What are your problems with RotMG as of current?

#22

Lets imagine an average redstar with 1-2 8/8s and can complete most dungeons but struggle with void/shats/o3
they only have 2 8/8s and haven’t gotten any whites from the aforementioned dungeons due to difficultly completing them.

If i want to bring the aforementioned warrior with WC tops, i will need at least a t13 sword, which yes isnt hard to obtain bc you can trade, but will still require a decent amount of grinding for life pots. Say I want to bring a wizzard, at the minimum i will need t13 staff, para spell, and either a endgame dps ring or a t15 robe. the theoretical player cannot bring his wizard to farm o3 because you need either a ring or a robe from o3.

In fact most classes are like this for null, pretty much pally and warrior are the only exceptions, but they still require at minimum t13 sword.

#23

No they don’t? You literally can bring t12/t6/t13/t5 or esben and meet reqs perfectly well. Yes you’re going to loose 8/8s learning o3/shatts big surprise? I can’t dictate what anyone does, but learning a dungeon on wizard is an incredibly stupid idea. And no warrior and pally aren’t the only exceptions, samurai can meet with wine cellar tops + doku + esben ring, bard can meet with leaf/concertina/esben and if you want to push it, priest can meet with fungal and mlab. All of these sets are easily farmable in mass and the likely hood of you dying in a null run is far lower than in an osanc run. I started this game backwards in which the first dungeon I learnt was o3 and then I did all the other exalt dungeons and harder godland dungeons and even with 0 experience of this game outside of snake pits, I managed to get my first osanc complete after 2 deaths so if someone with 0 experience of this game can do it with wc tops + 2/8 in life and speed then I’m sure an 8/8 warrior can do it perfectly well. I’m bored of arguing and I kinda made that pretty clear in my other replies so please don’t respond and if you do, don’t expect a reply.

#24

not wc tops, t12 sword is wc tops

not hard to get

you can use esben’s wedding ring, an omni you grinded for, e.t.c.

no new players farm o3s with wizard.

no? only wc tops, which is t12 sword.

#25

hmm, it’s been a while since I really talked about rotmg issues in this forum. where to begin? I suppose the best thing I can do for now is mention a very broad point that I can provide some justification for.

(tl;dr just read the last paragraph)

rotmg is neither a good roguelite nor a good mmorpg.

rotmg doesn’t have particularly good combat
if we take a look at the micro-gameplay, in the form of dungeon crawling shoot’em up content, rotmg simply doesn’t perform nearly as well as its peers in the “bullet hell” department- some of these issues take the form of tenured designs such as a simplistic aggro-based design, and others take the form of more mechanical/technical debts such as the presence of a highly exploitable instant nexus, lack of invulnerability frames, or the game’s general inability to lock the player to a specific playspace without a highly involved map design. there is a lot of skill involved in rotmg still, but anywhere else you look in the genre- you have a faster, purer, and just better executed version of combat.

rotmg doesn’t support the speed of roguelite progression
beyond level 20, rotmg struggles to continue its roguelite model of a nimble, skill-heavy progression. maxing is a greatly time-consuming process that involves grinding much of the same content in the same spot in the game. there’s not a lot of upward mobility through skill or random chance- a rare roll in a godlands dungeon might entail getting 2-3 stat potions instead of just 1. knowing that there are roughly ~200 potions required to max, this is an absolutely sluggish point in progression for any roguelite standards. in the early wildshadow days, the concept of maxing was added simply as a band-aid to give players something to do when they had mastered reaching level 20. does this sound familiar to… say, pets? exaltation? forge? everything is a band-aid. progression has no foundation and thus we continue changing the game state and rendering much content subpar or even completely useless to progression when we move to the next layer. Each of those layers adds some level of stability to the average player’s runs but reduces the probability of random windfalls that improve your run, or skill-based challenges that boost your run.

