The Problem with Event Culture (and how to fix it)

#1

Hello DECA games, while I had intentionally kept silent as I had seen frequent feedback before and only believed things such as the keyper returned in addition to so many 2x event white and etc because of the Exalt beta and believed you were finally going to put a stop to this, this event clearly shows an immense lack of understanding from your team and a failure to communicate, listen to, reason with, or understand the playerbase. I apologize for the harsh criticism, but this is what I have recently seen out of you on the whole and I will be making more posts about it in the future for the other issues, but this one right now is the most pressing with the release of your event. Which event you ask? For those who are unaware, DECA has released a new event here: https://www.reddit.com/r/RotMG/comments/gi6xy6/mountain_templethe_shatters_challenges_event/ .

This event features a mountain temple event, a shatters event (literally right after one just ended), and a 3X EVENT WHITE EVENT. With the framework set, lets begin.

Problem 1: What Playerbase?

Since the ownership of DECA I have taken two small to moderate breaks from the game, but one thing that has always persisted is events. Since their introduction, there has almost always been at least 1 event active without fail, often more, since 2017. That is four years. Not only has it been 3 years of constant events, but it has been 3 years of constant events that players are generally unhappy with. I imagine you think they are a good idea because of numbers on paper, but if you take a step back you can start to see the numerous harmful aspects of these events, such as:

Player burnout

Encouraging unintuitive / boring gameplay

Greatly shortening content lifespan (this is a VERY important point I will get into in greater depth in a different post).

Changing what players evaluate as “worthwhile”, ex: why would I ever go into a realm and do dungeons when I can wait for its event that will probably be in a week? The Realm is where players inevitably get the most gameplay and this has already changed significantly because of dungeon running, however damaging it even more is unacceptable.

Probably more I am not immediately thinking of.

DECA needs to take a step back and seriously assess the harm these aspects have on the game, primarily in the player happiness and content lifespan aspects, as both are greatly diminished by these events. Here is a very small sample of feedback (I did not collect the myriad out there because I believed DECA was already planning to stop, so my apologies) of a feedback in the ROTMG discord and then a few replies to the reddit post. https://gyazo.com/e8be7e4f289a72a4140be1bfbea89367 https://gyazo.com/923d0221b783517ade419d0b29900410 https://gyazo.com/28f22bab7bfdcd3d93626e15c4a466b1 https://gyazo.com/9431c0045d77433e3d4a740b3fa57613 https://gyazo.com/0f74c7e1c99828fb584279ef412f6924

As you can see here, there are at least a moderate amount of players that are unhappy about the state of events, and this number only becomes larger the more you look for it. In fact, here is a meme video criticizing MOTMG 2018, and you can see from the support of it that there is clearly at least some issue here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml58KltzW8I&feature=youtu.be . This was in 2018. In 2019’s MOTMG, there were numerous complaints about the difficulty of acquiring alien gear due to a busy life, having to pick and choose between the ~4 events active at the same time, and etc. Who knows what 2020 and beyond has in store if the trend continues? All I know is it won’t be good. Listen to the playerbase you have ignored for so long.

Problem 2: What Content / What Gameplay?

The reason events are a problem for players should be obvious (exhausting, demotivating, discourages people from playing the actual game and rather just logging for the event they want, etc), but the damage to the game, which is much worse, cannot be understated. Events not only discourage players from playing the game as it is intended, but as items are one of the three major progression types in the game, rapidly accelerating their drops even further discourages experiencing the realm and the game overall, which means there is much less content players want to or will consume. This is only amplified with the way that dungeons are ran during events. These three factors make your already established content rapidly lose value (especially items, when an item is no longer special it hurts it immensely), and requires a drastically increased schedule of either escalating events or content to keep up (and this of course has damage to game balance and item value overall). This brings us to problem 3.

