Why Realm gets boring


#1

After almost what feels like 10 years of playing (migrated from 2 other accounts so maybe less than 10 years? Im just going to say 10 years since i was there since old nexus), Realm is finally getting boring to me and i’m sure to countless others. This is not because Realm is inherently a boring game. This is of course a natural process as much of realms feelings of progression is stemmed from character stats and items that have a hard ceiling. When you finally get a jugg after 10 years (seriously it took me up until a little while ago to get my first event white after 10 goddamn years!) there’s not much else to progress to. And what i want to emphasize is the “not much else” part because there is something to progress to. That one item you still don’t have however the nature of having to narrow your goals into this one little thing compared to the boundless amounts to a new player will make the game feel grindy and boring because the only way to get Oryx’s ST set is to fight O2 over and over and over again. I also think its worth noting that the values of regular items after reaching this chad level are worthless. I have given away countless tops, lefts countless potions and even in some cases white bags because at my level, its the same as getting nothing and with the already abundant of 0’s along with this, feelings of satisfaction of getting items becomes very uncommon and that uncommonality turns to boredom. Many people do PPE/NPE because it makes that feeling of satisfaction more common. Realm, i feel, is a game that shouldn’t really last a player 10 years because there is not 10 years worth of content. Its more like 1 year worth of content stretched out because of exponential growth of the game becoming more grindier the more you become stronger along with rng. Games like CSGO are timeless because any sense of progression is not reliant on the game but the player. Every match is never really the same because the unpredictability comes from your skills and not the game as where Realm is completely the same every time. Sit in one spot and spam at the boss because you have 10 healers and a jugg, do this 100 more times to get a crystal sword and not the wand because the game is a piece of shit. Hopefully O3 and post-unity will allow the game to expand bigger and faster (and after COVID-19) because there is not enough new content being made for players just events that make them go through even more monotonous grinding. I know Deca is doing their best but having the game where it stands be on life support via keys is worrisome. I love this game for its simplicity but i know that it is not incapable of nuance. Honestly though, the point i’m trying to make is where the hell is my Ogmur.

TL:DR Realm is fundamentally finite because of its RPG aspects


#2

yes

?


#3

It’s not the content that gives an mmo it’s replayability, but rather it’s community. If it wasn’t for guilds, I would’ve quit a long time ago.

Games like CS:GO are not timeless. All games die over time.
Your criticisms of realm fall into common tropes of game design, and would rapidly unbalance the game. The way you describe the core gameplay loop, is not that of an unbiased player, but of one who seems exhausted from the gameplay. Realm has its faults, surely, however I do not see it reflected in this thread.

All I see is burnout.

Here is a thread that exemplifies my realm experience throughout the years. I don’t know what words to tell you, that would make realm an enjoyable experience again, but I hope you find what you’re looking for. And look, it’s okay to leave a game if need be.

On a lesser note, 10 years might be a bit of a stretch. My current account is 8 years old, and I had an account prior during the early Wild Shadow days. The nexus went through numerous changes, however the difference between a 9 year old player and a 10 year old player is huge. If you remember when oryx spawned on the beach, when priest could wear two rings, a time before whitebags, the old art style, then you played right after the Assembly Game Contest. Back when Rob, Alex, and Amit were releasing updates nearly every week, and introduced core aspects of gameplay we take for granted today.


#4

So you’re saying RotMG is boring because it’s always the same thing but you would have no problem forever playing the same maps with the same guns in the same game mode with characters who all look the same and play the same?


#5

The thing is, CSGo (while I haven’t played it) pits players against each other for a randomness that bots can’t really replicate, and rotmg bosses have repetitive bullet patterns and phases, which you pretty much have to have in a perma death game, otherwise noobs wouldn’t play


#6

Yeah for real, glad to hear another person with this opinion.


#7

RPG aspects being stats and gear. After 8/8 and getting top gear, there is not a lot left to see and not much left to progress to. This would include the process of getting to that level.


#8

I wouldn’t play either game forever. But there is a reason why CSGO is still thriving and is the most played game on steam to a day-to-day basis. It was a bit of an unfair comparison given CSGO’s competitiveness compared to Realm’s team-oriented play-style but competition can make any game thrive a very long time.


#9

Well it is from my point of view and not some researched essay. Playing this game for 2 hours is a burnout, but the being at the level that i’m at now, its more than a burnout. Its like i’ve seen all that there is to see at least until unity comes out.

I have left and come back to this games many times already but the difference now is that i’ve been able to get all those items i didn’t have last time. Of course the reason for playing can be different to everybody.


#10

That’s because RotMG is sold as a MMORPG but not paced like one. Actual progression is finished by the time you hit 6/8 for the first time, everything else is just mindless grinding for small increases in numbers or remaking characters that died.

That wouldn’t be so bad if you had at least some freedom to theorycraft fun builds but the game is so limited that you can’t really do that (and even if you could 80% of those builds wouldn’t be viable because permadeath is a thing).

It’s absolutely possible to make a RPG with years of content, you just have to make it as a RPG from the beginning instead of some wishy-washy social experiment.

The part about competitiveness might be true in the sense that it’s a strong psychological incentive, but you’re absolutely wrong to think a game that relies on skill automatically has infinite content. Everyone has a skill ceiling they’ll never get over and it gets lower and lower every year as you get older and you start losing your reflexes and perception.

(for CS specifically there might also be a good deal of people who still think they’ll make it into e-sports and sunken cost fallacy preventing those who spent way too much on skins from quitting).


#11

Timeless does not mean infinite content, just that its thrives through the passage of time. CSGO is a game made in 2012 that hit 1 million concurrent players just recently. Skill is still a strong factor as competition incentives skill but even then in casual matches people still want to get those team killer statuses and there are still videos being made today with tons of views of that happening.

