General Fixes That WILL Improve RoR

These suggestions, I feel, will greatly optimize Risk of Rain in terms of performance as well as general enjoyment. I've clocked over 100 hours into this game, as well as having 100% completion, so I feel that I'm more than qualified to suggest some general improvements.

• Full controller support: Make ALL menus controller-navigable. No one playing with a controller wants to have to lean over to their mouse just to click through one or two menus.
• Option for button to pick up passive items in co-op: Any RoR player that's actually good at co-op will not want to take an item if it's explicitly better on another playing class (for example, Commando finds a Barbed Wire and wants to give it to Han-D). For this reason, there should be an option for all items to require a button (probably the same one to pick up use items) to be picked up, as to let classes move over these items without taking them.
• Single player/Co-op consistency: As of now, there are certain items (Golden Gun, Gold-Plated Bomb, and the Imp Tentacle to name a few) as well as a certain (secret) stage that do not appear in multiplayer. The experience between multiplayer and single player Risk of Rain should be consistent; as I feel that players should not be penalized for choosing multiplayer over single player.
• Better Co-Op item scaling: As of now, the amount of chests on a level does not change depending on the amount of players present in the game. This is a problem, especially with games with 4+ people scrambling just to get their own items. The amount of chests on a level should increase as more players are in a game to account for the fact that each individual player will have less items to deal with the spawns which do scale with more players (correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty certain on this).
  
• Option to hide exp orbs/money drops/health orbs (from monster tooth, etc.)/corpses: Late, late game, Risk of Rain lags an obnoxious amount, no matter how good your computer is (I have a pretty good gaming rig). One of the best ways to easily improve lag late game, in my opinion, is to hide the ridiculous amount of exp/money/health that drop from the hundreds of enemies that you plow through. Additionally, being able to hide corpses that plague the entire battlefield (especially in the lategame) could possibly help with lag.
• Way to view Use Item cooldowns: For newer players, including the max cooldowns of use items either on their Item Log page or as a part of their sprite would be quite helpful.
  
• Lag optimization: At about 100 minutes in on Monsoon difficulty the game begins to run far less smoothly, no matter the computer it's being run on. This is a problem and should be optimized for those of us who enjoy "looping" the game on Monsoon to reach that tantalizing "godmode".
  
• Better co-op "sync" checking: Whenever I play Risk of Rain online with a friend, we eventually reach a point where he has enemies on screen that don't actually exist on my (host) client, resulting in him having remaining enemies even when all enemies have been killed. This has actually ended runs for us before, as occasionally I'll die and he will be desynced, resulting in neither of us being able to complete the level despite him still surviving.
• 1-100% sound options: Even 10% sound eventually becomes too loud when I'm in a call with my friend playing co-op, but I still like having the game's sound. For this reason, any sound percentage should be able to be used, rather than the increments of 10% currently available. (A current workaround for this is to manually go into the games Prefs.ini file and set the game's sound to 0.05, which the game actually recognizes as 5%)
• Server list/Recently visited IPs for online co-op: I understand the need for port forwarding in this game, but having to manually enter an IP every time you want to connect to a different server is completely archaic. Either include a list of public servers ("public" and "private" games could be denoted in a menu or something) or at least show the most recent IPs a player connected to for easy reconnection.

If any of you guys have any potential other suggestions to add to this list, post them in this thread and I'll add them to this post, provided that they are general improvements and not personal suggestions.

 

A few things i would like to point out (please keep in mind i do not know when this thread was posted):

• gamepad support is in the game at the moment designed for an xbox 360 controller, and even if it is not full control you can use free keybind software to fix that easily
• single player and co-op consistency is a good thing to say but i think you're safe to assume they are already working on this given past updates and the fact that the game still has at least i would say 10-20 updates till its finished to the level they wanted it the kickstarter which they said they would exceed as well
• i do fully agreed with all the lag statements, more options to reduce that would be nice, but i also think they will work to improve the quality so that eventually we will be able to get 60 frames on high for most of the game / other quality reduce options would be nice though for now
• the button for multi pickup i think should be a toggle much like the force share is now so players can decide or the host can decide
• the better co-op sync i think will be fixed in time as the quality of the game improves, also remember though that multi most of the time becomes a bigger task than the initial game and does take a while to iron out things and produce so give it time
• slidable volume setting agreed (good for getting preferences just right)
• I for one am gonna say the sniper buff is unneeded, yes i do believe it would be almost impossible to finish monsoon solo but the sniper i feel was a class mainly for multi where a melee character can agro enemies and give the time for the sniper to inflict its massive damage load. a melee and sniper on monsoon can rekt the game very easily given the right conditions. As for monsoon solo I think mainly just the right items are needed such as the dummy use item that pulls aggro or other items that stop time

sincerely,
Snips
85+ hours / all achievements soloed / host of a server

 

I was referring to the fact that some menus cannot be navigated with controller alone; most notably the character select screen (which strictly requires the use of a mouse).

