PT: In/Out of Combat System and more!

[ArkRumiera]

Harder =/= More enjoyable

Making these changes are literally encouraging players to leech in the dungeon. I would prefer buffing bosses rather than these.

Berserk change? Fine.
Damaging change? Fine.
Curse change? Fine.
Wismod on some classes? Fine.

Paladin heal nerf? Not fine. Literally gonna cause so many deaths and will become irrelevant. The compensations are literally nonexistent.
Armored nerf? Jesus christ just nerf base DEF on all characters. So many players used to Armored will never be used to it, also causing lots of more deaths, and one of the most sought-after whites are going to be irrelevant. Why do Lost Halls for marble seal when all you get is 20~ def? Just use Oreo! I can’t wait to get oneshot using Mseal just because of these changes.
Oh, the heals are removed! The only ‘buggy’ part about the seal was that you were still able to heal during Sick, why not just remove healing? Yeah, we have a way more serious bug where ninja can’t let go of their spacebar when they are silenced, but don’t fix that, who cares?

At the same time, we want to allow players to truly go all in on defense if they so desire, which is why we are increasing the defense cap from 85% to 90%.

So, pretty much a “big fuck you” to Endgame contents. Defense will render not viable in endgame despite these changes because of all those Armor pierce shots and Armor break debuff. Usually in Endgame, say, Void entity, Most of the shots do roughly 200 Damage. Shotgun will kill you anyways. Just about 5 shots are enough to kill you. Would you rather get 20 defense to get -100 damage, or get 160 HP to get -160 damage? I mean, sure, Maybe useful in some other cases like Ice sphere from shatters, but usually those weak-multi hit shotguns are made to kill instantly anyways, and you are not making any compensation to HP related stats. Hell, you aren’t even close with nerfing everything. You would have to make up 20~40 DEF just to stay with what happened to Armored, and usually all the items make you give up HP in order to get more DEF.
Also, if Armored is getting nerfed, does that mean the MOB Armored is also getting nerfed? Great, more steamrolls.

Currently a lot of monsters are immune to Stun, Paralyze, Slow, and more, as being able to lock an enemy into a status effect permanently can completely break any difficulty in a fight. As it stands, any monster vulnerable to such effects will likely be under those effects permanently, so from a design perspective, it had become a necessary evil to liberally apply such immunities to stop major bosses from becoming literal pinatas. We want to give players a reason to use their abilities instead of never using it because of immunity

Just make it vulnerable during certain phases. I would HATE to see endgame bosses being chain stun-dazed every 3 seconds. And why stasis? Don’t you guys already know that stasis is the closest thing to being a troll in this game, and you add that to most mobs and bosses now? Great. Time to delete my mystic.

A huge issue in the game currently has been the fact that players can stun lock and paralyze lock enemies to basically become a giant target with no way to move or fight back, and so the natural reaction was to make those monsters immune. But as time went on, more and more monsters have obtained this immunity, causing classes like Knight to lose a lot of utility.

Wasn’t this the reason you guys added Phase-related status effect immunity? Look at oryx, I personally love the Rework, but sadly all those people just sit back outside and wait until one/two people complete the entire phase.
Knight never lost its utility.
You guys made him so many types of shields. Armor break, Slow, Additional Defense, Heck, now Invulnerability!
Even in endgame contents, Lost halls. You were able to stun Cultist hideout bosses, Marble colossus towers, and void entity minions. And private LH Runs are ENCOURAGING players to bring knight. You can stun red mages in shatters, you can stun crusade commander in LH, etc. You guys are just missing some stun availability in some places here and there, like Nest, etc.
Just because you guys added stun immunity to bossfights doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. It still does damage, and some gives you survivability. Maybe you guys are overthinking about “compensations” to nerfing everything by giving useless and unnecessary buffs to a class that probably needs it the least.

As we saw recently with RIFTS, a lot of you are in the search for more challenging gameplay that might have made you fall in love with the game in the first place.

