the move to seasons seemed so cool at first but after four seasons I can’t help but wish we just had normal updates again. I mean it’s starting to feel like we’re getting in an entire season what would’ve only been one or three updates in the past
I was always worried about the move to "seasons" when they first announced them. I like the healthy approach to keeping everything in the season pass available after it ends, but I really do miss the normal updates. Updates can be BIG, they can be small... they don't come with the pressure to be better than the last one every single time with a grand reveal and thematic tonality, and they don't have to be relatively put out the same length of time (though I would rather never have another 7-month wait... I deeply hope...)
I realy dislike season pass cosmetics. Not only do they overwhelm cosmetic pool but most of them aren't even that good. They also take away precious time devs have to work on core elements each season. Many ideas seem half baked, but here is dozens of new hats I'll never wear.
I've been saying this since the first season and instead of taking my words as a warning, the community spat on me because 'i disagree with them, therefore im a hater'
@@marcoasturias8520I'm glad you're willing to change your mind but this is why you shouldn't make baseless claims when you don't know what you're talking about. Rock and Stone
Another thing that really annoys me about Corruptors (and I don't think it got mentioned unless I missed it): You can only call the cleaning tools on the Corruptor directly, which can become annoying if it decided to roam around somewhere high up. I wish you could just call it from any infected patch of ground, like you can with spikes.
Idk if thats entirely true, I recall being able to spawn a cleaning pod on the polyps that it spawns on the ground. Problem is though that those are almost never near the corrupter.
I wish that getting grabbed by a sting tail made the player immune to being targeted for another sting tail grab for 5 seconds. Getting grabbed repeatedly really sucks.
Damn, I haven't really played season 4 much, but seeing the corruptor fly up a cliff is a truly cursed site to behold. Imagine doing the aquark mission, but you have to carry two aquarks at once and the mine head keeps moving away from while enemies spawn around.
Yeah I think just dropping them would make the most sense and be the most seamless experience for the player, I went with the mini-cave lost equipment approach just in case it was because of a game engine limitation which forces them to spawn out of sight, so to be safe I tried to adapt an existing system to my idea!
On stingtails: I think their biggest problem is that they’ve basically made armor breaking a necessity. I can’t think of any other enemy that is so totally protected by armor. Even q’ronars uncurl every now and then. I think the tail weakpoint would be a great change even if they didn’t implement any kind of attack interrupt mechanic for this reason alone
1. Mactera Brundle. Fully armour clad. 2. Armour breaking is not a necessity. It is useful for dealing with them, but not required. 3. Armour breaking now having more of a use is a good thing. Those mods have almost always been bad on almost all weapons. If they fix the bugs regarding armour break on AoE weapons we'll be golden. 4. Stuns are also super effective against stingtails. To sum up: Stingtails are a new SUPER high priority kill, similar in priority to grabbers (or at least scaring them), trijaws, leeches, and breeders. This is a good thing, because teamwork is often required to deal with stingtails quickly, something that can't be said for others on this list besides the breeder in some scenarios. They are not without their counters, and their counters being often considered weaker in other aspects of the game is an indirect buff to those counters, like how larger maps in shooters make snipers more powerful. There is now more of a reason to bring them. When stingtails and septic spreaders were released people cried so much about how tough they are, especially the spreader, and that one led to the enemy being no more of a threat than a cave angel for a while. These enemies are fine and have always been fine (once the bugs were fixed). If you are complaining about them you are like the CS pros complaining about smoke changes. Games get updated and new challenges get added. It is up to the players to learn how to deal with them and remain effective.
@@jonathannash8471 The problem with teamwork though, is that it can kinda suck. Unless I use voice chat, in a pub I won't have enough free time to call out specifically where a stingtail is in chat. Using the laser pointer on it isnt also that easy due to how low visibility it is compared to the spreader or mactera brundle or even shellback. On armor breaking, while it is true that armor breaking probably could be better, it feels less like it encourages more armor break but instead FORCES needing armor break to deal with stingtails. That leads to having less build variety as you N E E D armor break to deal with stingtails, not more build variety. Also, you didn't have to add in a bit of a personal slight agaisnt a random commenter at the end there who just wanted to say his two cents on a video.
@@jonathannash8471i just don't buy this argument of "they're a priority target, they're supposed to be hard" as if it nullifies all criticism. its power creep, plain and simple. if I'm focusing the stingtail that means I'm not focusing the wardens, goo bombers, or menace but those enemies are all balanced around how potentially lethal they are. adding more and harder problems is power creep and I don't think that we should expect a game to get harder just because it's getting older. why can't the game just be the same level of difficulty as a baseline with optional challenge levels added afterwards?
@@jonathannash8471 A critical-priority target with the firepower of a trijaw that also has the tankiness of a lowest-priority target like a praetorian is just overpowered, man. You have lethality, durability, and commonality as balancing factors, turning all 3 to max on one enemy is not "good design" because it forces the entire team to all focus on one hard-to-spot enemy up on a wall to not get oneshot.
The rockpox boils also visually dissapear on low graphics settings even when the bug is decently close to you. Most Rockpox Breeders and Spitters I see have no boils on them, but they're just not rendered.
Did not expect to sit through and enjoy an hour long criticism of DRG’s new season today. Thought you made some very valid points and provided viable solutions as well. Very well put together mate, rock and stone!
This video is so insanely well done and well said. There's not a single point I disagree with, and you said things I've been thinking for MONTHS now. Please Devs. Take all of this feedback.
@@tobias1991o I really don't think they care what the redditors think at all (except Jacob seeing as his job is pretty much to be chronically online). Just today they began a new series of Steam posts that take a behind the scenes look at what they're doing, because (as they talked about on the latest dev stream) they are frustrated at how they haven't been able to communicate as much about what they're doing since seasons started, and so they got this new guy (Aaron, who is writing these bts posts) to help with exactly that. They've also made a lot of additions recently that get a lot of backlash even on reddit (like Stingtails and even Rockpox in general) and they haven't backtracked those things. Don't get me wrong they're not perfect, but they clearly know that and aren''t just listening to the people who only praise them (that doesn't help them after all).
@@dankshine916 I'm hoping your right but the devs are going to have to seriously like actually try to consider this feedback and actually make big changes.
@@jairdinh7563 most of deep rock's balance changes, and bug announces, and other things they just generally remove from the game are because of community speaking out.
@@LegoGoblin I know but those are very small balance changes and thats not really what we as the community want. I'm talking about big changes and most of the balance changes don't actually fix the problem.
The worst thing about jet boots is that it's advertised as some sort of DRG's counter measure against Rockpox while it's clearly not. Rockpox are evolving while we're still stuck with foamer and vacc. Maybe introduce some kind of new tech that can actually counter them. How about having the cleaning pod generate some sort of anti-rockpox dome? That way we can contain Harold to smaller arena for maybe easier fight. Another idea would be a small Lithobomb that needs to be refilled at cleaning pod. For balancing, either make them Aquarq sized or replace your grenades temporarily. Anything that mitigate the need to juggle between guns and cleaning tools or speed up the cleaning process would help immensly.
Great ideas - I like the anti rockpox dome. When I clean the spikes as gunner, I'll throw a pre-emotive shield right before vacuuming everything to try to create a safe space, but being in the gunner shield doesn't even slow down how fast your rockpox meter can fill up so yeah the shield helps a bit but it's still barely doing anything.
you know what, it'd make a lot of sense if the jetboots are given to the dwarves to help deal with a corruptor, given it's erratic movement and the need to circle it. And this would explain where they come from when you randomly see them in missions
I started getting display hitches around season 3 and they're happening much more frequently now. I've always run my game ~120fps and can easily go above that, but now I keep getting this thing where my frame rate halves for roughly a quarter second, randomly (it's not screen tearing, it's more like it freezes). I'm starting to think that the rockpox is eating away at my performance, too. This doesn't happen in other games.
@@crafterboy2584 yeah, before season 4 I would notice these huge stutters that you're talking about, mainly when I was host and someone joined my lobby for the first time for that current game session. After season 4, it's been happening a lot more frequently to the point I don't know what's causing it anymore.
Rockpox itself seems particularly bad for performance, I have had slowdowns and stutters that start the moment I look at a contagion spike, or anywhere with a large concentration of rockpox enemies or gas. It goes away if I look anywhere else in the cave.
On ps5, a frame drop from 60 to 20fps is a telltale sign of an ambush swarm I can't hear. It's another sign that bugs are coming lol. Didn't have this issue before season 4
At 36:00, you mention a counter that guarantees a corruptor spawn if one has not appeared recently. Splatoon 3 Salmon Run has a similar system to this: at the end of each wave is a small chance for an extra bonus wave with a King Salmonid, with the chance based on each player's "smell" stat, shown with the salmometer ui in the lobby. It starts off at 0 for each player, but with every game that does not have a king salmonid, every player in that game has their smell stat incremented by one. The game uses the sum smell stat of all players in the game to determine whether a king salmonid should spawn. If all players have a smell stat of 5, the maximum, then a king salmonid is guaranteed.
tbh I'm thinking part of why the seasons have been a bit lacking is because of the events. They've put a lot of effort into stuff like Oktoberfest, new year, halloween, etc. If you take one look at the space rig every time the art team has been very busy, and theres always new cosmetics, etc. Hopefully thats the case and now that the events are pretty done they can get to work on other aspects. They've also had things to do regarding DRG Survivor, the whole GSG publishing thing, the boardgame, that sorta stuff
100% agree, each time I see all the detail they put into designing a new space rig I'm like "... ok nice, but is this REALLY the best use of their artists' time?"
@synkt8759 I mean possibly? But a new mission type requires months of designing, months of programming, playtesting, iterating, etc - much more than just 3D models
Agree with all points, this is a critique that comes from a deep admiration for the game and a desire to see it improve. I hope we can see some improvements in DRG from your efforts.
Dont worry if youre gonna get some death threats, this really just shows that the DRG community isnt that always positive and that theres always something wrong with the community. As much as I love DRG, I still wish the best for the game and this season’s been really lacking.
Personally I think randoweiser is pretty good, forces random meme builds and is perfect for the casual playerbase that plays drg like a party game on like haz 3-4. I do agree though that random unowned overclocks would make give me a little bit of a non meme incentive to try it though.
I really don't get that criticism in the video, not using it because "it doesn't help for quick haz 5 runs" sounds like he's searching only for utility and forgetting the game should be FUN
Honestly have to agree with most of your points though I am surprised that you didn't mention the amount content of season 4 we didn't get that much actual content that will change up the game. Now I know why we didn't get new weapons but I feel like the team needed to replace that void with something else. Most players from what I've seen need something that will change up or give more options to the core gameplay loop of drg. The content in season 4 was alright, if I had to speculate why the season format has gradually been on a downward spiral my opinion is that they have to make an entire season pass every single time they want to update the game substantially. If we look at drg before the live season format they were many updates on their own that were just huge updates to the game deep dives, overclocks, new biomes etc. Overall though I am optimistic for what gsg will do they do seem like a dev team that will take feedback and capitalize on it.
Yea basically GSG prioritization has shifted overwhelmingly towards "will this content market well and make sense in a seasonal theme?" instead of just "will this improve the core gameplay experience", the latter being what they valued more before they switched to the seasonal model. At least that's the vibe I get hearing about how the game was like pre-seasonal, I only started playing in s1.
@@chanceIIors It was definitely like that before the season format and also the focus has now been shifted to instead of making a better experience for existing players they are now focusing a little too much on just getting new players.
@@jairdinh7563This mind-set makes sense when you're making a constantly updating live service game without the usual gacha or battle passes that justify said game. Studio's need funding to pay people and get resources for said games. Back then this was done by just making more releases or expansion packs. But with the advent of a "live service" game companies came up with new ways to keep the lights running. Old MMO games did this with subsription services. The late 2000's through 2010's created the trend of lootboxes. Now in modern times it's buying battlepasses. DRG doesn't really have any of that. It has some DLC but they are intentionally very small drop in the buckets made to be as unintrusive as possible. That's what makes DRG so great but it also leads the very real danger of the game bleeding money. So the new mindset of having updates appeal to try and bring in as many new players as possible is very deliberate because it's really the only tactic they can do to keep the game alive that doesn't invovle selling battlepasses each major update.
there's so much goddamn spaghetti code in the game and terribly balanced mods and OCs. I hope S5 will just be a "Rework and Improve" season where Management improves the miner experience after the Union starts objecting(would be a nice parallel to GSG saying that they listened to the community)
Man, i feel the same. I worry that the amount of cosmetics and features related to the adopted season format is taking up way too much work time on the devs. Whilst its nice that the battlepass is free and all, I would still happily sacrifice all of it if it meant we would get more features and improvements in future updates.