Problem 3: The Escalation

As you have clearly noticed by the volume of events you produce and the increased absurdity of them (3x event is absolutely unacceptable, especially for a cosmetic that most people don’t care about. People are not doing this so they can afterward get a cosmetic, they’re doing it so they can get an event white.) players continue to need more benefits from these rewards over time to continue playing, which is exactly one of the problems I cannot restate enough in this post. Event spam makes players play less, and it makes them require more to play. From a company perspective, this is the worst thing you can do to yourself. Short term profit is not worth the amount of content you are cutting out from the game, and to compensate for players goals being accelerated much faster you must now balance the future of the game with players who have gained a major entitlement from these events, and, more importantly, all of the best items (meaning they will need greater and greater for motivation). Why make balancing a nightmare and create a much harder content schedule for yourself? You are helping not only the players and game health, but your own business as well by giving it some breathing room. Two of the earlier screenshots ( https://gyazo.com/923d0221b783517ade419d0b29900410 and https://gyazo.com/28f22bab7bfdcd3d93626e15c4a466b1 ) illustrate this point perfectly, and this is exactly how players begin to think about events. It’s time that you start thinking about them too.

Problem 4: The Solution

“If events are such a problem, then what is the solution for them? Events are obviously a strong profit for DECA, so how do you balance the loss of income? What about the positive impact events have as an idea?” While I would first like to state that with dungeons like the lost halls deca will NEVER run out of key purchases (fungal and shatters are also ran all the time in discords, and tombs are ran in guild / public / private frequently as well still) so this is not an argument I would readily accept, there is a point in saying that events certainly do have a place in rotmg, and can have a lot of value if done right (and the point of this post was never to say that events are bad, but rather that the current events are). So what should you, DECA, do to stop this vicious and endless cycle that hurts both the game and the players in the long and even short term? Here are my ideas:

  1. Less events. Above all else, events need to happen MUCH, MUCH less to stop Problem 2 and 3 from persisting and getting worse, encourage players to start playing the game as normal, and bring back a lot of joy that has been lost from the soul draining nature of these events.

  2. Actual events. I saw this talked about by other players before regarding the event spam and it is a great point. With a much more infrequent event schedule outlined in point 1 you would have the ability to make this point a reality, this point being real events, not chest or drop ones. And no, I am not referring to the Keyper, an annoying, unintuitive test chest with a ridiculous drop table, I mean actual, fun events. I cannot think of a single other game that has the definition of “event” set as another chest you hit after to potentially get the same drops, and while this is not a bad reward at all, the idea here is that you can make new content in the already established areas to add more replayability, more value to events, and a much better overall player experience. For example, what if there were parasite colonies (plural) for a parasite event, with a temporary different layout to accommodate for the change? What if it had a larger arena but birthing pods that spawned corrupted characters with greater strength than they normally have? What if the colony had a distress call that summoned a form of special drone from the walls? What if (since parasite chambers is a corrupted guild hall to my knowledge) an infected Guill became a large part of the event fight? You have nearly limitless possibilities that are untapped here, and the players would find much, MUCH more value in this than what you are doing right now, or at least I know I would. In fact, why not help DECA out by leaving ideas of what you would like to see from some real events in the comments? You do not need to change the reward of events at all, just how they work (and with the infrequency listed in point 1, the threats that are present to the game with the current event system are a thing of the past).

  3. Introduce HEALTHY incentives for consistent gameplay. While it is true that ROTMG’s loot system is not perfect and could use some improvements, you are performing a surgical operation with these events for something that needed a band-aid. While removing event culture is a HUGE plus for the game overall, realm has suffered the issue of some whites being particularly unkind to players to the point where they may just give up farming for it.

INTRODUCING: Pity Rates and In Dungeon UT Exchange! I have deliberated over the white system for a while and I have found this to by far be the best solution. While I strongly disagree with the current UT exchange idea and believe it should be abolished completely (I will go into this in greater depth in a different post), there is certainly merit in a form of UT exchange which I will outline here. So how does the new system work? Whenever you complete a quest, there is the chance for the white you are looking for. However, that is all there is at the moment. Under this system, any time a boss completion fails to drop its white(s) there is a very small percentage increase to the player’s chance to get its white, resetting when one is acquired. This of course must be balanced carefully so that the grind is not removed, the purpose of this is to give players a chance or properly reward them for their dedication to an item, because in cases like mine where it took the chest events to gain my significant number of crowns (previously doing over 1000 without one) or in Marvin’s where it took something to the tune of 1.4k voids to acquire the Omnipotence Ring, the occasional punishment the loot system can administer is seriously demoralizing and this should be changed.

