anyone play arcaea?
The General Chat Thread v2
Xaklor
#537
if youâre going to insist on pushing me on this, lemme tell you all about my non-rotmg experience with this subject and how it helped nudge me toward understanding that rotmgâs behavior is unacceptable. if you didnât want to have your one throwaway comment drowned under piles of text then sucks to be you because Iâve been waiting for the excuse to blather on about this for years. itâs nothing personal.
monster hunter 4 ultimate has a rather unique endgame compared to other monster hunter games. rather than picking the hardest quest available, beating it, and calling yourself done with the game, there are randomly generated guild quests that you can take on and they level up in difficulty over time. the hardest content is level 140 guild quests, and these give very powerful relic weapons, and armor/talismans with special relic skills. level 140 GQ monsters will always either be apex or frenzied if possible, they also have insane damage output and can very easily drop you to near dead or one-shot you with a single hit in extreme cases. this is very difficult content to grind for, but grinding is the only way to get those relics I mentioned since the relic drops are randomized.
letâs focus only on relic weapons for now since theyâre both the most important and most clear-cut. perfect relic weapons are objectively the best weapons in the game for most weapon types, the exceptions are the gunner weapons (theyâre just not as powerful for some reason) and arguably the insect glaive (I donât think itâs possible to get the extract extender bug on one of those glaives, which is mandatory on endgame glaives). perfect relic weapons have higher raw damage and better sharpness than any normal weapon and they can even have element or status damage and 3 decoration slots to put in more skills on your equipment set.
now because these are so good and theyâre so hard to grind for, naturally the people banded together to cheese the system, and they produced the hame strategy. for hame, 1 support player (usually light bowgun iirc but could also be sword and shield) soloes the monster for a short while trying to put it to sleep with their status-inducing weapon. once the monster is asleep, the other 3 players come in with heavy bowguns maxed out on piercing damage and damage up skills. everyone drops bombs on the monster, and then when they go off the 3 HBGs unleash rapid fire max pierce shots into the monster. the dps of this attack is so high that between part breaks and staggers the monster is literally chainstunned to death in an extremely short period of time. this is by far the most efficient way to farm relic weapons.
now, finally tying this back to rotmg: hame is very similar to mass raid discords and their strategies. it completely removes all effort needed and is the most efficient method by far, but because it requires so little effort or skill itâs not very fun. however, unlike rotmg grinding for relics without hame is still doable. I have never done hame but I have a near-perfect relic greatsword. to offer some comparisons, a single level 140 GQ can take at most 50 minutes no matter how bad you are because thatâs when the quest times out. more realistically however youâll either beat the boss or die 3 times after only 30 minutes (I can beat teostra in 20 minutes).
now about grinding out a star of enlightenment in rotmg either solo or with 1 or 2 friends and no cheesing or skipping content: thatâs 20-40 minutes just to clear out a realm to find the miner event, probably another 20-40 minutes to beat the actual event just because this one is particularly awful, another 20-30 for the fungal cavern because itâs a big dungeon with a super elaborate boss fight, and then probably another 30 minutes for the crystal cavern depending on how bs the spawns are. thatâs 2 hours just for a single shot at an item that probably has a 1% drop rate. and if you mess up even once at any part of the dungeon bit you get nothing and have to start the entire process all over from the beginning. if you screw up particularly badly and lose your character you have to abort the grind and put together a replacement character just to get back to where you just were and resume the grind all over again. and of course, once you do get the star you donât permanently have it so maybe you should grind out a second or third for backups, which makes the entire process take even longer.
now letâs take a look at some numbers: the drop rates on good relic weapons arenât great, but theyâre not rotmg-tier. you also only need one because theyâre permanent. 3 of the 12 possible raw damages are all better than normal weapons, the number of slots are purely random, and for greatswords (the one I grinded myself) element/status doesnât actually matter. some sharpness patterns are better than others, but for greatswords theyâre all usable. so in the end I estimate the odds of a good (not perfect because I donât have perfect) relic greatsword to be about 6.25%. if we assume you take 30 minutes per quest and earn 1 relic weapon per quest (an assumption that can be rather wildly incorrect in either direction depending on what monsters youâre fighting but letâs shoot for an average for simplicity) it should take you about 12 quests to get better than even odds of your relic weapon or 30 hours. hame brings quests down to around 5 minutes depending how smooth it goes and whether there are 2 monsters which translates to around 1 hour. if you bump that estimate to 2 relics per quest because youâre fighting better monsters or take treasure rooms into account then thatâs only 15 hours normally or half an hour for hame (do note that I donât think you have time to mine treasure rooms when doing hame runs so your improvement may not be as steep).