I fully agree with this and will make it more clear that it should be an option, not a complete change. Whether it is client-based or host-based is irrelevant to me.

Thanks for your feedback though; I really hope the devs are working on most of this stuff like you said. They've remained relatively silent since the 1.0.2 patch which was released over a month ago now, which makes me a little nervous.

 

Same here stove and that does worry me greatly so i am probably going to email them about it but it was a holiday packed time so i do understand. Also thanks for clarifying on the two above, I do hope they implement some of these.

One side note though, even if u do need a mouse there is a binding that can move your cursor as well, and basically simulate a mouse so you could go full controller, if you want me to explain more in depth or help you set it up let me know. I usually use keyboard but setting it up doesn't take long

 

I disagree with this just because classes should have a somewhat even footing on solo runs. Having classes that excel only at multiplayer is ridiculous, especially if you're someone who wishes to main a certain class and prefer playing alone. There are plenty of players who do swear by sniper, and some of them even have no problem with him, but he still needs a lot of tweaks before I'd believe he's a "good" class.

 

i believe the sniper has this footing though, he is a difficult class to master but notice i said almost impossible, not impossible, i do believe the sniper makes up for what he lacks in firing rate in power. I do think he is a completely viable character atm but I also say if the community wants him buffed do it. The community having interaction in a game is what i want most for this game. I will also acknowledge that my reasons for viewing the character as valid might be opinion based instead of factual which is hard to distinguish with this game sometimes.

 

I like the idea of having some characters blatantly weaker than others like the sniper is. As for controller support in the menus, YES. It'll benefit the game's sales too by being able to list it as "full controller support" on Steam.

 

I, too, agree that not all characters should be at the same level of power (for example, I think that Mercenary is quite a bit more difficult to use than Huntress), but I think the gap between Sniper and every other class is far too large. Sniper is borderline unplayable in single player and isn't very strong at all in multiplayer because he has no reliable way of dealing with large hordes of enemies, which is basically all of Risk of Rain.

 

I will definitely agree on the full support controller boasting sales via steam, but i do believe that will probably something that comes last after bug fixes and finishing of the game

 

I'm sure this has been suggested in other threads already, but a proper server list + filter would be nice.

Also I'd personally like to see the ability to escape out of chat with Esc key, just a minor thing.

The matter of Sniper apparently being the "blatant" weakest character is simply nonsense, it has been discussed to quite a bit in a couple of threads already, feel free to re-raise the matter - or better, start a new thread for the sole purpose of discussing Sniper's viability if you feel that you have some solid ground to back your opinion with, I don't honestly feel the matter has actually been properly discussed enough.

 

Added the server list suggestion to the OP. As for Sniper, here's a list of reasons why I believe him to be the weakest class (by far):

• Poor synergy with a lot of items (on hit items are near useless, and a lot of those are very strong on every other class barring maybe Engineer)
  
• Lack of good, reliable crowd control (subpar piercing on a shot that requires 2 seconds to charge and a cooldown does not count)
• Gets overrun by hordes very easily; requires a lot of space to fight effectively
• 4th ability often targets a useless enemy and does very little for Sniper as a whole
• Requires more time to actually deal damage than any other class (a couple seconds is all it takes for a stampede of Parents to maul you)
• Advertised as a "boss killer", which he does excel at but nearly every boss in the game is extremely manageable with other classes anyway

I invite you to argue against any of these points, but I feel that they're all quite valid, moreso with Sniper than any other class. These are glaring weaknesses that really hamper Sniper's effectiveness as a whole, and until at least some of them are fixed he will remain the worst class by a landslide.

 

I'm probably gonna make people roll their eyes for dragging Sniper balancing discussion in almost every thread I touch, hence the suggestion for a thread dedicated to it, but whatever, here goes.

