About playing in a fixed group and player progression

[Ludewich]

Deep Rock Galactic is a great game! I have enjoyed lots of hours in two savegames, and I will certainly continue to do so for a long time - thank you, @ Ghostship games!

One of my savegames is a "usual" savegame where I join random lobbies, continue my assignments and progress through the game. I enjoy its pacing; I have played all four characters (3/2/2/0 promotions so far) and I am starting to receive overclocks that actually fit my playstyle. This is a great "individual gamer coop experience"!

The other savegame is a for a fixed group consisting of four friends who play
sunday afternoon, each playing a different dwarf. We have lots of fun and enjoy
it: we have played about 40 hours and have just reached the first promotion for
each player, along with the first deep dive. It is great to play together, learn
strengths and weaknesses of the characters and to learn the own role in our
team. But we also experience a couple of shortcomings that I would like to mention here in the hope that they might result in improvements eventually.

The shortcomings are all around player progression: we believe that progression is fairly bad for the situation of "we always play in the same group of 4 friends, once a week". We observed that
* most weapon assignments merely allow one or two players to progress at a time,
* even promotions only allow three players to progress, one is lagging behind,
* many overclocks are simply for the wrong character, and our fixed one-evening-schedule makes it unlikely that we will have time to play all four in this constellation.

Especially the direct comparison of the two savegames shows that progression in a fixed coop group is _much_ slower than if one plays alone. Playing alone (i.e. in random lobbies) results in the first promotion within -what?- 15 hours? We took 40 hours, and we still do not have all weapons.

These are the observations. I am fully aware that this might be intentional and I really enjoy playing in random lobbies. Let me stress again that these observations do _not_ apply to random lobbies.

The key question that I want to ask Ghostship Games is: is there a way to improve player progression for a fixed group of players who play, say, once a week? (preferably without negatively affecting the great "I am alone and join random parties"-progression)?

[marcusaddamsson]

Two saves, eh? You might wanna reconsider that... it takes ages to get the Overclocks that you might wanna use, especially these days.

[Ser Pounce]

Originally posted by Ludewich:

The shortcomings are all around player progression: we believe that progression is fairly bad for the situation of "we always play in the same group of 4 friends, once a week". We observed that

To be fair, it's a very niche situation.

Originally posted by Ludewich:

* even promotions only allow three players to progress, one is lagging behind,

How so, exactly ?

Originally posted by Ludewich:

Especially the direct comparison of the two savegames shows that progression in a fixed coop group is _much_ slower than if one plays alone. Playing alone (i.e. in random lobbies) results in the first promotion within -what?- 15 hours? We took 40 hours, and we still do not have all weapons.

Are you saying that playing solo with the possibility of playing as much as you want, at any time without "constraints" is much faster ?
Well... yeah, that's logical. Not much of a discovery here.

[Chibbity]

You guys are just shooting yourselves in the foot by having dedicated "group" saves. That might make sense in some games, but not in a game like this.

The solution is for you guys to stop making things hard on yourselves by doing everything twice. How progression works is not the issue.

You guys created your own problem with progression by choice, deal with it; or stop doing it. (No offense meant.)

[DJDiceZ]

I have friend groups and i have separate saves for all of them. I prioritize their progression, and once they reach a promotion, i go back to my main save, and i try not to use more than what they have.

It's true that the progression is too slow when you play with a group of four, but i'm not necessarily in favor of making it faster personally.

You should also try to sync up your assignement. For example, everyone should do breach the core at the same time.

It's not perfect but it helps a bit with this situation.

Originally posted by Chibbity:

You guys are just shooting yourselves in the foot by having dedicated "group" saves. That might make sense in some games, but not in a game like this.

The solution is for you guys to stop making things hard on yourselves by doing everything twice. How progression works is not the issue.

You guys created your own problem with progression by choice, deal with it; or stop doing it. (No offense meant.)

I see where they are coming from. It's not fun to have progression discrepancies between players. And the game does have a lot of padding, it's simply not something we can deny. Padding isn't necessarily evil, but it's still padding. Completing a single assignement per person can require upward of 12~16 hours of gameplay, which when people aren't available often, is a lot.

