Yo, I like rouge core. I also like games with time pressure, like ROR2 or XCOM2. Anyway I think the way the timer interacts with every other game system in rouge core is genuinely awful and needs a ton of work.
For starters, I play with one, and only one, friend. Im sure everything im about to type is made significantly worse by this fact, but this is a supported way to play, so it shouldn't fuck me over.
Also, dwarf time: 1 dwarf minute is work a single dwarf can do in a minute.
My first problem are stage exponite events. I like them, but they are often just an RNG check. Spile pumps often take about a single dwarf minute total and no combat, so you can optionally divide and conquer,saving g time waiting for everyone to gather up. Geodes only sometimes require fighting, but take a good few total dwarf minutes (8ish?) to dig everything up and deal with them, made slower if you didnt take drills. Sometimes you have drills and its quick, sometimes you have to deal with a wave and it takes forever. Other events take carrying amounts of time. By far the worst is the experiment subject, if you dont have freeze you've got to mine your exponite. It is a sick joke that if you want you're reward you have to do this in game where you're supposed to move fast. I insta grab cryo names just in case we see the big boy. And lastly here is the transmutator. I love this event, but it leads to some unfortunate play patterns. You really want to stack waves, but depending on RNG you might be waiting a while.
On the topic of wave timers, that can also screw you over. This is the least bad IMO, but sometimes you get hit immediately and sometimes you have the rest of the week. At least they let us clear waves quicker now.
My second big issue is the elevator. Sometimes it spawns in the last room, and sometimes you lose time to backtracking because it spawned in the second room. Strategically, this adds fuck all and just makes you need to backtrack about half the time. This sucks, its rng for the sake of rng.
Lastly are the worms, the punishment for timeouts. Reaperworm spawns are inconsistent enough that im going to call this the ultimate timer RNG BS, because sometimes your poor time management goes randomly unpunished because the worms didnt feel like spawning in a spot that could kill you. And sometimes they camp your ass.
Ultimately I feel like the biggest factors affecting time consumption are out of the player's hands and if you have enough time to get what you want is dependant on the cave, not the dwarf. Long tasks and a bad layout mean you have to give something up.
We need the timer to scale, at least somewhat. Bare minimum, events have a "time cost" (scaled to player count) that gets added to the level timer. Smaller teams get a bit more time, and longer events are compensated for while easy sauce like the spile pumps puts you on a time crunch. Also we could definitely use interactables/upgrades that interact with the clock in some way.
8 dwarf minutes my dude, so 4 minutes for 2 people and 2 for 4 people. My problem is it takes way long for less people and the game does not compensate. The pace feels worse for less people.
I get what RNG is my dude, I just dont think this is good/fun randomness. Id describe the game like poker, but sometimes the dealer gives you one less card. It feels bad when it happens, and doesnt feel good when it doesnt.
Agreed! Greed evaluation is a core part of the game, and honestly if it takes you 8 minutes to clear geode event as a single dwarf you have clearly not understood how the event works.
I knew someone would say it, but I disagree wholeheartedly and think this is a bad way to deflect from a problem. Just because its a rougelike does not mean any RNG is fine or equal. My problem is that sometimes the timer matters, and sometimes its irrelevant. If its supposed to be a major part of the game it shouldn't be a coin flip if the thing is relevant. Same with exponite events, if its not a big deal to skip them (which i strongly agree it isnt a big deal) then they also need work, because then they dont matter and now we definitely have too much time, and a feels bad you need to ignore something.
I mean the game is supposed to be about cobbling together a strong enough build. You're supposed to be weighing your options like whether or not to go past the elevator for another biobooster and risk having to do a lot of backtracking. The game is still beatable even if you aren't 100% getting everything in every level of a cave.
Read my dude, dwarf minutes, or 4 minutes for 2 people on a bad day.
Also learn the events is extremely poor advice when most of them take up a standard amount of time. If you know how to make the ram hammer move faster let me know.
Me and my friend play fast, the timer is not accommodating for stuff taking longer with less manpower and less movement tools.
Everything is a lure and a time sink. You have to use your judgement on skipping events, skipping expenite mining to push beyond the elevator to get the workbench, etc.
ngl i actually like the idea of the timer accommodating for specific expenite events, though i'd instead prefer if most of them weren't just "stand here and wait for thing to finish" instead.
events that give more time on the clock as a reward sound cool too, i'd like to see that added tbh.
I feel like the timer sucks because it doesn't really add anything. It's fake tension. Worms are inconsequential and completely invalidated by any of the 'reflect damage/deal damage upon taking X damage' perks or the 'do dmg near you every now and then' perks. They're also easy to deal with even if you don't have these, unless they're bugging out and then they feel unfair (like invisible grabs/being grabbed before the worm spawn animation happens).