>Poor synergy with items: It's a matter of not being item reliant, which is far from being a negative thing, and not all items have to be 100% effective on every class. That said, Sniper has his own selection of items that are particularly great on him, Drones (and hence Arms Race) being particularly good on Sniper due to his naturally high base damage which the Drones benefit off; All on-kill trigger items such as Will 'o the Wisp, Gasoline, Burning Witness, Chargefield Generator and Ceremonial Dagger are amazing on Sniper as well due to how quickly and effortlessly he can eliminate single targets; Due to his guaranteed Crit from Spotter, all on-crit trigger items such as Predator Instincts and Harvester's Scythe work great on Sniper as well.

>lack of CC: That is about the only valid argument against Sniper, he is one of the worst characters for fighting against a "Jar of Ants" situation, but said situation is easily avoidable by simply knowing where you should and shouldn't be picking a fight. Aside from that, Steady Aim AoE damage is actually a lot better than what people give it credit for. Say if we get a half ass charge for 1000% damage + perfect reload bonus, that's at least 500% on the 2nd target, 250% on third. That over all damage isn't actually a whole lot worse than most AoE skills, unless you are talking about a massive crowd, which shouldn't even exist in the wonderful world of Sniper.

>get overrun: For all my Monsoon Sniper solo run, I've never had an situation were I was really "overrun". Sniper has one of the highest run speed of all classes (really), that combined with the best dodge of the game allows him to kite effortlessly whilst buying him enough time to at least 50%-75% charge Steady Aim every few secs for a solid hit, that along with perfect reload almost guarantees a kill on non-elites.

>Spotter: Guaranteed crit on that single elite that's on your ass, or that boss you got a nice camping spot and clear shot on. Only time when it gets a bit difficult to have it sit on the correct target is between stage 5 and final stage, where you are drowned in different bosses and Blighted Clay Man in every direction, even then, it really isn't as hard as you are making it out to be to get it onto a target you need it on.

>Requires time: Actually, you'd be surprised. Sniper is a natural kiter, in most situations you are expected to be running and shooting (or backflipping and charging, whichever), assuming you are quite comfortable with perfect reloading every jump, you can easily stutterstep (or stutterhop, to be more accurate) for 250% + perfect reload bonus every hop, then every 6-7 secs or so, you can to Military Training + Steady Aim for over 1500% damage plus perfect reload bonus (plus crit, if you manage Spotter well). This is not a low DPS by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, that won't exactly compare to, say, a Commando's FMJ on a massive crowd, but the idea is to not let the crowd build up to that point, and Sniper is very much equipped to achieve that.

>Manageable boss: Why spend half of the countdown time running and dodging for your dear life against both the boss and the mob spawns when you can OHKO that annoying Vagrant or Magma Worm, then proceed to deal with the mobs at your own pace? Regardless, sure, it's a minor thing, but an extremely satisfying thing.

 

Another general fix that WILL improve RoR: The ability to toggle the time it takes corpses to disappear, ranging from where it is now to "disappear as soon as the corpse hits the floor". While I don't know how much of an effect the corpses actually have on lag, I'm certain they can't help.

 

Although I do agree that you should be able to make drops invisible as they contribute the largest to framerate loss, the lag isn't that tremendous (at 150 minutes in Rainstorm my computer hasn't dropped below 45 frames) and if it does get bad you can just turn on frameskip which makes everything lovely again.

This seems more like a calculation error when compared to the normally-used logarithmic volume curve. Fix the calculations rather than allow 100 different sound settings (if you really need to finetune your sound you can alter it in volume mixer)

 

I can tell you from experience that playing 2 player Monsoon co-op drops your frames permanently below 45 after about 90 minutes...which really isn't that long for a single run.

Nice suggestion, added to the OP.

 

I can't say that I played this game that much so not sure if this suggestion is reasonable.

It'd be good if there was some kind of timer/meter which shows for specific activated ability/item how much time left to last. It could be put next to the item icon or use the icon itself as a indicator.

 

I like this suggestion; if nowhere else, item cooldowns should at least be included in the Item Log page.

 

You know what would definitely improve RoR? Having more levels that the game could choose from for level 1-4, or maybe extend the road to Providence by 1 level, so that the temple is level 6 and the UES Contact Light is level 7. Adding even more randomization to existing levels, especially the temple certainly would help as well.

 

I don't quite agree with this. Keep in mind that while there is a shortage of items when playing on Co-Op there is the fact that there is twice the damage happening to enemies.

It's pretty easy to become an unbeatable behemoth when playing single if you get the right assortment of items. Double the items would include twice as lag and would take the challenge off Co-Op.

 

I agree with reVelske, sniper is fine.

He's the only character I've been able to beat monsoon with.