As someone who primarily plays on haz 3 or 4, rockpox is actually still very much a threat. Getting incapacitated by it seems to deal a lot of damage on any hazard level, being a basically guaranteed shield loss and significant health aside compounded by the fact that in such a scenario you're already surrounded by bugs a lot of the time. Sure, on lower hazards you might survive the situation more often but it still does a lot. As for waves during the corrupter, yeah, it's a lot less prevalent sometimes, but you do get a lot of variance on the missions. Some haz 3 missions feel like haz 2, some feel like haz 4, sometimes you get unlucky and a bulk or a duo of oppressors or a mactera flock spawn for an ambient wave. Corrupters mainly get annoying on bad terrain - tight, enclosed areas are just a challenge, but them climbing the walls and traversing to weird ledges is annoying instead. This just makes it more annoying that there's no real way to hem it into an area other than getting it to run in a vague direction. It does have a visual cue for its vine attacks, though, which is that when completing any three of its nine segments (the weakpoint destruction counts equally to a section being removed) it will immediatley anchor to the ground and start making these quick and high-pitched.. exertion noises? Not sure what they're meant to be, but it will stop moving (which it never does except when slamming or preparing for the vines) and send out three large tendrils to the ground around it. Once it unanchors itself after the vine attack, which is I believe after sending out three or four sets of three vine trails, it will run away like it does at the start of the fight, which does make it _possible_ to direct it as it will flee away from the dwarves but it is still largely random. I would like to note that I didn't notice that the blisters counted for where you needed to foam and vacuum and just assumed it was each whole side for quite some time, because they're usually covered and don't themselves leave any form of pit or injury when removed - they just vanish. The slam has a much better audio cue than the vines, while its visual cue is essentially identical to that of a dreadnaught slam, though I find its range difficult to discern amongst the vacuum's effect specifically. Also, yes, foam on the corrupter does despawn with the same timer that foam on contagion spikes despawns with. It's annoying on both counts. Other such details include that the lithofoamer indeed applies fear to lithophage bugs, though the vacuum does not; that getting the killing blow in a rockpox exploder via a headshot does in fact defuse it like any other; and that wardens can buff rockpox grunts and praetorians. The idea of the vacuum sucking up the gas is so clever - the patch job solution would be to apply the same blister vacuuming solution to the other bugs that the corrupter has, but there is so much better possibilities. The 'button-mashing' system on controller is even worse. You have to move the movement stick side to side, which works fine when frozen every now and then but against rockpox is legitimately bad for your controller, as you have to get out of that as fast as possible to avoid ever-greater damage. 35:07 Oh, is _that_ why I keep getting so many tiny meteorites and no large ones? I don't mind the large meteor, it's an engaging and interesting little encounter that is, yes, semi-disconnected from the mission but not all that disruptive, but all I get are small ones much of the time. I am apparently in the minority who doesn't mind the rockpox bugs, but they certainly can be difficult to fight with certain weapons (which is no different than, say, an OMEN tower in terms of 'if you didn't bring this build type then figure it out next time', and indeed not a very good thing). They have a lot of weird interactions, such as generally dying to even low-damage C4 as it destroys all their weakpoints but not having the same effect with most other explosives (even fat boy for some reason doesn't achieve the same effect), and are satisfying to fight with medium accuracy weapons like the Thunderhead or some minigun builds, which will relatively quickly hit all the front weakpoints and easily cut through their remaining health afterwards. They function as a gimmick faction, and while the corruption status effect can get out of hand if you're in the middle of them since all their attacks also spread rockpox, they feel like they have potential as something that you need to engage at range and preferrably away from the spike; the only melee-resistant, even if indirectly, enemies in the game. They're in a moderately better place than the bots are. Certainly we need the next additions to not be RNG-based. Jetboots are one thing, and seemingly the long-teased 'in-mission powerups' that double jump was slated to be reworked into, so such things might become much more common. But continuously getting more and more events and minibosses and so forth is getting tiring. Sure, the caves feel more varied overall, but individual missions don't when these things are so rare. I haven't seen a BET-C in some time, I've gone months without seeing korloks, even special minerals like error cubes (which I've gotten four of in this last week after multiple months of none, for whatever reason) just don't quite do it. I want more guaranteed things, like mission types and modifiers and new regions. Not more chance encounters.
Super in depth comment, loved reading through it and learning more about the Corruptor! It's crazy that I've put in so much time in Season 4 and still don't fully understand that guy. Also I agree that it's super confusing how some forms of AoE damage seem to trivialize the rockpox while others are much less effective, I think it's why I've leaned heavily into fast fire rate single target weapons like minigun and drak since they feel more consistent against the rockpox for me.
In terms of more deterministic play, I guess they can just greatly increase the spawn chance weights of particular events in certain biomes and broadcast that in the mission select clearly, but another really interesting approach would be if they could take inspiration from the Path of Exile Atlas passives system. Basically characters can influence spawn weights of events or tune the enemy resistances, rarity, or damage and speed under the restraint of a limited amount of points to earn and assign and the spatial relationship of each passive. The current issue with assignments is you can't really do promotion tracks with any sort of preference to game mechanics. While perks, weapons, and class are player choice, to keep progressing the promotion tracks and matrix cores every other aspect of the game (biomes, beer, objective) is up to the RNG of the mission selectors. Imagine if there were "overclocks" for mission types that hosts would install like "take a mini mule on extraction type missions, resource carry capacity is halved and you can't deposit large resources in the mini mule" or "double the signal relays needed to defend in salvage operation, uplinks must be done simultaneously, and signal loss when zone is empty is reduced to 25% of normal rate," These could mutate existing game modes to have some more variety while making the qualities that some players find annoying in certain mission types less of an issue while introducing some additional risk.
What a well made video. Love it. I agree with 99% of it. It feels like GSG is getting out-of-touch with their own game, especially when you see them call their own creation unfair. The Season model is just a mistake, they're not proper updates anymore. It's just marketing with flashy titles with shallow and arguably lazy content behind it. Shallow content that, at the same time, is spammed at the player at a ridiculous rate. Tbh I want to "opt-out" of the Season to make everything Rockpox spawn at base chance already, so it doesn't bug me every second mission.
One BIG thing I agree with is your statement on jet boots spawning when the corruptor spawns. While the corruptor obviously has lots of issues still, i find it WAAAY more fun to fight while i have jetboots to assist with evading and traversing, even if ive only had it happen 4 or 5 times. Amazing video in general by the way, great criticisms. Hopefully GSG takes a lot of these into account for season 5 in the future.
I never knew the minimules gave resources, i think a small effect like red and yellow rocks flying out and when walked over being auto added to team inventory would be nice, and it could be used for small rewards that don’t force you head back to the mule
You make great points lad, and I agree with most of em. Especially with the Corrupter and Stingtail. I like the Stingtail, but I won't lie it's a little busted. I kinda wish it had a weakness to pickaxe attacks. So when it does grab you from a fair distance you can punish it by bashing it's face in. Also I just like doing that to stick it too em.
Everything you mentioned I totally agree with since a couple weeks into the season started and the honeymoon phase wore off. Rocket Barrage novelty goes away real quick when you realize its all sizzle (Fast pewpew) and no steak (Damage) especially in haz 4+ missions. Corrupter should have had a dedicated mission like the Caretaker. It could have been beefed up by incorporating, meteors, contagion spikes and waves of rock pox and have 100% spawn jet boots to help traverse all the corrupted obstacles. I really hope they combine all the rock pox into a mission type moving forward in future seasons to keep it contained.
9:05 you actually dont have to keep aiming for a single target with PB missiles. Especially with bigger enemies, you can just fire a few shots and switch to your secondary to create a kind of plasma tornado thatll just keep hitting anything inside, a bit like Spinning Death for the Breach Cutter, but long range.
Yeah my friend told me about that mechanic and I actually tried it out during the REZ mission with the crassus in the video, but I found it only worked consistently on stationary enemies like spitballers and brood nexuses. I tried it on an oppressor in that mission and maybe I got unlucky and the oppressor moved away too quick but it didn't seem to work as well.
@@chanceIIors You gotta kite the oppressor to keep it inside the tornado, or you could quickly update the targeted location by swapping to your primary and then back to your secondary. You also didn't mention that PBM missiles are awesome when combined with the stun mod, much better choice for stunning when compared to rocket barrage, simply because you actually get DPS. I LOVE the Plasma Burster Missiles, it is my favorite overclock for the hurricane and I hope it becomes your favorite too.
The rockpox close range change have made them alot less fun to fight for sure. I'd say the stingtails aren't constantly oneshotting me to gravity anymore. But I do hope they get rid of the movement penalty when getting grabbed. And I agree with most of the cleansing tool complaints and suggestions.
the rocket barrage would've been extremely fun if they drastically increase the clip size and total ammo even if they'll have to nerf something else I just want to blast out a literal rocket barrage
makes sense, tbh they shouldve gone all in in the barrage aspect, maybe removing the ammo clip (making it like the scout third main), giving more ammo and more rof, but lowering the damage (to a point that mathematically you do the same dps, but fire more rockets), that and a small damage bump
personally i dislike that the stingtail just yoinks you, it often times doesn't even damage you with their horn, in my opinion the stingtail would be better implemented if it was better telegraphed by a bright weakpoint (like the septic spreader for example) and should work like a left for dead smoker, grabs you and reels you in to their big horn
This video does such an excellent job describing the problems with the corruptor, contagion spikes, rockpox, and stingtail. I couldn't agree more about everything said; maybe one can argue that these additions are "good enough", but ultimately I think it's pretty clear that so much could be improved just based on the fundamental game design principles as discussed. It's disappointing because I had a lot of optimism for DRG when they announced seasonal updates for the game. But looking back now, it feels like with each season, they've been adding more bloat than actual fun features to the game. It's not just rockpox and contagion spikes in S3 and S4 - while S1 + S2 may have been better rounded, I really question some of the things added then as well. Take the shredder robots for example - they essentially move randomly, often have laggy scuffed hitboxes, are not satisfying to kill (no sound cue, no blood & guts), and it's hard to determine when they're even hit as their long death animation is not much different from them flying around. Most people just use auto-aim weapons like turrets, the smart rifle, the flamethrower, boomerangs, etc. to eliminate them. Why add these enemies into the game? Why add any janky robots to the game in the first place? It's literally just extra bloat for the sake of adding a robot-themed season into a game that takes place on an alien bio-horror planet. Anyways, my point is that this is kind of a concerning trend for DSG. I think GSG deserves the benefit of the doubt given that they've developed what is still a phenomenal game and since, after all, these are essentially free battle passes. And the game is altogether still very fun. But we've had 4 seasons already and it kind of feels like each time GSG adds a lot of stuff that is neither necessary nor polished. Maybe I'm just too old-school in thinking that keeping games simple is better than adding underdeveloped features, but I think everyone can agree that, at some point, season after season of rushed additions to the game can really tarnish the entire DRG experience. I hope GSG revisits the drawing board when it comes to seasons and/or maybe just go back to the well-rounded updates they were doing before.
Agree wholeheartedly, and good point about the shredders I never really thought about it analytically but all your points I agree with, trying to pickaxe them as client is damn near impossible
You know I mostly agree with you but I LOVE the robots. Shredders have great game feel when you smack them out of the air, and they're fun to quick shot, essentially acting as a more dynamic naedocyte swarm. Patrols bots are excellent as well, I only wish they'd buff nemesis.
my POV on this season after 200h on my 900h is the same. MID. the stingtails is just the fun killer. some people are somehow starting to get used to it saying we just need to focus on killing it first. but the reason you wanna kill it first IS BECAUSE ITS BROKEN AND ISN'T BALLENCED. (can throw you out of the map. throw you so high you die from fall dmg full sheilf n hp. pulls you so hard you die from velocity on the wall. is tanky AND SPAWN SO OFTEN MORE THAN OPPRESOR.) the spitballers just SPAMS their attack that does ridiculous dmg, but i think it could be fix by being able to shoot the projectile before it hits the floor. the infection not being gone make sense but 2 season with the infection just make it super annoying and now feels like a chore. also elemental res barelly helps again the finger cramp smacking when you get stuck. i can't wait for the next season not just for hope of the new content to be good and alot but also to fineally be free from the plague chores and maybe update on these new enemies. also harold for me is fine. its a VERY EASY boss, you just run around it and dont get too close thats it. the enemies WHILE fighting is the difficult part to make it a boss. and its a special way to fight and its diffrent so i like it. also its harold everyone loves harold.
Very constructive vid, great job. I agree in particular about the rockpox enemies but honestly I think it's fair to say that GSG can do better on this in general, since the response from most of the community to most enemies since S1 has ranged from "bad" to "indifferent". The performance pass is another pet grievance of mine - it feels like a content crutch that's also superfluous when there's already an insane pool of cosmetics that just keeps getting more bloated. It feels like it'd be a considerable better use of their time to focus on bugs, QOL fixes and gameplay improvements. At this point I'd much rather take medium sized gameplay oriented updates every 3 months over the 6+ months wait for the current seasons. DRG is still in a decent place overall, but GSG do feel like they've gotten somewhat complacent with their approach to the seasons so constructive criticism like this is very much needed and welcomed.
i'm a graybeard and i'm running out of stuff to do. cosmetics are the only thing i can work towards, and i really don't care about them anymore. i need something more substantial than a hat.
Could not agree more everytime they want to update something significant with their game they now have to ship it with an 80 tier performance pass, new weapon framework for every gun, and an entire cosmetic tree.
About the stingtails. I absolutely agree that it's too sneaky and camouflaged of an enemy, and that it spawns too frequently with how lethal and tanky it is. Personally, I like how it makes armor break a considerable option. Up until this season, armor break was just a bad option. All I really want for the stingtails are for their spawn rate to go down a bit, so that they are more akin to a moving spitballer: not super easy to kill fast, easy to spot, and a high priority to kill.
I wholeheartedly disagree with the sentiment that armor break was a bad option until recently. I use it intentionally on my breach cutter with the return to sender overclock. Everybody can say goodbye to all the buggy bois, including dreadnaughts.
@@coenx1 The only bug that came close to requiring armor break up until this season was the dreadnought twins, of which only spawn regularly in elimination. Every other bug with significant armor is just too easily circumvented by avoiding the armor, like pratoreans, or just can't be dealt with in any other way, like oppressors. You may have been using armor break on your breach cutter, but that doesn't mean it was the best choice. This game offers a lot of freedom of choice, you would have to make several inferior options to have trouble with high hazards.
