u/NubCakeDaScrub

I’ve been greatly enjoying this game. But I’ve seen a LOT of contention around the shared upgrade pool. Personally, I like the system quite a bit in theory, however a lot of people REALLY do not.

I think the main problem people are facing is that if someone else has an upgrade they want, they have to compromise for something FAR inferior, and I think the main problem isn’t actually the negotiation system itself, but rather than nobody wants to take the leftovers. Why? Well it’s because the vast majority of upgrades in this game are boring stat boosts that are sometimes conditional! Which sucks!

I’ve played quite a few roguelike and a couple of co-op ones, and I’ve seen this problem solved already! Rabbit & Steel has the EXACT same upgrade system. You have 5 items and each of the 4 players pick one. They also have their version of the ‘less often but individual upgrades’ (workbenches and bio-boosters in RC) with alternate abilities.

What makes Rabbit & Steel work then? Well to put it simply, the upgrade design is just far better than RC. For the negotiation upgrades, even the leftovers will most likely have interesting effects and could lead to fun synergies down the line. On top of that, their individual upgrades are far more interesting compared to bio-boosters, as they give you more options and variety, allowing you to adapt your kit to what upgrades you got randomly, so even if you got the leftovers, you can still make use of them and build them into their own thing. There is also far more synergy between upgrades within the game, meaning that you’re more likely to find other upgrades that will help your leftovers become a core part of your run! And since you’re the only one with that item, since everyone else has their own thing, you’re free to take it since you’re one of the only ones building into that, alleviating the friction between players.

RC has the start of this, there are a few upgrades here and there that I love, and create fun synergies with just a few upgrades, especially in the bio-boosters, but with the vast majority of the upgrades being basic stat bonuses or damage bonuses on dumb conditionals, it makes the negotiation phase frictional as nobody wants the last 2-3 upgrades since they either suck or are boring. I think if everything was a similar complexity to the average Green Item in Risk of Rain 2, or the average item in Rabbit & Steel, where just one more upgrade could make it a cool synergy that is fun to play around, a lot less people would complain about the negotiation upgrade system, since almost every upgrade would be interesting and create fun and emerging gameplay.

TLDR: The negotiation system is fine, the upgrades just need to be more complex and interesting, and bio-boosters need to allow you to create synergies using what you’ve got. This would help the problems of nobody wanting the leftovers, and people would be able to build into their own thing as the run goes on instead of fighting each other.