PT: Classes balancing part 1, Gigantic Cave(Fungal Forest + Crystal Cave), LoD, LoS

#183

my concern for realism begins at the models (or in our case, sprites) and ends w/ the moment it starts to affect gameplay how much fun I’m having.

#184

FYI stacked shots

#185

In a game like realm, there’s only so much realism you can add before it makes less sense in the context of the genre. There isn’t really any way around that.

#186

… and one of the guys above you is n°1 for fame. What’s your point?

Judging by your Realmeye you barely play them at all.

If you’re just trying to have a rematch for that one time on the Kabam forums, go make another thread instead of shitting up this one. This is really not helping.

The term you’re looking for is “internal consistency”. Realism was never the point of this game and never will.

The other problem being, RotMG was made specifically to be very permissive when it comes to lore and rules, so internal consistency is also almost non-existent.

Again: this could easily be a separate thread. The more we post the more I feel we’re stifling the efforts of the people who are actually testing shit out. Kind of a problem when this is an official Public Testing Thread.

#187

I dont know if its me but the server is lagging hard, is it laggy for anyone?

#188

Unfortunately so u_u

#189

Pets
Many people have spent quite a lot of money finding a pet with heal/mheal/electric or mheal/heal/electric. Personally I got one of my pets to a medium level (it was right when pets came out, so it was decently high for f2p) then ditched it for one with all three of the abilities.
And now, deca comes out with an update that ruins those pets.
Mheal as a first or second ability is sought after because it is important to get it to a high level quickly. With this update, people can use mheal as a third ability because many (most?) characters will have plenty of time to recharge their mana before they can use their skill again.
Electric is a very popular ability due to the fact that it can deal high damage and paralyze.
But now that it cant paralyze as often, it doesn’t have as big an edge over the other damage dealing abilities (not to mention they have more range).
Deca cannot remove or nerf pets because players spend tons of money on them. But they just made players waste a ton by indirectly nerfing them

#190

Melee Nerf? More like Group DPS Nerf tbh smh my head

#191

Even though I don’t mind melee classes as much as the average Joe, I think the nerf should be to the swords/heavy armors/max stats, as needing abilities and def makes the game harder for all across the board, justifiably evenly. If the goal is to make the game harder, than it’s harder for all, and melee will still have the same advantage in the harder rotmg

#192

Very true! Haven’t replied to everyone who has made replyable things or would be here all day. I must sound like a broken record but it’s so messy when there are such a range of things being discussed/tested surely making it difficult to sort out useful feedback, also, Testing in the middle of an event two events on prod =unwise? Anyways will try to be concise!

You make a great overall point about buffs doing different rates to self than party. There’s little need for statuses on ability items (such as damaging on mystic’s Conflict) if the entire group is already receiving permanently the exact same buff from many paladins. Similar with berzerk if the party effect is 1.2x but the tiered orbs does 1.5x to self, this change would relatively buff mystic vs the other classes who only receive the party 1.2x.

I fear that it is packaging so many changes together, makes some people just throw their hands up and say “it’s all shit I hate Deca” because it is so difficult to imagine how everything will be affected due to all the changes, including lots of fundamental new concepts, it’s easier to simply hit “nope, reject” on the whole thing. Like the frog in the boiling water players would react calmer if each change was gradual and they have time to adjust to the new things.

The game is mechanically the same when soloing, as past times, but the awful HP scale implementation means soloing is not at all worthwhile, put notifiers on top of that who have had their job made easy by the HP scale keeping things alive so even if you are soloing, you have little chance to kill the thing before they can arrive.

I wish they simply went down the route of ‘buffable’ for all events (like ents) because that’s the perfect way to match the fight to the participants rather than make whole-game fundamental changes. Put this on the events with 2x and 3x drop rates for the different buff levels, and remove HP scale. Suddenly events get fun in a mob, or if you don’t like, you can seek out a smaller realm and battle vanilla events.

It’s like the game has spiralled into a vicious cycle, the drop rates are bad so players seek out every way to maximise chances to loot, so they run dungeons and events in big/efficient groups, which forces the loot rates to be kept low.

Actually my reading of this was Jugg was so desirable precisely because melees were so difficult to play (no pet era), that they ‘needed’ the survivability conferred by that item, for many people not to get flattened the first time they misjudged O2 or a Cube’s shotgun.

