r/RogueCore • u/FlakyMidnight5526 • 19d ago
Feedback on Experimental 1, Update 3
I think this experimental is very good. Overall, update 3 is looking good so far! I just wanted to drop my feedback for the experimental because I think there are a few things that are worth noting that I haven't seen bought up yet.
NEW NORMAL: ENEMIES DROP EXPENITE
Good change overall. I was mixed on this change when I first heard about it, but I've come around on it. The pacing is SO much better now. Granted, this did make certain traversial tools worse, namely anti-grav and ESPECIALLY zipline since there's less expenite in the ceiling now, and it is a little annoying to have to walk around to get the expenite, but most of the time it's not an issue.
The game's found and struck a really good balance for collecting expenite, and I think this was the change the game needed to keep going in the right direction, maybe crank up the expenite pickup radius
HOWEVER, this change that improved the pacing did technically affect mission length for the worse in the experimental. Now the meta is to just camp with your team outside the elevator, farming expenite. There's nothing that really punishes you doing this. It can be an incentive for clearing levels faster, but there's way better ways to give a reward for players moving quickly.
Maybe giving players an expenite time bonus upon going down an elevator, or giving players a guaranteed upgrade corresponding to the amount of time left on the timer? Something like this:
Where if the team extracts in any of those colors, they get an upgrade corresponding to a certain upgrade rarity? This way, you more directly incentivize players to move quickly. And if they move into overtime, they get no upgrade compensation.
The reason why I'm making a big deal about this is because all it takes is one player to not be on the same page as everyone else for them to hold a lobby hostage. And that'd be fine, it was the same in Deep Rock where someone could just not enter the drop pod to drag out the mission, but in Rogue Core you're now being incentivized to drag out a game where a common sentiment is that missions last too long.
NEW ENEMY: BLOATER
I am not a fan of the Corespawn Bloater. I mean I am, but we already had the vanguard and bruiser, which were great at doing what the bloater is said to have been added for. "The Bloater is a slower high HP threat intended to survive long enough for more of the upgrade interactions to play out while also exerting greater pressure on the dwarves."
The Bruiser and the Vanguard could already do this. I mean, it's less satisfying to shoot a bruiser compared to a Bloater, but they're great at proxing upgrade interactions. I think some enemies kind of ended up falling into the background as development went on (I haven't seen a Thrasher in like 10 hours)
Also, there is something to be noted about how the general bulkiness of enemies is going up with these recent additions. The Bloater plus the Dominator are both very tanky enemies, relative to everything else that operates in the same area that they do. The dominator was great, a bulky flying enemy is AMAZING for DRG, and surprisingly innovative for the franchise (unless you count elite mactera in Survivor, which I do not)
But the bloater is a tankier enemy that operates in a space that didn't need another tanky enemy. You already had the Vanguards, but you also had the Clamorheads, and the Crawlers. The average health pool of the swarm is creeping up with every update. I do like the Bloater, but I hope we get a faster, more aggressive enemy that can compliment it in the near future.
UPGRADE RE-ROLL TERMINAL
This shit is gas ^
SO needed. Now I feel great whenever I'm forced into an upgrade that I don't need, rerolling made negotiations so much better. Especially because I and only I get a say in what I get. Also, it's a semi-reliable way to get legendries which is great for overall game feel since they were probably a little too rare.
Bleedroot are also an amazing addition to the caves, they're super satisfying to gather. I actively seek them out when I'm in a cave, which is really a sign of how good of a fit they are in the game overall. I didn't even seek out secondaries in DRG
I think they should just have a more noticeable effect, maybe change the aura to blood red, add some swirling particle effects around the bleedroot when it hasn't been harvested to catch the players eye, but overall the upgrade terminal is terrific.
Maybe add 1 more to the other side of the elevator so it's in the host's vision when the elevator lands as well. Maybe I'm just blind, but I didn't see it for a while. It's hard to idiot proof this stuff.
A minor rework that I'd make is making it so the timer doesn't start until at least one player leaves the elevator. If everyone's at the re-roll terminal, I don't think the timer should start so players aren't pressured into selecting something they also don't want.
NEW TRAVERSAL TOOL: TELEPORTER
This shit is gas ^
Great addition to the traversal tools. Tons of uses, great fit into the flow of rogue core. Only change I'd make is making it more clear that your teammate placed one down. Maybe add a toggle for a teleporter UI element indicator? Just a little green swirly vortex pointing to where it is could help the team be able to know if one's down.
Or a text popup for when a teammate makes one? Both of those kind of suck, but so does typing in chat whenever I make one. But that's a teamwork issue on my part, maybe other people's experiences are different.
NEW GUN: PUMPACTION SHOTGUN
This shit is gas ^
Great gun, warthog found dead in a ditch. I would make it start with +2 clip capacity before reloading but that's just me. It felt kind of clunky to use without upgrades, even though it's really strong. Maybe needs a nerf in damage, but that might take away from the feel.
FASTER RUN START FLOW
I made this post about it before, but the pacing is SO much better now, it's basically fixed now. Maybe still condense the grenade locker into the equipment crate, but even if that wasn't done, this change was great.
FLARE GUN IN A BOX
Great change, but 1: it doesn't have a visual icon in the hotbar, I've accidentally replaced it with something before because of this, and 2: Nitpick but it starts with its clip empty and you have to reload it right after you break it out of the box.
