Complaining about difficulty

[PixalatedDoom]

This is essentially just so I can figure out if other people are struggling as much as I am. I am getting absolutely destroyed to the point where I'm not really enjoying the game.

I played the original game a fair bit, and while I used to think that this game was harder than the original, replaying the first has made me change my opinion. It has been a while since I last played, but I feel like an absolute beginner even in that one. It's like I've completely forgotten how to play the game. I've already put about ~30 some hours into returns, and I honestly feel like I'm getting worse. I'm consistently getting less far, and I can't think of anything I'm doing differently.

I'm going fast, jumping a lot, trying to prioritize elites as best I can, only to get sniped by 3 greater wisps on stage 2 at 7 minutes. I should note that I'm playing exclusively as commando, because if that's the first character the game gives me, I should be able to reasonably win with him. I don't really want to play as the other characters I like more (Like HAN-D and Sniper) until I can win with commando.

I'm also not noticing that much of a difference in difficulty between rainstorm and monsoon. I've heard people say that rainstorm is bugged and harder than monsoon (which I believed at first), but my own experience is really inconsistent.

All of this could just be a combination of me being rusty with the game (making it more difficult) and having already experienced it (taking away the mystery and excitement that would make the difficulty manageable).

Or it could be that commando ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sucks.

Or both.

tl;dr
I'm suffering from a severe skill issue and want to know if this is a common occurrence.

[Illusia]

7 minutes is a bit long to be on level 1 assuming thats how long you're staying. Average, you'll be reaching stage 4 by 10 I'm pretty sure. As much as it pains you, you need to go fast and focus on just surviving on your first go through and then if you loop (assuming you're powerful enough at that point) you'll have good luck.
Also note its possible to literally sit on the first level til you get enough boss drops to carry you through the game, as all bosses drop items in this game. Will mean grinding possibly all the way up to 20 minutes, depending upon both luck, difficulty, and your own skill though.

[whyeven]

Oh absolutely brother. Some of your issues will definitely come down to a skill deficiency as is the case with any new release, but I think the difficulty in RORR is dramatically different and increased from OG ROR.
I've said this in a few different threads, but the scaling for the difficulty timer is shifted way lower so the earlier stages are a lot harder than they used to be. You can get to stage 4 on medium or even easy and still get swarmed by elites that can two shot you (I know from experience).
Items seem a bit more sparse, especially with the apparent increase in the prevalence of equipment items, and also I think the rng is tweaked so you just might not see a a certain item or few during a run whereas in OG RoR you could see like 80% of items in one run and get a stack of 3 on half a dozen of them.
Looping is legit borderline impossible, every time my friends and I have accidentally pressed the wrong option in the stage 4 teleporter we eventually die and can't get back to stage 5, and the one time I did it solo I went through my extra life and got two shot within 20 seconds of starting the stage. Looping just isn't viable anymore it seems.

Whether all this is reasonable is a subjective matter, but it feels kinda bad sometimes imo, like I get the change but ♥♥♥♥ me is it rough out here even on Rainstorm.

[PixalatedDoom]

Originally posted by Istyrn:

7 minutes is a bit long to be on level 1 assuming thats how long you're staying. Average, you'll be reaching stage 4 by 10 I'm pretty sure. As much as it pains you, you need to go fast and focus on just surviving on your first go through and then if you loop (assuming you're powerful enough at that point) you'll have good luck.
Also note its possible to literally sit on the first level til you get enough boss drops to carry you through the game, as all bosses drop items in this game. Will mean grinding possibly all the way up to 20 minutes, depending upon both luck, difficulty, and your own skill though.

I'm usually in the second stage by 4 minutes, though I don't see how it's reasonable to reach stage 4 by 10 minutes without ignoring items almost entirely (especially since the teleporter event is always 1 1/2 minutes, and enemies don't always consistently spawn early on). I'll try to reach that, but I don't remember having to do that. Like I remember being able to completely slurp almost every stage on rainstorm.

[PixalatedDoom]

I should probably clarify that I beat the first game at least on rainstorm many times.
Also, currently trying to play as huntress and oh my god it feels like she does so much more damage than commando.

