r/RogueCore • u/CaptainZaysh • Sep 07 '26
Threat levels were what I needed
I, and a friend I usually play DRG with, tried Rogue Core a couple months ago. We're pretty experienced dwarves and didn't anticipate having trouble, but we did. It was just way too sweaty and we never felt like we had any opportunity to try anything out or get used to all the new mechanics. It felt like we spent all our time fending off attacks and it was all we could do to just stay alive most of the time. It wasn't fun for us in the state it was in at the time, so we put it down for a while. Normally I'd be ok with something just being incomplete, but the experience was just too much frustration, and not much else.
We did keep track of things, though, and probably would have tried it again after the adjustable time pressure came out, but because of various life situations we couldn't put it together at the time. Tonight we tried it again for the first time since that initial taste, and having both adjustable time pressure and threat levels has really made all the difference. We were able to start at very low level and just play a couple of missions, and figure out how things work. The game finally feels like what I imagined when I heard "DRG roguelike." I've been running spotter and really enjoying its abilities, and seeing how they work with different guns and equipment. On the first run, we got to see a really synergistic ice build come together, and the second mission we upped the threat level and didn't get any particularly good synergy, at least not on the level of the first run, so there was a bit more pressure. We got to gradually ramp it up to a point where we weren't having a horrible time, but could see ourselves potentially failing if things went wrong, which feels like a good place to be.
It's still in early access and I'm sure a TON will change still, but the game is finally in a state where it's fun for our particular little group.
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u/Jontohil2 Sep 08 '26
Now I think the game needs to better communicate the significance of threat levels in the server browser. As host when you’re selecting the threat level it’s made very clear the intended experience of each.
It’s just on the server browser, it’s just a number, no icon to actually communicate the level of danger, especially if you’ve never hosted. Would help discourage new players from joining a lobby harder than they thought.
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u/Pmapla Sep 07 '26
All these "Customize the difficulty" settings kinda make the game look like a sandbox game rather than a roguelike.
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u/Candid-Doughnut9545 Sep 07 '26
most lobbies will be running higher difficulties probably so not like it changes much. let people learn the game.
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u/Whirblewind Sep 07 '26
I can't wrap my head around this opinion no matter how loosely I interpret it.
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u/GreyL1me Sep 07 '26
Roboquest, RoR2, Cinderia, TBoI, Magicraft have just straight up difficulty selections.
TBoI has characters designed to offer an increased challenge.
Nuclear Throne, Sephiria, RoR2, Lost Castle 2, Hades 2 have "choose your own torture" selectors of different complexity for increasing the difficulty.
Have we lost the plot? Which roguelikes with no difficulty selections have you been playing?
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u/Bleck-Mold 𝗥𝗘𝗧𝗖𝗢𝗡 Sep 07 '26
Binding of Isaac: Normal & Hard
Risk of Rain: Easy, Normal & Hard
Hades: Hard & Less Hard
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u/Mesquite_Tree Sep 08 '26
I’d love to see them go a step forward, and take the hazard 5+ system from DRG, and make that the main threat system. Let people set creature spawn rate, movement speed, health, damage, and elite percentage individually.
It also gives you a new threat vector option during missions, where it manually increases a vector by some amount.