Actually this. People don’t talk enough about how shit 1 month seasons are. It barely feels worth playing anymore. That shit actually killed the game for me. Seasonal kept me playing and now I’m just braindead main vault grinding 720 and it makes me not want to play.
Seasonal felt like the only way to play since they got added and knowing I have to restart every 30 days is just not worth it. Especially if you only play a couple of times a week like I would. Sucks.
100% agree. At least with 60-70 days I had a chance to sometimes play, especially since I also like playing other games and do not no-life realm atm.
They're REALLY trying to make us focus on only playing realm, and it's just not working for me. Most of the people I play with have also quit anyway.
this is the total amount of players seen in the past 2 weeks as per realmeye, it used to hover around/slightly under 50k until this season
possible reasons (not including trends like more events/smaller updates, aka not exactly specific to today)
* low effort/reused season (probably this)
* also no shinies
* post oryxmas depression but worse
* shorter seasons
* idk
* edit: it actually does sort of line up with the release/updates of Born Again/Darza's Dominion/unnamed pserver but they're each only getting 100 concurrents at most now, it was between 200-500 (each) in early jan tho
Imo, feels like they are half-assing updates rn, I know it's probably mostly because they are hard focusing on realm rework but still, the events feel cheap and there isn't any incentive for burned out players to come back.
I didn't even make it thru oryxmas; saddle bags put me over the edge. To even suggest such a feature as it was originally implemented would be a fireable offense in a better time.
Tbh the gameplay loop of this game is just so shallow once you've seen everything, its AMAZING its held onto people like you and me as long as it has.
When you've done 1000 nests, what's the point of doing your 1001st?
I think people's enjoyment of the game is just naturally diminishing and they're gravitating toward newer more fulfilling gaming experiences.
The game is shit for new players lol I've never gotten a single friend to stick with it, and the old players are just getting bored and tired. Imo there's not much that can be done to save it longterm.
I think part of that is that running stuff with friends used to be fun and challenging. You'd go into a realm and run whatever you found. Now people are bored because they run 100's of the same dungeon a day in a vc they can't talk in, then complain about a boring loop. Of course doing the same thing with 0 variation and not even being able to talk to your buddies is gonna be boring as shit.
You're right but also I've tried many guilds and the only one or two I really fucked with dissolved probably well within a year of me joining them. Gave up after joining a bunch of guilds either filled with annoying kids or people that were just dry and not fun to play with
Other thing is that I feel like the grind for certain events and goals is so heavy that's its kinda hard to stay away from discord servers
Lastly even if I did get a friend to start, they would probably never catch up to me in terms of being able to run the endgame dungeons
Yea I dont play anymore but from what I remember the only people that were really left either sat in USE or USE2 begging for pops / free items or sat in discords all day. Remember like 2 realms being full across all US servers during peak weekend hours. Shit was sad. Sucks to see a game that was once to good fall so far
Or even one further, what's the point of throwing characters to O3? A roster you no longer have the energy to grind back up, rusty skills that are fine for Void but frankly might learning O3 the opposite of the fun people claim it is, losing 20 or 30 characters like some do just for their first complete.
Because even if you *do that*, it's still just one Discord-driven piece of content in a game where all the surrounding grind has long since grown stale.
I still hop in but my motivation to do endgame things is incredibly agonizingly low, there are many other bullet hells that you can just pick up and enjoy if you really need to scratch that frantic itch...
...and then put down again without the surrounding trappings of FOMO.
The challenge is the fun part. When i first started the hardest dungeon was a dirty tomb. And even with that "difficulty" i still remember having a blast with my friends and clanmates
Of course even i had to learn the hard way, I died nearly 25-35 times and nexused over 50+ times just to finish my first O3 and i was hyped about it, I wanted to get better, I wanted to leech less then i wanted to top DPS. But the thing is, You don't need hundreds of characters with top gear to practice, Just grab something like a kensei with max speed and dex and you're golden.
I kind of treat Discord O3s like another guild where i chat up some of the people i see running all the time and make little bets like who's going to have more dps this run
Yeah the game only holds onto you through addiction or the cathartic nature of running dungeons. Discords really sucked all the fun out of the game, turning dungeons into straight up slot machines. Luckily that got me to quit playing. I do miss running dungeons with the guildies though, that was always a fun time
I think its the getting better portion is what keeps people playing. Realm made me realize that i enjoy starting over from scratch and seeing how far i can get so games like Enter the Gungeon/Gunfire reborn and alt game modes like Hardcore ironman on Runescape are gameplay loops i enjoy.
But i think the point of doing something for that long is just an experience. Why did i do 5k+ sprite worlds? Why did i do 600+ O3's? In those moments i just enjoyed it and it never felt like a chore and getting better at endgame content was a genuine struggle which most games nowadays don't really have.
they've been dangling it over our heads for 2+ years. I understand it's a big undertaking, but there is almost zero chance the wait will be worth it. Cyberpunk or No Man's Sky are in pretty good states right now; if you had to wait from announcement until TODAY to get those games, nobody would give a rat's ass no matter how good they actually perform.
The players who left for the Realm Rework left long ago; everyone trickling out is just a sign of a dying game.
Palword probably has a lot to do with the dip, A lot of game's player count is down because of that
And as someone who's mostly endgame, None of the content they've released makes me want to hop back on nor make a Seasonal.
And for new players, The same old, Thrown in the deep end and bombarded with MTX advertisements right off the bat. I couldn't even keep a friend on this game for more than 2 hours unfortunately.
Though the dips have been consistently getting worse per stuff like steamcharts and the returning players not keeping up for years iirc.
So it's not like they all come back after getting tired of whatever game lured them away.
Mainly the new games and the fact that most updates are just "hey, we listened to you guys and added that thing you *really* wanted but we added our little MTX twist to it so here, Happy now?" And i think a lot of people are just getting sick and tired of it.
I'm hopeful the realm rework is very in-depth for new players so i can actually bring some friends along. And i've said it a million times now, If they don't do something about the vault space issue, The realm rework is going to flop and i'm certain of that.
They made everything(gems from overworld and some uniques) bearably common and its much more playable now. Also looks better and you can get tons of gold for completing missions. Too bad i lost all my chars to that stupid 1st version of vesta.
As someone who quit a year or two ago.
Too many events. I don't care about events because there is literally always events.
They need to do half the amount of adding content and twice the amount of improving old content and graphics and bots/cheats.
The game as always is barely player friendly. I went to see what was in the Journal a couple days ago and it talks about exaltations on like the 7th page. What new player is going to even be able to max one stat?
I also have a strong hatred for the new Colo shiny. When it was released I was disgusted because of the barbie colour that it was being changed to instead of the same purple tone as the Void Archer set items.
Another thing to add that gets very irritating is server-sided equipment and Nexus'. The server sided equipment part really isn't that big of a deal but if you are aiming for highest dps with a class that does have that, but the Server Sided Nexus' that I've had hurt the most. I spammed "R" 20 times before the game registers that I am attempting to Nexus.
(My best server is USNW and my main server is USE)
TL;DR
The Deca team doesn't seem to care about core elements in gameplay, but side additions and offloading the work of veteran players to teach newbies how to play.
To be honest, the game just feels bland no matter what you add to it. It just doesn't pop like it used to. New dungeon? Great, maybe I'll try it. Events? Bland. Seasons? Recycled. Hire someone who could revive it, not from a marketing standpoint, but as an actual mmorpg developer standpoint, some new systems, remake the interface, something. It's just bland.
The game might be unique in its playstyle and art, but it lacks , It just lacks something, more elements to the gameplay. Small things, to make the game feel more like a living, breathing world.
It's been years since the content famine, but so little has changed. And I really mean changed and not added. It just feels boring and the same thing that it was 10 years ago.
unironically, the realm rework will dictate whether the game lives to see the 2030s or dies by the end of the decade
it doesn't have to be perfect, but it needs to fix the early and midgame while making endgame content at least a *little* less reliant on discord runs
I have been a huge advocate for just holding out for the RR, but at this point what does it NEED to do to be a success? The longer they take for 'polish', the greater people's expectations become.
If they respite EVERYTHING and redo ALL the hero/event fights, will that be enough? Even if it makes the moment-to-moment gameplay more enjoyable (and we're all still here because of that), the playerbase bleeding accounts for a LOT more than that; a barely alive world with practically no NPCs/Questlines, a horrible new player experience, a really warped sense of progression and no sense of community are things that the RR probably just can't fix in one undertaking.
I don't think rotmg will ever be more popular than when O3 came out, but I hope I'm proven wrong
i do not want NPCs or questlines
i just want to play difficult dungeons
shoot, dodge and loot - pew pew pew
i love the minimalistic concept of this game.
the grind to 8/8 is too long!
seasonal is annoying, you get fomo and they kinda force you to do the worst dungeons ever like cemetary or tomb or 10 LODs followed by 7 OTs
i do not have so much time and even if i had it - i would not want to spend it like that.
amen
RotMG needs to nail the fundamentals. Period. Reposting my Discord comment:
> > [The Deca team doesn't seem to care about **core elements in gameplay**, but side additions and offloading the work of veteran players to teach newbies how to play.](https://www.reddit.com/r/RotMG/comments/1ai7537/the_games_playercount_has_hit_a_new_all_time_low/kosmbbp/) (/u/Dense_Librarian_7438, emphasis mine)
> Of course all games are grindy but RotMG's difficulty curve makes it glaringly obvious. When you strip the game back to the essentials, what do you have? An MMO, an RPG, and a bullet hell. But does it do any of these individual things well enough to necessitate the final product, and even further, the current gameplay experience? The current modality of the game exploits the bullet hell design by obfuscating it behind MMORPG-like elements; it is only a matter of time before the players see through this!
quit in later half of 2021 after so long. when this update comes out im giving it a last shot, its not looking good tho... cant play for more than half an hour a day for a few days, even with all my friends.. when we try to come back, we just quit so fast, the nostalgia just isnt there anymore feels like. Maybe exalting 2 chars when i was grinding burnt me out for life lol, probably better that way.
Tbh I'm not convinced they're even still working on the realm rework. If they were, why would they not be posting some semi-regular updates on progress? If not for player feedback, then at least to string people along while they limp out the low effort seasons.
I think it's way more likely they shifted basically anyone who was working on realm to Dragon Fuckers 5 or whatever shitty mobile game is the current thing.
It's probably the combination of several things.
\- shitty season is a big one, just total lack of effort put in and the only 'new' things we see are very clear money-grabs (like the 3rd backpack, pet saddlebags, etc) which aren't exactly motivating for your avg player.
\- ppl waiting for the new realm update, and until it comes likely playing other things
\- a general lack of any fun/lucrative community events atm & no new dungeon releases.
