The Keyper is a horribly designed event


#1

It’s very evident that clearing the realms is not something most people would do on a normal basis. The only times this is done is because there’s an event within Oryx 1 and/or Oryx 2 and everyone wants to clear realms to get to Oryx. That or there’s an event that increase the drop rates of all Encounter white bags (Encounters are otherwise known as realm events like Cube Gods, Pentaracts, Hermit Gods, etc.).

After these events are over, the realms suddenly become less active. There’s no good incentive to go out and kill the Heroes. But now…introducing the Keyper! From the patch notes:

The Keyper is a brand new event that aims to provide engagement in the realms as well as greater accessibility to rarer dungeons. You can fight him up to two times per realm after you disable his 5 crystal towers. They will spawn in the highlands and mountains after you defeat all Cyclops Gods and activate once again later in the cycle after you defeat all Ent Ancients.

A victory over The Keyper will guarantee you 8 portal drops out of a pool that we will update over time. But be warned: He may be a coward, but like a cornered bear, he can strike back with great force. He has infinite keys, after all, and he isn’t afraid to weaponize them.

  • Loot from The Keyper:
  • Current Dungeon Drop Pool:
    • Lost Halls
    • The Nest
    • The Shatters
    • Secluded Thicket

I don’t know what the community thinks, but I am still against having this event in the game. It straight up does not make sense and does not fit within the game.

1. The Loot

Why does it have to drop every Encounter event white? It’s already enough that it drops its own unique item, and not only that, the weapon itself is terrible. It’s a sword with unreliable damage and stats that don’t impact much either. And it’s probably super rare considering it drops from an Encounter, thus overall making the item a joke.

Even if the sword isn’t rare, there are so many other potential changes to the sword to make it more unique and actually good. Like, why not have a sword where you have to stand on top of enemies like an EP at the benefit of tons of damage? Or why not make it so that it shoots extremely fast like the Thousand Shot Bow but with low damage?

You don’t even get potions as a drop from the Keyper, which means the majority of the time you’re left with the terrible feeling of getting nothing and that very rare occasion of hearing a bag drop and getting excited…and then getting disappointed at getting an item like a Ray Katana instead of that Shield of Ogmur that you really, REALLY wanted.

2. The Enemies

The minions that spawn from the towers are the exact same copies from the Crystal Cavern. How the hell does that relate to the event itself? The Keyper doesn’t even drop a portal to the Fungal Cavern.

Part of the reason why I’m making this post is because I died to the minions, unaware that they were actually the EXACT same ones from the Crystal Cavern. I thought their damage would’ve at least been modified for the event which is why I went in to kill the towers. And I’m still pissed about dying like that.

The mechanics of the towers is an extra step in the whole process that just seems redundant and is annoying to deal with. There’s no relation to the towers and the Keyper, and the whole “going out to clear the minions then the tower” idea is more boring to go through than it is exciting.

I’ve heard some people dying when the towers first spawned in a realm when the Keyper was first released. I believe it’s hotfixed but I’m sorry that wasn’t caught during playtesting.

The Keyper as well is annoying to deal with, especially the last phase. The last phase is the boss running away from players like the Leprechaun…in the Godlands. And it throws out AoE bombs that give you the Confusing effect just to put the cherry on top. Once again, IN THE GODLANDS. That is one of the worst phases I’ve ever dealt with.

3. The Dungeons

I’m against the concept of the Keyper throwing out dungeons. The Encounter itself was designed to provide an alternative to basic event chests, so I can understand why it would do that in the first place, but it’s not very enjoyable going through the whole process of:

Clearing realms -> Clearing minions around tower -> Clearing towers -> Killing Keyper -> Entering event dungeon

It also “devalues” the other events that drop the current dungeons, such as not having to deal with the Lost Sentries in the realms to get Lost Halls and instead killing the Keyper. Or not having to go kill Killer Bee Nests to get Nests…and so forth.


To me, the Keyper fails to provide engagement in the realms and trying to update the Keyper itself won’t really do much either. I believe the bigger issue is the method to clearing the realms itself and I think it should be changed.


#2

I quite like the Keyper. The three phases are all totally different, and make for one of the most varied challenges there is. First phase is in theory simple but I’ve died to it; you need to keep your wits about you.

The second phase is easy if you have a char with range, though still quite challenging. I had to change chars earlier as none of the two of us doing it then had enough range.