NO.
NO. NO. NO. NO. NO.
Players joined RIFTS not because the gameplay is “More CHALLENGING”. It was used as some type of REFRESHMENT to the game and themselves. They had the thrill of competing with each other, which was pretty much nonexistent in this game other than Arena, which makes you Disconnect 24/7. It was something new. Competing while getting loot out of it, and everyone starts out fresh. Rather than being more challenging, it was more of proving their skill to the entire game. That was what’s exciting about it.

See, just because some Top 10 players can beat endgame dungeons with little to no problems doesn’t mean the game is too easy overall. You guys are focusing TOO MUCH to keep the old players in. Think about new players. Add more easy but fun, interactive dungeons. Kind of like Magic woods but easier. Also maybe work on re-spriting Outdated, Old textures? Maybe add biome blending? All this game needs is Quality of Life changes, and too big sudden changes you guys are making are going the total opposite of what you guys want, which is keeping in the old veteran players. Making these sudden changes that makes the game feel ‘different’ while also saying that you guys are adding ‘challenges’ to make it more enjoyable? Doesn’t make too much sense to me.

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In summary :

• Most of these are unnecessary. Especially Debuff system and Armored nerfs. Paladin nerfs, just make it so that you can’t heal when you aren’t supposed to, like Sick. Everything else, we might be able to work out with.
• I’ve said this a MILLION times. PEOPLE DON’T WANT HARDER CONTENTS. THEY WANT FUN, INTERACTIVE, FRESH CONTENTS THAT FEEL NEW. It doesn’t have to be that rewarding or challenging. If it’s fun on its own, people are gonna do it, and a great way to do it is : Visual satisfaction and Quality of life changes.
• For goodness sake, instead of doing this : ADD VISUAL UPDATES. If I was a new player and saw midlands-highlands spriting, I would think this is some low budget $10 game made by some highschoolers. Heck, look at dungeon designs like Mountain temple starting room, Add those kind of things to Realm itself, or some outdated dungeons? Rework some weird looking sprites? Add some biome blending so that from Mountains to Highlands it isn’t just grass turning straight into black rock?

[Imasquash]

Bold of you to try and speak for all players and say they don’t want harder content

[Wawawa]

well depends on the type of difficulty. It’s hard when every shot insta (real bullet hell like touhou), but I very doubt it’s what you (or most players) want.

I agree with fun and interactive content, hence why I still think Tomb is the best dungeon made, it’s very interactive and feel different all the time. Compare it with LoD which is also great, with interactive and fresh content by the countless orders, the difficulty being harder in LoD makes this dungeon almost never ran.

Even if people don’t say it, looking at what ppl are playing, I don’t see the passion towards difficulty, but more about loot + how pinata can it be in crowded stuff (hence LH discords)

ps : I disagree with the rest of his comment though, but for the difference between “difficulty” and “fun” I do agree. Certain kind of difficulty is very nice, but not the millions of big shots to counter high heal pets (and dps walls, but those seem to have stopped/got lowered at least)

[DragonRage]

dodge 1 bajillion bullets and force people to group up in discord calls to even have a chance

then nerf the only thing that gave people a chance to complete end game dungeons ON THEIR OWN. make this game super unfriendly to new players , content and loot tables that are not fun, old and repetitive stuff(dungeons and items), and desperately try to keep old players in the game

yes thank you deca

[Merricmojo]

I really like this actually, the new weapons need a nerf though especially blade of the assailant i just rekt a chicken oryx with that thing.

[Mrunibro]

That being said, despite the large influx of comments on different platforms, we haven’t seen a whole lot of traffic on the testing servers. We know these changes can look alarming on paper, so we again want to ask that you keep an open mind and thoroughly play test these changes before guessing their impact just from a bunch of numbers.

So i’ve spent about 5-6 hours on the testing servers now. I’ve seen 5 players online at one time, at most.

If you guys wanna bee the house of big comments for big brains, you’d do well to run a couple tests to see what you’re talking about is truly what you beelieve in, and not some panicky fabrication of eyeballing statistics.