I know you were only using the example as Rotmg-lolgic, but did you ever try throwing a sword at someone? It doesn’t go very far. :rofl:

#193

It’s like the game has spiralled into a vicious cycle, the drop rates are bad so players seek out every way to maximise chances to loot, so they run dungeons and events in big/efficient groups, which forces the loot rates to be kept low.

Exactly.

The problem is lots of people are outside the loop.

Let’s take this event and a newer player.

Let’s say they don’t know that people pop in the nexus of uss or that discords pop and they try to go out and farm sphinx on their own.

As I write this I’ve done 40 tombs this event. I have not gotten any whites outside of the normal bosses dropping them.

Doing 40 tombs without keys is pretty much impossible.

Thus, outside of organized play for all intents and purposes there literally is no event for a casual sphinx farmer.

The problem is the general game has progressed to this point.

Again, the people who are not using discord are out of the loop. Trying to complete a void halls without using a discord is extremely difficult for a new player.

Heck, even doing a shatters outside of discord is quite challenging (those trolls who mess up the village I’m looking at you).

Just about a month ago Kiddforce was asking - What changes would you like to see to lost halls that would allow sentry halls to be doable.

I don’t know Kidd, nerfing melee is the perfect change that will totally allow sentry halls to be doable.

The fact is that it’s the discords that are op and not the melees.

It’s just hilarious that talks about nerfing halls and talks about nerfing melees are happening at the same time.

People just can’t put two and two together.

You can’t balance the game around discords. What’s so hard to understand about this?

#194

Giving classes w/ even more dps to players who don’t know how to survive a dungeon in the first place isn’t gonna change anything. Yeah, it sucks for solo play but on the other hand, doing small group runs (if the damage+berserk buffs get nerfed) where you only have a warr or a curse buff (1.2x damage multiplier), compared to a 1.728x multiplier (all enemies cursed, players damaging + berserk) w/ the new buff, isn’t that bad, where as what we have now is small groups (if they even have pally or warr) might have a 1.5 or 1.2, let’s say 1.4x multiplier (multiple classes have abilities that inflict curse)… and large groups will have ~2.7x damage. It’s just ridiculous.

#195

The point is the mere fact that Halls aren’t accessible without Discords.
Nerfing melees will definitely have some impact on public runs, certainly, but if Halls remain unchanged, then the problem is still there.
Nerfing Halls so that public runs can actually choose whether they wish to challenge the Colossus and Void, or go for Cultist, is what the main goal is.

Halls isn’t being balanced around Discords running them with gargantuan groups. It’s being balanced for players that run them in public groups.

#196

Giving classes w/ even more dps to players who don’t know how to survive a dungeon in the first place isn’t gonna change anything.

They aren’t giving out any buffs, they’re just taking away. If the current dps isn’t enough for realms to complete nests, halls, and shatters, there’s no way nerfs will help.

The point is the mere fact that Halls aren’t accessible without Discords .

Yes. You are correct.
This nerf does not change this issue at all and in fact just makes it worse.

Like I said before discords were willing to help newbies out -> The 1/8 rule for Pub Halls has been in place for months.

Having lower dps just lowers that margin of error and forces the discords to demand more melees, more 8/8s, and more player selection.

Rather than be inclusive, they will be exclusive.
Exclusive is bad for the game.

Halls isn’t being balanced around Discords running them with gargantuan groups. It’s being balanced for players that run them in public groups.

There are NO plans at the moment for any Halls reworks. It’s just theory crafting and Kiddforce is being cheeky.

If this change goes through public halls will just suffer and suffer for at least half a year.

Nerfs and Buffs should happen in response to a problem that is plaguing the general community.

The melee nerf doesn’t solve any problem at all.
It’s like a man cutting his nose to spite his face. In fact he actually need to just use some face moisturizer first.

Discords will hate it because it makes their runs harder. Regular players will hate it because it will now be harder to accomplish their goals without grouping up.

Again, come and talk about nerfs when they’ve actually addressed the issues of the shatters village (literally 75% of shatts fail at the start), the beework (nobody does realm nests), and the halls accessibility (even doing a cult from a sentry is a rare sight).