Used to think the third phase was worst but with a few players it’s easiest, just surround him and pummel him. Don’t do as I did on my first solo and chase him through godlands.

The towers are a pain, minions are annoyingly skittish and have healing. With HP scaling they can be very tedious to take down. The various status effects just make things even slower.

As for the drops and dungeons, I like they are doing something different. It’s a chance at both the items and dungeons that are normally hard to get to. I’ve done more Thickets in the last week than in the previous years since its launch. Hopefully they will rotate in some new dungeons, such as other ones available after Janus.


#3

Although I like the Keyper in concept (get an extra shot at event dungeons), there’s indeed some flaws which you mentioned.

In my opinion, the worst part isn’t the Keyper’s excruciating movement - the Confuse grenade takes a long time to hit the ground, roughly 2 seconds or so, which is really slow compared to other grenades - but the tower clearing.
The minions, aside from being strong due to them coming from endgame content, are also jittery in their movement - their movement-based patterns are heavily reduced in effectiveness and functionality because of the tower ordering them to “protect” it, making it a pain to effectively clear them - made even harder by their relatively high regen.

If the towers themselves had some sort of attacks instead of minions surrounding them, something like just a simple shot pattern, they’d be much more fun to clear, I think.


#4

It kinda annoys me that it drops the bee quiver, if people get one without doing a killer bee nest, they have even less reasons to do them


#5

what are y’all talking about

anyway, i like the Keyper. It’s a new event, cool phases, but i only tested it with a puri Priest.

The only thing i hate in the keyper are the towers. THE TOWERS ! There’s more chance to be popped by towers than by the keyper. And they drops nothing ! Not even a stat pot, a shard,… a keychain ? Something that actually pushes us to destroy them


#6

The largest of the minions can drop a stat pot, at a much higher rate than gods it seems like.


#7

If people actually clear them, instead of just rushing the Towers, what usually happens beecause they’re a pain to clear…


#8

Maybe it pushes you because you want to fight the keyper?


#9

Yes, but no worries. The Keyper is the main attraction, so killing them quickly is the priority. I’ve mostly seen pots when doing them alone, in a quiet or empty realm so picking off minions does not take too long.


#10

I think the sporadic movement is alright, but just he moves away from his initial location way too much and enemies that run away like this shouldnt exist imo. If they add sporadic / rapid moving enemies they should only move within a certain area/proximity. I think the sword he drops is alright as it gives a vit buff which is unique to swords and could be used purely as a vit swapout, but you are right I feel that it is more a lackluster bonus / item either way.

The enemies designed at the towers I feel are not really dodgable as they just stack a ton of bullets from multiple enemies (and they all do a lot of dmg aswell) is a poor way to design an enemy but I might just not have noticed a pattern of some sort to know if there is something to it. And the Keyper moving away while shooting the white projectiles is too hard to see with all the players covering the bullets as they pierce through. I agree it is poorly designed but it was a cool concept imo.

I also feel that the dungeons are made more for discords / thought out groups of players rather than a public closing realm group of players. The dungeons it should drop I feel should be more like mid tier stuff like manor / mad lab / davys etc rather than end game stuff as they take very long times to complete otherwise. the only one that i feel is sorta bad for this is halls. thicket / lod / shatters are fine the others i feel take a long time with a public group (nest/halls)


#11

The keypers phases are easy as fuck to get SB in. The only problem I have is the loot pool. If it were up to me, I would remove Jugg and Ogmur from the loot pool to keep its prized status, as well as make the fucker drop something at all. Make it easier to hit as a melee, rotate dungeons (and good ones) like Reef, and all the other Janus portals.


#12

Dude you’re just mad because you died to the crystal lmao. Judging by how many people do the event i would say it’s very well received and many people including myself are very happy with the loot.


#13

Nooooo ! Some of us don’t do Discord, so welcome the chance to do these dungeons in a semi-organised way. Thicket in particular I’ve hardly ever done before; got an ST armour + ST ring during this event.

No point doing lower level dungeons you can easily do in godlands. Shaitans, Encore + Reef should be in the mix next time, as other hard to do/rarely done dungeons. Other event dungeons like MT, Davys maybe. Even special dungeons like Ice Tomb, Mad God Mayhem with a low drop chance.


#14

There’s so many problems that it’s difficult to know where to start.

