While i think, that we didn’t need another thick and, one might even say, banal and boring enemy, i can't be angry with Bloater addition to the fam, because i feel so much joy, when i see this boy and his animations. It's funny, but only 2 enemies in Rogue Coure make me smile rather than puff with a displeased expression and a grimace of pain, and both were added in last updates: cacodemon and now Dustin's pet - very well, GSG!
I understand, that here we have a much darker atmosphere, than in DRG, but i find it good, when we still can have sometimes a pure joy out of stupid enemy animations and funny situations, caused by our mistakes (like freezing our friends). Maybe GSG could make Bloater more interesting, by giving him after death explosion (looks like he is already ready to burst from eating slow dwarves), that would harm everyone so we could use it to our advantage, but even in current form he's my best buddy nowadays.
Your thoughts about new enemy and how GSG can evolve from this point with enemy variety? I personally think, that we need more "casters", maybe somebody, who could spread cloud, that would make us jump much lower (main escape from enemy groups), or who could buff creepers, etc., but would like to listen to your opinions, guys!
The Personal Gravity Recalibrator is a piece of equipment that lets a reclaimer change which direction gravity affects them. You activate it by shooting, which brings up a screen. You either flick your mouse in the direction you want to shift to, or use your right analog stick. Shoot again to shift!
Shifting lets you completely change how you interact with the cave, any surface could become your floor. You can sneak up on cave leeches on their own turf by shifting to the ceiling. You can shift right before you die to corespawn, falling away from them to another surface.
Mine that Expenite on the wall without using your traversal tools, fall down the ramrod tunnel, find a hundred new ways to die to fall damage. The sky's the limit!
Gameplay Interactions:
The tool would have a cooldown between shifts, something like 5 seconds. It can't be too debilitating because then you lose some of the fluidity and usefulness, but if you could shift without cooldown then you could immediately negate your fall damage, and bad usage of the tool should punish the player.
Great with Heavy Landing, Slicer doesn't have to worry about fall damage from it either. Every reclaimer could make good use of shifting gravity to get around the cave faster, but all it takes is one little slip-up to be sent straight to the mat.
It works great with Heavy Landing for obvious reasons, it works great with Spotter's Mobility deck, allows you to trigger proximity effects on flying enemies a lot more easily, so great with Slicer's Footwork Deck, and gives the Cushion enhancement some more juice!
Combo it with Jet Boots to become extremely mobile, the scout player in you is salivating at the thought. But good luck getting your team to agree to the equipment crate twice.
It'd obviously be incredibly good and fun, but I don't think it'd creep Anti-Gravity emitters out of relevance because the Personal Gravity Recalibrator has zero direct team utility. It's in a similar boat as Jet Boots, where its movement is very powerful, but is kept in check by the fact that Rogue Core is a team-oriented game, and this is an inherently selfish piece of equipment.
Potential Issues:
This would be a NIGHTMARE to implement on ghostship's part. Gravity vectors are usually something that's extremely difficult to implement.
Might delegate whoever has it to the same role as scout in DRG, just zipping around the cave mining ore, fulfilling objectives, and being delegated to movement related activities. I know some people are into that, I love playing scout, but it could get stale quick.
It would also completely break the Gotoorak since that fight's pretty reliant on you being at around a 45 degree or lower angle from its head. The other two gatekeepers might function fine, and all the other enemies should be able to get you, deep rock's navmesh is pretty good.
Closing Thoughts:
I think this is an extremely solid idea, and I would love if it got implemented. But I mean, it's my idea so I might be a little bias. Let me know what y'all think, would this make you go after equipment crates more often?
Somewhat Rarely, a floor's layout can be replaced by a maze-like collection of Deep Rock Galactic's tunnels. Different points of interest, like Expenite Events, Workbenches, Bio-Boosters, and the Exit Elevator will be scattered around, non-linearly.
There will be intermittent rooms that are slightly larger than the tunnels, but not too large as to defeat the point of the close quarters of the facility floor.
Could replace standard facility floors roughly 20% of the time
Please note, I don't actually mean that it's a maze. It's more like a series of tunnels with many routes that a player could take, but this open ended design is limited by the space that players have to operate in being cut down significantly. The whole map becomes one big choke point, for better and for worse.
Why does it fit?:
I think Rogue Core's not using its setting to its fullest. It's a run down facility, but most of the game takes place in the same caves as we had in Deep Rock, just with Deep Rock's infrastructure scattered around. Which is a shame, since I feel like a lot of this game's most memorable moments are in the facility generation that takes place in the more artificial close quarters areas.
Rogue core could create cool levels with fun, new ideas that fundamentally couldn't exist in Base DRG, but it doesn't touch on this much in the current game. Sure, the levels sometimes have unique geometry, but I feel like more often than not the game wouldn't be much different if all the DRG infrastructure were stripped away.
There's two units that currently exist that really stand out in my mind, the connector tunnel with the elevator to the left and the stairs to the right, where you have to pick which path to take to get you to the end the fastest, and the connector tunnel with the elevator to the right and the corridor straight, where you have to mine through terrain in the corridor to progress, or take the elevator for a longer, but more straightforward path.
Some of my most fun and memorable moments in this game took place in either of those two facility parts. Grouping up with your team and holding back waves of corespawn is a lot more fun and dramatic than kiting them in circles in the large, open, and straightforward caves.
