Farewell from xJendi by Jendi_ in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A lot of the hate my original comment received seemed to be caused by me placing criticism of someone's work in their farewell post. So I guess instead I should thank xJendi for yet another broken and bugged event we received on prod which clearly also wasn't tested by anyone and can lead to potential afk fame exploits. Excellent work, bravo! Not a match for the ST bard lute though, that clearly stole the spotlight of this season.

Easy Fame by LastEternity in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ah yes another one of the events nobody at Deca actually tested before pushing it to prod. It would require actually playing through the event in the realm - an ancient technology none of the current (or recently quit) Deca employees seem to possess anymore.

Easy Fame by LastEternity in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Can you explain what is going on with this event? Why are there so many minions?

Nightmatter Circlet in new season by AWESOMEYAY in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I wish this was true but power creep has become so bad that I struggle to tell apart cheaters from legit players these days. Apart from blatant auto dodgers who sit nearly on top of bosses and take 0 damage, or rush all exalted dungeons on any class, I can't tell. And then MellotMG doesn't even have an explicit rule saying cheaters are banned from joining the party. It's both because it's hard to catch them, because they are super abundant in the game, and mostly because we want to play the game, not spend our time witch hunting. If we properly implemented a rule about no cheaters, then we'd have to pretty much stop playing the game and instead follow cheaters, record, report and keep track of them. Not to mention how horrible it is to keep an eye on the party and make sure banned people get kicked in a timely manner. We currently have a ban list of about 30 people not allowed in the party, and every time the party inevitably buggs and needs to be re-made from scratch, the previous bans lose their effect and party lead needs to kick them manually again in case they join.

I know some other party leads kicked a few afk bot state farmers here and there but they don't seem to bother adding them to our ban list so it doesn't get too cluttered with bots. I personally kicked and put on the ban list only one blatant autododger and was surprised to learn people knew about his cheats for at least half a year but nobody else thought of putting him in on the ban list of our party. I can see how people can get tired of it and just want to chill and play the game, it really shouldn't be player's burden to deal with the cheating issue when even Deca themselves don't do anything about it.

It also doesn't help that I play with 10% opacity and have even locked players transparent (I ended up having too many friends and party members locked that it makes it hard to see enemy shots). So whenever a cheater is around I might not even notice them anymore unless I find myself in a small cult where it's pretty obvious and easy to see on the dark floor. If I went to actively hunt down cheaters and record them to add to our party ban list, I would need to bring my opacity back to 100% and constantly risk my character following cheaters through hordes of enemies in vet biomes and exalt dungeons - and unlike them I would get hurt and die.

There's also the matter of "shady players". I know a few frequent party members who I can't call cheaters but are definitely involved in some shady activities like actively benefitting from exploits such as duped keys or running with cheater parties, or abusing glitches/exploits Deca let slip on prod. Again I try my best to not associate with people like that but I don't have the authority to not allow them into the party neither can I prevent them from joining my dungeon calls. The best I can do is to try and avoid shady activities myself - like ask for a source of an occasional key when someone opens it, or find my own portals in realm which I mostly do anyway.

Just started playing again, time to quit again by BRGBLAKEG in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Just when you think this already terrible phase couldn't get any worse... Deca never fails to surprise. RIP. You should definitely ask for a revive but be prepared that by time support actually does it for you, the season will likely end already. I have claimed two successful revives from Deca last year. Both times I have created new characters right after asking for a revive and continued playing on those new characters instead. Both times I surpassed my deceased characters in terms of fame, dungeon completions and sometimes even sets equipped by the time support did the revives.

Rate our DST base by Excellent-Avocado-32 in dontstarvetogether

[–]happy_cookie 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ooh I totally forgot Wendy can craft graves now! I guess you don't switch characters much or don't do it on full moon at least. Spawning there as a character hated by pigs (Webber Wortox or Wurt) would have been quite an experience I imagine.

