Recommendations VRMMO that is actually balanced

I think you are getting confused, He is beating them, with equipment he built. Just with that, he's able to close the gap of dozens of levels. NOw for a blacksmith class, his attacking skills, still, trump actual classes that have attacking skills. Chris one of the top dogs couldn't do shit against ancient golems even tho he's an attack based character. But grid a blacksmith could? he's broken af. But again that's how the author made the story. Also extends to his family, NO ONE in the years of playing that game protected an NPC with their life?whut? that's a joke. Again that's the story, but don't delude yourself into thinking its actually balanced.

 

Hmmm... maybe This MC is Kickass? That's the closest thing I can think of to the world of Glory. Though it reminds me more of LMS, set in a cultivation fantasy VRMMO game, with a female MC (beautiful rich kungfu genius in real life, chooses to be ugliest avatar possible to avoid special treatment. Gets promptly scorned upon and ROFLstomped a few times by other gamers. But thanks to her insane luck stat, she even finds a quest in Hell.). Part of the problem is that Glory's balance is shown through PvP and the pro tournament. Without that component, just playing the single-player PvE game alone, most VRMMOs get either OP or don't bother competing (OSO, VRMMO Ossan). MC is Kickass doesn't have a pro scene, but describes guild-on-guild and adventuring party battles quite well, about the same level as Lord Grim's adventures on the 10th server (minus the OP MC... she dies quite a bit. MC is more like Tang Rou's character).

 

I was under the impression that she was fairly OP and that most of the story revolved around romance though?

 

Not really. Or at least, not OP in the male-power-fantasy sense of being able to beat everyone she fights or overcome every challenge. In real-life, she gets plenty of cool stuff, but in the game, she's kinda has to depend on her luck and the help of her brother / guildmates power-levelling her a bit. The main 'cheat' she has is the highest Luck stat in the game (in compensation for also being the ugliest character in the game). So her guildmates make use of her as a lucky mascot for getting good drops. Lots of power due to status and position, but not much personal combat skill in the game. She gets killed quite a few times (especially when alone), but takes it in stride. Romance is sort of like A Slight Smile is Very Charming, but there's a solid amount of action/adventure scenes as well - it's not focused on romance to the same level as Slight Smile is.

Having said that though, the story itself is not very compelling. Kinda meh to me.... solidly in B-list territory. I only mentioned it because it might fit a number of your criteria.

 

I feel your pain. I'm a hobbyist RPG designer and into game design in general and I so often want to scream about how these games are such incredibly shitty designs it's not even funny. I even made my own thread about this a while back, but the only req I got that hasn't been covered here is The Gam3 and that fits at most half of your specifications and I haven't been following it for a while so no idea how it develops. I tend to read the shitty stuff anyway since nothing better seems to exist, but I'll be watching this thread just in case.

 

I liked the Gam3 up until the point when his mind was wiped and replaced by something else and no one, not even the author, seemed to notice or care. I mean, we switched protagonists and it was treated as a side note. That said, yeah, that game was about as balanced as made sense in context as far as I recall.

Normally, I'll put up with the bad game designs as long as they're not so bad that I can't imagine anyone wanting to play the game at all. I was just hoping for something different this time

 

That happens? Well, I guess I don't have to pick it back up then.

I'll give you a heads up once I find or write something.

 

Well, if the difficulty has lowered from "reasonable and properly balanced, including for the MC" to "balanced enough that people would still play it", then I have a few more recommendations for you, most from Royalroadl.

Tidal Lock. Not sure why I didn't recommend this in the first place, as it fits the request. Only real problem with this series is the slow updates. A Hard Sci-Fi Space Battle VRMMO, "re-spawns" happen due to everyone (in the game world) essentially being implanted with a chip that allows them to upload their consciousness to the in-game version of the internet when they die. The only things they lose is whatever they're holding onto and the money buy a new spaceship.

Clockwork. I avoided recommending this one previously due to the MC and his crew getting some unfair advantages. They do "earn them" in one way or another, and they aren't typically things that other players cannot receive. The main thing about this game is that it's a "clean the mistakes of the past" style game, where the game world's a s***-hole due to a war between basically everybody long before the game world opened to players.

