Question to the Realmers

Hey Wonderful Realmers,

I've noticed numbers on the servers dwindle since launch.

I would like the game to be successful, max out server capacity, and have popularity issue problems. Make it successful enough to become a small indie gaming studio.

I've played off and on since 1996 and on MistWalkers. In the current iteration the Realm Finvarra's Fortress - I've leveled 12 toons (a variety of builds) to 2,000 (2K). I've paid for 6 noble accounts, but have since stopped since I haven't played for several weeks. I have also checking the wiki on a daily basis. But, I still check the discord channel daily. I check the forums randomly - there's been a lot of great discussions.

The team has done a great job of revitalizing the game. Rat-Labs added a bunch of much needed quality of life improvements like F12, less client crashes, and too many other things to list.

Just to brain storm some ideas on how to keep the game fresh and alive.

What keeps are your top three reasons to keep playing(paying) the realm?

Here are some ideas that I could think of off the top of my head:
+Nostalgia
+Grinding for Loot / XP
+Game Mechanics / Skills
+Content (New Dungeons, Locations, New Weapons)
+Cosmetics / Loot Boxes
+PVP / Rewards for PVP
+Trading / Economy
+Video Tutorials
+The People / Community
+Storyline

Here are my personal top three reasons to play also my definition of fun:
+Nostalgia
+Grinding for Loot / XP
+Content (New Dungeons, Locations, New Weapons)

I originally returned to the Realm for the nostalgia. I found a post on theRealm.io by DragnDave and found MistWalkers.

What kept me playing for nearly a year was the fresh content in new weapons, new baldrics, being able to prestige. But since I've maxed out, there's really no reason for me to keep playing until the 3K is released.

I understand that this is a shoestring team all working as volunteers with families and full time jobs.

I understand the developer team wants to make a new multi-platform client.
That would be great! But its not here now and there is no set date when it will be complete.

To keep gamers that play like me are some monthly content updates (weapons, interesting loot, dungeons) and the ability to prestige forever. It would be great to get some kind of reward like more skills, cosmetic items, but those can be provided when ready.

I understand that creating new content all the time is difficult so maybe make more seasonal monthly content? Hallow's End, Fallows, and Konge were fantastic.

I'm sure if you need more help with graphics - the team can set out guidelines and more people can help create new things.

Thanks for reading and please share your top three reasons why you continue to play.

I guess I will post a response to this also, since most people know I hit the server hard from the beginning (with 2-3 others). From launch for the first month or so I played every free second I had aside from when I was working. Why did it stop? Lack of quality people who actually want to participate with the community. The toxicity in the game rose to a level that it was beyond absurd. I don't enjoy logging into a game to get trolled by some douche bag because I am a known player and have done well. I say that because someone actually told me that was their reasoning. I put the effort in to get to were I got, sorry you didn't. Why else? Eh… I think that is honestly the main reason. MTX shop was a nice addition, but lack of new colors has quickly faded that to the background, the majority of the work done to the game outside of prestige has been focused on helping overly casual players, with no additions for the people who put in more effort/dedication and want a challenge. That challenge is not there, and unfortunately it appears as though us players could be taken or left. I am glad that the people who only want to run 1 account can do everything people who ran 6 did, that was a huge smack in the face. In other words if I had townied for the first 2 months of the server's launch, I could've accomplished what I did then, now at 1/6th of the effort. Thanks for the pat on the back for being a dedicated player.

I think adding some new items, fixing bounties and the Den making it so they drop anything in game instead of just crappy items. That's my thought right now.

This is a pretty good question. I saw this post last night and really had to think about it.

I think for me it's:
Nostalgia, Community, Mechanics

Nostalgia: Fond memories, and for sure there's a part of me inside that hopes we can get back to "the glory days" even though I realize it will never happen. I think this is the definition of nostalgia!