“But I keep getting Bloodshed ring from Malus and it resets my rate every time, so this system really doesn’t fix my problem of being unable to get a Ritual Robe”. This is where the very specific UT exchange comes into play. Unlike the total mess that is DECA’s version, this exchange doubles down on the fairness of this new system by allowing you to melt your undesired items into ones you may actually want but fail to get, and as they come from the exact same place, unlike the other UT exchange you have actually earned the item(s) you are grinding for! So how does it work?

If a dungeon boss has multiple whites (ex: Lost Halls) you can only trade with the items the boss actually possesses (example: Breastplates cannot convert into Omnis). If a dungeon boss has one white (ex: Shatters), you can convert gemstones into crowns for example. To make this fair and to add reward / excitement to getting the actual drop you want, it will require multiple of the white you are offering to be able to acquire these items (for example, 3 bloodsheds or 2 bloodshed + skull for 1 ritual). Event bosses will not have exchange.

It would be amazing if this system could be applied to STs too, but getting it implemented for whites is the first step. With this, any possible negative impact from event culture will be gone and the small problem whites have had will be out of the picture entirely, allowing for you to focus on making real events as outlined in point 2 which are much healthier for the game and much more enjoyable for the playerbase!

  1. Make events an event (restore meaning to the word). If the previous points are followed correctly, you will be able to give the word “event” in ROTMG value again and make it something that players are excited for in a beneficial way, not the way they are viewed now. This will not only be good for Exalt marketing and bringing players back / getting new players into the game, but it will also have the gameplay and game health benefits outlined in the previous points!

Conclusion / TLDR

While events certainly have a place in the game, they do not have one the way they are implemented now, a way that causes significant damage over time to game identity, player experience, and content value. Serious change to this is required and massive improvements to game health and experience can be made here, and it should be before the aforementioned damage becomes impossible to heal.

Thank you all for reading this post! If you agree with the ideas or sentiment shared in it, please consider giving it a like and sharing it around for support, as this is the best way to get DECA to listen to us about this issue!

Support links:The Problem with Event Culture (and how to fix it) https://www.reddit.com/r/RotMG/comments/gidgds/the_problem_with_event_culture_and_how_to_fix_it/

#2

Sorry for not reading the whole thing as its very long. But THANK YOU!!! I participate in these events because as long as people are popping keys I want the same chance of whites and STs as they do. But where is the realm content?? We had this last event last 6 days, Thursday to Wednesday, and now we have another starting the next day?? Thats 2 weeks straight of events!! I get it as far as the unity beta because of the exalt tokens and the three runes— Deca wanted a grindfest for these prematurely released items that will be very valuable. But we don’t need to go straight into another two week grindfest after a two say break!! Give us some time to play the game, to use those whites we grinded the previous week. Dont just throw three more events at us for no reason. The ST sets that are being replaced drop from four locations: Para and Lab for the first, MT for the second, Shatts for the third. We literally just had a Shatters event a week ago, so Deca should have thought of the upcoming Story of War and made it at the end of the rune events. Then we have around 5 more weeks before the new sts are released. Make one weekend for Para, one for Lab, one for MT. Easy! Then you can add a 3x event white event anywhere in that 5 month period (even those are grindfests, where people dont play most content and skip oryx just to keep grinding events). Chest events brought back the game and are a great source of income for Deca, but when it was a 3 day event every weekend that was acceptable. That gives 4 days to pot farm and do whatever else you like to do in the game. I also love the token and many shard events because they are still grindy, but most of them allow you to choose the content you grind (like the unity tokens). I don’t think chest events like this will lead to the death of the game but I really am getting sick of it. For the “just don’t do chest events” replies: Just like everyone else I really want these rare items and I want the opportunity to get them just like everyone else. I feel like if I don’t grind the chest events Im missing out in something every other player benefits from. This is what Deca wants, and its really sad. Theyre upsetting their player base but the player base keeps coming back because they don’t want to miss out.

#3

While your points are valid, there’s one very crucial thing you’re wrong about here, events aren’t what cause steamrolling, boring gameplay and discord runs, steamrolling itself is the core cause of all these core issues including devaluing and trivialization of content, you can’t have events trivialize anything if there are no pets and priests to make discords and key poppers able to steamroll everything. If all events disappeared tomorrow forever, it would fix nothing at all, everything would be just as boring and easy because steamrolling would stay intact.

