does anyone have the ban hammer? and would they kindly use it in me i kinda want the chains 🥲🥲

Hi guys! I took a longg break from Royale High and was surprised to see the value of the GoT set depreciate dramatically. I also just won the Tidalglow halo from the fountain -- would you expect it to increase or decrease in value when the season ends? (based on past trends)

I’ve played since very early 2019, and I’ve built about 15,000,000 in worth in that time. I’ve sank hours into roleplays and outfits and builds and I’ve been here for almost every major season. I’ve definitely seen the game have “phases” in this time and how those have impacted how the devs handle the game today. This is a really long post but I just wanted it out there, I like discussing these things with people!

Update schedule (or lack of it)

I think honestly the game boomed the most in 2020. Lockdown meant a bunch of people who (were supposed to be doing online school, most likely) had plenty of time to play the game. Sunset island at this time was booming and trading was out. The spring-summer update in 2020 added a vast amount of new items and admittedly set standards extremely high. At this point we had sets pretty much every season, new hairs almost every month. The developers had clearly set this as their standard and wanted to keep to it.

I think this actually was part of the downfall, after 2020 when lockdown eased a lot of the team couldn’t keep the same momentum and updates slowed. Events came late if they even came at all and the semblance of a schedule vanished. I think this may have lead to some cracks forming in the community, because previously everyone would come together to talk about new content, but with less of it, less buzz was generated and a lot of players got bored and just never came back.

Now, we don’t get any communication. Every four months or so we get a few hairs, a few toy items locked behind a paywall (and I’m not biased because I have most codes redeemed. I just get angry for those who don’t have access to them!) and a chest if we’re lucky. That’s it. Bugs don’t seem to get fixed even if they have seen complaints, such as the code rotting in campus 2 and outfits not loading, and I theorise it’s because Barbie doesn’t want to release smaller updates to address this. Because each update for a time was bigger than the last, she now fears going back to smaller updates that don’t have a new set or realm or item.

Broken promises and neglected features

When campus 3 first came out, the hype was understandably huge. This had been drip marketed to us for ages! The developers promised more drops of content and “waves” of additions to the campus. These never came. I noticed a lot of players falling off as we waited months and months with no communication. After the soft confirmation of campus 3 being dropped, campus 4.1 (beta) came out. I noticed the reception was generally very positive, but sadly this campus didn’t last long. Months later this too was axed for campus 4.2. I noticed a lot less people seemed to like this one at first? The cafeteria was cute but overall I saw a lot of complaints about the structure and lag. This campus too was axed, and now we have 4.3. No other campuses have been updated since then, which means campus 1, 2, 3, 4.1 and 4.2 are all dead. Barbie seems to be incredibly indecisive about what she adds to the game, and while I don’t think this is a bad trait, it’s a bad trait for someone who develops a game to have. Players got tired of all the mind changing and more dropped off because of it.

Barbie also dropped a lot of other features over time, we no longer got seasonal sets, toy items dropped to a crawling pace once released, the mermaid shop items and tails don’t fit correctly with a lot of items, the lore they started hasn’t seen additions in years, and so on. And we rarely if ever see a fix for these complaints.

Greed

I feel like this is the one a lot of players are waiting for. The developers have definitely gotten worse.

Having initially promised to never release sets for Robux, it’s clear they had their sights set at money, as they soon went back on this sentiment in a really deceptive way, toys. But there was signs before this too.

The sets over the years became more expensive, and diamond earning methods didn’t scale this increase. It was evident Barbie was trying to coerce players into spending either hours of time or money on her game at this point. Outfit making essentials such as heels started costing an outrageous amount of diamonds, some of which amounted to about eight hours of straight playtime for an average player who had multipliers. Even more without. Quality of life features such as hair colours, patterns and the now semi redundant customised C2 lockers got locked behind a Robux wall.

I am deliberately not counting the GoT set here. The proceeds were proven to, to some degree, be going to charity. Some speculation claims the devs took huge cuts but I’m simply not qualified enough to talk on that, nor do I think it was horrendously greedy. It was an optional set for a good cause which was not essential to own for a good gaming experience.

