Controversial Opinion - One Shot Protection (OSP) Needs to Go

[Femboy Thighs]

Basically the title. OSP is boring and I'm going to explain why I don't believe it needs to be here.

What is OSP? For those who don't know, basically it means you'll never go from 100% HP to 0% in one hit. Two hits within the same millisecond will still kill you, sure, but never one hit alone. Also, "full HP" includes shield. Meaning if you have shield generators, and they get depleted, you'll have to wait til both your health AND shields refill completely before you're safe from being one-shot again. Barrier isn't a problem, though, because it counts as being "above your max health". If you lose your barrier but still have full health/shields, you're still safe.

Why is this bad? On paper, it's not. I assume it's there to prevent enemies you can't see from sniping you across the map and leaving you feel like you were given a cheap, unfair death. And to that extent it DOES work. However, it's also VERY exploitable.

Here's how it's exploited: Get a TON of healing items. So much healing, that as long as you're doing SOMETHING, you're being healed - even if just a little bit. Next, get like 10+ Shaped Glass. Enough so that your health is in just the double digits. Third, make sure you have no shield-giving items: No shield generator, transcendence, or Wake of Vultures. That's it! Now you'll never die, because enemies won't be able to deal 100% of your health in one hit, and your health is so gosh-darn low, that ANY healing you get will instantly put you back at 100%. Not to mention - You now also have a lot of Shaped Glass, so you'll also kill basically everything instantly too!

Now, being unkillable and murdering everything you so much as look at, is kinda the point of the game. Everyone wants to get to that point during a run. What bothers me is how EASY it is to do that by exploiting OSP, and how it goes against the core principles the game sells itself on.

I'll try to make this brief: The first Risk of Rain was all about two things: Risk/Reward, and having fun by getting absolutely decked out with hundreds of little trinkets and gadgets that, while individually weak, all added up to make you an unstoppable force. Risk of Rain 2, of course, presented itself as a sequel, promising the same things - but BETTER! And in almost every conceivable way, it has so far delivered.
The "OSP/Glass strat" - however - breaks both of these fundamental guidelines. It removes the "risk" from risk/reward, since building MORE Shaped Glass, despite it's "downside", actually makes you HARDER to kill - all while making you extremely powerful. And it removes the fun of gathering every item you can get your grubby hands on by strictly forcing you NOT to pick up certain items. To be fair, it's only the items that give shield, which are just the shield generator, transcendence, and wake of vultures, but STILL. It limits your options, and if you accidentally pick up just one of those items? You're basically dead.

Also, for me anyways, it saps the fun out of getting to the point where you're an unstoppable force. It feels really rewarding to be able to kill an Overloading Worm in mere seconds when you actually got to that point by playing really well and picking up any item without caring whether it's detrimental or not - because all items (besides Lunar ones, duh) are supposedly good for you. That's how it's always been. It's NOT fun to spend Lunar (that, let's be honest, most people just edited into their save file) on the SAME item OVER AND OVER again until you're virtually immortal and can also kill anything with a single click. It's repetitive and takes all the rogue-lite RNG charm out of each run. For me, anyways. And I think it should for you, too.

Nothing against you if you still enjoy it, of course. To me it feels like a system that was never intended to be there. And now removing it will upset, potentially, hundreds of players!

------------------ How could we fix it? ------------------

Without making anyone angry? Probably no way to do that. But I think there could be a way to compromise. I have two solutions, the first is... much more simple than the latter:

1. Simply give OSP a cool-down. Maybe it could be shown somewhere near your health bar with a symbol... like a "1" crossed out with a Ø. Just a 3-second cool-down would be enough to make OSP/Glass builds suddenly very risky, but consequently, much more fun to pull off successfully and stay alive with. And, of course, explain what OSP is somewhere in-game.

2. Buff Dio's. Currently quite a few people consider Dio's one of the worst Red items in the game (maybe behind H3AD-5T and Wake of course...), and the people who dislike it usually dislike it because of the OSP/Glass strategy. If you never die anyways, why would you need a Dio's, after all? You'd be better off with a Rejuvenation Rack or an item that takes care of enemies for you, like a Tesla or Ceremonial Dagger.