[whyeven]

Originally posted by PixalatedDoom:

I should probably clarify that I beat the first game at least on rainstorm many times.
Also, currently trying to play as huntress and oh my god it feels like she does so much more damage than commando.

My friends unanimously agree that she's the best character and potentially overpowered. I haven't used her much but the mobility makes her feel cracked compared to more dookie characters like Acrid and Artificer.

[A.J.]

Originally posted by whyeven:

Originally posted by PixalatedDoom:

I should probably clarify that I beat the first game at least on rainstorm many times.
Also, currently trying to play as huntress and oh my god it feels like she does so much more damage than commando.

My friends unanimously agree that she's the best character and potentially overpowered. I haven't used her much but the mobility makes her feel cracked compared to more dookie characters like Acrid and Artificer.

Acrid is definitely not dookie. You have to play him like a hit and run style. Honestly should mostly ignore the primary and use the other abilities. Enemies standing in your poison trail while taking damage from your special die nicely. Throw in the secondary too. (I'm talking all the default skills here. The alts feel meh to me)

Artificer deserves a nice fat rework though.

[LuckyDude]

I think we need optional mod where everyone can shoot and move at the same time with no penalty to movement speed (you don’t want to play everytime as huntress) and experimental optional mod with full 360 degree aiming with mouse / stick. Since it anyway goes far away from original (like enemy can climbing), I not versus about that change in order to compensate modern difficulty.

[Illusia]

Originally posted by PixalatedDoom:

Originally posted by Istyrn:

7 minutes is a bit long to be on level 1 assuming thats how long you're staying. Average, you'll be reaching stage 4 by 10 I'm pretty sure. As much as it pains you, you need to go fast and focus on just surviving on your first go through and then if you loop (assuming you're powerful enough at that point) you'll have good luck.
Also note its possible to literally sit on the first level til you get enough boss drops to carry you through the game, as all bosses drop items in this game. Will mean grinding possibly all the way up to 20 minutes, depending upon both luck, difficulty, and your own skill though.

I'm usually in the second stage by 4 minutes, though I don't see how it's reasonable to reach stage 4 by 10 minutes without ignoring items almost entirely (especially since the teleporter event is always 1 1/2 minutes, and enemies don't always consistently spawn early on). I'll try to reach that, but I don't remember having to do that. Like I remember being able to completely slurp almost every stage on rainstorm.

Thats kinda just the way. To be frank I've played with another player who isn't very good, letting them take all the items and I can survive on stage 3 with zero items and still taking out good amounts of enemies. Game should probably be a bit easier but in the end thats the skill level they expect you to be able to do. You'll get money while fighting the boss, you'll get money when you defeat the boss, get the closest say three to four chests or interactables to the teleporter and then go. Activate the teleporter immediately.

Thats all I can suggest, or you can keep trying til the stars align.

[PixalatedDoom]

Originally posted by Istyrn:

Originally posted by PixalatedDoom:

I'm usually in the second stage by 4 minutes, though I don't see how it's reasonable to reach stage 4 by 10 minutes without ignoring items almost entirely (especially since the teleporter event is always 1 1/2 minutes, and enemies don't always consistently spawn early on). I'll try to reach that, but I don't remember having to do that. Like I remember being able to completely slurp almost every stage on rainstorm.

Thats kinda just the way. To be frank I've played with another player who isn't very good, letting them take all the items and I can survive on stage 3 with zero items and still taking out good amounts of enemies. Game should probably be a bit easier but in the end thats the skill level they expect you to be able to do. You'll get money while fighting the boss, you'll get money when you defeat the boss, get the closest say three to four chests or interactables to the teleporter and then go. Activate the teleporter immediately.

Thats all I can suggest, or you can keep trying til the stars align.

I appreciate the suggestions. I just don't remember disliking the difficulty so much, and it seems like whether I go fast or slow it ultimately doesn't matter (Though going slow often yields better results). I'm not really looking for feedback, since I've never gotten workable advice on anything RoR related (Especially not RoR2; everyone that says you need to be fast in that game is full of ♥♥♥♥. Almost every monsoon win I've gotten in that game was over 40 minutes), but I appreciate the effort.

