Difference between revisions of "Rumble Fighter"

Latest revision as of 10:31, 16 April 2021

Rumble Fighter

Genre	Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game
Gamming Style	MMORPG
Platform	Windows, Steam
Release Date	August 2, 2007 (USA)
Developer	Nimonix WeMade Entertainment (2007-2011)
Publisher	RedFox Ent. (2016 - ), GamesCampus (2014-2016), OGPlanet (2007-2014)
Website	https://www.playredfox.com/rumble_fighter

Rumble Fighter^[1] is a free-to-play, fighting, massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) ^[2] developed by Nimonix and WeMade Entertainment, available on PC. ^[3] Rumble Fighter mixes martial arts and fast-paced boxing into a PvP (player vs player) brawl^[4]. The characters within the game are customizable, allowing players to create different characters with unique fighting styles and transformations. Players can choose between different forms of gameplay, including engaging in free-for-all battles against one another or fighting teams on a variety of different maps and game modes.

History

Rumble Fighter was originally produced by Nimonix and WeMade Entertainment but has gone through multiple publishers throughout its lifetime development ^[5]. OGPlanet was the first publisher to work with these developers in 2007 and was able to later release Rumble Fighter after it had received a lot of positive feedback from its beta testers. The game flourished during its initial years as many players were drawn to the game's unique design. However, as the game became increasingly popular, hackers began to exploit the game, discouraging WeMade Entertainment from further continuing its development alongside Nimonix.

In 2014, Rumble Fighter would announce that it would be moving its publisher to GamesCampus due to disagreements between Nimonix and OGPlanet that ultimately led to their discontinued service ^[5]. Following the contract termination, Nimonix decided to set a low 30-item limit on item transfers during its publisher change, which outraged many players who had played the game for a long time. As a result, a significant drop was seen in the number of players since the game transferred to GamesCampus.

Eventually, GamesCampus would be bought out by a competitor in 2016 who decided to put an end to Rumble Fighter’s services after witnessing the continuing decline in its player base ^[5]. In response, former GamesCampus CEO David Son decided to make a new startup company called RedFox Games that would later adopt Rumble Fighter and provide full account transfers to current players who were still actively playing the game.

In 2016, Rumble Fighter was released on Steam where it is now presently hosted. Since changing platforms, the game has still continued to see low player numbers with an all-time peak of 32 users playing concurrently since being added onto Steam.^[6] The game is also available through other video game distribution catalogs similar to Steam such as Pmang in Japan and Webzen’s PC room in South Korea.

Gameplay

Classes in Rumble Fighter^[7]

Classes ^[8]

There are currently six unique classes in Rumble Fighter each specializing in its own abilities.

• Striker: Physical strength; close combat; low spirit
• Soul Fighter: High speed; low defense, hit-and-run attacks
• Elementalist: Long-ranged; strong psychic powers; high spirit
• Alchemist: High defense; slow speed; mechanical weapons
• Shaman: Souls and spirits; well-balanced stats; inflict status effects
• Android: A combination of offense and defense; recover spirit points; repeated ExoCore

Attributes ^[8]

Attributes in Rumble Fighter^[9]

Each class in Rumble Fighter has its own unique set of preset attributes(stats) that can be affected depending on items equipped onto the character as well as gem enchantments within the game.

• Health Points (HP): Health meter
• Skill Points (SP): Special skills meter
• Strength (STR): Damage meter
• Armor (ARM): Defense meter
• Speed (SPD): Movement speed meter
• Jump (JMP): Jump height meter

Scrolls in Rumble Fighter^[10]

Exocores in Rumble Fighter^[11]

Scrolls and Exocores ^[8]

Scrolls and Exocores are equipable items in Rumble Fighter. Scrolls determine the character's fighting style within the game with each Scroll being unique and drawing from many traditional fighting styles in addition to fantasy fighting styles. Exocores are special add-ons that allow players to transform their characters and gain new abilities depending on the class they choose. Many Exocores are shared within all classes, but some Exocores are also class-exclusive.

EXP and Carats ^[8]

Players in Rumble Fighter gain experience points (EXP) and level up the more they play. Each level is separated based on total EXP accumulated throughout the game and gives players access to even more game modes, systems, and items as they level up. Carats act as the in-game currency used in Rumble Fighter to purchase various items within the in-game shop to customize their characters. Carats are earned by playing the game in any mode, attending game events, and also selling owned items. There is also an alternative cash currency called Astros within Rumble Fighter that is obtainable only by purchasing with real money that allows players to purchase the same items as they would with Carats but with real money instead.

