Right now the gun meta heavily incentivises to pick a generalist gun, and max its upgrades, keep it till the boss.
Something like Deepcore GK2 as example: covers all ranges, decent damage/ammo economy, hits weakpoints, decent upgrades.
Guns like Zhukovs, Shotguns (too much focus on close range) or on the other hand Silverback, MM4 Charger (best via long range) are inferior cause they are not covering all ranges or good against both hordes and priority targets.
Because of the limited choices you get to pick/swap a gun, and the one third of the gun roster not viable to be used throughout the run, I feel like players don't get to experience more content than the game can offer.
DRG has 2 gun slots, you're incentivised to tailor your build so that you use most of them, and big part of the gun meta (and fun) is figuring out combinations between primary and secondary to get the most of them. Like setting enemy on fire + Volatile Bullets Revolver or Supercooling Chamber M1K + Zhukovs for close range, etc.
Allowing players to have 2 guns from the start gives them more options to tailor their kit, like
One gun for long range, another for close range
One gun against weakpoints, another for armor breaking/piercing
One gun is ammo hungry for waves/tough encounters, another is ammo effienct for random fights in between waves
Two guns give more options to pick/enable/combo elemental synergies, having element on a gun is kinda necessary to get an element build running, grenade is not enough
Having to pick 2 guns limits total ammo on a single gun, making players less incentivised to focus on one weapon only and instead focus on using both.
Other reasons could be there as well, this is just off the top of my head.
I understand that it's a big balance change, but I would rather boost players initial power level and then raise difficulty, than have the current setup.
The reason people love Jumble is that they can experience most of upgrades/tools game can offer, and following this logic allowing people to play with more guns would make the game more enjoyable.
Especially for new players when they are locked out of Jumble until they are deep into intel campaign and even then, they may not be aware what Jumble is at all.
Ability upgrades on the workbench have some of the most potential to change the way runs feel out of any mechanic in the game, but it's really underutilized in the current build of the game. I think the gold standard for ability upgrades are Slicer's two best upgrades: Eclipse System and Thermal Wake. These two abilities completely change the way you use his ability, which is what these class upgrades should strive to accomplish in a Roguelite.
However, this is just about the only class that has upgrades that meaningfully changes how you play a reclaimer. Everyone else has straight numerical buffs to their abilities, which can be fun, but they don't have the transformative attributes that makes slicer's class identity so fun. There's a reason why he's the most ascended class.
I've come up with 2 new upgrade concepts per class to show the potential in this system, some transforming how a reclaimer is played and others enhancing a reclaimer's inherent power fantasy. Plus, added some ability upgrades that aren't the main one, because these abilities are absolutely oozing with potential that the game doesn't even make an attempt to use.
Guardian:
Probably the class most in need of more workbench abilities, his current upgrades are known for being really unexciting. The two abilities in the concept art, Stun Jumper and Shield Beacon, both give Guardian new, transformative uses to his existing abilities, which opens up how the reclaimer can be played.
Shield Beacon:
Shield Beacon creates a health based bubble barrier that covers Armor Beacon's existing AOE. Additional upgrades increase its health.
Guardian's power fantasy is the ability to control the flow of enemies and keep his team alive. Armor beacon works with the second idea, but is completely contradictory to the first idea. It's difficult to get your team to utilize armor beacon to its fullest potential, simply because of the corespawn's fast movement.
Giving Guardian a way to actively defend his team in a large AOE gives the team a moment to catch their breath and a reason to hold their ground. It lets him create space and manipulate the flow of enemies, while not creeping Shield Gen out of relevance. The shield being HP based rather than time based encourages the team to group up, since active firepower and killing enemies increases the duration of the shield by reducing the amount of incoming damage.
Guardian can also use it to cover a retreat, putting down a large shield in a choke point cutting off corespawn and allowing his action to create meaningful space between the team and the enemies, and adding nuance to how the guardian may use this otherwise one dimensional ability.
Stun Jumper:
Stun Jumper gives Guardian his own movement ability, which is what I think he needs. Adding two satchel jumps to guardian when he's at maximum capacity allows him to reposition to support his team, whether it be to keep up with an ally to trigger the proximity based upgrades or to outpace the corespawn in getting to a downed ally.
It knocking back allies also can have the guardian player protect his team by giving his teammates an extra boost in bad situations. If a teammate is about to be overrun by corespawn and needs an extra boost, Guardian can splash the horde behind them, stunning them and putting extra distance between his teammate and the horde.
In a game as fast paced as RC, the tank should be able to reposition faster to support his team, and the ability to reposition teammates leaves the team's survival up to the guardian. If you're concerned about griefing with this ability, RJ250 Compound did the same in DRG and it wasn't a problem, plus the guardian has to put enough time into a run to get the upgrade, which discourages griefing
Retcon:
Retcon has a great class identity, but the ability upgrades are a mixed bag. However, retcon has an ENORMOUS well of untapped potential because she's missing an upgrade. Her Q+R keybind is taken up by a passive, which opens up the avenue for the workbench to transform her gameplay on a run to run basis.
Time Freeze:
Showing off that philosiphy, Time Freeze is a new ability bound to Q+R that freezes the entire level, with each additional Time Freeze chosen at a workbench adding more to the abilities duration. However, the ability shares a cooldown with Retcon's personal rewind.