@@b33nz25 And just because it's "not required" doesn't mean that it was ever a bad choice. Go slay some praetorians or mactera bundles. Just because something doesn't cater to the way you play, doesn't mean that it's a bad choice. You just see better value in other things, for YOU. With the way I have my breach cutter set up: yes, it does high damage; yes, I have plenty of ammo; yes, it's because I use my weapons together rather than relying on only one.
@@coenx1 Now mactera brundles are a fair point. However, I rarely encounter enough of them for the inefficiency of shooting armor to matter. I can also dodge the projectiles very easily while evading grunts. The same can't be said about the stingtails, which is why I now consider armor break a requirement for at least one weapon in my builds.
@@b33nz25 Armor break isn't good on every gun, but it feels nice to shred through everything on an EDD. Prime everything for maximum death with engineer. There is a massive difference in the way it feels to fight a horde down there.
The worst part about having 10 new hats to wear every season is that i only have one head. They can instead skip the hats and focus on actual meaningful gameplay additions. Besides the shark hat from the summer festival is the only one ill ever need anymore
did not think I would watch an entire hour long video going over all this. while I've mostly liked season 4 in general, since a lot of my issues with it were the same for season 3, I definitely think all that was said here raises some good points, the suggestions and fixes highlighted especally are quite something. its this level of criticism and care that I think only the people who have played the game for so long really care to give, I know a lot of casuals kinda took the season how it is and there was a lot of critisism that quickly got shut down fairly often around launch
for me the spreader shooting out of line of sight is the best part of him. The fact you need to utilize more then just sight to defend against him is perfect.
Yes, I do like that behavior to some extent, maybe there could be some kind of middle ground though where it can shoot for a bit, then has to relocate before shooting again, and while relocating it must stay in line of sight for a certain amount of time.
GSG: "We heard a concerning report that some players still enjoy playing the solo mode that's been abandoned for 5 years, so we've decided to introduce not one, but TWO new enemies that are tanky, attack you without cooldown or line of sight from across the map, deny a large area from complete safety to prevent salvage operation from being beatable, and are treated like grunts by the respawn system, meaning they'll be replaced during a wave on the same frame they die. There, that should fix the issue of people wanting to play solo mode for years to come!"
Honestly they should add the crates to be more common, like allowing for more than 1 to spawn and having atleast one type of helmet or cargo crate per match and give tokens you can use to unlock what you want ontop of a random unlock, maybe ranging from costing 1-5 of the tokens per item
To be fair, if you can't afford 10 starch nuts, then you're getting the highest amount of unluckiness anyone has seen; you NEVER go a mission without finding at least 1 plant of Starch Nuts. Starch Nuts are the first thing you get enough fruits for drinks for, and its only use without Malt Stars and Yeast Cones is either Rando or Blackout
had a frustrating time with this season when it dropped, told myself i just needed to learn the new enemies/content. you've demonstrated why my skills weren't translating into the new stuff, so thank you! pls drop the mod list king
I would love it if the stingtail could grab things out of your hands- if you're carrying a lithofoamer or an enor pearl, it doesn't move YOU, but launches your shit away instead.
55:18 I want to point out the reason I believe the stingtail's audio cue sometimes doesn't play. It gets overridden. I've noticed in DRG that when enough sounds are playing, it muffles/ducks/mutes other sound cues so that it doesn't become overwhelming. I'm not sure if there's a priority system for audio cues, like how bulk detonators basically muffle everything else, but I think the stingtail should be given a priority level like that.
this is like the third video i've seen about season 4 that starts with "i maxed out the pass and tree" and i'm over here like "what the fuck how do y'all even motivate yourself to play tf" edit: oh, he's one of those guys who meta maxes with all the datamining (or whatever the hell modern gamers are doing now).
When I clicked on your channel you were at 999 subs, When I left you were at 1000 with my help, I hope you grow and create more fabulous videos just like this one, all the points were laid out well, very well spoken and easy to understand in greatly divided sections. This could pass for a college essay or project to be fair. Well edited perfect video and I was shocked to see you still in the triple digits. Hope your TH-cam career goes far.
Looking at the November update some points were infact taken into consideration like the corruptor change , spreader goo being able to shot down mid air and needing the sting tail cooldown after grab. Kudos to the devs for listening to the community.
The Sting tail feels almost as hard as an oppressor, it should be about as rare. And maybe add a sqyish baby stingtail, incapable of damage and with weak armor to be the ones who spawn amidst swarms.
It's much more dangerous than an oppressor. To actually get killed by an oppressor, you have to stay locked in place, whereas the stingtail WILL get you, wether you are moving or not.
@@Specoups7 months late, but this is absolutely true. Haz five mission I was using jet boots to get up to a drop pod, one sting tail said "Nah b" and I got fucked cause of it.
I actually like the fact that the spreaders can shoot you from behind an obstacle, We call them 'the artillery'. I would only maybe decrease their accuracy when not having direct line of sight or other balances. But having to track the projectile and figure out where are they camping is a fun play element.
Or at least make a secondary attack for both of them to make them more useful. Example, the lithofoamer could right-click charge and launch a sticky projectile to slow enemies, the lithovac could have a BLOW option to blast enemies back a few feet like the pyro's right-click in TF2.
something I've noticed with the stingtail is that it's mele attack's animation is quite hard to notice and I genuinely thought it didn't mele for the longest time until I pickaxed one and saw it use it's "horn" attack or whatever. the other glifids all bite or smack you with their forearms, where either their forearms move dramatically or their face pushes away from the rest of their body to bite you, both quite obvious. the stingtail just kinda headbutts you which can be quite missable as well as resets quickly so if you get hit from behind and see a stingtail you don't know if it was the thing that just hit you
A really well produced, well edited video, that makes a lot of valid points. I don’t agree with all of them, but im sure that’s partly because I mostly play on haz 4. Also I like how you put your extra notes on the Dwarves map tablet thingy, it’s a nice touch!
The worst part about the unlikelihood of finding Jet Boots in a Corruptor mission is that having them WOULD make the fight a lot less of a slog. They'd act as a long-cooldown resource for outright avoiding the spawned-in Rockpox patches, as well as for chasing the Corruptor through difficult terrain when it decides to flee (you know, so you can scale walls, etc. without having to drop your cleaning tools). On paper, it sounds like Jet Boots were DESIGNED for the Corruptor... yet you'll almost never see both in the same mission!
Just proves that seasonal design, unless done rigorously a la PoE, is easy to use as an excuse for subpar content updates. Regardless of how much you love DRG and GSG devs, you can't refute that Season 4 has been a subpar update so far. You can love something and still be critical of it. I don't see why Corruptors can't have been a mission type of its own, or why Rockpox missions haven't become a thing yet or a biome of their own. There is a lot they can do with this thematically and design-wise, and the fact that all they could come up with is RNG events is disappointing. At least the Contagion Spikes were interesting as a new addition to the list of anomalies we have.
In regards to PoE as well, the last couple leagues have been disappointing as well, so it just further proves my point. Seasonal game design just promotes minimal viable product delivery, or whatever that design philosophy is called.
If you want a perfect preview of the pitfalls of seasonal design just look at Diablo IV. Granted, that game has issues far beyond that of its seasonal design philosophy, but everything you could possibly do wrong in a seasonal update, they did. Which was pretty fun, and sad; seeing what Blizzard has become will always be depressing.
Felt like GSG is phoning it in a bit recently, with the voicelines for the two Oktoberfest assignments being shared for both. The funny thing is that the "Oktoberfest assignment completed" voiceline from MC plays on the fifth mission, but since one of the assignments has six, the last mission just gets a generic "assignment complete" voiceline. The corruptor is not a very fun boss indeed, and the janky nature of unclear weakpoints to foam and vacuum frustrated my team so much we just pop two weakpoints and then dps the visible spots just so we don't have to bother with foaming it anymore. Wish GSG would actually hotfix each season more than once for balance changes instead of leaving us to dry with bugs until the next season. I put not too many hours into S1, but blasted through S2 and had fun, had less fun in S3 but still finished it, and I'm dragging my feet on finishing S4, it's just that uninspiring to me. Hope S5 is better.
I want the corruptor to change so bad, it's genuinely one of the things I looked most forward to with the new update. Now I consider myself unlucky everytime I hear Harrold roaming in a nearby room, because for some reason I get him rather frequently and the hassle of dealing with him is always overwhelming. Especially with greenbeards around. I love my friends but they are not as experienced in this game as I am and seeing them struggle to comprehend the mechanics of the Corruptor leads me to having to finish it off on my own the majority of the time. I agree with all the changes listed in the video. My first encounter with Harrold, I actually got lucky and it stayed relatively in the same area, and I assumed it had a radius with the cleaning pod. I was quickly proven wrong the next time I encountered him, when he ran up an unclimbable cliff to an unaccesible part of the cave unless you were a scout. Amazing video, details all the thoughts I've had about this season and more. I hope the devs are still listening and focus on quality for quantity. I'd much rather see quality changes before getting new skins, as nice as the season battlepasses are. Rock and Stone!
Re: the performance pass's 'filler item' distribution, I think it's less intended to force you to play to the end and more because the later levels do get harder - there are a few point requirement bumps during the progression - so having more density of notable items keeps the pass giving items at a fairly even rate.
Huh, this is the first time I've heard of this for DRG's battle pass specifically. So you're saying the later tiers take longer to complete than the earlier ones? (The fandom wiki says each tier requires 5k performance points but might be out of date idk) The reason why I'm asking is because to my knowledge, games choose to incorporate that mechanic for anti-consumer reasons - someone who is at tier 90 out of 100 most likely won't remember exactly how long it took them to complete earlier tiers and if the game makes those later tiers juuuust long enough to frustrate the gamer, they might be more incentivized to buy tier skips to 100. All this is speculation on my end but I really can't see why else battle passes would do this. All this to say, GSG doesn't even sell tier skips and it would seem out of character for them to stoop to these types of tactics. I guess it would be pretty easy to test since the game is very transparent with battle pass progress and how it doles out performance points but I'm away from my gaming PC for the next few weeks.
@@chanceIIors I don't know the numbers exactly, but they are written on the level when you're working through one so it wouldn't be hard to find out, either I suppose by finding a newer player to help or waiting for another season. The pass certainly feels like it slows considerably as you progress due to both getting somewhat used to newer content and eventually running out of daily scrip rewards and thus slowing progression in the tree.
One small thing I love about the Jet Boots you didn't mention is the fact that the jets themselves can actually ignite enemies, giving it even more use in combat. I love little details like that. But yeah, generally this season has been very forgettable. You know it's bad when the main new boss on the cover is rare enough that I didn't encounter it until about two weeks back. And I've only seen two in total. Also, even on lower Haz levels, Stingtails just feel like ass. I've seen them hook me through WALLS. And this was recent, too. Usually I love open or super tall caves but the existence of the Stingtail makes me dread them.
Very well thought out and constructed video. I agree with just about every point (though I had a different approach with some changes, as is to be expected). I hope that the devs see this and get some inspiration on how to rework the problematic things in S4. Rock and Stone!
Great video; I agree with basically everything. Just wanted to note some things of note related to some of the jankier stuff, from testing we did for the wiki/playtesting during the season's experimental branch, because its interesting: 1. As far as I can tell, the fear being so janky is because its being inflicted on the blisters, not the enemies. As a result, this makes the direction the enemies run really, really weird (since they try to run away from the source of fear, which in this case is foam hitting the enemy, which the blister is attached to). I assume the devs did this so they could recycle the AI of the base enemies. 2. On the note of fear, Mactera Bombers (as well as their infected counterparts, far as I can tell) can actually be feared; its just that they are immune while doing anything that locks their destination (such as the goo bomb attacks), making it very rare unless you catch them in transit to one of your teammates. This is true of a few enemies in fact, and I think is what might be happening with the exploders; they're destination locked already (set to run at you), so they can't be feared. How/why the devs did this is beyond me, though... 3. They actually made fighting Rockpox worse twice, far as I can tell. Firstly, with what you mentioned, by making the blisters popping inflict pox in an AoE around it. However, until a recent patch, you could actually sidestep this, since all Rockpox inflicting effects (barring terrain removal, anyways) inflicted the same non-stacking status. As a result, you could got all in and stand on Rockpox terrain and no longer suffer the blister popping effect, since you were already "affected" by the status. This still kind of works, but its much less reliable now... 4. Stingtails might actually be the souls of scouts getting revenge; their attack is, far as I can tell, a single-tick grapple hook whose velocity is set based on their distance from you. If you start and release the grapple hook with the right timing (relative to your latency), the grappling speed gets applied twice. You can exploit this as scout if you're client, in fact (and likely have by mistake before)! The "yeeting" seems to be this same bug/exploit, but with the stingtails performing it on you against your will (and thus flinging you far past their current position). This is speculation based on testing and my intuition as a "lazy programmer", though. 5. The Stingtail's grab is interruptible! Its just that its only interruptible by stunning, fearing, or throwing something in the way (like a pack of C4); at least Driller can be happy! As a migrant from the Warframe gimmick hell, I really agree with your last statement; I hope GSG listens and doesn't follow the same path. Cheers!
Wow super insightful comment, enjoyed reading it to learn more about how some of these mechanics might work from an implementation-level. It was funny because I was almost done working on this video and was chatting with my DRG friends and I asked them "wait... goo bombers aren't fearable.... right??" and all of us were like "uhh...." and then I was gonna test it but forgot hah. The stingtail grab being a repurposed scout grapple is super interesting, because it might mean the devs have actually tested scout's grapple being able to grab heavy objects and pull them towards the player, which I've seen suggested by others before. Probably will never actually see it since the devs are against traversal tool overclocks, but fun to think about.