rotmg is punishing for the wrong reasons
it’s due to the same technical crust and poor design mentioned in the first section that rotmg ends up adding many sources of unfair loss mechanics- whether that comes in the form of many near-instakills that technically aren’t instakills, but are still general singular mistakes that lead to a run reset. similarly, the punishment scales with the time/effort needed to get back to the same point in progression, something that doesn’t scale very well at all. a lot of times it can feel difficult for a player to take ownership over their own loss.

rotmg is also too safe/stable for the wrong reasons
early-midgame progression takes the form of character progression (pots and items), which are all capable of being stored in an expandable vault system. lategame progression takes the form of pets/exaltations, neither of which lose any progress on death. at some point, stakes don’t properly scale as the ability to store massive windfalls of items softens any real blow that permadeath could possibly deal to your way of playing the game. in short, storage is the permadeath buffer, but as it’s nearly unattainable for F2P and far too reliable for anyone who does have the space, it’s not very good at what it does. with storage buffering all sense of loss, it fails to actually bring out the good aspects of permadeath games- the ability to change your play circumstances at a moment’s notice.

rotmg doesn’t support an mmo progression
it’s due to the same systems that once made rotmg a semi-decent roguelite that prevent it from making it a good mmo. character progression is cut terribly short due to a short-sighted maxing system that stops being relevant beyond godlands tier content, and account progression is lagging sorely behind auxiliary systems that were never meant to hold the full weight of player progression needs. character progression is unable to really flourish due to permadeath acting as a limiter to how much time/effort should be sunk into an individual character. without the broad scale of activities that can contribute to your account progression, it’s hard to really dive into rotmg the same way you can a more typical mmo with better systems designed for large time/effort sinking.

rotmg has no art, sound, or narrative worth remembering by
it lacks an aesthetic beyond just being a “quirky pixel game” that might turn a few bored teens’ eyes when looking for games to kill time with. it’s just not a very memorable game for anything but gameplay. this is deserving of a post in itself, so i’ll keep this one short.

rotmg is actively resistant to change
try as you might to bring the best points to the table, or the most innovative solutions, no one that matters is listening. each valued group of players, whales, lategame raiders, etc. (basically anyone except F2P) each have established their own set of expectations that they are quite difficult to budge on. DECA’s management is far too risk-averse to ever shift the game too far from the expectations of the players that pay for their bottom line. In both Kabam/DECA, there have been many truly talented and passionate developers and designers who wished the best for the game, but the management structure is built against their wishes and often at times the most ambitious game-changers are often the ones who are booted from the team first. Those who stay struggle with a company that literally, not figuratively, does not care for the design of the game, and resists attempts to better the game.

i love realm, which is why it’s sad for me to say that i’m pessimistic things will ever improve from the perspective of realm of the mad god. but there’s better things to stress over and battles that are actually winnable. maybe think about that before placing too much emotional investment in the game’s future.

#26


No, this is just simply wrong

#27

Ive been arguing my point about gear reqs and how they gatekeep against new/bad players from being able to experience the game at a certain level. But i dont really blame discords and groups for these reqs, because they almost have to because of one of the biggest fundamental problems with realm.

Bad players ruin the experience for experienced players.

The reason you wont find a lot of experienced players farming realms if there’s not an event is because, due to a lot of reasons, new players make the game harder for experienced players.

I don’t really have a solution for this besides more fundamental ways to split players by power level being built into the game, rather then players being forced to create these barriers themselves. I remember years ago a pserver I played had this idea where once you got 8/8, you would get access to a new area where you could farm in smaller groups, but it was always publicly accessible, you just had to spend i think fame.

This was, I think, a incredibly healthy thing for the game, because new players didnt have endgame players steamrolling their content, and endgame players didnt have new players slowing them down. Having this publicly accessible meant that it was very feasible for the entire player base to interact with, as opposed to requiring money to be spent like in the current system.

Deca ofc will never deal with this problem, because the problem they have created makes them money, from players feeling obligated to buy keys.

#28

I thought of one way the other day: have the game take account of power level for HP scaling.