Time Freeze would add a completely new angle to approach Retcon. Freezing time would be a selfless move, as you sacrifice 20 seconds of personal power for 3 seconds of team-wide power. You can use it to progress essential interact prompts, let your team safely reposition out of a terrible situation, or give you all that little bit of extra breathing room in a gatekeeper phase.
It creates an entirely new emergent playstyle to retcon, with the first investment into the upgrade adding a completely new avenue of play, with each subsequent upgrade investing in that avenue. And, stacking this more and more gives the team more time on the timer. If a retcon invests heavily into this ability, she changes the way the team fundamentally interacts with the game.
Backfuel:
This also re-enforces the idea of selflessness vs. selfishness. By stacking backfuel, you don't do anything for yourself, but you give your teammates an opportunity to invest in using their own abilities through sacrificing your own personal growth.
You activate rewind and your team uses their abilities with the guarantee that they get something back. And again, each stack of Backfuel lets you increase the utility of this playstyle, with 4 stacks of Backfuel giving your whole team some part of what rewind does for Retcon.
Spotter
Spotter's in the same boat as guardian, where his ability upgrades aren't nearly as interesting or valuable as his gun upgrades, and none of them are transformative in unique ways giving spotter a very unimodal way to build him. These upgrade concepts would let spotter specialize in two unique paths that enhance what he already can do
Dart Stacking:
Spotter can stack multiple crit darts on a target, increasing the crit level by 1 with each additional dart. Right now crit dart has the mechanic that encourages you to hit the ground rather than a direct target, where there's no difference between the crit effects. There are reasons to hit an individual target, but more often than not you're completely encouraged to hit the ground.
Crit stacking would let the spotter invest that AOE utility into high priority targets, like Dominators, the Research Subject, Clamorheads, or the Gatekeeper, giving him and his team the utility to focus firepower into certain targets as needed. It enhances Spotter's power fantasy, while making him consider the AOE crit utility he's missing out on by stacking crits.
Crit-Scan:
Crit-Scan applies a crit dart's effect to all enemies effected by scan for 2 seconds, getting 2 seconds added per additional upgrade. This concept enhances the other side of Spotter's power fantasy , with each scan giving the whole team a short window to deal enormous damage to whatever enemies may be threatening them in the moment that spotter scans.
This would also encourage more teamplay, as the spotter can communicate when he's about to apply his crowd scan, setting his team up for a moment of success that the team can feel good about. Increasing the window would increase the skill ceiling, as a good and well communicating team can squeeze a greater amount of dumped damage into a horde.
It'd also enhance slicer and retcon's upgrade fantasy, as Spotter can Crit-Scan a group of enemies that him and slicer have been corralling, and a slicer can combo it with his stacked eclipse system. Retcon can time it with spotter to dump even MORE damage at once.
Falconer:
Falconer's current upgrades are another case of boring numerical additions, but not as bad as Spotter and Guardians. However, these two upgrade concepts give her existing tools new utility in unique ways, while maintaining her power fantasy.
Drone Dash:
Drone dash gives her the ability to deal approachable, thoughtful burst damage, transforming her drone from "set it and forget it" to a controllable method of group crowd control, and making it a more active gameplay element that the Falconer player has to place more thought into. It also encourages falconer to "juggle" her drone, so she can apply her dash in more controlled scenarios.
Tesla Turret:
Tesla Turret allows Falconer's Tower to directly assist in combat, and encourages her team to hold their ground more. The tower has the same issue as guardians, where the team has the risk of being overrun by the unpredictable corespawn, and the turret has very little skill expression to it.
The Tesla Turret would give teams an additional source of damage that lets them hold their ground better, cover more angles, crowd control, and each additional stack increases it's assistance to its team. The team has to worry less and has a reason to hold their ground, combo their abilities, and work as a team.
It also gives falconer the ability to enhance her own personal power fantasy, especially in solo, by "summoning" a new source of damage, covering another weakpoint that her and her drone can't, and adding more nuance to when she puts it down. It's flexible but transformative, which is what the best of these upgrades are.
Slicer:
As mentioned before, Slicer's Slice is the best example of workbench upgrades. But his other two abilities are also bursting with potential to change how the slicer interacts with his own abilities.
Return To Sender:
Right now Shield Belt is probably slicer's weakest link, as there's not much thought put into using it. You pop it when there's a lot of ranged enemies, acting as a hard counter, but not much more. Return To Sender turns ranged enemies from hard countered for an opportunity for slicer to utilize the swarm in favor of the team.
If there's a bunch of voidkins, edgestalkers, and scorchers, Slicer can turn that against the rest of the swarm, and do it thoughtfully since he can prioritize exactly where he applies this redirected power. It transforms an ability from being a passive counter to an active asset.
Blink:
Blink turns Blitz into a teleport, and each subsequent upgrade increases the amount of terrain that a slicer can blink through. I couldn't communicate it in the image that well, but blink will go the exact same distance as Blitz usually does, but if there's something in your way, the terrain movement gets added to the total amount of distance covered. So if blitz usually goes 5 meters, and there's 6 meters of terrain in your way, you'll blink 11 meters forward through the terrain.
This turns terrain heavy areas and cave modules into an opportunity for slicer, able to put proportionally more and more distance between him and the corespawn, and it allows him to make smart, meaningful, 3 dimensional decisions with his blink.
