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Risk of Rain 1 was super depressing, if you don't know the game good enough your character basically gets old and powerless as the game progresses. A lot of fai

Risk of Rain 1 was super depressing, if you don't know the game good enough your character basically gets old and powerless as the game progresses. A lot of failed runs end with enemies having a bazillion hit points and you running away not being able to kill them faster than they spawn.

GolDDranks 6y ago
Also, it was quite buggy at times.
- atoav 6y ago
  I played it since it was still in Alpha and didn't encounter any major issues in ~100h, maybe you played in pre alpha?
tsujp 6y ago
This was my experience with Risk of Rain 2, too. Couple that with the ~40-60 minutes it takes to get back to the point where you are seemingly out-scaled by the game (of course due to my lack of knowledge) but it was a frustrating experience and one that caused myself and my friends to give up after a while.
klmadfejno 6y ago
It's mostly that the game continues endlessly (with potential "victory" stopping points) and the larger game is trying to get more powerful faster than the game gets harder. If you do its quite fun to accelerate in strength moving at absurd speeds, esp. in RoR2. It's a race, even though that's not super apparent up front. What makes it really hard is finding the balance of clearing a level (which stops enemies from spawning, which stops income) as a tradeoff for looking aimlessly for chests, and choosing when to move to the next level. Loosely speaking the meta is to progress very quickly up front because money and loot is easier to acquire in later stages. But I found that model to be kind of tiresome. They have an alt artifact mode where you don't need to open chests anymore and enemies just drop items instead. I found that to be a lot more fun and help even the playing field for playing co-op. It also encouraged sharing and teamwork in a weird way. When you have to pay for chests, the chest is "your" chest and you don't want to give an item to a teammate even if its better for them. When its a drop, sharing is caring. Your idle time looking for loot drops to zero and you can instead just play the game, go straight for bosses, and advance as fast as possible.
citizenpaul 6y ago
Thats always the issue with these games. I don't want to play a Roguelike ultra difficult game that I also have to race through. If I wanted to do that I'd play online FPS twitch shooters. However then if you slow down those mechanics enough the brain can out think a computer AI so people complain because the game is too easy. I think the reality is that while these games are cool and fun the AI part needs to be very good and very advanced. Probably several years in the works like dwarf fortress. Most game cycles simply cannot support this so you end up with basically a cool idea that has to be reduced to a gimmick for sales.
dleslie 6y ago
It also uses a heavily weighted power curve. It's normal for games to unlock more powerful weapons as the player progresses, but it's generally the case in non-RPG games, particularly single session action games, that it's a good idea to give the player powerful gear immediately or early. Ie, Doom's shotgun. RoR doesn't do this, despite being a single session action game. RoR makes the player grind excessively to unlock powerful abilities, rewarding players who play many sessions or who have high skill. This doesn't serve players with little free time or without high skill. It's not wrong, just a particular style of design that many prefer; kinda a "Soulslike", but it's worth being aware of.

GolDDranks 6y ago

Also, it was quite buggy at times.

atoav 6y ago
I played it since it was still in Alpha and didn't encounter any major issues in ~100h, maybe you played in pre alpha?

tsujp 6y ago

This was my experience with Risk of Rain 2, too. Couple that with the ~40-60 minutes it takes to get back to the point where you are seemingly out-scaled by the game (of course due to my lack of knowledge) but it was a frustrating experience and one that caused myself and my friends to give up after a while.

klmadfejno 6y ago

It's mostly that the game continues endlessly (with potential "victory" stopping points) and the larger game is trying to get more powerful faster than the game gets harder. If you do its quite fun to accelerate in strength moving at absurd speeds, esp. in RoR2. It's a race, even though that's not super apparent up front. What makes it really hard is finding the balance of clearing a level (which stops enemies from spawning, which stops income) as a tradeoff for looking aimlessly for chests, and choosing when to move to the next level. Loosely speaking the meta is to progress very quickly up front because money and loot is easier to acquire in later stages. But I found that model to be kind of tiresome. They have an alt artifact mode where you don't need to open chests anymore and enemies just drop items instead. I found that to be a lot more fun and help even the playing field for playing co-op. It also encouraged sharing and teamwork in a weird way. When you have to pay for chests, the chest is "your" chest and you don't want to give an item to a teammate even if its better for them. When its a drop, sharing is caring. Your idle time looking for loot drops to zero and you can instead just play the game, go straight for bosses, and advance as fast as possible.

citizenpaul 6y ago

Thats always the issue with these games. I don't want to play a Roguelike ultra difficult game that I also have to race through. If I wanted to do that I'd play online FPS twitch shooters. However then if you slow down those mechanics enough the brain can out think a computer AI so people complain because the game is too easy. I think the reality is that while these games are cool and fun the AI part needs to be very good and very advanced. Probably several years in the works like dwarf fortress. Most game cycles simply cannot support this so you end up with basically a cool idea that has to be reduced to a gimmick for sales.

dleslie 6y ago

It also uses a heavily weighted power curve. It's normal for games to unlock more powerful weapons as the player progresses, but it's generally the case in non-RPG games, particularly single session action games, that it's a good idea to give the player powerful gear immediately or early. Ie, Doom's shotgun. RoR doesn't do this, despite being a single session action game. RoR makes the player grind excessively to unlock powerful abilities, rewarding players who play many sessions or who have high skill. This doesn't serve players with little free time or without high skill. It's not wrong, just a particular style of design that many prefer; kinda a "Soulslike", but it's worth being aware of.