On that note, Realm cannot survive like CSGO does, it consistently needs more content because existing bosses and shot patterns will always be the same.


#12

For me it’s the mechanics of the game that make Realm continue to hold an interest, more than fighting the 10000th Malphas or whatever.

I blame electric pets (and why I don’t have one) a bit in this regard, once you have that, the tactic is always, sit pet on enemy, shoot until dead. Boring game.

Getting access to new items (or characters) that let you do new things, and experience the game in a different way is how to keep the game renewing itself.

You mention getting ahold of a Jugg Helm, this is a good example, Warrior with and Warrior without that item are quite different experiences.

The mistake Realm has made, and why IMO lots of people burn out, is getting ahold of these items is WAY too reliant on grinding RNG (they have spoken of introducing alternate methods to get rarities through NPCs, which would lessen this, but we still wait). Classic Realm of course you could get these items through trade, so players were not forced through the grind in the same way.

One solution would be to keep putting in new classes every so often, to give everyone immediate access to a new thing: a new ability, instead of it being a pay experience (STs with new mechanics in the shops) or a grind experience (to loot the rarities that give you those new mechanics to play with).


#13

Realm gets stale cause y’all play it too much. if you’re gonna play a game everyday you can hardly expect it to stay much fresh. take a break, you’ll come back and have a lot more to explore and enjoy.


#14

rotmg is and always has been a pretty shallow game, it only avoided getting exposed as such for so long because it hid behind soul-crushing drop rates of valuable items and permadeath resetting everything you’ve done every time you make a small mistake. now that pets, keys, organized discord mobs, and constant chest events have optimized the game to bypass those two things as much as possible, it’s not surprising that the current “game” is boring as hell and has basically nothing to offer anymore.

there’s nothing meaningful to progress towards once you have maxed stats because the difference in usability of tiered items is negligible and the vast majority of UT’s make no noticeable difference in gameplay. you could push for fame, but that never meant anything to begin with and now with the discord LH environment around it means even less now than it did then. on top of that, permadeath strongly discourages you from doing anything risky or challenging (read: interesting) because it threatens you with losing all your progress to a single mistake.

I would not say realm can’t compete with something like CSGO because of the need for more content like you keep bringing up, it’s because the core of rotmg doesn’t hold up very well to begin with. adding more and more content to rotmg isn’t going to fix the current state of the game, it will require much greater changes to make an impact. the general playerbase seems to hate on any motion that might try to fight against the current “easy mode” meta that everything’s sunk into because most people actually like things to be easy whether they want to admit it or not, so it’s not surprising that deca doesn’t seem interested in trying to fix the problems either. the current arrangement is profitable for them anyway so why rock the boat?

because the problems are so core to the game fixing them would essentially transform the game into something entirely new, most people would resist even if the current state of the game is about as far removed from what qualifies as a game while still technically retaining the ability to pew pew stuff.


#15

events. its the constant events.


#16

And as long as its a cash grab (via keys), i don’t think its going away anytime soon.


#17

Whil I’m sure the WS era was great, imo the way people are starting to hate on DECA and, to a lesser extent putting Wildshadow on a pedestal is just the effect of burnout over time. Progression is gated, but the very fact that it was gated was what hid the fact there wasn’t much of it. At the end of the day, this game is an open world game (or at least suffers from the issues of one - lack of goals) The very fact that progression isn’t as gated anymore (a relatively easy to obtain rare or even unc heal pet rendering most of what used to be the midgame cheesable) is responsible for burnout. There is really no reason to run the midgame or early game outside from events, which are balanced around a horde of maxed players steamrolling everything at maximum efficiency. Keys and boss only dungeons only capitalised on them, and gave them even more efficiency. In the end the only thing to blame is human nature. Our greed is what ultimately made this game boring, with duping to gain wealth destroying the value of items, and rending the items that were originally valued valueless, players constantly calling for nerfs, and the tiny portion of players who want to make the game harder are all united under one banner, to make the game more fun again.(fuck that sounded like trump lmao) Whether it’s veterans motivated by nostalgia, or newbies who only want to play, whack the pinata to feel themself feel good, and eventually don’t care after they find that everything has lost because everyone alwas caves in and ends up whacks the pinata by doing events.
Sorry for the rant, I got a bit carried away :flushed:


#18

also, writing that on an ereader was HELL (wanted to see if re would work on my ereader and ended up writing a post~)


#19

Keys are the most pay to win that you can get in a video game i have ever seen (not counting those idle cell phone games. Those are not games. Raid Shadow Legends is not a game. I consider realm a game because it can have actual gameplay). Its like saying, hey instead of playing our game, why don’t you just pay to play the best parts of our game. Its like the fast lane to amusement parks except if they provided a portal so you didn’t have to walk all the way to the rides.


#20

If you wished some unsolicited feedback the post is a bit difficult to read because of no formatting/no paragraphing, don’t know if it blocks double returns but some spacing would help.

This bit I’d want to argue though, it’s maybe true if you’re comparing Deca with Kabam, that things like events and reskins and free pet food helps progression towards ‘winning’ Rotmg. But the pedestalling of WS is usually tied into the loot being unsb in those days, so there was nothing barring us from instantly remaking a dead character using stored wealth, the only loss was starting the fame again, and a knock on your wealth. The endgame was running whatever you wanted to, and trading to try out the items you hadn’t used before. This tied into the game being essentially a sandbox with no real win condition.

Retaining the enforced PPE-style “you must loot your own UT items” is the gate compared to these times that turns today’s endgame into a grindathon that players get sick of, or feel compelled to join in the hamster wheel of the events.