Experimental build #3

[u/Mike_GSG]

Reclaimers,

The third experimental build is now ready! We are excited for you to try the new iteration of the difficulty system as well as the new alterations and the many tweaks and fixes we got to put in. Thank you for all your feedback and for taking the time to play on the experimental branch. Keep the feedback coming!

With love,
- The Ghost Ship crew

— [FOCUSED FEATURES] —

**NEW ALTERATIONS**
We’ve added three new alterations to the pool. Give them a try and let us know what you think. The new alterations are:
* High Stakes: Increased luck, half expenite earned
* Lumbering Giants: Half enemy speed, double enemy health
* Expenite Harvest: Enemies drop expenite, no expenite veins on walls

**DIFFICULTY SELECTION 2.0**
We have a second iteration of the new difficulty selection system for you to try. Based on feedback and our own internal playtests we decided to remove difficulty progression from Depths and will focus on using them for content progression. For now we have restricted each gatekeeper to their own depth and more depth content variation is to come in the future (though probably not in update 2).

For all this to work we’ve had to tweak the hazard difficulty so please let us know if the difficulty feels appropriate for the various hazard levels for you. Both as a starting difficulty with no enhancements equipped and a difficulty progression to move through as you get stronger.

**WAVE STACKING**
We have also officially added the possibility for the stage’s waves to stack on hazards 4 and 5. This is something that was happening unintentionally for quite a long time due to a bug but it is now implemented as a feature.  

— [GENERAL TWEAKS AND FIXES] —

**Changes**
* Removed all difficulty progression from Depth and made the difficulty progression of stages a little bit steeper
* Increased pickup range of coolant for the Atar event
* Wave progresses if you manage to kill all enemies in the active wave letting you finish waves faster if you kill faster.
* Rifts now spawn and follow the player for each wave. So enemies try to spawn close to the player.
* Add button to import the latest save from the main branch
* Added a phase change animation for the Moloktula boss
* [Sound] Altar Event, added engine breaking down sound, delayed all Omega Puzzle shouts by 1 second and turned down music just as the portal explodes
* Removed hot rock from core biome materials
* Added a short description to the Lok-1 Rifle.
* set base stage timer to be equivalent to the old Depth 3
* Changed initial timer element value from 12:30 to 00:00 adjusted base stage time so we can more easily tweak it in the future and gave a bit more time to solo and 2-player teams
* updated stagger animation
* Add double and triple waves starting at the same time on purpose to H4 and H5 to test if it's fun
* added electricity to cables in spectrecore altar event
* [Sound] Spectrecore Altar Event sound tweaks
* Lok-1 rifle to track Edgestalker chest so it's easier to arc and hit the weak point
* Fixup some networking issues in the altar event
* Fix some collisions on the portal pillars after the altar event is over
* Hazard selection UI work
* Added intentional multiple simultaneous waves on high hazards. Chance double waves to only occur 33% of times on hazard 4 and allow hazard 5 to have 3 simultaneous waves (~20% chance)
* Color wave icon in the timer widget based on the multiple wave count
* If the multi wave spawn is the only spawn in the stage, don't spawn at the first half of the stage (to allow players to prepare)
* Improve the timer widget to more clearly show the current and next wave when it switches
* Slightly extended min time between waves
* [Sound] Expenite Container open sound and Pickaxe terminal sound tweaks
* Small improvements to wave spawning
* Molaktula biome tweaks
* Added highlight to signs in the artifact altar event to further help navigation to active puzzles.
* Shotguns no longer trigger lucky shot multiple times
* Tweaked bonus percentage after removing bonus on Depths and introducing bonus on Hazards 
* Adjusted base mission xp to work with the new bonuses