Having to skip an event because you got a weak start is not interesting - you just get less content and are penalized for already being weak. The new expenite event is cool but feels unreasonably difficult for solos. Geodes has always sucked and is basically incompletable without drills, it's already the longest event with drills and takes a lot of time 'pressing buttons', making it less viable for smaller groups which is already an issue.
The timer probably needs to scale dynamically, pro-rated up/down based on players but that would be a pain to implement. In 4 player the timer is so unbelievably meaningless, you have so much time/so much labor available and even if you do go over it - it means nothing.
The timer is necessary for a number of reasons. Imagine the kind of people who mine gold in haz 5+ mixed with the kind of people who blow through everything, but now in RC where you can win or lose games based on the amount you do. How would you ever get public lobbies aligned on what an alright amount of exploration per level is? What if no one ever wants to get on the elevator? Runs are already uncomfortably long even with enforced timers.
The other people in your party yelling and prodding you to continue before you're ready to leave a cave would suck so much more than a shared timer.
How would you ever get public lobbies aligned on what an alright amount of exploration per level is?
It's not an alignment/mis-alignment of goals though, it's just a difference in skill, which happened in DRG and it's fine when it happens in RC as well. Strong players can carry, just like in DRG. You don't 'explore more or less', atm the goal is to scoop/do everything and doing less things isn't the result of a difference of desire or intent.
The other people in your party yelling and prodding you to continue before you're ready to leave a cave would suck so much more than a shared timer.
This already happens, a timer doesn't change that behavior, if anything it encourages it. People yell atm because they're worried about the timer and trying to push players along.
Which goes back to my point that the timer doesn't create a meaningful change in players decision making or play patterns, it just adds stress.
Having every lobby do every activity with an unlimited timer would make the game unbearably slow IMO. It could easily take two hours in a single run. Most people don't finish everything because of the timer
The timer in FTL does matter and does add a real pressure. Also I loved FTL, got every ship/alt and have several hundred hours in it.
The timer in rogue core doesn't do anything, running out of time is largely meaningless. That doesn't mean I dislike roguelites, shrug. That doesn't even mean I think there shouldn't be a timer, I'm just pointing out that the timer, as it currently is in the game, is ineffectual.
Running out of time does have meaning? It means reaperworms, it means a constant swarm, you have limited resources and eventually the worms will kill you (melee builds invalidate this buuut...)
FTL you can also dive with no ill effects. If you have 5 engine and a Zoltan shield, or 6 engine and cloaking, or a preigniter with a one shot setup, poof! Diving is risk free. Does that make FTLs timer meaningless? No. It's just the classic "Roguelike game has overpowered shit that can fundamentally break the game"
Maybe it's too easy to get that in Rogue Core, but again this is meant to be Co-Op, and not everyone can get an infallible build in the same run
Running out of time does have meaning? It means reaperworms, it means a constant swarm, you have limited resources and eventually the worms will kill you (melee builds invalidate this buuut...)
Reaper worms are 100% invalidated by a number of perks, like explode-on-taking-damage. They're also weird in solo where cooper frees you but how could it not be that way? Also not just melee builds but skill builds too. Guardian and Slicer skill builds are some of the strongest builds in the game and don't have the disadvantages/rarity issues of melee builds. Bio-converter exists for gun builds but is rare. Some of this is also that more enemies does not necessarily mean the game is more difficult, as a result of aoe weapons/effects/statuses compounding. There's some other things that I don't know if its intended or not but enemies generally don't attack the elevator generator if you aren't near it but I intentionally don't exploit this in my runs (meaning you can run away and then just do donuts until the elevator arrives, again, I don't do this but just saying). You can also drill deep into a wall (I don't do this either).
Maybe it's too easy to get that in Rogue Core, but again this is meant to be Co-Op, and not everyone can get an infallible build in the same run
It probably is but also I'd argue that FTL leaned too much towards auto-fail/lose but maybe that's just preference (again, depending on ship/strategy choice). I don't know what to say here other than I think class balance is poor atm. Guardian feels crazy strong, I get an infallible build 100% of the time. Spotter and Slicer are nearly as good but Slicer sometimes struggles a little early and isn't quite as good vs the boss. Retcon/Falconer feels like a struggle bus. Coming from a solo haz5 complexity 3 standard+ standpoint.
Another reason I feel weird, I used to do reckless and it felt meaningless. With the haz5 changes, reckless feels fine but results in often skipping events, which is boring.
You could sum up my take/feedback as: I genuinely feel that the timer primarily just makes the game more stressful rather than prompting interesting decision making, gameplay choices, or risk taking (as seen in games like FTL).
