PT: Challenger Mode

[UberAtrain]

The game was a nice return to form in terms of pacing, but the game felt kind of empty.
With the game losing so many dungeons and still able to access pets, you can pretty much play everything in a few hours really.
I know you guys have Ideas about changing up the game mechanics every season and I hope it helps the game feel less empty or weeds out the monotony of the game reduced size of the game.

The mark quests are super painful to do, simply because of the limited vault space (but maybe that was intentional for players to focus on one character at a time for the limited lives you have) but getting the quests done was a big challenge not because i wasn’t able to kill the bosses but because I didn’t have any space to store the marks.

But overall I’d say I enjoyed this mini-season It definitely felt like your company slogan, “Breathing New life into old game”
the community was back together and everyone was helping each other out because there was nothing to lose and only to gain, with trading disabled. Starting fresh made every extra hand that much more impactful.

Some things I found during my play through
Needs fixing-
Can’t check the leaderboard anywhere other than nexus (i.e. vault, daily, quest etc)
egg omelette gives no feed power
leaderboard updates are buggy
The Incantation description is wrong (Use once hitting rank 10)
Inventory space (very limited, room for potential expansion?)
The pet yard feed display still shows pet xp progress on 0 FP items.
Samurai are available for play but have no UT’s to go for like every other class. (Pre-Kabam)

My questions
Will there be vault/character slot expansion available, if so will it be paid in real world or will it be unlockable in-game for the seasonal server.

[Textbook]

Well, the season is over now. Though the testing servers are still up, it looks like you can only view the top 20 leaderboard, and the one that shows your current placement says the there isn’t a season going on.

Before I launch into typing up more feedback about my thoughts on the challenger mode/this season on public testing, I’d just like to begin by saying that these last 2-3 hours were genuinely magical. There was like only 8 people online, but by god did we band together to topple event gods, storm the castle, defeat O1, and then conquer O2 (though not with casualties).
There was a sense of adventure and teamwork and friendliness that harkens back to perhaps your first days of Realm, and it blew me away especially given I’m relatively new to the game, all things considered.
It was amazing, and I felt similar even when this public testing had like 60 people online; everyone was teaming together to clear abysses and grind out udls.
You don’t see this in current Realm any more, in prod. If I’m in the godlands, half the time I’ll call out a dungeon so people can join me to run it for loot, and I’ll get no one tping over. The nexus sitting to wait for some whale to pop wlabs so you can sit at spawn while the trickster tps over and then steamroll the boss is like the absolute opposite feeling. Not even organized Discord runs for dungeons like halls even hold a candle to the atmosphere I experienced this public testing.
It was beautiful.

I might be going off on a slight tangent here (if I am just skip down to where I’ve put down bulleted points, that’s more concrete feedback), but I believe one of the key factors to this was that everyone wanted their character to grow and survive, and it was not a trivial task to do so.
If people just aren’t dying, because they are cheating, it affects more than the leaderboard (which is already a big issue by itself). There is no reason for these players to play it more safely, if they can spare the time to make up for playing sloppily, if they will not risk losing their character. I know that Deca is trying their best, and intends to try as hard as they can, to prevent cheating during challenger mode.
But I don’t think it’s enough. I can already give one example where more can be done, and that’s with how our lovely individual “A” from Sebchoof’s video on cheaters is still taking up 2 all-time top 10 leaderboard slots on prod. And I think that the fact that cheaters will still likely be rampant in prod does risk jeopardizing the wonderful experience I have had on public testing, where it’s just not feasible to be cheating.
I realize that for many reasons, not just the cheating problem, I might potentially never be able to experience the wonder of public testing challenge mode once all the testing sessions are over… but uh yeah it’s not like there’s been anything else in my life I have enjoyed and then lost right haha

Uhhh anyways overall, I think the current season for challenger mode is definitely strong.
Bulleted points time!

• This may be harder to implement/tack on to the current implementation, but I would love to see individual class leaderboards as well.

Currently, there’s not much incentive to pick certain classes with less survivability/utility, and even more so if there are no UTs to grind for on that class. These classes may also be less likely to reach top 20 against classes with more survival power.
If there were a leaderboard for each class as well (similar to how RealmEye has top wizards, top mystics, etc), then even if you might not be top 20 in the world for this season overall, you can at least try for top 20 in your class!

• I think that there may potentially be not much to do after 8/8 other than grind O2s in this season, and so players who are currently on the leaderboard and have maxed their character have no incentive to play further unless they’re at risk of losing their leaderboard.

This probably explains why public testing seemed kinda dead tonight. However, adding more content could contradict the intention of having the tinkerer quests be feasibly obtainable for someone who isn’t playing 24/7, so it’s a tricky problem. I’m not really sure if there’s a good solution to this.