And no one enjoys being the lvl 1 noobie while your lvl 99 bud destroys everything as you follow up and pick up loot. It's that kind of feeling. Sure you can limit yourself and remove some mods/ocs, but it can be hard to figure out what your friends do or don't have. Less of a headache, it feels more "right" to just make another save.

At the end of the day it's not all good and healthy for the game if almost everyone i've played with finds the pace to be a slog and makes similar points to the OP. The grind doesn't bother me, i enjoy it, but i've seen a lot of people dislike it.

I'm not sure what a good compromise would be, but it shouldn't be out of the question.

[vid23]

Originally posted by Ludewich:

The shortcomings are all around player progression: we believe that progression is fairly bad for the situation of "we always play in the same group of 4 friends, once a week". We observed that
* most weapon assignments merely allow one or two players to progress at a time,
* even promotions only allow three players to progress, one is lagging behind,
* many overclocks are simply for the wrong character, and our fixed one-evening-schedule makes it unlikely that we will have time to play all four in this constellation.

Well you cant really do much about this, you guys pretty much handicapping yourselves by playing like this, the only thing you could do is playing different dwarfs, not just one all the time

[Chibbity]

Originally posted by DJDiceZ:

And no one enjoys being the lvl 1 noobie while your lvl 99 bud destroys everything as you follow up and pick up loot.

That's my point though, this isn't that kind of game; it's not an MMO.

It's a shooter, and at the end of the day the vertical progression is very limited; and skill trumps all. I get the concept in theory, because my friends also do that for certain games, but this isn't one of those games; and in my opinion it's kind of silly to handicap your progression like that in DRG.

Ultimately though, it's a SUPER niche issue, this is literally the first time I've ever heard this complaint in years; and I doubt it's realistic to expect the dev's to address something that doesn't affect 99.9% of players. Even beyond that though, it's an issue they chose to take on, it's a position they chose to place themselves in. It'd be like if me and my friends decided the game wasn't dark enough so we all agree to turn our flashlights off; but then complained that the dev's needed to buff flares.

[CCShad]

Honestly, if you guys have reached your first promotions, you’ve pretty much upgraded your dwarves as much as you can. Leveling up from this point on just changes your arbitrary levels, ranks, experience bars, etc. cosmetic stuff.

I can appreciate what you guys were doing in the build up to your first promos, but now that the meat of progression is finished, so to speak, I have a suggestion:

Play normal missions whenever you like, solo or with friends, but do the weekly assignments and deep dives during your Sunday game session. This will allow you to unlock matrix cores together, which are considered the end game.

[Ludewich]

Thank you for your thoughts on this topic.

@ Ser Pounce: regarding your question about "even promotions only allow three players to progress, one is lagging behind" : three players have the same promotion assignment missions, but driller has different ones. Thus, we have finished the three players and then needed to repeat it for driller.

Regarding your question "Are you saying that playing solo with the possibility of playing as much as you want, at any time without "constraints" is much faster ?": no, I am not saying anything like that. I am saying that given the same ingame time, progression for "single player" (solo or matching with randoms) is much faster than spending the same time with friends.

Regarding "To be fair, it's a very niche situation": that might be. It is like finding friends for a board game evening, and we are happy that we managed to find multiple games which fascinate all of us (or at least a vast majority). But the fact that such a precious quality time is rare (and probably beyond reach for the majority of players) does not prevent me from hoping that a great game like DRG can be made even better.

@ DJDiceZ : I feel completely understood by your comment!

@ CCShad : I agree with your point that we almost completely made it through all (well, most of the) "progress handicaps" that come with only playing in a group of friends. That is: as soon as all of us have finished their weapon assignments (which is not currently the case). Progress will be more in synch as soon as we play weekly assignments/ core hunts or deep dives (or occasional shared cosmetic hunts). If Ghostship decides to improve coop progression, they will make it for others who play with friends, not for us.

@ Chibbity / vid23: thank you for your thoughts. We accept that it is our choice to play only together. We also accept that it is our choice to play DRG - and most of us believe that it is the best coop game that we played in our long history of coop games. But we also think that the game can be improved by optimizing player progression for cooperation. And we believe that some other games did that better than DRG, so it is possible.