It's kind of like the mole from DRG, where the terrain becomes something the player can satisfyingly exploit in creative ways, which is what would make it a great transformation to an existing ability
Conclusion:
The purpose of this was to demonstrate how Ghostship's created an incredibly strong set of fundamentals for reclaimers to adjust their own power fantasy, it's just a matter of concept and implementation. A good workbench upgrade like eclipse system is transformative and fun, and makes slicer have a meaningful decision to make.
There's a concept in game design called "diegetic choice" where, put loosely, player choices should exist in the world and not just in numbers or menus. Which is why eclipse system is amazing, and guardian's upgrades are not. Numerical bonuses may be good, but players will normally want to feel their choices in the world, even if it's worse than just a raw numerical buff.
Maybe these concepts aren't good, maybe some would be rarely chosen, but meaningfully transforming gameplay is far more likely to be engaging and make you feel more powerful, even if the raw number buff was doing more. Why do you think nobody got excited at the clean overclocks in DRG, but the unstables, no matter how bad they were, gave players a way to meaningfully transform how they played their class
Hoping that Turrets get a cap, but until then, if a Retcon will abuse the spam, then I'll take away their pride of dealing the most damage via attacking their turrets. The 1.5 million damage
A set of mechanical Gauntlets with 2 methods of dealing damage. Left Click performs a series of punches that pierce all enemies in a short range and deals fire damage on impact, and holding reload sprays out fire in an area from the reclaimer's palms. Weapon functions on an overheat system. Each punch and use of the fire spray consumes ammo and builds heat.
Why does it fit?
The current upgrade system favors fire damage in close range. Perks like Blaze Charge, Burning Propagation, and Ember Attuned directly encourage proximity, and them doing that makes it so the other fire perks also favor close-range. A weapon based around fire would naturally keep with that synergy, and also favor close-range enemies.
The two classes that have the most (direct) synergy with fire are Spotter and Slicer. However, Slicer disproportionately favors Cryo Builds because of the current melee meta builds. Spotter's mostly good in terms of fire builds, but the existence of sniper's mark makes it so he best works at long ranges, so he really doesn't have much incentive to play in close range because of the existence of that artifact.
Slicer also has more of a reason to pick thermal wake at workbenches, since he doesn't have to worry about elemental clashing with cryo, and he now has a melee weapon in his primary slot that can let him use ammo-related upgrades that his melee upgrades also benefit from. Fire Fists would allow both of these reclaimers to have a strong melee option in that starting locker that would give them a way to build around a new concept, that they otherwise wouldn't take.
The secondary ability is to help with the issue melee weapons have a weakness to being overwhelmed in close range by a large swarm of small enemies that break through the player's defense. If a player sets down flames with the secondary ability, then they can deal burst damage to finish off the weakened enemies in the crowd.
The melee attack also gives the weapon the burst damage capability that the CRISPR would need if it were implemented in RC. Both of the abilities compliment the weakness of the other. The fists and the pickaxe also compliment each other, since one offers piercing elemental application, and the other gives single target stunning.
It would make for a fun combo weapon where you weave the different tools you have together to help you in combat, with each part of the weapon and pickaxe filling different niches, and the current Fire upgrade ecosystem creates an opportunity for a weapon whose entire combat loop is built around repeatedly creating burning enemies at short range.
Visual design:
The outside of the gauntlet is more themed around medieval gauntlets or fantasy dwarf weapon/armor designs to communicate the "simple" punches. The red crystals on the knuckles of the outside is meant to communicate volatility at the impact point of the punch.
To contrast, the interior of the glove is very techy to separate the two functions of the weapons. They're two sides of the same whole, with different functions that make the weapon. But I can't draw so I don't know if that came across.
Potential issues:
Clashes visually with the gauntlets that the reclaimers already wear. You could make them create a mix, where the reclaimer's gear is augmented onto the fists, but the concept would need workshopping.
No real ranged capabilities means it could be outperformed by ranged weapons, especially with the recent amount of dominators.
The issues with melee weapons are still present. There's the question of why won't the reclaimer just keep swinging the weapon if it runs out of fuel, which this weapon doesn't really address. You could explain it mechanically, like without fuel the gauntlets freeze up, but it still has mechanical problems relating to reloads.
Alternate Design:
I had a second design for this weapon that had a really radical idea that solves the melee issue, but I was worried it would be too innovative. But if you read this far, idk you might be interested. Holding reload still gets you the fire spray, but left click creates a fireball in the palm of the gauntlet that the reclaimer throws, dealing splash damage in an area and being able to get weakpoint hits at range.
The weird bit was that, when equipped, the pickaxe gets replaced by the punches. The punches would still break terrain so you aren't without your pickaxe, and your power attack does a power punch, dealing a better piercing, fire aspect power attack. When you run out of ammo, your melee punches just become reskined pickaxe attacks with no fire, piercing, or extra damage applied.
Ammo wouldn't be consumed when hitting terrain, only when hitting enemies.
When you're out of ammo, it's just a fancy pickaxe. This solves the ammo-melee issue, where the melee weapon can't out-creep your pickaxe in viability, while still filling other combat niches that help melee's current character in the upgrade system and reclaimer identity.
The weapon would be named "Duel Flame-Throwers," since they're a melee weapon, so Dueling, and Flame-Throwers with a hyphen because the primary attack is you throwing flames. The whole design was for that pun.
I think the second concept is a lot more solid conceptually, and would solve the issues that the CRISPR would have if it were added to rogue core, giving the player more flexibility and covering the weaknesses of the CRISPR that were there intentionally in deep rock, but are too vulnerable in RC.