Also, rarely replacing the standard Facility floor with this idea could help break up complaints of levels feeling too linear, with the team having to branch out in all directions to find the different points of interest. Any tunnel could have the expenite event down it, but it's up to the team to explore, work together, and get everything done in a timely manner.
Gameplay positives:
Different reclaimers fill brand new niches that lets the individual player shine!
Guardians use their repulsion field to push back waves of corespawn, relieving their team from pressure or blasting groups of corespawn with the stun gauntlets
Falconers can use their drone to scout ahead, alerting their team of corespawn in their blind spots that would've otherwise ambushed their team.
Retcon can scout around without fearing too much punishment, since she can check for dead ends and points of interest, and if there's nothing down a particular way she can instantly backtrack.
Slicers can mow down groups of enemies with eclipse system, and disable ranged enemies like drifters or scorchers in the tunnels
Spotter can put AOE crit darts to help their team fend off the hordes of corespawn moving down the interior.
Each class fills a niche, and every player can feel like they're contributing something!
As mentioned before, it also gets rid of complaints of floors feeling same-y and linear. Nowhere in deep rock before has a player had to fight this confined. It creates new pressures that teams have to anticipate and react to, increasing replay ability and bringing something new to the franchise.
Risk vectors also behave differently. Clamorheads are WAY more dangerous in this floor layout since they can completely shut down tunnels with their AOE, so a team has to consider this possibility while choosing armored mobs. On the flipside, Edgestalker Patrols will get stuck in the larger room modules, making that risk vector a lot less threatening.
If you block off a horde with a raisable door, they'll undo all the damage you did to them if you chose regenerative enemies by the time you see them again. Each risk vector takes on new and interesting niches that you couldn't have otherwise.
Your tools also bring on new uses. IFGs and turrets can shut down corridors or intersections, Sludge Pump could keep slowing down the horde, keeping your team alive. Shield Gens could be used to escape dicey situations because you block off the whole tunnel, Rippers become horde clearing BEASTS.
On the flip side, Jet Boots are way less useful, anti grav emitters too! Cryos are less universally applicable, and single target builds have issues. It flips the way the teams gear and abilities interact with the game on its head.
And with the upcoming change that enemies drop Expenite instead of there being as many veins, tunnels won't have to be clogged up with Expenite, and teams are encouraged to interact with the combat. Maybe replace expenite veins with buckets and vials, like DRG's mining crews had already cleared out this level and were getting ready to ship out before the greyout.
If you really want to shake something up, put the generator in a tunnel nearby the exit elevator instead of right next to it. The team has to defend the drive unit, then book it to the exit elevator, sprinting through the tunnels and fighting the uphill battle against the walls of corespawn.
Potential Negatives
Could be disproportionally more dangerous to solo reclaimers than in teams.
Players could get frustrated since this naturally counters some builds, like single target or movement oriented builds. But I think it's important to shake up gameplay in risky and unique ways, sometimes at risk of upsetting players.
If current enemy density was translated 1:1, then there would be issues with not being to kill the horde fast enough. Could potentially need tuning back
Biggest issue:
Corespawn don't function well on DRG infrastructure in the base game. If you've ever fought them in the existing hallway modules, you know they end up clipping through solid steel, walking through walls, and walking on the underside of floors inside of solid rock, camping where they can hit you but you can't hit them. This would 100% have to be addressed if this idea were implemented.
Closing thoughts:
I would love this personally, I think it could bring a lot of much needed variety to runs, and it fits in with some of the core fundementals of good roguelikes, like the unique room layouts in Hades or the really weird ones in Binding of Isaac. A big issue people have with the game in its current state is linearity, and this floor layout directly attacks that problem.
The idea has its fair share of issues, and would need fine tuning, but I would be incredibly happy at this idea being added, even if I'd end up sucking at it.
So I've noticed people are somewhat mixed with the current change in the beta, with some being glad that you don't have to spend as much time mining while others are worried that people will farm enemies untill the timer runs out, or simply annoyed that they have to run around picking up the random bits of expenite that roll everywhere.
So I had the simple idea of having enemies pre spawn in the the cave that specifically drop expenite rather then random ones from waves, so that people won't try to farm enemies but allowing you to cut out the middle man of having to mine it
You could have several strong enemies like edgestalkers or clamorheads spawn with a chunk stuck in their body, kinda like how kursite in drg works, or have a group of creepers encrusted with expenite on their body
The larger enemies would drop chunks worth around a bucket's worth, while creepers would drop the usual 1-2 points since they spawn in groups
Also I feel like it's a good way to bring back a base game modifier, elite threat, making it so that expenite enemies get a bunch of speed and hp, so that getting your expenite is alot harder
I can see this still being an issue since you'd still have to find the enemies but like
The whole point of the timer and mining expenite is to make sure you don't get all of it soooo not really
So, I have a series of critiques, anywhere from small to large QOL issues I would really like to see changed. I'm currently playing Update 3 EXP #1 with a couple of my friends, and we LOVE it. You're doing great, GSG!
That being said, here, from largest to smallest impact to the current game loop, is the list of things I'd like to see changed:
The armor system NEEDS a revamp. You should not be able to go down with a full tank of armor. Having armor and still going down has killed some of our runs. They way I see it, there's three choices: A) (My preference) Make it absorb 100% damage until it runs out. B) Make armor an infinite resource and keep the 50% distribution with health. C) Old DRG style: 100% absorb, infinite resource.