I'll keep chipping away at it, and maybe after a few dozen more hours of screaming I'll have beaten the game on rainstorm.

[TwinIndifferent]

RoR Returns is indeed a bit overtuned with difficulty over original. And it's not about AI getting a bit better with climbing ropes or jumping over obstacles, it's about scaling being offset.
RoR1 has golden rule of 5 minutes per stage, including teleporter. This rule is completely thrown out of the window with RoRR due to difficulty ringing the bell around 3:30. Just in general RoRR seems to give way more points to spawn director, which leads to absurd amount of spawning. Even waves of enemy spawns in teleport event almost don't have pauses to have a bungus healing time.
Many enemies got overbuffed, not even including bug with overloading enemies. That's the problem of balance at release. It is seen even in Providence Trials, where some tasks have impossible gold trophies.

[whyeven]

Originally posted by A.J.:

Acrid is definitely not dookie. You have to play him like a hit and run style. Honestly should mostly ignore the primary and use the other abilities. Enemies standing in your poison trail while taking damage from your special die nicely. Throw in the secondary too. (I'm talking all the default skills here. The alts feel meh to me)

You lied, I just played a round of Acrid without relying on the primary and he was hot doodoo, he had no damage output, his ult is worthless, his secondaries are convoluted, the speed slime is the only redeemable part of his character as far as I can tell.

[A.J.]

Originally posted by whyeven:

Originally posted by A.J.:

Acrid is definitely not dookie. You have to play him like a hit and run style. Honestly should mostly ignore the primary and use the other abilities. Enemies standing in your poison trail while taking damage from your special die nicely. Throw in the secondary too. (I'm talking all the default skills here. The alts feel meh to me)

You lied, I just played a round of Acrid without relying on the primary and he was hot doodoo, he had no damage output, his ult is worthless, his secondaries are convoluted, the speed slime is the only redeemable part of his character as far as I can tell.

Idk man. I just completed the first stage as acrid with double shrine of the mountain. Only item was an infusion. (Was three wandering vagrants)

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2224276677698653056/377039AEF76176335C03C325BF3222EB9EEF56DD/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

Here's what the run ended up being. I accidentally looped and ended up dying to an overloading magma worm, but it was going pretty good before that (even with rushing). All default settings with no artifacts on rainstorm.

[whyeven]

Originally posted by A.J.:

Idk man. I just completed the first stage as acrid with double shrine of the mountain. Only item was an infusion. (Was three wandering vagrants)

Here's what the run ended up being. I accidentally looped and ended up dying to an overloading magma worm, but it was going pretty good before that. All default settings with no artifacts on rainstorm.

Looks about right, I've had one run of Acrid that was actually decent and going well and it was a lot of the same items, double sunglasses, barbed wire, the ATG missile. And then on top of that you have a ton of healing items too, so yeah you had a really good set of items, I think any character would do well with that set up.

[A.J.]

Originally posted by whyeven:

Originally posted by A.J.:

Idk man. I just completed the first stage as acrid with double shrine of the mountain. Only item was an infusion. (Was three wandering vagrants)

Here's what the run ended up being. I accidentally looped and ended up dying to an overloading magma worm, but it was going pretty good before that. All default settings with no artifacts on rainstorm.

Looks about right, I've had one run of Acrid that was actually decent and going well and it was a lot of the same items, double sunglasses, barbed wire, the ATG missile. And then on top of that you have a ton of healing items too, so yeah you had a really good set of items, I think any character would do well with that set up.

Right. The main point was really me beating that double mountain stage with only an infusion. I edited that in afterwards. I should add that if it’s only a single enemy then ofc I use the primary. Or when they are nearly dead just to finish them off. Majority of the time I’m just running around with my dots up. The special does 6 ticks of 100% of your damage. A 600% aoe is nothing to sneeze at. Mix that in with your other dots and you’ve got a lot of damage going on.

[Gatinicore]

Honestly, even original risk of rain used to kick ass hard but with remake it kinda got even more intense thanks to certain additions (looking at you swifts)