From a Roguelike perspective, XP orbs shouldn't disappear

[Dabu]

I know a thread already exist about this subject but I wanted to make a point on it aswell.

Roboquest is a fun fast paced shooter, and I do get that devs wants their players to fight frenetically; forcing them to take risks and get rewarded for it. But from a roguelike perspective (as the game is also advertised on this range), it simply is frustrating and doesn't make a lot of sense to make the major way of progression disappear as the player is constantly taking risks due to how the level-design in roguelike works.

If you analyze the main concurrent of Roboquest, Gunfire Reborn rewards its players by clearing a room. The difficulty to clear a room comes naturally from the management of this room and your navigation in it:

- How much space is there in this room ?
- How vertical is it ? Is there multiple levels ?
- Where the covers are placed ? Is there any covers ?
- Where does the enemies spawns ? How many are they ?
- Is there anything special about this room ? (Floor is lava, Exploding barrels, Roof is slowly coming down / Time based events, Traps etc...)

This process of cleaning a room is time consuming (especially the more you progress during levels, as enemies will get more and more tough and will require more time to be killed).

By making XP orbs disappear, you not only create frustration and take away the reward from a roguelike player, but you also create "holes" in the build of the current run. The current configuration of the looting system seems not rewarding and appealing enough to continue the run to completion as it removes a part of the feeling of progression (this could also be said for the permanent upgrades in the basecamp as they do not feel really impacting for now).

If you choose the roguelike path for Roboquest, please base its difficulty on the level-design route and the management of space, events and enemies that comes with it (As many roguelikes do like The Binding of Isaac, Darkest Dungeon, Dead Cells, Enter The Gungeon, Hades, Slay The Spire, etc...).

Not on a time-based loot that restrain the progression.

[Percher]

missing out on a few orbs result in missing a single level by the end of the game if you kill every enemy, which isn't necessary at all. boohoo, big deal, get over it.

[Dabu]

My point is not only based gameplay-side but also on the feedback of players. It results in forcing them to take useless risks in a videogame genre that adjust its difficulty from the level-design and not-time based loot.

Overall, it simply creates frustration and isn't rewarding enough compared to many other roguelikes.

On the other hand, you didn't understood what I said earlier or you simply didn't read my op. In each case scenario, you sound hurted in your feelings after taking a feedback for devs personally. (Either way, I'm not the person to ask "Who hurt you ?"; psychanalists are)

[Percher]

literally have had zero problems, and the layouts of the levels change very little. it's basically the same every time.

hard to understand where you're coming from when i cannot see what they problem even is.

[Dabu]

Yea, I understood that we have differents point of view on the subject.

To be more clear, I will compare the rewarding system and the feeling of progression of Roboquest and Gunfire Reborn (as they can share similarities but end up taking differents roads).

I played each game both solo and coop up to 3 players.

As I said previously, Gunfire based its progression from cleaning rooms. You can loot from enemies:
- Heals
- Gold (to buy heal, ammunition, abilities and weapons for your arsenal)
- Souls (to permanently upgrade your character at the end of each run)
- Scrolls (to upgrade your current skills and gameplay)
- Ammunition
- Weapons

And after clearing each room, you get a free chest rewarding you with an upgrade for your abilities that you can choose between 3 choices.

These chests gives you a secured reward that will impact the rest of the run but also the feeling of progression through it. You feel more powerful, you choose wisely and strategically based on your current build (and team composition if you're in coop) and you feel rewarded for always going a little further through the game.

Hell, there is even synergy scrolls that will give you the opportunity to team up with your friends and interact with them (A heal is shared 33% of it original value with the rest of the team, ability to share weapons and abilities to trade etc..).

And overall, the game remains difficult as the level-design becomes more complex, the enemies spawns behind you and get upgrades through the game as well, traps gets in your way and you will often need to dodge them while fighting etc..

(This is my one of my main point. Take Hades for instance: fighting in areas become more challenging as the floor will have less space to walk on because of lava. Dead Cells begins with stupid enemies in front of you and continue with you walking in the dark avoiding to to stay too long in it otherwise you'll get poisoned and the list could go on...).

-------------------------------

Now, if I take Roboquest instead (let me know if I'm wrong) but so far you only get from killing enemies:

- XP orbs (to level up and choose between two upgrades)
- Ammunition

And they disappears after some seconds. Healing is free when you encounter the Robo-Repair. You get cores to put points in your statistics and a chest with two weapons in vaults.

After playing a lot of coop games and lately some Gunfire Reborn with friends, our overall feeling was a great structure and a nervous gameplay from Roboquest. (A lot more than Gunfire indeed). But the core of the game (which is the rogue-like genre) simply isn't appealing enough to continue. Neither me or my friends felt a change in our gameplay to push the run a little further.

Progression post-run felt inexistant and didn't brought us back to say "Okay one last game". And especially, the thing that made us frustrated and felt like we weren't rewarded from playing were the disappearing major way of progression: XP Orbs.

Because it forces you to take risks while still being in conflict. So you either die stupidly from taking the risk (or take damages that slowly kills you), or you ignore it and feel frustrated and unawarded despite your effort to go further in your run. (Without talking about the artificial difficulty that it creates).