Give each player a power ranking. Start with e.g. maxed_stats * equipment_fame_bonus, then refine it by focussing on the stats that most help in combat, giving extra bonuses to the rarest/best gear, perhaps varying it by class also, perhaps taking account of exaltations.

Then instead of counting players to do HP scaling, add up their power levels. So when a 3/8 with old tops joins the group it won’t be problem as they’ll barely affect HP scaling.

It doesn’t need to be perfect, just good enough to let chars of different power levels, so with varrying numbers of maxed stats and levels of gear, play together. It could be refined over time based on stats of how it worked.

If it worked well then groups like the publishers of the above graphic could use it instead, either by requiring a particular power level, or by letting in anyone knowing the game’s HP scaling will take account of differing power levels. They might still want players with a certain amount of experience, or to fill particular roles, but they would no longer need to micromanage power levels.

#29

FYI, Null reqs updated quite recently. Old reqs for reference:

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Sneaky way to nerf good items if you ask me. Either the items are good/HP and not enough changes, or the nerfing is enough that these items are now just… bad, at least in most situations (making them not really worth it to get).

#30

As I wrote it’s not meant to be perfect. I thought of it after the latest scaling rework was put on testing. Hard to tell exactly but the intent of it seems to be to tone down scaling for larger groups, on the assumption that larger groups have more low level/unoptimised players messing up HP scaling. Changing HP scaling to take account of power levels would address this.

It’s only on reading this discussion I thought it might help with discord/raiding requirements. But probably only some as others would still ask for e.g. O3 or Shatts items, to filter out players without the experience to get them.

And there are many ways it could be tuned. One way is only have it apply for groups of over 20 players. HP scaling works pretty well up to 15-20 players, and you’re less likely to see many hangers on with a small group.

#31

There’s a lot I agree with that has already been mentioned but my personal gripe is the early to mid game UT items. A couple of them have been fixed but most of them have been ignored. Almost all of them just have random stats and distinct purpose or niche. There’s also just too many items in the game and DECA just thinks adding more will balance this out itself, but then just oversaturates dungeons.

#32

I don’t disagree. It’s down to one particular feature of the game though, the incredibly simple mechanics.

I mean, in theory Realm’s stats are similar to DnD. But DnD has so much more in other ways. It has magic, many different sorts. It has different resistances such as 10/Silver or whatever, and then weapons that can overcome them. Weapons normally do a particular sort of damage (bludgeoning, piercing, slashing) and have a critical chance + amount. Plus swords etc. work completely differently from ranged weapons.

So there’s only so much they can add to RotMG before they start repeating things. There’s not too many items compared to other games. But with the limited mechanics they overlap very easily. Or where they’ve tried adding new things like burst shots, procs on shoot, they just make the weapon harder to balance and compare with others, and the additions quickly become confusing.

Maybe they should add some DnD-like resistances. Something like armour but armour break/ignore doesn’t work, instead you need special weapons/abilities to overcome their shied/aura/unobtainium hide. It could be the USP of a new dungeon, which could also drop some of the weapons/abilities.

#35

As much I want to be as neutral as possible, your experience of o3 doesn’t apply to other people. That’s a stacked evidence fallacy, or an argument that only presents one side of the argument and uses that as a basis. Some people will take tens, maybe hundreds of attempts to get their first complete, and as a result, having to remax a char over and over again is very taxing and overall isn’t worth it in their eyes, so having a requirement of being 8/8, while it doesn’t seem that bad to someone who doesn’t die as often, can be very taxing to those who die very often. Again, not trying to start an argument or anything, I just wanted to let you know that and to be sure check for logical fallacies before bringing up a point.

#36

Yes I completely agree it was a bad point but I’m tired of this argument and I don’t want to argue anymore so I would greatly appreciate no more replies thanks :heart:

#37

Didn’t know about the updated reqs, but this still applies:
image

My statement isn’t “simply wrong”. In addition, you can still meet reqs with warrior and paladin using any antimony ring, bee helm, colo sword, mercy’s bane, or using the pirate st set, all items any early game player can easily get. new players aren’t being “gatekept” in the slightest.

