Is this like Downhill?

[Heatnixx]

I really miss that game, which was pretty much SSX on bikes. Is this like the PS2 when it comes both to gameplay and absurdity of stages (jumping off buildings, riding down steep mountains with falling boulders, volcanos, etc)?

[Kickfister]

It doesn't have absurd stuff like that, at least not what I've played. It's much more about riding itself without excessive gimmicks. Can't really say how it compares in game feel since I never played that game.

[Gryker]

It is more then likely a "Mountain bike" sim :(

[Sombrero]

It can be a bit absurd by how intense things can get, and the boss jumps are all over the top still.

[No More Robots]

Hey Heatnixx! So Descenders is essentially somewhere between the silliness of Downhill Domination, and a mountain bike sim. It has a ton of silliness in it, like jumping over crazy things, riding on the moon etc -- but then it also has serious bits, like the handling of the bike, and all the different tricks and skills you can pull off.

Hope that helps!

[[FOR] Reason]

Originally posted by No More Robots:

Hey Heatnixx! So Descenders is essentially somewhere between the silliness of Downhill Domination, and a mountain bike sim. It has a ton of silliness in it, like jumping over crazy things, riding on the moon etc -- but then it also has serious bits, like the handling of the bike, and all the different tricks and skills you can pull off.

I've followed Descenders since its first few days on Steam... However, what's prevented me from buying it is the (at least seemingly) lack of verticality for which Downhill Domination 2 was, & still is, unparalleled. As well as the absence of multiplayer, which is now resolved but only 'kind of' as it has too few 'max players' available, & no hostable dedicated servers which is always incredibly disappointing for any MP game to lack.

I played Downhill Domination 2 for PS2 a lot as a teenager but no game since has offered steep mountain descents like DD2 had. I saw the inclusion of Steam workshop support for Descenders but the one example offered so far had only bright colored obstactles on a flat terrain and no steep, nor wide, mountain track examples.

So, are there any plans to include(?):
A) Super long, wide(r), & steep tracks.
B) Increased MP max player count.
C) User-hostable dedicated servers for regional performance benefits, customization, & increased player counts.
... I ask because the roadmap is sadly devoid of all 3 of those aspects but my hope is that No More Robots may become one more studio of only a handful in the world that comprehend the significance of those aspects to a MP game, particularly referring to B & C.
https://trello.com/b/UIUrqPGq/descenders-roadmap



Examples of what I think a lot of us want but which Descenders is not providing...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjK6JHmZ2Ko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_IFoSKTl1Y

[SRMCH]

A) The map displayed in the Steam support announcement was only one map, made by the devs, showcasing the possibilities of custom maps. They've also been working on another map you might enjoy more : a big open-world map set in the mountains, set to release next month.
"Super long, wide and steep tracks" can be made. Maybe someone in the community will end up creating what you're looking for (maybe you will?).
However I've watched the Downhill Domination gameplay you linked (I'd never played the game before) and I can tell you that you most certainly won't survive this kind of tracks on Descenders due to the way physics work in this game. The very high speed will make it very hard for you to handle your bike, and you won't be able to land 20 meters jumps casually.

B) The more people are in a multiplayer session, the more CPU-intensive the game gets, which is why it has been limited to 8 players max (4 on Xbox). The devs are a really small team (about 3 people if I recall correctly) and optimizing the game further would certainly require a huge amount of work, therefore you might never see an increased MP max player count.

C) Hosting dedicated servers represents an important cost, and as a small indie team, I don't think the devs at Rage Squid (nor their publisher No More Robots) could afford it. The player-hosted sessions have never been an issue on my end. The way you character behaves is handled client-side (I guess), so you should most probably never feel lag when you're riding. You might see other riders lagging if you're playing with someone far away (never had the issue myself though) but it won't matter as riders CAN'T collide anyway.

Descenders is a wonderful game, and quite an ambitious one for such a small team. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone interested in extreme sports games. However it is not an AAA sequel to Downhill Domination. If that's only what you are looking for, Descenders might not be a game for you.

[[FOR] Reason]

Thank you @Rémoche for the most thorough and simultaneously straightforward (respectful & without condescension) response I've seen on Steam in a long while!
As you can see below I do have some responses and I apologize for the seeming-wall-of-text. My point is to offer clarification on my perspective, not to argue.

Originally posted by Rémoche:

A) "Super long, wide and steep tracks" can be made. Maybe someone in the community will end up creating what you're looking for (maybe you will?).
However I've watched the Downhill Domination gameplay you linked (I'd never played the game before) and I can tell you that you most certainly won't survive this kind of tracks on Descenders due to the way physics work in this game. The very high speed will make it very hard for you to handle your bike, and you won't be able to land 20 meters jumps casually.

My only concern regarding workshop support was whether it'd be possible to create massive descending terrains because I've played multiple sports games in the past where their "map editor" was restricted to a small square for placing only prefabs like those seen in the (so far singular example offered) announcement post by No More Robots.
As for the speed & wildly long distance jumps from DD2, that's of far less (virtually zero) interest to me and I'm most interested in the total potential scope & scale of the maps.

Originally posted by Rémoche:

B) The more people are in a multiplayer session, the more CPU-intensive the game gets, which is why it has been limited to 8 players max (4 on Xbox). The devs are a really small team (about 3 people if I recall correctly) and optimizing the game further would certainly require a huge amount of work, therefore you might never see an increased MP max player count.

