Risk of Rain 2 thoughts and impressions
Some of you may have heard that the bright minds behind Risk of Rain have made their next effort with the help of an added dimension. Risk of Rain 2 released on Early Access lately, to many peoples' surprise and joy. I played a decent bit of the original, but never managed to get into it. Something about 2D scrollers like that puts me off hard, but I respected the hell out of the awesome art, fantastic music, and neat synergies/shenanigans throughout the game.
Risk of Rain 2, so far, has been an absolute blast and I'm super happy for the devs. They received way more support than they initially expected upon launch, and the buy 1 get 1 gift key strategy did wonders for them. I've been steadily playing this game with friends and after the initial Diablo 2 loot stealing shenanigans, we've all managed to memorize items, learn builds, and work out what survivalists we like. This game is a killer time-killer; I've spent what I thought was 10 minutes in one match only to glance at the timer and read that 70 minutes have passed. This game almost feels like it's a finished product, and the devs aren't even done yet. I'm super psyched for all the new stuff we'll get to see and experiment with.
I'm also curious as to what anyone else thinks. Has anyone played enough to share their opinions? Did anyone not enjoy their time with the game? Please share!
I was just about to open up the game and do another run, and been thinking about it all morning while taking care of things at home first. I am at sick leave, keep that in mind, but i will let the in-game time speak for itself. since the first run i did Monday, 01/04/2019, 12:09, i have spent 36 hours playing this game. It has basically been my job for a week time wise!
The buy one gift one worked on me. As i said, i am on sick leave and money is very tight, i did not plan on buying the game because of this. My friend and his girlfriend that i used to play Risk of rain 1 with gave me a copy. And i have mostly been playing duo with him, we once spent 3 hours in a single run without noticing it other then i felt tired.
The game is amazing, and the potential outcome after full development is huge. One thing i worry about is them striving to far from what they have created up to this point. Which is basically Risk of rain 1 in 3D.
I have had a few thoughts on changes, and the other day i decided to join their discord and get involved giving my input, which is very uncommon for me. I simply want the game to be the best it can be so that we can enjoy it as much as possible, and for as long as possible.
I am super happy for Hopoo Games, i always thought ROR 1 was under appreciated. Its amazing how well they implemented the same mechanics and game play from 2D to 3D.
Other then a few balance changes i would like seeing, one thing i want added is that the pings, or markers you put down on interactive objects should stay on indefinitely until put elsewhere. Often time we have to ask each other once more where the particular loot we found and left is, chasing it down and loosing time. The downside of this would be less communication and less "chaos", that feeling of loosing to much time, which is key to make the game as fun as it is.
I sank so much time into the first game so I actually got kinda nervous when I saw the ror2 sneak peak gifs. It's so easy for a game to feel like a gimmick when going from 2d>3d, and it being such a homegrown project makes it much more at risk of falling into that 'uncanny valley' if you could even call it that.
So glad they managed to capture the essence of the game though. It's like ror2 is inspired by the first game, instead of it being a remake/sequel. Things are the same, things are different, but somehow it's got the exact same spirit as the first.
I agree with you that pings need some work. My biggest gripe is how unreasonably coarse the ping selection is. Want to ping that chest? with an enemy also on the map?? haha good luck not pinging that wisp 20 times.
My thing I want added is being able to hold down the ping button to preview where it'll land before you let go. You could even have it so a 'beam' shows up for teammates too, that way you can 'point' in vague directions without your friend needing to be right beside you (if far away they might look at a diff place bc of angles)
Also, how is their discord server? I'm an admin on another game company server and couldn't imagine ever finding it useful except for announcements. But with something more active and quaint like ror, I might try to delve in.
Yes i agree, the ping system needs work in that way as well. Perhaps they can adapt it in a similar way it works in for example league of legends, so that when you hold down, in this case, mouse3. You get a wheel to choose what kind of ping you want to do. Perhaps you could use this as a filter of some sort. So if you decide to ping the loot, even with 20 enemies between you and the chest it chooses to ping the loot rather then an enemy.
Another thing that i forgot to mention is that i would like to see some kind of radar system for pings and your team mates. Not an actual map. but a way of seeing what general direction the ping is coming from.
I have not joined the discord channel yet, i will do it in the near future when i have time to really look through it. They do not link to any forum which is the traditional way to get feedback from the consumer/player, i am hoping there is something like that in the discord channel. They ask you to use their email for feedback, but with this kind of success i cant see how they will be able to filter all the emails. They will need a forum most likely if not discord is able to handle the task i think.
I have spent some time in the discord channel now and it has everything i wanted. I think that when they decided to use a discord channel rather then a forum they where counting on having less players playing the game. But it seems to be running pretty smoothly. You get the announcements of course, but also able to see patch notes and a faq.
There is a section dedicated to feedback, ideas and bug reports other then the usual game discussion, theory crafting and group finding.
You've pretty much captured my feelings for this game. I'm super stoked to see what comes next. Enforcer or riot.
I tried getting into the original one, and I should probably give it another shot, but I couldn't past that my guy was tiny sized and I really didn't get how to control him.
I couldn't get into the first one either. This game seems to just "click" with me though.
RoR1 kinda clicked for me, but I'm not usually a fan of 2D sidescrollers. This game managed to draw me in the first round and I'm eagerly anticipating new content and more ways to break the game
This game is far far from finished :) My first night playing I did a 4-player quick-play and we did ~24 rounds before the game really started breaking on us. After ~32 rounds enemies just stopped spawning so we hit the portal and ended our run. There many balance issues to address but you're right; the 80+ minutes we spent in that game felt like 10. I haven't experienced that since League of Legends first dropped.
This game effortlessly wastes hours of your time in what feels like minutes, and I think that's a very positive sign that this game will only continue to improve. Of course, there's more work to be done and it shows, but they already have such a solid foundation, and they effortlessly made the switch to 3D, so I have no doubts that they're going to knock this out of the park. And yeah, that enemies ceasing to spawn glitch is quite troublesome. Apparently, the game actively decides what enemies are good enough to be thrown at you over time, and after a certain period of time, the game just decides that nothing it can throw at you will stop you, so it just stops. Quite a flattering achievement I'd say!
Just curious OP, what makes this game "rogue like"? I associate rogue-like games with top down dungeon crawlers with ascii characters for graphics.
The common explanation, is that a Roguelike goes through a loop with randomly generated levels with various possible encounters and bosses and powerups. You die, you start on an entirely new level and will likely never play that one again. Optionally there is an unlock and progression mechanic to get more better drops, and a lot of them are top down, but it's not a requirement. If you want to be pedantic, a lot of the new ones are Roguelites, but nobody makes that distinction any more.
Pretty much what moocow said. It isn't a correct term per se, but it's been misused so often and for the same genre of games that it's sort of been detached from the game that gave it it's name, much to many peoples' chagrin. It's more of a roguelite, but if you said "roguelike" these days, most peoples' first thoughts are Binding of Isaac or Nuclear Throne. I've found that it's very much a generational thing
Very interesting. I've never heard of either game you mentioned but I've played many (of what I'd call) traditional rogue variants over the years...starting on an IBM 386 so there's your generational thing lol.
Thanks for the explanation!