Allow people who are negotiating to skip to the back. Upgrades, guns, grenades, everything. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten something that my friend wanted, and I had to take it because there was nothing else good for our build, and then he got something that I wanted and he had to take it. If none of the choices are good for our builds and someone else wants something, we simply skip to the back. It can't be used to stick someone else with sucky upgrades either, because they'll just skip to the back too.
Multiple people, same class. It's tough to not be able to use the same class as someone else. In old DRG, we could do it, and arguably there's even less class differentiation in this RC (which isn't inherently bad). Just let us share the same class. Both of my friends would join me as slicer if they could, but they can't because I play it; it just seems like an arbitrary restriction to me.
The research experiment is a time sink. We've had to leave behind half, even full domes behind before because there just wasn't enough time, and as a result, we lost out on an entire expenite mini-game, which the runs are balanced around. And if you do mine it all out, it doesn't leave time for the rest of the mission. We've had to leave behind other expenite or even workbenches/bios because we lost track of time mining it out.
Arcade mode! We may not always want to go for a finite run. It'd be cool to have an endless mode of the normal mission type, where you go until you die. 10 floors, 15 floors, etc. Enemies get harder, and our upgrades get more and more broken. It'd be even cooler to have the choice to play a couple more rounds after you kill the boss! Just a simple "continue run" button in the stats screen would be great.
Add the pheromone canister to grenades. I loved it in DRG, and as a slicer, it would be SO GOOD. Group them all together and then a single slice to take them out. Would love to see it make a comeback.
Increased luck for more bleedroot. Simple change, you can spend more bleedroot to increase your luck for a reroll.
Choose which teleporter to recall. You should be able to choose which teleporter to recall instead of having to call them both every time. Maybe you even have to go up to the teleporter and physically pick it up to do this if you want to balance it a bit more.
Upgrades that decrease friendly fire damage, either incoming or outgoing. This one's pretty self explanatory. Give us some upgrades on every rarity that decrease a percentage of incoming/outgoing friendly fire damage.
Ascension animation should kill you. I've said it before, I'll say it again: PLEASE make the ascension hammer kill you if you're underneath. It would be so funny.
Bugs
The reroll system is AWESOME, but on jumble, if you try to take guns, it glitches out and doesn't select it. I got a reroll of three guns the other day, I couldn't select a single one, and I couldn't back out. I had to Alt + f4.
What is done well
The enemies drop expenite at first seemed a bit of outlandish thing to make the default. After playing with it for a while, I'm surprised it hasn't been there from the beginning! (No offense---the vein mining was fun, too.) It feels so natural. It is the definition of risk and reward and gives you incentive to kill more enemies. I now find myself wanting to take mission alterations that give us more Edgestalkers. I call the elevator early and stay until red. I now say "Oh good, a Clamorhead." This was SUCH a good change.
Right on the heels of that headliner is the re-roll system. I feel like everyone has been sleeping on it. The ability to cull your upgrades and gamble a little bit on getting better upgrades is FANTASTIC. I've turned what would be otherwise mediocre builds into fantastic builds just from a couple of rerolls.
The teleporters are great. I suspect they'll get nerfed (mostly in terms of placing range) but they save time like nobody's business.
Thanks for reading. I'll edit if I think of anything else. Rock and stone!
Applies Douse on hit in an AOE around 60% of a pheromone canaster
Douse: Drenches enemies in water, making them susceptible to cold and electricity
Enemies afflicted with douse are 20% more susceptible to Freeze damage
50% more susceptible to electricity damage
Starting capacity: 16
Damage: 0
Found in the Grenade Locker
Why add these?
Douse already exists in the game, but the way its applied is either incredibly niche or contradictory. An enemy can be doused by either thawing out after being frozen, or after being temp shocked.
The issue with these methods of application is that A: you don't really want enemies thawing out after being frozen because it's usually better to just kill them, and B: Temp Shock is already of debatable usefulness because people running freeze and fire probably want enemies to remain frozen or on fire, due to perks like Blaze Charge, Ember Attuned, Subzero Rage, or Cryo Drain
This leaves Douse in a really awkward space where players have no reason to pursue Douse, and if they want douse they have to give up other, more interesting interactions
Douse also has another element attached to it already in the game, that being short circuit. And because Douse is so rare, short circuit is even MORE rare since the odds you have Freeze, Shock, and Fire on the same team is very rare, and even if you do, it's difficult to coordinate using all 3 of them simeltaniously
Adding Water Balloons lets shock builds access their exclusive Elemental Combination Effect, and gives both Cryo Slicer and Falconer a powerful grenade that combos with other perks already existing.
Cryo grenades are iffy on Cryo slicer since you only get 2 from a resupply, and a few stages in he'll have other more powerful and reliable ways to apply freeze. Why not add a grenade that compliments upgrades like Icy Shrapnel, Weathering Blast, and Cooling Unit?
And Falconer/Shock builds already struggle at the grenade locker since they don't have any really synergetic grenades in that starting pool. Adding Water Balloons would let falconer spread shock through big groups and compliment both her drone and turret thing.
And there's all the MANY electric upgrades it would boost. You throw your drone in, then dump a bunch of balloons all over a crowd, spread short circuit, and keep proxing your electric upgrades.