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So, despite a turnout rate that is beeyond dissapointing for such a monumental update, i’ve set out to do a couple tests with the changes.

For most of these changes, i’ve picked the place where IC would hit the hardest, which I beelieve would be Lost Halls. Specifically the MBC’s final core phase would have you in IC a lot due to shot density and patterns.

So, has the pace of clearing been absolutely clapped, and is this dungeon impossible now?

NO

really, all of it was fine. “So a mystic, ninja and a Warrior walk into a lost halls” - sounds like a joke right? Well, That’s precisely what we did. Clearing our way to the boss took just shy of 15 minutes. Considering 2 of us had no pet, there were no healers at all and our group composition for getting ANYTHING done was a joke, in what is meant to be the hardest dungeon in the game mind you, that really was nothing.

Over any runs i’ve done with this change, in any group, in any dungeon, with any level of pet, I have not noticed a decrease of pace. Time to Kill (TTK) seems almost the same for any sane amount of players. Additionally, I’ve not noticed any ‘steep’ increase in difficulty, especially when you handle IC like a sane person.

Which brings me to the next one. What has IC/OOC done to the current level of difficulty for the game?

it’s fine. If you’ve for some reason bothered to watch the previous link for verification, you might notice the run died at MBC. (Kind of expected if you bring a petless ninja with no healers, with or without IC existing). So the next thing we set our eyes on was testing just about how ‘‘impossible’’ a boss with shot density like MBC is. Not wanting to bother with ‘well but what if lower pet level’, we yeeted pets out alltogheter and just went petless. The results? not a sweat. This is with the “nerfed” pally and warrior too, comes to show they’re still bonkers strong, especially when combined. Some other runs for verification were done also, like a priest + warrior + wizard combo. easiest run of the day.

We had brought ONE healer, to the “demands organisation, hardest run the video game will let you do” dungeon boss, as weak as we can get through IC by not having a pet at all, and it was STILL piss easy.

Naturally, doing solo runs of things isn’t dead either. It’s not like godlands has become insurmountable unlike some have been implying, nor are dungeons like abyss a drag now. Yes, even soloing bigger dungeons are doable on your pet as well as mine.

Rushing things? For midgame ( 1 2 3 & 4) and onward, Totally fine. This again holds up for halls - runs - !. The only risks posed by these are of no difference whatsoever with OOC. Stuff like getting petrified and insta-ripping are still the same. ^{unless you hack like a brainlet}.

The only thing not accounted for by now is divine pet moneybags having to deal with less power now, but can you really say that? your pet still scales exponentially and is more powerful than anyone else’s. Now however you do actually have to keep damage numbers that aren’t triple digits in mind. It’s not like IC implies Pet Stasis, you will still be healing ROYAL amounts of health and mana.

The only thing I haven’t been able to test is ‘true’ halls raids of 20+ players, because no one shows up to the session that’s meant for testing stuff like that.

All in all, this change really does not ‘kill’ the game like so many seem to be shouting. and Ive seen more shouters than testers online today, with 0 intersection of those sets.

it might come down to needing to git gud, and if that’s something you refuse to do, the least you can then do is show up to actually test the changes before you go apeshit. So that you can constructively show (preferably with examples!) how this change kills the game for you. If instead you eyeball the numbers and start making an anger snowball, you appear like a baby refusing vegetables. That’s not how your feedback is going to get taken seriously, and maybe deep down you realise this as well as the fact that this game has beecome painfully riskless for a “bullet hell” “permanent death” game.

Given your inability to bother testing this, Why am I assuming you’ll bother to read this text blob & it’ll change your mind to actually try the update anyway. What a waste of time.

[Illuminavi]

I agree with your post and appreciate the extent of your testing. I think it really shows the extent to which the proposed system is reasonable.

I have to say though: You are really good at ROTMG. I don’t think I could do some of your runs (or do them as fast), but that is how a game of skill should work.