You said it yourself in the first comment.

By the gods! What an amazing amount of content that somehow doesn’t include the Beework !

There are bigger fish to fry.

#197

It’s not a DPS problem, it’s a coordination problem. If you made it so every dungeon could just be bruteforced with pure DPS and fucking up was impossible the game would be even easier.

By definition, forcing players to use a a 3rd-party site to do anything is exclusive in and of itself.

If they were playing solo on anything that’s not a melee, this update changes nothing for them.

To work on endgame dungeons, you need the base game to be solid, otherwise you’re just adding more shit on top of the shit pile. That’s what this kind of rebalance should strive to achieve.

And again: you’re just being stubborn because you can’t admit that you’re bad at playing melee. It’s been years, get a move on already.

#198

I used to believe that class balance in this game came through as “let’s make everything overpowered so that nothing’s underpowered.”

And bruh, was that not true with max legendary+ pets, glorification of Warrior and Paladin, as well as the neglect received by the Samurai, Ninja, and the more ability-reliant, low-DPS non-melees.

In the end, many people of this community will state how they want the game to change, but it’ll be up to Deca to actually implement the changes, picking and choosing what they deem better for the players, the game, and their income most of all. Don’t forget they have to take our munnies in the process of all this, too.

Many aspects of the game are indeed NOT working as intended, despite the copypaste messages posted in many people’s emails from Deca. Death is literally cheated every single day. Fame is exploited, and whether people want to believe it or not, cheaters have changed the definition of what being good at the game is, and what it isn’t. Cheating removes the entire point of this game by simply allowing you to avoid death on 95% of occasions. So of course people can walk around with tens of thousands of alive fame that should have been dead, full lost halls item sets, and the right to talk trash on every player that doesn’t have such “prestige” due to the fact that they haven’t played illegitimately to get their items. It doesn’t impress me anymore. It’s really damaging and makes other legit players like myself feel inferior or useless in-game, and I do NOT like that. Sure, it’s just a game, but you know what a game means to most skilled players. It’s more or less life. And I am NOT afraid to admit that realm is life to me.

Before someone gets the idea to tell me that cheaters don’t affect the game because they don’t directly affect you due to Realm not being a PvP game, that is gravely false. If someone is supporting you in any co-op situation game but doing so with a blatant advantage that is against the rules and/or against conduct, isn’t that pretty unbalanced? Also, if the person ever so happens to just be an absolute meanie that thinks they’re better than everyone because they can cheat and get away with it, that’d be very appalling. It is the reason I’ve left every major Realm discord server, because the “skilled” community is more or less what I explained above: highly toxic and self-centered. Not a good thing to be in a co-op game, is it?

Players who use exploits and cheat - those people being more numerous than ANYONE would like to admit - do play the game as intended in their own new, recreated definition that also spells the way of the game experience for everyone who does not. I’m not saying this is entirely the reason that new changes often get frowned upon when Deca, [as well as our hard-working dungeon designers and closed testers] do decide to do something for the game, but it’s a large, underrated reason that is very overlooked, due to how many players are actually illegitimate… and how many rules in Discords, r/rotmg, and various other places keep all topics about cheating from being posted to avoid drama. But I have to bring this under the light because it needs to be seen and has been ignored and accepted for far longer than it should have.

The character-based changes [VitMod/Debuff immunity, Pally instaheal removal, Def’s damage reduction cap across the game, and the nerf of Damaging and Berserk buffs] are obviously to encourage a better, more wholesome teamplay experience, and on top of that, it marks the beginning of changing your thoughts about the classes that you wish to play to truly become a choice of personal playstyle, rather than choosing a specific few because it’s a mandate to play buffers and high-damaging ranged classes in order to contribute to being able to make other players have a good time steamrolling dungeons. With some of the more popular dungeons being heavily reliant on the group’s total damage output within a certain time, I see why players would be angry at such changes, ESPECIALLY at first. In theory, they are indeed fairly questionable to think about, as the game I knew before is truly being changed with yet another set of major core mechanic reworks. But I thought of as to why they would be, and from that, it’s partly because the playerbase is taking this whole topic the wrong way, as if every said change is going to be slammed into the game right away upon the next patch or two. For the game to change, the people have to change, and that, when cheating is within the game, will take a VERY long time to truly allow the game to grow into what it can be from and for the better. I think Deca knows this. But this update will change the way the game was meant to be played, and will slowly reverse the damage that pets, cheaters, and exploiters have done. Though there is much complication, frustration, and resilience from the community as of now, these changes are making a better game for everyone who deserves it, those who want to play as a team to get somewhere within it, as it was first meant to be.

