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One complaint I've had with RL recently is that it seems like they've put all their energy into new visuals and cosmetics while leaving the game mostly unchange

by holler 5y ago

One complaint I've had with RL recently is that it seems like they've put all their energy into new visuals and cosmetics while leaving the game mostly unchanged. The standard multi ranked map sometimes feels boring and I've wondered why they don't add different types of maps to the mix; spheres, tubes, different physics, goals in the center, figure 8 map(?), embankments (like map in season 1), etc. I guess it's simple and works but it'd be cool to see new gameplay related updates.

Daneel_ 5y ago
They did this a long time in the past (See: Rocket League Rocket Labs) and it was near-universally disliked. The complication when it comes to adding new features is that Rocket League is built on top of a bespoke scripting engine that was discontinued after Unreal Engine 3, so they have to fully recreate RL in UE5. Because of this they don't want to put any additional resources into new features for UE3 since it's wasted effort once the game transitions to the new engine.
- holler 5y ago
  Interesting, have they said much about that or when to expect it? I did like that game mode where the ball would gravitate towards the goal!
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    They turn those weird modes and maps on occasionally - called Limited Time Modes. The only genuinely new one they've done for years was the NFL mode, which they presumably got paid for and wasn't very good.
  - Sturmis 5y ago
    Ball gravitating towards the goal has been available as a Limited Time Mode on a few occasions, it's called Heatseeker IIRC.
- Arrath 5y ago
  I know I was always in the minority, but I loved the Rocket Labs maps and wished for more funky, mind bending ones.
telchior 5y ago
Fair criticism, but one that is only relevant in the first place because of freemium. Prior to that business model, there was no such thing as a company continuing to provide regular, ongoing support to a 7 year old game of the non-subscription variety. I mean, how or why would they? You release something; it makes 90% of its lifetime revenue in year 1; if you continue working on it for 6 more years, you're out of business. As for the ownership or survivability of in-game virtual goods -- I think the author is referring to Valve's hats in Team Fortress 2? -- to me it's nonsensical to complain that you don't own it outside of the game. It only has relevance in the game, and it would be silly to ask the company to develop some external service just for owning your object. The ones that have tried that kind of thing just fail and look silly. But wait! Along come NFTs, with potential permanent ownership... but gamers despise that idea, too. Gamers are just eternally grumpy and conservative about changes and progress. (I say that as a grumpy gamer, myself.)
- hanselot 5y ago
  Back then: Pay for Game when it releases, launch day it mostly works, or the studio is dead. Now: Pay for game prior to its release, launch day, people will tell you the bugs are actually features, studio milks franchise forever.
- robin_reala 5y ago
  No Man’s Sky has been getting 6 years of updates purely out of a wounded sense of pride.
  - peterashford 5y ago
    I was very critical of No Man's Sky on release, but boy have they knocked it out of the park since. Super impressive piece of work
  - Groxx 5y ago
    Wounded pride and a ton of money for a small company like that. They got enough money to comfortably run the company for at least a couple years if not the entire time since launch until now. The wikipedia page sticks it right along-side other highly successful AAA launches around the same time because it was that "successful" despite being an absolute mess of a game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Man%27s_Sky#Sales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Man%27s_Sky#Sales
TulliusCicero 5y ago
Not that I'm outright opposed to this kind of thing, but often messing with core mechanics in wacky ways is a lot more fun on paper than in practice. There's a lot of games that have a sort of boring standard (SC2's 1v1 ladder maps are all same-y, nobody competitive plays Smash with items on, etc.) and the fact that you see this pop up repeatedly in unrelated communities should probably tell you something. IMO, when you have a game with sufficiently deep mechanics, wackiness tends to obscure that depth, resulting in an experience that's less interesting rather than more. Like if you added Mario Kart abilities to football/soccer and suddenly the winning team was getting regularly blue shelled, I don't think it would improve the experience, even if initially it'd be hilarious. Now maybe it's still worth it to have "party game" modes in some cases, I'm just saying that these modes might not have legs, so to speak, and thus may not be worth the dev effort if hardly anyone plays them.
- olau 5y ago
  You're probably right, but I still think we should add another ball to soccer/football and see what happens.
  - holler 5y ago
    ooh never thought of this, 3 balls! like foosball
- dendriti 5y ago
  Those are pretty bad examples. Mario Kart and Smash are literally some of the top selling games of all time. If their "wacky ways" are played and enjoyed by 10% of players, that's still millions of sales.
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    They were designed to be party games first and foremost though. I think it's different when you take a more serious game and try to layer wackiness on top. If nothing else, there's a huge difference in player expectations. Anyway that's why I also used SC2 as an example. Blizzard's attempts to add more wackiness/variety to the 1v1 ladder maps have generally been poorly received. Now, SC2's co-op mode has a bunch of wackiness and did great, but note that this is very VERY separate from standard ladder/melee games. It's not just "oh we changed a few rules" or "we took the base game and added wacky items" it's a much more fundamental rework than that, it's an entirely new 'vertical' for the game. And yeah, that kind of thing could probably work for a game like Rocket League.
Kiro 5y ago
That's like saying they should change the rules of football. Rocket League is a seriously competitive game and even the slightest change to the physics would have a big impact. I like that they have kept the core gameplay intact. It's beautiful and pure.
- mcphage 5y ago
  > That's like saying they should change the rules of football. They do that pretty regularly. Not in major ways, but the rules of football do change over time.
bhedgeoser 5y ago
I think their dev team is too busy with the UE5 port.
bart_spoon 5y ago
The reason is because people absolutely hated that Tokyo map with the embankments, myself included. Rocket League is unique in that the core gameplay is so good, that messing around with it is just a bad idea. It’s like asking why there aren’t new pieces being released for Chess, or why people don’t start adding unconventional elements to a soccer field. It’s because novelties like those take away from what is already a solid experience. They have added some modes to that in non-competitive Rocket League, but RL is a unique game in that it seems like most players play the game in competitive modes, where those novelties are not appreciated, and so putting lots of work into those kinds of alternative arenas just doesn’t make a lot of sense. I personally am glad the developers have realized they have a game like this and haven’t killed their game through adding more for the sake of more.
- dkersten 5y ago
  Interesting. I haven't played Rocket League in years, but I actually liked that Tokyo map... it added variety.
- evandale 5y ago
  Oh god, I forgot about how awful that Tokyo map was. I enjoyed the wide slightly sloped wasteland though.
  - holler 5y ago
    It wasn't great, but, it represented something different, and along with the hexagon map it added variety. Feels like there's much more room to get creative in terms of map shapes/obstacles/nuances.
xboxnolifes 5y ago
> The standard multi ranked map sometimes feels boring and I've wondered why they don't add different types of maps to the mix; spheres, tubes, different physics, goals in the center, figure 8 map(?), embankments (like map in season 1), etc. They tried. Wasteland, Neo Tokyo, and Starbase ARC were non-standard maps. Players complained about it, and now they are changed to be standard.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  I liked wasteland, any other attempts were irritating.
ajmurmann 5y ago
They added those types of arenas years ago and removed them all. In the ranked games these honestly felt to gimmicky and I'm pleased that the differences between arenas are now only cosmetic. They still keep adding other game modes some of which are only there for a few days.
evandale 5y ago
>The standard multi ranked map sometimes feels boring and I've wondered why they don't add different types of maps to the mix They tried that with the original wasteland map and there was huge pushback from the community and people demanded the maps be standardized.