I already saw topics about this subject and even if it is not an issue for everybody, players coming from the major concurrent (Gunfire Reborn) will hardly feel any progression in Roboquest resulting in the "unappealing" aspect of it.

A Rogue-like base its replayability by the "addiction" of getting new stuffs and the feeling of progression making the player always on the edge of thinking: "I'm sure I could get a little further this time".

If XP orbs are not likely to change, the awarding and progression system needs to get deeper than what it currently is. Taking away rewards from players under their own eyes mostly likely means taking the feeling of progression from them.

[Percher]

comparing apples to oranges here. both are linear roguelike shooters, but both appeal to different tastes.

gunfire has a lot of variety, but the gunplay and movement are lackluster. the game feels really slow and most of the fun comes from seeing what kind of crazy bs you get, if any. there's no in-game timer as far as i'm aware, which emphasizes that notion. completed runs probably take more than an hour and half, but that's mostly a guesstimate. have yet to complete a run in that game.

roboquest is the exact opposite. great gunplay and movement, but there's not a whole lot of variety. the game feels fast and you can blast through levels in a couple of minutes. most of the fun comes from improving your times and knowledge of the game. runs take around 45 minutes casually, and maybe half an hour if you start really trying to lower your times.

i vastly prefer roboquest, since it just feels better to play. keep in mind that i've only played single-player on both, and base my opinions on that. co-op is a completely different beast since everything is more fun with a friend.

[Snobby Hobo]

Originally posted by Percher:

comparing apples to oranges here. both are linear roguelike shooters, but both appeal to different tastes.

gunfire has a lot of variety, but the gunplay and movement are lackluster. the game feels really slow and most of the fun comes from seeing what kind of crazy bs you get, if any. there's no in-game timer as far as i'm aware, which emphasizes that notion. completed runs probably take more than an hour and half, but that's mostly a guesstimate. have yet to complete a run in that game.

roboquest is the exact opposite. great gunplay and movement, but there's not a whole lot of variety. the game feels fast and you can blast through levels in a couple of minutes. most of the fun comes from improving your times and knowledge of the game. runs take around 45 minutes casually, and maybe half an hour if you start really trying to lower your times.

i vastly prefer roboquest, since it just feels better to play. keep in mind that i've only played single-player on both, and base my opinions on that. co-op is a completely different beast since everything is more fun with a friend.

I'm going to agree with this. I get what the OP means, but it's a faulty comparison. It's however a fair mistake as "roguelite" is a label that is at best very confusing for Roboquest.

Roboquest is just Doom with repeated runs. The roguelite elements are there, but they're bland and don't really add anything to the way the game plays. The only mechanic I can justify that could be classified as such is getting random weapons from the arsenal. The leveling up and especially commitment to specific categories feels out of place and redundant. Don't be fooled thinking this game is anything like Gunfire reborn in that regard.

[Dabu]

Yes, and I'm not expecting Roboquest to copy/paste Gunfire formula. My feedback is mostly about the "negatives" that I have about the game so far (and especially from a coop standpoint as I mainly play these games with a team).

I don't feel like it is rogue-like enough to be classified as so (by saying that, I mean that the progression given by the game is not enough to be considered as impactful gameplay-wise).

Merged message / Edit:

According to @IncrediblyAverage, I guess this is my main issue from the game then. I expected a roguelike fps as it is advertised as such. But I really feel the same from beginning to end with little to no upgrades through my runs.

By the way (and to my knowledge) there is a in-game timer in Gunfire, just under the mini-map.

[Yun and the Yuns]

It results in forcing them to take useless risks

What you perceive as "useless risk" is actually what we think is "interesting gameplay". We absolutely don't want people to play hide and seek.

in a videogame genre that adjust its difficulty from the level-design and not-time based loot.

It's your point of view, and maybe how most Roguelite are made, but we don't think it's a rule of thumb that difficulty has to come from level design. Also, the difficulty in Roboquest doesn't come from a time-constraint but from mastering movement, shooting and forward combat.

I expected a roguelike fps

We tried to say "Fast-FPS Roguelite" has much as we could, to emphasis the fact that it's a fast-fps before anything else.

Though, your feedback is welcome and we thank you for your developing your pov in a constructive way.

[Dabu]

Then the "interesting gameplay" comes from scoring and time-trial as Percher and Incredibly Average said (Which is a lot closer to what "Ultra-Kill" is as game from example). But it doesn't rely on roguelikes as advertised and it is clear as crystal when comparing it to other games in the same genre.

Which is fine on its own by the way.

But thinking players would play "Hide & Seek" on linear corridors shooters (or even in roguelikes overall) is simply wrong. You have tools to overcome these kinds of behavior in your game-design: locking doors and stuck the player in a room as "The Binding of Isaac" does, forcing players to kill all enemies before looting as "Gunfire Reborn" does, loot specific items on enemies to open chests and vaults as "Enter the Gungeon"...

Removing rewards (and as I said, the major way of progression) from players is an "odd" way to do it. To say the least.