#38

they should quit the game at that point lmao

at that point they should bring unmaxed characters to event runs or do osanc runs

edit:

the whole point of bringing an 8/8 is to do “Null runs” or “high quality runs”. The point of those runs is that they shouldn’t die easily. The person arguing with Zewouwu said Null gear reqs are hard to meet, which they are not.

if someone is constantly dying in higher quality runs, they shouldn’t do o3s.

#39

As someone who has been playing pservers mostly now, the game is just completely focused on endgame. Players have nearly no reason to play glands dungeons after they max out the stat that drops there, aside from snake pit for the ring and during events. In the pservers I’ve been playing, even the midgame dungeons have things that are useful in endgame at lower rates, you can argue that you don’t like it, but that really made the game more group focused. Even players who had endgame gear would come into those when someone called it trying to get these drops.

#40

gives example of a very specific 2-3 sets which are like the only ones a midgame player can feasible obtain, while also still requiring a fair amount of grinding endgame dungeons.

Also

new players aren’t being “gatekept” in the slightest.

bro just admit it, null actively tries to exclude new players.
again, I dont blame them for it, but its still a problem that this game has.
name another PvE game that has the same level of interaction between new and endgame players, youd be hard pressed to find it. Thats because a general rule of game design is that new and late game players make each others experience worse on a general scale. so most games have some way to keep them separate, such as level gates, ect. Rotmg utterly fails on that point, which breeds the toxicity we see in game, with players trying to make the game harder to “parse” noobs

#41

Where you’re going doesn’t even make sense

You can’t be “toxic” to new players if they can’t meet reqs. In addition, there is no negative “gatekeeping”, as reqs ensure people in the proper stages of the game play the properly scaled content.

#42

Antimony accessories are basically 1 time thing at this point, just like Eminence. Bee Helm and Colo: Do ya really expect a new Realmer can clear Nest + MBC that early on?

Ok MBane and Pirate Set: Those can be obtained readily as they drop from midgame dungeons. But again, not everyone is going to bring Paladin/Warrior when raiding with Null. Rogue’s reqs as I noticed, basically requires at least one endgame equipment to comply (Monocle that gives 2 points).

And accessories from the req sheet? ALL except one (Ice Crown but that thing is damn rare from Ice Tomb) drops from endgame dungeons. Melees (except Knight as he needs Splendor that is fairly expensive to obtain) are going to have easier time to circumvent that as their required equipment doesn’t need to be endgame items, assume this is in a normal raid, not Elite raid.

#43

Do ya really expect a new Realmer who can’t clear Nest/MBC to clear O3?
(Pubhalls also isn’t terribly bad from my experience)

*Every 0/8 who dies in an O3 run

Anyways, IMO the argument is shrouded by “Null is bad because it gatekeeps”, or whatever term you wanna use… when the argument should be just “Is Null gatekeeping?”.

There’s legitmate (actual skill, dps items actively making the run better*) reasons, and reasons that are rooted in negative game mechanics (HP scale, bad players being a net negative, how O3 opens). As probably said, it is very silly to not expect endgame skill players to pair with other endgame players in order to do runs as fast and safe as possible - if not a public discord, then private discords or guilds or whatever.

If Null runs are so easy to meet reqs for, then vet runs… in any server, really, are still intentionally restrictive and I don’t think you can deny it. As stated above, there’s obviously a point to this. But the best players are doing the least dangerous runs, so the restriction at all leaves a bad taste in the mouth. In a world with linear HP scale, then you’d probably have much less discords with reqs. In a world with current HP scale (and o3 items), you get the meta as it is.

*Arguably, DPS items mattering is also a potential negative. Runs of a certain quality are reliant on them. But this would be splitting hairs (are they not supposed to be good?), and I’m not sure how much more skill interaction points there can be in ROTMG.