@@chanceIIors While they're not planning on traversal OCs, I could see something like it as a new OC for the crossbow; it already has a recall bolt mod, after all. Something like "Sticky Bolts" maybe?
16:36 Thats not only dumb, but a privacy violation aswell. Its dumb because its RANDOM, its not supposed to be balanced or representative of how a mod is supposed to play, its supposed to be random, for fun. Thats it. Two, dont collect data. Just dont. We have enough things spying on us already.
Also ranged attacks from enemies shouldn't be able to shoot through other enemies, or they should deal frindly fire damage to them, this is so frustrating being hit by something you can't even see.
This is a GREAT amount of work! I agree with almost everything you said and hope GSG will do a better 5-th update which will not only add new content, but also balance all the things mentioned in that video
While a lot of your criticism WAS good (and I agreed with most of it), some of it veered into the pointlessly nitpicky. Complaining about the in-game size of the corruptor being smaller than the promotional material, for example. It's just a gripe for griping's sake. Same goes for the "just hit the random button with your eyes closed" bit when discussing Randoweisser, or discovering that you can scare rockpox bugs with the foamer (a mechanic that has been present since the implementation of Rockpox.)
I 100% agree. I have been noticing these issues but feel very pressured to not say anything negative. A big worry of mine is bloating of the game. Already there are almost too many OCs and customizations are a hell scape of grind.
The idea of contagion spikes being their own mission made me think that it could be a great idea if there was essentially a rockpox version of industrial sabotage. You take out 2 or 3 contagion spikes and at the end you fight the corrupter as a boss fight akin to the caretaker in sabotage. it allows you to opt into the event, be completely focused on it instead of having to juggle it with other missions, and could have more unique and valuable rewards.
The stingtail part made me remember about last week, i was playing in a pretty big cave and 2 stingtails spawned, it was like haz 3 so it wasn't that huge of a problem, but i can't deny how having those 2 playing with me like a god dam volleyball was NOT a fun experience, and it must be hell in higher levels
22:42 you can very easily dodge the stingtail by just changing direction after hearing the noise, it tries to predict where you're going to be so if you change direction it cant get you
It's not easy at all, because you have to input precise timing and movements which is not consistently feasible in the middle of a swarm and difficult terrain.
My own personal lore explanation for the jet boot unlock is it's mentioned it's a safety protocol, so the brief jetty boot minigame can be seen as like a learners license or a test. Just my personal thing everyone has their own
Love seeing the confirmation bias in the results of that poll you posted proving that the majority of the community likes the season and still thinking the poll validated your opinion simply because some people did agree with you.
i find the corruptor's ground slam to be really obvious and easy to predict, but the movement/fleeing behavior more than makes up for that in terms of inconvenience. also the fact it was bugged for a while where you couldnt vacuum up the floor shit meant some missions became phyiscally impossible due to it rapidly spreading indestructible damaging goop throughout entire systems of tunnels, mid ambient swarm
The stingtails need a serious nerf. The fact that i've been pulled by them several times while me and the stingtail were on two opposite sides *of a fucking sandblasted cavern* is just too much range. Also, it not having a weak point AT ALL until you blast its armor off is ridiculous. This makes it impossible to kill them quickly if you dont have armor shredding, and if the devs want us to use armor shredding upgrades, then this isnt the way to do that.
Finally, a voice of reason. I've been wondering why the community does so little checks and balances. As great as GSG and DRG is, they have been severely reducing the amount of content. I know it's hard to think of new things, but maybe it's time for some rigorious experimentation. I love this game, and want to see more of it. I hope this update is a low point.
its because the game has bred a weird air of positivity and yes men partially because of the "rock and stone" shit and purposefully avoiding any themes that are dark or serious. it also has such a tiny playerbase that there arent enough people who care about the game and the direction its heading. a lot of players are just casual greenbeards who play the game twice and never again.
After over 3300 hours this was the first DLC I didn't buy, because I was so disappointed by the Season aswell as the design of the stuff the DLC offers. Says a lot. Your points are all valid.
thank you for speaking your mind on these issues. with how much blind "worship" the devs get from the community, it's honestly tiring to try and critizise features that lack polish and thought.
Blind worship is a bad side effect of hype culture. Criticism strengthens the things we love by pointing out where improvement can be made, but many people think criticism is the same as hatred because hype culture disallows them any reaction other than "LETS GOOOOOO!!!" If people want their favorite games to retain their identity, retain their power and constantly evolve, respectful and thoughtful criticism, like this video, is necessary. Too many fans think their options are blind praise or intense fiery hatred, when criticism is not only healthy, but obligatory. Not only does it strengthen the game but it helps the devs know what to avoid next time, and why.
This was a well written video, but I fear it will fall on deaf ears. One of the biggest problems that the DRG community suffers from is toxic positivity, meaning that ANY criticism of the game is swiftly rejected and dismissed. I love this game, having well over 1,000 hours in it. But if the community can't come together and agree that this season was by far the worst one so far and now finding out that we're being stuck with it until JUNE NEXT YEAR is completely unacceptable, then I fear things will only get worse because GSG will have no motivation to change because they'll just say "well, most of them are fine with this. So why try harder?"
If im being honest, playing with my greybeards and playing with my greenbeard friends is two different sides. Me and my friends that have played a while and have every overclock there isnt much to come back and do in this season. No new weapons or objectives really so outside of that its just a revamped version of season 3. I like the new additions but honestly wasnt anything added where i was like i have to play this season. My newer friends of the game love it alot, not sure if they just like the new feel of the game even though some are prestige. But they like the new update and have that push to grind. But i really think the update was good, just not exciting. Felt like a patch more than a major ypdate.
Wow, what an incredible video! Well done. The Stingtail almost single-handedly made me quit the game. In its current format it is way too powerful and spawns too frequently. The fact that I’ve had 3 or 4 of them spawned at the same time is absolutely mind blowing. Imagine 4 grabbers flying around - but they attack you every 5 seconds. Would be insane. Thankfully there are so many options to fix the Stingtail. If they keep it as-is, they need to drastically reduce the spawn chance of it, and cap it at 1. It would be far more intriguing if it were a rare enemy spawn - like a detonator or a dreadnought. Otherwise all the options outlined in this video are absolutely viable. I really hope GSG does something to fix it. Every time I hear the sound of a Stingtail it’s like nails on a chalkboard. I dread every encounter now; not out of fear but of annoyance. Okay that’s the end of my Stingtail rant. Again, exceptional video! Very well done. ⛏️
I heard someone say that the stingtail is designed around being a frontline enemy but it for some reason sticks in the back And yeah I feel that too, why is it so heavily armored and dangerous if all its Gona do is stay in the back?
5:00 I wanted to provide my reasoning for why you have to play Jetty Boot to unlock the jet boots. I think of it like a Captcha, "Are you a Dwarf?" sort of check. So, you have to play a little bit of Jetty Boot to prove you're not rival scum, or some glyphid that just happened to press the "Open" button. Maybe this helps you recontextualize it.
Idk why but I really really suck at Jetty Boot, to a point where I havent been able to ever get past 4 walls. In soloplay I just skip them all togheter when I find them and otherwise I ping teammates to solve the problem. I just wish it was some normal hacking thing which is fairly easy
Randoweiser is for veterans who have mastered the game and can pub-stomp with any build. The "high" cost isn't really high at all, since most players with over 1,000 hours have like 5k starch nuts (speaking from experience). You noted that it's essentially a "meme beer," and that's really all people want from it. To put this a polite way, there's two groups of veteran DRG players - those who don't care about anything anymore, and those who only care about optimizing/grinding levels. You're the latter, the beer is made for the former. Nothing wrong with that, just an explanation on who the beer is aimed at. I really do like the idea of a more "precise" Randoweiser like you suggested, that gives actually _useful_ builds to Greenbeards - perhaps it doesn't have to be a beer at all, though. Maybe we can get a new terminal called the "Loan Terminal" where (lore-wise) veteran or retired Dwarves loan their gear to Greenbeards to help them learn the ropes. A Greenbeard could loan a loadout (either for a cost of 5k gold, or on some sort of daily limit), giving them a fully-tailored build with Overclocks and everything. It would be random, but custom-built, and last only 1 mission.
I'm a DRG boomer who's been around since 2019, and I'm inclined to agree, I really have not enjoyed this season (nor Season 3 to be honest) I actually liked the robots, and sabotage, but the new clean up stuff just feels like a chore, and has actively made this the only performance pass I have not and likely will not 100% complete.
I agree with most of this but your takes on randoweisser are completely off base. 1) It's not for "optimal builds", it's for challenge runs. Assiging meta builds for each OC that you roll into is completely antithetical to the idea of randomizing your build. You even had a clip where you were at first disgusted with your perks, but then later found use for berserk to kill the oppressor. That was a perfect example of why randowiesser is fun but it seems like it went completely over your head. 2) Your criticisms of how it will affect greenbeards perception of overclocks, or using it as a teaching tool for new players is completely out of pocket, i don't even know how that's relevant or what made you think that's what the beer is designed for. 3) Your idea to lift from all possible items, instead of just ones that you own, isn't bad but I also don't have any problem with it's current iteration. 4) The price is high but you say this as if we all don't have insane stockpiles into the hundreds for these beer ingredients. If the beer cost like, 20 starch nuts maybe i would be bothered by this. Yes you can do it for free but the beer adds a ritualistic element to it. It's very obviously less fun to just hit a button on a menu compared to the beer pouring and drinking animations and the fancy particle effects that you can share with friends. 5) The streak idea gives me ick. I hate this tendency to turn everything into a progression or a score for clout. Every fucking video game is full of meters and challenges and bars to fill up, and that includes good games like DRG. why can't we just have one thing that's fun to mess around with. I agree with almost everything else you said and the video was well made, so it's crazy to me how much you triggered me by talking about the funny meme beer. I didn't even realize that i liked the randoweisser so much until i saw how wrong someone could be.
I think your points 1 and 5 kinda go together in my head - because right now Randoweisser goes completely against the only vanilla endgame we have (optimizing play for blue rank grind faster), and I just felt like for me, as someone who leans heavily into that playstyle, there is very little internal or external reason to use the Randoweisser. With DRG seemingly being allergic to fleshing out endgame activities I tried to imagine a simple way to adapt Randoweisser into an endgame-esque ability. And if you think about it, DRG has essentially zero "flex cosmetics" - stuff like calling cards in COD or portrait frames in Vermintide where you see a rare one and think "dang this guy must be pretty good". Blue rank *can* be an indicator of skill but it doesn't always. So the idea was that Randoweisser could've been something along that vein (even though I get the vibe that GSG is extremely scared of introducing something like that to their "non-toxic" playerbase lol). Point 2 - I guess my assumption of the randoweisser might've been a bit off - if the beer felt so useless between me and my graybeard friends, my natural assumption was that the beer was designed for newer players then. I still believe there are outright "wrong" ways to build weapons and OCs, and it feels icky for me to use a weapon like that (if I have nothing to show for it - which goes back to the streak idea).
@@chanceIIors fair enough. like I said I agree with nearly everything else so I totally get where you're coming from when you say there's no end game content, there's very little incentive for a player to push themselves beyond just playing on hazard 5. I do see the potential in a style of "challenge run" for a clout reward, but I think that would be better suited towards something like challenges in Binding of Issac where you have to play a run with a crazy restriction in place, or challenges in risk of rain 2 where you have to go out of your way to something noteworthy in a mission. Personally my friends and I use randoweissers as a way of challenging eachother. Every now and then someone will order a round and then it's a game of, "Whats wrong bro? you're not going to drink your randoweisser? Do you really need your neurotoxin build to carry you that badly?" etc. Like the other beers, its purely for jokes with your friends, basically. That, at least, is better than the fortnite dances or funny fart sounds so it elevates it highly above the other beers, but it's still just a beer. sorry if my first comment came off as hostile, I've had a shitty night. You made a good video, truly. i appreciate all the relevant gameplay clips that you included for all of your talking points. i just got tilted about the meme beer for some reason.
@@chastermief839 no worries mate, glad to hear about how other use randoweisser and that you guys are enjoying it! After reading comments from you and some other people, I can definitely see it being kinda fun seeing how scuffed a build can get and trying to work through that as a team with your group of friends. Maybe there can be a "smart stout" version of randoweisser that has the min-maxed weapon mods like I suggest in the video, and the existing one could remain as is.
instead of having one tool for foaming and another for vacuuming, they could be combined into one tool where players switch between modes after a short animation using the reload button
49:10 the button mashing on controller is way way worse, because it's not even a button you have to break, it's the joystick, it's not as fast getting out of rockpox as it is on PC, you have to spam it from one side to the other fast enough to not die, in the process ruining a joystick, if you have stick drift then pray to god you don't get infected bc the more you do, the sooner you're gonna have to buy a new controller.
I dont think the stingtail is overtuned stats wise, its a bug you NEED to target, or it WILL fuck you up, the range should be smaller though. However, rockpox enemies (especially the mactera ones) are so stupidly annoying to kill, unless youve got the breach cutter, because for some reason the blisters have a lot of explosion resistance.
That is true but for such a high priority target does it really need that much defense when its offensive effects do so much. It takes an insane amount of time to kill it without armor break.