With the Unity port and more advanced security to the game’s code coming soon along, cheats will be nonexistent. But until then, we who play the game legit can only accept what Deca releases in terms of what they think is acceptable. The reason I do not disagree with all these potential changes, however, is while it may break the loop of what others found fun about the game, it breaks a loop in Realm for me, making it feel this much closer to being a game with a soul again! I’ll have to play the game differently than I usually do by playing other classes, trying new strategies in dungeon completion with or without friends, and much, much more to come later on. The title does say “Classes balancing PART 1,” right? Therefore, in those aspects as well as the new content [that I have not tested,] there’s obviously more to it.

Long story short, I’m genuinely excited about this update, though the reason I understand the community’s frustration is when I first looked at the topic, I felt the same way. I mostly did not take kindly to my favorite sword class potentially getting hammered back down to where it was in 2011/2013, but whatever has to change, I’ll let it change. I know how to look at the bigger picture too.

The General Chat Thread
#199

no, the problem is that the loop exists at all.

keys and hyper efficient dps-mobs plow through content far too quickly, to compensate for this drop rates have to be made low to avoid having loot given out too easily and too often. low drop rates combined with the massive dps disparity between giant mobs and casual groups make farming outside of the nexus key chains or discord groups completely ineffective. the result is players sitting in the nexus or a horrendously one-sided voice channel for hours or even days just to get a chance at anything worthwhile. further compounding the tedium is everything having full status immunity (except sometimes slow) makes your ability worth jack shit unless it either pumps up damage or prevents damage. and since HP scaling makes the difference an individual player makes irrelevant, the rest of their set becomes equally meaningless. so in addition to brain-crushing tedium of grinding for days on end, anything you might acquire no longer means anything anyway outside of solo or small group play. not that those two situations amount to much of anything since the abysmally low drop rates and extreme time-saving powers of giant hordes of players mean you’ll get through much less content with not much to show for it in those two scenarios.

to break the loop what I’d like to see happen is the following:

  • meaning given back to status-based abilities, allowing players to feel like they’re contributing and giving reasons to play those status-based classes over the dominant warrior/pally/wizard meta. this is on PT right now in the form of status immunity cooldown.

  • slashing the power of giant groups, making the difference between massive groups and smaller groups less noticeable which makes small group play more viable. this is also on PT right now in the form of the berserk/damaging nerfs

  • REDUCE HP SCALING, a lot of people are complaining that nerfing berserk and damaging will encourage more melee play in order to “keep up” with HP scaling, yet it does not occur to them that HP scaling can be reduced after this change since it becomes less necessary to prevent steamrolls once berserk and damaging are nerfed. reducing HP scaling in addition to making smaller groups viable once again gives back meaning to your equipment, since your friends will once again be able to notice whether or not you’re using a T3 sword or a T13 sword.

  • add “naturally dropped” drop tables to dungeons somehow, that increase the drop rates of items found in dungeons that are naturally spawned in the realm as opposed to keys. deleting keys entirely would make this simpler since you could just buff drop rates to something approximating reasonable without them around, but keys make deca money so they’re not going to budge on that. buffing the drop rates of natural dungeons without affecting the drop rates of key dungeons removes another incentive to stay stuck in discords and nexus key chains. it also makes smaller, casual groups even more viable since they’re more suited for this approach than giant mobs.

