and don’t know about discords at all. You quit.

I know someone that really wanted the cheetah skin that dropped from Tomb of the Ancient during an event. I told them it would likely take hundreds of tombs before they got the skin. They said “that’s no fun I have things to do” and they quit shortly after.

So please stop spinning it like Deca is trying to help the noobs.

Honestly when I see noobs I like I tell them to just quit because the uphill battle isn’t worth it anymore.

Eveyone here seems to forget that lots of good open world single player games take around 40-50 hours to complete.

#109

If nerfing Pets means that they’ll be able to make (And redesign, because Pets have tainted the design of nearly everything since their introduction so such a redesign would absolutely be called for) dungeons and bosses better because several hundred damage all at once is the only reliable way to currently be dangerous to a character with a decent pet, I’m all for it.

I had thought way back when that since there was clearly a status effect specifically countering Pets, it would be used more often so that Dungeons and the like wouldn’t feel the need to be designed around characters having hundreds upon hundreds of extra Vit and Wis. That it, for the most part, just plain wasn’t is both surprising and disappointing.

It’s important to remember that while for the moment it is a nerf, it opens the door to a better-designed game in the future. Of course, that does hinge on the design actually improving instead of just going “Job Done” and never looking back.

#110

That’s usually what happens.

Again, they just dropped the bard nuke and moved on.

I haven’t heard people crying about inspired lately. That’s because they know it’s final.

There won’t be any tinkering or fine tuning at all.

And like I said some people are going to cry that it wasn’t nerfed enough, while others will cry that it was nerfed in the first place.

All I know is I’m not spending on this game ever again.

#111

You say “removed”, but again: nerfs are needed sometimes.

The biggest example in my opinion was OT.

The bow had the same feed power as the void bow, the armor and ring were both better than EP despite being cyan bags, and the trap was… as useless as ever.

The trap has been buffed to 800 fp, cbow was balanced, and the cyan bags are now more on par with other cyan bags.

The 900 fp ez fp items you’re talking about were used for fp because they were too good for their rarity, that’s why they were the meta.

This is also ignoring the fact that deca practically hanfs out free fp, and that there’s been a daily quest added that gives a the omlet for the price of a couple pet eggs.

What?

Enticing their players to be active?

Also handing out tokens in free packs?

… and also giving out direct free char slots during holidays/motmg?

I haven’t done a single nest, and have only done about 3k points worth of shatters/lh at most.

I’m also at 17.5k points, despite not playing at all today because Hypixel Skyblock dropped a new update.

complains about deca making things unfriendly to noobs
then based on his own opinion, convinces people to quit the game.

Wow how pretentious of you to assume that your opinion is what everyone else shares.

Says who?

The knowledge that I know and don’t know sums the knowledge of the entire universe.

#112

They we not just “owners”, they created this game. They cared about the community, and introduced frequent, new content. They had a dream for the future of this game, and accomplished it. A game’s core game loop does not become a blank slate when the ownership of a game is passed on. Yes, the new owners have every legal right to completely and utterly change the game. However, it is in respect to the current playerbase, and the previous work put into a game, that developers try to mend the game, and not rewrite it.

#113

…mostly shotguns and minion spam, but still a fair point.
Really though, from what I’ve heard, those first few phases of Oryx 1 were all lhe had when WS introduced the Castle + his Chamber.
Cube God and Skull Shrine are another 2 examples of WS design.

#114

Yes that’s true, Deca’s actually run the game now for double the time that WS had it. A difficult thing to do coherently without some design principles of their own, as it gives a solid base for the Why things might be good or bad changes for the game (and helps take the playerbase along).

Indeed and that’s why it’s one of the biggest pities about how Rotmg has gone, that so many new and interesting different mechanics have been put onto a single item (Eg. an ST ability which 99% of players will never access). IMO they’ve nowhere near made the fullest use of what they’ve already designed, like we could have a class based on the totem idea that marble seal/bard banner use and so on.

Maybe I don’t! Or I’d have quit, haha. I’d say in general the content and mechanics are fun and enjoyable to engage with rather than shitty. I see a few things happening that don’t gel well with the existing content and mechanics, but for that we’re going back around in a circle, because changes have happened (Kabam but ongoingly) without much of a care for any design principles.

Sparingly please! Because irrelevanting DEF plays into the always-HP meta which we’ve got into.

Remember (or let me enlighten!) this was deliberate designed endgame content of its time, for a Rotmg of waaay more weak, and patient, play. Somuchso that people wrote tactics guides for how to fight them even! Get either one in a soloist situation without a pet, and relive their challenge, weaving in to get the dmg etc. Cube with its moving hoards and slows to avoid at all cost. Skulls easier due to their static and predictable minions. I’ll take the reminiscence glasses off now because they both cope badly to today’s hoards, sure, but they’re good examples for their time, not cases of poor quality.

#115

Nonetheless, they are still kind of bland. I mean, sure the Cube God does have that neat thing where the cubes move in to form some sort of shield for a bit every so often, but it’s still just one shot pattern, over and over. Back in the day it was probably overlooked slightly because of the generally higher difficulty of maintaining characters, but still.