• The tinkerer quests are feasibly obtainable, as is the intention, if there is enough activity (for example, Friday afternoon for me was very active). However, if they’re at the level of activity I experienced tonight, the tinkerer quests would not be feasible to obtain within 4 days.

Hopefully this is a non-issue when it hits prod, though I’m not sure what the planned set-up for challenger is on prod (separating servers per region? will having the intended number of servers effectively work, given currently on prod I often experience players flocking into one server and even crowding at an 85/85 realm portal rather than joining the other realms or even playing on other servers?)

• Probably already noted and queued up for fix, but pet yard upgrade and potentially other things are definitely using legacy mode fame still despite being listed as costing 0 fame.
• I feel like O2 is too powerful in terms of fame, and can contribute to potential burnout in this 4 day season because of how many you need to do to compete. Missing out on a couple O2s can leave you having to play major catch-up with the players close to you on the leaderboard, and a player could miss O2 for many different reasons.

It should hopefully not be as big of a problem in a month-long season for example, but in a 4 day season, the players who are playing as much as they can over the weekend are already going to be stomping the leaderboards. There isn’t really a good way to make up for the missed O2s either, especially if when you get on, the server activity is low enough that O2s aren’t being done as quickly as during other times.
I don’t think O2 fame should be nerfed, because I think 100 fame is ideal. Instead, dungeon fame could probably be upped just a bit more to compensate (I don’t want to up godlands fame at all, since that just encourages fame trains).

• I would like if the final leaderboard (for your personal ranking) for the season is still visible for some brief time in some form in-game after the season ends.

This way, people can view their final placement and see how they placed at the very end of it all. I don’t think it should be just blocked off entirely, but just archived for a short period of time at least, obviously without it receiving any updates from the point the season ended.

• The points I brought up in my earlier feedbacks I still believe in and hope that they are considered.
• Other than that, I think that the rest of the decisions made for this season work wonderfully.

[Urgle]

unless they’re at risk of losing their leaderboard.

don’t make rotmg like ranked seasons

[Lolization]

This PT gave me a nostalgic feeling of realm. I didn’t touch the game in a while and going back to “NPE style” was breathtaking. After a few years of not doing so, I was grinding godland dungeons for potions to max myself, and cooperated with everyone by calling out dungeons and clearing together to make everyone’s lives easier. Was sad to see some deaths here and there, instead of the usual “LOL F” reaction that happens in prod.
Overall, it was a very nice experience and I hope the way it was this season will be similar to the other seasons. By that I mean how pet feeding worked (so you don’t need to grind fame and suicide to feed it), and not having any p2w stuff that gives someone the advantage (besides having the pet yard bug but that’ll be fixed haha).
Something that I have a hard time thinking of a fix but think is a bit of an issue is the amount of grind required to get to high positions. On the last day I hopped on to see if the leaderboards updated and from having the leaderboard say that Akram is #1 with 1750 fame, it was a Mrunibro with a whooping 5.5k
I was surprised how someone got so high up within a day, and most people can’t spend countless hours per day on gaining fame. Other than that, this run was truly amazing and I had a great time being part of it.

Oh and something I thought about that could be nice, is that at the end of the season, the main account gets the fame as if the character died. It can be sad to lose everything that you worked hard to earn, so you can count it like the character just died. That way, you at least gain something from all that work even if you don’t hit leaderboards

[Unicorn]

Leaderboard Final

Mrunibro OP…also may not be 100% accurate cuz I remember Jason saying he was 18 or something. I’ll give some notes as someone who played a good amount this weekend, character had 30 some hours when it died.

• Mentioned already but I didn’t really like having alive fame as the ranking measure. Between the dc’s and not getting fame due to some guy ks’ing from off your screen, we probably missed out on a third or more of the total fame we would’ve got from the O2s. Unibor consistently got highest damage as a fuken warrior but lost out on a ton of XP cuz some sin got the kill from the other side of the map.

  • If we do want to go that route, that’s fine but since you’re centering gameplay on the core “clear realm, do oryx” loop, you should make it more fair. Something like an oryx mark quest for fame (akin to an epic chest) would be a better implementation.

• A few people got to 8/8 (Tiffit, Unibor, MMoas) but not without the help of keys. I was 1 greater mana shy of 8/8 for the last 2k fame of gameplay because realm OT’s didn’t drop anything for me . Not sure if a goal is 8/8 but 6/8 pacing feels correct, life/mana maxing is a bit tough for a 4 day natural gameplay window. Perhaps consider adding this to the drop table for Oryx (or some guaranteed mark quest).

but we would like to know how attainable the Tinkerer’s quests feel based on what you accomplish within whatever time you play.