by holler 5y ago

Daneel_ 5y ago

They did this a long time in the past (See: Rocket League Rocket Labs) and it was near-universally disliked. The complication when it comes to adding new features is that Rocket League is built on top of a bespoke scripting engine that was discontinued after Unreal Engine 3, so they have to fully recreate RL in UE5. Because of this they don't want to put any additional resources into new features for UE3 since it's wasted effort once the game transitions to the new engine.

holler 5y ago
Interesting, have they said much about that or when to expect it? I did like that game mode where the ball would gravitate towards the goal!
- IshKebab 5y ago
  They turn those weird modes and maps on occasionally - called Limited Time Modes. The only genuinely new one they've done for years was the NFL mode, which they presumably got paid for and wasn't very good.
- Sturmis 5y ago
  Ball gravitating towards the goal has been available as a Limited Time Mode on a few occasions, it's called Heatseeker IIRC.
Arrath 5y ago
I know I was always in the minority, but I loved the Rocket Labs maps and wished for more funky, mind bending ones.

telchior 5y ago

Fair criticism, but one that is only relevant in the first place because of freemium. Prior to that business model, there was no such thing as a company continuing to provide regular, ongoing support to a 7 year old game of the non-subscription variety. I mean, how or why would they? You release something; it makes 90% of its lifetime revenue in year 1; if you continue working on it for 6 more years, you're out of business. As for the ownership or survivability of in-game virtual goods -- I think the author is referring to Valve's hats in Team Fortress 2? -- to me it's nonsensical to complain that you don't own it outside of the game. It only has relevance in the game, and it would be silly to ask the company to develop some external service just for owning your object. The ones that have tried that kind of thing just fail and look silly. But wait! Along come NFTs, with potential permanent ownership... but gamers despise that idea, too. Gamers are just eternally grumpy and conservative about changes and progress. (I say that as a grumpy gamer, myself.)