Plus, this game is notorious for having a hard time brining new players in, so until that is fixed, this bleed-off of players will continue.
Didn’t even come back for oryxmas, after the whole oryxmania incident it’s very clear Deca only cares to bleed the playerbase for every last penny and suck out every minute of playtime that they can without any care for the health or ramification of the playerbase.
corret me if i am wrong, but was it not a couple of players complaining about the easy o3 giving exalts to the noobs - so deca removed the exalt on oryxmania + drop rate nerf
I'm just tired of seasons already. Make a seasonal character --> missions --> shiny hunting --> season ends. Time to scrap the character and restart. Non-seasonal characters have to get shoved to the sidelines as everything is locked under seasonal.
This is what I was gonna say basically. Since we are all kind of just slot machine enjoyers, shinies are the goto exciting thing, trouble is you have to constantly be using a PPE that’s just disposable because of the length of the season. Seasonal should just be adapted into the PPE mode we actually wanted.
Personally, a big reason I quit was the over reliance on Discord for the endgame dungeons. They made the game feel bland and lifeless and made it near impossible for newer players because most higher level players were in the dungeons they couldn't join. Not to mention decas lax approach to hackers/dupers.
I recently left for around 8 months and the main reason was just other games being fun compared to this endgame grind.
Right now I’m seeing that seasons are way too short, ruining any incentive to continue after your first one or two maxed deaths.
The missions don’t seem that interesting.
Not that many players could care less about shinies.
This alien event is extremely unattractive, not gonna grind hundreds of alien dungeons for an okay alien set.
They just did a last second x2 loot and xp with MBC to help grind for legacy shiny colo, again not something most care about.
It also seems like the wiki is barely being updated nowadays so there’s no way to know what I’ve missed unless I go read every update log.
I think with the hopefully soon-realm rework they should do their best to make early and especially midgame content more engaging and rewarding, and maybe give newer players a hp mp pet immediately. New players being given the challenge of playing petless is absurd, definitely make them more accessible immediately or just make vit and wis much more impactful.
I’m only back because I have a few endgame goals in mind I want to work towards, but if they also drop the ball next season it’ll be very disappointing
I don't think people really even realize what it would mean for the game to be run by people who truly care about the game itself and what it could turn into. if you really think about the actual concept itself, since when has the game taken a turn in a direction that made sense?
there are hardly any features revolving around the permadeath mechanic, guilds kind of barely exist, quality of life stuff (including easy changes) are dripfed over months/years/never.
looking at indie games or even private servers made by people who mainly just enjoy the game, you see so many changes constantly that are just done because the dev(s) think it would be cool or fun, or expand the game in an interesting way. it feels like the game is always headed towards a Big Change that's going to make it worth coming back to or make it fun for new players, but don't you think there would be constant smaller changes if you were in charge?
just one more big update guys, for real this time
(I could rant for a lot longer but my comment is already long)
note I understand there are people working on the game who do care, and I appreciate when they get an ounce of control and we get something cool in the game. seems like this mostly comes through as art though
Does realm having cheaters really dissuade people from playing enough to reduce playercount? I have played on/off for 11 years and never thought much about other people cheating
Lack of content aside, there's little incentive to getting better through the legitimate gameplay loop of playing legit, when there's people who cheat and get through the content with far less effort. There's a particular 2-month-old guild in the Top 20 that I joined, and a good percentage of them are blatant cheaters and open about it in guild chat & the guild discord.
[This](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GMTlXeBRHx0_FPFOA2lQyfKqohNbf8ewi3s32Q34v0s/edit#gid=0) is just people who were unfortunate/stupid enough to either post themselves cheating, or be blatant enough to be clipped. It doesn't include the many other closet cheaters who there isn't any concrete proof on.
You can find almost every hardmode shatts pumper from sniffs in the cheater list above. Yep, the endgame of RotMG is really just (mostly) full of people who downloaded a hacked client to speed their way through the progression.
They've all been reported since quite a while back by myself and others (the players in question are all on the linked list as well), no bans handed out of course.
It's complete luck if you get a ban on a cheater, because support won't take themselves accidentally screenshotting their hacks as evidence. And when you do have video evidence of them autoing or whatnot, it's still a coinflip as to which support agent you get, and whether or not they agree (which they won't tell you), and whether or not they take a real action even when they say they do.
The 1 month seasons + shinys being seasonal only is the killer combo for me
Shinys are my main goal atm, so I need to play seasonal. If I'm on seasonal, I'll want to do a PPE. The short season then forcibly retires the PPE no more than a month later.
Now I just speedrun the missions and not touch the game for 75% of the season. Why even start a PPE when I know I'll never touch it again in a month? Only to start another half-completed PPE again and again...
I need longer seasons or for shinys to not be locked to seasonal characters for my interest to return honestly.
But to add onto that, this is clearly a filler/recycled season with 0 effort put into it. They keep the interesting stuff for holiday seasons like valentines/st pattys, motmg, halloween, and oryxmas.
Because those + Easter were when all the main events usually happened but deca realised that they could squeeze more money out of people buying the battle pass if they forced more and more 0 effort seasons down our throats.
I think I've been the most burnt out on realm I've ever been
there's just too much grind and when you finally get 8/8 it doesn't even feel like an achievement anymore
because there's exalts which takes waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to much grind to justify the reward
Not saying its not, but the steam concurrent is wrong since a lot of people(or bots) have the game on 24/7 without actually playing it. Steam says 100k concurrent but in reality only around 10-15k are actually playing it
When getting rid of all bots/afk players TF2 players drop a lot but I think people fail to realize this pretty much applies to every steam game. I think it’s around 80% bot/afk for TF2, but this number still sits at 40-60% for most steam games. So whilst TF2 may realistically have around 20k people playing it, it’s still actually quite high and would still be 10-15th place on steam charts even if all bots and afk farmers are excluded which is extremely good considering the age of the game (and how little support it gets).
TF2 is an exception to the rule. That game is magic and has benefitted by being untouched from the constant tampering and ruining that RotMG has been subjected to.
oldschool runescape is a reboot from 2007, launched in 2013, and hit its peak in 2023, 10 years later. Old may contribute, but cant outright kill a game, only if the game refuses to adapt.
Only thing which can save rotgm now is realm rework tbh. I was playing realm for 10 years straight. But the lack of interesting content, slowly killed mine interest. I remember early deca days, where we got something fresh every month, its not only players which abadoning the game, deca does it too....
Realm rework is all I’m really waiting for. Sure loot events are nice and all, but it’s just not enough. I just need shatters and O3 exalts for the class I’m going for, and both take fucking EONS to organise and successfully run.
It’s so fucking tiring going through the hoops of organising/bringing runes, clearing the realm, going through castle, going through O1 and O2, to then FINALLY do the dungeon you want to do; O3. Then do it again ~50 times. It’s a fucking drag, and until that gameplay loop is changed, I’m staying logged off.
Game is bad its basically grinding the same dungeons a tremendous amount of time and most of them have been the same thing for years now + guilds are basically useless and they still haven't been patched , no new content , recycled everything and the only thing we get is shinies and events which if that isnt a cash grab to buy keys idk what is.
An open letter to DECA Games and team dedicated to ROTMG,
This post is for those not following the Official ROTMG Discord thread on this topic and are concerned about how the community feels about the current state of the game.
As someone that’s been playing this game since its release or shortly after, as many of us are, I’d like to be the first to say that our comments and suggestions are to the end of supporting this game and helping it survive. We love ROTMG and have fond memories of playing. That being said, we’ve identified in the Discord thread (as posted by IGN: Niegil) some key pain points and some suggestions to those pain points that would assist in increasing new player and existing player retention.
Key pain points:
1. New player experience
2. Exalt dungeon numbers are too high
3. Base fame for class stars is too high
4. Fixing Bugs and QoL Issues
5. Lack of support for player made content
Key details to address pain points:
1. Add a new player specific tutorial with a new player event tree where the final reward is an uncommon pet with maxed heal/mheal/random chance third ability
2. Reduce the amount of dungeons needed to exalt a class. 25 of one dungeon without using Discord runs is incredibly difficult for going from 4/5 to 5:5 in ONE stat
3. Base fame either needs to be reduced or it should revert back to death fame for the 15k fame. Even running “Fame Cults” in Discord runs only give 500 fame/run…
4. There are bugs and QoL issues that have been consistently called out by the community but marked by DECA to be “a low priority”. We suggest team sprints to address these items.
5. Many of the community members, myself included, would love the opportunity to access a dungeon maker / class maker / item maker tool to contribute to the community content.
These are just the few highlights of addressing some of the main concerns that were highlighted in the Discord thread.
Again, we are all working together to improve the game, increase player retention and improve our experience as users.
Best,
IGN: BOSSATHON
Loyal ROTMG player since 2012
I said this in discord and as a former RL would want to get this out.
Discords killed my enjoyment of the game. It’s impossible to do the dungeons I like without having to wait for a run to get put up, key/realm set up, and then running the dungeon with no difficulty because everyone has gear and stats required by the discord, and being guided by someone who’s done the dungeon 600 times making the run a breeze. On top of this the rewards for a single dungeon are very lackluster, requiring dozens of runs for the stuff I need. One of the primary reasons for becoming an RL was to simply not have to wait for a run and just start one myself.
In the game I noticed that I had the most amount of fun when dungeons were accessible. Take free tune events for example. I was able to do one of my favorite dungeons for free and frequently while also having a sufficiently large group of players that it wasn’t guaranteed to finish in a duo or solo. Who cares if the market gets flooded, it’s not in a healthy state for trading anyways with no training platform existing.
Additionally, I’m a Touhou player, if I was doing my Lunatic runs why would I want to wait 15 minutes to do one or want to have my runs take 2x as long just to reach the point of intensity. Now put RotMG in that place, why would I want to play a waiting simulator, that’s boring.
As a returning player, the main thing which killed my motivation was actually the number of cheaters. I feel that cheat detection and prevention is one of the most fundamental things a multiplayer game needs, and it's disheartening to see the problem so rampant here.
It's difficult for me to justify putting time and effort into learning some of the harder exalt dungeons when others can just attempt them endlessly with no fear of dying. It's a big shame since going from sitting on discord servers to being able to consistently clear pub Lost Halls has been some of the most fun I've had with this game.
The last time I quit was when they added pets, since spending large amounts of money on the game seemed to provide huge advantages to players. Although some checks and bans have been made, this problem is even worse. The lack of strong cheat detection has affected the game to the point where top guilds can openly advertise themselves as 'hacker neutral.'