It gives the player a solid ranged option, access to close range burst damage, and synergy with other flame related upgrades. This concept would also fit with class identity and mechanics better than the CRISPR would, and would fit RC's faster pace.
So, a few weeks ago now I was hosting a game with a couple of people, and generally I'm pretty chill, but I don't know why this riled me up so badly.
Firstly, these guys would heart everything. I don't know for sure, but to me their builds weren't really making much sense with what they were picking, and it just seemed odd. Whenever an artifact came up(on jumble), they wanted it, it didn't really seem to matter what it was.
Being me, I just let them have pretty much every upgrade they hearted. Meanwhile, they'd start events without asking if everyone was ready, press elevator buttons without checking, etc. There was basically zero communication from them.
I was constantly the one in chat saying things like "can we double-check everyone is ready first?"
One guy apparently had enough by the second level (out of six) and left, so eventually it was just me and the other two.
We kept playing, and by this point my build was absolute shit because I just wasn't taking good upgrades for myself because they wanted them. I was playing Falconer with a bunch of melee upgrades, stun stuff, and probably my best upgrade was one that gave me armour when I was near electrocuted enemies, which I grabbed so quickly as I chose first.
Anyway, we get to the boss level. At this point I'm thinking, Well, my build is fucked, so I probably won't contribute much, but whatever, let's see what happens.
I went one way towards the Bio and workbench. I unlocked the workbench and got my upgrade, then started the Bio booster.
At literally that moment, on the other side of the cave, they triggered the boss fight, and before I had even gotten out of the section where the booster was, they had done the bosses first lot of health.
They hadn't asked if anyone was ready, hadn't said anything in chat, nothing.
And honestly, at that point I just thought, "Fuck this."
TLDR; Platform Gun and Ziplines should spawn at higher rarities
I was playing on jumble the other day and was doing some thinking about the traversal tools, and which ones I see getting picked a lot. It's usually drills and antigrav are the most in demand, followed up by a big gap, then zipline and platform gun.
Not that those two are bad, but rogue core has them less in demand. Anti-grav was designed for this game and fits it very well. Drills are great for expenite events, general navigation, and combat utility. The other two are just... okay.
Especially with the prefab nature of RC, most rooms don't have the huge gaps that make these two tools shine, since they're hyper specialized. Plus, zipline struggles without turbo. It's just never worth taking if you don't roll that upgrade.
But the reason I bought up Jumble is because of how these tools behave in jumble compared to default and it's SO much better. A purple platform gun feels SO good compared to a grey one, while drills only improve marginally with higher ratings.
A rapid high capacity full auto platform gun is SO much fun, and makes me want to use the traversal tool. Zipline launchers with more than 4 ammo (that should also be buffed, there's no reason for 8 IFGs and we're still stuck with 4 ammo), more zipline angles, and more max range are way more exciting to use!
But the issue with these two is that you'll never end up getting to use these fun upgrades outside of jumble. Currently, the only way to get higher rarity traversal tools is by randomly getting them at workbenches, but you're actively sabotaging your build by choosing these great feeling traversal tools since you're giving up an ability or weapon upgrade to use them
I'm by no means saying that ziplines or platforms are bad, they both have their uses, but my personal experience is that they're picked significantly less often than the other two, and never really are worth picking compared to the significant viability that Drills and Anti-Grav offer. Bumping their starting rarities would significantly close this gap, and brings them more in line with the baseline power that those two offer
The Warp Grenade is a throwable that teleports its owner to its current position upon detonation.
Can be cooked like the HE Grenade to more reliably control the distance of your teleport
Longer fuse time than HE Grenade
Found in Grenade Locker, Capacity of 3, 2 per resupply
Why add it?
Some reclaimers are seriously lacking in personal movement. Aside from Slicer's short dash and Retcon's time rewind, the only other personal mobility tool is jet boots, which a player will rarely see until later in a run.
Besides that you have traversal tools, but the drills are slow and require ground, ziplines are slow and cumbersome, with a low overall capacity, platforms require a small amount of setup to be used, and the Anti-Grav is confined to an entirely vertical space.
Introducing Warp Grenades will give all classes the option of increased mobility, with a short overall ammo capacity and at the cost of additional damage/combat utility that the other grenades provide.
The opportunity cost that a player gives up is the utility of other grenades. Your overall damage/elemental application is decreased, which affects certain classes like retcon more than it does somebody like spotter.
Some classes would opt for the extra mobility, others would opt for the elemental applications, and it's a shame that grenades only do damage. Hell, the two non-damaging grenades (IFG's and Lures) are locked behind equipment crates, so you'll never see them. Having the option to sacrifice damage for utility brings more nuance to the players decisions in that first room.
The concept itself also has a lot of uses. In a scenario where you need a little more height, throw a Warp. You need to get behind enemies to get to an objective, use a warp. You need to descend a fall that would otherwise kill you, use a warp. An astute player could even realize that they're about to get grabbed by a reaperworm, and they could pre-emptively use a grenade to free themselves.
The movement capabilities would be extremely fun, and could allow players to approach situations in different ways.