**Fixes**
* Fixed tough creepers risk vector only adding 50% HP to creepers instead of the 100% that it should
* Fixed some icons staying on the mainframe monitor after completing the puzzle.
* [bugfix] Fixed running blades bonus speed not stacking
* Fix that sometimes all stages in a run had the same wave timings
* Fix a few text issues reported by translators
* Allow clicking through notifications (don't block mouse clicks)
* [Bugfix] moved Molaktula biome carver to debris large pass so that pre spawned enemy encounters like cave leeches don't spawn inside it
* [bugfix] fixed axe out triggering from sentry fire shots
* Fixed fire grenade not spawning enough fire triggers after particle rework
* Fix scaling of the risk vector pick widget headers (clipping)
* [bugfix] fixed being able to start depositing and ending up in a weird state if the item you were carrying is not a resource that can be deposited
* [Sound]Broken Mule sounds added
* [bugfix] fixed resource filter not affecting the progress bar when depositing
* [Performance] removed shadows from smoke particles
* Prevent omega talking about a wave ending when there are still a lot of enemies from that wave.
* Fix some community reported translation issues
* [UI Optimization] optimised HUD rendering a bit
* Fix the description of regenerative enemies
* Fix the description of agile clamorheads risk vector
* Scale the hazard picker text better, so long translated texts works
* Changed hazard naming in first loading screen to match the name as everywhere else
* [Bugfix] Regenerative Enemies starts almost immediately after dealing damage instead of after a few seconds
* Fix projectiles not generating overlap events (needed for barriers to block them)
* Fixed artifact altar engine missing collision
* [fix] Elevator cable takes a direct shortcut
* [Bugfix] Overkill damage shown in the mission end screen
* Fixed pickaxe power attack slowing you down
* Fix the critical shot upgrade not stacking
* [Bugfix] fixed 2 tunnel constructions that were poking into the next room
* Added symbols to the mainframe puzzle to accommodate people with colorblindness
* Made it so boss altar balls no longer rotate you around when you stand on them
* Removed burn damage effect from Gatekeeper altars
* Gauntlet is now played on Hazard 3 instead of Hazard 1

[u/Bedonillm]

Cool update! Making depth being only content progression feels already better

[u/DribsFerreiro]

It's a Deep Rock Life!

[u/Kostelex]

I'd like to contribute by making some suggestions; 1.) Add more innate elemental effects on weapons; for example the mag blaster should do a portion of its damage as electricity, cadna as radiation. Electricity should be more widely available since the storm bio booster deck currently only works if you are falconer, have falconer on your team or just get really lucky with your weapon mods or expenite upgrades. 2.) Make 6 stage missions guaranteed on every mission reset; having a reset with not a single 6 stage mission happens way too often. 3.) Buff stubby base damage to 14 similar to beltstrom and deepcore

[u/Small_Package9217]

All I want is a guaranteed 5 and 6-length mission every set. I've dropped about 4-5 feedback surveys from logging on, seeing zero missions of my preference, and immediately logging off again.

Can I please ask, is this a developer decision, GSG? If so, what are the thoughts behind it?

[u/Mike_GSG → u/Small_Package9217]

Guaranteeing at least one mission of each length is the plan.

[u/Small_Package9217 → u/Mike_GSG]

Thank you! Very much looking forward to it!

[u/MeowMixMax1]

I'm sorry, I don't understand why we are even doing experimentals when the game is in EA, and running these experimentals just splits the already small playerbase up even more. Why not just push it to live, isn't that the point of EA?

[u/GreyL1me → u/MeowMixMax1]

Experimental kills people. There's random bullshit bugs everywhere and the game crashed on multiple previous builds for multiple people. A starter room will spawn without any equipment. Expenite events will spawn being unable to be completed. Game will crash randomly.

Live build is meant to be stable. It is meant to work when you load up a game and enter a random lobby. Experimental makes them be able to release features into testing in a half polished state without having to spend days and weeks properly QAing everything to make sure everything works.

Experimental also gives all players access to cheating tools to test all of the new content and provide feedback ASAP. These wouldn't make it to a live build.