My suggestion: Make Dio's recharge like in the original game. Every (x) number of stages, one of your used Dio's will recharge. One Dio's at a time, if you have multiple. The number of stages is up for debate, of course. I'd say 5 is fair, if we're considering that OSP would be removed in its place. And make sure the Bazaar doesn't count. I find abusing Lunar boring, if you couldn't tell already. Although if that would be too hard to code, I wouldn't really care.

Alternatively, Dio's could recharge after a certain number of enemies are killed by the player who has it. 1,000 enemies may sound like a lot, but you can kill hundreds per stage once you get going. That way you still might wanna build Shaped Glass to kill things faster.

------------------ Discuss ------------------

There might be other ways to compensate for nerfing/removing OSP. Or maybe I'm just doomed to have bad opinions on things forever. Who knows. I strongly feel OSP/Glass strat was never intentional and the devs nerfing Barrier in the last patch supports this. I obviously can't speak for the devs, though. So what do all of you think about it?

[Warrior Zero]

Honestly I think it would cause backlash if it was removed because it has been in the game since the beginning of it and has been her for quite a while, and I would imagine that a lot of people use this strat to get moving in the game.
I will even admit that I have cheated in lunar coins because for a long time I kept having to worry about the coins that I used up and had to worry that it would be useless if I died after using like 4-5 when I had only 20 coins. I got so fed up with having to worry I cheated them in and have had not worried and used well over 500 by now. But I can see where you are coming from in your thoughts and I feel that it would upset a lot of people if they remove it from the game.

[Jimmy Hunter]

Originally posted by A Cardboard Box:

Here's how it's exploited: Get a TON of healing items. So much healing, that as long as you're doing SOMETHING, you're being healed - even if just a little bit. Next, get like 10+ Shaped Glass. Enough so that your health is in just the double digits. Third, make sure you have no shield-giving items: No shield generator, transcendence, or Wake of Vultures. That's it! Now you'll never die, because enemies won't be able to deal 100% of your health in one hit, and your health is so gosh-darn low, that ANY healing you get will instantly put you back at 100%. Not to mention - You now also have a lot of Shaped Glass, so you'll also kill basically everything instantly too!

By the time you've gotten that much healing and 10+ shaped glass, you'll already be destroying anything that comes your way.

Doesn't really seem like much of an exploit when you're already insta-gibbing bosses by Stage 20.

[Dragontoast]

I agree OSP needs to gtfo.

There are games that do it good(like borderlands), but RoR2 is definitely not one of them.

[BananaBadman]

I don't really see a reason to fix this. Most people who play this game probably won't bother blowing tons of lunar coins and passing up items while trying to build for this specific strategy. It's just an unnecessary nerf to people who feel like blowing all their coins and time going into the bazaar between every stage for a CHANCE of having a superpowered character build that is still pretty risky. The risk is assumed during the setup time for this build where your health isn't low enough to reliably get OSP every second. If you manage to get it going, you've earned it.

This isn't something that ruins the game for anyone. It instead gives people a different way to play. If people are using it as a crutch to win games, then good on them for playing the way they want to.

This does however sound like a very simple thing to mod into the game. I don't doubt that this will be available at some point.

[Thug Killadome]

Originally posted by BadmanNinja:

I don't really see a reason to fix this. Most people who play this game probably won't bother blowing tons of lunar coins and passing up items while trying to build for this specific strategy. It's just an unnecessary nerf to people who feel like blowing all their coins and time going into the bazaar between every stage for a CHANCE of having a superpowered character build that is still pretty risky. The risk is assumed during the setup time for this build where your health isn't low enough to reliably get OSP every second. If you manage to get it going, you've earned it.

This isn't something that ruins the game for anyone. It instead gives people a different way to play. If people are using it as a crutch to win games, then good on them for playing the way they want to.

This does however sound like a very simple thing to mod into the game. I don't doubt that this will be available at some point.

+1

Don't really see the point in nerfing a single style of play done by a minority that's gonna end up affecting a majority of players

The amount of enemies capable of dealing a single hit of damage you'll reasonably get hit by to bring you to 10% is limited to like, Vagrant explosion,golem lasers,bison charges, and Scavenger's Royal Capacitor--everything else is either a DOT or a multi-hit attack that bypasses OSP already

I agree that OSP is mostly just a bandaid for the insane damage potential late-game mobs have but ripping it off without putting anything in its place is a bad idea

[Devious_Craven]

A lot of the time when I die I get hit by two things at once so rapidly it might as well be the one attack. Elites will just tick you to death anyway.