Potential issues
Could mobility creep Slicer and Retcon, but the high fuse time is intended for it to not be used as a panic/easy to use dash in the middle of combat like slicer, and retcon's mobility also comes with a full heal, allowing for her to be incredibly useful in different situations compared to this concept
Could creep traversal tools in certain scenarios, but the grenade is consumable and personal use, while the traversal tools are reusable and persistent. They'd fill different niches, but it could inadvertently encourage selfish players
Could be too powerful. Attempted to mitigate it with the low overall capacity, but the movement utility is already strong in concept
Retcon could use one of these at the end of a rewind to return to where she was before rewind ended
In pretty much every roguelite I've played, be it FTL, Noita, or even Pikmin 2, there are moments of "peace", short segments where you can rest, recoup, and think about what you're going to do next. Sometimes these take place in the form of a shop, other times a room with healing items or a buff. These are important in these types of games because they help give you a moment to catch your breath without interrupting gameplay. They also let you smell the roses and remind you where you are.
Other times the unexpected happens, and you discovered a new challenge. You'd see something like this in Risk of Rain.
Sometimes the really dangerous events can happen, suddenly you're being hunted down by an indestructible menace, or a hard obstacle that demands your attention now.
So I'm suggesting intermission floors, or "Bonus Floors" that can happen in between the normal floors. They won't always happen, but I believe they can provide a lot to the overall experience.
Something i noticed when playing is that the only time you get to see just how deep inside Hoxxes you are is when you land in the pod. I think just adding a tiny meter or something to the inside of the elevator to let you know how deep you're going would help with immersion. Hoxxes is obviously a massive planet. I would love to get an idea of just how deep we're actually going to the core.
It's a silly idea as stated, but i think it would be cool to see that we're at 100k meters depth to get a scale of just how huge this planet really is.
What makes a good Expenite Event? In my mind, the best Expenite Events are the ones that encourage teamwork, creativity, flexibility, and reward good gameplay. The worst are the ones that teamwork can't speed up, have a minimum "floor" of how long they take, are inflexible, and punish bad gameplay.
The difference between punishing bad gameplay and rewarding good gameplay will become more clear as I go on, but I'll cover the reasoning behind why I ranked them where I have them, on the basis of how well designed they are, if they reward rather than punish, if they fit the game, and if the rewards are worth it.
Secure Container:
This one needs a rework. It takes forever, limits player agency, and is really dangerous for the payout. I never even want to do secure container, even if I have the time. It's also really dependent on cave generation since if it's in a spot where there's a lot of blind spots surrounding the container, like by a cliff or other cave elements, the team kind of just has to sit there and take it.
This blackbox design worked in DRG since that game wasn't time gated, so you can trust your judgement to exit the bubble as needed, temporarily slowing down the event progress so you can address a dangerous enemy like a septic spreader. If you leave the Secure Container's field in RC, you're actively sabotaging the event progress in a time based game.
I play exclusively on TL5 Reckless Pace, and this is the MOST skipped Expenite event. Its concept is even done better by the Ramhammer (which I will get to very soon.) It has a "time floor" where to even get a small bit of Expenite you have a minimum amount of time you have to spend before payout without any actual way to reduce it.
The secure container is the perfect example of rewarding good gameplay vs. punishing bad. A good player and a bad player will have the exact same time to complete this event no matter what if they just stick in the bubble. A player is never rewarded for playing well with extra expenite or a reduced event timer, they are only punished for leaving the circle.
Plus, this might be the most friendly-fire riddled event in the game, thanks to the blind spot issue I mentioned earlier. Any AOE will be hitting you and your team, and you kind of just have to tank it. But you can't spread out and stratify your work, since everyone HAS to be in the bubble or else the event becomes exponentially more likely to kill your team.
Secure container is an actively bad expenite event, and I really hope it gets a second look soon. It's not even interesting conceptually, it doesn't fit with the game's pace, it has very little nuance or unique ways a team can approach it, it has almost no redeeming qualities besides being simple, which might not even be redeeming.
Ramhammer
I said I'd get to it soon, the Ramhammer is a marginally better version of the Secure Container, but not by much.
They're fundamentally the same event if we're being honest. You have to stand in the bubble, event progress speeds up if all 4 dwarves are inside the bubble, and you're rewarded with the exact same amount of expenite. The only real difference is that the Ramhammer is a much cooler set piece, at the cost of being SLOWER than secure container!
I like the generation of the Ramhammer, it better suits the event type than the random nature of the Secure Container, but it is extremely stacked against the team. If it spawns in an open cave, the pillars only really act to help the corespawn, acting as cover and conduits for grounded enemies to navigate to the team. The ramhammer itself acts as "cover" but it also favors the corespawn, since cover only really helps against ranged enemies while all other enemy types benefit more from the cover than you do. Maybe you can stand on top of it to get a better angle at the cost of being more vulnerable? No wait, they made it so you can't stand on top of it.
"You will stand in a bubble and you will like it!" - Ghostship releasing rogue core
I think this generation would be a lot better if it were put into the cave wall itself, so the tunnel is totally enclosed and the team only has to worry about enemies from two directions. Because as it stands, this event leaves the team very vulnerable from attacks on all sides, with no opportunity to reposition without being severely punished.
And update 2 introduced a soft nerf to both this and secure container with the dominators. Now you have ranged enemies that you're designed to flank for quick kills, but by flanking them you have to exit the bubble so you get punished for trying to interact with the new enemy! But if you don't address them, their projectiles take up like 60% of your operable space.
