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Gearbox's first Risk of Rain 2 expansion gets hammered on Steam as developer admits the PC version 'is in a really bad place'
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- Authors
- Andy Chalk
- Published
- Aug 29 2024
- Word count
- 582 words
I don't understand how they messed up so much shit when they only added content.
Tying physics to framerate is like, the most newbie thing I've heard in a while. Who doesn't know about time delta's at this point??
It's as if someone thought they could "do better", or didn't understand the codebase they bought well enough to work on it.
It's honestly kind of embarrassing lol. I just hope they fix the game sooner rather than later.
There is a reddit thread with a couple of screenshots of odd code changes.
I genuinely do not understand why they felt the need to unify the console and PC code. And not once think to themselves;
Apparently they seemed to lack fairly common Unity engine knowledge. Which makes sense cause they're more Unreal oriented, but the difference between FixedUpdate and Update is genuinely like page 1 of Unity.
Crossplay between Epic Games and Steam versions actively broke multiplayer just between those two systems. That's just another of the litany of issues that having more than one 'thing' comes with.
As a business decision, it seems like an obvious one: why pay your programmers to code the same thing twice when you can have them do it once and cover everything? I guess whoever made that decision was not aware of the difficulty that would entail.
I totally understand that, but when tasked with creating additional content. I wouldn't assume foundational code like that would even need to be touched.
From my knowledge the game is fairly data driven. And it's not like none of it is reusable on both ends. I highly doubt that, although I am speculating.
Notably, they also updated Unity to a new major version. I'm not an expert here, but my understanding is that Unity 2021 made changes to how deltaTime works. It seems likely that they missed that core change when updating, and didn't catch the issue afterwards as they were testing at 60 FPS. Having played the game for about ten hours since the update, it's not obvious exactly what's wrong if you're not playing at very high or very low framerates. Things just feel slightly off. Possibly an engine/core developer wouldn't have noticed this.
Gearbox also unified the PC and console codebases, which is not a bad idea. This makes it easier and faster to create new content, since that work doesn't need to be duplicated. The console game was also already in a bad state, so starting over probably wasn't the worst idea. This change should improve the long-term prospects of the game. Console-specific optimizations and features (like controller support) can then also be shared between platforms. While not in the current release, it also opens up the possibility for crossplay.
Gearbox had the right idea by making these changes. Updating the engine and unifying the codebase were necessary steps towards long-term maintenance of the game. Unfortunately, they just didn't do them very well. Hopefully the fixes will be coming shortly.
After skimming the post, I doubt this is the culprit, they mixed together FixedUpdate and Update, which is a fundamental change. You have to deliberately lock physics to fps, like they had in this case.
Which is why it's an especially poor idea to use the console game as the foundation.As they've introduced console bugs to the PC version.They should have done it the other way around.
Modders have suggested that they didn't use the console version as the foundation. Some console code may have been ported back to PC though as part of the merger. That could explain the reintroduction of some console-specific bugs.
Regarding delta time, I'm not sure exactly what's happened but Gearbox has at least announced intent to fix it in the first patch. It's not ideal, but I've just set my max FPS to 60 for now. The biggest problems I'm having with the update isn't actually the FPS bug at all, but the new spawn costs for elites. They absolutely swarm you after stage 3, and I'm having trouble keeping up. And I say that as somebody that found Monsoon a cakewalk after finishing Eclipse 8 on every (pre-DLC2) character. The game feels way harder now.
Oh I see, thanks for clearing that up ^^
Really makes you wonder what their QA was though.
The first patch is out now, and has addressed the majority of bugs I've run into. Very happy to see the fixes to highlighting in particular.
They mention the reported FPS bugs were due to an issue in the build compilation which is interesting. I'm not sure how that might happen, but I'm glad to see it patched, too.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/632360/view/4608959311771420255
Can confirm that the "feel" of the game is different now and more in line with how it felt prior to the DLC update causing all sorts of problems. Physics/speed/actions/etc all feel back to normal now, regardless of FPS. Game felt unwinnable (at least for me) prior to these fixes. Got a win on my 2nd post-patch run, even. Coincidence? Maybe, but I was just as powerful in other prior runs but always got stopped either by bugs or awkward damage/physics/etc.
Can confirm that Mithrix no longer softlocks if he gets the Echo item (the deferred damage one) as he did before. So that game-breaking/run-ending bug is gone.
Can confirm items are highlighted properly again, so that's fixed.
Can't confirm yet whether teleporters that were spawning in inaccessible places are fixed, but they claim it is- and I'll take them at their word given the other fixes are there.
Also glad to see they really paid attention to the feedback in detail because there are LOTS of small bug patches in here too.
I just finished a trial run (loving the new secret character), and everything worked well here too. The difficulty felt more in line with what I'm used to. I also noticed a number of undocumented fixes, such as the scoreboard no longer slowing you to a walk upon opening. I didn't see any enemies fall through the floor like before either.
It seems like a very good patch. A few little things still need fixing, like the chosen abilities/skins being reset on the new survivors when launching the game, but the game feels right again.
I'm also glad to hear they plan to do a balance patch soon. The new whites are basically scrap fodder right now. It's not the end of the world, but whenever they add items they really need to maintain a balance of speed, healing, and damage to keep the game flow right, and they didn't do that. So hopefully some of them get a rework based on feedback.
Overall though, feeling a lot more optimistic about the game now!
Me too, the fun is back in the game and that's the biggest thing. It was definitely broken af on release.
But yeah, agreed some balancing is still needed. I think some of the new items are a bit underwhelming. I like them in concept but not all of them feel useful in practice
EDIT: It's a disaster, I was wrong, see my reply.
Oh weird. I've watched streamers play it, and I've played it myself, and I don't really have anything negative to report other than a small visual bug where items aren't properly highlighted / look strange in appearance in shops, and a bug with one of the new character's attacks that causes it to shake the screen pretty violently (in a buggy way).At 144fps the game feels pretty fine otherwise. Maybe there are side effects I am not noticing, but I've liked the bit of new content/stages/enemies/items/etc I've seen and in general have been enjoying it, and I had the impression that a lot of the bad reviews were typical "hateful gamers" that bomb reviews of anything that isn't perfect these days (or that have hatred for companies like Gearbox, etc)But seems the devs admit there are significant issues, so that's interestingUpdate: I take it all back. The DLC release is a disaster. The FPS code change really messed with damage and general "feel" of the game. Limiting to 60 as a workaround helped but obviously shows how massive the problems are in the update.
Aside from that, it's too buggy. Massive bugs, ones that cause me to recommend against buying this until they're resolved. There is a post-launch devlog (as well as devs themselves) acknowledging many problems.
My two best runs ended to different game-breaking bugs that I only have experienced since the DLC released. One is teleporters that are unreachable (one inside an unopenable shipping container on Rallypoint Delta) and the other is that Mithrix, depending on what items you have, may softlock starting with the 4th phase and only take slight damage (which he re-heals) and does not return your items on taking damage, thus completely making him immune to dying and breaking your run.
I am extremely disappointed.
You can downpatch, I've decided to do so until an update is released :')
Given that most of the bugs seem to stem from improper usage of update cycles, where the game is updated dependend on player framerate, if you have a very consistent framerate, you should likely see less problems. I'm not sure how it all ties in, I'm not a unity dev.