  • enforce stricter dungeon caps. I’m pretty sure the only ones who notice the difference between a group of 80 people and a group of 40 people are the servers and the player’s computers, mostly the servers. heck, things start getting out of hand at around 30 people. if too many people access a single dungeon portal at once, it should split them into multiple instances of the dungeon to avoid having too many people. this one might not be necessary at all if the other points are completed since some people will have another option outside of giant groups and won’t stick around. I’d prefer it this way, but the few that actually enjoy this horrific cycle might want to keep their original option intact I guess.

now, some of these steps cannot be completed unless something else is completed first. most notably, HP scaling cannot be taken out of the picture while the problem it was intended to fix is still in play (giant mob steamrolling). therefore, berserk and damaging have to go first. this is a multi-step process, which is why it says “Part 1” in the title. this isn’t a standalone change, there are other things hopefully coming along to compensate.

is this actually deca’s roadmap to the future? I can’t say for sure because they’re as bad at communicating with the testers are they are with you guys. but the first step in this is to nerf berserk and damaging, so they are on the right track.

Why weekend/chest events are a scam
Let's talk about the proposed Reworks
Why weekend/chest events are a scam
#200

Dude you haven’t even played melee in months.

Sorcerer 20 5/5 2 655 4 899 466 1 097 8/8
Huntress 20 5/5 5 605 10 800 424 405 8/8

Nice melees you’re using there.

Doesn’t even look like you’ve played the game in months.

You’re as fake as they come.

To work on endgame dungeons, you need the base game to be solid, otherwise you’re just adding more shit on top of the shit pile. That’s what this kind of rebalance should strive to achieve.

You know it’s funny that you bring this up. It’s almost as if they didn’t create dozens of dungeons with melee having 1.5 buffs.

slashing the power of giant groups, making the difference between massive groups and smaller groups less noticeable which makes small group play more viable. this is also on PT right now in the form of the berserk/damaging nerfs

No. The difference between the two groups is exactly the same. Both groups lose the same percentage of dps assuming both have the same buffs.

You’re just multiplying by a different number assuming both groups have access to the same buffs.

Let’s say a large group is 50 players and a small group is 10 players. Let’s say there’s one warrior in each group at least.

That’s like saying 1.2 x (50) - 1.2 x (10) does not equal 1.2 (50-10)

In fact, the group of ten might not have a warrior so the large group still has a difference.

If small groups benefit from the nerfs so much, tell me why small voids are done with warriors.

Tell me why BTEL does his MBC solo with a warrior.

Unless I’m missing something here, if the nerfs went through the current mbc solo time could never be beaten because mbc will still have his 0 hp scaling (he won’t heal with one player) and that player (who is most likely using a warrior) will deal less damage.

In fact as the game currently stands a carefully crafted and coordinated group can benefit more from the current buffs than a larger group. A group of 10 guildmates can fully utilizes their buffs as opposed to larger groups which might have bunch of useless people.

meaning given back to status-based abilities, allowing players to feel like they’re contributing and giving reasons to play those status-based classes over the dominant warrior/pally/wizard meta. this is on PT right now in the form of status immunity cooldown.

Wizard doesn’t status enemies. Wizard is used because it deals dmg.
Warrior doesn’t status enemies. Warrior is used because it buffs dmg.
Pally doesn’t status enemies. Pally is used because it buffs dmg.

no, the problem is that the loop exists at all.

The loop of keys can’t be closed. In fact they want to keep it as open as possible.

REDUCE HP SCALING, a lot of people are complaining that nerfing berserk and damaging will encourage more melee play in order to “keep up” with HP scaling

This could be a good idea.

I don’t have much faith in them to hp scale. Try doing a Halls with a small amount of people and you’ll see the minions are bullet sponges.

enforce stricter dungeon caps.

That’s probably the best way to resolve this issue. If they don’t want larger groups just say so and be done with it.

#201

Not really sure how I died in this gigantic cave (sorry for the music, it’s not ocean man)

#202

Agreed. Additionally, for the most part the only dungeons that are filled up are event dungeons. Since these are once-per realm it makes sense that it should allow all or most players to enter. Its only fair.
But maybe popped keys should have a lower cap. Every dungeon except shatters, lh, and void
can be easily completed with less than 10-15 decently prepared players (meaning experience, stats and equips). The only reason why I can understand the cap being higher is if it is 50 to ensure that an entire guild can join.
Additionally, the glitch? bug? compromise? that if multiple people enter a portal at exactly the same time they can all enter regardless of if it would he full MUST be fixed. Whatever the cap for dungeons is, 120 is much higher. Yet thats what I see in many (most?) void runs. Deca needs to come up with a way to enforce the cap, even if it is slightly less fair to people who click enter at the same time.