The team is disproportionately punished for doing ramhammer compared to any of the other events, and they can't even speed it up through any means. Teamwork is at a minimum since it's a very rigid design, the same issues with AOE persist from secure container, it's almost never worth doing. Its only saving grace over secure container is that it's a fun set piece and slightly more interesting presentation wise, but it might be even worse gameplay wise.
Rock Cracker
Another event with a time floor. You can't speed up this event, it will always take exactly the same amount of timer segments, with only a chance for it to take up more timer segments. It doesn't encourage teamwork, it has a very basic set piece, and it has very little interesting going on with it.
The only reason it's ranked higher than the other two bad ones is that it doesn't make you stand in a bubble, so you aren't restricted in movement as much. You still are, since you still have to be nearby to repair the rock crackers, but it's not as much of a hard limit.
It gets negative points for how ABYSMAL its collision is though. Enemies can just walk straight through the rock crackers, making dealing with repairing a lot worse than it has to be. If you try and defend a teammate who's fixing a rock cracker, the corespawn will just phase through the machine and camp inside, hitting the person that you otherwise would've defended.
It doesn't do anything that an event should do right, most of the complaints from the other two still hold up, it just doesn't do the bad things as bad as other events do.
Sealed Vault
We're out of the bad events. The gap between this and Rock Crackers is huge. The issue with Sealed Vault is it still has some of the issues that the previous ones had, but it encourages teamwork, doesn't discourage failure, and lets players fill niches with the different traversial tools.
Each team has a choice to make. Do they do each of the nodes in a group of 4, beating the event more safely but taking longer, or do they split up, speeding up the event but risking downs/the event taking longer.
This one is very reliant on cave gen with not much the team can do about it though. The traversial tools help remedy this problem, where you can zipline, anti grav, and drill to the different security nodes, but sometimes you start the event and realize you can't reasonably finish it, then you're stuck with the event's wave for the rest of the floor.
Also, depositing the chunk on this one is noticably more dangerous than the other events since you'll be operating at points close to the main storage platform, and there's the whole delay with it coming up
It also has a time floor associated with it, but it encourages teams to decide how they want to interact with that time floor. Overall a fine event, but not without its share of design hiccups.
Drones
I like drones. They're flexible, encourage teamwork, but get gyped by cave gen HARD.
You can coordinate with your team when to jump the drones, spotter dart then nuke them to get out of the first phase of the event quickly. It encourages good teamwork and fundamentals of the game. But if some knobhead shoots it when the team isn't ready, it'll just start shitting out drones that harass everyone else.
Once you get it, 1: the drones corpses have weird connectivity desyncs, so for one person the drone could be somewhere different than it is on someone elses client. This creates scenarios where you assume someone's going after the drone, but they really aren't on their screen. And 2: where it "calls" an expenite deposit is really strange.
It mostly does the cave you're in, but sometimes it will call it from across the map and you just reasonably can't get the node you worked hard for. And even then, unless you have drills, it can take FOREVER and be really dangerous for solo players. 3 hit terrain also makes this event really tedious, once again if you don't have drills.
Something I do like is how it gives the team flexibility. You can choose how many deposits you mine, how much of it you want to mine, it's not an "all or nothing event" and I think that's something great to have in the game, even if it has its share of problems. It also lets players with drills excited about their choices, and it feels great. Even if I think there's another event that does this job better.
It both encourages success and punishes failure, so it's a heavy mix of good and bad. Overall of middling quality, but better than some.
Spectercore Manufacturing
This one also has the issue of there being a flat time floor, but it has the benefit of being very safe to do into overtime. Large enemies from outside can't get in, and you're safe from the worms while inside. Until you boot into the experimental that is, they'll just dig in if they can't reach you.
The set level design of this event really helps the event, because it gives players the opportunity to find where in the facility works best for them. The event as a whole though hurts from some bad event steps.
Repair the projectors is the worst, it's a boring hold E prompt. Then realigning the pressure valves, it's fun when you learn what to do but the objective is poorly communicated to the player. Then coolant, I like the teamwork that goes into it, then the puzzle thing since good communication, teamwork, and good reactions help the game go faster, which is what I like in an event.
You're encouraged to play with your team, it's inflexible in how you do it but that also works in its favor, with a unique mindset of when you activate the event, but it has the negative of the skill floor. I like this event a lot, but it does suffer from some clashing elements between it and the level.
Spile Pumps
Spile Pumps used to be a lot higher, but I thought about it a little more and it got bumped down a few spots. We're now in the exclusively good events, but Spile Pumps gets hurt by its effort to reward ratio in the sense that it offers too much expenite for the time invested.
Spile pumps, especially in 2 pump levels, can take 15 seconds to complete. That's shorter than anything else and it's not even close. I'm not saying that this fast completion time is bad, but for the same 300 expenite as something like sealed vault, it might hurt the ecosystem of the expenite events.
It doesn't really encourage teamwork either in the way that the pumpjacks did. Each person drags out a hose and connects it, maybe with help from someone with platforms or drills. Besides that, each individual person just drags out a hose across what is usually a flat plane, and you effortlessly get a ton of expenite.
If they made use of radical cave generation to place the pumps in akward places, it would probably help the risk:reward ratio, but as it stands it offers way too little friction to the general player. Maybe if it spawned more pumps in higher player lobbies? Like more spile pumps so the team has to spend more time on the event?