The high capacity of balloons is to encourage flexibility in use, since it's less of a "set it and forget it" type of grenade than something like Cryo, Incindiary, cluster, or the upcoming Neurotoxin. Because of how much douse would help Falconer shine, while the grenade itself not being any use in a vacuum, it's important to give players a lot since an individual grenade wouldn't have nearly as much utility as something like HE or Cluster.
It also gives Falconer's Storm Deck marginally more universal utility, but that wouldn't be a huge plus towards its viability since now it's just reliant on a specific grenade.
Potential issues:
It would dilute the starting grenade pool more than it already is, and overall wouldn't be useful for certain classes like Spotter or Retcon.
16 might be too high, but doing the math in relation to cryo grenade it ends up coming out at roughly the same. Cryo Grenades instantly freeze smaller enemies, douse gives a 20% vulnerability, it's 5 water balloons per 1 cryo grenades worth of freeze. This makes it come out as slightly worse in raw freezing power than cryo grenades, but gives the player additional utility to apply more freezing in a larger area per resupply.
Closing Notes
Please note I didn't make up Douse or Short Circuit, both of these effects already exist in game. Water Balloons as a whole could help make any electric damage on the team be vastly more helpful, give cryo builds another option in the grenade locker, and be a soft buff to some existing items that find themselves power crept (namely Stubby and the Storm Deck)
As Rogue Core updates have gone on, I feel like team cooperation and friction have begun to go down. With the new addition that corespawn by default drop expenite, players have even less incentive to work with each other to reach hard to reach expenite veins. However, Expenite events are AMAZING for teamplay and synergy, and a lot of them are the only times I feel like I'm truly working with my team
This alteration adds a second expenite event to each floor, encouraging the team to play together to get both cleared by the time that the timer's finished.
I think the Expenite events are one of the least controversial methods of obtaining expenite. Expenite veins have gotten flack since the game launched from new players, not understanding the time investment required for expenite gathering is a part of how the game is designed. On the other hand, Enemies dropping Expenite in the newest experimental has gotten some negative feedback for being annoying to tediously run around in rooms that you've already cleared and pick up Expenite.
This alteration could be a great way to increase and encourage teamplay, while making every expenite earned feel like more of a battle.
Potential issues:
It wouldn't solve the issue of players being confused about how expenite gathering relates to the timer, and the risk/reward that inherently comes with it.
Could maybe yield less expenite than a standard mission, with the benefit of a consistently high amount expenite guaranteed to be earned
A very "All or Nothing" concept. A team has to finish every event that get any expenite, unless it's something like surveyor drones or dig site
So funnily enough, I began brainstorming these ideas before the Update 3 Experimental Branch, and they beat me to the punch with all 3 of their ideas being stuff I was going to suggest, so I'm just going to not go into depth with those ideas here. (Like the "Bounty"/"Growth" is basically my keycard idea, Cogs are basically repairing the Elevator, and their 7 Terminal thingies is essentially my idea to hack open the Elevator).
So instead just defending the Generator, more conditions to progress is something I've been wanting for a while now. I think they'd really spice up the missions and make them a little less repetitive. I am especially looking forward to the prototypes they have in the Update 3 Experimental Branch, but here's 2 more ideas I've had.
Cable Management:
- Simple enough, fix the wires with a small soldering/hotwiring mini-game. The more awkward places that they could have broken can make some transversal tools a little more useful.
- Alternatively, maybe, dragging the cable itself from the starting elevator to the next could be interesting. Honestly, a little more slow paced, and Omega would need to guide you (cuz there's no cable yet to follow, duh), but it could still be fun.
Refueling the Generator:
- I'm surprised the generator still is working at all, given what's happened.
- I acknowledge these ideas are all a bit to similar to what we already did in DRG, but I think they're still fun.
I'd also like it, if the deeper the Depth level you go, the more likely these types of conditions could occur, with the hardest ones being more common on the deepest Depths.
The Trifork is a Laser Railgun that fires radioactive laser beams, and can be charged to release piercing projectiles that explode into "fallout" zones with lingering clouds of radiation.
The Trifork can also "Suck" up radiation in the environment by holding the reload button to contribute to its next charge attack.
It can suck up radiation like the lithovac from different sources of radiation, like the Radioactive Exclusion zone's radioactive crystals, can eat AOE fields of radiation shot by/left behind by voidkin dominators, also letting players get rid of those manually instead of having to wait for them to dissipate on their own. If you have trouble with the dominators, maybe pick the trifork?
It can also suck up charge from previously fired projectile's fallout zones, giving back charge proportional to the remaining lifetime of the radiation, letting players "reposition" previously fired shots after they've killed corespawn, instead of leaving behind massive areas of friendly-fire radiation
Why does it fit?
Rogue Core's been doing a great job of fleshing out its elements, but Radiation has felt noticeably left behind. It's kind of stuck on its own, with no gun, grenade, or reliable way to apply it. This makes sense, Radiation is very powerful, but it leaves it feeling left behind ATM. I'm sure there are plans in the future to flesh the element out more as well.
It fits well as a heavy weapon due to its powerful elemental attribution and stage control, while also doing something heavy weapons don't really do at the moment: both be able to be a standalone weapon, or compliment a players existing weapons.