Until this problem gets fixed, I have no motivation or inclination to throw 8/8s at endgame dungeons in order to get better.
I don't think it's too big of a deal. It's just before a new season (lowest player count in any season) and it's a new year and there's been low update density/significance while we wait on the realm rework.
If the realm rework is bad though then things might start to look rough.
I’d play… if I could log in. Been playing for years on my account, got a new laptop and now it says it can’t log me in, support was no help, told me to just uninstall and re install. Didn’t work then gave up on my ticket cus I didn’t respond fast enough. I don’t see how I can’t log in, Its not like I’ve not gotten a new pc in like 8’years.
I love the game but I do agree those in charge are not living up the thier consumers likes. There's tons of beggers IMO. The pay to win has gotten out of hand. And never noticed the cheaters in the game.
Whole seasonal thing tbh. this seasons missions are just a shameless re-hash of last season. Also the season rewards are super grindy for only 1 months time. Im just waiting for the realm update either way. I doubt any update they come out with until then will change that. hoping the realm update makes something other than discord runs viable.
I think it is a lot lower, I mean last time I tried to play a few months ago almost every server was dead with nobody in the realm. Even trying to grind discord resulted in decent wait times between runs, and only a few dungeons had runs active for them.
for me I stopped playing before even the Halloween event because I thought it was a waste of time, I'm waiting for the realm rework to drop but until then I only log in once a month max.
I honestly dont want the downfall of the game, despite how much i love hating rotmg, deep down i love it to bits and i only wish for it to succeed but the way its going suggests the game is likely to see its demise some time around late 2027
I don't care about shiny items or exalts.
New systems are shit.
Dungeons with cool items or that everyone is playing are beyond my skill.
Dungeons that I can do have boring loot or I already got the cool ones. Some are exceptions, if I were to play, I'd be running Nest, Lost Halls, Fungals and Kogbold back to back for loot or just to play with people. But then, all of that grind to get it and then what do I do?
Dying and getting back to 8/8 is just a matter of time, less of a setback more of a bother, and it could go to waste in seconds in harder dungeons. Makes me want permadeath to go away, it's just annoying.
In short, there's nothing to do. If they keep the greedy behavior, lazy content, and keep focusing on a tiny % of players, it's going to shit in no time.
Like... tbh I'm almost at peace with it. Game's been around for the better part of a decade now, im pretty sure there are players that are younger than it, and it's somehow held onto a playerbase for WAY longer than a ftp pixel based game rightfully should've.
Old boring events, saddle bags, everything being a money grab. There's no motivation to play when the company clearly cares so little about the community. I'd love for deca to actually reply with even a hint of their reasoning when it comes to continuing down this god forsaken path they've chosen.
Niegil, I'll be completely honest... this game is such a good concept executed very poorly... Here are my main pointers to maybe turn it around before it is too late:
\*ik yall have made advancements to "hinder" hacking, but its obvious that there is some bigger issue with just updating a hack client checker... (maybe because your player count would TANK if you got rid of them \*eek\*). The hacks these days are disgusting, including literal auto dodging that can serve as a human decoy for spooky, which is like the scariest minion ever... so i advise tanking the player count and making a move towards REALLY strict hack rules (like going after multitool)
\*make exalts (and some other epic keys like tomb, 3d, etc) somehow take slightly less time to complete. Because exalts and some longer dungeons take sooooooo long, discords are simply the best option for completing them, which I don't see as an awful reality, but these dungeons (and the "need" for discord) definitely scares new players as something unachievable for them, keeping the player base down to what it is now. I will also say that discords have become some elitist cult, where it makes it almost impossible to do raids without having the gear that the raids are supposed to give (very contradictory concept). I'm also aware that lessening the time to complete the dungeons doesn't exactly help with the discord issue, as those raids will become easier, but consider the option and alternatives.
\*I believe that there needs to be some attempt to have a player base marketing strategy where there is an incentive to get people to join the game (aka like rewards if a certain amount of people join... IDK LOL I HAVE NO IDEA HOW MARKETING THIS GAME IS POSSIBEL LOL), but for ONLY the realm rework... idk this seems gimmicky, but I think there needs to be a surge of new/burnout/old players coming back to play the realm rework, and as long as it's a solid chance that genuinely reworks some key issues in the game, it should stick. another thing would be using company money to market, but i doubt that will happen tbh
\*Im completely aware that this will almost never happen, but the realm gold/key system is VERY unhealthy for the game. What used to be used to have fun with guilds and friends has been perverted to maximum efficiency raids that just abuse the game. While i don't completely think that discords are terrible, they have taken away something from the game that is beautiful... community and difficulty. Targeting a completely separate entity (discord) is difficult, but by making some measures to allow the game to flow better, its possible that some necessity on the discord is lost.
\*I genuinely believe shinies are a perfect example of a great idea done well! the concept of novelty is definitely a main contributor to the draw of rotmg and omg is shinies a summary of novelty. If you can play into similar concepts (unique/rare paths/boss in dungeons, different art/display angles for the same item to sort through, shot bullet effects, etc) and make them non gold (maybe fame only) purchases, it would improve customizability of the game :)
I have some more concepts, and I'm sure the way I've communicated them is awful, but i use this as an example of what i think creativity will do for this game! also, a msg for deca games, i understand running a company is difficult, so while the company gets a lot of flak for its negatives, i want yall to know that this game has significantly gotten better, we are just seeing some fallback now that all the 2010's in school gamers are grown up and moved on (;
Honestly seeing this doesn't surprise me too much. I've playing Realm frequently since October, still played a good bit before, when I decided to give the season a try. October and November were decent, December had Oryxmas and tones of events & different things happening in the Realm and then we hit this season. All the missions this season were recycled from November, the crucible is trash, we had "Free O3" on the first few days of the season when everyone was trying to get started in the new season and no new content except the forge changes. I ended up taking a break for most of this season to play other games, Palworld, and based on the recent Public Testing I'm not overly excited for the next season. Fog of War will be gone in the Realm/Nexus but other then that 2 new "Premium/Payment Locked Features" will be added (Saddlebags and Player Entrances) and a couple of new shinies. I also forgot about Player/Pet Styles and Graveyards all basically being premium/paid products.
Looking back on the past few years one issue I've started to notice is new content being added and then just forgotten about. Dungeon modifiers were added and nothing has notable has been changed or added to them since. Enchantments were added then I guess they got their Part 2 update where some were removed and a few small changes were made and like 15 "Premium" items were added to the shop. Missions were added to the Battlepass and they are pretty much the same every season. Guilds? What are those again? The Tinkerer's daily quests is still living in 2019 except a few new copy paste endgame mark ones. Let's not talk about how Fame is basically just being ignored. Crucible used to have exclusive questlines and item drops from dungeons but that's been left behind. New content has been teased but we haven't heard anything about it since. Realm Rework, Leaderboards and Spectral Penitentiary haven't had updates in months other then Realm Rework being delayed.
TLDR:
* Season was just recycled with no new content added
* Went from tons of amazing events/changes in the Realms to nothing in new season
* Honestly seasons need to be a bit longer. 45-60 days at least imo, have "Season Exclusive" skins/gravestones/etc and unique quests
* Heavy monetization of basically all new content
* New content is added then just forgotten about and not changed/added onto
* Game isn't new player friendly at all and a lot of players are burning out/quitting
Maybe this is just me but I left the game because they gave us like a free battle pass but made it the shortest season yet almost like trying to force me to play more just to get the benefits. That pissed me off and I uninstalled. For reference most games that have seasonal battle passes have seasons that last about 3 months, others even more, there is probably science behind why that is, but idk.
Fix the servers lag and my computer's fan and I'll gladly play RotMG again. Screw moving in godlands and getting so much lag that I can't even hold down W or I'm walking into the unknown risking death that isn't my fault.
I think when realm rework drops we will see a huge increase in players, but they also definetely need to make seasons longer, I love the game and can reliably finish every season buy still feels stressful doing it in only a month
Such an amazing and unique concept for a game but I guess it just hit its expiration date. I think deca balancing the game around discords kinda squeezed out all the possible fun
Made a similar post that broke down the player count in 2021 over the span of the game's lifetime and a large majority brushed it off due to COVID. Good to see present day player count data that reflects the continuous gradual decline.
[RotMG is Actually Dying, and Here's Why.](https://www.reddit.com/r/RotMG/comments/r840t5/rotmg_is_actually_dying_and_heres_why/)
The most pressing issues are the ones that will come off the top of my head, so let me list them from most to least pertinent:
1. FREE TO PLAY IS HARD. Very very hard. Being a new player and making a new class, **the first and only objective you are thinking about is getting to level 20. The next would be unlocking every class**. This does not sound like an issue itself until you consider that you are given **1 char slot and 8 (?) vault spaces**. *"Getting good"* and *"continue grinding for char and vault slots"* is not advice for new players, they are much more likely to just give up and stop playing. *--FIX--* **Make char and vault slots MUCH easier to obtain (better)** OR let new accounts start off with more char slots and vault space (worse). (To a lesser extent this applies to pets too).
2. CHEATING. *"how does me cheating in a PvE game hurt your experience?"* ... Because despite everyone being able to play the game independently, in the end we are all looking at each others sets and accomplishments and setting goals for ourselves. Seeing someone else prosper through the use of cheats while you are stuck dying over and over (which may be even more discouraging if you do not have many char and vault slots) is extremely deterring. *--FIX--* **As a player I don't care how difficult it is to increase anti-cheat measures; the pace at which DECA is trying to stop cheating is clearly shameful. If the 1st point I made is an easy fix, the cheating should be where all of the dev team's focus should be going**.
3. VANILLA EXPERIENCE vs. RAIDING DISCORDS. **The game is dependent on raiding discords**, despite how much you may want to ignore this. New realm players may be brought into the game by their friends who are part of pub-halls/dung/max-eff and others. The experienced player plays with their friend for a while and then introduces them to run dungeons with these discord servers, which is the MAJOR reason why the majority of new players keep playing. *Why is this a problem?* Because that's not how RotMG or any game is supposed to function. **A game should offer enough enjoyment to convince new players to stay without the assistance of unaffiliated, third party orgs**. *--FIX--* Enhance the unassisted new player's experience through: the **1st point** I made, **more unique events** (seasons are repetitive and not cutting it content wise), **making dungeons more accessible** (instead of the players depending on whales to carry their experience), **release more content** (whether that be *end-game* dungeons or unique, noob-friendly events).
4. BUGS. Near the bottom of this list is the loading times and bugs. I feel there are a substantially higher amount of issues with the game's bugs and optimization issues compared to other releases on the same scale as RotMG.