Community: I think like most when they forced channel split (which I still think was a huge mistake on this size population) I went to chan 3. It's clearly the more active and there is lots of discussion there as well as trade. However, I agree with goof's point on community in this channel - it's actually pretty negative/toxic. It took me a bit but I eventually migrated to chan 4 and although it is a lot of the same questions, in general I think it's a much more positive and helpful community. I actually enjoy being on that channel, and there are several regulars who I like chatting with.

Mechanics: I'll be honest I like that I can just kinda do this while distracted or whatever. Turn based with adjustable timer and all that. I know I'm a filthy casual, but I can successfully play realm while doing a lot of things that I can't do while running a dungeon in World of Warcraft.

Although this thread didn't originally ask for the one thing you dislike or is driving you away, it does seem to be trending that direction so I'll chime in here also. If I had to pick one thing I would say that, in general, I feel like most things being added are being added purely from a statistical or analytical approach with no regard to user experience. Almost everything that's added just "Feels Bad".

For examples I would point to things like Bounties. Bounties were added and had a chance to be empty, and from a loot control and even logic standpoint I get it (Hey you can get nothing from a dungeon run!) but as a user experience it was actually terrible to get nothing from a bounty. It just FEELS BAD. I realize this was changed, but it took a long time.

Most recently we can look at Underground and the final chest disaster. To have a dungeon with zero chance of item drops throughout the dungeon and then have to play chest roulette at the end is such an infuriating design. Why not have 1 chest and adjust rates accordingly? Choosing a chest that has a scroll and being left feeling like you made the wrong choice FEELS BAD and is such a worse experience than, for example, doing fuloran and getting a crappy chest. Yeah we all bark about how cheap fuloran is, but it doesn't FEEL BAD like the Underground experience.

I also think the user experience for power gain/progression in prestige should be better, although will confess that maybe build point baubles will address this. Getting all of your build points immediately and then having 1000 levels with no additional gain/carrot feels pretty bad to me also.

I like the dev team and know they are basically volunteers at this point so nobody needs to come white knight for them. I'm not trying to insult anybody. I just also think we have some logic/stats/coder guys leading things and sometimes user experience isn't top of mind. Maybe QA needs a "DOES THIS FEEL BAD?" checkbox in their process.

I came because it was free and nostalgia.

I stayed because playing 6 box is actually a hell lotta fun.

I was bummed I had to pay for 6 separate accounts to enjoy realm to its fullest which is quite the rip-off while also having an mtx. It's either one or the other, not both.

I finally stopped the subscription and only log in very casually when they made dungeon scaling a thing, with the sole intent of punishing people for playing 6 toons. I understand something needs to be done to help the solo player due to the lack of people to group up with (even though they could, just like me and at any given moment, start running multiple accounts with ease), scaling dungeons is the wrong way to go about it and in the long run ruins the game for both 6 boxers and especially for legit players who want to play in a group.

The game is headed in the wrong direction by trying to fix things which aren't broken which has left a very bitter taste in my mouth.

I like the way that Chas is thinking. The "does it feel bad" is a very interesting approach. I add my voice to:

• wish there was a bonus at reaching 2k (maybe the nb baldric should have been given at 2k instead of lvl 1001)
• the UG cave is too long with terrible loot. I agree that it would make more sense to be one chest at the end. I also think that the drop rates in that cave need major adjusting

In terms of what I like about the game

• mechanics is my main motivation. I really enjoy playing turn based games. I also tend to go afk a lot, so this type of game style really suits my rl situation.
• finding loot or the idea that there is a "perfect" set for a hitter/wizzy/thief appeals to me
• nostalgia of course has to be in the top 3
• I actually do like the fact that I can multibox. My main motivation is that I get to experience many types of characters in the game time. It saves me from having to explore various character builds. Another game I used to play and also enjoyed the game style was Dofus (or Wakfu later on). It really reminds me of Realm a lot. That game too, one could multibox and again the appeal was being able to pick from back then 12 types of pre-set characters.