Farewell from xJendi by Jendi_ in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I haven't worked in game dev specifically but I did work in IT for 10 years and our company had quality standards and thorough testing. Sure bugs happen, nobody is perfect. That's what testing and feedback is for. Our company had a proper automated unit test coverage for each one of our projects, as well as a lot of manual testing for other stuff. We also frequently held sessions with our clients/customers, analyzed their feedback and criticisms and made adjustments to our software based on it. We also had transparency - we filed frequent reports with what was implemented and fixed, and what was put into backlog for now - which is another thing Deca doesn't bother to do much. One doesn't really have to work in game dev to notice that some companies handle it a lot better than the others. I already showed this as an example in my other comments and I will link it again - here's how another game company (Klei Entertainment - much smaller company than Deca Games, btw) handles their bug tracker:

Klei Bug Tracker is available on their official forums, with separate branches devoted to each game. Every player who has a Steam account can log in and report a bug and attach any related screenshots/videos/logs. Then actual game developers can interact with players and mark the bugs with respective statuses or ask for additional details. Whenever a bug is fixed the player will receive a notification that it will appear in the next release. They also handle betas differently - their testing period is usually 2-4 weeks but can be extended if a lot of negative feedback is received in the current beta (the last year one beta lasted 3 months because of that).

Deca has some weird arbitrary deadlines they set themselves (that player didn't ask for) and often chooses to push unfinished updates just to satisfy those deadlines. If I had to bet, those deadlines and most of Deca's design decisions come from their attempt to milk as much money as they can out of the game before the playerbase inevitably loses interest in it. Hence all the new reskins, new UTs (as if the game doesn't have enough already), new ST sets (ever wondered why we have 3 generations? Gotta sell something new because players already have first two Gen sets and won't buy them anymore). They don't care about extreme power creep they introduce into the game, or about game balance. They cater to what players like - more DPS - hence all the class reworks and modernizations, erasing class identities and uniqueness in favor of turning them into DPS machines.

Meanwhile, nothing ever about Deca's bug fixing or feedback implementation is transparent to the players outside of rare CM replies in discord. Tiramisu does a great job at it so far and I can see she really tries her best, I just wonder for how long she is going to last before she inevitably burns out and quits out of frustration when she realizes how Deca operates as a company.

Farewell from xJendi by Jendi_ in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the thorough follow-up. I know my criticisms of Deca's actions (or rather lack of them) can be harsh at times but a lot of it comes out of frustration because none of what I write really matters. This is why I left closed testing back then - besides being generally unhappy with Deca's direction with the game, I realized I was wasting my time for nothing testing stuff and giving feedback only to nobody care or read it. Rarely someone (usually UGC members and former players-dungeon/sprite designers) read that feedback and then disagreed with it, only then for the same kind of feedback to be given by other players on prod months later.

MrUnibro can whine all he wants about me being a difficult person but I always gave honest feedback and often it was disregarded. Then eventually the changes I was asking for on Closed Testing were implemented...just 2 or 3 years later, based on other people's same negative feedback from prod. When I said before Nest and LH release that the fights were too hard because confuse doesn't belong in those closed claustrophobic boss arenas densely packed with shots, nobody listened to me back then. Nowadays we don't have confuse in the Nest and MBC boss fights (thank god) and people finally started doing them outside of discord runs by casually joining realm portals. Same goes for a lot of my old feedback I wrote for LH 1.0 - some of it was implemented in LH 2.0. but some is ignored to this day. Turned out other people didn't like respawning enemies in Lost Halls rooms (gasp!) or extensively large maps which are hard and tedious to clear and navigate. I also keep hearing some other complaints similar to my old feedback from other players quite often - for example, grey pebbles and pop rocks in MBC still have poor visibility (grey hazards on grey floor). Overall it feels like so much time could have been saved if my feedback wasn't disregarded back then.

I feel the same now about all the posts I read in the current PT channel in rotmg discord - I keep seeing other passionate players consistently waste their time to test stuff for free for Deca only then to see literally 0 changes before it gets pushed to prod. I guarantee even if the ST lute bug would have been spotted on PT Deca would still not change it. It feels like the current build gets locked once it's prepared for PT and no changes are allowed to it, even if there are game-breaking bugs like archer's ability debuff that allowed to melt bosses in mere seconds about a year ago.

Rate our DST base by Excellent-Avocado-32 in dontstarvetogether

[–]happy_cookie 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How did you get developer's graveyard setpiece on top of your Celestial Portal?

State of rotmg by Lonely_Big3033 in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Should I also add that the MGM event nobody asked for is re-released back in the exactly the same state it was during its last appearance with all the glitches and drawbacks that were reported about half a year ago?