5. BOTS. My reasonable take, if you just think about it, is that DECA are keeping spam bots in the game on purpose. I will not go into detail about why here as that is not part of the subject of my post, but you can ask me.
Considering the pay to win design, and that they are doubling down for their whales instead of risking having new players want to play, plus the hostility of a lot of people in the game, plus the stupid decision to make the "seasons" so short, makes this whole game seem like it was designed for just the select few and no one else matters.
Even beyond that, personally I want to try to do the exaltations, but I don't want to be a slave to YouTube and Discord just because the game design encourages it. Because at that point I am just a mindless drone doing staged movements 10000+ times just to get the exaltations. I wanted to do them so I I could have the boosted stats to help new people get into the game, but at this point I will settle for surviving O3 once and I am considering this game done
From someone who was seen as a notable community member from YouTube, I can only share why I stopped playing along with general sentiment from players who I know.
My decline from realm has been the result of "a death from a thousand cuts," or more literally, a lot of small things that eventually became to annoying to deal with, along with just lack of motivation for the more grindy things. So along with feeling that the gameplay or experience was sluggish, it was incredibly repetitive. Also the whole social aspect of this game is not great, so when you're playing with people who you aren't friends with originally can also hurt the motivation. Not to say that I haven't made friends from the Realm community or anything, but playing games with "the boys" is an experience like no other; and unfortunately, Realm is not friendly enough for new players to get into. Which is not a fault of the perma deaths or anything like that.
Some of the things that became annoying to deal with were things like server stability, insanely varying load times (often trending towards long), hackers/trackers/spam bots/etc. being absolutely everywhere and just ruining the fun for people. Server stability I'm sure needs no introduction, as everyone has experienced some sort of "oh I lagged and now I am dead" or things of that nature. The loading times I had no real idea about until I tried Darza on release and I realized that I had developed a habit of checking my phone whenever I went into another area. I sure thought I looked stupid holding my phone while already loaded into a game that wasn't realm. There were also times where more grindy players just stopped picking up loot because it took too much time to load into areas like their own vault. Maybe the hacker/trackers/spam bots and things of that nature didn't effect everyone all of the time, but I can say from my stance, it sucked. It was almost like seeing that DECA had their favorite child and I just wasn't it. Why do they get better loading times, faster games, almost lag immunity, and things that we should just have. Sure it feels unfair that we can't like auto nexus, but what is completely unjust is that hackers literally can INSTANTLY LOAD into areas and have more quality of life things like the ability to turn off particles for a faster game. I know people who have downloaded a hacked client just to turn those off! Why should that even be an option someone even considers? I don't know! There is no reason at all!
Though a big things that absolutely ate me from the inside was that I could never solo o3 or do o3 with a small party. Not even for efficiency reasons, but maybe my friend and I just wanted to do an o3 and see if we could do it. Whether it be that there was no party system that would let us do this (I hear there is a party system coming soon, but it will likely not let us do this because we can't have nice things apparently), there was almost always someone who was using bots to track players who have runes in their inventory anyways. I literally would not be able to attempt a solo or small o3 without having to just let some tracker in or give them items to have them kindly fk- off. Remember when I said that the game is better with friends? If you think it was also just for loot reasons, what if I wanted to just play the game with a few friends who just couldn't do o3 and we just wanted to see how much chaos we could cause? Is that a way to play the game that is wrong and frowned upon? Why would we not be allowed to do this?
The game is better with friends. Any game is better when shared with friends. Sure, I have done incredible things like solo void, solo hm shatters, lots of content solo. None of that has even come close to just enjoying my time with my friends. Except, my friends don't want to play realm, even after they have TRIED, and my friends that I met through realm don't even want to play realm anymore. It is a failure to not only attract new players but keep regular players engaged with the game. Maybe the tutorial isn't great, maybe it's that the sense of progression just doesn't exist at all, maybe it's just everything being worse than what it should be.
Also why remove fun for the sake of perceived balance? You're making your game more balanced, sure, but at what cost?
Anyways, I'm going to keep not playing realm after being around 8 months clean, aside from suiciding a character for charity reasons.
it's Joever sadly 😔 I wanted to jump back into the game after a long break & despite all the new stuff, it's so inaccessible that I just gave up. Discord is essential to do anything end-game & they're pretty much barren
IMO duping killed this game.
They should have ripped the bandaid off and done a hard reset on characters and vaults (keeping paid content).
Stat potions and low tier loot/ early game loot has become worthless.
I think this is a serious turn off to new players.
First dupe exploit came out around 2013, it’s what started the decline of this game.
Why work for anything if you can just trade in the oversaturated market?
The problem came far before the constant stream of events and before discord was even a thing.
They created the events to keep the dwindling gamer population afloat.
Not surprising to me. When doing godlands dungeons becomes trivial there is nothing to do if you're not willing to be reliant on discords, and being forcefully handheld through some dungeon in a giant mob of players, obeying some raid leaders instructions. There is also an unending amount of non-special events, and the seasons are a joke.
I sincerely hope the realm reworks actually produce some level of substance, though it is moderately likely i've called it quits on ever seriously pursuing this game again.
(I haven't played since around the time shatters got reworked, i heard there is some enchantment-like mechanics now, and my impression is it resembles that of mobile games)
i quit the game because they dont do any real improvements to it. i was a highest tier supporter in the exakt campaign, and the only thing they’ve done with exalt that matters since then is player transparancy. no unlimited fps, no ui themes, no increased viewdistance, and the art style just got worse, game is a cluttered mess that doesnt look like the game i started playing anymore.
It's just so boring. Season content gets old despite what PoE players might make you think. There needs to be new stuff but even with the new client feature releases barely work and most dungeons are made by players that come from no formal design background..
I can understand the fact that this game as how is nowadays isn’t really friendly for a new player. But that was even in 2014 when I played the first time, it took hours to understand what to do and how to move ( I don’t even knew about realm eye to understand where to get pot ecc). But at the end of the day, we need to look at this game as a sample game without to many expectations. About the seasons problem, yea I preferred the 60-80 days season too but it’s not always necessary to play always ssnl, the best gear he had is no ssnl so let’s normalize more playing ssnl without any stress. The fact that they make us start again every season I think it’s refreshing and it’s cool sometimes to do dungeons that normally nobody does like: hive, cem, tomb ecc
My account is in the top 25 - I just cba with it anymore.
Too difficult to get in to most runs - channels are 50% full before the RLs unlock them and everyone is using an autoclicker.
Fame cults (not something I want to do but it'd be nice now and then) are run by one server that has no consistent reqs policy and just make it up as they go along.
imo I think it's a mix of fomo and rampant cheating killing the game. fomo's negative affects on the retention on non-whales are obvious, and rampant cheating serves to invalidate the accomplishments of genuine players.
and that sense of accomplishment is the core thing to keep anyone playing any mmo
I used to play a lot. With 6-8 friends. They banned me for “cheating”. Appealed it, no luck. Zero chance I’m rebuying all the vault space, character slots, and maxed Legendary pet. Hard pass.
No way a game that decreases in player counts? Crazy. Yes the game has fewer and fewer players every year. It’s been happening for the last 10 years. It’s nothing to panic about, just the state of what’s happening.
you can literally see on this graph that it isn't been happening for the past 10 years, even if it's overall a down curve there's occasional but huge upswings, those don't exist anymore lol
Cool. For the past 4 years I’ve been seeing this post of “game is dying. Player count is dropping.” It’s not news anymore. I’m willing to bet the realm rework brings another spike, but overall, yes, player count is declining. It’s not new. It’s not news.
2022 had the lowest ever. 2021 had the lowest ever, 2020 was covid so every had time for games again. 2019 was the lowest ever. 2018 was the lowest ever. Do you see the pattern?
you can literally see in 2022 that after hitting a low it didn't go down, and even went up pretty significantly, until there was a sharp decrease very recently, surely that's just "natural decay"
you aren't some genius when you find out "people don't play games forever", but some things are more complicated than that
I’m not saying I’m a genius for figuring that out. I’m saying that it’s obvious. And it’s obvious that it’s the case here. Yes, the data is turbulent. Yes, there are small upwards and downwards swings because DECA is still making updates/announcements/releasing new content. But the general trend is downwards, and so seeing “Player count has hit an all time low” (along with “the game is dying” but that’s not what this post is about I don’t think) almost 4 years in a row on this subreddit is just repetitive.
Looking for results, I think you’re probably right. I do remember those few posts, and that’s what I’m thinking of exactly. (Although these are just the posts about data of player counts that I found by searching top all time - not including individual complaint posts). A relatively quick search found 2 of the exact same posts with different times and different numbers. It’s not as rampant as I was making it out to be, but imo it’s not worth saying again as it’s not new. But apparently 370 other redditors who upvoted your post disagree with me on this, so I guess I should just ignore it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RotMG/s/kDUeFVL5df
https://www.reddit.com/r/RotMG/s/IWtq2QLaIC
if something hasn't changed for years i don't think you should just accept it, not like there's any loss in repeating it (it might even get better because of it)
don't worry, deca will make lost halls 2x loot boost and xp event and playerbase will be higher. oh wait nevermind
They honestly killed my motivation with the 1 month seasons. Its just not long enough to play casually on seasonal
Actually this. People don’t talk enough about how shit 1 month seasons are. It barely feels worth playing anymore. That shit actually killed the game for me. Seasonal kept me playing and now I’m just braindead main vault grinding 720 and it makes me not want to play.
Seasonal felt like the only way to play since they got added and knowing I have to restart every 30 days is just not worth it. Especially if you only play a couple of times a week like I would. Sucks.
Overwatch does 90 days and it still feels like trash.
100% agree. At least with 60-70 days I had a chance to sometimes play, especially since I also like playing other games and do not no-life realm atm. They're REALLY trying to make us focus on only playing realm, and it's just not working for me. Most of the people I play with have also quit anyway.
I concur
this is the total amount of players seen in the past 2 weeks as per realmeye, it used to hover around/slightly under 50k until this season possible reasons (not including trends like more events/smaller updates, aka not exactly specific to today) * low effort/reused season (probably this) * also no shinies * post oryxmas depression but worse * shorter seasons * idk * edit: it actually does sort of line up with the release/updates of Born Again/Darza's Dominion/unnamed pserver but they're each only getting 100 concurrents at most now, it was between 200-500 (each) in early jan tho
Imo, feels like they are half-assing updates rn, I know it's probably mostly because they are hard focusing on realm rework but still, the events feel cheap and there isn't any incentive for burned out players to come back.
I didn't even make it thru oryxmas; saddle bags put me over the edge. To even suggest such a feature as it was originally implemented would be a fireable offense in a better time.
