Hi @PRCSakura
I see you like doing screenshots for the Death Thread. So do I. 
If it’s any help to you: in Windows the PrintScreen button captures the whole screen, but you can do ALT+PrintScreen and this will screenshot only the active window. So if you don’t want your desktop in the picture, ALT+PrintScreen is an easy way to do it.
I believe the forum often suggests topics that are a bit “dusty” and nearing auto-close, when you’ve read all your ‘watching’ and ‘tracking’ topics, to prompt people to visit them before the lock, and possibly revive them for some more chat.
This is why I don’t get stressed about One Month Later as a “bump”, if it’s a legit comment post, because if the forum itself invites us to post there, we shouldn’t rage about it.
Rip didn’t manage to get a photo there was an ava nest event stack :C
here this tile combo looks pretty thicc!
Obviously I’m not RMG, but my opinion is that with permadeath it’s a good idea to just avoid the idea of progression altogether or at the very least keep it toned down.
One example of this is a little mobile game called Pixel Dungeon; the game revolves around multiple (mostly) short games, and the only thing you gain between runs is the knowledge you gained from playing the game. Dying is permanent, and the dungeon is random. You always start in a low level area, and gradually progress to a more difficult area which is enforced by a food system, where you’ll eventually starve to death if you don’t move further down into the dungeon to get more. Runs are relatively short, so although dying late into the game is awful, it’s not too horrible as it doesn’t take too long to get back; just a bit of luck and skill is needed. Although the game does eventually force you further down, and unlike RotMG it’s either you win or your character dies. However, the game has at least a million downloads since I last checked, and a decent rating in the play store, so I assume this concept is popular. The game is also rather difficult, even when you understand the mechanics, which means even with my own 7 wins (yeah, out of 200+ runs) there isn’t an expectation that you’re going to win.
Now lets look at an “mmorpg”, although I don’t play any really so I’ll just use Hypixel’s Skyblock as an example. No permadeath. Dying is really just a slap on the wrist that sends you back to the island’s spawn point and at worst, you lose half of your savings, but you keep everything. You slowly progress by aquiring better gear and grinding item collections among other things. Yes, it takes ages to get the very rare items, but you don’t lose anything in the meantime.
Now, let’s look at RotMG. The game obviously features permanent death. The main aims of an unmaxed character are probably to get good gear and max stats. Now here’s where the problem lies; this takes too long. In a scenario where dying removes everything you work towards, this is not good. It usually takes a significant amount of grinding in fairly dangerous dungeons to get the items that you want, and a decent amount of time to slowly increase your character’s stats by a single point each time, or 5 in the case of HP and MP. You can keep grinding easy dungeons in order to painfully have to spend a very varied amount of time in a player decided trade server, spamming the chat in the hopes that some other player is willing to part with their expensive life potions, or go into even harder dungeons to maybe increase your health points by 5 each time.
Here’s the catch; if you die, everything you worked for is instantly lost.
If you took, say, half a year maxing and gearing up your character, acquiring fame, etc. then suddenly died, what then? You have nothing left aside from a larger number next to the fame symbol. If a player who doesn’t spend much time on the game takes about a week to max a few stats, then the result is them sitting at their computer after 7 days with nothing to show for it.
The vault remains the only way to truly store progression within this game, by letting you hoard items and potions for future characters. This is an okay design choice, but then there’s the problem of having only one as a new player. Of course, the easy solution is “just pay money”, but this disregards two things; 1. A lot of kids play video games, and not all of them are able to pay real money. 2. There is no incentive to pay for a game which doesn’t interest the player. If they don’t like the game due to certain reasons, then they won’t pay for 8 extra item slots to store maybe a few more items at best.
Haha, wait, no, pets exist. The not okay progression in the game. Either a very long term or expensive investment, these guys are well worth it with healing so good it can negate the need for any healing class or vitality, and mana healing so good that things like perma stun became a possibility. They are a problem, because like with some MMORPGs then there will come a time when people hit the metaphorical ceiling that is hypothetically “end game”. Once you have a divine, you’re virtually invincible against the standard level of gameplay, like, let’s say, godlands. You take a few shots here or there, and the giant blue fish walking behind you zaps you once and you’re fine. This has lead to an unhealthy sequence of design choices where high amounts of burst damage has become the only method of killing off players who have reached this “end game”.
I feel these are just very contrasting ideas of what the game wants to be. Yes, it’s a permadeath game, but there’s a feature that allows players to upgrade essentially their vitality and wisdom to insane levels so that players with similar gear but widely different pets vary vastly in how powerful they are. Yes, it’s permadeath, but you have to spend ages to gather items with only slightly different functionality that can be lost in a few seconds. Yes, there is a way to keep things safe from the everlooming permanent death system, but unless you pay money then you’ll have to decide which of the rare items you want to keep, and have to trash the other item knowing that you could potentially not get it again in months.
I wouldn’t say permadeath and MMORPG is an impossibility, but with the way things are with RotMG, there is a pretty significant level of dissatisfaction with the game. It can be disregarded by people, but the fact is, for every new user we see complaining about how the game works there’s probably a lot more that never found out about the forums or the subreddit because the game left them unsatisfied, and when people aren’t happy with it, there’s nothing stopping them from moving on.
The way such a concept could work to satisfy most players is with significant differences to current RotMG; things like faster maxing, easier to get loot and perhaps no progression at all, other than cosmetics, and increased difficulty. Maybe faster maxing could be an issue, but, like I said, significant differences. There could be plenty of harder content for players to challenge themselves, and if they die, it could take only a day or two to get to a similar level to “6/8” so they can challenge themselves again. With no progression between characters, dying would feel very real and problematic, but you can make another character and get back to a decent state without having to waste several hours of your week doing so. With increased difficulty, you have more chance of dying, but you can recover from deaths easier. There’s other ideas I have for providing plenty for the player to do, but that’s not the point of this.
The game is too far ahead to even begin to implement what I would consider a more enjoyable experience, at least without losing a significant bunch of players. I feel that the problem with RotMG, again, is the execution rather than the bare concept itself. Ultimately the game is about making money for its developers though, so I’m not too surprised to see that some healthier design choices might not be considered due to the potential of not getting as much of it.
Yes, it’s a bit of a dichotomy (nice word) for the game, that the more developed/complex it gets, the less the original concept works, because permadeath doesn’t sit at all well alongside long-term building of a character.
I think you’re lowballing how many thoughts surrounding longer-term balance are being thrown around. Then again, I’m more in the knowhow of what’s more-or-less planned, so it’s only natural that I’d get frustrated at players not knowing what’s coming. Which is a bad trait for a closed tester.
Thanks for the response though, it actually gave me a fair bit more insight!
Bah! Only half an hour? 
I’m glad you weren’t squatting in the Immunity Frames topic watching how long I have been writing…
I mean, I liked the whole OOC idea. The problem is that they’re still, well, thoughts at the moment, you know? Once they’re implemented then I’ll stop my complaining.
I like the recent patches where Deca seems to be addressing my key gripes with the game, however, to the point that I actually played the game recently, not just for the daily rewards. Hopefully we’ll keep getting those kinds of updates.
Well, it was more like an hour 
I’m on my phone after all.
No screenshot never happened okay
You know the rules
You need evidence to show you beat me otherwise it never happened.
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