Dropping items

[Gimply]

Alright, so i've played abit of the game with friends so far and a recurring issue is that there is always a power gap between players. A pretty significant one at that whether that be very early legendary items or just really good rng it leaves some people behind during the later half of the game.

This means that you could have half the team constantly dying and not getting the chance to get more items to close the gap.

One way I can think of combating this is to allow players to drop items from their tab menu in order to help friends or to give away items they dont want.

Thoughts?

[Nafen 🐱]

Or you can just help them kill stuff and/or open chests/buy stuff at terminals for them

[Raw Master]

it would be an amazing QoL change to allow you to give items to your teamates, instead of having them running across the map to get them

anyone making excuses not to have this feature is a tool

[SushiJaguar]

This power gap that sometimes happens - it's part of what makes the game a roguelike. It's endemic to a RNG-based loot system, you can't just breed it out without making the game not a roguelike anymore. And if you're gonna do that, why bother buying/playing -this- game in the first place, y'know?

Not to mention, this game really isn't quite as dependent on red or even green-rarity items as RoR 1 was to start off with. Before you unlocked many items in RoR 1 your selection of whites was pretty damned awful. In 2, here, you have almost every on-hit/on-kill effect item I saw in 1, available right from the get-go, and all the best ones too! Except, y'know, Brilliant Behemoth and Will-o-Wisp which are red and green rarity respectively.

Being able to give away items is technically in the game anyway. 3D Printers. Plus, later on we'll likely see the return of the selector item RoR1 had, which allowed you to pick what came out of a chest for the rest of the run after you nabbed it. That'll go a long way to alleviating the power gap issue.

In addition, you could also just...buy items for your allies. Just be like; "that dude's playing engineer, and this tri-shop terminal has a bustling fungus in it. Bustling fungus is really good for Engineer. I have spare money. I'll buy it, and ping it, and maybe even send a chat message so he knows I've left it for him."

[Gimply]

Originally posted by Nafen 🐱:

Or you can just help them kill stuff and/or open chests/buy stuff at terminals for them

While I get what you're saying it doesn't really solve the problem later in the game when AOE spam is unbelievable and the damage skyrockets.

But take this for example, a player dies early on for the first few levels and misses out on critical mobility loot such as red whip, hoopoo feather and energy drink.

If that player is unable to outrun the mobs and they are unable to defend themselves from said mobs in a reasonable manner then how are they going to live long enough to get those items? It just becomes a never ending loop of dying and respawning, causing the gap to widen even more.

[-SNiGS- JAM]

Another +1 for item dropping. Lets get with the future babiiieee

[Nafen 🐱]

So what you're saying is that if a player died early and they're unable to outrun mobs, they'll die early next level instead of being able to follow the guy who is carrying them and be handed loot by that person buying chests for them?

And your remedy to this situation is....allow the person who is carrying them to be able to.....hand items to them....yeah I can't see how this can go well at all lol.

At the very least, a quick interim screen between levels where people can trade items would be far less awkward.

[K1: LION]

I like the idea of "dropping" items like how the Bazaar "drops" items for a better one. That particular map could be used way more for this kind of stuff that isn't specifically dropping loot for another person. I agree that Risk of Rain runs will always be suspect to some element of randomness, but I do believe there was always at least some element of player agency to choose what to do with the items. The developers have already mentioned that the 3D printers and chances to make drastic choices were taken better than expect, perhaps we can expect more ways to exchange items in the future that might make it easier to "trade" between other players. Eg. a player stacked with items buys a legendary for someone else in the Bazaar (which you can do now by the way so long as you spend a Lunar Coin to summon it)

[Slice of Thanatoast]

Originally posted by Nafen 🐱:

And your remedy to this situation is....allow the person who is carrying them to be able to.....hand items to them....yeah I can't see how this can go well at all lol.

What's so difficult to see? It's a very simple solution to a very annoying problem. Although I would say that once you drop an item you shouldn't be allowed to re-gift it at all or have a timer set on it.

[Gimply]

Originally posted by SushiJaguar:

This power gap that sometimes happens - it's part of what makes the game a roguelike. It's endemic to a RNG-based loot system, you can't just breed it out without making the game not a roguelike anymore. And if you're gonna do that, why bother buying/playing -this- game in the first place, y'know?

Not to mention, this game really isn't quite as dependent on red or even green-rarity items as RoR 1 was to start off with. Before you unlocked many items in RoR 1 your selection of whites was pretty damned awful. In 2, here, you have almost every on-hit/on-kill effect item I saw in 1, available right from the get-go, and all the best ones too! Except, y'know, Brilliant Behemoth and Will-o-Wisp which are red and green rarity respectively.