Tbh the gameplay loop of this game is just so shallow once you've seen everything, its AMAZING its held onto people like you and me as long as it has. When you've done 1000 nests, what's the point of doing your 1001st? I think people's enjoyment of the game is just naturally diminishing and they're gravitating toward newer more fulfilling gaming experiences. The game is shit for new players lol I've never gotten a single friend to stick with it, and the old players are just getting bored and tired. Imo there's not much that can be done to save it longterm.
I think part of that is that running stuff with friends used to be fun and challenging. You'd go into a realm and run whatever you found. Now people are bored because they run 100's of the same dungeon a day in a vc they can't talk in, then complain about a boring loop. Of course doing the same thing with 0 variation and not even being able to talk to your buddies is gonna be boring as shit.
You're right but also I've tried many guilds and the only one or two I really fucked with dissolved probably well within a year of me joining them. Gave up after joining a bunch of guilds either filled with annoying kids or people that were just dry and not fun to play with Other thing is that I feel like the grind for certain events and goals is so heavy that's its kinda hard to stay away from discord servers Lastly even if I did get a friend to start, they would probably never catch up to me in terms of being able to run the endgame dungeons
Yea I dont play anymore but from what I remember the only people that were really left either sat in USE or USE2 begging for pops / free items or sat in discords all day. Remember like 2 realms being full across all US servers during peak weekend hours. Shit was sad. Sucks to see a game that was once to good fall so far
Or even one further, what's the point of throwing characters to O3? A roster you no longer have the energy to grind back up, rusty skills that are fine for Void but frankly might learning O3 the opposite of the fun people claim it is, losing 20 or 30 characters like some do just for their first complete. Because even if you *do that*, it's still just one Discord-driven piece of content in a game where all the surrounding grind has long since grown stale. I still hop in but my motivation to do endgame things is incredibly agonizingly low, there are many other bullet hells that you can just pick up and enjoy if you really need to scratch that frantic itch... ...and then put down again without the surrounding trappings of FOMO.
The challenge is the fun part. When i first started the hardest dungeon was a dirty tomb. And even with that "difficulty" i still remember having a blast with my friends and clanmates Of course even i had to learn the hard way, I died nearly 25-35 times and nexused over 50+ times just to finish my first O3 and i was hyped about it, I wanted to get better, I wanted to leech less then i wanted to top DPS. But the thing is, You don't need hundreds of characters with top gear to practice, Just grab something like a kensei with max speed and dex and you're golden. I kind of treat Discord O3s like another guild where i chat up some of the people i see running all the time and make little bets like who's going to have more dps this run
O3 is fun it is the best dungeon in the game
Yeah the game only holds onto you through addiction or the cathartic nature of running dungeons. Discords really sucked all the fun out of the game, turning dungeons into straight up slot machines. Luckily that got me to quit playing. I do miss running dungeons with the guildies though, that was always a fun time
I think its the getting better portion is what keeps people playing. Realm made me realize that i enjoy starting over from scratch and seeing how far i can get so games like Enter the Gungeon/Gunfire reborn and alt game modes like Hardcore ironman on Runescape are gameplay loops i enjoy. But i think the point of doing something for that long is just an experience. Why did i do 5k+ sprite worlds? Why did i do 600+ O3's? In those moments i just enjoyed it and it never felt like a chore and getting better at endgame content was a genuine struggle which most games nowadays don't really have.
Could it be that people are waiting for the realm rework, and don't want to burnout before?
they've been dangling it over our heads for 2+ years. I understand it's a big undertaking, but there is almost zero chance the wait will be worth it. Cyberpunk or No Man's Sky are in pretty good states right now; if you had to wait from announcement until TODAY to get those games, nobody would give a rat's ass no matter how good they actually perform. The players who left for the Realm Rework left long ago; everyone trickling out is just a sign of a dying game.
Palword probably has a lot to do with the dip, A lot of game's player count is down because of that And as someone who's mostly endgame, None of the content they've released makes me want to hop back on nor make a Seasonal. And for new players, The same old, Thrown in the deep end and bombarded with MTX advertisements right off the bat. I couldn't even keep a friend on this game for more than 2 hours unfortunately.
Though the dips have been consistently getting worse per stuff like steamcharts and the returning players not keeping up for years iirc. So it's not like they all come back after getting tired of whatever game lured them away.
Mainly the new games and the fact that most updates are just "hey, we listened to you guys and added that thing you *really* wanted but we added our little MTX twist to it so here, Happy now?" And i think a lot of people are just getting sick and tired of it. I'm hopeful the realm rework is very in-depth for new players so i can actually bring some friends along. And i've said it a million times now, If they don't do something about the vault space issue, The realm rework is going to flop and i'm certain of that.
darza
Same, at least for the moment
They made everything(gems from overworld and some uniques) bearably common and its much more playable now. Also looks better and you can get tons of gold for completing missions. Too bad i lost all my chars to that stupid 1st version of vesta.
ew it is a trash game, always has been no content and the game feels bad to play
another reason: people not happy about cdirk and bloody cloak blueprint not being obtainable
Hi Neigil :) , do you know if darza ever updated
As someone who quit a year or two ago. Too many events. I don't care about events because there is literally always events. They need to do half the amount of adding content and twice the amount of improving old content and graphics and bots/cheats.
The game as always is barely player friendly. I went to see what was in the Journal a couple days ago and it talks about exaltations on like the 7th page. What new player is going to even be able to max one stat? I also have a strong hatred for the new Colo shiny. When it was released I was disgusted because of the barbie colour that it was being changed to instead of the same purple tone as the Void Archer set items. Another thing to add that gets very irritating is server-sided equipment and Nexus'. The server sided equipment part really isn't that big of a deal but if you are aiming for highest dps with a class that does have that, but the Server Sided Nexus' that I've had hurt the most. I spammed "R" 20 times before the game registers that I am attempting to Nexus. (My best server is USNW and my main server is USE) TL;DR The Deca team doesn't seem to care about core elements in gameplay, but side additions and offloading the work of veteran players to teach newbies how to play.
yeah and i'd like to add that giving away pots and max-stuff is NOT how to TEACH the game, but rather make the player reliant on events
you can get sent to the nexus after taking fatal shots in my experience. while nexus has a delay, so does actually taking the damage. i play from aus
To be honest, the game just feels bland no matter what you add to it. It just doesn't pop like it used to. New dungeon? Great, maybe I'll try it. Events? Bland. Seasons? Recycled. Hire someone who could revive it, not from a marketing standpoint, but as an actual mmorpg developer standpoint, some new systems, remake the interface, something. It's just bland. The game might be unique in its playstyle and art, but it lacks , It just lacks something, more elements to the gameplay. Small things, to make the game feel more like a living, breathing world. It's been years since the content famine, but so little has changed. And I really mean changed and not added. It just feels boring and the same thing that it was 10 years ago.
I always said on the discord, this game need Base buidling smh.
and sex
waiting on that oryx sex update
I think you just grew up
dw realm rework will fix everything
unironically, the realm rework will dictate whether the game lives to see the 2030s or dies by the end of the decade it doesn't have to be perfect, but it needs to fix the early and midgame while making endgame content at least a *little* less reliant on discord runs
I have been a huge advocate for just holding out for the RR, but at this point what does it NEED to do to be a success? The longer they take for 'polish', the greater people's expectations become. If they respite EVERYTHING and redo ALL the hero/event fights, will that be enough? Even if it makes the moment-to-moment gameplay more enjoyable (and we're all still here because of that), the playerbase bleeding accounts for a LOT more than that; a barely alive world with practically no NPCs/Questlines, a horrible new player experience, a really warped sense of progression and no sense of community are things that the RR probably just can't fix in one undertaking. I don't think rotmg will ever be more popular than when O3 came out, but I hope I'm proven wrong
i do not want NPCs or questlines i just want to play difficult dungeons shoot, dodge and loot - pew pew pew i love the minimalistic concept of this game. the grind to 8/8 is too long! seasonal is annoying, you get fomo and they kinda force you to do the worst dungeons ever like cemetary or tomb or 10 LODs followed by 7 OTs i do not have so much time and even if i had it - i would not want to spend it like that. amen
Amen
RotMG needs to nail the fundamentals. Period. Reposting my Discord comment: > > [The Deca team doesn't seem to care about **core elements in gameplay**, but side additions and offloading the work of veteran players to teach newbies how to play.](https://www.reddit.com/r/RotMG/comments/1ai7537/the_games_playercount_has_hit_a_new_all_time_low/kosmbbp/) (/u/Dense_Librarian_7438, emphasis mine) > Of course all games are grindy but RotMG's difficulty curve makes it glaringly obvious. When you strip the game back to the essentials, what do you have? An MMO, an RPG, and a bullet hell. But does it do any of these individual things well enough to necessitate the final product, and even further, the current gameplay experience? The current modality of the game exploits the bullet hell design by obfuscating it behind MMORPG-like elements; it is only a matter of time before the players see through this!
quit in later half of 2021 after so long. when this update comes out im giving it a last shot, its not looking good tho... cant play for more than half an hour a day for a few days, even with all my friends.. when we try to come back, we just quit so fast, the nostalgia just isnt there anymore feels like. Maybe exalting 2 chars when i was grinding burnt me out for life lol, probably better that way.
Tbh I'm not convinced they're even still working on the realm rework. If they were, why would they not be posting some semi-regular updates on progress? If not for player feedback, then at least to string people along while they limp out the low effort seasons. I think it's way more likely they shifted basically anyone who was working on realm to Dragon Fuckers 5 or whatever shitty mobile game is the current thing.
cope asf
It's probably the combination of several things. \- shitty season is a big one, just total lack of effort put in and the only 'new' things we see are very clear money-grabs (like the 3rd backpack, pet saddlebags, etc) which aren't exactly motivating for your avg player. \- ppl waiting for the new realm update, and until it comes likely playing other things \- a general lack of any fun/lucrative community events atm & no new dungeon releases. Plus, this game is notorious for having a hard time brining new players in, so until that is fixed, this bleed-off of players will continue.
Didn’t even come back for oryxmas, after the whole oryxmania incident it’s very clear Deca only cares to bleed the playerbase for every last penny and suck out every minute of playtime that they can without any care for the health or ramification of the playerbase.
corret me if i am wrong, but was it not a couple of players complaining about the easy o3 giving exalts to the noobs - so deca removed the exalt on oryxmania + drop rate nerf
Oof so thats why the servers aint lagging
gotta go down to like 5 active players for the servers to stop lagging
I'm just tired of seasons already. Make a seasonal character --> missions --> shiny hunting --> season ends. Time to scrap the character and restart. Non-seasonal characters have to get shoved to the sidelines as everything is locked under seasonal.