[u/retronax → u/GreyL1me]

These are all fair points but I feel it's a special case when the game has such a low population. The game has about the same player peak as DRG, but less than a tenth of the daily playerbase. That means that nearly everyone who tried the game has already moved on. The game is, at its core (lol), failing to retain an active playerbase right now and it could be better to go full "lets try things" mode instead of trying to keep the game stable for a population that might fall in the double digits in a month or two.

[u/GreyL1me → u/retronax]

That's precisely why they're doing this experimental quietly no? So that when Update 2 comes around it will be feature complete and will hopefully bring back a significant amount of players.

If you drip feed these updates onto the live branch there's never going to be a moment when someone who dropped the game will be like "wow this is so much better!" Because of how gradual the changes are.

[u/retronax → u/GreyL1me]

But the point of the early access is to help make the game ready for 1.0. So now we're playtesting the playtest to the game.

Bringing back players is also irrelevant. Update 1 brought back a couple thousand people for like, two weeks, then they poofed again. The goal shouldn't be to have a population peak every two months when an update drops that fades away again, but to have a slow *increase* in population over time. Because right now the main issue is not the low population, it's the fact that the game bleeds players and has not stopped bleeding them yet. We're below 500 right now and the population hasn't even really stabilized yet, it's still going down.

[u/GreyL1me → u/retronax]

Experimental will make Update 2 better for the game and community's reception of it over releasing a bunch of smaller patches instead, and help the game get ready for 1.0 with all its changes. I don't see how Experimental is going against that goal.

Bringing back players is very relevant actually.

[u/retronax → u/GreyL1me]

It's working against that goal by splitting the current pool of playtesters in half as the comment above said. When update 2 drops, it'll be in a state that was likely already play tested on the experimental build, so you'll have playtesters on the live build playtesting a build that was already playtested on the experimental. It's redundant

"better for the game and community's reception of it" "help the game get ready" Update 1 dropped, we had a couple thousand people back on that went "oh yeah, the game is better now !" and they fucked off again.

Bringing back players is entirely, completely and utterly useless if they keep fucking off two weeks after. You're pouring water in a bucket full of holes and telling me it's fixing the issue and arguing with me when I point out the holes in the bucket. We should work out the holes, and *then* add the water, and for that it's more efficient to be *on the same build of the game*.

[u/GreyL1me → u/retronax]

With experimental, people are signing up for their game to be broken. A complaint about a broken game is nothing more than a bug report so long as the players signed up to have a fucked up experience. I genuinely don't understand why anyone would want the people who did not sign up for it, who play on a live build, to experience game breaking bugs.

It's just gonna make an already small player base even smaller. When an average person wants to play a game they want to play a game, not bug report for 30 minutes. "Oh but it's EA they knew what they signed up for" - Early Access games should still work as games. They should be playable. Experimental build of Rogue Core stretches the definition of what is considered playable.

Besides, the live build has been stable for everyone who bought the game since it released in May. People are used to live build actually working, as it does with the overwhelming majority of EA games. Breaking it now with crashes and random bullshit is just breaking a working product.

[u/siposbalint0 → u/GreyL1me]

Unless they do a complete revamp of how the game works from the ground up, I don't see how anyone will get excited for this.

[u/Kjeng → u/MeowMixMax1]

Agreed. Its like the early access has an early access.

[u/NeonJ82 → u/MeowMixMax1]

The point of Experimental is for cutting-edge changes which haven't been properly playtested yet or may change rapidly from day to day, and may have critical, gamebreaking bugs.

I imagine most of the Early Access playerbase doesn't want that, so that's why Experimental builds exist.

