70% of complaints are being caused by players not accepting that they’re new to the game
The two biggest complaints I’ve seen are Timer Bad, Shared Lootpool Bad. There’s a lot of other valid critiques as well, but these are some of the bigger ones.
In my opinion, as someone who’s played a lot of DRG and a lot of roguelikes, the timer is necessary. It can’t be removed outright without effectively trivializing the game. I think it’s much more reasonable to have the time slightly extended, but even then almost all of my runs with randoms we’ve cleared everything in the cave before the timer goes off. Making it a little bit longer could be reasonable, but I think it’s more of a git gud issue in terms of people being upset they’re getting caught and dying when they’re literally brand new to a game advertised as hard. It wouldn’t be much of a mechanic if there wasn’t actual threat, there’s not enough to do in the caves if you could take your time and waltz through it, and the constant speed pressure keeps the long form missions fun. People are demanding the removal of challenge instead of adapting to it. Would you remove the get-to-the-drop-pod timer at the end of the DRG mission because it’s hard sometimes?
As for the shared lootpool complaints, my least good experience was my first run and it only gets better the harder missions I unlock, to the point where it’s been a nonissue for the past several dives. Isn’t DRG the community famed for how chill and friendly it is? Communication is easy and goes a long way. I think the main problem is everyone trying to run the same kit all the time. If three people in the lobby are going for critical damage builds, then obviously that’s not going to work. People need to be more flexible, especially into roles that their class benefits, like a melee build for slicer or a status build for falconer. If you’re chasing the same rigid class build every run, it’s not going to end well for you.
The root of the matter is, everyone’s new right now. People have been agreeing that a lot of the friction is removed if you’re in a voice call with a competent team. In my experience, once you get to the lower depths, you basically have that. A lot of these complaints are coming from people dropping into a brand new game and getting frustrated that people in their lobby are playing suboptimally and dragging the game down. These are valid complaints, and the game is definitely geared towards competent players more than just the masses, but seriously, people, can we not take at least a day for the greenbeards to learn the ropes before we write off the game as a failure?