now for the crystal star: 2 hours per run for a 1% drop translates to about 70-75 runs for better than even odds of the drop or 140-150 hours. and again, this is for only one star and only for slightly better than even odds. if you wanted more than one star youâd need to go through all this again and the timing can take even longer if you die at any point. monster hunter has neither of these problems. if you use discord raiding, the entire process start to finish takes around 10 minutes I think because the realm is skipped and the bosses are trivialized. in total this results in 11-12 hours. if you only grind this out during a chest event and we assume the chest has the same drop rates as the boss (in my experience I think the chest actually has slightly better odds) then you only need 35 runs for a total of 6 hours.
the difference between 1 hour and 30 hours (or 30 minutes and 15 hours) is WAY nicer than the difference between 6 hours and 145 hours. THIS is what I mean when I say normal rotmg is unviable. THIS is what raiding discords and chest events have brought us to. THIS is the thing I hate. I donât care much that hame exists for monster hunter because the drop rates arenât being catered to the hame crowd and the difference in efficiency isnât as steep. I can (and have) gotten my hands on a good relic greatsword playing solo without too much pain (level 140 GQ monsters are super tough letâs not forget that). on the other hand, I could never realistically get a crystal star playing solo or with friends. not unless I do it the braindead way. itâs just not happening.
there is one extra piece of the puzzle that makes the contrast even harsher than it already is against rotmg. the act of player monster hunter is mostly intense monster fighting action that keeps you engaged throughout because if you werenât engaged youâd lose all your health instantly against something this powerful. I donât actually mind it much when monster hunter gets grindy because the act of playing monster hunter is fun in itself. Iâll gladly take any excuse I can to keep playing it. rotmg on the other hand isnât that. even playing solo thereâs a lot of extremely repetitive kiting and strafing going on and it isnât super fun. even if youâre weird and enjoy every second of both the fungal and crystal cavern dungeons, I know for a fact you think the realm and the fungal realm event are extremely tedious, and those two things are about half of your runtime during this grind. thatâs 70 hours of boring monotonous content youâre forced to put up with for not buying keys, more if you also find the non-boss monsters of the actual dungeon bit boring as well. this downtime in the realm could in theory be appreciated from a pacing perspective, but the drop rates are assuming youâve paid to just skip that section entirely and are too unfairly harsh to compensate.
I just want my cookies man. I donât care that oreo paste is a thing, I only have a problem when it takes over and becomes the only oreos available.
What are your problems with RotMG as of current?
PRCSakura
#539
So TLDR:
You dislike + quitted RotMG not just because Kabam + Deca, but also the game mechanics and the community?
Seelpit
#541
Thatâd be a bit of an oversimplification.
The way I understand it - and am starting to sympathize with it - itâs about a combination of time spent per reward, and engagement of gameplay.
Realmâs pace varies wildly between a âsoloâ player entering a Realm with 10-20 random people inside it, all doing their own thing, and the players who use raiding Discords to all pile up in one Realm and clear it out (or leech on the beach) together.
This then gets amplified when it comes to boss fights, which take significantly longer to clear towards as a solo player. It requires getting the related monster to spawn, killing said monster, clearing the dungeon, and finishing the boss; all time that in Monster Hunter 4 gets downsized into just the boss fight. (See also the times mentioned in Xakâs original post)
Normally thatâd be fine-ish if the game was engaging enough. To pull my own comparisons, Iâll take Paladins as an example, since Iâve been sucked into that now.
Paladins has 54 playable champions. You start with 6 pre-determined ones unlocked for free, and 4 random ones are on a rotation schedule, with 2 being swapped out every week.
Obviously, youâd like to unlock all of them, and they all cost between 15, 30, or 60k gold. Given an average, somewhat balanced match that lasts roughly 12 minutes, you could get around 220 gold. If you complete a few simple objectives (typically spread out over 2-3 matches), you could get an extra, say, 1200 gold. Getting enough account experience from playing matches also grants a bonus in gold.
Now, if I want to grind up to 60k for a specific character, itâd probably take me a fair while - probably around the same time spent if I were to grind efficiently for an item in Realm. However, I donât mind playing Paladins, because the gameplay is engaging and varied (despite the frequent only-me-affecting-disconnects).