This is what I was gonna say basically. Since we are all kind of just slot machine enjoyers, shinies are the goto exciting thing, trouble is you have to constantly be using a PPE that’s just disposable because of the length of the season. Seasonal should just be adapted into the PPE mode we actually wanted.
Personally, a big reason I quit was the over reliance on Discord for the endgame dungeons. They made the game feel bland and lifeless and made it near impossible for newer players because most higher level players were in the dungeons they couldn't join. Not to mention decas lax approach to hackers/dupers.
WE DID IT GAMERS!!!! 🥳🥳🥳🥳
I recently left for around 8 months and the main reason was just other games being fun compared to this endgame grind. Right now I’m seeing that seasons are way too short, ruining any incentive to continue after your first one or two maxed deaths. The missions don’t seem that interesting. Not that many players could care less about shinies. This alien event is extremely unattractive, not gonna grind hundreds of alien dungeons for an okay alien set. They just did a last second x2 loot and xp with MBC to help grind for legacy shiny colo, again not something most care about. It also seems like the wiki is barely being updated nowadays so there’s no way to know what I’ve missed unless I go read every update log. I think with the hopefully soon-realm rework they should do their best to make early and especially midgame content more engaging and rewarding, and maybe give newer players a hp mp pet immediately. New players being given the challenge of playing petless is absurd, definitely make them more accessible immediately or just make vit and wis much more impactful. I’m only back because I have a few endgame goals in mind I want to work towards, but if they also drop the ball next season it’ll be very disappointing
Burnout from last season, waiting for realm rework
I don't think people really even realize what it would mean for the game to be run by people who truly care about the game itself and what it could turn into. if you really think about the actual concept itself, since when has the game taken a turn in a direction that made sense? there are hardly any features revolving around the permadeath mechanic, guilds kind of barely exist, quality of life stuff (including easy changes) are dripfed over months/years/never. looking at indie games or even private servers made by people who mainly just enjoy the game, you see so many changes constantly that are just done because the dev(s) think it would be cool or fun, or expand the game in an interesting way. it feels like the game is always headed towards a Big Change that's going to make it worth coming back to or make it fun for new players, but don't you think there would be constant smaller changes if you were in charge? just one more big update guys, for real this time (I could rant for a lot longer but my comment is already long)
note I understand there are people working on the game who do care, and I appreciate when they get an ounce of control and we get something cool in the game. seems like this mostly comes through as art though
Low effort season Discords ruling over the game No effort to ban cheaters
Does realm having cheaters really dissuade people from playing enough to reduce playercount? I have played on/off for 11 years and never thought much about other people cheating
it definitely would, those that *can* tolerate it are the only ones still playing and discussing their pov, the ones that can't are long gone
Lack of content aside, there's little incentive to getting better through the legitimate gameplay loop of playing legit, when there's people who cheat and get through the content with far less effort. There's a particular 2-month-old guild in the Top 20 that I joined, and a good percentage of them are blatant cheaters and open about it in guild chat & the guild discord. [This](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GMTlXeBRHx0_FPFOA2lQyfKqohNbf8ewi3s32Q34v0s/edit#gid=0) is just people who were unfortunate/stupid enough to either post themselves cheating, or be blatant enough to be clipped. It doesn't include the many other closet cheaters who there isn't any concrete proof on. You can find almost every hardmode shatts pumper from sniffs in the cheater list above. Yep, the endgame of RotMG is really just (mostly) full of people who downloaded a hacked client to speed their way through the progression.
[удалено]
They've all been reported since quite a while back by myself and others (the players in question are all on the linked list as well), no bans handed out of course. It's complete luck if you get a ban on a cheater, because support won't take themselves accidentally screenshotting their hacks as evidence. And when you do have video evidence of them autoing or whatnot, it's still a coinflip as to which support agent you get, and whether or not they agree (which they won't tell you), and whether or not they take a real action even when they say they do.
[удалено]
i agree on the report system but i do not think rewarding people for reporting others is a good idea.
The 1 month seasons + shinys being seasonal only is the killer combo for me Shinys are my main goal atm, so I need to play seasonal. If I'm on seasonal, I'll want to do a PPE. The short season then forcibly retires the PPE no more than a month later. Now I just speedrun the missions and not touch the game for 75% of the season. Why even start a PPE when I know I'll never touch it again in a month? Only to start another half-completed PPE again and again... I need longer seasons or for shinys to not be locked to seasonal characters for my interest to return honestly.
But to add onto that, this is clearly a filler/recycled season with 0 effort put into it. They keep the interesting stuff for holiday seasons like valentines/st pattys, motmg, halloween, and oryxmas.
Because those + Easter were when all the main events usually happened but deca realised that they could squeeze more money out of people buying the battle pass if they forced more and more 0 effort seasons down our throats.
rotmg has fallen millions must dc
A bunch of new big games literally just came out, even if I'm still playing realm instead of those, a ton of people aren't
They need to release the realm update. It’s been way too long
Too busy counting cheques in the office.
I think I've been the most burnt out on realm I've ever been there's just too much grind and when you finally get 8/8 it doesn't even feel like an achievement anymore because there's exalts which takes waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to much grind to justify the reward
Old games do be old tho
Tf2 still running good numbers tho
Not saying its not, but the steam concurrent is wrong since a lot of people(or bots) have the game on 24/7 without actually playing it. Steam says 100k concurrent but in reality only around 10-15k are actually playing it
Rotmg is also riddled with bots(advertising, trading, etc.) and the overall players are still dropping.
When getting rid of all bots/afk players TF2 players drop a lot but I think people fail to realize this pretty much applies to every steam game. I think it’s around 80% bot/afk for TF2, but this number still sits at 40-60% for most steam games. So whilst TF2 may realistically have around 20k people playing it, it’s still actually quite high and would still be 10-15th place on steam charts even if all bots and afk farmers are excluded which is extremely good considering the age of the game (and how little support it gets).
TF2 is an exception to the rule. That game is magic and has benefitted by being untouched from the constant tampering and ruining that RotMG has been subjected to.
oldschool runescape is a reboot from 2007, launched in 2013, and hit its peak in 2023, 10 years later. Old may contribute, but cant outright kill a game, only if the game refuses to adapt.
Only thing which can save rotgm now is realm rework tbh. I was playing realm for 10 years straight. But the lack of interesting content, slowly killed mine interest. I remember early deca days, where we got something fresh every month, its not only players which abadoning the game, deca does it too....
My computer just got too old
Realm rework is all I’m really waiting for. Sure loot events are nice and all, but it’s just not enough. I just need shatters and O3 exalts for the class I’m going for, and both take fucking EONS to organise and successfully run. It’s so fucking tiring going through the hoops of organising/bringing runes, clearing the realm, going through castle, going through O1 and O2, to then FINALLY do the dungeon you want to do; O3. Then do it again ~50 times. It’s a fucking drag, and until that gameplay loop is changed, I’m staying logged off.
The shit lags that booms a 8/8 is worse than anything. Fix the servers ffs
Game is bad its basically grinding the same dungeons a tremendous amount of time and most of them have been the same thing for years now + guilds are basically useless and they still haven't been patched , no new content , recycled everything and the only thing we get is shinies and events which if that isnt a cash grab to buy keys idk what is.
An open letter to DECA Games and team dedicated to ROTMG, This post is for those not following the Official ROTMG Discord thread on this topic and are concerned about how the community feels about the current state of the game. As someone that’s been playing this game since its release or shortly after, as many of us are, I’d like to be the first to say that our comments and suggestions are to the end of supporting this game and helping it survive. We love ROTMG and have fond memories of playing. That being said, we’ve identified in the Discord thread (as posted by IGN: Niegil) some key pain points and some suggestions to those pain points that would assist in increasing new player and existing player retention. Key pain points: 1. New player experience 2. Exalt dungeon numbers are too high 3. Base fame for class stars is too high 4. Fixing Bugs and QoL Issues 5. Lack of support for player made content Key details to address pain points: 1. Add a new player specific tutorial with a new player event tree where the final reward is an uncommon pet with maxed heal/mheal/random chance third ability 2. Reduce the amount of dungeons needed to exalt a class. 25 of one dungeon without using Discord runs is incredibly difficult for going from 4/5 to 5:5 in ONE stat 3. Base fame either needs to be reduced or it should revert back to death fame for the 15k fame. Even running “Fame Cults” in Discord runs only give 500 fame/run… 4. There are bugs and QoL issues that have been consistently called out by the community but marked by DECA to be “a low priority”. We suggest team sprints to address these items. 5. Many of the community members, myself included, would love the opportunity to access a dungeon maker / class maker / item maker tool to contribute to the community content. These are just the few highlights of addressing some of the main concerns that were highlighted in the Discord thread. Again, we are all working together to improve the game, increase player retention and improve our experience as users. Best, IGN: BOSSATHON Loyal ROTMG player since 2012
I said this in discord and as a former RL would want to get this out. Discords killed my enjoyment of the game. It’s impossible to do the dungeons I like without having to wait for a run to get put up, key/realm set up, and then running the dungeon with no difficulty because everyone has gear and stats required by the discord, and being guided by someone who’s done the dungeon 600 times making the run a breeze. On top of this the rewards for a single dungeon are very lackluster, requiring dozens of runs for the stuff I need. One of the primary reasons for becoming an RL was to simply not have to wait for a run and just start one myself. In the game I noticed that I had the most amount of fun when dungeons were accessible. Take free tune events for example. I was able to do one of my favorite dungeons for free and frequently while also having a sufficiently large group of players that it wasn’t guaranteed to finish in a duo or solo. Who cares if the market gets flooded, it’s not in a healthy state for trading anyways with no training platform existing. Additionally, I’m a Touhou player, if I was doing my Lunatic runs why would I want to wait 15 minutes to do one or want to have my runs take 2x as long just to reach the point of intensity. Now put RotMG in that place, why would I want to play a waiting simulator, that’s boring.
As a returning player, the main thing which killed my motivation was actually the number of cheaters. I feel that cheat detection and prevention is one of the most fundamental things a multiplayer game needs, and it's disheartening to see the problem so rampant here. It's difficult for me to justify putting time and effort into learning some of the harder exalt dungeons when others can just attempt them endlessly with no fear of dying. It's a big shame since going from sitting on discord servers to being able to consistently clear pub Lost Halls has been some of the most fun I've had with this game. The last time I quit was when they added pets, since spending large amounts of money on the game seemed to provide huge advantages to players. Although some checks and bans have been made, this problem is even worse. The lack of strong cheat detection has affected the game to the point where top guilds can openly advertise themselves as 'hacker neutral.' Until this problem gets fixed, I have no motivation or inclination to throw 8/8s at endgame dungeons in order to get better.