Game Modes ^[8]

Rumble fighter has a variety of different game modes that players can choose from while playing the game. Each mode consists of its own unique set of maps that players battle on either single-player or multi-player, both with and against other players.

• Battle Mode: For players who enjoy free-for-all battles. The objective is to defeat everyone else on the map and to be the last one standing.
• Rumble Mode: There are five different Rumble Modes that each have their own objectives.
  • King of the Hill: Players fight one another to control a certain area on the map. Whoever controls this area the longest will win King of the Hill.
  • Moving Screen: Players begin at the ground level of the map while fighting one another. As the match continues, the map will slowly begin moving upwards and players must avoid falling off the map while also defeating other players with the same goal.
  • Caged Beast: Players are separated into teams and will fight opponents one-on-one as the rest of their teammates await in cages. Each cage will open one at a time when the current fighting player on their team is defeated. The next player will then have to fight the same opponent until they are defeated. This continues until all players on one team are defeated.
  • Potion Battle: Players battle to drink their way to victory as each player runs around the map finding potions scattered randomly around. The player that drinks the most potions within a given time limit is the winner.
  • Arena: Players are thrown into a small arena where each team has to try and acquire the most kills possible. Once a kill count of 12 is reached for their team, that team wins.
• Adventure Mode: For players who enjoy playing alongside other players against game bosses. Players must fight through waves of monsters before reaching the final boss.

Ethical Concerns

Ethics in Combat Games

Rumble Fighter is one of the many combat games played today. In fact, the current most popular game, based on player count, is Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on Steam. The current players today are 1,092,173, which is 485,087 players over the second most popular game, Dota 2 (which is again a combat game)^[12]. The ethics behind players engaging in combat videogames, especially for minors, has been an exhausted constant discussion. As long as there exists people against violent combat video games, there exists people for it. Patrick Markey from Villanova University claimed in one of his books that the war against violent video games is 'wrong'. In his book, he states, "Here’s what they’re (the media and government) not telling you: Only a small minority of school shooters played violent video games. If that surprises you, you’re not alone--the national dialogue around these games has become skewed and biased. On the flip side, most well-adjusted children and teenagers regularly play violent video games, while never exhibiting violent behavior in real life."^[13] As Markey showed, there are many people who play violent video games regularly and exemplify no desire for violence. However, violence and war has been used to engage audiences for a long time in movies, video games, etc. War tends to fascinate and engage people which is what causes people to be worried about playing too many violent video games. Creators of these violent combat video games claim that their sole purpose is to provide an entertaining game to their users, but that doesn't mean they have no responsibilities. The Battlefield 3's Executive Producer, Patrick Bach, stated that "We don't want to make bad choices and have bad moral values being forced onto the player, because it's an interactive experience where the player actually put themselves into the position where he or she needs to do these things."^[14] Another key factor that plays into both sides of the ethics in combat videogames is whether you have experience playing these games or not. Users who have experience playing these games have their own experiences to rely on and make decisions based on that.

Ethics in Rumble

Trading System (Scamming)

Rumble Fighter Lobby^[15]

Trade scamming^[16] in Rumble Fighter is when one player takes advantage of another player’s trust or ignorance inside the game and steals from that player via in-game means. The player committing the act is called the scammer and the scammer achieves this usually by promising the victim a certain item in return for another item. Once the scammer receives the item they want from the victim, the scammer breaks the agreement by not returning the gift as promised and will block the victim from all forms of communication. As a result, the victim is left emotionally damaged while also losing currency within the game ^[17]. This can often translate to real-life currency for in-game items that were purchased by the player. Due to the lack of formal trading systems within the game, this is one of the most common forms of scamming that occurs. The impact left on the victim can be quite severe as Rumble Fighter does not take responsibility for any scams that occur within the game. Rumble Fighter has repeatedly stated that the support team will not compensate victims of scam incidents nor will take action on the scammer no matter how vile the scam may be. Scamming is very common in Rumble Fighter, as it is in other games with an online community. Multiple players in Rumble Fighter resort to scamming in an attempt to trick new or ignorant players into trading items they would otherwise have to earn or pay for themselves. As a result, this has discouraged many players from continuing to play the game ^[16].

Hacking

Hacking in Rumble Fighter is similar to scamming but much more severe. Hacking occurs when one player is able to gain access to another player’s account. Once the hacker gains access to another player's Rumble Fighter account, they will sell all of the other player’s items and will use the currency gained from the sold items in order to gift multiple items back for themselves. The most common way for hackers in Rumble Fighter to gain access to these accounts is usually by taking advantage of the other player’s trust. The hacker will usually promise something in exchange for the other player’s account information such as free items or in-game currency. Again, this can leave severe emotional damage on the user who will have lost all of their progress within the game as the Rumble Fighter support team does not take responsibility for such actions and will not do anything to help support the victim ^[18]. This, again, has caused many players to eventually quit playing the game. Rumble Fighter's response is only to not give personal information to strangers online.