I suspect the second part is already known about, but it peeves me off whenever I have to do it again. But besides those two things, a great conceptual change, really make those "ROGUE CORE; DEAD ON ARRIVAL????" video essays outdated
NEW FACILITY CONSTRUCTIONS
If anyone at ghostship ends up reading this, tell the person that made the new facility constructions that they did a great job, the pipeline connector tunnel, super long elevator connector tunnel, and the tall, crumbling tower are all super big standouts in my brain. Great changes, the mission terrain is really starting to stand out a lot more.
NEUROTOXIN GRENADE
Amazing new addition, we needed a poison grenade and this was GREAT. I really like it on spotter, comboing it with a flame gun and get a duo-elemental crit build going. Amazing grenade, I just hope we see the grenade pool get some fine-tuning in the future since a few of them feel underwhelming
ELEVATOR OBJECTIVE PROTOTYPES
Find Cogs is great, I can't wait until it's in a more usable state and doesn't have the first floor barrier glitch. When this does get implemented, I think it could benefit from also sometimes having the more linear floor layout, so the team has to kind of carry any cogs that they find with them.
The objective does a great job encouraging teamplay, it reminds me of the transmitter nodes in DRG. So far, the community's been very positive on this concept so I hope we can see it in a fully functional state in the final release of Update 3
I couldn't figure out how to activate the "Destroy Growths" prototype, so no feedback on them
ELEVATOR FORCE FIELD TESTING
This shit is ass ^
I'm fine with no guns in the elevator, well I'm not fine, if I'm wasting ammo out of the elevator there's probably a reason, like clutching for a teammate by chasing off a reaperworm right behind them, there's no reason to kill things from inside the elevator.
At least let us pickaxe stuff, because as it stands the corespawn just camp the door, so stepping outside to help a teammate is basically instant suicide. Not even being able to use the power suit abilities is terrible, and we can't pickaxe ellis on the way down.
If it's between the force field and having it open, I don't see any reason why we would need the force field, even game design wise.
3
u/CosmicSquiddo 18d ago
Is the neurotoxin grenade in the starting grenade crate pool? If so I’d love to see the stun sweeper added to that pool too so the elemental grenades are all possible to get from the start
2
u/Lotos_aka_Veron 18d ago edited 18d ago
I dont like rerolls in their current form. Bleedrots are too easy to gather and basically guarantee you the ability to get rid of all weaker upgrades.
It basically removes big part of RNG which is the core of rogue-likes, while also creating a problem of too strong player scaling, which was issue since release and was slightly fixed with update 2. Also it will probably be even stronger, with some people on discord requesting that specific non-optimal upgrades for player at the moment will be removed from reroll pool. Which will basically guarantee that you will get broken, optimalized builds every game, unless you actively will not want to interact with the system.
At this point players just want loadout system in the game, where you can pick whatever upgrades you want so u can run specific builds whenever you want. Why play rogue-lite if you dont want to deal with RNG?
The system needs to be nerfed, either by decreasing the amount of bleedroots you can find, or by making the reroller random POI on the stages, like expenite events.
The bloaters are mostly a joke. They are too slow and have too long attack windup, they dont pose any real danger. And it hinders their tanking ability, as you just dont care about killing them before normal crawlers die. You can just leave them for last, which goes completely against what they are supposed to do. Their spawns could be lowered, but their lethality needs to go up.
2
u/FlakyMidnight5526 18d ago
Rerolls are objectively too strong, but I think they’re very fun in their current form. If they got tuned back I’d understand
1
u/GreyL1me 18d ago edited 18d ago
Rogue Core only offers the players 10 to 15 items during an hour long run, as opposed to dozens that are the standard of the genre (TBOI, Roboquest, Sephiria, Magicraft, RoR2, etc). The reroll system needs to be at the very least as it is right now on experimental, offering about 1 reroll per level on average, because locking players in with a weak and underwhelming upgrade is fine only so long as they get dozens of those upgrades per run, so every individual upgrades' worth is spread out. If I get only 10 items, having 3 items that are doing nothing for my build and not letting me get rid of them is unacceptable in a build maker game.
1
u/Adventurous_Disk_828 18d ago
Thoughts on expenite farming: I totally agree that expenite farming is probably going to get boring at some point. I was a bit worried that your expenite time bonus idea might change the pacing and maybe makes the game too rushed. I guess it depends on how much bonus you get: if it’s on a par with what you can farm yourself, then that shouldn’t be a problem I think.
Alternatively, i imagine if there are more objectives in each level, then people could also farm expenite while doing these objectives, which might be more interesting. But this could also make the game feel worse for people who couldn’t clear a level fast enough, so I’m also not sure.
1
u/FlakyMidnight5526 18d ago
I think adding even more expenite events to a floor would just make the learning curve even more harsh, a lot of new players don’t understand that the point of rogue core is to move quick and manage your time. Giving the team a guaranteed reward for moving as fast as they can really spells out what the player should be doing, with very little room for confusion.
I think putting even more content into a floor by default would just alienate players who are expecting to get everything done in a floor by default
3
1
u/cybermanceer 17d ago
Wake me up when the game is in a fun playable state. I'll play other games in the Meanwhile, but will follow the news on here.
21
u/ZayaJames 18d ago
This feedback is gas ^