• Completing ALL the quests would have been a stretch, especially if we start out with such limited storage for marks. I had 1 slot/1 vault and maybe could have finished all the quests around the 20 hours of gameplay if I had been trying hard. But given the rewards, I didn’t do a lot of them since I had already gotten those items as drops (ex. I already had a better robe than moon, so didn’t do that quest). In that sense I don’t get why the ultimate goal was to do all the Tinkerer quests. Open question: was anyone able to finish the non-repeatable Tinkerer quests?

he actually deserves the oryx fame like wut ;-;

[Shatter]

Oh i did make it? yaaay.

ok now fix bugs and release so I’ll play this game that I no lifed for 7 years again. I played prod for a good 10 mins today before getting off with no desire to go back.

A few people got to 8/8 (Tiffit, Unibor, MMoas) but not without the help of keys.

I ended at 7/8 with 3 greater mp pots needed (no keys). If I played more last night or if Thessal wasn’t such a greedy biatch I would have managed it.

The quest would have been fine and doable but with the storage given they were far too much of a pain.

[Heraldism]

I ended around the same. Needed 4 greater mana to max, was at 3.2k fame. The key pops are definitely the only reason I maxed life. The past few days reminded me why priest was my favorite class before pets made it irrelevant to play outside of Lost Halls which I absolutely despise. Overall I had more fun grinding out this challenger mode test than I’ve had playing realm in literal years. It could use some work, pets definitely shouldn’t go beyond uncommon and O2 should give no more than 50 fame, 100 was a bit absurd, but fame aside the game was great. I do worry we will run out of things to do since there is no point in trying to max other characters due to the limited time and hard resets of the season, but I remain hopeful.

Also MMoas true first 8/8 change my mind

As a side note, would love to see the final results of the leaderboard. I was #1 for a solid 5 minutes at 3.2k but was unable to play for the last 24 hours, maybe more.

[Unicorn]

See 2 posts above my friend, under drop down:)

Oh yeah you reminded me, cheaters and people like Japan are gonna dominate prod boards because of auto and 24/7 grind. Sad

[TheVulture]

as many ppl wrote, the overall experience was great. the game was mostly coop. the O2 ping-pong with Textbook and the other players was awesome. I’m also a bit worried about how this mode will work out on prod due to clients.

the list of issues I came by, even though many were reported by others, are:

• many ppl didn’t see the challenger mode the first time. they were loaded automatically into the normal mode instead (happened to me as well)
• mass dcs: enemy disappears from screen, but stays on the minimap. projectiles are invisible, so everyone dcs after a few seconds. something like this was fixed on prod. I clearly remember it happening at O2, limon, and a cube god, but there were probably many more occasions.
• fame distribution:
  • enemies give lots of fame (e.g. O2 gives 100)
  • it’s very easy to miss the fame. it took me about 3-4 wcs to get it for the first time.
  • it often happens in sprite world, udl, snake pit, and at event bosses, stone guardians, and O1 too
  • this affects the leaderboards too much
• egg omelette has 0 fp despite of being a pet food item
• pet feeder:
  • accepts all items, including non-pet food items
  • shows original fp and level changes instead of 0 for non-pet food items
  • takes all items, but gives 0 fp for non-pet food items (rip doom bow)
• hp scaling is too harsh sometimes: it shouldn’t take 10 minutes to kill a cube god. it should either take into account the class/dps of the players or it should be lowered in this mode
• top 20 list is often times not up-to-date
• extra content: mt, candy, cave of a thousand treasures, parasite, janus, etc?
• the season is now over, and a new one has been started. I tried to join the game by creating a new character, but I got the “account already has 2 active characters” error. on a second login attempt, there were two necromancers showing up in the character list, but the server was admin-only.

[CarSeatHeadrest]

Maybe guarantee vit/def from abyss again? I don’t know if this is the case already but I ran around 5 abysses (b/c I didn’t have much time to play challenger only around 2 hours) and only got vit in groups. Otherwise, challenger mode made me want to play RotMG again, which is not something very easy to do nowadays with how many other games coming out that I want to play.

[Unicorn]

accepts all items, including non-pet food items

That reminds me there was a glitch where if you feed your pet any item, your account fame switches to your legacy fame. Then you can use that to switch a pet’s family, making it considerably easier to fuse (b/c u don’t need to hunt for another egg of that family, or farm the 1k fame needed for that switch). Creds to heraldist for help me exploit…

[XHippobroX]

imo I don’t really see the appeal to me it just seems like regular realm but with less content. Personally I prefer the fast paced gameplay that pets provide. Even though waiting for your vit to kick in has its own charm, its not as fun for someone who has always had pets. If other people enjoy it that’s fine but I will probably just stick to the main game.