Flaming

Flaming^[19] is a form of cyberbullying that involves posting hateful and hurtful comments about another user online. Within Rumble Fighter, flaming is very common as many players become frustrated with their teammates and will resort to degrading them as a result of their poor in-game performance. Currently, the punishment of flaming in Rumble Fighter is a chat restriction/limitation where a player is prevented from using the chat feature in the game for a set period of time. This type of online behavior tends to be facilitated by the anonymous nature of the game, allowing players to sign up with any name they want.^[20] Due to this nature, Rumble Fighter gives users a sense of psychological freedom to act aggressively and threaten other users without any serious repercussions. As a result, individuals are able to attack others while hiding behind a screen, often driving other users away from the game and can inflict undeserving suffering as well. This type of harassment can have real-life consequences, as many players tend to experience emotional pain from their in-game experiences.

Many methods for reducing this form of harassment have been recommended. While chat restrictions have served some purpose, censoring bots and other forms of chat moderation have also been used to reduce the amount of hostile chat between players. However, these forms of moderation are not as effective in games that allow voice chats between players. Overall, the amount and types of hate speech used by players online is a serious issue that needs to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. While it is possible for parents of children to restrict access to these features, adults can also be the victim of this verbal abuse with little to no consequence. Overall, most publishers recommend disabling these features as the most effective way to avoid flaming. ^[21]

Griefing

Griefing is an activity undertaken by a player in an attempt to disrupt and annoy another player on purpose. ^[22] This can involve a variety of methods including cheating, stealing items, team kills and causing as much general grief to other players as they can. This can occur through a variety of methods in Rumble Fighters, including players who intentionally make attempts to lose the game for their team or actively attempting to trade scam another user. While some players may enjoy griefers, by seeing them as a challenge to overcome, others consider griefing as a form of cyberbullying that should be moderated. Rumble Fighter's inability to deal with such players was a contributing factor in causing many players to leave the game.

Pay-to-win

Players in Rumble Fighter can purchase items in the shop in order to boost the strength of their characters. However, these items are quite expensive and it takes many hours of gameplay to buy just one item within the game using the in-game currency. However, Rumble Fighter also allows players to purchase the same items with real-life money called Astros, which allows users to gain access to these items without having to invest the same amount of time and effort into the game as others. This divides the player population of Rumble Fighter into players who are willing to use the pay-to-win^[23] system and those who are not. As a result, many users who do not spend money on the game are forced to play against players who have bought extremely powerful upgrades and items in a completely one-sided matchup. This has caused many players in Rumble Fighter to complain that the game is no longer enjoyable for such “poor and weak” players since they cannot compete on the same level as the "rich and strong".

This often categorizes Rumble Fighter as a “pay-to-win”^[24] video game. Shops within MMORPG games usually do not compensate for the lack of real money spent or do they balance such factors so it highly encourages players to spend real money on the "free" game in order to have a better experience. Microtransactions in games have become increasingly common since the development of PC games. This has resulted in a large debate surrounding the issue of the ethics of pay-to-win systems. While it has been stated that free games, such as Rumble Fighter, depend on microtransactions in order to sustain themselves, others have argued that these transactions have created an unbalanced system. In addition, creating a game that requires players to pay for better items as they reach higher levels can be considered unethical in that it often forces players to either slowly make fair progress or quickly pay for the items instead without much hassle^[25]. As a result, the development of the pay-to-win system in Rumble Fighters has also contributed to its decline in popularity.