The problem with targeting it is that it's always way in back shielded by the swarm, so you can't focus it. It's a backline support bug, but it's tankyer than everything bar bosses and minibosses while having a huge reach and a potential to kill with a single grab, either directly or indirectly. They don't even always telegraph the attack, much less that they have spawned, so your first hint of danger might be when you are yanked to your death. It's a hugely annoying fk you like no other bug in the game that can randomly spawn bar the exstreamly rare dreadnought that at least halts other spawns and bulk detonators that are much rarer and aren't a huge issue unless you are doing a defense objective. They are a colossal pain every time they are in the spawn pool. All the other high priority bugs are squishyer, trijaws, spitters, mactera, spreader, shellbacks, and wardens.
It's weakness on its head requires for you to get close, strafe, break armor off, then you have a weak point. It's tail weak point is a lost cause to hit, as it's small and moves erratically ad the stingtail goes across the rugged terrain that DRG is known for. Meanwhile, it can quickly yank you extreme distances, usually giving you some fall damage, melee damage from the stingtail hitting you itself, then damage from the large group of bugs that you got yanked right to the center of. Fuck stingtails.
I guess you people really don't understand that every comment on this damn website is subjective, if you have a problem with the stingtail, make your own comments and suggestions discussing why you think it's not well designed, overtuned, undertuned etc. The only reason why I say what I say is because from MY experience of playing haz5 I have almost no problems with dealing with a stingtail.
@@antynomity I think the heart of the issue that I try to explain in the video is that, if you can put aside your subjective experience with it and think about how it relates to the OTHER enemies in the game, the stingtail is just much stronger *relative* to the other bugs in the game. It's got 80% of the health of a whole ass praetorian while being 3-4x more disruptive than a grabber. It just doesn't really fit in when you compare it to existing enemy design in the game.
1:03:15 Fully agree with your message here. The game has become bloated with tons of gimmicks and shiny bells and whistles, whilst making combat more and more frustrating thanks to first robots and now insanely tanky, unfun to play against rockpox enemies. The few additions to normal enemies like Stingtail are in a bad shape and this may just be my personal opinion but the game has too much visual clutter on screen more often than not. It's very hard to lose oversight in a hectic fight and I hate it. Wish we'd go back to a regular update circle with just some new maps, weapons, tools, more customisation etc. Would also alleviate GSG from having to bring in tons of cosmetics and skins every time and instead focus their artists' efforts somewhere else. The crisp, clean feel of DRG has been buried underneath a pile of scrap that I never asked for.
the move to seasons seemed so cool at first but after four seasons I can’t help but wish we just had normal updates again. I mean it’s starting to feel like we’re getting in an entire season what would’ve only been one or three updates in the past
Starting to agree, I like seasons but....+6 months for this? some OC changes for a whole half year of waiting?
I was always worried about the move to "seasons" when they first announced them. I like the healthy approach to keeping everything in the season pass available after it ends, but I really do miss the normal updates. Updates can be BIG, they can be small... they don't come with the pressure to be better than the last one every single time with a grand reveal and thematic tonality, and they don't have to be relatively put out the same length of time (though I would rather never have another 7-month wait... I deeply hope...)
@@agent5657gahd dayum 6+ months for a new seasonal update? And here i thought Splatoon 3 players had it rough. 💀
I realy dislike season pass cosmetics. Not only do they overwhelm cosmetic pool but most of them aren't even that good. They also take away precious time devs have to work on core elements each season.
Many ideas seem half baked, but here is dozens of new hats I'll never wear.
I've been saying this since the first season and instead of taking my words as a warning, the community spat on me because 'i disagree with them, therefore im a hater'
I really hope that GSG are secretly working on something huge and not just putting the game on autopilot forever with tiny updates.
DRG survivor
@@marcoasturias8520 what do you mean by that (cos I think I know what you mean by that, and you're wrong)
@@marcoasturias8520 DRG survivor is not worked on by GSG but another studio they're close to.
@@dankshine916 that they'd ve working on the new game instead of the current one. Apparently, that's not the case.
@@marcoasturias8520I'm glad you're willing to change your mind but this is why you shouldn't make baseless claims when you don't know what you're talking about. Rock and Stone
Another thing that really annoys me about Corruptors (and I don't think it got mentioned unless I missed it):
You can only call the cleaning tools on the Corruptor directly, which can become annoying if it decided to roam around somewhere high up.
I wish you could just call it from any infected patch of ground, like you can with spikes.
Man fighting the Corruptor in Hollow Bough especially when you get those extremely vertical cave gens is hell
Idk if thats entirely true, I recall being able to spawn a cleaning pod on the polyps that it spawns on the ground. Problem is though that those are almost never near the corrupter.
Yeeeesss!
I wish that getting grabbed by a sting tail made the player immune to being targeted for another sting tail grab for 5 seconds. Getting grabbed repeatedly really sucks.
mfw when A and D exist, just dont get grabbed
@@The_Jumping_Boxah yes, the infamous "skill issue," very productive
Just power attack it in the face
@@cinereus4670 is it not applicable in this case? The mob designed to be a threat is actually a threat, what a surprise.
@@cinereus4670 well done you found the joke
Damn, I haven't really played season 4 much, but seeing the corruptor fly up a cliff is a truly cursed site to behold.
Imagine doing the aquark mission, but you have to carry two aquarks at once and the mine head keeps moving away from while enemies spawn around.
I love the suggestion of the corruptor giving jet boots, although maybe let them drop or something, instead of a mini cave
Yeah I think just dropping them would make the most sense and be the most seamless experience for the player, I went with the mini-cave lost equipment approach just in case it was because of a game engine limitation which forces them to spawn out of sight, so to be safe I tried to adapt an existing system to my idea!
"Attention miners! The corrupter is getting stronger. So we're sending you down some ordnance to help you out."
They could also make the foamer package pod come with a boots module attached somewhere, making it different from the pods for regular spikes.
On stingtails: I think their biggest problem is that they’ve basically made armor breaking a necessity. I can’t think of any other enemy that is so totally protected by armor. Even q’ronars uncurl every now and then. I think the tail weakpoint would be a great change even if they didn’t implement any kind of attack interrupt mechanic for this reason alone
1. Mactera Brundle. Fully armour clad.
2. Armour breaking is not a necessity. It is useful for dealing with them, but not required.
3. Armour breaking now having more of a use is a good thing. Those mods have almost always been bad on almost all weapons. If they fix the bugs regarding armour break on AoE weapons we'll be golden.
4. Stuns are also super effective against stingtails.
To sum up: Stingtails are a new SUPER high priority kill, similar in priority to grabbers (or at least scaring them), trijaws, leeches, and breeders. This is a good thing, because teamwork is often required to deal with stingtails quickly, something that can't be said for others on this list besides the breeder in some scenarios. They are not without their counters, and their counters being often considered weaker in other aspects of the game is an indirect buff to those counters, like how larger maps in shooters make snipers more powerful. There is now more of a reason to bring them.
When stingtails and septic spreaders were released people cried so much about how tough they are, especially the spreader, and that one led to the enemy being no more of a threat than a cave angel for a while. These enemies are fine and have always been fine (once the bugs were fixed). If you are complaining about them you are like the CS pros complaining about smoke changes. Games get updated and new challenges get added. It is up to the players to learn how to deal with them and remain effective.
@@jonathannash8471 The problem with teamwork though, is that it can kinda suck. Unless I use voice chat, in a pub I won't have enough free time to call out specifically where a stingtail is in chat. Using the laser pointer on it isnt also that easy due to how low visibility it is compared to the spreader or mactera brundle or even shellback.
On armor breaking, while it is true that armor breaking probably could be better, it feels less like it encourages more armor break but instead FORCES needing armor break to deal with stingtails. That leads to having less build variety as you N E E D armor break to deal with stingtails, not more build variety.
Also, you didn't have to add in a bit of a personal slight agaisnt a random commenter at the end there who just wanted to say his two cents on a video.
@@jonathannash8471i just don't buy this argument of "they're a priority target, they're supposed to be hard" as if it nullifies all criticism. its power creep, plain and simple. if I'm focusing the stingtail that means I'm not focusing the wardens, goo bombers, or menace but those enemies are all balanced around how potentially lethal they are.
adding more and harder problems is power creep and I don't think that we should expect a game to get harder just because it's getting older. why can't the game just be the same level of difficulty as a baseline with optional challenge levels added afterwards?
@@jonathannash8471
"Who gave the stingtail a phone and wifi?"
@@jonathannash8471 A critical-priority target with the firepower of a trijaw that also has the tankiness of a lowest-priority target like a praetorian is just overpowered, man. You have lethality, durability, and commonality as balancing factors, turning all 3 to max on one enemy is not "good design" because it forces the entire team to all focus on one hard-to-spot enemy up on a wall to not get oneshot.
The rockpox boils also visually dissapear on low graphics settings even when the bug is decently close to you. Most Rockpox Breeders and Spitters I see have no boils on them, but they're just not rendered.
Wow wasn't aware of that, that's actually insane and would make killing the rockpox breeder impossible
Did not expect to sit through and enjoy an hour long criticism of DRG’s new season today. Thought you made some very valid points and provided viable solutions as well. Very well put together mate, rock and stone!
!a
This video is so insanely well done and well said. There's not a single point I disagree with, and you said things I've been thinking for MONTHS now.
Please Devs. Take all of this feedback.
They won't, they're so high on the toxic positivity of the subreddit. Jacob specifically is huffing copium.
@@tobias1991o I really don't think they care what the redditors think at all (except Jacob seeing as his job is pretty much to be chronically online). Just today they began a new series of Steam posts that take a behind the scenes look at what they're doing, because (as they talked about on the latest dev stream) they are frustrated at how they haven't been able to communicate as much about what they're doing since seasons started, and so they got this new guy (Aaron, who is writing these bts posts) to help with exactly that. They've also made a lot of additions recently that get a lot of backlash even on reddit (like Stingtails and even Rockpox in general) and they haven't backtracked those things.
Don't get me wrong they're not perfect, but they clearly know that and aren''t just listening to the people who only praise them (that doesn't help them after all).
@@dankshine916 I'm hoping your right but the devs are going to have to seriously like actually try to consider this feedback and actually make big changes.
@@jairdinh7563 most of deep rock's balance changes, and bug announces, and other things they just generally remove from the game are because of community speaking out.
@@LegoGoblin I know but those are very small balance changes and thats not really what we as the community want. I'm talking about big changes and most of the balance changes don't actually fix the problem.
The worst thing about jet boots is that it's advertised as some sort of DRG's counter measure against Rockpox while it's clearly not. Rockpox are evolving while we're still stuck with foamer and vacc.
Maybe introduce some kind of new tech that can actually counter them. How about having the cleaning pod generate some sort of anti-rockpox dome? That way we can contain Harold to smaller arena for maybe easier fight.
Another idea would be a small Lithobomb that needs to be refilled at cleaning pod. For balancing, either make them Aquarq sized or replace your grenades temporarily.
Anything that mitigate the need to juggle between guns and cleaning tools or speed up the cleaning process would help immensly.
Great ideas - I like the anti rockpox dome. When I clean the spikes as gunner, I'll throw a pre-emotive shield right before vacuuming everything to try to create a safe space, but being in the gunner shield doesn't even slow down how fast your rockpox meter can fill up so yeah the shield helps a bit but it's still barely doing anything.
you know what, it'd make a lot of sense if the jetboots are given to the dwarves to help deal with a corruptor, given it's erratic movement and the need to circle it. And this would explain where they come from when you randomly see them in missions
You mentioned performance and i heavily agree, the game has been running worse for a while and i hate it
He game seems laggy and after the update is even worse its unplayable on certain caves or biomes.
I started getting display hitches around season 3 and they're happening much more frequently now. I've always run my game ~120fps and can easily go above that, but now I keep getting this thing where my frame rate halves for roughly a quarter second, randomly (it's not screen tearing, it's more like it freezes). I'm starting to think that the rockpox is eating away at my performance, too. This doesn't happen in other games.
@@crafterboy2584 yeah, before season 4 I would notice these huge stutters that you're talking about, mainly when I was host and someone joined my lobby for the first time for that current game session. After season 4, it's been happening a lot more frequently to the point I don't know what's causing it anymore.
Rockpox itself seems particularly bad for performance, I have had slowdowns and stutters that start the moment I look at a contagion spike, or anywhere with a large concentration of rockpox enemies or gas. It goes away if I look anywhere else in the cave.
On ps5, a frame drop from 60 to 20fps is a telltale sign of an ambush swarm I can't hear. It's another sign that bugs are coming lol. Didn't have this issue before season 4
At 36:00, you mention a counter that guarantees a corruptor spawn if one has not appeared recently. Splatoon 3 Salmon Run has a similar system to this: at the end of each wave is a small chance for an extra bonus wave with a King Salmonid, with the chance based on each player's "smell" stat, shown with the salmometer ui in the lobby. It starts off at 0 for each player, but with every game that does not have a king salmonid, every player in that game has their smell stat incremented by one. The game uses the sum smell stat of all players in the game to determine whether a king salmonid should spawn. If all players have a smell stat of 5, the maximum, then a king salmonid is guaranteed.
tbh I'm thinking part of why the seasons have been a bit lacking is because of the events. They've put a lot of effort into stuff like Oktoberfest, new year, halloween, etc. If you take one look at the space rig every time the art team has been very busy, and theres always new cosmetics, etc. Hopefully thats the case and now that the events are pretty done they can get to work on other aspects. They've also had things to do regarding DRG Survivor, the whole GSG publishing thing, the boardgame, that sorta stuff
100% agree, each time I see all the detail they put into designing a new space rig I'm like "... ok nice, but is this REALLY the best use of their artists' time?"