(ps: pls do not nerf mass heal, it is a poor man's EB, esp since EB is too rare and too expensive )

I don't mind the drama in this game because I don't get involved with it. I just make a few friends and try to spread the joy. I let things slide off my back, maybe because I am older (57). I enjoy Realm for the turn based factor, the new armor sets and the fact that I can muti-box. I also like the MTX store.

I haven't played many other games besides The Realm, so I don't know what it's like out there, but this is the game I love very much and choose to stay with.

I'd put my top three reasons at nostalgia, content and community. I like the effort that the dev team puts into making this game enjoyable. Sometimes, they do miss the mark, but it's our duty to communicate with them. Chas has it perfectly right that "does it feel bad" is a great test of content.

The UG is disappointing, especially if you played on MW server. It was my favorite cave. You could get a magician's robe from any mob. There was a decent chance of good loot from the Digger's bonepile, too. Adjusting the in-cave drop rate would be good. Getting a key from the Dart fight, and maybe from the Digger's bonepile, so beating the Cloud Hopper gives you the right to open all three chests would be a good change. Chest roulette feels terrible.

I played back in the 90's until duping was rampant and the economy was trash. Huge kudos to the dev team on keeping that under control! In general, they do yeoman's work to give us a good time. A little more communication about what feels right and what feels bad will make this game even better.

I used to play for the loot but there is none so i stopped playing

Nostalgia/Loot/Content/Community. I also played tons when the server launched and now have ~8 toons at or near 2k. I stopped playing about a month ago because though I haven't exactly maximized all my bigger toons, I do feel like I've basically done most everything. It's disheartening to see the prestige system rolled out with expectations set that the rest of it would be here in October and now it's nearly December. It makes me think we could be here this time next year still waiting for 3k caps, by which time I will be long gone and may check in again a few years later.

I'm Pail in game, and I've quit playing for a few reasons.

#1 Leveling is way too fast and at the same time not rewarding. You can do 1-1k in 3 days pretty easily because exp is so out of whack in some places. Get to 300ish doing whatever, do HDH on it's hot day then do anvil from 500-1k, HC works too for 500-1k but it's slower just has better loot. I liked the game better when 500-1k took a relatively long time because you ran caves for loot, and the exp was just a bonus that added up and kept it fresh.

#2 Dungeon scaling ruined endgame for me outright. It's faster to run 2 or 3 caves at the same time than to run a single cave with 6 toons. It also ruined the social aspect for me because playing with friends just makes caves much harder unless they have amazing gear which limits the people you can play with by quite a bit. (Even then, if they do have meta toons/amazing gear they'll just do their own caves tbh.)

#3 Considering the first two things I mentioned, the idea that new gear will be coming along just crushes any remaining motivation. Nobody trades really so selling stuff is a huge pain in the ass and farming up perfect gear that you know will be trash in a few months anyway doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Not to mention I can already solo/duo toon all the caves we have now anyway, the power creep from the new items will only make the second reason I've stopped playing worse.

I like the game, I like the core mechanics of the Realm. I just get frustrated when the progress I make in the game is farming 5m of shopfood from the dungeons I run while everything else I find is either useless, or worthless.

Let me add my voice on the scaling issue. I never understood why to make something better for others = nerf something for another set. The multi-boxers were hit the most due to scaling. Punishing them for having more boxes isn't the answer.

It goes along the idea of hitters and throwers need to become better (that doesn't translate into nerfing wizards).

1) Nostalgia - I played on and off (God/Woe/Malevolent) since 1997 through the reign of Sierra, CM, NG and my new favorite, RL. The game still has that old school feel to it with incredible contributions to the QoL to engage the modern player. Most of the changes to the game I love, while there are some I am not a fan of. That is expected.

2) Trading - My absolute favorite activity in the Realm has always been trading. I was dubious of BoE at launch but I do now see its merits. I do like that there are some rare items in the game that take dedication to obtain via trading (EB, 600 weps, etc). The market has been diminishing lately but that’s likely more to do with botters getting the banhammer than a dwindling player base. I expect things will pick up over time.