I don't really see how this is really a problem, mine and my friends deaths always take us by surprise and we never really know what did it. Even in the end of game screen we are confused sometimes.

Way I see it, make it an option to turn off. Don't blanket everyone into it, you have to think about all the players as a whole.

[ComatosePhoenix]

To be honest, I don't think oneshot protection should work with shaped glass. it kinda defeats the point of the item. simply taking shaped glass is inviting that kind of unexpected cheap oneshot death.

[Femboy Thighs]

Originally posted by ComatosePhoenix:

To be honest, I don't think oneshot protection should work with shaped glass. it kinda defeats the point of the item. simply taking shaped glass is inviting that kind of unexpected cheap oneshot death.

Yeah I guess now that you put it that way my problem isn't OSP existing. It's perfectly fine for normal game play. It's the fact that it makes Shaped Glass so broken. Shaped Glass shouldn't theoretically be buffing your survival chances as well as damage.

Maybe they can make it so that taking a Shaped Glass counts as not being at max health, thus you break OSP by just taking one. But then I'm afraid people would start seeing it as a trashy item. Then again though... it is a Lunar item, and they're supposed to be risky.

[Krull]

Originally posted by A Cardboard Box:

Originally posted by ComatosePhoenix:

To be honest, I don't think oneshot protection should work with shaped glass. it kinda defeats the point of the item. simply taking shaped glass is inviting that kind of unexpected cheap oneshot death.

Yeah I guess now that you put it that way my problem isn't OSP existing. It's perfectly fine for normal game play. It's the fact that it makes Shaped Glass so broken. Shaped Glass shouldn't theoretically be buffing your survival chances as well as damage.

Maybe they can make it so that taking a Shaped Glass counts as not being at max health, thus you break OSP by just taking one. But then I'm afraid people would start seeing it as a trashy item. Then again though... it is a Lunar item, and they're supposed to be risky.

In that case you've effectively made the rest of the run into an Ethereal challenge. You're absolutely right it will be seen as a trashy item then.

[24/7🔴Triple B>Backpacks/Keys]

Honestly they should just give it a small cooldown

[Turahk]

Aaaand how long does it take you to become immune to damage? You never mentioned. I for example have never become immortal as far as I remember and I've had multiple runs that took over 3 hours.

[cuhrayzee]

OSP crutch kinda highlights the main issue - game's scaling isn't very balanced. Your healing and elite monsters' damage get out of control too fast. Past first loop you can instantly heal up from just a single scythe and few crit glasses and in return some random celestial wisp can just kill you with one hit. Instead of careful management of your health you only need one second to completely heal up to max HP.
But even in current state OSP should be totally removed. It messes too much with items and their value. Glass is too powerful, shield gen is just bad because of some obscure protection mechanic which punishes you for getting more shield. This is weird. I'm still puzzled why shield is even in the game as mechanic because now it's already completely inferior to health with the exception of maybe first few stages.

[Dayal]

Shaped Glass could also have a -50% from healing sources drawback on top of the -50% health. So your healing and total health will always have the same ratio prior to picking up Shaped Glass.

Not sure if it's going to fix the issue, but it could be a nerf worth exploring.

[Void Hermit]

As a not so great player, OSP is probably necessary for the likes of me. I've only managed to obliterate in Monsoon with 2 characters so far and I've played almost 50hrs lol, so imagine if it wasn't there. Maybe there could be an extra mode without OSP? Something like Hardcore Monsoon or whatnot.

[Jimmy Hunter]

Originally posted by Night:

Shaped Glass could also have a -50% from healing sources drawback on top of the -50% health. So your healing and total health will always have the same ratio prior to picking up Shaped Glass.

Not sure if it's going to fix the issue, but it could be a nerf worth exploring.

Pointless change tbh. OP's situation is so niche that you're realistically never going to see it unfold. Especially when you're talking stacks upon stacks of specific items that aren't exactly commonplace.