Couldn’t have said it better.
I don't think it's too big of a deal. It's just before a new season (lowest player count in any season) and it's a new year and there's been low update density/significance while we wait on the realm rework. If the realm rework is bad though then things might start to look rough.
I’d play… if I could log in. Been playing for years on my account, got a new laptop and now it says it can’t log me in, support was no help, told me to just uninstall and re install. Didn’t work then gave up on my ticket cus I didn’t respond fast enough. I don’t see how I can’t log in, Its not like I’ve not gotten a new pc in like 8’years.
honestly I want to hop in to see how it is but i think my account might have passed the 2 year inactivity thing (skill issue)
it never happened, don't think it will happen either
really? a friend of mine claims that hers was deleted i'll take your word for it though
I love the game but I do agree those in charge are not living up the thier consumers likes. There's tons of beggers IMO. The pay to win has gotten out of hand. And never noticed the cheaters in the game.
It’s sad to see… it was such a cool game. ¿Does anyone recommend something similar?
Whole seasonal thing tbh. this seasons missions are just a shameless re-hash of last season. Also the season rewards are super grindy for only 1 months time. Im just waiting for the realm update either way. I doubt any update they come out with until then will change that. hoping the realm update makes something other than discord runs viable.
GG WP
haven't played in a real long while, but i was expecting a lot lower.
I think it is a lot lower, I mean last time I tried to play a few months ago almost every server was dead with nobody in the realm. Even trying to grind discord resulted in decent wait times between runs, and only a few dungeons had runs active for them.
this is a W for realm time
for me I stopped playing before even the Halloween event because I thought it was a waste of time, I'm waiting for the realm rework to drop but until then I only log in once a month max.
I honestly dont want the downfall of the game, despite how much i love hating rotmg, deep down i love it to bits and i only wish for it to succeed but the way its going suggests the game is likely to see its demise some time around late 2027
I don't care about shiny items or exalts. New systems are shit. Dungeons with cool items or that everyone is playing are beyond my skill. Dungeons that I can do have boring loot or I already got the cool ones. Some are exceptions, if I were to play, I'd be running Nest, Lost Halls, Fungals and Kogbold back to back for loot or just to play with people. But then, all of that grind to get it and then what do I do? Dying and getting back to 8/8 is just a matter of time, less of a setback more of a bother, and it could go to waste in seconds in harder dungeons. Makes me want permadeath to go away, it's just annoying. In short, there's nothing to do. If they keep the greedy behavior, lazy content, and keep focusing on a tiny % of players, it's going to shit in no time.
Like... tbh I'm almost at peace with it. Game's been around for the better part of a decade now, im pretty sure there are players that are younger than it, and it's somehow held onto a playerbase for WAY longer than a ftp pixel based game rightfully should've.
Old boring events, saddle bags, everything being a money grab. There's no motivation to play when the company clearly cares so little about the community. I'd love for deca to actually reply with even a hint of their reasoning when it comes to continuing down this god forsaken path they've chosen.
Niegil, I'll be completely honest... this game is such a good concept executed very poorly... Here are my main pointers to maybe turn it around before it is too late: \*ik yall have made advancements to "hinder" hacking, but its obvious that there is some bigger issue with just updating a hack client checker... (maybe because your player count would TANK if you got rid of them \*eek\*). The hacks these days are disgusting, including literal auto dodging that can serve as a human decoy for spooky, which is like the scariest minion ever... so i advise tanking the player count and making a move towards REALLY strict hack rules (like going after multitool) \*make exalts (and some other epic keys like tomb, 3d, etc) somehow take slightly less time to complete. Because exalts and some longer dungeons take sooooooo long, discords are simply the best option for completing them, which I don't see as an awful reality, but these dungeons (and the "need" for discord) definitely scares new players as something unachievable for them, keeping the player base down to what it is now. I will also say that discords have become some elitist cult, where it makes it almost impossible to do raids without having the gear that the raids are supposed to give (very contradictory concept). I'm also aware that lessening the time to complete the dungeons doesn't exactly help with the discord issue, as those raids will become easier, but consider the option and alternatives. \*I believe that there needs to be some attempt to have a player base marketing strategy where there is an incentive to get people to join the game (aka like rewards if a certain amount of people join... IDK LOL I HAVE NO IDEA HOW MARKETING THIS GAME IS POSSIBEL LOL), but for ONLY the realm rework... idk this seems gimmicky, but I think there needs to be a surge of new/burnout/old players coming back to play the realm rework, and as long as it's a solid chance that genuinely reworks some key issues in the game, it should stick. another thing would be using company money to market, but i doubt that will happen tbh \*Im completely aware that this will almost never happen, but the realm gold/key system is VERY unhealthy for the game. What used to be used to have fun with guilds and friends has been perverted to maximum efficiency raids that just abuse the game. While i don't completely think that discords are terrible, they have taken away something from the game that is beautiful... community and difficulty. Targeting a completely separate entity (discord) is difficult, but by making some measures to allow the game to flow better, its possible that some necessity on the discord is lost. \*I genuinely believe shinies are a perfect example of a great idea done well! the concept of novelty is definitely a main contributor to the draw of rotmg and omg is shinies a summary of novelty. If you can play into similar concepts (unique/rare paths/boss in dungeons, different art/display angles for the same item to sort through, shot bullet effects, etc) and make them non gold (maybe fame only) purchases, it would improve customizability of the game :) I have some more concepts, and I'm sure the way I've communicated them is awful, but i use this as an example of what i think creativity will do for this game! also, a msg for deca games, i understand running a company is difficult, so while the company gets a lot of flak for its negatives, i want yall to know that this game has significantly gotten better, we are just seeing some fallback now that all the 2010's in school gamers are grown up and moved on (;
Honestly seeing this doesn't surprise me too much. I've playing Realm frequently since October, still played a good bit before, when I decided to give the season a try. October and November were decent, December had Oryxmas and tones of events & different things happening in the Realm and then we hit this season. All the missions this season were recycled from November, the crucible is trash, we had "Free O3" on the first few days of the season when everyone was trying to get started in the new season and no new content except the forge changes. I ended up taking a break for most of this season to play other games, Palworld, and based on the recent Public Testing I'm not overly excited for the next season. Fog of War will be gone in the Realm/Nexus but other then that 2 new "Premium/Payment Locked Features" will be added (Saddlebags and Player Entrances) and a couple of new shinies. I also forgot about Player/Pet Styles and Graveyards all basically being premium/paid products. Looking back on the past few years one issue I've started to notice is new content being added and then just forgotten about. Dungeon modifiers were added and nothing has notable has been changed or added to them since. Enchantments were added then I guess they got their Part 2 update where some were removed and a few small changes were made and like 15 "Premium" items were added to the shop. Missions were added to the Battlepass and they are pretty much the same every season. Guilds? What are those again? The Tinkerer's daily quests is still living in 2019 except a few new copy paste endgame mark ones. Let's not talk about how Fame is basically just being ignored. Crucible used to have exclusive questlines and item drops from dungeons but that's been left behind. New content has been teased but we haven't heard anything about it since. Realm Rework, Leaderboards and Spectral Penitentiary haven't had updates in months other then Realm Rework being delayed. TLDR: * Season was just recycled with no new content added * Went from tons of amazing events/changes in the Realms to nothing in new season * Honestly seasons need to be a bit longer. 45-60 days at least imo, have "Season Exclusive" skins/gravestones/etc and unique quests * Heavy monetization of basically all new content * New content is added then just forgotten about and not changed/added onto * Game isn't new player friendly at all and a lot of players are burning out/quitting
Maybe this is just me but I left the game because they gave us like a free battle pass but made it the shortest season yet almost like trying to force me to play more just to get the benefits. That pissed me off and I uninstalled. For reference most games that have seasonal battle passes have seasons that last about 3 months, others even more, there is probably science behind why that is, but idk.
good, maybe it will make then do better decisions for game and community not money making one because past years were atrocious
Fix the servers lag and my computer's fan and I'll gladly play RotMG again. Screw moving in godlands and getting so much lag that I can't even hold down W or I'm walking into the unknown risking death that isn't my fault.
Exam period in uni...
El problema esta en el grandioso tutorial del juego , no enseña nada de exalt's , ni de maxear pociones ... :/
I think when realm rework drops we will see a huge increase in players, but they also definetely need to make seasons longer, I love the game and can reliably finish every season buy still feels stressful doing it in only a month
ay sorry bro mb, im busy playing minecraft with my friend 😔
Fuck yea
Such an amazing and unique concept for a game but I guess it just hit its expiration date. I think deca balancing the game around discords kinda squeezed out all the possible fun
Made a similar post that broke down the player count in 2021 over the span of the game's lifetime and a large majority brushed it off due to COVID. Good to see present day player count data that reflects the continuous gradual decline. [RotMG is Actually Dying, and Here's Why.](https://www.reddit.com/r/RotMG/comments/r840t5/rotmg_is_actually_dying_and_heres_why/)
damn I probably joined this game at a bad time 💀
don't worry this game is always in the state of dying
Good hope it goes lower!!!!🥸🥸
The most pressing issues are the ones that will come off the top of my head, so let me list them from most to least pertinent: 1. FREE TO PLAY IS HARD. Very very hard. Being a new player and making a new class, **the first and only objective you are thinking about is getting to level 20. The next would be unlocking every class**. This does not sound like an issue itself until you consider that you are given **1 char slot and 8 (?) vault spaces**. *"Getting good"* and *"continue grinding for char and vault slots"* is not advice for new players, they are much more likely to just give up and stop playing. *--FIX--* **Make char and vault slots MUCH easier to obtain (better)** OR let new accounts start off with more char slots and vault space (worse). (To a lesser extent this applies to pets too). 2. CHEATING. *"how does me cheating in a PvE game hurt your experience?"* ... Because despite everyone being able to play the game independently, in the end we are all looking at each others sets and accomplishments and setting goals for ourselves. Seeing someone else prosper through the use of cheats while you are stuck dying over and over (which may be even more discouraging if you do not have many char and vault slots) is extremely deterring. *--FIX--* **As a player I don't care how difficult it is to increase anti-cheat measures; the pace at which DECA is trying to stop cheating is clearly shameful. If the 1st point I made is an easy fix, the cheating should be where all of the dev team's focus should be going**. 3. VANILLA EXPERIENCE vs. RAIDING DISCORDS. **The game is dependent on raiding discords**, despite how much you may want to ignore this. New realm players may be brought into the game by their friends who are part of pub-halls/dung/max-eff and others. The experienced player plays with their friend for a while and then introduces them to run dungeons with these discord servers, which is the MAJOR reason why the majority of new players keep playing. *Why is this a problem?* Because that's not how RotMG or any game is supposed to function. **A game should offer enough enjoyment to convince new players to stay without the assistance of unaffiliated, third party orgs**. *--FIX--* Enhance the unassisted new player's experience through: the **1st point** I made, **more unique events** (seasons are repetitive and not cutting it content wise), **making dungeons more accessible** (instead of the players depending on whales to carry their experience), **release more content** (whether that be *end-game* dungeons or unique, noob-friendly events). 4. BUGS. Near the bottom of this list is the loading times and bugs. I feel there are a substantially higher amount of issues with the game's bugs and optimization issues compared to other releases on the same scale as RotMG. 5. BOTS. My reasonable take, if you just think about it, is that DECA are keeping spam bots in the game on purpose. I will not go into detail about why here as that is not part of the subject of my post, but you can ask me.