3) Community - While we have a few toxic members in the community, I love all you fools. I tend to stay away from the drama but even so, such is Realm. The devs are productive and very open to feedback, the mods are fun and engaging and the players color the world, “muh”s and all.

To chime in on the scaling debate above, I do support the notion of giving solo or duo players a fair shot at content. However, in my opinion, difficulty scaling should also scale the reward. A solo player running a cave with 60% scaling should get lower rewards than a full group of 6 with 120% scaling.

I may be in the minority (likely just vocal minority), but to me, the biggest downside has been the prestige system. Having powerful skills and abilities gated behind 1,000 level resets does not sit well with me. As the level/ability gap grows, new players will be discouraged from sticking around. My cousin returned to Realm about 2 months ago and once he discovered that being able to 6x requires being reset to lvl 1, he said he will try to get lvl 1k as a personal accomplishment and then he is quitting. I am sure he is not the only one that sees that increasing wall as discouraging. I’ve proposed mechanisms to counteract this in a way that would be mutually-beneficial to the hardcore and casual players, but it is usually met with hardcore players not wanting to compromise to retain superiority. That is well and fine but we may end up with 20 hardcore grinders as the entire player base, as not as many of the casual or new players are as vocal. My concern is not about my own townie self-interests as I am still leveling out a full group of 6 post-prestige, but it is one born out of my wish to see our community grow and thrive.

To me it was 1) Grinding for Loot 2) Nostalgia 3) Community.

1) Loot
Some dungeons just suck. Its a work in progress. To me, FHP had the best loot and xp in my teething levels, it's a shame more dungeons can't capture that excitement. As a solo player, middle level dungeons just felt like a terrible slog of attrition.
The many channel games played I really like. I think the moderators here are more involved than any I've ever seen in my earlier years of playing Realm. Maybe they are not on all the time, but honestly, I don't think everyone should be.
The event loot I saw as a fail. Example, The Halloween event being a large box of rooms and yet all of them 'middle difficulty' I saw as poor form. Why not take the areas all around Leinster and change them up just for this? Anyone can get to them, and you have tiered difficulty at each compass point (Scaled up considerably for West and South, of course). Like a new player wants to be carried or wants to just make jack o lanterns in town. I'd rather not leave anyone out for getting something neat. Come on.

2) Nostalgia - This game's still got that. I think the moderators are doing a great job marrying the art style to new content.

3) Community
I understand there is a lot of salt about making 6 characters to run the dungeons and get all the loot and now with balancing there doesn't seem to be a need for that. But .. isn't that a good thing? Do you honestly think the first thing new players really want to hear is 'Hey now make 5 more accounts'. I tried solo'ing. Then I tried a duo, teaming with my wife on here. But in the end, we multi'd, because I'm not spending hours doing one dungeon as a team for bad loot. Because it wasn't balanced. I don't have a problem with MB dungeons and solo dungeons being separate things, but honestly, I'd rather just not have to run my own posse. Thats fake community.

I'm not on here much anymore, community is nice, but the mob mentality to me feels like its feeding on itself.

Nov 28 2018
I go by MistyDawn and NORKattria among others in game
My top 3 reasons for continueing to play are 1.) Nastalgia 2.) Content and 3.) Storyline
I have played off and on since 1997, played some on mistwalkers, and ive been playing since relaunch. Of my 5 current accounts I pay noble for 2. I plan to noble atleast 1 more soon. I have only prestiged 2 so far, and maxed them out to 2k. I'm currently working on another 2 chars .The community is a huge factor too. What I would like to see in the game is a trade window. No scamms of players and MTX Glowies for those who wish to buy or have Glowie boots. It will help create Revinue for the realm, as well as help realmers be happy. The twitch tuesday team with JeffAtom Charlotte myself and Technofunkboy was discussing this with Redbeard tonight. I hope they deside to add them. The Glowie Boots should be bindable of course in my opinion. I'm a simple person and I play realm daily for the most part but, I dont speed through it. Trade channel is my biggest gripe. The prices are very expensive and it does nothing to help atract new players to the game. I post on sites rateing the game highly and others i can like sitejabber or anywhere mentioning the realm when i see them. I'm not much of a web surfer unless needed. I would love to see the community grow as grand as it once was back in 90's with 2k plus members and ill do what i can to help it to grow. I think solo dungeons for all lvls should be added not everyone likes to group and the solo dungeons should have loot tables comparable to group dungeons, this would help balance the game.