[DYSTRATIX]

Love the post, I’m not quite as good at mbc as you are but I went and soloed all other endgame dungeons nest, fungal, crystal (and thicket, shaitans) with a legendary pet just to see how much harder it was, I barely even noticed the difference in any of them. The only thing I had to do was pay a little more attention to some of the lesser shots but It really didn’t change anything.

People not testing stuff and jumping to conclusions is really infuriating as it could potentially have a very large impact on the future of the game, and I really really dont want to see the game continue being the mindless cakewalk it is.

[Textbook]

OK so I’ve went and killed a bunch of stuff on knight. Will probably go kill a bunch more stuff on archer tomorrow.

I don’t know which of these are already posted in the thread because 154 posts and uh well I sure do love the Realm community.

• Secluded Thicket has a very minor quirk on the second boss where if you paralyze the Bird Tribesman while it’s on its way to another corner, it’ll perform its corner attack whereever it’s paralyzed. After un-paralyze it then heads to the corner it should have been at by now (basically making it cross the arena diagonally) and then fight works normally from there. No real ramifications on gameplay that I can think of.
• The Void Entity flips rotation direction after it’s been paralyzed. It’ll be rotating clockwise, you paralyze it, it’ll then start moving counter-clockwise after it un-paralyzes. There could be other issues later on in the fight (for example, I’m sure this also works with the 4 clones which would be… interesting, to say the least), but I, uh, haven’t gotten that far. IMO it should be immune to both stun and paralyze as well even if stun doesn’t happen to break the fight, it just fits thematically with the fight and stunning an almighty being of darkness with a piece of wood breaks my immersion.
• In the Fungal Cavern, the boss fight with paralyze is uh… really something. After a segment is paralyzed and then is freed from paralysis, it flies back to rejoin the rest of the worm body. Given the overall movement of the worm and how long paralysis can last, this generally means it flies across the entire arena. Multiple segments being paralyzed means eventually multiple segments flying across the arena. This is hilarious, in a way, but also messes with the boss fight design and adds danger.
• Stunning Heroic Malphas when he’s doing his cheese curl phase (the phase that he starts doing at ~50% HP) seems to make him skip the entire phase. Once he’s unstunned he doesn’t try to continue the phase but starts up a new one (this can be the aforementioned cheese curl phase but anew, or one of the other phases he has). This doesn’t seem to happen with the tentacle phase at the end, nor does it happen with any of Heroic Septavius’ phases.
• The cores in the Marble Colossus fight should probably get paralyze immunity. Either the cores are going to get paralyzed in a detrimental spot for some time (which can even be done intentionally if someone is griefing), or they’re going to get paralyzed in a really good spot and a lot of the challenge of the phase is gone because all the cores can do to defend themselves is move and now they can’t. I haven’t played through the fight enough to see if the Marble Colossus itself can get messed up from anything.
• Cursed Library has a very very minor quirk on Avalon where paralyzing him while he’s in transit from one place to another offsets his movements (so he’s not moving in the center of the path) and also makes him arrive at his destination at an offset. It fixes itself after he starts moving again. This seems to have basically 0 gameplay ramifications, but I haven’t tried paralyzing him as he’s moving from first to second phase. If someone’s able to, they can test that.
• I haven’t experienced this firsthand, but apparently O2 red bomb things can be paralyzed and that can make them stack on top of each other and that’s obviously really bad.

Wait, I almost forgot to put my thoughts on the new Dwarf Miner fight.

Without a doubt, the fight is an improvement. The waves go by a lot quicker, and that’s a blessing. I’m not sure if testing the fight at the same time a massive rework is in play is the best idea though. But I’m sure it should still work in prod.
However, one issue that remains is loot. Yes, the fight is easier and quicker now. I still don’t think the loot is appropriate. It looks like the loot table is the same as any other event boss, when the intention is clearly for it to be harder than a plain old Pentaract or Skull Shrine. I would buff the loot table a bit so that it’s more rewarding to complete, especially given it already has the stigma of being an event players don’t want to do so the people who may want to do it may be doing it alone or in very low numbers, and especially given having to clear waves first before fighting the boss proper (and then having to go chop up some more mushrooms halfway through the boss) means it’ll likely take a bit longer than most other events.