#4
SPOILER : These are MY opinions on the current state of the events. Please do not roast me because i say things that people may not like.

We’re in a sort of unique transition from spaghetti (flash) to Unity. There’s more events than usual because it’s a phase that will only happen ONCE.

Yes there’s a lot of events. But, a lot of players got into the game or just came back, so Deca keeps up the events. It’s normal imo.

I did not read the whole thing, but Niegil talked about an UT exchange.

If we remove events, the only thing you could do in RotMG are realms and organised runs. I have no idea for you but doing 10 realms in a chain is really boring. Deca is trying to hold both new players and experienced players so let them do what they want to do. It’s up to you to do events or just play other games.

As of money, adding payable cosmetics for rare ut items is acceptable. You buy the cosmetic, you farm for the UT. I see more and more people blaming Deca for abducting money, but come on, they just pushed the game to Unity taking around two years !

https://www.reddit.com/r/RotMG/comments/ctj355/deca_producer_letter_august_2019/

#5

August 2019 is about 9 months ago by now. Although to be fair that does devalue the ‘ignoring for so long’ point

#6

“We’re in a sort of unique transition from spaghetti (flash) to Unity. There’s more events than usual because it’s a phase that will only happen ONCE.”
I can’t really accept this argument because we have seen this for 4 years and exalt has not been in open beta for 4, which is my same argument for the second point.

I am aware of the UT exchange and wholeheartedly disagree with it, which is why I have introduced what I believe to be a much better system in this post. The other one has a lot of problems that I will be bringing up in a post later.

“If we remove events, the only thing you could do in RotMG are realms and organised runs. I have no idea for you but doing 10 realms in a chain is really boring. Deca is trying to hold both new players and experienced players so let them do what they want to do. It’s up to you to do events or just play other games.”

You really should read my post, because I in fact said events were not a bad thing and were in fact good. This lack of understanding could clearly only come from you not reading it, so I really think you should before you continue with the replies, as I not only said events could be a healthy thing for the game, but they have a ton of potential that is not currently being tapped into. There should be benefits to both organized runs and in realm activities, which my system would definitely put some incentive into (see my fix to the UT problem)

“As of money, adding payable cosmetics for rare ut items is acceptable. You buy the cosmetic, you farm for the UT. I see more and more people blaming Deca for abducting money, but come on, they just pushed the game to Unity taking around two years !”

I’m not talking about the cosmetic, I don’t really care about that. In fact I didn’t really mention it anywhere in my post aside from saying that the event was not going to push the sales like they think it will. Unity got an incredible amount of support from the earlier programs so it is definitely not about that, but yet again I never mentioned the UT cosmetic being a bad thing or it even being a problem in the first place.

Overall, you clearly responded to the title of this post instead of the body, so I would appreciate if you could go back and re-evaluate your response.

#7

You can quote posts here properly instead of manually copying them

I'm Floflorian, DECA Partner AMA
#8

I think most of what you said is right, don’t get me wrong, and UT exchange within the dungeon with a 1:1 rate instead of a lower rate but for everything would be great, but you seem to be making the problem here about how common the loot itself is which is the least of the causes here, consider that even with 0.5x drop rates you would still get dozens of whites before dying in average pubhalls runs. The removal of death as a relevant aspect hurts the gameplay more than making loot take not as much time to get, because while it doesn’t hurt the longevity as much, it does way more damage by making the process of getting the loot itself repetitive and lacking effort to the point of every run except one where people get their fix of white dopamine being boring, making over 90% of your time playing a mindless chore. You’ll find most people get bored not because they get loot too quickly, but because everything between each white you get becomes trivial and boring.

TLDR: Fix steamrolling before you “fix” events.

(PS: A 3x event is acceptable for something that is way too rare like event whites tbh)

#9

That’s quite a good idea about your point of view of UT exchange, but these are my opinions on events in general, and are not directly related to your post.

Not meaning to be that toxic guy that opposes to everyone’s idea btw, just exposing my points of view.

The only thing i would like to see in events are one free key in the packages section or increased dungeon drop chance in the realm (for paras, mad labs etc) instead of the current “pop you @&$%#*”

And no, i don’t protect chest events because i am dependent of them.

#10

Wait, WHAT?