#116

2 things I wish to point out about this:

  1. that would be out of respect for the old playerbase. the vast majority of the current playerbase has never played during the wildshadow era and by extension has very little reason to care. that’s a side effect of the game growing from such a small community into something this big, people who have actually been around since the beginning end up in the minority.

  2. it’d be cool if the developers that rotmg got passed to tried to stick to this approach, but if we’re being honest the game kinda has been rewritten. multiple times actually, pets permanently redefined how people experience the game, and then chest events redefined it again later. and it’s likely to keep evolving and changing until it bears so little resemblance to the original that it’d be hard for someone to see them as the same game. it’s a bit late to try holding out for deca to try to swing the game back around to its roots because they’ve made it pretty clear they aren’t very interested in that direction.

#117

I mean, it sounds nice and all when you word it like that, but i hate to break it to you, literally the only thing you do for Cube God and Skull Shrine is either cloak or tank them cause they’re impossible to dodge.

Wildshadow era had some strengths but bosses were not one of them, alot of bosses (Oryx 2 and Tomb to name a few) share the same issues to varying extents.
People will way too often put on the rose tinted glasses and forget the duped UT economy, ammies, sorcerer and assassin having even less use, so many classes having practically no ability options, the lack of weapon options too, the terrible drop rates, undodgeable shotguns, etc. Also responsible for so many inherent flaws that persist today like realm clearing being mostly boring killing of setpiece enemies, keys even existing, the serious lack of QoL; terrible code, and extreme balance flaws like the unlimited healing of priest.

#118

That statement was more of a general statement about any game developers.

In realm’s case, despite the hiccups regarding Kabam, I don’t see the current state of the game, alien to the beginning. Yes, it’s changed greatly, but nothing to the extent where I would consider it rewritten.

Consider some other games, from League of Legends to Club Penguin. Riot did not exactly change ownership, but the parent company changed. Despite this, their design philosophy has mostly stayed the same, though it has evolved. Club Penguin on the other hand, has three distinct separations. In the beginning, it was known as Penguin Chat 2, and was a novel multiplayer flash game. The titular Club Penguin came next, and finally the Disney Club Penguin era followed suit. Each iteration, the core of the game was fundamentally changed, only retaining artistic design each time.

#120

What issues? Tomb is one of the best designed dungeons in the game, and O2 has aged pretty well (though they did add extra phases)

That has always been true of realm, as long as the server code is spotty, it’ll keep on happening. One thing I have to say, is that wasn’t WS’s fault, it was merely the greed of the playerbase. (If you look at the early patch notes, duping fixes came up every few)

Are you sure about that? Back then, assassin was the king of getting sb. In fact, I’d argue that they became less used over time because of the constrictive spaces that is a trademark of DECA dungeons .

Tell me. Isn’t that also true of modern RotMG? You’re encouraged to use DPS gear most of the time to optimise efficiency, in fact I’d say we have fewer options that before.

You say that, then say

Is something that is a challenge to dodge, boring
to you?

Yes. I agree that keys are the most inherently p2w thing in rotmg, but removal would cause an uproar in the whale portion of the playerbase.

A serious lack of QOL = implementing anti lag features, loot preview, even pressing “i” and getting to spray bullets?

Priest just doesnt work with pets.

#121

Those bosses were designed for a player base without pet abilities. A playerbase that worked together to take down bosses, and not greed to do the most DPS.

Bullshit.

It’s as if no company, in the entire history of the game, fixed duping. It’s as if Kabam, when they promised to tackle the issue, decided to just keep the then promised temporary soulbound, as a permanent solution for the problem. The economy back then, was far healthier than the current bot ridden nexuses of today. Countless websites and organizations exist in the modern day to sell duped items. You cannot attribute the failures of all three game companies, on the actions of the first. Both Kabam and Deca had the game ownership well longer than Alex, Rob, and Amit.

Were balanced items and part of the core gameplay loop. They costed 11,500 fame after build 118.7, and were an item that you had to really save up for. Back in those days, fame was an actual currency, that meant something. You couldn’t just spend money to buy amulets or weapons, or armor in the nexus, unlike one company’s philosophy.

And pray tell, where is this data?

The updates to the game were frequent and plentiful. Wild Shadow would often interact with the forums and ideas were common to make it into the game. To say that, what, class abilities were limited, is an understatement. Entire sections of the game you take for granted were being written into existence. Obviously, comparing the current list of ability items to then, is a different story, and an unfair rationale to support. The UTs in the game were balanced and meaningful. Please, explain to me what classes were limited?

https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/ditto

Hahahaha, you’re preaching to the bloody choir here. I’ve run thousands and thousands of snake pits, and I haven’t gotten a single bulwark…

EXCEPT UT TRADING WAS PART OF THE ORIGINAL DESIGN PHILOSOPHY. THE GAME WAS NOT DESIGNED BE A DECADE LONG GRINDFEST FOR THAT ONE ITEM. ITEMS WERE MEANT TO BE TRADED.