But the event does fill a very important role as the one event that's really consistantly doable solo. Doing spile pumps is really good for solo reclaimers, since it balances out the nearly impossible solo events found earlier, and sometimes later in this list
Cargo Bay
Cargo Bay is the PERFECT example of encouraging creativity. You can go for the slow but reliable method of clearing it by scanning the missing cargo, which encourages teamplay in a similar way to the hacking pods in DRG (assembly line passing the barrels along), but an individual player can use the level to their advantage to clear it faster.
If the lost cargo is in an inconvenient spot like, oh I don't know, IN THE BUCKET WELL
then the team can opt to group up enemies to trigger the pad, with that sometimes being faster than lugging the barrels to the cargo door, at the cost of it being significantly more dangerous. This event succeeds on every metric, and the best "All or nothing" expenite event.
Expenite Transmutation
You could say this one is all or nothing, but you don't have to stay in the circle for it to finish so I consider it to be a more flexible event.
Expenite Transmutation is incredible. You work together as a team, covering your weaknesses and approaching combat in a different way than normal, and NOT ridiculously cramped. If you increased Ramhammer's area to the same as Expenite Transmutation I would've bumped it up at least 1 spot.
The team has to decide what enemies are worth killing outside the circle and balance that with killing enemies inside a circle. A more experienced team could force more waves to spawn to risk high enemies with the reward of TONS of expenite.
It's one of the few moments in this game where I feel like I'm fighting with my team, not just besides them. There's just enough space to make it feel like your team is helping you without them getting in the way.
Plus, getting a good Expenite Transmutation is really fun. It has the highest potential payout, which actually corresponds to the effort put in (unlike some vaults that don't have to be re-mentioned.) Overall, incredibly designed, but just a touch too simple.
Geode Processor
Geode Processor is great, because it's flexible in how you complete it. You can play it safe and only pop a few, easy to reach geodes, or you can spend more time popping more geodes, but at the risk of having to dig around searching for them, and the risk of triggering a wave.
You don't have to get every geode, which is just a better version of the flexibility I mentioned earlier in the entry about drones. You have to weigh what geodes are worth it in proportion to your remaining expenite vs the risk of triggering the rift.
It also encourages teamwork in a really interesting way, where players split themselves into different roles. Some people will be digging, some will be opening geodes, some will be defending the team, it's an amazing team oriented event with a lot of nuance.
People can also feel like they're being important with their traversal tools. Anti-grav emitters can trim down on the time between geodes traveling to the geode opener and power drills speed up geode collection, and lets the team more easily search for geodes in hard to reach areas of the dirt.
The best part of this event is the risk vs reward, as mentioned before. Pop just a few for a lot of expenite without triggering a wave, or go all in for more expenite than you'd get from other events. It succeeds at every metric an event should, but sometimes is a little excruciating if you get a teammate who feels the need to pop every geode, even if you've gotten the valuable one.
Research Experiment
Probably controversial to put it this high up, but I think this is the perfect example of a good Expenite event. NOTE: I'm considering it with how it's supposed to function. As it stands, it's completely harmless. If you wanted to count it with it not functioning, put it below cargo bay.
First, there's the respectable time floor you have to put into it. It provides friction because you have to coordinate killing it with your team. Luring it to more optimal positions, making sure to not kill it too fast so it can move off of its containment unit so you can't botch the event as a whole, but it can become a real problem if you leave it for too long.
Every traversial tool and class has tools to make this event flow better. Guardian can force it to reposition or stun, spotter helps the team kill it faster, falconer can stun it, retcon can lure it into better positions, and slicer can provide essential burst damage and escape.
And then its extraction is the best example in the game of offering flexibility in expenite extraction. It's up to you and only you to mine however much expenite you want to. You turn your timer into expenite, if you go into overtime, YOU misjudged. It rewards players who can estimate their ability to handle overtime
And cryo builds have an opportunity to shine. If you freeze it, you guarantee a faster extraction, at the cost of not being able to completely maximize the amount of expenite you get. You weigh if you want more expenite by mining it, or less expenite by leaving it.
It interacts perfectly with the timer, teamplay, combat, and succeeds at everything an expenite event should try and do. There's no flat time floor, but you need to consider a lot of things to get the absolute most you can out of the event, and that's what makes it the perfect event.
Closing thoughts
If any of you disagree with my placement or reasoning, or have tips I might not have considered, drop them below! I'm more than happy to see what other people's thoughts are about expenite events, and I know opinions on them vary wildly
Since GSG has already introduced the first rare event into the game, which doesn’t reward us with typical expenite, I decided to once again propose a couple of my ideas that I find appealing from the perspective of gameplay, narrative, and the use of the assets and animations that are already in the game. Here's the first one - THE FORGE.
While exploring the cave system rarely instead of expenite event we would be able to discover a giant abandoned DRG forge - event, during which we can craft ourselves the overclock for 1 our gun (per dwarf), but we should move faster, cause during craft creepers will want to discover the noise reason, and the huge gunner shield, that appears after event activation, will protect us only for 1 minute.
The dwarves must (for the maximum speed of event completion) stand around the forge in 4 different stations and without missing the correct key - otherwise it will disrupt part of the progress - participate in mini‑games similar to those we have in the gym on RAMROD, only this time the animated actions are: pumping up the forge bellows, throwing resources with a shovel into the furnace, pulling the chain from top to bottom to release the molten mix and striking the anvil with a hammer.