@@chanceIIorsso true, all the stuff in the rig could've been like 3 new mission types
Lol, prepare for 8 more months with no updates, and as compensation... a DRG roguelike! Yaaay...
@@bugjams yeah, I mean Rogue Core looks good, but I'm still a bit unhappy about how things have ended up
@synkt8759 I mean possibly? But a new mission type requires months of designing, months of programming, playtesting, iterating, etc - much more than just 3D models
Agree with all points, this is a critique that comes from a deep admiration for the game and a desire to see it improve. I hope we can see some improvements in DRG from your efforts.
ok
ok @@GregTess 👍
gah damn. get ready for the death threats LOL
the sludge must be dumped, what can i say
Whole thing was incredible bro, great stuff. Wish i was able to articulate these issues as well as you did, hope GSG will take this seriously
@@AxisKronos maybe if Jacob stops ghosting you, you can send the vid his way 😂
@@chanceIIors He knows the LLC lore I'm dead 💀
Dont worry if youre gonna get some death threats, this really just shows that the DRG community isnt that always positive and that theres always something wrong with the community.
As much as I love DRG, I still wish the best for the game and this season’s been really lacking.
Very well versed criticism of the new season. I agree 100%.
Totally. I haven't thought about some of the points before, but he really nailed down what I by myself could not quite put a finger on
Personally I think randoweiser is pretty good, forces random meme builds and is perfect for the casual playerbase that plays drg like a party game on like haz 3-4. I do agree though that random unowned overclocks would make give me a little bit of a non meme incentive to try it though.
I just wish I could make it not randomize my armor and equipment mods
@@indecisivemann4349 That's the entire point of it though...
@@indecisivemann4349 thats fair, a more targeted randoweiser
Dont miss out on EDD rando
I really don't get that criticism in the video, not using it because "it doesn't help for quick haz 5 runs" sounds like he's searching only for utility and forgetting the game should be FUN
Honestly have to agree with most of your points though I am surprised that you didn't mention the amount content of season 4 we didn't get that much actual content that will change up the game. Now I know why we didn't get new weapons but I feel like the team needed to replace that void with something else. Most players from what I've seen need something that will change up or give more options to the core gameplay loop of drg. The content in season 4 was alright, if I had to speculate why the season format has gradually been on a downward spiral my opinion is that they have to make an entire season pass every single time they want to update the game substantially. If we look at drg before the live season format they were many updates on their own that were just huge updates to the game deep dives, overclocks, new biomes etc. Overall though I am optimistic for what gsg will do they do seem like a dev team that will take feedback and capitalize on it.
Yea basically GSG prioritization has shifted overwhelmingly towards "will this content market well and make sense in a seasonal theme?" instead of just "will this improve the core gameplay experience", the latter being what they valued more before they switched to the seasonal model. At least that's the vibe I get hearing about how the game was like pre-seasonal, I only started playing in s1.
@@chanceIIors It was definitely like that before the season format and also the focus has now been shifted to instead of making a better experience for existing players they are now focusing a little too much on just getting new players.
@@jairdinh7563This mind-set makes sense when you're making a constantly updating live service game without the usual gacha or battle passes that justify said game. Studio's need funding to pay people and get resources for said games. Back then this was done by just making more releases or expansion packs. But with the advent of a "live service" game companies came up with new ways to keep the lights running. Old MMO games did this with subsription services. The late 2000's through 2010's created the trend of lootboxes. Now in modern times it's buying battlepasses.
DRG doesn't really have any of that. It has some DLC but they are intentionally very small drop in the buckets made to be as unintrusive as possible. That's what makes DRG so great but it also leads the very real danger of the game bleeding money. So the new mindset of having updates appeal to try and bring in as many new players as possible is very deliberate because it's really the only tactic they can do to keep the game alive that doesn't invovle selling battlepasses each major update.
there's so much goddamn spaghetti code in the game and terribly balanced mods and OCs. I hope S5 will just be a "Rework and Improve" season where Management improves the miner experience after the Union starts objecting(would be a nice parallel to GSG saying that they listened to the community)
Man, i feel the same. I worry that the amount of cosmetics and features related to the adopted season format is taking up way too much work time on the devs. Whilst its nice that the battlepass is free and all, I would still happily sacrifice all of it if it meant we would get more features and improvements in future updates.
As someone who primarily plays on haz 3 or 4, rockpox is actually still very much a threat. Getting incapacitated by it seems to deal a lot of damage on any hazard level, being a basically guaranteed shield loss and significant health aside compounded by the fact that in such a scenario you're already surrounded by bugs a lot of the time. Sure, on lower hazards you might survive the situation more often but it still does a lot. As for waves during the corrupter, yeah, it's a lot less prevalent sometimes, but you do get a lot of variance on the missions. Some haz 3 missions feel like haz 2, some feel like haz 4, sometimes you get unlucky and a bulk or a duo of oppressors or a mactera flock spawn for an ambient wave.
Corrupters mainly get annoying on bad terrain - tight, enclosed areas are just a challenge, but them climbing the walls and traversing to weird ledges is annoying instead. This just makes it more annoying that there's no real way to hem it into an area other than getting it to run in a vague direction. It does have a visual cue for its vine attacks, though, which is that when completing any three of its nine segments (the weakpoint destruction counts equally to a section being removed) it will immediatley anchor to the ground and start making these quick and high-pitched.. exertion noises? Not sure what they're meant to be, but it will stop moving (which it never does except when slamming or preparing for the vines) and send out three large tendrils to the ground around it. Once it unanchors itself after the vine attack, which is I believe after sending out three or four sets of three vine trails, it will run away like it does at the start of the fight, which does make it _possible_ to direct it as it will flee away from the dwarves but it is still largely random. I would like to note that I didn't notice that the blisters counted for where you needed to foam and vacuum and just assumed it was each whole side for quite some time, because they're usually covered and don't themselves leave any form of pit or injury when removed - they just vanish. The slam has a much better audio cue than the vines, while its visual cue is essentially identical to that of a dreadnaught slam, though I find its range difficult to discern amongst the vacuum's effect specifically.
Also, yes, foam on the corrupter does despawn with the same timer that foam on contagion spikes despawns with. It's annoying on both counts. Other such details include that the lithofoamer indeed applies fear to lithophage bugs, though the vacuum does not; that getting the killing blow in a rockpox exploder via a headshot does in fact defuse it like any other; and that wardens can buff rockpox grunts and praetorians.
The idea of the vacuum sucking up the gas is so clever - the patch job solution would be to apply the same blister vacuuming solution to the other bugs that the corrupter has, but there is so much better possibilities.
The 'button-mashing' system on controller is even worse. You have to move the movement stick side to side, which works fine when frozen every now and then but against rockpox is legitimately bad for your controller, as you have to get out of that as fast as possible to avoid ever-greater damage.
35:07 Oh, is _that_ why I keep getting so many tiny meteorites and no large ones? I don't mind the large meteor, it's an engaging and interesting little encounter that is, yes, semi-disconnected from the mission but not all that disruptive, but all I get are small ones much of the time.
I am apparently in the minority who doesn't mind the rockpox bugs, but they certainly can be difficult to fight with certain weapons (which is no different than, say, an OMEN tower in terms of 'if you didn't bring this build type then figure it out next time', and indeed not a very good thing). They have a lot of weird interactions, such as generally dying to even low-damage C4 as it destroys all their weakpoints but not having the same effect with most other explosives (even fat boy for some reason doesn't achieve the same effect), and are satisfying to fight with medium accuracy weapons like the Thunderhead or some minigun builds, which will relatively quickly hit all the front weakpoints and easily cut through their remaining health afterwards. They function as a gimmick faction, and while the corruption status effect can get out of hand if you're in the middle of them since all their attacks also spread rockpox, they feel like they have potential as something that you need to engage at range and preferrably away from the spike; the only melee-resistant, even if indirectly, enemies in the game. They're in a moderately better place than the bots are.
Certainly we need the next additions to not be RNG-based. Jetboots are one thing, and seemingly the long-teased 'in-mission powerups' that double jump was slated to be reworked into, so such things might become much more common. But continuously getting more and more events and minibosses and so forth is getting tiring. Sure, the caves feel more varied overall, but individual missions don't when these things are so rare. I haven't seen a BET-C in some time, I've gone months without seeing korloks, even special minerals like error cubes (which I've gotten four of in this last week after multiple months of none, for whatever reason) just don't quite do it. I want more guaranteed things, like mission types and modifiers and new regions. Not more chance encounters.
Super in depth comment, loved reading through it and learning more about the Corruptor! It's crazy that I've put in so much time in Season 4 and still don't fully understand that guy. Also I agree that it's super confusing how some forms of AoE damage seem to trivialize the rockpox while others are much less effective, I think it's why I've leaned heavily into fast fire rate single target weapons like minigun and drak since they feel more consistent against the rockpox for me.
you put more effort in a yt comment than my school homework
In terms of more deterministic play, I guess they can just greatly increase the spawn chance weights of particular events in certain biomes and broadcast that in the mission select clearly, but another really interesting approach would be if they could take inspiration from the Path of Exile Atlas passives system. Basically characters can influence spawn weights of events or tune the enemy resistances, rarity, or damage and speed under the restraint of a limited amount of points to earn and assign and the spatial relationship of each passive.
The current issue with assignments is you can't really do promotion tracks with any sort of preference to game mechanics. While perks, weapons, and class are player choice, to keep progressing the promotion tracks and matrix cores every other aspect of the game (biomes, beer, objective) is up to the RNG of the mission selectors. Imagine if there were "overclocks" for mission types that hosts would install like "take a mini mule on extraction type missions, resource carry capacity is halved and you can't deposit large resources in the mini mule" or "double the signal relays needed to defend in salvage operation, uplinks must be done simultaneously, and signal loss when zone is empty is reduced to 25% of normal rate," These could mutate existing game modes to have some more variety while making the qualities that some players find annoying in certain mission types less of an issue while introducing some additional risk.
What a well made video. Love it. I agree with 99% of it.
It feels like GSG is getting out-of-touch with their own game, especially when you see them call their own creation unfair.
The Season model is just a mistake, they're not proper updates anymore. It's just marketing with flashy titles with shallow and arguably lazy content behind it. Shallow content that, at the same time, is spammed at the player at a ridiculous rate. Tbh I want to "opt-out" of the Season to make everything Rockpox spawn at base chance already, so it doesn't bug me every second mission.
One BIG thing I agree with is your statement on jet boots spawning when the corruptor spawns. While the corruptor obviously has lots of issues still, i find it WAAAY more fun to fight while i have jetboots to assist with evading and traversing, even if ive only had it happen 4 or 5 times. Amazing video in general by the way, great criticisms. Hopefully GSG takes a lot of these into account for season 5 in the future.
I never knew the minimules gave resources, i think a small effect like red and yellow rocks flying out and when walked over being auto added to team inventory would be nice, and it could be used for small rewards that don’t force you head back to the mule
You make great points lad, and I agree with most of em. Especially with the Corrupter and Stingtail.
I like the Stingtail, but I won't lie it's a little busted. I kinda wish it had a weakness to pickaxe attacks. So when it does grab you from a fair distance you can punish it by bashing it's face in. Also I just like doing that to stick it too em.
Everything you mentioned I totally agree with since a couple weeks into the season started and the honeymoon phase wore off.
Rocket Barrage novelty goes away real quick when you realize its all sizzle (Fast pewpew) and no steak (Damage) especially in haz 4+ missions.
Corrupter should have had a dedicated mission like the Caretaker. It could have been beefed up by incorporating, meteors, contagion spikes and waves of rock pox and have 100% spawn jet boots to help traverse all the corrupted obstacles. I really hope they combine all the rock pox into a mission type moving forward in future seasons to keep it contained.
You make videos of exceptional quality, all the way from overall design to the video composition, very good!
9:05 you actually dont have to keep aiming for a single target with PB missiles.
Especially with bigger enemies, you can just fire a few shots and switch to your secondary to create a kind of plasma tornado thatll just keep hitting anything inside, a bit like Spinning Death for the Breach Cutter, but long range.
Yeah my friend told me about that mechanic and I actually tried it out during the REZ mission with the crassus in the video, but I found it only worked consistently on stationary enemies like spitballers and brood nexuses. I tried it on an oppressor in that mission and maybe I got unlucky and the oppressor moved away too quick but it didn't seem to work as well.
@@chanceIIors You gotta kite the oppressor to keep it inside the tornado, or you could quickly update the targeted location by swapping to your primary and then back to your secondary.
You also didn't mention that PBM missiles are awesome when combined with the stun mod, much better choice for stunning when compared to rocket barrage, simply because you actually get DPS.
I LOVE the Plasma Burster Missiles, it is my favorite overclock for the hurricane and I hope it becomes your favorite too.
@@FortKnight_Gamer all super valid points, great tips! will definitely be using PBM more in the future especially on elims
The rockpox close range change have made them alot less fun to fight for sure. I'd say the stingtails aren't constantly oneshotting me to gravity anymore. But I do hope they get rid of the movement penalty when getting grabbed. And I agree with most of the cleansing tool complaints and suggestions.
the rocket barrage would've been extremely fun if they drastically increase the clip size and total ammo even if they'll have to nerf something else
I just want to blast out a literal rocket barrage
makes sense, tbh they shouldve gone all in in the barrage aspect, maybe removing the ammo clip (making it like the scout third main), giving more ammo and more rof, but lowering the damage (to a point that mathematically you do the same dps, but fire more rockets), that and a small damage bump
I don't think it'll be effective
but sure as hell it'll be fun, I'd definitely use it
personally i dislike that the stingtail just yoinks you, it often times doesn't even damage you with their horn, in my opinion the stingtail would be better implemented if it was better telegraphed by a bright weakpoint (like the septic spreader for example) and should work like a left for dead smoker, grabs you and reels you in to their big horn
although that would require a full rework which i really really doubt will ever happen but it is an idea nonetheless!
