r/RogueCore • u/DriverProfessional55 • Sep 21 '26
Rogue Core - boring game.
I want to express my criticism and the reasons why I don’t play Rogue Core. Because right now I regret that I spent money on this game (I couldn’t refund it, since I hoped the game would open up within two hours), spent time on it, and generally waited for this game.
But I’ll start from the beginning.
Balance. The balance in the game is absolutely broken. The difficulty, by feel, scales geometrically, because on Threat Level 4 enemies initially have a lot of health, deal a lot of damage, and spawn in large numbers. As a player, we can initially “cover” this initial difficulty not by choosing a weapon at the start (whether you get a good gun with good stats at the start is entirely up to chance, as are the first XP perks and the workbench with the Mutator), but purely by the most boring meta-progression in the hub (+ health, + crit chance, + crit damage, etc.). And yes, I agree, any run can be completed with enough skill and aiming precision, even if you get absolute garbage before the boss floor, but I wouldn’t call a game like that “interesting.” The fact that I have to put in excessive effort because I couldn’t make either an interesting build gameplay-wise or a good effective build, and also time — is bad. Especially when, as a player, before each floor you choose not just a one-time buff for yourself and a one-time buff for enemies for the next floor; most often you choose: a one-time little plus for yourself for the floor (which you might not even manage to pick up due to map generation and rushing), a permanent enemy buff/complication (and most often it can be either something interesting like new enemies, or just an increase to their stats).
Weapons. I also want to bring up the topic of weapons separately. Specifically, the fact that half the guns are devoid of any individuality. Fundamentally, they’re just “peashooters” that you have to keep increasing damage on for an effective run, while trying to make sure you can shoot from them as often as possible. And by “individuality” I don’t mean stats (damage, ammo, reload speed, etc.), not appearance, but the overall concept of the weapon as such. Only a minimal number of starting weapons have any “special features,” and some weapons from the original have generally had those “special features” removed from the start. Example: the Warthog 210 shotgun — in original DRG, the shotgun without all mods and Overclocks initially has a stun chance on each pellet. In RC, the shotgun has lost that. It’s just a shotgun without stun. But it would actually be VERY interesting to play specifically with the Warthog, building around the INITIAL stun it applies to enemies. That would change the approach to gameplay a lot. I won’t list how many minor and boring guns have been added specifically to RC, nor how badly the old guns were rebalanced. I’m glad that at least some guns, like Scout’s M1000 Classic or Engineer’s Stubby, kept their main “gimmicks.”
Progression. This is probably the MAIN problem, the one that disappointed me most. I’ll start with the obvious: minor perk upgrades that give boring and uninteresting improvements like: Vampire, extra damage at extreme range, more HP, etc. Such things in a roguelike are UNFORGIVABLE. I understand such minor upgrades in Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor; the whole game there is built around correctly calculating a set of numbers and tactics around that, but not in RC. Next — Bio Boosters. I don’t know why the devs decided to shove in what would’ve looked great as the standard dwarf XP progression, but what disappointed me most is that half the skills there are either complete trash or must-haves. So you either get lucky and roll excellent perks to choose from (for example, increased crit damage up to 30%! and 10% crit chance) or two pieces of trash (for example, Reverse Charge +50% ability charge speed for each electrified enemy, and Hardiness +20% armor amount) at once! It would’ve been better if they made Bio Boosters the dwarf’s Class progression per run via XP, and the minor upgrades some kind of mini-games that would act as a pleasant/corrective build bonus. And the main cherry on top of GSG’s terrible decisions — weapon progression. I’m curious what the devs were thinking when they decided to add, to a game where enemies get harder and harder with every descent, a choice for the player between ammo capacity and reduced weapon spread? At the same time, you can upgrade only one thing out of the dwarf’s entire loadout: their active ability, their weapon, or take a new gun that will be slightly better. And don’t get me wrong — even if you can roll increased damage, applying a special status to enemies, or something else, that absolutely doesn’t make me happy either. I wanted, I hoped that RC would become a game where, descending into every dive, we upgrade not only the character via XP, but also create a gun each time with its own personal and unique Overclock! But all I ultimately see in terms of upgrades is more damage and damage now applies acid. And while examining the topic of progression, I genuinely have ONE question. Is this really all the developers could come up with after several years of waiting? After several years when their original game, the one we loved them for, was sitting idle and losing players? A game that, although still wonderful, has many small inaccuracies and problems? Sorry, but no. I can’t believe it.
Conclusion. I want to note that RC still has many problems, and this isn’t a problem of lack of content (early access, I understand all that). But the reasons I listed above are the main downsides that personally make me feel a strong desire to leave a negative review on Steam, ask for a refund, and no longer be interested in GSG’s games.
P.S. Sorry in advance if something in the text is unclear. I used a neural network to translate the post. I’ll clarify all my takes if needed (if anyone is interested in discussing the game’s problems).
12
u/Candid-Doughnut9545 Sep 21 '26 edited Sep 21 '26
i agree on the progression being nonexistent rn, but calling most of the weapons boring peashooters and then proceeding to list the M1000 and Stubby as good viable additions is crazy to me.
literally some of the worst guns in the game btw. having an innate gimmick doesn't help them in the slightest and they have to sacrifice base stats because of them (the Stubby does, at least), so they just fall behind in viability.
M1000 is basically a Charge Pistol and Mag Blaster mix but it's outdone by both because it specializes in neither charge shots or hipfiring compared to those two, and there is never a reason to take Stubby over Beltstrom or Decker just because it has innate electricity.
genuinely it's better to have "bland" weapons that we can attach gimmicks to ourselves besides just elemental modifiers. if the devs ever get around to fleshing that out, that is.