Being able to give away items is technically in the game anyway. 3D Printers. Plus, later on we'll likely see the return of the selector item RoR1 had, which allowed you to pick what came out of a chest for the rest of the run after you nabbed it. That'll go a long way to alleviating the power gap issue.

In addition, you could also just...buy items for your allies. Just be like; "that dude's playing engineer, and this tri-shop terminal has a bustling fungus in it. Bustling fungus is really good for Engineer. I have spare money. I'll buy it, and ping it, and maybe even send a chat message so he knows I've left it for him."

Again, see above to my other reply. Sometimes in the late game buying chests for them and said players even surviving that long can be a problem. (Seeing as how some mobs can attack you before you can even fully spawn in.)

This is just a request/discussion about having the ability to drop items, and buying chests for them just seems like such a roundabout way of going about it. There is absolutely no reason to have to go to what is essentially a middle man so I can give items to a friend.

Let's take your bustling fungus as an example and say i'm playing merc (A mobility based class) and I have two of said item. Why shouldn't I be allowed to just drop it to him rather than just running around the map as he gets his head kicked in by mobs he has no hop in fighting against.

And finally, I have never said the RNG loot was a bad thing, I think it's actually great and has loads of replay value but there are problems with it. This is just a suggestion on a way to voluntarily help a player.

[Garble]

While I wish this was a feature, at the same time I think it would trivialize some challenges in the game.
Getting through 20 stages for example is a fairly difficult task but if you were able to pass around items, what's stopping a group from gathering everything and then just passing off all of the offensive items to one character specifically for the purpose of carrying them to 20 stages?
Now, if the devs said that they didn't really care about how hard the "difficult" challenges were and said that they were going to add item dropping I'd be perfectly fine with that. But I think that's much different than us begging them to add it because we don't like being behind/ahead of everyone else. It's unfortunately part of RNG and to remove that would kind of defeat the purpose. Everybody could just fine tune the builds they and their teammates have and it's not really random anymore.

[SushiJaguar]

What's the difference between opening a chest for someone and dropping the item for them, though? Functionally, none. You still had to wait for the item to pop out and land in the world, to be picked up. That's a pretty significant amount of time to be standing around with your thumb up your arse and your face in a menu pop-up, right? It's dangerous with both suggestions.

"well just start dodging enemy attacks properly" but that can be difficult, Wisps aren't 100% reliable to dodge, for example. Sometimes it does just take one (un)lucky hit to take you out for yet another round.

But if you want to voluntarily help a player, even a direct-trade system would be clunky and difficult to handle, since on higher difficulties enemies spawn fairly close, fairly frequently, when the map starts. If you try trading an item as soon as the map starts it probably won't end well.

Is it still a better option than hoping they survive...? I dunno. I don't think so. If you could drop that bustling fungus to the Engineer then you better hope he's dropping his turrets to take the aggro, because standing still for him to use it himself is just gonna get him killed - and we're back at square one with that hypothetical scenario.

I just don't think that anything other than a direct trade would be an improvement - and I don't think (personally, not objectively) that it would be anything other than a detriment to the game, just to pander to bad players. It compensates for bad luck, yes, but at what point does the "Risk" get taken out of "Risk of Rain"?

[Gimply]

Originally posted by Garble Master:

While I wish this was a feature, at the same time I think it would trivialize some challenges in the game.
Getting through 20 stages for example is a fairly difficult task but if you were able to pass around items, what's stopping a group from gathering everything and then just passing off all of the offensive items to one character specifically for the purpose of carrying them to 20 stages?
Now, if the devs said that they didn't really care about how hard the "difficult" challenges were and said that they were going to add item dropping I'd be perfectly fine with that. But I think that's much different than us begging them to add it because we don't like being behind/ahead of everyone else. It's unfortunately part of RNG and to remove that would kind of defeat the purpose. Everybody could just fine tune the builds they and their teammates have and it's not really random anymore.

You know I never really thought about it like this, it might lead to people fine tuning builds but the items they get would still be random most of the time, sure they essentially get like 3 other people getting their items for them.

But is it really such a problem? Isn't coop meant to be enjoyed as a team? If half your team at any given time aren't enjoying their time and aren't even playing the game most of the time for the better part of an hour is it really worth it?

I'm not disagreeing with you hear btw, you brought up some really good points but I still think that the game would benefit from it more.