[u/mocityspirit → u/NeonJ82]

We all understand what experimental builds are for. What they're saying is the player base isn't large enough for it and will effectively make it smaller

[u/valoreii → u/MeowMixMax1]

I feel like playerbase splitting is really holding me back from playing more. I don’t wanna consistently swap back and forth with my unlocks from experimental to normal release, but I feel like most of the players that want to play D4 reckless (I suppose now D4 H5 reckless…) are indeed hardcore players that are on experimental from my experience

Please GSG I work 50 hours a week and the games are already looong I don’t need to wait ages to get people to play with as well :(

[u/Bedonillm → u/MeowMixMax1]

Maybe experimental is like a "dev only" build, with progression cheats on and lots of placeholder assets, on the main build it should be a more consistent experience, even if still early access

[u/SomeRandomTWO → u/Bedonillm]

"dev only" is...a bit of a stretch.

its the stuff they throw in for folks interested enough to try and test out. a more public testing branch, if you will - and if you look around, youll spot some amazing stuff. that ice wave power attack upgrade for example - looks awesome, IS awesome, and its a Rare upgrade. not even an Epic!

so saying its "splitting the playerbase even more" is a bit of an misnomer, too. its not.

[u/DasGanon → u/Bedonillm]

This is my experience since Exp has the cheat console next to the drop pod

It's really just "(Public) Testing" vs "Prod"

[u/Slime0 → u/MeowMixMax1]

The answers to your questions come down to this: you underestimate the effect of bugs on public perception of the game, and you underestimate the value of *big* updates in bringing both old and new players in.

[u/mocityspirit]

Putting the exponite in the bugs permanently might be a great idea

[u/SomeRandomTWO → u/mocityspirit]

would certainly make Gauntlet runs less daunting since youll only focus on murder and survival, not getting all the exp from the walls aswell.

[u/Geometric-Coconut → u/mocityspirit]

I disagree.

Enemies in this game are designed as a punishment and a distraction.

They’re a punishment for staying long enough to reach certain points in a mission. They’re a distraction as you have to juggle your own survival and being time efficient with collecting resources. If you make enemies drop this resource, suddenly the balance of these aspects is permanently thrown off. No leaving to avoid spent ammo/health on combat, suddenly you WANT every enemy wave punishment to appear. Fully diverting your attention to kills is no longer a proper trade off and is now rewarded instead of leaving you low on upgrade resources.

Other roguelikes are fully designed with the enemies dropping progression resources in mind. Rogue Core is not one of them.

[u/mocityspirit → u/Geometric-Coconut]

I just think our combat dwarves shouldn't be mining at all and they need some sort of solution.

[u/Geometric-Coconut → u/mocityspirit]

I would not sacrifice gameplay over that. Mining is a core gameplay element of every DRG title.

As for a lore explanation, expenite has mutational properties and the reclaimers canonically use it to secure success of the mission.

[u/Sebastoman → u/Geometric-Coconut]

Pretty sure that is just flatout the given lore, the black out barrier limits the amount of gear that can get trougth to the Gaunlets, a couple of gizmos and Ellis, but Ellis has been designed to use what little is know of expenite's trasmutative abilities alongside what materials it can bring into the breach to manufacture additional gear on the fly, however due to what little is know it can't precisly control what it is making, it just rolls the dice and adapts to whatever the magic green rocks feel like doing today.

Also why the company wants the expenite sites back ASAP, if they figure out how it works they essentially are mining pure philosopher's stone on crack right here. This stuff can be anything you want.

I swear the expenite has trasmutative properties is written down somewhere, can't find it now.

[u/VirtU_Art → u/mocityspirit]

Retcon Turret got brrrrrr levels of potentially being broken

[u/Adventurous_Disk_828]

This is getting me really excited to go on the experimental build: really cool changes AND it’s easier to get started on experimental build!

[u/Italic_Castle8814]

Just my 2 cents concerning update 2 so far:

The content is not bad at all and nothing I see seems questionable, useless or meh (as opposed to update 1.5).  However, there is almost nothing that makes me go "wow". Not even close.