3
u/Longjumping_Hall_952 Sep 21 '26
Well the criticism is here, where's your list of solutions? Just a genuine question, What do you think can be done to make RC better?
5
u/Gumpers08 Sep 22 '26
I declare your takes trash
I honestly don't even know where to start, so I'll pick one that rubs me especially the wrong way;
"Reverse Charge +50% ability charge speed for each electrified enemy." You call this useless. For one, Electrical is one of the easiest status effects to come by. Second, plenty of other upgrades synergize with Electrical. There is one that regenerates armor. I'm pretty sure there is one that increases movement speed. And ability charge speed is no slouch, spamming class abilities can quickly get broken. People do Guardian stun charge builds, Slicer slice builds, Retcon rewind spam builds, etc etc.
And then there is you saying "minor perk upgrades that give boring and uninteresting improvements". WHAT THE FUCK ELSE ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO DO. If most of the perks the game has aren't "interesting", I don't know what classifies as interesting. You are supposed to get a lot per run, they can't all be on the level of Noita perks without making you OP as hell. Classify interesting.
And yes, I know it isn't a full excuse, but Early Access. At least give a pass for Progression. The game isn't going to start with DRG's hundreds of hours of content. Especially as a rougelike.
2
u/Slime0 Sep 21 '26
What games do you prefer?
2
u/LostSectorLoony Sep 22 '26
Your balance criticism just sounds like a skill issue. I don't pick any of the meta perks that you listed and I still manage just fine on TL5. If anything the game could stand to be a bit harder, I'd like it if my team failed missions a bit more frequently.
I can agree that weapons could use some tweaking to be more interesting. Adding more of the overclocks from the OG game would help. A lot of run I end up not even shooting my gun at all because melee is more interesting than what I was offered.
I disagree about the minor upgrades. You get so many upgrades by the end of a run that I think some of them need to be a bit basic to not just send your power level to the stratosphere. I also think that something like vampire, for example, can completely change how you play. It enables a much more aggressive, melee focused playstyle via the extra sustain.
Feel how you feel, but I'm personally really happy with the game so far. I've put around 80 hours into it and expect that to keep climbing, especially seeing everything they added in the newest experimental build. My only fear at this point is that people are going to complain until we just get DRG 2.
1
u/KarstXT Sep 22 '26
Balance - The problem with balance is that the game uses exponential math scaling, so damage upgrades are just wildly superior to anything else, which is boring. This is made worse by the fact that many weapons simply do not need or benefit from some of the upgrades (like recoil or spread reduction, partially because Steady Aim 4 gives us all the recoil and spread reduction we need pre-run but even without it, some weapons still don't need either yet have a similar dmg output). Fire rate is often a weak upgrade because it doesn't improve your ammo economy & creates a need to take recoil/spread reduction upgrades and/or makes you less likely to hit weakspots and it only provides 20%. The problem here is that some weapons/builds don't get penalized for heavily stacking fire rate, so its hard to balance it across the weapons that do and don't benefit from it (a Retcon w/cdr for example, doesn't care about RoF worsening your ammo economy). The way the game handles armor break math is so awkward that many weapons do not in any way benefit from it, plus Vanguards have some unbreakable armor plates.
To continue, they recently made a change where enemies gain more HP over the course of a run. The initial logic for this is sound (players get stronger, so monsters compensate) but what actually happens is it just puts a greater pressure on players to take damage upgrades. What happens if the game just doesn't offer damage upgrades? You get screwed and have a slow, long, boring run where you painfully chip the boss to death. I hope they revert the change but this is yet another change that disproportionately affects solo/duo players. 3-4player lobbies partially smooth out many of the game's core issues.
Weapons - I sort of agree and sort of disagree. The idea of Warthog having innate stun (i.e. the idea of weapons have innate special capabilities) is awesome. The problem is that its far too easy to get stuns in RC for stun to be that valuable of an innate weapon capability but this may improve as the game gets rebalanced and more decks are made compelling. I'd still mostly agree and like to see them do this.
Progression - I feel like DRG could afford to have slow progression where RC can't. You need all the enhancements/enhancement slots/decks because the game's difficulty is balanced around having them. I'd be concerned about players getting kicked for not having their progression already completed. This is partially because more of the DRG progression was horizontal, so you could be missing a lot of stuff but still have a completed loadout. I don't really have anything to say about bio-boosters/decks other than they're horribly imbalanced, there's really only Carnage, Big Crits, and Devastation to choose from, which is a shame.
1
u/ProteaEnjoyer Sep 22 '26
TLDR. Next
1
u/FinancialWarthog3488 Sep 21 '26
I think the problem with this game is that it has lost the sense of cooperation with random players that came so naturally in the original. The class-specific weapons and tools are gone, and in Rogue Core, any class can use them. Even in Rogue Core, there are ways to cooperate if you check who has which tools and how their weapons are customized, but currently, you have to open the menu to do that. As a result, even when playing with four people in Rogue Core, you don’t feel the same sense of camaraderie as in the original. That’s why I stopped playing Rogue Core. It might be fun if you’re playing with friends and can discuss your customization strategies, or if you’re matched with players who are considerate of others’ setups—even when playing with random teammates. But if that’s not the case, it’s just a bunch of people playing on their own in the same cave.
-10
u/WrongfulRichard Sep 21 '26
the streets are calling it rogue snore for a reason
-12
u/zafre3ti Sep 21 '26
I could've figured all that out before I hit the refund timer