[Gimply]

Originally posted by SushiJaguar:

What's the difference between opening a chest for someone and dropping the item for them, though? Functionally, none. You still had to wait for the item to pop out and land in the world, to be picked up. That's a pretty significant amount of time to be standing around with your thumb up your arse and your face in a menu pop-up, right? It's dangerous with both suggestions.

"well just start dodging enemy attacks properly" but that can be difficult, Wisps aren't 100% reliable to dodge, for example. Sometimes it does just take one (un)lucky hit to take you out for yet another round.

But if you want to voluntarily help a player, even a direct-trade system would be clunky and difficult to handle, since on higher difficulties enemies spawn fairly close, fairly frequently, when the map starts. If you try trading an item as soon as the map starts it probably won't end well.

Is it still a better option than hoping they survive...? I dunno. I don't think so. If you could drop that bustling fungus to the Engineer then you better hope he's dropping his turrets to take the aggro, because standing still for him to use it himself is just gonna get him killed - and we're back at square one with that hypothetical scenario.

I just don't think that anything other than a direct trade would be an improvement - and I don't think (personally, not objectively) that it would be anything other than a detriment to the game, just to pander to bad players. It compensates for bad luck, yes, but at what point does the "Risk" get taken out of "Risk of Rain"?

I see what you mean, I still think having the ability to drop items from your tab menu would still work, as you do retain most WASD controls but you wont have mouse control. Not really sure how it would work on controllers though.

Maybe a good middle ground would be to sent to the bazaar for a limited amount of time in order for trading to happen every five turns or every map loop? I dunno.

[penuds]

Originally posted by SushiJaguar:

What's the difference between opening a chest for someone and dropping the item for them, though? Functionally, none. You still had to wait for the item to pop out and land in the world, to be picked up. That's a pretty significant amount of time to be standing around with your thumb up your arse and your face in a menu pop-up, right? It's dangerous with both suggestions.

"well just start dodging enemy attacks properly" but that can be difficult, Wisps aren't 100% reliable to dodge, for example. Sometimes it does just take one (un)lucky hit to take you out for yet another round.

But if you want to voluntarily help a player, even a direct-trade system would be clunky and difficult to handle, since on higher difficulties enemies spawn fairly close, fairly frequently, when the map starts. If you try trading an item as soon as the map starts it probably won't end well.

Is it still a better option than hoping they survive...? I dunno. I don't think so. If you could drop that bustling fungus to the Engineer then you better hope he's dropping his turrets to take the aggro, because standing still for him to use it himself is just gonna get him killed - and we're back at square one with that hypothetical scenario.

I just don't think that anything other than a direct trade would be an improvement - and I don't think (personally, not objectively) that it would be anything other than a detriment to the game, just to pander to bad players. It compensates for bad luck, yes, but at what point does the "Risk" get taken out of "Risk of Rain"?

"Muh difficulty" Then it can just be added as an optional feature, idiot. Then you can play on monsoon with no trading and other people can play on whatever difficulty they want minus an annoying feature that can be fixed with a simple change.

[Gimply]

Originally posted by brucejetta engine:

Originally posted by SushiJaguar:

What's the difference between opening a chest for someone and dropping the item for them, though? Functionally, none. You still had to wait for the item to pop out and land in the world, to be picked up. That's a pretty significant amount of time to be standing around with your thumb up your arse and your face in a menu pop-up, right? It's dangerous with both suggestions.

"well just start dodging enemy attacks properly" but that can be difficult, Wisps aren't 100% reliable to dodge, for example. Sometimes it does just take one (un)lucky hit to take you out for yet another round.

But if you want to voluntarily help a player, even a direct-trade system would be clunky and difficult to handle, since on higher difficulties enemies spawn fairly close, fairly frequently, when the map starts. If you try trading an item as soon as the map starts it probably won't end well.

Is it still a better option than hoping they survive...? I dunno. I don't think so. If you could drop that bustling fungus to the Engineer then you better hope he's dropping his turrets to take the aggro, because standing still for him to use it himself is just gonna get him killed - and we're back at square one with that hypothetical scenario.

I just don't think that anything other than a direct trade would be an improvement - and I don't think (personally, not objectively) that it would be anything other than a detriment to the game, just to pander to bad players. It compensates for bad luck, yes, but at what point does the "Risk" get taken out of "Risk of Rain"?

"Muh difficulty" Then it can just be added as an optional feature, idiot. Then you can play on monsoon with no trading and other people can play on whatever difficulty they want minus an annoying feature that can be fixed with a simple change.

Having trading as a modifier is actually a pretty neat idea. It pretty much neglects most of the arguments against it, if a group of friends/randoms want to do it they have the option.