[Twitchystr]

Some thoughts on the new weapons

Henchman's Claymore (sword)

Seems like a cross between acc and ass but honestly, the range is only 0.1 more than tiered alternatives and though I haven’t run the numbers on pfiffel it seems to have worse dps than acc. So basically a sword without ass’s range or acc’s dps

Predator Bow (bow)

Might be good in shatters to fight anything dragged from behind while still hitting other crap. So, a multishot white bag bow that makes covert even more obsolete…

Blade of the Assailant (katana)

A doku with less range and more dps, no curvy is always a plus so I can definitely see myself using this as a main katana. Solid.

Tyrant's Wand (wand)

Yay deca made a pixie with better range, piercing and only slight worse dps PLUS i can put it on a priest

Oppressor's Staff

Seems like a worse tail staff might be good might be bad we’ll see I’m actually not that sure.

Feel free to discuss and give your opinions

[Goldnfish]

With the decrease of the armoured buff will the rogues mad God cloak be receiving a buff. You mentioned the daybreak chakram receiving a buff, will that be an increase in defence for that item?

I have tested these changes but not thoroughly as I am grinding the event currently. I love having the ability to stun everything and find that playing Knight is much more rewarding, I will say that I do feel that some enemies that have phase switches seem to not be stunned for the full stun duration. If the ability to stun everything is turned on I feel like all enemies MUST best stunned for the full duration no holds bar or the system will be not worth the risk. So look into all enemies that have phase changes to ensure they do not break out of stun prematurly.
I have not tested it as I was unable to get the items needed but currently on Knight and warrior you can have instances in which the in combat state would have a negative duration. What happens in such cases, is in combat even applied? I feel like if someone goes to the effort to get over 175 vit the status effect should become null.
On testing, I feel any range classes have a much larger advantage compared to melee as you have a greater range in which to dodge projectiles to ensure you have greater than full Mana regeneration.
I have not fought a dwarf miner but the lessened duration sounds nice but I feel a lessening in the hp scaling to an area around the encounter would be useful. In full servers where dwarves are left the ho scaling even with the 25% reduction would still be abbismal to a solo or small group of players.
Will armor breaking also be allowed on all targets now as keeping individuals immune would just be against the idea of decreasing immunities. The same idea with expose. Will all enemies be effected by expose?
Will the archers speedy quiver be given a wismod or will you make it the only speedy duration item without one (ninja being a held speedy).
With the reduction of no regeneration an additional ability that buffs Mana and Wis such as Sseal would be beneficial to the playerbase and provide different use cases for classes.

[ArkRumiera]

I didn’t say players don’t want harder contents, I’m just saying that harder doesn’t necessarily means ‘better’.
Personally, dungeons like Fungal/Crystal cavern. Endgame. Fun. ‘Challenging’. Those types of dungeons are good IMO. The bossfight is predictable but refreshing and very unique from other bosses. Sure, if this was like magic woods-easy, it wouldn’t be so much fun, but I didn’t say challenge had 0 relationship with being enjoyable. I just said they aren’t 100% the same.

You probably get the point.

Bold of you to try and speak for all players

Ok, my bad on that part. I did say ‘players’ for RIFTS part, but most of my friends that I asked had similar opinions with me, so I guessed it was kind of generalized. Seems like I was wrong.