For Realm, I donât think I could realistically keep doing what I do in it, because the downtime-to-fighting ratio is much more skewed towards downtime of either gunning down monsters at a chance for stuff to spawn, or walking towards the place to do said gunning down because no oneâs there.
To summarize - Realmâs grind is monotonous, time-consuming, and extremely punishing. Monster Hunterâs grind is less time-consuming, more engaging, and (probably) doesnât punish you as badly.
Am I then also quitting Realm? Probably not. Do I have utmost confidence that the game will somehow become good? Also probably not, but I have a small amount of faith in a few of the planned things thatâll at least make the small amount of gameplay I participate in a bit more enjoyable.
XBookwyrmX
#542
@Heartfelt Hm, just curious. Youâre pfp character wouldnât happen to be Alois, would it? Iâm not terribly familiar with the character, but your character looks kind of like them
Heartfelt
#543
gonna be real with you chief, i have no idea who Alois is 
but to answer your question, itâs an album cover featuring Marisa from touhou
XBookwyrmX
#545
No worries. Iâm not that great with differentiation between anime characters at a glance. Now that I remembered the franchise Alois was in and saw them again, thereâs definitely a difference. Silly me!
(The extent of my in-depth knowledge for most anime doesnât go beyond a few of the Miyazaki films lol)
LanceVance
#546
So this game was published on Steam a few days ago:
[Rivaling Rotmg game thatâs been a hot topic in other Rotmg mediums; easy too look up]
Was curious about yâallâs thoughts
Herwin
#548
i played it way back on the phone and loved it, now itâs out it looks really difficult to play on the phone which is annoying.
i still have some 8/8s so ive been able to explore end game and its really hard but well done mostly, ive been enjoying it.
maxing isnt hard if you allready have a good char but for a new char its hard to get sb on anything and they have made the early game dungeon way to hard (primal marsh, pls turn it back 
)
over all i am grinding for purple shield and having fun with it, good game, actually a very different feeling to play than rotmg so i feel like they have done a pretty good job making it not rotmg
Laurencher
#549
One and a half hour in. Itâs just RotMG without pets. The fact that they stuck so close to RotMGâs design is such a downer for me. You got a Realm to level up in, slowly going through its zones, and maybe a dungeon, and there is a villain insulting you trough the chat. You got one ability, four items slots total, and cap at level twenty, after which you collect consumables to increase your stats further.
[Rival game] is so similar to Realm, why would I as a burned-out veteran bother? Its 2022, hype and intruige in MMOâs peaked a decade ago, and the bar for indie games (especially in story-telling and graphics) is way higher now. I wish the devs all the luck in the world but, its just rotmg.
Seelpit
#550
I havenât played it, but from what I gathered from othersâ experience and stories:
- Most positive reviews are generic about it and donât actually compliment the game on what it does, bar being ânot RealmââŚwhile it simultaneously fixes literally none of the issues with old Realm.
- The UI is weirdly split in a way that, from the screenshots I saw, seemed kind ofâŚrandom, and tough to quickly distinguish.
- Progression comes at a snailâs pace with random boxes that you need to grind forâŚfor a random tiered ring, between T3 and T5. Incredible.
- Pretty much all bosses are summarized by âwander behavior, follows if close, fast bullet novasâ. With, additionally, zero transition indicators, meaning bullets overlap between phases.
Yeah, IâmâŚpretty sure it wonât last very long past the initial âhypeâ of another Realm clone inspired game.
Totally doesnât reuse certain assets, either.
XBookwyrmX
#551
Based on what I noticed when some of my guild was running around the game (despite the hype from a couple of them that are rapidly burning out of Rotmg), this is kind of what quickly lost any interest from me early on. Itâs not the fault of those devs that theyâre learning both how to better operate the game and make something more interesting than the original game that has several years on them (and probably a larger team?), but itâs just too basic compared to where Rotmg is now and thatâs saying something.
I donât mind the lack of pets and slower progression, as that means they could potentially be more careful about powercreeping the game while itâs not too late. But until something revolutionary happens that would likely take years worth of work with the progress these games make, Iâm only going to stick around one Rotmg type game, and itâs going to be the original for the foreseeable future.
(PS, I donât really know how strictly the âRotmg onlyâ rule is being enforced with the rapid decline of the forums among other circumstances, but direct callouts to the game in question by name were once outlawed, so maybe Iâll just edit out the name before Doc or OB slink back again and raps a couple of our knuckles with rulers for âdisobedienceâ 
)