Good examples where a game rewards coop progress are Helldivers (which we played for a very long time), Borderlands, Sanctum II or Empyrion. In this list, Helldivers is probably the closest one as it is also a skill-based tactical coop shooter game.

It is my hope that Ghostship games considers our experience as a way to improve their motto "Co-op First. Our goal is to take Co-op to the next level and to make great games alongside a passionate community." . I say: they meet this goal pretty well when playing with foreign players in random lobbies (or solo). But I think they fall short when playing (only) with friends.

--------

The most simple and first step toward improvements would be to let driller have the very same promotion assignment missions as all other dwarfs.

Technically, it would be easy to synch weapon assignment missions between players as well. Are there any downsides to such an approach? One could say "second primaries all have the same missions, third primaries all have the same missions, second secondaries all have the same missions, third secondaries all have the same missions".

How could one improve overclock collection for coop play? Trading overclocks between others in the friends list? (might have unanticipated downsides.) More ways to choose overclocks in order to favor a character (similar to the events, but also for deep dives or core hunts)?

[Chibbity]

I appreciate your position, but I'm going to just let you know to not hold your breath; devs aren't going to change how progression works to cater to a few groups of friends who are intentionally stalling their own progression.

The solution here is for you guys to play together on your main profiles, simple as that.

You guys could also look into modding on those saves to solve your issue.

[Paintbrush]

I agree it'd be nice for assignment missions to align on the hosts server so everyone gets progression. Especially for a coop based game I think it's a fair consideration.

As for the rest, I'd have to agree with the other sentiments here that you're basically doing a nuzlocke type thing and imposing rules on yourself. I feel like part of enjoying DRG is playing the other classes. That, for me, is the only way to become the best team mate. If you get an OC for a different class...just play it then.

Get your first promotions (thats probably the only one that matters), maybe look into a mod or something to get you over the weapon unlock "hump" and ya'll can enjoy the same weekly assignments/deep dives/seasonal stuff

[Shyhalu]

A mission realignment button would be fine for the non hosts to hit and align with the host, the whole two saves crap? Needless complication.

[Scuzz MB]

As Chibbity and others pointed out, having separate saves for this purpose is not just not important, it's absolutely detrimental to you as a player because of how the progression system works.

A level 1 Dwarf's base abilities are no different than a level 99s. There's no scaling based on player level AT ALL. The only REAL difference are the equipment terminal upgrades which you can hash out pretty early in the game. You don't get more powerful the more overclocks you get. All OCs are modifications that tweak weapon stats to preference. Anything is playable AND manageable using no overclocks whatsoever. Probably the only critical mass thing from the equipment terminal is the additional health pool you get from maxing armor.

The equipment upgrades are awesome tweaks, but you can go stone bare without upgrades in to any haz level and they won't make the difference between being overwhelmed or not.

The only thing that's going to make you stand out from your peers is raw experience--hours in the game and learning it. Having separate saves doesn't make you less experienced in the save with less hours. The only reason one player is better than another is experience and in-game savvy.

[Ludewich]

Re "creating a second savegame is contraproductive for player progress": yes, absolutely. I think we all agree on that one.

[Sokaku]

OP, your group is confusing progression in DRG with other games. Levels don't mean anything beyond the first 25 per class which determine weapon unlocks. All classes will level up at the same rate though I think the issue you are raising is with the weapon unlock assignments where the driller Cryo unlock assignment won't overlap with the scout M1000 assignment.

Realistically there is no reason to use a spearate save especially to play just 1 day a week. If one player doesn't play as much and others want to handicap themselves then you could accomplish that by reserving the 5th config on your main account class to be your "group" config and remove perks, OCs etc.

[Pez [rehab]]

I started running 2 saves (actually, accounts) a few months ago, and for now, I'm doing more or less the same thing - one for playing with my pals during the weekend, and one for public random games.

The one with randos do level slightly, like 20% faster. But that's just the result of picking Double XP missions instead of helping with each others' assignments.