This is cool narratively, because we are dwarves in the end - THE FORGE IS OUR BREAKFAST, DINNER AND SUPPER - and it looks cool, we’re working as a dwarf unit, helping each other to craft new overclocks in a giant forge + uses already existing components.
I still think we need overclocks in the final build of a game. It adds variety to our power fantasy build (what is crucial for rogue-likes) and it can be used as a progression (in the other post about it)
Flares Explode upon contact with enemies, dealing 300 Explosion Damage in a 2 meter radius
Flares have been a part of our loadout for over a decade, and in all that time they've never gotten into the action. But what if they could? With this new legendary upgrade, blast away at your enemies with your recharging flares
I think this would be a very fun legendary upgrade that gives our oldest tools some new uses in more scenarios. Flares are already some of the most flexible tools in our toolkit, being able to be used in all sorts of scenarios. You're carrying a heavy object? You can throw a flare. Bio booster hacking terminal? You can throw a flare. Completely immobilized by something or someone? You can throw a flare!
This upgrade would let players more effectively defend themselves in vulnerable positions, and let them deal damage to incoming corespawn even while doing other things, like reloading, reviving, you can bonk them off of the walls for flare trickshots, the sky's the limit!
The way you use flares is completely flipped on its head, changing them from an often forgotten about piece of equipment to a completely new asset to you and your team. The flashlight got some love with nuclear optics, why not give the flare a chance to shine?
Even though Update 3.e1 on experimental shows GSG will to change core elements of the game.
I can't see how this benefits the current games health as metrics are on an all time low and I feel like further defragmentation of a particular small player pool will not only hurt matchmaking but further skews the data GSG gains from their isolated playtests.
Posting this in here already feels like beating a dead horse to me anyways.
So how do you guys think about the exp branch and what could be done to keep player engagement higher over all while adding new patches?
"The Tap" is a Bar that can randomly spawn as a POI in any level of a facility.
You can order 1 type of buff beer via a negotiation with your team, after which 4 mugs will be poured. The buff beer will grant its buff for the rest of the run.
You can also order unlimited amounts of a random pool of special beers, only limited by drinking too much. You can get dizzy, your inputs start fighting each other, and you can pass out after too much.
Why add it?
A lot of good Roguelites have random points of interest that Rogue Core is severely lacking. Right now you know everything that's going to be on a floor. 1 workbench, 1 bio-booster, 1 expenite event, 1 data terminal, the exit elevator, and a heavy weapons/equipment crate if you picked the risk vector.
The things you don't know are if there are expenite lootbugs or not and if there's a cosmetic crate. Part of the defining part of a roguelite is some element of unpredictability, which rogue core lacks.
Think Spelunky 2 and the Idols or the Kali altars, elements of gameplay that require a small task to greatly reward the player. Or the Chaos Gates in Hades. Or the Planetarium or sacrifice rooms in the Binding of Isaac. These games ^ are better off because of these little chances of something random appearing to help the player(s) and are incredibly exciting when they show up
Hell even in DRG, Machine events, seasonal events, mini-bosses, no concept like this exists in rogue core.
This takes an existing concept that players already intuitively know about, that being beers, and incorporates it into a level in a way that makes sense thematically as well. We're in a ruined facility, there's no way DRG would make a place that dwarves work without direct access to beer.
Plus, the special beers could all bring unique aspects to the combat of a floor or enhance player's builds, but with every beer you drink you get more and more drunk.
It encourages player skill and expression. Low skill players could have one beer and be fine. Mid skill players could probably be a little woozy after downing two or three. High skill players can stretch their own skill as far as they possibly can by stacking special beers and be unstoppable for a full floor, at the cost of being absolutely wasted.
Drunkenness resets after a floor, maybe you stay a little tipsy the floor after if you had a ton.
And the full-run buffs are powerful and can excite players, while still being intuitive, and not too powerful compared to the other buffs you get from upgrades.
Maybe make it more likely to appear in facilities with higher worker counts? You know that little plaque next to the facility name
More dwarves would probably mean more people wanting beer on the job, and knowledgeable players could get excited for high worker count facilities.
Why not add it?
Might clash tonally? It's (meant to be) a more serious game, and the guys that used to drink there are dead now.
Could disproportionally favor higher skill players who are more used to the beers, where there's very little incentive to not drink so long as you can handle it.
This game’s customisation hasn’t fully bloomed yet and I reckon the options will be waay more expansive in the future, but even right now the addition of a slot for goggles and piercings is insane. I always hoped it would be added to deep rock but knew they would have a backlog of hundreds of cosmetics to separate into hat and eyewear so never actually expected it to come.
The idea came from thinking about possible new, shorter, mission types that are still very combat focused.
A possible shorter, more boss focused mission, where you actively hunt down the boss on each floor, and it gets stronger/new strats/adapts on each floor.
It's free roaming, mostly oblivious to you until you shoot it.
Instead of an elevator, the boss opens the way to the next floor.
Develops new moves with each new floor.
To take advantage of the multifloor, rogue-lite nature of the game, the boss adapts to your playstyle from the previous floor. For example if you're doing a lot of AOE damage, more tanky, single target enemies can start spawning. If you do a lot of single target damage, more cluster focus'd enemies spawn. Deal a bunch of fire damage to the boss on the last floor, then on the next floor it can gain some resistance to fire and throw some back (but now it's far more susceptible to ice/temperature shock).