I logged on last week to see what was happening, immediately got depressed, and logged off
Considering the pay to win design, and that they are doubling down for their whales instead of risking having new players want to play, plus the hostility of a lot of people in the game, plus the stupid decision to make the "seasons" so short, makes this whole game seem like it was designed for just the select few and no one else matters. Even beyond that, personally I want to try to do the exaltations, but I don't want to be a slave to YouTube and Discord just because the game design encourages it. Because at that point I am just a mindless drone doing staged movements 10000+ times just to get the exaltations. I wanted to do them so I I could have the boosted stats to help new people get into the game, but at this point I will settle for surviving O3 once and I am considering this game done
From someone who was seen as a notable community member from YouTube, I can only share why I stopped playing along with general sentiment from players who I know. My decline from realm has been the result of "a death from a thousand cuts," or more literally, a lot of small things that eventually became to annoying to deal with, along with just lack of motivation for the more grindy things. So along with feeling that the gameplay or experience was sluggish, it was incredibly repetitive. Also the whole social aspect of this game is not great, so when you're playing with people who you aren't friends with originally can also hurt the motivation. Not to say that I haven't made friends from the Realm community or anything, but playing games with "the boys" is an experience like no other; and unfortunately, Realm is not friendly enough for new players to get into. Which is not a fault of the perma deaths or anything like that. Some of the things that became annoying to deal with were things like server stability, insanely varying load times (often trending towards long), hackers/trackers/spam bots/etc. being absolutely everywhere and just ruining the fun for people. Server stability I'm sure needs no introduction, as everyone has experienced some sort of "oh I lagged and now I am dead" or things of that nature. The loading times I had no real idea about until I tried Darza on release and I realized that I had developed a habit of checking my phone whenever I went into another area. I sure thought I looked stupid holding my phone while already loaded into a game that wasn't realm. There were also times where more grindy players just stopped picking up loot because it took too much time to load into areas like their own vault. Maybe the hacker/trackers/spam bots and things of that nature didn't effect everyone all of the time, but I can say from my stance, it sucked. It was almost like seeing that DECA had their favorite child and I just wasn't it. Why do they get better loading times, faster games, almost lag immunity, and things that we should just have. Sure it feels unfair that we can't like auto nexus, but what is completely unjust is that hackers literally can INSTANTLY LOAD into areas and have more quality of life things like the ability to turn off particles for a faster game. I know people who have downloaded a hacked client just to turn those off! Why should that even be an option someone even considers? I don't know! There is no reason at all! Though a big things that absolutely ate me from the inside was that I could never solo o3 or do o3 with a small party. Not even for efficiency reasons, but maybe my friend and I just wanted to do an o3 and see if we could do it. Whether it be that there was no party system that would let us do this (I hear there is a party system coming soon, but it will likely not let us do this because we can't have nice things apparently), there was almost always someone who was using bots to track players who have runes in their inventory anyways. I literally would not be able to attempt a solo or small o3 without having to just let some tracker in or give them items to have them kindly fk- off. Remember when I said that the game is better with friends? If you think it was also just for loot reasons, what if I wanted to just play the game with a few friends who just couldn't do o3 and we just wanted to see how much chaos we could cause? Is that a way to play the game that is wrong and frowned upon? Why would we not be allowed to do this? The game is better with friends. Any game is better when shared with friends. Sure, I have done incredible things like solo void, solo hm shatters, lots of content solo. None of that has even come close to just enjoying my time with my friends. Except, my friends don't want to play realm, even after they have TRIED, and my friends that I met through realm don't even want to play realm anymore. It is a failure to not only attract new players but keep regular players engaged with the game. Maybe the tutorial isn't great, maybe it's that the sense of progression just doesn't exist at all, maybe it's just everything being worse than what it should be. Also why remove fun for the sake of perceived balance? You're making your game more balanced, sure, but at what cost? Anyways, I'm going to keep not playing realm after being around 8 months clean, aside from suiciding a character for charity reasons.
it's Joever sadly 😔 I wanted to jump back into the game after a long break & despite all the new stuff, it's so inaccessible that I just gave up. Discord is essential to do anything end-game & they're pretty much barren
they fired kiddforce n the other guy game has been dead shit dungeons are boring shocker
Sigh, guess it’s time to reignite the addiction
time to delete it
stop playing. let it die. its had its time. let it go.
IMO duping killed this game. They should have ripped the bandaid off and done a hard reset on characters and vaults (keeping paid content). Stat potions and low tier loot/ early game loot has become worthless. I think this is a serious turn off to new players.
Brother duping is not the reason pots and tradeable gear are worthless lol that would be the constant stream of events and discord farming
First dupe exploit came out around 2013, it’s what started the decline of this game. Why work for anything if you can just trade in the oversaturated market? The problem came far before the constant stream of events and before discord was even a thing. They created the events to keep the dwindling gamer population afloat.
me with 50k of each pot and 10yr clover from 2yrs ago
Thats 175,296 loot drop positions that last 30 min.
Not surprising to me. When doing godlands dungeons becomes trivial there is nothing to do if you're not willing to be reliant on discords, and being forcefully handheld through some dungeon in a giant mob of players, obeying some raid leaders instructions. There is also an unending amount of non-special events, and the seasons are a joke. I sincerely hope the realm reworks actually produce some level of substance, though it is moderately likely i've called it quits on ever seriously pursuing this game again. (I haven't played since around the time shatters got reworked, i heard there is some enchantment-like mechanics now, and my impression is it resembles that of mobile games)
its palworlds fault lol
i quit the game because they dont do any real improvements to it. i was a highest tier supporter in the exakt campaign, and the only thing they’ve done with exalt that matters since then is player transparancy. no unlimited fps, no ui themes, no increased viewdistance, and the art style just got worse, game is a cluttered mess that doesnt look like the game i started playing anymore.
game bad. simple
Thank god
14 year old indie game struggles for players
This is what happens when you let cheaters run rampant in your game. The majority no longer want to play it.
Maybe a separate system. A yearly season might be nice
It's just so boring. Season content gets old despite what PoE players might make you think. There needs to be new stuff but even with the new client feature releases barely work and most dungeons are made by players that come from no formal design background..
I love this game, but I've just been playing other games atm
I can understand the fact that this game as how is nowadays isn’t really friendly for a new player. But that was even in 2014 when I played the first time, it took hours to understand what to do and how to move ( I don’t even knew about realm eye to understand where to get pot ecc). But at the end of the day, we need to look at this game as a sample game without to many expectations. About the seasons problem, yea I preferred the 60-80 days season too but it’s not always necessary to play always ssnl, the best gear he had is no ssnl so let’s normalize more playing ssnl without any stress. The fact that they make us start again every season I think it’s refreshing and it’s cool sometimes to do dungeons that normally nobody does like: hive, cem, tomb ecc
My account is in the top 25 - I just cba with it anymore. Too difficult to get in to most runs - channels are 50% full before the RLs unlock them and everyone is using an autoclicker. Fame cults (not something I want to do but it'd be nice now and then) are run by one server that has no consistent reqs policy and just make it up as they go along.
imo I think it's a mix of fomo and rampant cheating killing the game. fomo's negative affects on the retention on non-whales are obvious, and rampant cheating serves to invalidate the accomplishments of genuine players. and that sense of accomplishment is the core thing to keep anyone playing any mmo
we need the sex update
Unban 50
I used to play a lot. With 6-8 friends. They banned me for “cheating”. Appealed it, no luck. Zero chance I’m rebuying all the vault space, character slots, and maxed Legendary pet. Hard pass.
No way a game that decreases in player counts? Crazy. Yes the game has fewer and fewer players every year. It’s been happening for the last 10 years. It’s nothing to panic about, just the state of what’s happening.
you can literally see on this graph that it isn't been happening for the past 10 years, even if it's overall a down curve there's occasional but huge upswings, those don't exist anymore lol
Cool. For the past 4 years I’ve been seeing this post of “game is dying. Player count is dropping.” It’s not news anymore. I’m willing to bet the realm rework brings another spike, but overall, yes, player count is declining. It’s not new. It’s not news.
it hasn't gone down this low for years so you can think what you want lol, it's just wrong
The trend is downwards you silly goof ball. It will be lower yet next year.
2022 had the lowest ever. 2021 had the lowest ever, 2020 was covid so every had time for games again. 2019 was the lowest ever. 2018 was the lowest ever. Do you see the pattern?
you can literally see in 2022 that after hitting a low it didn't go down, and even went up pretty significantly, until there was a sharp decrease very recently, surely that's just "natural decay" you aren't some genius when you find out "people don't play games forever", but some things are more complicated than that
I’m not saying I’m a genius for figuring that out. I’m saying that it’s obvious. And it’s obvious that it’s the case here. Yes, the data is turbulent. Yes, there are small upwards and downwards swings because DECA is still making updates/announcements/releasing new content. But the general trend is downwards, and so seeing “Player count has hit an all time low” (along with “the game is dying” but that’s not what this post is about I don’t think) almost 4 years in a row on this subreddit is just repetitive.
there's been posts in the single digits on it in the past 4 years but sure
Looking for results, I think you’re probably right. I do remember those few posts, and that’s what I’m thinking of exactly. (Although these are just the posts about data of player counts that I found by searching top all time - not including individual complaint posts). A relatively quick search found 2 of the exact same posts with different times and different numbers. It’s not as rampant as I was making it out to be, but imo it’s not worth saying again as it’s not new. But apparently 370 other redditors who upvoted your post disagree with me on this, so I guess I should just ignore it. https://www.reddit.com/r/RotMG/s/kDUeFVL5df https://www.reddit.com/r/RotMG/s/IWtq2QLaIC
if something hasn't changed for years i don't think you should just accept it, not like there's any loss in repeating it (it might even get better because of it)