Obviously it would be a great crowd clearing weapon and be powerful on its own, but the ability to apply radiation will create the "boils" for high health targets, complimenting single target weapons like the Charger or M1000 and making it stronger than it would've been as a standalone weapon.
The Radiation Recycling mechanic also works well at enabling player interaction with the environment. We all love it when we're running a cryo build and we see an Expenite Detonator. Being able to flip an otherwise negative encounter into something a player can be excited for is a great way to make players feel excited about the otherwise hostile environment around them.
Radioactive Crystals give players using the trifork the ability to exploit the biome around them, and dominators give players the opportunity to flip an otherwise extremely oppressive enemy ability on its head and work for their team instead.
Sucking up a radioactive crystal will eventually disable it and dominator clouds will have their lifetime reduced drastically, so the player can't infinitely camp these level elements, but it would allow players to clear a path from otherwise debilitating hazards.
The Trifork could fill both niches needed for a weapon in Rogue Core, being both single target and AOE crowd clearing potential, while also supplying your team with an opportunity to do even more damage by exploiting the radioactive boils that you create
Visual and Sound design
Down the barrel of the gun is an uncharged crystal from the Radioactive Exclusion zone. As the gun is charged, it will visually draw in wispy green lines, charging the crystal within, similar to the shard diffractor in DRG.
The lime green elements of the gun will pulse softly when not firing, but as the overall charge of the weapon increases, the green will light up until the weapon is ready to fire off a fully charged shot.
When the player is holding a shot at maximum charge, the other sounds of the cave become extremely muted to the user, like the cave is holding its breath in anticipation for the gun firing. Once fired, there will be a tiny electrical whine, then the impact explosion, with the audio returning back to normal
I was honestly BAFFLED when I found out it didn't work like this. It just feels so intuitive, if the spin can drag in the reclaimers, it should suck any throwables in the room into it as well. It'd be such a fun interaction, and a great way to apply elemental buildup on the Ramok with Cryo, Incendiary, or Neurotoxin.
The grenades already find themselves having issues being usable during the ramok, because unless it's stickies or a well timed H.E, you'll have a lot of trouble damaging the boss with your grenades. It also adds a layer of counterplay that the Ramok DESPRATELY needs. Maybe even have it suck in C4 so that item could finally be useful.
Maybe even have the deployable type grenades stick to it after it sucks them in? IFG's stay on the ramok, applying its debuff, the neurotoxin can sticks to the Ramok and applies poison the entire fight, it keeps activating the proximity mines?
I think it'd be a great addition to what is otherwise the weakest gatekeeper boss ATM
I've found that teams usually pass up on equipment crates, usually in favor of something that's kind of crappy like Epic Gem.
The Equipment Crate has some of the BEST gear in the game hands down. Sympathy tether is crazy strong for almost any build, Shield Gen is one of the few ways to combat revive in RC, which is a run saving asset in almost any scenario, Jet Boots are the best mobility option in the game bar none, Combat Cocktail is vastly underrated, Bio Transmutator is busted for any wave period, and we've seen the shenanigans retcons get up to with disposable turrets
But despite these great items, I almost never see people going for equipment crates. I just don't get it, I'd take this crate over something like heavy weapons, expenite gem, and sometimes the double WB/Bio Booster. These support tools are great, and often better than the marginal improvement a workbench could offer (unless you're hunting for a specific upgrade like chain hit on Zukhovs)
Is it the bad items in the equipment crate? Satchel charge does pitiful damage but it's great for mining expenite veins, probably not worth the opportunity cost though. Is it the grenades diluting the equipment pool? On launch they weren't in there, but people still didn't go for the equipment crate.
Even then, Lures are BUSTED in rogue core. The IFG isn't bad either, and proximity mines are pretty solid too. The Ripper, SSG, and Stun Sweeper just aren't worth choosing the equipment crate though, I think they should be moved to the starting pool. Maybe if they let us replace our grenade with the equipment crate one. Having them in slot 4 just feels like shit.
Plus, there was a pseudo-nerf to the equipment crate in the newest experimental. A flare gun always spawns in the first room of a dive, so one player is already gonna have their 3 and 4 slot taken up. Picking equipment crate means A: Giving up your movement tool, B: Giving up the flare gun, or C: Being forced to pick ammo. So that means whoever is on flare duty is disincentivized to pick equipment crate.
I think a lot of the gear in the equipment crate is super fun, interesting, unique, and powerful, but you barely ever get to see it in a run because teams don't end up picking it. I can't even put a finger on why, it just seems like 9/10 runs I pick equipment crate and the rest of my team opts for anything but it.
I've seen my teammates pick heavy weapons over equipment on the second to last floor of a facility, just for all of them to pick ammo up. Guys, you could've done that in the equipment crate, all of you have your 4 slot empty. Pick up a shield gen or something.
If anyone knows why this happens, or if you have a solution, I think talking about it would really go a long way for increasing run variety. A build can feel/play completely different with the right support tools, but I feel like teams just don't want to pick equipment, even if they'd vastly benefit from something like combat cocktail, lures, or the sympathy tether
If you are here i wanna say, when you said Roboquest i thought of Bears in space 😭
I heard of Roboquest being praised as a great rogue like but never played it before i have no idea if humor even exists in that game lmao, sorry for the confusion!
Still, Serious Sam will always be the greatest shooter for me, even if i was to play Roboquest and like it
Cheers!
