Realm Rework's Leveling Changes (And What RotMG is Missing)

#1

In a blog post a while back, DECA announced some changes to the stat increases that leveling provides. You can read the post for yourself, but to summarize the stat-related changes: they’re increasing the initial stats you have on character creation depending on your class’s stat caps, granting a maximum of +1 DEF with each level up, and guaranteeing stat increases of more than +0 (excluding DEF).

It’s a bold move, but I think that it’s fair considering how boring it can get to grind, especially for Knight. Assuming the game is generous, it’s entirely possible to get 20 DEF out of your minimum 25 cap if you hit the coin flip every single time, but I don’t think that’s too much of an issue. The most likely outcome is that when you hit level 20, all of your stats are already at higher amounts than before, and a few stats will only require a couple of dungeons to farm, essentially reducing them to clean-up quests.

Let’s imagine that you’re on a Wizard, and you get high rolls for a majority of your stats. What’s likely is that the stats you’re going to focus on farming are the stats with the highest caps, which in the case of the Wizard, are MP, ATT, and DEX. DEF will also be a priority unless you somehow hit 20 coin flips in a row, but that’s the exception. Lower-end stats such as VIT and SPD will probably only take a few dungeons to farm for in order to max since they’ll have been significantly increased through leveling alone, maybe only taking like 5 or 7 Abysses/Pits to max. This streamlined design of stat-increases should mean that, depending on the class you are playing, you are more likely to focus on stat-specific dungeons more than others. I think that this is a smart decision that will ease the repetitiveness and fatigue of grinding the same dungeons for potions since the focus is only on a few stats.

Although that then brings me the concern of how meaningful stat pot farming will become now. Less grinding is good, but besides exalts and gear, what’s left to do? Exalts are more of a post-game thing, and gear isn’t too desirable outside of necessity and personal preference, especially UT’s. If you’ve already got maxed stats in such a short period of time, and you’re not masochistic enough to grind for exalts nor are you that concerned with farming gear, then what’s left to do? If you’re a new player, then gaining fame in order to unlock other classes that you can then master and max is a substantial branch of progression that veterans might overlook due to having all classes unlocked already, and it makes sense considering that the Realm Rework aims to resolve many new-player related issues. However, once you’ve unlocked all classes and maxed them too, then the only remaining objectives are to gain fame in order to increase your star-rank, farm dungeons for UT’s that you may have missed, and grinding for exaltations.

To be clear, I don’t find any of these changes bad at all since they remove a lot of the padding that the midgame has without necessarily nullifying any of the content because different classes have different stat caps and subsequently, different dungeons to aim for when maxing. Nevertheless, they also reveal that something is missing from the game’s progression. I have no doubt that class progression is a major branch that new players will enjoy conquering, and there are currently 18 whole classes to master and max, which can definitely take time.

Despite this, I think that the game needs something substantial in order to keep new players coming back even after getting 8/8 beyond some subjectively good items for specific classes or an excruciatingly long bonus stat system. Exalts work best as a post-game progression system, something for middling players to work for in the background and hardcore veterans to grind for. The game needs a bridge between the mainland that is pot-farming and the island that is exaltations, not another small island after the first or even more shiny rocks to scavenge for in the sea.

TLDR; leveling changes are good, but the game is also in desperate need of an actually substantial progression system after maxing stats

#2

have you played Starbreak? it’s a bit of a difficult game to get into, and it plays much better on controller than on keyboard, but it outlines a basic expandable plan of progression that RotMG lacks: tiered maxing. While in that game you max from little pickups off the ground instead of stat potions, the basic theory is still the same- you depend on specific dungeons to max stats that make you stronger.

Tiered maxing is the idea that you gain higher-tier stats from harder dungeons, and you can’t replace them with gains from lower tier dungeons. This ensures that you’ll farm dex from Sprite World, and then later on benefit from dex from Deadwater Docks, because in such a system they’d likely give different tiers of DEX. Anytime you run out of tiers, just add a new tier level, raise the stat cap in such a way to accommodate, and you’ve got another bunch of dungeons worth of progression that players want to go through.

It’s not the end-all be-all of progression systems that the game desperately needs, but I consider it to potentially be the largest needed change across the board- being able to actually scale your stats up to the higher tier content through a system that people already enjoy.

#3

Fair points. For me the most boring part of the game is maxing to 8/8, but you’re right in that if this is made easier - then what? The playerbase is being pushed toward exaltations and more endgame content with more advanced shot patters and things to learn.

But maybe more things like Crucible mode can be added to give alternative paths or challenges where everyone is on a level footing.

#4

I think Crucible mode is already a more interesting and maybe potentially more rewarding system than the daily quest system. They can still have the event-oriented stuff that gives BXP boosts and tokens, but there could be something organized the same way as the seasonal mission tree where you have to do a series of trials in order, with the added restrictions that Crucible mode provides. Missions are somewhat interesting for guiding players along different paths with different objectives, but if combined with the special restrictions of Crucible mode, we could have a really interesting main game progression system where, if you want to make substantial progression beyond potion farming but don’t want to grind exalts, then you can try out these much harder trials. Something as simple as doing a Toxic Sewers without any DEF so that you can max DEF even further than the potion cap, or completing an Abyss of Demons with a permanent Confused debuff and gaining a resistance to the debuff.

Crucible mode is just one possible progression branch, and I think that it could still work well on its own, but there could also be something better-fitted to fill the current hole in RotMG’s progression. I can imagine the fatigue of repeating the same trials on characters because you died, regardless of their quality or difficulty. Crucible mode could work, but there could also be something better that we just haven’t thought of yet.

#5

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.