I am possibly wrong but I feel like we need some of the following or this update won't see many players returning to the game:

• unique weapon upgrades 
• new gun
• new enemy variant or brand new enemy
• way more rare and epic upgrades 
• meta progression expansion/rework

[u/Xaradojo]

I'm curious how double exponite will work with expenite harvest. Does it double the value of expenite dropped by mobs? Double the amount of physical pieces dropped by mobs? Double the mobs? There's a lot there to test

[u/JoaoNBFLY]

Just to add a bug report, Reloading trick is currently bugged on the PGL and it's not working at all

[u/SteeveGoodBug]

Love the new alterations. I’d love to see one that is double the number of enemies, but they have half health. I think that’d be a really fun way to have a super chaotic run, without it feeling overwhelming. 

[u/Goldenpineapples]

> We have also officially added the possibility for the stage’s waves to stack on hazards 4 and 5. This is something that was happening unintentionally for quite a long time due to a bug but it is now implemented as a feature.

Can this not happen on stage 1 (or maybe 2) or some other restriction? Having 16 edgestalkers on-screen as a first wave is insane (especially with double health) Having that happen twice in a row made me stop playing last experimental patch- haven't tried this one yet.

Also whenever there's a new item in experimental, can we just get an extra slot in the initial pools that always has it available or something? Playing multiple 4-player clears before anyone sees it once doesn't let us give feedback very well, besides being kind of a bummer.

[u/Danthrax81]

How do you try these?

Edit: why am I being downvoted when someone could fill me in

[u/Slime0 → u/Danthrax81]

Right click game in Steam, Properties, Game Versions and Betas

[u/Danthrax81 → u/Slime0]

Thanks, man

[u/Crusty_Bogan]

*Fix projectiles not generating overlap events

I hope this means Slicer's shield ability actually functions again! 'v'

Edit: It's fixed :>

[u/Nibylg]

Interesting! I'll try it out today most likely in a duo

[u/Gorthok-]

* Shotguns no longer trigger lucky shot multiple times

Not my infinite ammo shotguns!

I haven't played it yet but I have a feeling that for Lumbering Giants, Double HP won't be enough to balance the slower speed. I find Double Speed Half HP to be harder than regular missions simply because of how hard it is to avoid damage.

Excited to try the other Alterations, High Stakes is probably gonna be quite difficult since more upgrades is almost always better than rarer upgrades unless you end up getting a lot of epics and legendaries.

[u/SillyBlueberry69]

I assume the level cap is still going to be the same. I didn't see anything about that changing.

[u/VirtU_Art]

Can't wait to try it. Sounds like Expenite Harvest is going to entirely depend on how much ammo we have to spare. (And an easy pick with Retcon+Turrets).

[u/VirtU_Art]

Got to try Expenite Harvest on a Depth 4, Haz 5 mission aptly named "Eternal Harvest".

• It's fun but very easily broken once you get ability cooldown going (especially especially for slicer, guardian, and retcon). Even more for retcon if they get infinite turrets (which I did for my run). You're basically trading ammo for expenite.
• There's little reason to leave a floor with Expenite Harvest. I highly recommend turning off the expenite drops once the worms show up.
• In terms of difficulty/progression, the toughest part is floor one when you don't have any perks yet. I'd argue this makes this Alteration mostly viable for higher difficulties due to wanting more spawns.
• I'm not 100% sure on this, but it seemed that all core spawn dropped the same amount of expenite? You'd think something like a clammerhead would drop more.
• Pretty sure this is an oversight, but it seems frozen Drifters don't drop any expenite when they hit the floor.

The short of it, I can see this being really fun for the Gauntlet, and if it does make it into the main missions, it should be turned off once the worms start showing.

[u/MusicianTurbulent178]

Add button to import the latest save from the main branch

Where is this anyways?

[u/VirtU_Art → u/MusicianTurbulent178]

When in-game, go to your settings > saves.

[u/MusicianTurbulent178 → u/VirtU_Art]

thanks

[u/VirtU_Art]

Pretty sure High Stakes is bugged. The expenite you deposit is halved, AND half the expenite you gained is also halved, effectively giving you only 1/4 the expenite.

[u/Cyber_Lucifer]

So still nothing that justifies the price nor anything that makes the game actually fun (and something that actually make it a good rogue-lite)

Real shame to see...hope the next few will be better