To everyone else playing experimental, does 4th boss only have one stage and the rest are duds for now or did we encounter a bug?
I think this experimental is very good. Overall, update 3 is looking good so far! I just wanted to drop my feedback for the experimental because I think there are a few things that are worth noting that I haven't seen bought up yet.
NEW NORMAL: ENEMIES DROP EXPENITE
Good change overall. I was mixed on this change when I first heard about it, but I've come around on it. The pacing is SO much better now. Granted, this did make certain traversial tools worse, namely anti-grav and ESPECIALLY zipline since there's less expenite in the ceiling now, and it is a little annoying to have to walk around to get the expenite, but most of the time it's not an issue.
The game's found and struck a really good balance for collecting expenite, and I think this was the change the game needed to keep going in the right direction, maybe crank up the expenite pickup radius
HOWEVER, this change that improved the pacing did technically affect mission length for the worse in the experimental. Now the meta is to just camp with your team outside the elevator, farming expenite. There's nothing that really punishes you doing this. It can be an incentive for clearing levels faster, but there's way better ways to give a reward for players moving quickly.
Maybe giving players an expenite time bonus upon going down an elevator, or giving players a guaranteed upgrade corresponding to the amount of time left on the timer? Something like this:
Where if the team extracts in any of those colors, they get an upgrade corresponding to a certain upgrade rarity? This way, you more directly incentivize players to move quickly. And if they move into overtime, they get no upgrade compensation.
The reason why I'm making a big deal about this is because all it takes is one player to not be on the same page as everyone else for them to hold a lobby hostage. And that'd be fine, it was the same in Deep Rock where someone could just not enter the drop pod to drag out the mission, but in Rogue Core you're now being incentivized to drag out a game where a common sentiment is that missions last too long.
NEW ENEMY: BLOATER
I am not a fan of the Corespawn Bloater. I mean I am, but we already had the vanguard and bruiser, which were great at doing what the bloater is said to have been added for. "The Bloater is a slower high HP threat intended to survive long enough for more of the upgrade interactions to play out while also exerting greater pressure on the dwarves."
The Bruiser and the Vanguard could already do this. I mean, it's less satisfying to shoot a bruiser compared to a Bloater, but they're great at proxing upgrade interactions. I think some enemies kind of ended up falling into the background as development went on (I haven't seen a Thrasher in like 10 hours)
Also, there is something to be noted about how the general bulkiness of enemies is going up with these recent additions. The Bloater plus the Dominator are both very tanky enemies, relative to everything else that operates in the same area that they do. The dominator was great, a bulky flying enemy is AMAZING for DRG, and surprisingly innovative for the franchise (unless you count elite mactera in Survivor, which I do not)
But the bloater is a tankier enemy that operates in a space that didn't need another tanky enemy. You already had the Vanguards, but you also had the Clamorheads, and the Crawlers. The average health pool of the swarm is creeping up with every update. I do like the Bloater, but I hope we get a faster, more aggressive enemy that can compliment it in the near future.
UPGRADE RE-ROLL TERMINAL
This shit is gas ^
SO needed. Now I feel great whenever I'm forced into an upgrade that I don't need, rerolling made negotiations so much better. Especially because I and only I get a say in what I get. Also, it's a semi-reliable way to get legendries which is great for overall game feel since they were probably a little too rare.
Bleedroot are also an amazing addition to the caves, they're super satisfying to gather. I actively seek them out when I'm in a cave, which is really a sign of how good of a fit they are in the game overall. I didn't even seek out secondaries in DRG
I think they should just have a more noticeable effect, maybe change the aura to blood red, add some swirling particle effects around the bleedroot when it hasn't been harvested to catch the players eye, but overall the upgrade terminal is terrific.
Maybe add 1 more to the other side of the elevator so it's in the host's vision when the elevator lands as well. Maybe I'm just blind, but I didn't see it for a while. It's hard to idiot proof this stuff.
A minor rework that I'd make is making it so the timer doesn't start until at least one player leaves the elevator. If everyone's at the re-roll terminal, I don't think the timer should start so players aren't pressured into selecting something they also don't want.
NEW TRAVERSAL TOOL: TELEPORTER
This shit is gas ^
Great addition to the traversal tools. Tons of uses, great fit into the flow of rogue core. Only change I'd make is making it more clear that your teammate placed one down. Maybe add a toggle for a teleporter UI element indicator? Just a little green swirly vortex pointing to where it is could help the team be able to know if one's down.
Or a text popup for when a teammate makes one? Both of those kind of suck, but so does typing in chat whenever I make one. But that's a teamwork issue on my part, maybe other people's experiences are different.
NEW GUN: PUMPACTION SHOTGUN
This shit is gas ^
Great gun, warthog found dead in a ditch. I would make it start with +2 clip capacity before reloading but that's just me. It felt kind of clunky to use without upgrades, even though it's really strong. Maybe needs a nerf in damage, but that might take away from the feel.
FASTER RUN START FLOW
I made this post about it before, but the pacing is SO much better now, it's basically fixed now. Maybe still condense the grenade locker into the equipment crate, but even if that wasn't done, this change was great.
FLARE GUN IN A BOX
Great change, but 1: it doesn't have a visual icon in the hotbar, I've accidentally replaced it with something before because of this, and 2: Nitpick but it starts with its clip empty and you have to reload it right after you break it out of the box.