[Lessking]

IC/OOC + Armour remarks,

• Pets, tbh, I was quite content with how the pets are in prod, i have a just about maxed legendary and it doesnt really feel overly insane in health or mana regen. Granted by now im quite used to granting perma slow/paralyze and always having invisibility, berserk or damaging with the respective classes, and with the exception of stun and paralyze i dont think its that bad of a thing to have.
  So the way the IC seems to handle the pet abilities seems phenomonal to me. The extra heal and mheal is still there but its just enough to offset that one misstep (in late-game +) instead of tanking half the bullets, and the few seconds that have to wait are next to nothing when you have a little space to retreat to. Closed off areas like void, mbc, nest, ect. are a different story. But i like this as well, it ups the tension and lets the ‘bullet hell’ aspect of the game shine some more instead of the ‘overleveled/geared’ vibe from mmo’s i sometimes have now.
  And maybe because im not that invest in my pet, time or money-wise, instead of experiencing it as a nerf while playing keeping OOC and its perks felt like a sort of bonus or reward granted to me and made me change from a damage based game-style to a more evasive based one, like in challenger or before the pet times.
  The only nitpick I have is that i would prefer 4 heals of 22.5 in 4 sec over just 1 heal of 90 in 4 sec.

• Petless, I have just about only praise for this side of IC/OOC. It not only speeds up regen time when retreated but more importantly it sorta rewards me when im low on health and manage to dodge everthing thats coming my way by boosting my recovery. It isnt super huge but allows for a sort middle ground between cqc and a full retreat where dodging is a lot easier and you can still get a shot in here or there (and know whats happening).
  Ive seen people say that this update would be bad for new players, but i cant see anything even close to outweighing this massive benefit for people with no or a bad pet. (challenger mode is gonna be even more fastpaced with this, so you guys might give that a thought or two)

• Armour, the armour-piercing damage is a bit of a bummer, mostly the tiles (like rushing in an abyss), but also the small hands in shaitans, the basic goblin in sewers, white demons in glands and abyss, those types of minor critters that before this i didnt have to pay any mind (except for not sitting on like 5+ of them) require a lot more managing now.
  But I quite like the and combined with the 90% armour there is a lot of potential in def build for just about any dungeon under late-game. During a cem (where i forgot my pet) i was thinking if i maybe wouldve been better of with a soulless and a bloodshed ring since that would, just barely, put some of the 60 damage bullet below the threshold and not stop the boosted regen.

I suggest revisiting some of the dungeons that make use of small armor piercing shots (like shaitans) since those will be massively more difficult now (tho the ability to stun the advisor migates it quite some, that only works if there is a knight)
But in all, I approve of this part of the update. Some tweaks here and there might improve things, but with my tinted glasses i only see good things here.

[SilverM]

Given your inability to bother testing this, Why am I assuming you’ll bother to read this text blob & it’ll change your mind to actually try the update anyway. What a waste of time.

I still really don’t understand why people insist on saying we haven’t tested the update at all. Timezones are a thing and you guys know that right?

[Keion]

Regarding the realm weapons:
Dagger is Great, Wand is Great, Staff is Great.
Katana shots feel way too slow, if I wanted shots that barely moved I would just use the void blade.
perhaps give them another unique point or something like that.
The sword is just a sword.
The bow is cool as well.

[UnIucky]

Deca, don’t test your already withered down community. Your game is already on the verge of death, don’t lose your active veterans because you want to nerf their pets into the ground. not a good play

[Djimm]

this is by far the best change i have ever seen ever this is truly what the game needs for the long term
i myself have a 100 100 divine on prod and testing out this update with my 90 90 pet on testing and even petless felt amazing!
it seems that everyone complains about the state to the game and when theres a change on testing nobody even tests it and instead screeches about how it will change the state of the game wich people complained about that they wanted to be changed in the first place.

i have a hard time formulating things in text but i really hope this update pulls through.
and as a final note just dodge 4head

[SilverM]

Also a point I would like to raise here, which I am not sure how many people have brought this foward, is that we are all older players replying to this thread, but have we recieved any feedback from the more recent playerbase? (Talking about red stars and lower) While bringing OG players is good for a game’s health, making it as welcoming as possible to new players is as good as doing that, because the game’s start recently has no staying power

[Twitchystr]

I’m a redstar… started half a year ago I replied somewhere up there (too lazy to find it)

[Mrunibro]

obviously

the problem i’m having is all the people who haven’t tested it at all, and often have no intention to in the future, feel entitled to Cry ‘Havoc!’ in the thread