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.
The Problem with Event Culture (and how to fix it)
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.
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/
August 2019 is about 9 months ago by now. Although to be fair that does devalue the ‘ignoring for so long’ point
“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.
You can quote posts here properly instead of manually copying them
I'm Floflorian, DECA Partner AMA
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Wikipedia article you posted compares the said Skinner box to a slot machine.
Let’s not even get into the Mystery Boxes…