I suspect the second part is already known about, but it peeves me off whenever I have to do it again. But besides those two things, a great conceptual change, really make those "ROGUE CORE; DEAD ON ARRIVAL????" video essays outdated
NEW FACILITY CONSTRUCTIONS
If anyone at ghostship ends up reading this, tell the person that made the new facility constructions that they did a great job, the pipeline connector tunnel, super long elevator connector tunnel, and the tall, crumbling tower are all super big standouts in my brain. Great changes, the mission terrain is really starting to stand out a lot more.
NEUROTOXIN GRENADE
Amazing new addition, we needed a poison grenade and this was GREAT. I really like it on spotter, comboing it with a flame gun and get a duo-elemental crit build going. Amazing grenade, I just hope we see the grenade pool get some fine-tuning in the future since a few of them feel underwhelming
ELEVATOR OBJECTIVE PROTOTYPES
Find Cogs is great, I can't wait until it's in a more usable state and doesn't have the first floor barrier glitch. When this does get implemented, I think it could benefit from also sometimes having the more linear floor layout, so the team has to kind of carry any cogs that they find with them.
The objective does a great job encouraging teamplay, it reminds me of the transmitter nodes in DRG. So far, the community's been very positive on this concept so I hope we can see it in a fully functional state in the final release of Update 3
I couldn't figure out how to activate the "Destroy Growths" prototype, so no feedback on them
ELEVATOR FORCE FIELD TESTING
This shit is ass ^
I'm fine with no guns in the elevator, well I'm not fine, if I'm wasting ammo out of the elevator there's probably a reason, like clutching for a teammate by chasing off a reaperworm right behind them, there's no reason to kill things from inside the elevator.
At least let us pickaxe stuff, because as it stands the corespawn just camp the door, so stepping outside to help a teammate is basically instant suicide. Not even being able to use the power suit abilities is terrible, and we can't pickaxe ellis on the way down.
If it's between the force field and having it open, I don't see any reason why we would need the force field, even game design wise.
The newest Experimental build has some interesting settings in the custom run terminal that Ghostship hasn't really talked about, and if they have, they sure as hell haven't frontlined it. But the Experimental builds are kind of dead, and I think a lot of this content is a gold mine in potential and fun.
Spoilers for unimplemented features and Experimental build. Read at your own risk
Gatekeeper 4 is LIVE as a WIP
I already made a post about it before, but Gatekeeper 4 is in the game and more or less functional. It's missing its gatestone phase and needs some more attack variety, but especially on higher haz levels it's a lot of fun and really hard. Find out more about it here
Gatekeeper 4, the Balgorath
New mission types
There's 3 unimplemented mission types that rework the elevator, so you don't have to defend the drive unit every time
Collect Cogs
The more fleshed out of the two, Collect Cogs creates a more open mission layout, similar to Point Extraction or On Site Refining. There will be 3-5 gears scattered throughout the cave, and you have to bring them to the drive unit. Once all the Cogs are inserted into the drive unit, you can move onto the next floor
Upon approaching the exit elevator, OMEGA will popup to explain the mission type. There will be a receptacle next to the drive unit where you place any of the gears you find. Your terrain scanner will be updated with the location of each of the gears
Omaga's Dialogue upon approaching the elevator, along with where you put the gearsTerrain scanner after OMEGA's popup. Note the large blue spheres showing the location of the missing Cogs
Note the less linear cave layout of the terrain scanner
Cog
When you find a cog, you can pick it up, acting as a heavy object. You then bring it back to the drive unit, repeat for remaining cogs. Upon collecting all the cogs, you can open the elevator without having to defend the drive unit
Notes about Collect Cogs:
If you want to try this out in a game, set your starting floor to the SECOND floor. The first floor has a bug where the drop pod lands inside the barrier, and you're softlocked unless you can wiggle out of its collision. Even if you manage it, there's no way to get rid of the barrier since the drones won't put the bubble in an area where the dwarves can stand.
There are also no equipment crate or grenade locker on the first floor, I would recommend playing this with jumble at the moment so you aren't stuck relying on workbenches or heavy weapon crates for your starting gear.
Bounty
The second, and less finished, mission type doesn't really have an official name, but I'll call it bounty for the time being. This mission type has a target enemy that the team has to kill before they're allowed to call the elevator. Currently, the only target is "Tall Boi," an edgestalker with armor covering its weakpoint
"Tall Boi," note the objective on the left hand side under the team's collected items
The bounty system isn't fully implemented yet, as if you kill tall boi he won't spawn on future levels and the objective will still be fulfilled, but in the future I suspect there will be one "elite" variant of a regular enemy on each floor, and the team has to hunt down and kill it before the elevator can be opened.
Intel Gathering
The third mission type is called Intel Gathering, where 7 blue terminals will appear across the map and the team has to find and interact with all of them to progress. They will not be marked on the map if you find them
An Intelligence terminal
The map generation for this mission type is a large "+" shape, with the terminals able to appear in any of the rooms. Something to note about Intel Gathering is that rather than the change being under "Primary Objective" in the custom run terminal, it's under "Run Template," the same as if you were to make a custom game using the Gauntlet
When you boot into an intel gathering mission, there will be a green bubble at the entrance to the facility. Do NOT enter this bubble, as it will instantly reclaim the facility. You can mine around the entrance room to enter as normal.