[Snobby Hobo]

Originally posted by Dabu:

Then the "interesting gameplay" comes from scoring and time-trial as Percher and Incredibly Average said (Which is a lot closer to what "Ultra-Kill" is as game from example). But it doesn't rely on roguelikes as advertised and it is clear as crystal when comparing it to other games in the same genre.

Which is fine on its own by the way.

But thinking players would play "Hide & Seek" on linear corridors shooters (or even in roguelikes overall) is simply wrong. You have tools to overcome these kinds of behavior in your game-design: locking doors and stuck the player in a room as "The Binding of Isaac" does, forcing players to kill all enemies before looting as "Gunfire Reborn" does, loot specific items on enemies to open chests and vaults as "Enter the Gungeon"...

Removing rewards (and as I said, the major way of progression) from players is an "odd" way to do it. To say the least.

I completely understand your point. I also agree why you would feel it's a mechanic inherently hostile towards how you perceive conventional roguelites. Somewhat surprisingly I've never seen Elliot mention what I would reckon is the design philosophy being followed here: evolving the original Doom-likes. Roboquest is extremely similar to Doom Eternal, which is suppose to be a very old formula tuned to near perfection. Doom has evolved to becoming a game of mastering combinatorial subroutines to achieve a high room clear speed. Roboquest does almost the exact same thing with design choices such as auto-reload, cooldown on weapons and armor pickups on specific kill executions.

Problem is this kind of conflicts with what games like Rogue, and by far extension roguelites, offer. Somewhat ironically the game also seems to recognize that issue by making the roguelite elements really boring and more linear. I think this is the game's biggest weakness too, and it should probably be better off just throwing the roguelite elements out of the window altogether. Trying to gain mastery of the mechanics as focal point conflicts pretty heavily with diversifying aforementioned routines through RNG.

So yea: I get your point and I agree you shouldn't really consider this game anything remotely resembling Rogue. The roguelike elements are rudimentary at best.

[Dabu]

Totally agree on this. You either live up to what is marketed for the game in the first place or you simply drop it rather than making it half-baked as it is right now.

At the current state, Roboquest lacks of a lot of deepness that will not be filled by creating new enemies and weapons but expanding the progression system and how the game awards players by navigating through it.

If the subject is simply avoided, we only have a fast-paced shooter here. Skills through levels seems not impactful enough to feel like any build or meta could be manageable or interesting, weapons are not upgradeable, there is no shop and money, heal is free, very little permanent upgrades; and most importantly no feeling of progression through a run which is especially an issue in a "Rogue-like" game..

Which is a shame because the rest of the game is solid. But this is a "roguelike" at the bleeding edge (a very limited roguelike tbh) and it shouldn't be advertised as such in its current form. This tricked me into thinking it was.

[Slayton]

Originally posted by Elliot Yun:

What you perceive as "useless risk" is actually what we think is "interesting gameplay". We absolutely don't want people to play hide and seek.

I've played through Heroes +3, and reluctantly agree with the OP. XP orbs disappear very quickly relative to the speed of game play with certain setups. Some weapons are designed to shoot from long range, such as the rocket launchers, lobbing grenade launchers, pistols with scopes, and more, but the XP orbs are across the room when using these weapons.

The auto pickup from precision based sniper rifles is nice, and addresses this is a modest way. Maybe adjusting the vacuum to offer more flexibility in regards to how fast we are expected to pick up XP orbs would be a fair tradeoff. It's not that the vacuum doesn't already do this, in a way, it's just that the vacuum is extremely boring to use compared to the other interesting options, like the jetpack and extra life.

[Buntkreuz]

I agree and i hate that in these games.

The problem isnt that i camp and shouldnt get the experience.
Often its the exact opposite, i kill too much and fast to get all the experience points.
In Roboquest the glarring issue is rather a technical one, i dont get experience because enemies die offscreen without me doing much about it.
I often use Drones or AoE or Chaindamage, means enemies in one area die without me even being close.
Which means, i lose experience because it disappears and i couldnt possibly do anything about it.
Some enemies dying to the far right and others to the far left, i only can decide which exp to lose.

In that way, its a cheap and useless way to design a mechanic, to put pressure and push players to move.

Which is contradictory design i might add.
There are loadouts and guns that rely on staying in position (shield for example), disappearing experience points are thus undermining the core game design that is present.


Honestly, whenever there are disappearing coins or experience points in those games, it reeks fould as if there was no thought spend on the mechanic at all.
I absolutely know that this can be used to cause certain effects or even balance out gameplay, but most of the times it is the worse option and there is a much better way to achieve the same.

I say get rid of disappearing experience, i killed that enemy, i should get the score. Period.

[Dabu]

Really interesting feedback @Argentum, thanks. You pointed out things that I've didn't thought about like the contradictory game-design between builds and weapons but also the gap that it creates by unbalancing game mechanics over others.

This truly adds up to the issue imo. Especially when you have other mecanics to achieve the same goal and make the player move.

So yeah, nice point.

[LeoKingRulz]

I agree. Maybe they disappear on hard mode? otherwise no