This video does such an excellent job describing the problems with the corruptor, contagion spikes, rockpox, and stingtail. I couldn't agree more about everything said; maybe one can argue that these additions are "good enough", but ultimately I think it's pretty clear that so much could be improved just based on the fundamental game design principles as discussed.
It's disappointing because I had a lot of optimism for DRG when they announced seasonal updates for the game. But looking back now, it feels like with each season, they've been adding more bloat than actual fun features to the game. It's not just rockpox and contagion spikes in S3 and S4 - while S1 + S2 may have been better rounded, I really question some of the things added then as well. Take the shredder robots for example - they essentially move randomly, often have laggy scuffed hitboxes, are not satisfying to kill (no sound cue, no blood & guts), and it's hard to determine when they're even hit as their long death animation is not much different from them flying around. Most people just use auto-aim weapons like turrets, the smart rifle, the flamethrower, boomerangs, etc. to eliminate them. Why add these enemies into the game? Why add any janky robots to the game in the first place? It's literally just extra bloat for the sake of adding a robot-themed season into a game that takes place on an alien bio-horror planet.
Anyways, my point is that this is kind of a concerning trend for DSG. I think GSG deserves the benefit of the doubt given that they've developed what is still a phenomenal game and since, after all, these are essentially free battle passes. And the game is altogether still very fun. But we've had 4 seasons already and it kind of feels like each time GSG adds a lot of stuff that is neither necessary nor polished. Maybe I'm just too old-school in thinking that keeping games simple is better than adding underdeveloped features, but I think everyone can agree that, at some point, season after season of rushed additions to the game can really tarnish the entire DRG experience. I hope GSG revisits the drawing board when it comes to seasons and/or maybe just go back to the well-rounded updates they were doing before.
Agree wholeheartedly, and good point about the shredders I never really thought about it analytically but all your points I agree with, trying to pickaxe them as client is damn near impossible
You know I mostly agree with you but I LOVE the robots. Shredders have great game feel when you smack them out of the air, and they're fun to quick shot, essentially acting as a more dynamic naedocyte swarm. Patrols bots are excellent as well, I only wish they'd buff nemesis.
The fuckin dev was about to complaint about the septic spreader 😭😭 he didn’t want to hurt his coworkers feelings 😭😭
my POV on this season after 200h on my 900h is the same. MID.
the stingtails is just the fun killer. some people are somehow starting to get used to it saying we just need to focus on killing it first. but the reason you wanna kill it first IS BECAUSE ITS BROKEN AND ISN'T BALLENCED. (can throw you out of the map. throw you so high you die from fall dmg full sheilf n hp. pulls you so hard you die from velocity on the wall. is tanky AND SPAWN SO OFTEN MORE THAN OPPRESOR.)
the spitballers just SPAMS their attack that does ridiculous dmg, but i think it could be fix by being able to shoot the projectile before it hits the floor.
the infection not being gone make sense but 2 season with the infection just make it super annoying and now feels like a chore. also elemental res barelly helps again the finger cramp smacking when you get stuck.
i can't wait for the next season not just for hope of the new content to be good and alot but also to fineally be free from the plague chores and maybe update on these new enemies.
also harold for me is fine. its a VERY EASY boss, you just run around it and dont get too close thats it. the enemies WHILE fighting is the difficult part to make it a boss. and its a special way to fight and its diffrent so i like it. also its harold everyone loves harold.
Very constructive vid, great job. I agree in particular about the rockpox enemies but honestly I think it's fair to say that GSG can do better on this in general, since the response from most of the community to most enemies since S1 has ranged from "bad" to "indifferent".
The performance pass is another pet grievance of mine - it feels like a content crutch that's also superfluous when there's already an insane pool of cosmetics that just keeps getting more bloated. It feels like it'd be a considerable better use of their time to focus on bugs, QOL fixes and gameplay improvements.
At this point I'd much rather take medium sized gameplay oriented updates every 3 months over the 6+ months wait for the current seasons. DRG is still in a decent place overall, but GSG do feel like they've gotten somewhat complacent with their approach to the seasons so constructive criticism like this is very much needed and welcomed.
i'm a graybeard and i'm running out of stuff to do. cosmetics are the only thing i can work towards, and i really don't care about them anymore. i need something more substantial than a hat.
Could not agree more everytime they want to update something significant with their game they now have to ship it with an 80 tier performance pass, new weapon framework for every gun, and an entire cosmetic tree.
About the stingtails. I absolutely agree that it's too sneaky and camouflaged of an enemy, and that it spawns too frequently with how lethal and tanky it is. Personally, I like how it makes armor break a considerable option. Up until this season, armor break was just a bad option. All I really want for the stingtails are for their spawn rate to go down a bit, so that they are more akin to a moving spitballer: not super easy to kill fast, easy to spot, and a high priority to kill.
I wholeheartedly disagree with the sentiment that armor break was a bad option until recently. I use it intentionally on my breach cutter with the return to sender overclock. Everybody can say goodbye to all the buggy bois, including dreadnaughts.
@@coenx1 The only bug that came close to requiring armor break up until this season was the dreadnought twins, of which only spawn regularly in elimination. Every other bug with significant armor is just too easily circumvented by avoiding the armor, like pratoreans, or just can't be dealt with in any other way, like oppressors.
You may have been using armor break on your breach cutter, but that doesn't mean it was the best choice. This game offers a lot of freedom of choice, you would have to make several inferior options to have trouble with high hazards.
@@b33nz25 And just because it's "not required" doesn't mean that it was ever a bad choice. Go slay some praetorians or mactera bundles. Just because something doesn't cater to the way you play, doesn't mean that it's a bad choice. You just see better value in other things, for YOU.
With the way I have my breach cutter set up: yes, it does high damage; yes, I have plenty of ammo; yes, it's because I use my weapons together rather than relying on only one.
@@coenx1 Now mactera brundles are a fair point. However, I rarely encounter enough of them for the inefficiency of shooting armor to matter. I can also dodge the projectiles very easily while evading grunts. The same can't be said about the stingtails, which is why I now consider armor break a requirement for at least one weapon in my builds.
@@b33nz25 Armor break isn't good on every gun, but it feels nice to shred through everything on an EDD. Prime everything for maximum death with engineer. There is a massive difference in the way it feels to fight a horde down there.
The worst part about having 10 new hats to wear every season is that i only have one head. They can instead skip the hats and focus on actual meaningful gameplay additions. Besides the shark hat from the summer festival is the only one ill ever need anymore
Grinding for hats means more playtime and player engagement.
39:08 A lore reason for the spike having nitra in the core could be that it's using the nitra to build and expand the tough exterior of the spike
did not think I would watch an entire hour long video going over all this. while I've mostly liked season 4 in general, since a lot of my issues with it were the same for season 3, I definitely think all that was said here raises some good points, the suggestions and fixes highlighted especally are quite something. its this level of criticism and care that I think only the people who have played the game for so long really care to give, I know a lot of casuals kinda took the season how it is and there was a lot of critisism that quickly got shut down fairly often around launch
for me the spreader shooting out of line of sight is the best part of him. The fact you need to utilize more then just sight to defend against him is perfect.
Yes, I do like that behavior to some extent, maybe there could be some kind of middle ground though where it can shoot for a bit, then has to relocate before shooting again, and while relocating it must stay in line of sight for a certain amount of time.
@@chanceIIors I'm very certain it's a bug. He's supposed to have line of sight.
👀
@@gsganders8355Oh hi Anders! :)
GSG: "We heard a concerning report that some players still enjoy playing the solo mode that's been abandoned for 5 years, so we've decided to introduce not one, but TWO new enemies that are tanky, attack you without cooldown or line of sight from across the map, deny a large area from complete safety to prevent salvage operation from being beatable, and are treated like grunts by the respawn system, meaning they'll be replaced during a wave on the same frame they die. There, that should fix the issue of people wanting to play solo mode for years to come!"
Honestly they should add the crates to be more common, like allowing for more than 1 to spawn and having atleast one type of helmet or cargo crate per match and give tokens you can use to unlock what you want ontop of a random unlock, maybe ranging from costing 1-5 of the tokens per item
The here’s a few ideas to improve the stingtail “no more stingtail!” That was so ruthlessly intentional ha
To be fair, if you can't afford 10 starch nuts, then you're getting the highest amount of unluckiness anyone has seen; you NEVER go a mission without finding at least 1 plant of Starch Nuts. Starch Nuts are the first thing you get enough fruits for drinks for, and its only use without Malt Stars and Yeast Cones is either Rando or Blackout
had a frustrating time with this season when it dropped, told myself i just needed to learn the new enemies/content. you've demonstrated why my skills weren't translating into the new stuff, so thank you! pls drop the mod list king
I would love it if the stingtail could grab things out of your hands- if you're carrying a lithofoamer or an enor pearl, it doesn't move YOU, but launches your shit away instead.
Fun idea but thay would drive me crazy
55:18 I want to point out the reason I believe the stingtail's audio cue sometimes doesn't play. It gets overridden. I've noticed in DRG that when enough sounds are playing, it muffles/ducks/mutes other sound cues so that it doesn't become overwhelming. I'm not sure if there's a priority system for audio cues, like how bulk detonators basically muffle everything else, but I think the stingtail should be given a priority level like that.
this is like the third video i've seen about season 4 that starts with "i maxed out the pass and tree" and i'm over here like "what the fuck how do y'all even motivate yourself to play tf"
edit: oh, he's one of those guys who meta maxes with all the datamining (or whatever the hell modern gamers are doing now).
When I clicked on your channel you were at 999 subs, When I left you were at 1000 with my help, I hope you grow and create more fabulous videos just like this one, all the points were laid out well, very well spoken and easy to understand in greatly divided sections. This could pass for a college essay or project to be fair. Well edited perfect video and I was shocked to see you still in the triple digits. Hope your TH-cam career goes far.
Appreciate the support and kind words!
Looking at the November update some points were infact taken into consideration like the corruptor change , spreader goo being able to shot down mid air and needing the sting tail cooldown after grab. Kudos to the devs for listening to the community.
The Sting tail feels almost as hard as an oppressor, it should be about as rare.
And maybe add a sqyish baby stingtail, incapable of damage and with weak armor to be the ones who spawn amidst swarms.
It's much more dangerous than an oppressor. To actually get killed by an oppressor, you have to stay locked in place, whereas the stingtail WILL get you, wether you are moving or not.
@@Specoups7 months late, but this is absolutely true. Haz five mission I was using jet boots to get up to a drop pod, one sting tail said "Nah b" and I got fucked cause of it.
I actually like the fact that the spreaders can shoot you from behind an obstacle, We call them 'the artillery'. I would only maybe decrease their accuracy when not having direct line of sight or other balances. But having to track the projectile and figure out where are they camping is a fun play element.
I think R&D needs to make the Litho foamer and vac merged into one weapon
Or at least make a secondary attack for both of them to make them more useful. Example, the lithofoamer could right-click charge and launch a sticky projectile to slow enemies, the lithovac could have a BLOW option to blast enemies back a few feet like the pyro's right-click in TF2.
@@jetrexdesignthis is a great idea.
something I've noticed with the stingtail is that it's mele attack's animation is quite hard to notice and I genuinely thought it didn't mele for the longest time until I pickaxed one and saw it use it's "horn" attack or whatever. the other glifids all bite or smack you with their forearms, where either their forearms move dramatically or their face pushes away from the rest of their body to bite you, both quite obvious. the stingtail just kinda headbutts you which can be quite missable as well as resets quickly so if you get hit from behind and see a stingtail you don't know if it was the thing that just hit you
A really well produced, well edited video, that makes a lot of valid points. I don’t agree with all of them, but im sure that’s partly because I mostly play on haz 4. Also I like how you put your extra notes on the Dwarves map tablet thingy, it’s a nice touch!
The worst part about the unlikelihood of finding Jet Boots in a Corruptor mission is that having them WOULD make the fight a lot less of a slog. They'd act as a long-cooldown resource for outright avoiding the spawned-in Rockpox patches, as well as for chasing the Corruptor through difficult terrain when it decides to flee (you know, so you can scale walls, etc. without having to drop your cleaning tools). On paper, it sounds like Jet Boots were DESIGNED for the Corruptor... yet you'll almost never see both in the same mission!
Just proves that seasonal design, unless done rigorously a la PoE, is easy to use as an excuse for subpar content updates. Regardless of how much you love DRG and GSG devs, you can't refute that Season 4 has been a subpar update so far. You can love something and still be critical of it. I don't see why Corruptors can't have been a mission type of its own, or why Rockpox missions haven't become a thing yet or a biome of their own. There is a lot they can do with this thematically and design-wise, and the fact that all they could come up with is RNG events is disappointing. At least the Contagion Spikes were interesting as a new addition to the list of anomalies we have.
In regards to PoE as well, the last couple leagues have been disappointing as well, so it just further proves my point. Seasonal game design just promotes minimal viable product delivery, or whatever that design philosophy is called.