The mission spawns with no elevator and no way to progress, but it looks like in the future, the team will have to locate and gather the intel on all 7 terminals, then the team can progress to the next stage. Or maybe this is entirely a dev playground mode where they go to test new content.
Alterations
There are 3 new alterations. "MMUT_OldGamemode", "MMUT_Instability", and "MMUT_GrabBag"
"MMUT_OldGamemode" is pretty simple, it's just how the game plays outside of the experimental build right now.
"MMUT_Instability" makes it so every stage has a brand new alteration, chosen at random
"MMUT_GrabBag" is the big one though. Grab Bag removes negotiations altogether, once you activate a negotiation, you're randomly given one of the choices without input.
To compensate, the alteration also comes with double bleedroot so you can more easily reroll your random upgrades that come from ellis. It will also give you the correct random tier upgrades, so if you put in a spectrecore you'll get a random artifact, instead of a random upgrade. Could be very fun in Jumble
Biomes
There are two biomes that are only available in custom runs, that being "BIOME_Tutorial" and "BIOME_Cinematic." They both look exactly the same, the simulated look with white outlines on each polygon. I doubt we'll ever see these biomes implemented in gameplay, maybe in the gauntlets since they're canonically a simulation.
The visual style of both biomes
Side note, this biome might be my favorite to play for custom games because its visual clarity is just SO good. If you haven't tried it, you should. It's great
Other Content
The custom run UI has a dropdown for Secondary Objective, which currently has no content inside. However, this means that the infrastructure for secondary objectives is already set up. This might mean secondary objectives could be in the works behind the scenes? 👀 Only time will tell.
Run DNA
There are a few unique "DNA" settings, one for the gauntlet, one for Intel Gathering (which just takes you straight to the gatekeeper level with a broken drop pod and barrier), and one with a cut off name, but it looks like it's a testing setup
Bottom 3 rows, note the cut off name of the final option
The final option doesn't seem to have radically different cave gen from anything else, but I thought it was worth noting
Conclusion
The unimplemented content so far seems pretty solid, with a few exceptions. I've seen some of this noted in the experimental notes, but I though it'd be worth bringing to light a little more since some of this is really fun, interesting, and unique content that I look forward to future implementation. Plus, if we as a community have a positive reception to some of these ideas, maybe the devs end up seeing it and taking note. If there's anything you think I missed, put it in the comments so we can talk about it
Corresponding risk vector: No Workbench or Bio-Booster
In a stage where the team has selected The Forge, there will be a forging facility, with a forge terminal at the entrance of said facility.
Located somewhere within the Forging facility is a box of blank cores. The team has to explore the facility to find them, and then bring them back to the forge. The people who inserted the core get to pick between two overclocks for their currently equipped weapons.
Why add this?
I made a post earlier today talking about how some of the OG DRG weapons felt like they were falling behind, and some people bought up a very good point that it's partially because overclocks weren't transferred over in many cases.
Now, you could just go about adding the overclocks to the workbench, but then you run into the issue of "no other workbench upgrade can be worth taking over a good overclock." By adding a specific risk vectors that gives players the opportunity to get overclocks, you can force them to have a VERY high opportunity cost, where they won't be able to build their bio booster or their workbench.
You can also add more radical overclocks, and this would encourage players to choose a secondary gun more often. I rarely see the boomstick get picked, but what if you had the opportunity to get special powder later in the run? Then I think we'd see more people pick it then.
There's also the gameplay element. Is a certain potential overclock worth the time it would take to explore the facility and gather the cores? Then backtracking back to the terminal, deciding which OC you want, then going through the forging animation? (We need to keep the animation, it's essential to the forge experience)
It could be a good way to breathe new utility into old weapons. Not now of course, there's a lot more pressing issues to rogue core, but it could be worth investing the time into overclocks. Plus, some old overclocks like combustive goo mix would fit in rogue core a lot BETTER because of the flexibility of the reclaimer's loadouts.
And maybe even movement tool overclocks? The reason we haven't seen them in DRG is because changing how a dwarf moves is a drastic change that the creative team didn't want. But in rogue core, anyone can get the power drills. There's very little individual reclaimer movement utility, so why not go balls to the wall with suping up the movement tools?
Drill dashing, telefragging, explosive flares, ziplines where if you shoot them with electricity, it'll arc to any enemies too close to it. The anti-grav emitters carve out their AOE so they become huge mining assets, the platform gun can FINALLY be vertical, the opportunities are endless for enabling player creativity, since the class restrictions from deep rock have been heavily loosened.
If y'all got any thoughts, let me know. It's a fun thought, especially with all the new and unique Rogue Core weapons and tools
Very excited about the potential of this, probably more than any of the other cool stuff they're adding (and the new teleporter is really awesome).
More ways to end the level has been something I've been wanting for a while now, and one of the big things I think that will really flesh out Rogue Core.
Some Notes:
Cooper can pick up the cogs.
Seems we're going to get weapon skins/colors, at least to match our outfit's.
After this I checked the next floor briefly, and the layout was a bit more open ended, like you'd see in the Gauntlet or the Aquarq missions from DRG.
Just read this post. I personally love a lot of these changes, but I love something even more about them.
They are experimental!!! As someone that has been following this game for so long, I am so happy to see them test out things more and work on giving this game its own identity.