Back in my day, our skill was based on dodging, and not how much money we burned to max our divine pets.

It’s almost like the addition of pet abilities, without changing anything else in the game, affected the entire balancing of the game :poggers:

The game HAD to make money somehow. What in this non-Newtonian era of gravity run physics of a world, do you think was an alternative for an indie game company with a Free to Play model? And how are these keys so evil, but the Golden Archer Pack is just absolute sheer brilliance in your mind? Or selling bloody old tops in the nexus? For $10!?!?!

Gee willikers, it’s like the game was actively being created. Go to the patch notes for 2010, 2011, and the TiGSource forums. I dare you. I double dare you. Tell me that there was no QoL patches.

The game was created originally for a timed game contest. The developers then used, cutting edge, actionscript 2, which was brand new at the time. Even in 2011, flash was just starting to become popular online. Of course the spaghetti code runs terribly in today’s standards, especially as Kabam and later Deca tacked on to the size of the game, without optimizing the source code.

Swearing ahead

Are you daft, or just trolling? Priest could not unlimited heal until Kabam fucking introduced fucking pet fucking abilities that fucking let fucking priests fucking heal fucking forever.

#122

simple: keys allow players to literally bypass 80%-90% of the game via cash alone with no other caveats or restrictions. if you wanted to farm for a pyra ring as the game structure intended, you would have to enter a realm, clear out enough realm quests to spawn a sphinx, kill it, and then do the tomb. not all realms have sphinxes though, and not all sphinxes drop tombs. keys allow you to instantly skip that entire process in an instant with no drawbacks. now maybe you might feel that the realm/sphinx process is a bit lengthy and has too many variables or maybe you actually felt that was just fine, but either way the time investment was an invaluable part of the game’s pacing, or at least the pacing it used to have.

by taking out that entire chunk of content, keys are arguably the most powerful catalyst in the rise of the current grind-a-thon meta rotmg is stuck in atm. if they aren’t the most responsible for this, then it’s chest event abuse, either way it certainly outweighs the effects pets had in this area. pets do allow players to run the dungeon part of the game loop faster and faster, but keys instantly delete the entire rest of the loop no questions asked.

because of this, keys are also directly responsible for the maintaining of miserable drop rates. bad drop rates + tradeable UTs = good system. good drop rates + sb UTs = good system. bad drop rates + sb UTs = nightmare hellscape. either UTs need to be made tradeable again, or UT drop rates need to get massively buffed to compensate. trouble is, duping enforces sb, and the grind-a-thon meta enforces bad drop rates. duping is a technical limitation that as you correctly pointed out has not been addressed by anyone, but excessive grind is built on keys which are not part of the gameplay loop or any technical obstacle. they exist solely to drain money out of meaty whales and are a very fixable problem. keys are to blame on this one.

as for alternative monetization measures to keep the servers going, we all know that it was pets that saved the game financially. there’s your alternative right there. but let’s brainstorm some other alternatives for fun:

  • as I alluded to above, keys bypass the game loop without any caveats. money doesn’t count because whales are gonna spend no matter what. a somewhat common suggestion I’ve seen is to have two separate drop tables for key-popped dungeons and naturally-dropped dungeons so the drop rate disconnect can be addressed, but how’s this for a different take? suppose we only allowed a person to enter 5 key-popped dungeons per day. even if someone dumps $1K into keys for a chest event, they and their friends can only make use of 5 of those keys every day. it speeds up the process of the grind a little bit without letting things get out of hand, and it also promotes healthy spending by capping it instead of letting whales bleed themselves dry.

  • another possible take on just “fixing” keys without coming up with brand-new alternatives yet would be to replace the dungeons keys open with “practice” versions that don’t drop loot. probably also dismiss the permadeath aspect since there’s nothing to gain inside one other than experience. it’d certainly help with the issue the game has where practicing things can be difficult without risking too much. similarly to the cap idea above, it also doesn’t incentivize excessive spending since there’s no loot to be acquired through it.

  • guild perks are horrendously underused. guild member expansions, ghall decorations, communal ghall chests, guildwide loot boosters, the list goes on. ghall decos in particular can have some depth to them by adding some practical benefits built-in to them such as dispensing a free spd pot or something every day. tons of potential with guild monetization measures, none of which have to be as game-breaking as keys are.

  • suppose you gave a player the opportunity to pay gold to save a single item of choice they were carrying. a bit dirty, sure, especially considering the emotional reaction/attachment the person is likely to have in response to a death, but from a gameplay perspective it’s not as game-breaking as keys are. it wouldn’t change much in the big picture to let whale #283 keep their jugg after multiple deaths since they can’t keep the character it was attached to or the mercy’s bane and crown they paired it with. they still have to keep playing to earn back their stuff, just less of it.

those are just a few ideas spat out at 1 AM. I’m sure a proper brainstorming session could produce some other alternatives that wouldn’t quite be as bad as “delete the entire realm from the gameplay loop” from a gameplay-focused perspective.

lastly, I’d also appreciate it if both you and megayeah could stop poking each other so hard. it’s not fun to read to be honest.