Nov 28 2018
I go by MistyDawn and NORKattria among others in game
My top 3 reasons for continueing to play are 1.) Nastalgia 2.) Content and 3.) Storyline
I have played off and on since 1997, played some on mistwalkers, and ive been playing since relaunch. Of my 5 current accounts I pay noble for 2. I plan to noble atleast 1 more soon. I have only prestiged 2 so far, and maxed them out to 2k. I'm currently working on another 2 chars .The community is a huge factor too. What I would like to see in the game is a trade window. No scamms of players and MTX Glowies for those who wish to buy or have Glowie boots. It will help create Revinue for the realm, as well as help realmers be happy. The twitch tuesday team with JeffAtom Charlotte myself and Technofunkboy was discussing this with Redbeard tonight. I hope they deside to add them. The Glowie Boots should be bindable of course in my opinion. I'm a simple person and I play realm daily for the most part but, I dont speed through it. Trade channel is my biggest gripe. The prices are very expensive and it does nothing to help atract new players to the game. I post on sites rateing the game highly and others i can like sitejabber or anywhere mentioning the realm when i see them. I'm not much of a web surfer unless needed. I would love to see the community grow as grand as it once was back in 90's with 2k plus members and ill do what i can to help it to grow. I think solo dungeons for all lvls should be added not everyone likes to group and the solo dungeons should have loot tables comparable to group dungeons, this would help balance the game.

Trade windows shouldn't be a thing, part of the realm has ALWAYS been the need to have trust of some sort in the community, we have dumbed down the game enough for people, do you have trade windows in real life for when you buy items on ebay from strangers? I do not feel moving ANYTHING from the Den to MTX would be a fair move to those spent 100's of millions of gold trying to obtain those items from the Den. Therefore, I feel glowies, and all other cosmetics, should stay in den and randomly in events like they currently are. Prices are expensive?! 75k-500k for set gear is expensive? Or is it because you can't buy end-game level 600 weapons for next to nothing? solo dungeons should have loot tables comparable to those who put in MORE effort and run more accounts? I am sorry but this entire post screams I am lazy give me stuff and again make me put in the least effort possible.

The reality is that eventually there will have to be some form of secure trading if this game ever wishes to attract new/young players.

It's simply not modern or acceptable in today's market to have no form of secure trading.

I get that we all grew up with no secure trade and that it's a part of Realm's historical identity but I think this becomes one of those points where they will have to decide: do we want to appeal to a new market or are we happy with the old time players we have?

I really think it's all but inevitable at this point, and that instead of us all resisting it maybe we should be talking about ways to implement that don't destroy the community. I do think that the whole buy/sell community has a stake in insecure trading.

A couple ideas that I've had are:

a) Some sort of auction house with somewhat steep fees.

b) Some sort of secure trade environment consumable via mtx.

Each allows secure trading at some expense that for many deals may not even prove worthwhile. There would still be a reason to do insecure trades, which would mitigate impact to the trade community.

I don't confess to have fully thought these ideas out, nor do I specifically endorse either. I guess I just present them as an alternate line of thinking to simply black-and-white trade-windows-or-not type of discussion.

Anyone else have thoughts or ideas along this line?

I would agree with a form of secure trading at a cost, so as to not kill the community feel all together. Without the necessity for honest players in the community, the community will fade even further then it has. To some people the whole reason they play the game is to MM and be that vital part that is needed. It requires you to be aware of those you are playing the game with, and scamming, hate to say it, but is almost like a profession in the game. If someone quits because they lost an item, is that really the games fault or the players?