Slime Tamer's Chronicles. MC reincarnates into a VRMMO, becoming a NPC. VRMMO's in this world are digital worlds with all the NPC's having their own consciousness. Didn't recommend this one previously due to the Gender-bent MC starting with a trade-off power (slow growth & physical development for extreme magical power), and the fact that she quickly (in terms of story pacing) gains advantages that neither the local NPC's, nor, seemingly, most of the Players get access to. And then she gets access to the advantages that the NPC's have for self-protection against the Players who grow as fast as monsters.

World Seed. This one starts as a VRMMO Story, but doesn't end as one. The newest form of VR Playing has been created, and are called Seeds. People around the world start playing, including the MC, and shortly afterwards magic starts affecting the world. This story is complete.

Also, The Taming Master, originally a Korean Web Novel, is a VRMMO with a world balanced enough that people might play it. It has a few issues, such as the MC gaining advantages that nobody else could possibly gain in his Tamed Creatures/Familiars, and the presence of locked account weapons that cannot be used by the player, but it's still better than most, and relatively playable.

 

I really like Tidal Lock, but I had to drop it due to the glacial update speed. Whenever a chapter came out I was like, "Which series was this again? Who are these people? What was going on? What? They're in a battle? Why?" etc.

There are a lot of red flags in the synopsis for Clockwork, but I'll give it a go.

SLC seems a bit iffy, but I'll check it out.

World Seed's reviews are abysmal, and there's a lot of stuff in them that makes me think this wouldn't be the story for me even if it the reviews were positive.

I dropped Taming Master. There weren't any actual characters in it, and the girl that looked like she might become one suddenly got a lobotomy and started chasing the MC's D for no reason at all. Combine that with the lackluster nature of everything else in the series and I just couldn't be bothered to continue.

 

All of that's perfectly reasonable and understandable.

Clockwork's good, but it's not exactly for everyone. The worst part about it is actually how it starts, which honestly seems to be there significantly to make the MC's character growth easier, give him an excuse to never leave VR &... spoilers for around where the story currently is that's actually noteworthy but there's a but. STC, meanwhile, is less a hardcore gaming story, and more slice-of-life in a Video Game as a Noble. World Seed is... if that's how you feel about the reviews, I can accept that. It's kind of an outlier for this request, anyway. And, you're right, Taming Master doesn't really have characters, does it?

 

Endless Online: Oblivion's End
It's not exactly a VRMMO, but I think the story itself makes up for that. As a bonus, the first two books are completed, but it might be pulled off RRL soon since the author is planning to sell (for 99 cents) on Amazon.

 

Dawn Sky and ZapKing5’s reviews make me wonder if it’s actually worth reading, especially considering that other reviews agree with their reasoning.

 

If you take a step back and think about it logically, yeah, it's got plot holes. However, I think the world-building and characters are good enough to give it a try (at the least, you'll be able to tell one character from another). It only took me about four hours to finish the two books, skimming over some of the heavier details. The author's style is also pretty interesting - a bit dramatic, but unique in that he uses more traditional language that is hard to find on webnovels. If nothing else, I thought it was a good ride. Of course, the main reason it stood out to me is that it is completed, and has a reasonable quality compared to print books. The only other book of notable mention that is completed on RRL is Flight of Icarus (although it is a VRMMO, the protagonist is OP), which I actually skipped over in the middle because it is quite long, despite which it had a very nice twist at the end. Sadly, all other favourites of mine on RRL are either on hiatus or still ongoing at a snail's pace (and also with OP protagonists for the most part). Actually, it seems like everything I read has protagonists who are OP or special characteristics, at least compared to their peers.

If you don't mind reading (potentially) dead ends, I would also recommend
Soulshard: Willbender
Sanity Online
Getting Hard
For Glory
We Dream of Worlds
Hazard Frontier
Overgrowth
Root (this one's links don't seem to be working properly, so I read by scrolling up and down in the link I gave you - the other story was also nice, a bit dark though)
Haven in a Dangerous World
Trials

 

I dropped the story for those reasons and bc I can get picky sometimes. I enjoyed a scene of backstory tho, for me that made the waste of time worth it.
p.s love The Kings Avatar so far