Then came the toys. They aren’t for Robux sure, but they still cost real money. About half the items now released are locked behind not only a paywall, but a paywall many people cannot even access due to stocking issues! The only method of obtaining these things in game is a very tiny chance from a mermaid bubble, and they’re expensive when you do get them. As someone who has most of the toys, the quality is nice and the items are cute, but I’m getting tired of almost every nice item in the game being a toy. The only ballgown that isn’t a toggle of a smaller skirt just made big since miss lady rose is a toy. All the elemental fairy dresses are toys. The only animal feet sans the hooves are toys. It’s a bit much when a toy item is the only item in a set niche. And even though a lot of the items are toys, the toys drop extremely slow and randomly. This causes a panic buying effect on people when a toy does drop, and also incentivises buying all the toys before they have items.

The positives

I don’t like ending things on a bad note, so I do want to list some positive changes I’ve noticed too!

First of all, the sets are more versatile. Skirts now often have long and short toggles, you can add and remove features including fur and snowflakes that mean they’re now year round items, and most sets and items often feel like you’re actually getting more than one item due to how variable the toggles are!

Second of all when events do release, they are really cool. Halloween in specifics is extremely fun, tons of players band together to grind candy and explore the chests! I don’t think they’ve lost their charm even after all these years.

Third, I think the updates we do get are very well done. I am not talking about old bugs not being patched, and not saying the updates themselves are good or exactly what we want, but when we get new features, it’s very rare that they have any bugs, let alone game breaking ones. New items almost always fit, new realms normally always have correct physics, and new items are usually very pretty!

Fourth, I think the devs are trying to grab the reins on this game again. They know where they’ve made mistakes and are clearly not repeating them. The addition of mermaids and the mermaid shop, new roleplay features and realms, and the lean back into “fantasy” sets clearly shows that they’re trying to steer back into their roots a little. I’m hoping in the future they integrate the uniqueness of the elements and magical creatures more!

Fifth bullet points that don’t really warrant a whole paragraph:

The detail in some of the features is insane! Each cafeteria item has a description and isn’t just a reskin, furniture has so many poses to interact with and so many items have secret interactions!

The devs are really good at storytelling through sets and items, such as the descriptions on a lot of the winter calendar items

The devs are really good at adding small touches to updates. Instead of making just the mermaid shop they gave us little fishies to unlock too!

And finally I think the community that is left has held steadfast. Aside from the odd toxic players, you’re all really nice. Compare this fandom to almost any other Roblox game and this one comes out on top for how kind and gentle they are. Yes there’s arguments and whatnot but I think that’s natural. The amount of cool outfit hack posts and community projects I see never fails to amaze me.

So, I started Rh in 2017 and I've been a loyal player up until like 2023. After quitting for a WHILE I recently decided to check how it's doing, and even though the decline is obvious and very sad, playing it still makes me happy. I'm tired of chasing trading, grinding and desperately trying to keep up, and I just want to enjoy the game when I feel like a distraction.

Even though, I remember when I used to play with my friends or just start roleplaying or complimenting whoever I came across. Now the community feels empty, like all connection there used to be is completely gone (call it nostalgia, call it whatever. I also wanna point out that the chat ban holds a lot of responsibility for this). Trying to play like back in the day, I discovered you can still chat by typing in your name in the menu that appears on the right. Sure, it's tedious, but I'd say it's a good enough solution. Plus, I immediately thought it's great for proximity chat and therefore, roleplay.

I really don't want to let the community die, no matter how many obstacles, and I want to contribute to something that I loved and still do. So, I think it'd be a great idea to start a roleplay server.

The idea is to build a well curated community (no matter how small) and roleplay with an established story built by the members, a weekly play session (or more, but I want it to be accessible for all of us who don't have that much free time anymore), characters and activities about them, events... There are many things to take into account, but I'm more than willing to put in the effort. One of the main problems however, is whether people would even want to join.

All of that just to ask if there's anyone who would be interested in something like this, or even who would like to help create it or just hang out in the meantime and offer input and opinion. Anything really is appreciated :D

Tl:dr Is anyone interested in roleplay servers anymore? (I'm sorry for the big text lol)