Towers

The towers were horrible. I basically couldn’t get near enough to do any damage, or even to see the tower itself. I usually ended up standing kinda nearby and waiting for those with a deathwish/hacks/divine pet to TP and take it down. Please, stop designing so tough content, it merely drives players to leech and/or hack.

Length

Making the entire thing take so long to fight and placing the second one at the end of a realm led to the unedifying sight of experienced (usually) players screeching at new (usually) players: “don’t kill lich you [redacted]”. It also gave a green light for organised groups and/or notifiers to wait out the TP cooldown, instead of the event rewarding those who had worked to spawn it. Please, stop designing events that take so long to complete (hello Dwarf Miner). It overly rewards leeching/notifying.

Rare UTs

Having the keysword be some rare item wasn’t fun (~250 it took me to get one). A fun thing would’ve been to hand it out to most everyone, for us all to spend the weekend running around shooting keys like loons. But making it low % simply pushes players into notifier use, which isn’t good. Scroogy drop rates aren’t fun.

I got one Tablet in those ~250 so it was hardly throwing out other UTs. I hesitate to say that’s good or bad, as I think the whole event UT thing needs rethinking but that’s for another topic. Fair to say it wasn’t broken.

Portals

The spam of portals felt bizarre, for it to throw out for example four Nests - what’s the point. One of each perhaps would’ve been better (like Craig/Court does) as people seemed disappointed when there was no Thicket. Maybe I’m non-typical here but I prefer dungeons from the bosses anyway, and hardly joined any, wanting to focus on the keysword farming.

Improved vs first Keyper

One positive was the improvements vs the first Keyper event, as Keyper boss v2.0 was a bit more enjoyable to fight, though agree with OP the confuse is nasty, and the quiet spam (instead of silence) is as always overly harsh to lower pet players. The new shard tokens, to reassure that you have done sb dmg, and work towards the keyring UT, was the saviour of the event, I would have ignored it completely had this not existed. But please get these obvious things in from the start when designing future events.


#15

good point, didn’t think about that. I guess it is fine how it is - i was trying to think of more rare dungeons that are mid level / high level but dont take a ton of time - like what you listed with the mt idea but yeah mad lab shouldnt be on there but i think manor / davys / reef / encore / lod / shatters / shatain / ice cave (rare and mid level but probably wouldnt be wanted) could be better ideas imo but like you said not everyone uses discord for the end game dungeons so it isn’t so bad as it is. the problem is more so the enemy design anyways i feel


#16

i dont think anyone is really necessarily mad here, people are just throwing out opinions on the event lol and saying that the person is mad just because you like the event and claim that “many people” think the event is fine how it is without any actual proof besides yourself as a vote is kinda dumb imo lol


#17

Yeah I regretted making my post afterwards but i just want it to be heard that not everyone dislikes the event. At the very least there isn’t massive outcry like there is for dwarf miner.


#18

You sound really salty


#19

It really boils down to:
Did you get a white?
If yes:
OMG this is amazing!
If no:
Ugh I wasted my time.

Now, as for my actual opinion:
The keyper should’ve dropped pots himself. It’s really frustrating to get nothing (first times) or just a shard for an arguably pretty bad ring.
Honestly, the cutlass itself should have been a vanity item that dropped at a rather high rate.


#20

A bit off-topic, but this is kind of really sad. The core gameplay loop of RotMG has been basically tossed out the window, and it’s not that this quote is incorrect because that is an accurate reflection of the game at the moment. So many things need to be addressed, and Keyper is just one of them.

I agree very much with the tester quote in the OP. All those points are valid and should have been addressed, and the fact that none of what was brought up was really addressed is incredibly disheartening.
This seems to unfortunately be a common pattern, from an outsider’s perspective (HUDL, anyone?), and while I understand that it seems like you need to push out new content at record pace to keep the community occupied (for example, in this case they wanted to make non-chest events due to backlash), IMO this seems like self-generated pressure that is not an accurate reflection of the playerbase. I think the original release of HUDL should have been a detailed lesson on why rushing content that no one is really chomping at the bit to get right this second is not very epic. There was closed tester backlash, there was public tester backlash, and unsurprisingly there was prod playerbase backlash.
Addressing the tester concerns more thoroughly would have prevented a lot of problems, and as we can see here the concerns our anonymous tester brought up regarding the Keyper turned out to be legitimate concerns in prod that negatively affect the Keyper idea! Who knew?