hanselot 5y ago
Back then: Pay for Game when it releases, launch day it mostly works, or the studio is dead. Now: Pay for game prior to its release, launch day, people will tell you the bugs are actually features, studio milks franchise forever.
robin_reala 5y ago
No Man’s Sky has been getting 6 years of updates purely out of a wounded sense of pride.
- peterashford 5y ago
  I was very critical of No Man's Sky on release, but boy have they knocked it out of the park since. Super impressive piece of work
- Groxx 5y ago
  Wounded pride and a ton of money for a small company like that. They got enough money to comfortably run the company for at least a couple years if not the entire time since launch until now. The wikipedia page sticks it right along-side other highly successful AAA launches around the same time because it was that "successful" despite being an absolute mess of a game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Man%27s_Sky#Sales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Man%27s_Sky#Sales

TulliusCicero 5y ago

Not that I'm outright opposed to this kind of thing, but often messing with core mechanics in wacky ways is a lot more fun on paper than in practice. There's a lot of games that have a sort of boring standard (SC2's 1v1 ladder maps are all same-y, nobody competitive plays Smash with items on, etc.) and the fact that you see this pop up repeatedly in unrelated communities should probably tell you something. IMO, when you have a game with sufficiently deep mechanics, wackiness tends to obscure that depth, resulting in an experience that's less interesting rather than more. Like if you added Mario Kart abilities to football/soccer and suddenly the winning team was getting regularly blue shelled, I don't think it would improve the experience, even if initially it'd be hilarious. Now maybe it's still worth it to have "party game" modes in some cases, I'm just saying that these modes might not have legs, so to speak, and thus may not be worth the dev effort if hardly anyone plays them.

olau 5y ago
You're probably right, but I still think we should add another ball to soccer/football and see what happens.
- holler 5y ago
  ooh never thought of this, 3 balls! like foosball
dendriti 5y ago
Those are pretty bad examples. Mario Kart and Smash are literally some of the top selling games of all time. If their "wacky ways" are played and enjoyed by 10% of players, that's still millions of sales.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  They were designed to be party games first and foremost though. I think it's different when you take a more serious game and try to layer wackiness on top. If nothing else, there's a huge difference in player expectations. Anyway that's why I also used SC2 as an example. Blizzard's attempts to add more wackiness/variety to the 1v1 ladder maps have generally been poorly received. Now, SC2's co-op mode has a bunch of wackiness and did great, but note that this is very VERY separate from standard ladder/melee games. It's not just "oh we changed a few rules" or "we took the base game and added wacky items" it's a much more fundamental rework than that, it's an entirely new 'vertical' for the game. And yeah, that kind of thing could probably work for a game like Rocket League.

Kiro 5y ago

That's like saying they should change the rules of football. Rocket League is a seriously competitive game and even the slightest change to the physics would have a big impact. I like that they have kept the core gameplay intact. It's beautiful and pure.

mcphage 5y ago
> That's like saying they should change the rules of football. They do that pretty regularly. Not in major ways, but the rules of football do change over time.

bhedgeoser 5y ago

I think their dev team is too busy with the UE5 port.

bart_spoon 5y ago

The reason is because people absolutely hated that Tokyo map with the embankments, myself included. Rocket League is unique in that the core gameplay is so good, that messing around with it is just a bad idea. It’s like asking why there aren’t new pieces being released for Chess, or why people don’t start adding unconventional elements to a soccer field. It’s because novelties like those take away from what is already a solid experience. They have added some modes to that in non-competitive Rocket League, but RL is a unique game in that it seems like most players play the game in competitive modes, where those novelties are not appreciated, and so putting lots of work into those kinds of alternative arenas just doesn’t make a lot of sense. I personally am glad the developers have realized they have a game like this and haven’t killed their game through adding more for the sake of more.

dkersten 5y ago
Interesting. I haven't played Rocket League in years, but I actually liked that Tokyo map... it added variety.
evandale 5y ago
Oh god, I forgot about how awful that Tokyo map was. I enjoyed the wide slightly sloped wasteland though.
- holler 5y ago
  It wasn't great, but, it represented something different, and along with the hexagon map it added variety. Feels like there's much more room to get creative in terms of map shapes/obstacles/nuances.

xboxnolifes 5y ago

> The standard multi ranked map sometimes feels boring and I've wondered why they don't add different types of maps to the mix; spheres, tubes, different physics, goals in the center, figure 8 map(?), embankments (like map in season 1), etc. They tried. Wasteland, Neo Tokyo, and Starbase ARC were non-standard maps. Players complained about it, and now they are changed to be standard.

colechristensen 5y ago
I liked wasteland, any other attempts were irritating.

ajmurmann 5y ago

They added those types of arenas years ago and removed them all. In the ranked games these honestly felt to gimmicky and I'm pleased that the differences between arenas are now only cosmetic. They still keep adding other game modes some of which are only there for a few days.

evandale 5y ago

>The standard multi ranked map sometimes feels boring and I've wondered why they don't add different types of maps to the mix They tried that with the original wasteland map and there was huge pushback from the community and people demanded the maps be standardized.