Huh, I had a similar thought earlier today. My Idea is that whenever you complete a dungeon on a character, it increases the chances to get an unobtained drop from that dungeon on that character.

Huh, I actually like this idea a lot better then the current plan for UT extange. Although with this, Im pretty sure there would be a massive drop in potatos in player position, getting the breastplate or colossus sword or mseal instead.

#11

I used to agree with you on deca’s typical response to these sorts of complaints, the “but player count is higher during events” thing, but after a while I realized it paints a much more dire picture than the one you have detailed here. as disastrous for the game’s health as they have been and are continuing to be, they are what’s still holding the game up. and it’s not money that’s the issue, it’s the player’s interest in the game. because the precedent for this kind of gameplay built around intense optimized grinding to bypass as much challenge as possible has already been set, and the players are hopelessly spoiled and addicted at this point. any change that’s perceived to get in between the masses and the rewards they feel entitled to either provokes outrage until it gets forgotten or just makes people not engage with the game anymore, and the cessation of free bonus drop chances is about as direct an intervention as you can get.

people don’t really “play” the game anymore, they jump straight to the button that randomly decides to give them a treat every now and again and keep mashing it until prizes come out. if the events stop they’ll give up on the prize button because they’re too conditioned to not want to bother if it requires that much effort. the point is that I believe this is a problem that can no longer be fixed. your ideas for “alternative events” will either produce exactly the same issue as the current chest fiasco by simply providing an additional chance at loot, or will get ignored entirely if they don’t drop anything worthwhile. I’m pretty sure deca has already figured this part out since they tried experimenting with alternatives to chests in the past, and it basically had the same results. and simply stopping the events will finally give the players a chance to step back and realize how meaningless the whole grind was and finally stop being addicted to the little prize box that’s left in place of an actual game.

#12

This is really upsetting but 100% true

#13

You’re 100% right on the cause but you seem to exaggerate it when it comes to everyone thinking like this, the mere fact you, me and other people here are acknowledging, agreeing with this for one, and also, people who only value loot will always be the most vocal part over the more neutral people because they are the ones complaining the most about certain changes that can improve the state of the game at the expense of steamrollingp like In-Combat, i still play despite being almost completely desentisized to loot, one time i got 3 event whites in 2 hours and had no reaction other than being really surprised/weirded out (not counting being glad i got to use them afterwards), whereas being at the brink of death constantly and adrenaline pumping the first time i fought Killer Bee Queen stuck with me as one of my best experiences.

#14

I do agree with a lot of what you are saying here but I can honestly only attribute this to the multiple years that this has been a problem in the game, I have complained about it a lot, seen it complained about a lot, but after this I have realized that it has nothing to do with exalt anymore and it will be present after its release if nothing is done. Any first step to reigning realm back into what it used to be will require event culture being dispatched of first.

@Megayeah I don’t want you to think I am ignoring you because I do have a lot of things to say about that topic as well, but these are honestly not the same issues just because some traits happen to overlap in them and I am planning to make a post about the entirety of that PT + more which I will be more than happy to engage with you in then!

I also do agree with Mega about everyone thinking like this, because if everyone did then there would be a 100% vehement opposition of what I am talking about and 100% support on the thread (which is clearly not the case). Despite having a 100/100, regularly doing discord runs and pretty much having a complete account, I still spend a lot of time and money on the game and enjoy my time in it (as well as see the potential that is being stifled with event culture). It is one of the biggest thorns in this game’s side since DECA has taken over and seeing its removal would be a major step towards bringing back the identity of realm we had that made us able to support it with no new content for ~3 years (the fact that it could even do that is a testament to its potential).

#15

you two are missing the point. it’s not that every single individual is hopelessly addicted to the grind, it’s that enough of a majority is hooked to the point where the outliers like you two don’t matter and can’t sustain the game by yourselves. obviously there are individuals who don’t fit the mold outlined above, the point is that those people are outliers, and it’s a very very bad situation when people who actually enjoy engaging with the content in the game are the outliers instead of the default.

#16

But there’s pretty empyrical proof that it’s an almost perfectly even split, whereas being outliers has very little evidence, if you look at the polls on how many people liked In-Combat and, more recently, how many people liked the player cap changes, both things that are very detrimental to steamrolling, you’ll find it was an almost 50/50 split between liking and not liking. Someone who doesn’t enjoy the content would never want In-Combat added, they would gain nothing from higher difficulty.