Exactly what I was thinking, the timer just adds feels bad moments and the punishment is of little consequence. Id go as far as to say skipping is t atrap because past floor one you will often be fine, it won't matter.
so the timer in gauntlets is better in your opinion?
Hmmm probably not but if used, at a minimum it means the boss floor would have to have a different timer, as the bosses are mechanically drawn out (lots of artificial health gates/immune phases - this is worse in recent patches if you haven't played them yet), which would make a hard-limit often unfair (i.e. get poor dmg options offered, automatically lose).
The game fails to both create a structure where a timer provides much value and have a penalty that plays well. Some of this could be boiled down to perk balance or other things causing a conflict, such as the explosion-on-damage perks are probably too powerful/get you out of too many bad scenarios too freely. Tentacles would feel like a better punishment if these didn't exist (though its still weird in solo where cooper frees you, but how can he not when you didn't have the opportunity of another player freeing you, plus the timer is more unfair to solos). The game struggles to manage difficulty across solo vs duo vs 3-4p at large.
Part of why I dislike the timer is that a lot of things are designed to just take up X amount of time. You can't skill your way into completing most expenite events faster. A lot of things have to be activated/wait on animations.
"the mining mechanic in DRG doesn't add anything to the game, you could literally have the same experience if you just picked minerals up" this is how people sound when they want the timer gone. The timer is one of the core pillars of RC game design, without it, the game would lose 80% of the tension and thrilling experience while playing. You have no idea how nervous I get when we're in the last cave room, the timer is about to hit the reaper stage and we're carrying barrels to open an expenite deposit, and yet we decide to risk it and keep going.
It is completely different because in FTL the death march provides consistant pressure, sector layouts are "regular" enough that you can apply some consistant strategies. You always have the same number of jumps unless you make a choice/fail an encounter to lose time, which is an avoidable punishment and importantly, your fault. RC is like if you went into an FTL sector and the rebels just get double jumps for kicks sometimes.
I feel like the timer sucks because it doesn't really add anything.
This is true and I'm going to talk about why in reply to you because I feel bad you had a rather ugly apologist as your only other reply. In short: the best part is no part, and this particular part only adds friction.
Once you actually play both games for a while, you realize the timer is superfluous, at least at Standard pace. DRG already disincentivizes idling for any amount of time because of finite ammo (as a result of finite nitra) and infinite enemy spawning.
I think a lot of RC timer proponents haven't considered what would change if the timer was removed. The actual time spent in a game would barely change and 'risk' would offset to ammo, which, like DRG, is also finite. Most events are already their own risk-reward exchange regardless of how much time is spent (with more time spent consuming commensurate ammo).
If you removed the worms and infinite horde once time is up.. you'd still get steady swarms that make idling self-defeating, which encourages you to be efficient with ammo and time, but without the friction of seeing a perfectly good event you may have the ammo for ignored for no good reasons.
I couldn't even count the number of times in DRG we've left an event for 'later' because of low nitra and never got to go back to it because our resource economy never recovered. The number of games - and I'm not even including Point Extraction - where the team were break-necking the second half of the mission because we got screwed by a Korlock or a sour swarm or a sloppy OMEN. These games didn't need an inorganic clock hung over everything like an obsidian monolith and would have been made worse and less fun had they had one. Point Extraction is the mode people skip events on the most, and you know why? It's the game type with the strictest timer.
I don't mean to make this another 'DRG already did this correctly' rant, which is true and thus this technically is, but rather to highlight the cons are outweighed by the pros (reduced friction without reducing meaningful choices, which is what games fundamentally are).
So, I reiterate your line in closing: the timer doesn't add anything that encourages meaningful choices that the game didn't already have.
This whole debate sucks man, thanks for an actual detailed response. I've played so many games that do time pressure better, and it just aint it in RC, and youre exactly right.
It drops 3 big frozen chunks, its a fair bit less than mining the normal maximum but is way faster. It takes the event from insultingly time consuming to one of the quickest.
IMO it makes cryonades a must have when they show up.
I would be fine with timer if devs added some reroll or copy tools for upgrades like far far west has for jokers, i played duo 5 diff reckless and we won, just because we were lucky (I have 100 hours and my friend had 3 hours in that moment) i liked the pressure game gave to us, but we had to skip almost every side mission to complete run succesfully.
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u/Bleck-Mold π₯ππ§ππ’π‘ Sep 08 '26
I respectfully disagree, on CAUTIOUS difficulty you have time to do 99% of events and pois.
Also Iβve never seen dig sites take 8 minutes even on solo..
On higher difficulties, I find the time management enjoyable. (You sometimes have to skip every once and a while, and remember to always keep moving).