References

1. ↑ RedFox Rumble Fighter. “Rumble Fighter: Free-to-Play Fighting MMO.” Play RedFox, www.playredfox.com/rumble_fighter. 2015
2. ↑ Techopedia. “What Is a MMORPG? - Definition from Techopedia.” Techopedia.com, Techopedia, 15 Aug. 2011, www.techopedia.com/definition/1919/massively-multiplayer-online-role-playing-game-mmorpg.
3. ↑ Staff, IGN. “Rumble Fighter Adds New Guild System and Guild Channel.” IGN, IGN, 8 May 2012, www.ign.com/articles/2011/02/03/rumble-fighter-adds-new-guild-system-and-guild-channel.
4. ↑ Steam. “Rumble Fighter: Unleashed” steampowered.com, Steam, 2015, https://store.steampowered.com/app/357500/Rumble_Fighter_Unleashed/#:~:text=Rumble%20Fighter%20is%20a%20free,for%20this%20game%20are%20positive..
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1 5.2} Fandom. “Rumble Fighter Fandom.” Fandom, 2019, rumblefighter.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page.
6. ↑ Steam Charts. “Rumble Fighter: Unleashed.” Steam Charts, 2016, steamcharts.com/app/357500#All.
7. ↑ “Rumble Fighter: Free-to-Play Fighting MMO.” Play RedFox, www.playredfox.com/rumble_fighter.
8. ↑ ^{8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4} Rumble Fighter Support. “Support.” RedFox Games, 2015, rumblefighter-help.playredfox.com/en/support/home.
9. ↑ “Rumble Fighter: Free-to-Play Fighting MMO.” Play RedFox, www.playredfox.com/rumble_fighter.
10. ↑ “Rumble Fighter: Free-to-Play Fighting MMO.” Play RedFox, www.playredfox.com/rumble_fighter.
11. ↑ “Rumble Fighter: Free-to-Play Fighting MMO.” Play RedFox, www.playredfox.com/rumble_fighter.
12. ↑ Steam. “STEAM & GAME STATS” steampowered.com, Apr. 16, 2021, https://store.steampowered.com/stats/Steam-Game-and-Player-Statistics?l=english.
13. ↑ ResearchGate. “Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games is Wrong” researchgate.net, Mar. 2017, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313853398_Moral_Combat_Why_the_War_on_Violent_Video_Games_is_Wrong.
14. ↑ IGN. “Editorial: The Ethics of War Games” IGN.com, Apr. 18, 2011, https://www.ign.com/articles/2011/04/19/editorial-the-ethics-of-war-games.
15. ↑ MMOs. “Rumble Fighter Lobby.” Mmos.com, 2021, cdn.mmos.com/wp-content/gallery/rumble-fighter-overview/Rumble-Fighter-Lobby.jpg.
16. ↑ ^{16.0 16.1} Rumble Fighter Support. “Trade Scamming.” RedFox Games, 2015, rumblefighter-help.playredfox.com/en/support/solutions/articles/8000033360-trade-scamming.
17. ↑ Angela Marrujo, Sift Science. “Fraud Is Taking the Fun out of Video Games: Scams, Spam & Account Takeovers.” VentureBeat, VentureBeat, 6 June 2018, venturebeat.com/2018/06/07/fraud-is-taking-the-fun-out-of-video-games-scams-spam-account-takeovers/.
18. ↑ The Katy News. “How Hackers Destroyed Online Gaming- What Can Be Done?” The Katy News, 23 Sept. 2020, thekatynews.com/2020/09/23/how-hackers-destroyed-online-gaming-what-can-be-done/.
19. ↑ Chew, J. "Flaming, sexism, trolls: The toxic side of online gaming and how to deal with it." CNA Lifestyle, 27 January 2021 https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/trending/online-gaming-flaming-sexism-trolls-12782526
20. ↑ Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (ASPA). “Kids on Social Media and Gaming.” StopBullying.gov, 30 June 2020, www.stopbullying.gov/cyberbullying/kids-on-social-media-and-gaming.
21. ↑ Solutions, Madison Web. “Types Of In-Game Abuse.” Cybersmile, 2020, www.cybersmile.org/advice-help/gaming/types-of-abuse.
22. ↑ Achternbosch, Leigh, et al. “Griefers versus the Griefed - What Motivates Them to Play Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games?” The Computer Games Journal, Springer New York, 15 Apr. 2014, link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF03392354#:~:text='Griefing'%20is%20a%20term%20used,own%20personal%20enjoyment%20or%20gain.
23. ↑ W., Bryan. “The Best and Worst Pay to Win Games.” The Ultimate Resource for Video Game Design, 21 Jan. 2021, www.gamedesigning.org/gaming/pay-to-win-games/.
24. ↑ Neely, Erica. "Come for the game, stay for the cash grab: the ethics of loot boxes, microtransactions, and freemium games" Research Gate, Sept. 2018, www.researchgate.net/publication/329403049_Come_for_the_game_stay_for_the_cash_grab_the_ethics_of_loot_boxes_microtransactions_and_freemium_games.
25. ↑ Crunch, Lynden. “Pay to Win - The History of Microtransactions in Video Games.” Medium, Medium, 2 Feb. 2019, medium.com/@lyndencrunch/pay-to-win-the-history-of-microtransactions-in-video-games-48ca64425704.