All of that was my understanding and I appreciate you stating it but I'm just consistently disappointed with every studio setting out to make a MP game without prioritizing client-server authoritative networking from the beginning of development. Peer-to-peer (P2P) networking is always disappointing to see [compared-to] the numerous performance advantages of server-client architecture.

Originally posted by Rémoche:

C) Hosting dedicated servers represents an important cost, and as a small indie team, I don't think the devs at Rage Squid (nor their publisher No More Robots) could afford it.

That perception is unfortunately the most typical defense of P2P games and it's, respectfully, outdated & incorrect. The reality is game developers have not had to host game servers themselves for a decade so long as the dedicated server software is made public. They don't have to host a single public server, not one.
The pervasive misconception continues because, justifiably, developers are too busy making their own games rather than seeing what a small minority of their competition is doing. One of the best examples is what Offworld Industries(OWI) has done with their game Squad. They have two server browsers in their game, rather than the one typically, and in order to get on the first (which all players care about) you must be approved by the developers. There are hundreds of licensed servers btw, and even more in the unlicensed browser. Even when OWI are beta testing a new version... they get community server owners to host it for them! They don't pay a dime toward public server costs. So, worldwide there are easily over ten of thousand gaming groups online that jump at the chance to host dedicated servers for games which offer them. I know this first hand with 16 years experience hosting dedicated servers for every single game that's ever offered them and prioritizing purchasing & playing games where they're available.
... And all that is not even including the (at least) hundreds of server hosting/rental companies around the world which try to offer servers is as many games possible.

Originally posted by Rémoche:

Descenders is a wonderful game, and quite an ambitious one for such a small team. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone interested in extreme sports games. However it is not an AAA sequel to Downhill Domination. If that's only what you are looking for, Descenders might not be a game for you.

Great points and I've followed Descenders since first released on Steam. I've understood their team is very small (not a bad thing), and never expected nor wanted a sequel or even a spiritual successor to DD2. All I want are large(r) scale racing games with dedicated servers but too few developers have caught on to the modern approach to MP games to make it a priority. Peer-to-peer will [always] be inferior to dedicated servers in about 90% of use-cases because, and this is key, ...no matter how wide a clients bandwidth, it doesn't change the length. P2P networking (again, [compared-to] dedicated servers) makes it very hard to play with international friends due to inherent limitations of all players bearing the burden of far greater bandwidth shared across all clients vs singular direction client-server traffic per user.
As for being an ambitious game, if it had incorporated dedicated servers with the goal of high player counts - or - if they implemented some wildly revolutionary technology then I'd agree but it's a racing game (easiest video game genre to create, factually, akin to the horror genre in film). Descenders also runs on Unity, which is one of the easiest engines to use. This is NOT to diminish what their studio has accomplished but merely that I think the use of the word ambitious in relation to this game is a little bit of an exaggeration. Making a racing game and slapping in steamworks (API) P2P networking is a (relatively) easy accomplishment in the world of game development. Their random terrain generation sounds impressive but I don't know enough about it's depth and complexity to have an opinion.
It's clear the developers chose to make a (originally) SP-only racing game on Unity precisely because it's not ambitious & that's smart of them given their limited team size & budget. They then expanded the scope to MP but poorly, imo, as it's "just P2P" instead of a bigger vision approach incorporating dedicated servers which would give them a ton of free promotion from Game Server Providers (GSPs) and gaming communities. Almost every single game that's ever released dedicated server software to users still has an active multiplayer community 10-20 years after release which means a massively long tail of sales.



... My hope is that their community manager will read this and pass it on to their team lead to consider the significant undertaking of migrating to server-client networking after their console ports in order to give this game a huge lifespan & a broader player base. Given the track record of most MP game developers I'm not optimistic but 20 minutes typing here with some possibility of getting them to check out what other studios have done right could make it worth my time.
The problem is, most developers only see the hours required and so they fail to see the payoff of such a move.

[SRMCH]

That is one wall-of-text indeed, but a welcomed thorough point of view.


The open-world map I've mentioned is, according to one of the devs, 4x4 kilometers wide. That's 16 times the size of a randomly generated map. I don't know if that's the kind of scale you were looking for.
There doesn't seem to be a set limit to a custom map size (as long as the game's engine is able to support it I guess). The devs showed the map several times during Twitch live-streams and it seemed to run pretty well. I wish I could link you a video, but they have disappeared from the devs' Twitch account for unknown reasons.


Concerning online issues, you are much more competent than I am. It seems my guesses were based on misconceptions I had about dedicated servers in video games, but I'm happy I actually learned something here.


The devs are currently attending Pax West in order to promote their game, but the community manager will most certainly read your posts and answer you once he's back. I don't know if they'll be able to do anything about your concerns so far in the development of the game though.

[Rosie]

The workshop support maps will have to be made using the same Unity editor version as the game is using. But that's about the only limitation the workshop maps will have. So there's a LOT of possibilities for the community to explore.

Regarding the multiplayer I'd like to state that Descenders is not a racing game at all. It's an extreme sports game similar to Tony Hawk, SSX, Skate etc. Because of the procedural nature of the game we thought it would be a very nice addition to see players that are in the same environments you are. It's more of a hang out with friends / check out other people instead of a competition multiplayer. This is a choice by design (whether that's good design or bad is for others to decide but it is our choice nevertheless).

We wanted Descenders to be a fun single player experience where there is no multiplayer needed to enjoy the game. However it is a lot of fun with the multiplayer as well.

Hope this makes sense :D