[DATjihad]

This mini-season was truly a breath of fresh air. Even got a few of my old buddies to play it who had lost all interest in the current cesspool of prod.

In the 7-8 hours that I had played I played as a warrior with a wizzy on the side in the case I would rip, luckily that did not happen. In those 7 hours I was able to max my warrior to 5/8 with the greater potions, and I must say, those dungeons felt REWARDING, and by god it was nice only having to do 10 sprites instead of 20.

The absence of godly pets was very interesting as well, taking me directly back to the olden days, the days when you’d hug a priest leg until they accidentally pressed spacebar and gave you some of their holy juice so you could continue killing shit. Having to actually manage your health instead of just being hooked up to a blood infuser from your pet gave the game another layer of complexity and made for more risk/reward decisions. Even mana management was a great part of the pet-less saga, where I actually had to use mana potions.
And the bloody scavenger hunts on LotLL for mp/hp pots were savage as you were trying to swipe as many pots as possible.

The tinkerer quests were a nice addition. The mark situation however, will have to be slapped down in the complaints.

Now for my complaints;

• Firstly, there was a fine gentleman who had gold from eons ago, from when you could still glitch gold in testing, and he was popping keys. That by itself, was by far the worst part of the experience as it felt like the cancer of USSouth all over again.
• Secondly, the fucking marks. The god damn marks. There is simply no storage space for containing all of the marks, unless you specifically farm for just one dungeon. And this could be so easily fixed by just allowing us to stack the marks into stacks of 8. If you can create a “Hello World” program, you can create an object to stack 8 fucking marks.
• Thirdly, this complaint is minor and will likely be fixed in an actual challenge season; Guilds. I was unable to have a guild with which I could rob Guill of his mp/hp potions. DECA pls fix.

All in all I do hope that these seasons bring us something akin to Path of Exile where we get a fresh start every few months with hopefully new content. New content that is not insta-killing trash that rushes into your face.

[Kristian]

Honestly if people were using keys to max mana and life then maybe DECA should add the 3 epic dungeons also, I see no harm in that and the UTs would be nice.
I really enjoyed the gamemode, the teamwork was awesome, and the thrill of actively dodging attacks was great. If you’re doing things based off Wild Shadow then I suggest you add every event and dungeon they made because things got stale after saturday night for me. It would be cool to have a challenger exclusive event/dungeon.

I didn’t get 2 slots or 2 vaults but my only complaint would also be the marks taking up space.

[Jadragoniz]

I thought Challenger Mode was super fun.

[Shatter]

you’re the insane man who got orange star on it right?

[NotJustin]

As a firm believer that pets were a mistake, I’m more than a little disappointed with that regard. Last time I consistently played was 4 years ago though so I’m probably not the target audience.

The rest of the concept sounds very exciting though.

[Alzeimers]

I love the idea of challenge mode but I still think pets are too powerful at level 70, even 50.

According to this link I found (https://guidescroll.com/2014/05/rotmg-pet-heal-and-mheal-data/) a level 50 heal pet is 70 vit and a 50 mheal pet is 50 wis, this is a huge amount of vit and wis that changes the stats to beyond the original intention and balance of the class and makes classes.
I completely agree with some other people here saying remove heal and mheal, lower the pet cap or even completely remove pets!

But this is a great idea and I will definetly play it!

[CandyShi]

I played challenger mode for 5(?)ish hours, and here are the highlights: (same character, 0 deaths)

Summary

OT #1

OT#2

EP denial #1

OT#3

Oryx #1 lmao

EP denial #2

Pogmur

1/8

2/8

3/8

I also recorded a video of a problem, I had gold on my testing account for some reason and it transferred over to challenger mode, where I could buy stuff from the nexus. It’s on my computer at my dads house, so I’ll try to get it uploaded/posted here in a couple days.

[TheVulture]

level 50 was the max. getting a heal/mheal pet, and maxing it in 4 days is quite a challenge, because you can’t use anything but pet food to feed it.
I was very lucky getting an uncommon humanoid egg yielding a heal/mheal/decoy baby, which I leveled up to 50/43. most people seemed to have way worse pets.
but, by the time I got that egg, I already had a level 30 common pet with heal, so I wasted quite a few pet food items on that.
the heals my pet gave were okay to maintain hp in most situations with normal dodging, but it’s clearly not enough to tank anything. level 50 heal means 23 hp every 2.66 seconds. priests, necromancers, and paladins with their buffed (compared to 2012) abilities heal you a lot more than that.