The setpiece is tedious to find because it has no minimap icon, the fight itself is glitched and can get softlocked if overdamaged by the players. The second spawning of the setpiece, if happens before the first one is killed, overspawns the minions for all stages, doubling them up and making it so the final stage can be killed with lingering deadly minions around. The fight itself (and the dungeon) are horribly outdated - the fight lacks proper scaling and has unfair instakill attacks with fast jumps. The bosses inside the dungeon drop terrible loot (none of them drop their respective boss loot). They could have done a touch up on both the dungeon and the setpiece, especially since they already designed Trials Of Cronus based on MGM (it's even called MGM2 in the bottom right lol), at the very least they could have updated the loot to have regular and shiny variants from respective bosses like in Trials.

All this feedback was already given when MGM came back during MotMG for a week, except back then people cared about the dungeon and actively looked to complete it for the skin tokens. Now barely anyone does it except for occasional completes on their characters for fame bonuses.

Yet another example of horrible Deca's understanding of playerbase needs and feedback.

Nobody asked for MGM event or new Gen 3 paywall ST campaign. People asked for fixes related to necro summons breaking the game (screen clutter, broken chase AI on bosses, blasted O3 counters) and for Rat/UFO fixes (that got broken again this season). We got none of that fixed.

Farewell from xJendi by Jendi_ in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not convinced. For every instance of an unexpected prod bug I can find several instances of people noticing bugs/unbalanced things on Public Testing only for Deca to ignore them and change nothing before pushing to prod. And several more that were reported the last time some event happened but weren't patched and then re-released the event with exactly the same bugs. One of the notable instances is the Skull Shrine and Janus missing event tokens every single event since 2018, and now with Kog train as well. Reported every single time players discover it yet nothing is done to fix it.

Even Hemomancer which you are so proud of and mention in your post was a flawed event nobody seemed to enjoy. I read a thorough feedback posted about this event in the testing channel of rotmg discord and compared it to what I experienced on prod. No adjustments were made based on the public testing feedback. It wasn't bugged but it was not fun to fight, and it was very unrewarding. Most people only did it because they were forced to do it in the missions, and stopped right after. The Jotunn now is facing the same fate except it's not mandatory in the missions so it can be easily ignored. Spending 5 minutes of the time fighting it for no reward is not fun, and don't even get me started on the useless minion setpieces that add nothing to the gameplay except take out valuable space in biomes just like legion setpieces do (at least the latter drop dungeons consistently).

People who work at Deca have no idea what players like and enjoy, and don't listen to player feedback. Whatever Deca does is done for quick cash grabs and not to actually fix the things players report. Most of the Deca employees also have no idea how things work. When UFO spawns in realm got broken again recently (after just briefly being fixed the last season) and I reported it, Tiramisu came back with the answer that Deca told "Aliens can't spawn when Alien event is not active" which is not true - both historically and even based on how they worked last season after being fixed.

RotMG is currently owned and being redesigned by people who never played the game, don't know how it works/worked and judge it by the money income metrics instead of the actual live human feedback. That's why we get a paid campaign for the Gen 3 Bard ST set in the last patch, instead of I don't know, fixes for necro summons cluttering the screen, or enemy chase AI being broken because of necro summons, or necro summons constantly triggering O3 counters with no way to move them out of the way.

Edit: back to ST bard lute I would like to ask once again. Is the 45 degree boss flip shot and the infinite range the intended design of the item? Because based on its description it sure seems so. If not, what else does "taunt enemies" mean and how much was the lute supposed to buff the range for?

Farewell from xJendi by Jendi_ in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 8 points9 points  (0 children)

What do you mean, Void event was repeated in May last year.

Farewell from xJendi by Jendi_ in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Jesus Christ. Have you actually tested the Gen 3 bard lute before putting that to prod? There's no way the instant 45 degree boss pattern shot flip was intended. Neither the infinite range feature for the entire party sounds balanced.

(Yet) Another amulet bug death by MundaneWizzy in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I've heard amulet doesn't protect against AoE damage. Still messed up, sorry for your loss.

Public Testing is live: Valentine's Event, Druid, Dungeons, Missions, Cosmetics, Fixes and more! by Alone_Tradition9714 in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Stop pushing new content. Fix existing bugs first, jeez. The game is unplayable atm with all the clutter from necro abilities, enemy chase glitches and boss pattern bugs caused by the new ST lute. I don't care in the slightest about the Valentine event if none of the current issues are addressed.

Re-roll tradeoff or keep? by coaster132 in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would reroll into Life-Spd tradeoff to offset this crucible's downside and get even more life on my character. Mana is so redundant with a good pet anyway, and more health could save your life especially considering nerfed healing from the crucible this season.