EDIT: This isn’t even taking into account the ambiguity of the poll, creating an overlap between people who like In-Combat as a concept but not the exact way it was done and the people who just dislike it outright, but there’s none of this overlap in the opposite direction, you can bet if the poll asked whether people like In-Combat as an idea specifically, the overlap would be gone and the Yes side would either be perfectly even or have a slight edge over No side, rather than the other way around. (Yes side was 38.4 and No side was 39.9, uncertain was 21.5)

#17

This isn’t a surprise. People never liked dying. People liked getting loot. Put the two together and it’s clear to see why the event cancer has spread.

I will say that events draw in a lot of players due to skins, backpacks, and other items which are impossible to obtain without money otherwise.

Honestly I am not a fan of it. However, if it pays the bills and keeps people happy I think that’s fine.

The problem is all of the solutions that are proposed here don’t bring in any additional revenue to Deca. I’m all for them, but they have seen the low hanging fruit and are zooming for it. People buy keys, Deca makes profit, people are happy with whites.

The War STory (where’s the story though?) is also guilty of this. STs are low hanging fruit (I guess people are buying them) so they keep pumping them out.

The people have spoken with their wallet, which is the loudest voice.

#18

Agree. I don’t bother with chests. It is mindless shooting at still boxes. I’d rather forget all that crap is going on and just go to empty realms to have fun killing stuff.

#19

I’d say I agree with most of your post when it comes to events. I’m not against them either, but I’d appreciate not being bombarded with events constantly. Couldn’t they find a middle ground by just doing 1 event per month? Personally, I try to ignore them because I can’t stand doing the same thing all over again, I burn out easily, and variety was what I always liked about this game. There was no sense of grinding back then, unlike now.

I think the playerbase is way too divided and polarized, you’re either pretty good or you’re fairly new or returning. I hope I’m wrong, but I think the only way to salvage all of this is to do what Jagex did with RS3 and OSRS, or something similar. Just my two cents though.

#20

I feel this pretty much hits it on the mark, as pessimistic as it sounds.

I view it like this:
Deca’s original sharp increase of running events (we can track it down to at least right after MotMG, where they no longer had an excuse to spam events but continued to do so every weekend) slowly but surely chased away many players who played for the actual gameplay (wait, the actual core gameplay of RotMG isn’t sitting in the nexus waiting for keys?). It’s not as fun to play the game the way it was originally intended if a good chunk of the playerbase is waiting for keys and subsequently not playing in the Realm itself; sure, it adds to the challenge to do more things on your own/in low player count, but after a while it does get tedious. All the while, in all that time you spend being in the Realm, other players have been running laps around you and swimming in loot from Nexus chains.

Now, most of the people who are left still playing (bar a few stubborn/optimistic individuals, who we can see in this thread still wish for the RotMG of the past) are playing for the events, basically. What entices them to play is the collecting loot and building up their characters aspect, but not quite the “do all this in the face of potential death” part.
But that’s ok, events pretty much offer loot on a silver platter with very little effort required, because running the dungeon with 64 other players is much easier. Won’t even have to bother hunting for the dungeon yourself since as per Deca’s plan to make big bucks, people will buy the keys for you (or you will buy the keys yourself). It’s just doing enough dungeons that you eventually get the item you want, and then you will feel the enjoyment of getting that item.
This is akin to a Skinner box (if I remember correctly since it’s been years since I moved on from pursuing a neuroscience degree, they increase the number of pulls or wait time on the lever the rat pulls before a food pellet pops out over time. sound familiar regarding the drop rates of chests in these chest events?).

This is not very sustainable for a permadeath game, I would wager these players are a lot more likely to quit on a harsh death because that isn’t what they play the game for (this is on top of the already existing problems that can encourage even someone who does enjoy the permadeath to take a break from the game, such as the feeling of not being able to rebuild due to low drop rates or otherwise). And it’s inevitable they die at some point, so it’s almost like a ticking time bomb.

I see a lot of Deca’s decisions as being hopelessly short-sighted, and I hope you can see why this focus on events is one of them. It’s not a long-term solution to anything, it’s more of a “milk the game until it takes its last breath” sort of deal in my eyes.