u/Beep_meep_Im_a_sheep

Something I believe GSG is really good at is getting players to play with each other vs just next to each other. It is a difficult challenge to create genuine cooperation among strangers, but there are tools the developers used that I thought worked really well.

Starting with the original DRG, the classes had complimentary weaknesses that brought them together by necessity. In addition, molly acted as a moveable anchor-point that kept the team together. Notice both of these bring people physically closer. A dissolution of this that bothers many playing for the coop parts of the game are EPC drillers who run miles ahead of everyone and just shoot walls to scatter morkite and nitra everywhere, relying on others to find and cleanup the mess while they continue sprinting forwards alone. The developers didn't like this either which is why they nerfed EPC mining, so this isn't just my opinion. It breaks down the dependency that different classes/players have on each other to necessitate working together to efficiently gather minerals from weird places.

In Rogue Core, inter-class dependencies are no longer. But GSG still wants this to be a real coop game. I thought that the REPD circle upgrade activation and upgrade negotiations solved this super well. Success now comes from how well the team moves together than just individuals trying to carry things by themselves. You feel like such a squad when you have teammates who keep at top of mind what others are doing and when works best with each other to do what. The REPD upgrade activation system required teams making collective decisions together. With upgrade negotiations, this again makes teammates have to be aware of each other's needs. It often forces tough decisions, but that's where the fun comes from.

With the patch 1 notes released, those elements that bring teams together are going. Without players having to group up for upgrades, you'll now see tons of people in different parts of the cave playing their own games rather than with each other. The need to be with each other is so much lower now. There's very little reason now for players to physically stick with each other versus scattering around the cave doing their own thing. With the changes to the upgrade choices, negotiations and the presence of others is lessened. You now all get closer to your own menu of options that don't have as much to do with each other anymore. The focus becomes much more focused on you and you alone versus others.

I believe that the people who complained the most about the systems we had until now are people who don't play well with others. They want to just run around on their own, and they see interactions and dependencies with others as "burdens." There are many games designed around letting you not have to "deal" with others while playing a technically "coop" game. They are also the most vocal online and most motivated to write negative reviews than being silently, but pleasantly enjoying the game. The majority of games (mostly pubbing) I've played have gone super well with teamwork with these systems. I think GSG was hasty in capitulating to the initial complaints about the game. The game in its current state gives very obvious feedback about what kinds of behaviors lead to success vs failure. I've of course played games where people try to play their own individual games, so we can't upgrade, and the game is much harder or just fails. Those are learning experiences. They also make good teams feel that much better because you know those players are extra special and care about playing with you. The point of a coop game is to have success come from the skills of individual players AND how well they work together. If the developers never changed this, players would learn in a year how to work together to be successful and have the most fun.

What makes me sad is that the complaints we're seeing about the current systems aren't that the mechanics are broken, but we just can't work with others on a team. The developers played with each other while developing and no doubt had a great time with each other coordinating where they were and saying to get together to upgrade, and then chatting about what builds they'd go for. The current system is just step 1: come together. Step 2: share. Can we really not do this or enjoy it? These are pretty fundamental concepts that have been implemented in a completely fair way. There is nothing broken or bugged about these systems. For the people that hate this, that distaste is coming from ourselves and for others versus the features themselves. Again, it's just coordination and sharing.

TLDR: Prepare for rogue core to feel more like 4 solo games loosely connected to each other versus a strong coop game due to changes to upgrading.

First of all, I am really loving Rogue Core right now!

Deck swapping however, is something I think should be changed. I thought deck swapping would be some kind of reroll option you get when picking biobooster upgrades to get something from the other deck. Swapping between classes was completely unexpected and something that I believe will make balance a nightmare for devs and players, and result in very lukewarm solutions.

## Problems
Let me start with the problems and then think about solutions. Decks must now be balanced around the fact that they can be used by all other classes. This necessitates that upgrades be kept lukewarm because if the devs want to balance around really cool synergies and playstyles for the intended class, another class can be too OP with that deck. An example I can think about is overwatch (+dmg to things beneath you) for spotter. I think it can be better. BUT, if you make it better to say +50% dmg, it's now too OP on slicer who can always just pop up and rain death beneath him. I'm not suggesting exactly this balance change, but just trying to show the problem we now have with deck swapping. Spotter has to get stuck with mild decks because they could be too much on other classes. This is true for all other classes. Do you think any current deck needs improvements? Well, you have to be extremely careful to not make anything OP now.

This problem will only compound as (/if) we get more classes. New classes/decks provide more opportunities for boring OP must-pick decks. The fix for this will often be to make decks intrinsically underwhelming so nothing game breaking happens.

I say to preserve class identity and keep upgrades locked to classes. Now devs/players can go crazy tuning and overtuning deck upgrades knowing that you are designing around a single class. Make spotter become an absolute gibbon without worrying about what that will do to other classes. Some people complain about carnage being too good. I say make it even better in a way that's tuned to just slicer so you can have an absolutely feral slicer. But, none of this can happen because of the risk of making any given deck a must-pick on any or all classes.

## Solutions

Maybe make more class specific cards and have that be a class specific progression system. It can be specific to the enhancements system where you can only pick a certain number of the cards from the pool to bring on missions that can be upgrades in bioboosters. Now you have legitimate deck building and class specific progression. This is of course more work on devs to design the new cards BUT the design is easier in some ways because they just need to focus on how they interact with ONE class. Those upgrades are now freer to be wackier, crazier, and just more fun.

I'm glad you can currently only swap one deck. Maybe even being able to swap a card or two could be better. I know this sounds boring at first, but the more constrained upgrades are to classes, the cooler the upgrades themselves can be.

Maybe make it so that decks become less effective on other classes. Carnage is the main deck people talk about being too much of a must pick. Maybe keep it as is for slicer, but reduced effectiveness for everyone else. For everyone else: +15% dmg for 2 sec on kill, +5% ability charge on kill, +1 or 2 stone skin on kill, etc. The numbers can of course be tweaked, but now the decision becomes more interesting for other classes. You have to REALLY benefit from the concept of some cards from another deck that you're willing to sacrifice the deck that's tuned to you for it. How it works now is to just pick THE objectively best deck(s).

I know some people might say stuff like, "Just buff the bad decks" or "Being OP in roguelikes is fun". The concept of "just" buffing bad decks becomes extremely hard when all interactions between all classes have to be considered. Building towards OPness can be fun in roguelikes, but that comes from gameplay and randomness. This is OPness that comes from reduced randomness based on what you pick in the build screen. Infrequently being OP is fun, yes, but consistent game breaking is not. To avoid this, the decks must be balanced around being available to everyone and therefore must be conservatively balanced.

Thank you all for reading my wall of text and I'd love to hear what others think about this.

TLDR: deck swapping forces the design of the cards to be much more conservative/boring to avoid the complexities of creating too consistently OP builds on other classes. Deck swapping should be altered or switched to something else that allows for more interesting/risky design choices to be made for each class.