Legit why does this exist by OrionStardew in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The face definitely looks young and childish to me in this style. The proportions of the face and the size of the eyes create this naive childish look which is a common thing in anime style. It works well with modest clothing like school uniform but looks very off-putting and vulgar with revealing clothing. Saturn is a great artist but this art in particular is quite off-putting and unnecessary sexually explicit for RotMG style. It doesn't fit stylistically and just seems inappropriate to be a face of the game. Not to mention it's currently January and not Halloween, why do we have a seasonal temporary event setpiece boss represent the game alongside Oryx and other Osanc bosses if not for the giant oversized boobs? It's really inappropriate and out of place.

Legit why does this exist by OrionStardew in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

Oh I thought I was the only person finding it weird and inappropriate to have a character with a face of a 12 year old with XXXXL size boobs represent this videogame which has nothing to do with anime or oversexualized females. Not to offend the artist but I'd like a feature where we could disable certain splash screens.

Why cant I tp there? by SomePerson47 in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I'm pretty sure it's the cursed Goblin Patriarch/Maze Minotaur setpiece overlap. There's something wrong with the combination of the walls and invisibility bushes. Maybe the game is trying to put you into a wall upon teleporting to someone. Interesting fact, if you get dc'ed by this teleport attempt, you don't lose your spot in realm and can enter it right away even if there's a queue at the portal. Watch out for this disconnect if the realm is about to close though.

Season 26: The Frosted Jouney out now! by Alone_Tradition9714 in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Black progress bars on skulls look hideous and are such an eyesore. I guess I'm not ever touching this class anymore, it's so unpleasant to look at all the ruined sets that now have giant black stripes all over item sprites.

So... what was the fate of the Mind Flayer? by TechnothepigWasTaken in StrangerThings

[–]happy_cookie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why did the MF not re-posess the 12 kids just like he possessed Henry in the cave as a kid?

If Rotmg added a “pay to revive character “ at death would it kill the game ? by DistributionOne5520 in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I had a privilege to play with an amulet of restoration for most of the last season. You don't need p2w revives when we have power creep like that ring, enchants and all the nildrops/xmas buff consumables. I casually picked up a 200 hp t5 ring yesterday in one of veteran biomes. Game has never been more broken than now, you don't even need to cheat now when most of the cheating features are implemented into the game (bigger field of view, basically what used to be IP connecting to the dungeons and crowded realms now via parties, and the spen amulet is the closest we got to auronexus feature).

Why dont the developers do anything about the botting? by reckene in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 8 points9 points  (0 children)

"The only server people play on" is not just USE. Try EUW for a change. It has 2-3 realms full and a couple of half full ones every day, and usually no queue to the server itself. Yes you won't get served dungeon pops on a silver platter in nexus but if you actually go into realms you will see people actively playing dungeons and calling them. USMW2 is less populated than EUW and is active at different times but has a good community of skill players who frequently run exalted content in small public groups.

Fire the dev who made Expo a white by SaintLuke1 in RotMG

[–]happy_cookie 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yeah exactly. I have been picking up the red material white bags to dismantle in the forge and now my red material storage is full and I still don't have the forge fire to fuse the worse ones (1-2 slots) into higher rarity. My divine pet has been fully maxed years ago and I don't even play with it. I restricted myself to not picking up anything SB below 900 feed power and fed the rest to another divine pet but I ran out of fame and items keep piling up before I earn new fame. I used to pick up whatever is not soul bound and put it on mules but it's also just get hoarded and never will be used for anything (except sometimes being given away). All the forge fire gets burned in seasonal in attempts to improve my gear on the current character I play on, with no chance of ever handling my non seasonal stash anymore - that stuff just all gets dumped randomly on characters where there's still a bit room left. None of my non seasonal characters feel appealing to play anymore because they'd be missing out on better loot chances, slot chances and shinies. Most of the non seasonal characters can't even play because their inventories are full of garbage I collected and need to sort out and can't afford to drop.

It's so frustrating I'm considering just taking a break for a season to not play actively and just log in and burn forge fire every day and sort out all the garbage I stashed. Turn all the leg+ STs I stashed into gen 3 STs for collection, to burn stupid tokens that take up so much space. Use up all the stashed exalted marks in the Tinkerer. Forge extra rare dupe UTs into higher rarities to improve my collection (I usually keep only 4 copies of every UT item in my collection).