If you want a perfect preview of the pitfalls of seasonal design just look at Diablo IV. Granted, that game has issues far beyond that of its seasonal design philosophy, but everything you could possibly do wrong in a seasonal update, they did. Which was pretty fun, and sad; seeing what Blizzard has become will always be depressing.
Felt like GSG is phoning it in a bit recently, with the voicelines for the two Oktoberfest assignments being shared for both. The funny thing is that the "Oktoberfest assignment completed" voiceline from MC plays on the fifth mission, but since one of the assignments has six, the last mission just gets a generic "assignment complete" voiceline.
The corruptor is not a very fun boss indeed, and the janky nature of unclear weakpoints to foam and vacuum frustrated my team so much we just pop two weakpoints and then dps the visible spots just so we don't have to bother with foaming it anymore.
Wish GSG would actually hotfix each season more than once for balance changes instead of leaving us to dry with bugs until the next season.
I put not too many hours into S1, but blasted through S2 and had fun, had less fun in S3 but still finished it, and I'm dragging my feet on finishing S4, it's just that uninspiring to me. Hope S5 is better.
I want the corruptor to change so bad, it's genuinely one of the things I looked most forward to with the new update. Now I consider myself unlucky everytime I hear Harrold roaming in a nearby room, because for some reason I get him rather frequently and the hassle of dealing with him is always overwhelming. Especially with greenbeards around. I love my friends but they are not as experienced in this game as I am and seeing them struggle to comprehend the mechanics of the Corruptor leads me to having to finish it off on my own the majority of the time. I agree with all the changes listed in the video. My first encounter with Harrold, I actually got lucky and it stayed relatively in the same area, and I assumed it had a radius with the cleaning pod. I was quickly proven wrong the next time I encountered him, when he ran up an unclimbable cliff to an unaccesible part of the cave unless you were a scout. Amazing video, details all the thoughts I've had about this season and more. I hope the devs are still listening and focus on quality for quantity. I'd much rather see quality changes before getting new skins, as nice as the season battlepasses are. Rock and Stone!
Re: the performance pass's 'filler item' distribution, I think it's less intended to force you to play to the end and more because the later levels do get harder - there are a few point requirement bumps during the progression - so having more density of notable items keeps the pass giving items at a fairly even rate.
Huh, this is the first time I've heard of this for DRG's battle pass specifically. So you're saying the later tiers take longer to complete than the earlier ones? (The fandom wiki says each tier requires 5k performance points but might be out of date idk)
The reason why I'm asking is because to my knowledge, games choose to incorporate that mechanic for anti-consumer reasons - someone who is at tier 90 out of 100 most likely won't remember exactly how long it took them to complete earlier tiers and if the game makes those later tiers juuuust long enough to frustrate the gamer, they might be more incentivized to buy tier skips to 100. All this is speculation on my end but I really can't see why else battle passes would do this.
All this to say, GSG doesn't even sell tier skips and it would seem out of character for them to stoop to these types of tactics. I guess it would be pretty easy to test since the game is very transparent with battle pass progress and how it doles out performance points but I'm away from my gaming PC for the next few weeks.
@@chanceIIors I don't know the numbers exactly, but they are written on the level when you're working through one so it wouldn't be hard to find out, either I suppose by finding a newer player to help or waiting for another season. The pass certainly feels like it slows considerably as you progress due to both getting somewhat used to newer content and eventually running out of daily scrip rewards and thus slowing progression in the tree.
One small thing I love about the Jet Boots you didn't mention is the fact that the jets themselves can actually ignite enemies, giving it even more use in combat. I love little details like that.
But yeah, generally this season has been very forgettable. You know it's bad when the main new boss on the cover is rare enough that I didn't encounter it until about two weeks back. And I've only seen two in total.
Also, even on lower Haz levels, Stingtails just feel like ass. I've seen them hook me through WALLS. And this was recent, too. Usually I love open or super tall caves but the existence of the Stingtail makes me dread them.
Its not good when you see a corruptor boss and think; "Ugh i dont even want to fight this thing" No other mini boss has given me that thought.
Very well thought out and constructed video. I agree with just about every point (though I had a different approach with some changes, as is to be expected). I hope that the devs see this and get some inspiration on how to rework the problematic things in S4. Rock and Stone!
for future overclocks, I think the experimental plasma charger needs an ammo count overclock
Great video; I agree with basically everything. Just wanted to note some things of note related to some of the jankier stuff, from testing we did for the wiki/playtesting during the season's experimental branch, because its interesting:
1. As far as I can tell, the fear being so janky is because its being inflicted on the blisters, not the enemies. As a result, this makes the direction the enemies run really, really weird (since they try to run away from the source of fear, which in this case is foam hitting the enemy, which the blister is attached to). I assume the devs did this so they could recycle the AI of the base enemies.
2. On the note of fear, Mactera Bombers (as well as their infected counterparts, far as I can tell) can actually be feared; its just that they are immune while doing anything that locks their destination (such as the goo bomb attacks), making it very rare unless you catch them in transit to one of your teammates. This is true of a few enemies in fact, and I think is what might be happening with the exploders; they're destination locked already (set to run at you), so they can't be feared. How/why the devs did this is beyond me, though...
3. They actually made fighting Rockpox worse twice, far as I can tell. Firstly, with what you mentioned, by making the blisters popping inflict pox in an AoE around it. However, until a recent patch, you could actually sidestep this, since all Rockpox inflicting effects (barring terrain removal, anyways) inflicted the same non-stacking status. As a result, you could got all in and stand on Rockpox terrain and no longer suffer the blister popping effect, since you were already "affected" by the status. This still kind of works, but its much less reliable now...
4. Stingtails might actually be the souls of scouts getting revenge; their attack is, far as I can tell, a single-tick grapple hook whose velocity is set based on their distance from you. If you start and release the grapple hook with the right timing (relative to your latency), the grappling speed gets applied twice. You can exploit this as scout if you're client, in fact (and likely have by mistake before)! The "yeeting" seems to be this same bug/exploit, but with the stingtails performing it on you against your will (and thus flinging you far past their current position). This is speculation based on testing and my intuition as a "lazy programmer", though.
5. The Stingtail's grab is interruptible! Its just that its only interruptible by stunning, fearing, or throwing something in the way (like a pack of C4); at least Driller can be happy!
As a migrant from the Warframe gimmick hell, I really agree with your last statement; I hope GSG listens and doesn't follow the same path. Cheers!
Wow super insightful comment, enjoyed reading it to learn more about how some of these mechanics might work from an implementation-level. It was funny because I was almost done working on this video and was chatting with my DRG friends and I asked them "wait... goo bombers aren't fearable.... right??" and all of us were like "uhh...." and then I was gonna test it but forgot hah.
The stingtail grab being a repurposed scout grapple is super interesting, because it might mean the devs have actually tested scout's grapple being able to grab heavy objects and pull them towards the player, which I've seen suggested by others before. Probably will never actually see it since the devs are against traversal tool overclocks, but fun to think about.
@@chanceIIors While they're not planning on traversal OCs, I could see something like it as a new OC for the crossbow; it already has a recall bolt mod, after all. Something like "Sticky Bolts" maybe?
16:36 Thats not only dumb, but a privacy violation aswell.
Its dumb because its RANDOM, its not supposed to be balanced or representative of how a mod is supposed to play, its supposed to be random, for fun. Thats it.
Two, dont collect data. Just dont. We have enough things spying on us already.
Also ranged attacks from enemies shouldn't be able to shoot through other enemies, or they should deal frindly fire damage to them, this is so frustrating being hit by something you can't even see.
I'm a greenbeard who mainly play solo Engineer and I want nothing more than the complete extinction of Septic spreaders
This is a GREAT amount of work! I agree with almost everything you said and hope GSG will do a better 5-th update which will not only add new content, but also balance all the things mentioned in that video
While a lot of your criticism WAS good (and I agreed with most of it), some of it veered into the pointlessly nitpicky. Complaining about the in-game size of the corruptor being smaller than the promotional material, for example. It's just a gripe for griping's sake. Same goes for the "just hit the random button with your eyes closed" bit when discussing Randoweisser, or discovering that you can scare rockpox bugs with the foamer (a mechanic that has been present since the implementation of Rockpox.)
I 100% agree. I have been noticing these issues but feel very pressured to not say anything negative. A big worry of mine is bloating of the game. Already there are almost too many OCs and customizations are a hell scape of grind.
The idea of contagion spikes being their own mission made me think that it could be a great idea if there was essentially a rockpox version of industrial sabotage. You take out 2 or 3 contagion spikes and at the end you fight the corrupter as a boss fight akin to the caretaker in sabotage. it allows you to opt into the event, be completely focused on it instead of having to juggle it with other missions, and could have more unique and valuable rewards.
Meanwhile, the perk system is heavily outdated and it never changed since when? 2019?
That needs an update.
The stingtail part made me remember about last week, i was playing in a pretty big cave and 2 stingtails spawned, it was like haz 3 so it wasn't that huge of a problem, but i can't deny how having those 2 playing with me like a god dam volleyball was NOT a fun experience, and it must be hell in higher levels
22:42 you can very easily dodge the stingtail by just changing direction after hearing the noise, it tries to predict where you're going to be so if you change direction it cant get you
It's not easy at all, because you have to input precise timing and movements which is not consistently feasible in the middle of a swarm and difficult terrain.
My own personal lore explanation for the jet boot unlock is it's mentioned it's a safety protocol, so the brief jetty boot minigame can be seen as like a learners license or a test. Just my personal thing everyone has their own
Love seeing the confirmation bias in the results of that poll you posted proving that the majority of the community likes the season and still thinking the poll validated your opinion simply because some people did agree with you.
With how much bootlicking the average fan does of the game that is still pretty telling.
oh man this takes me back to the "safehouse customisation" days of payday 2
i find the corruptor's ground slam to be really obvious and easy to predict, but the movement/fleeing behavior more than makes up for that in terms of inconvenience. also the fact it was bugged for a while where you couldnt vacuum up the floor shit meant some missions became phyiscally impossible due to it rapidly spreading indestructible damaging goop throughout entire systems of tunnels, mid ambient swarm
The stingtails need a serious nerf.
The fact that i've been pulled by them several times while me and the stingtail were on two opposite sides *of a fucking sandblasted cavern* is just too much range.
Also, it not having a weak point AT ALL until you blast its armor off is ridiculous. This makes it impossible to kill them quickly if you dont have armor shredding, and if the devs want us to use armor shredding upgrades, then this isnt the way to do that.
Finally, a voice of reason. I've been wondering why the community does so little checks and balances. As great as GSG and DRG is, they have been severely reducing the amount of content. I know it's hard to think of new things, but maybe it's time for some rigorious experimentation. I love this game, and want to see more of it. I hope this update is a low point.
its because the game has bred a weird air of positivity and yes men partially because of the "rock and stone" shit and purposefully avoiding any themes that are dark or serious. it also has such a tiny playerbase that there arent enough people who care about the game and the direction its heading. a lot of players are just casual greenbeards who play the game twice and never again.
As someone who went back (from s5) I found s4 pretty fun. I could definitely see how people who’ve been playing for longer don’t like it though.
After over 3300 hours this was the first DLC I didn't buy, because I was so disappointed by the Season aswell as the design of the stuff the DLC offers. Says a lot. Your points are all valid.
The best way to handle the corrupter is to just put a warning on the level encountered.
thank you for speaking your mind on these issues. with how much blind "worship" the devs get from the community, it's honestly tiring to try and critizise features that lack polish and thought.
Blind worship is a bad side effect of hype culture. Criticism strengthens the things we love by pointing out where improvement can be made, but many people think criticism is the same as hatred because hype culture disallows them any reaction other than "LETS GOOOOOO!!!" If people want their favorite games to retain their identity, retain their power and constantly evolve, respectful and thoughtful criticism, like this video, is necessary. Too many fans think their options are blind praise or intense fiery hatred, when criticism is not only healthy, but obligatory. Not only does it strengthen the game but it helps the devs know what to avoid next time, and why.
Well I think GSG saw this vid because it almost _entirely_ shaped the November 2023 maintenance update! 👀
This was a well written video, but I fear it will fall on deaf ears. One of the biggest problems that the DRG community suffers from is toxic positivity, meaning that ANY criticism of the game is swiftly rejected and dismissed. I love this game, having well over 1,000 hours in it. But if the community can't come together and agree that this season was by far the worst one so far and now finding out that we're being stuck with it until JUNE NEXT YEAR is completely unacceptable, then I fear things will only get worse because GSG will have no motivation to change because they'll just say "well, most of them are fine with this. So why try harder?"
If im being honest, playing with my greybeards and playing with my greenbeard friends is two different sides. Me and my friends that have played a while and have every overclock there isnt much to come back and do in this season. No new weapons or objectives really so outside of that its just a revamped version of season 3. I like the new additions but honestly wasnt anything added where i was like i have to play this season. My newer friends of the game love it alot, not sure if they just like the new feel of the game even though some are prestige. But they like the new update and have that push to grind. But i really think the update was good, just not exciting. Felt like a patch more than a major ypdate.
today I beat Harold in 15 seconds with a squad of randoms
Wow, what an incredible video! Well done.
The Stingtail almost single-handedly made me quit the game. In its current format it is way too powerful and spawns too frequently. The fact that I’ve had 3 or 4 of them spawned at the same time is absolutely mind blowing. Imagine 4 grabbers flying around - but they attack you every 5 seconds. Would be insane.
Thankfully there are so many options to fix the Stingtail. If they keep it as-is, they need to drastically reduce the spawn chance of it, and cap it at 1. It would be far more intriguing if it were a rare enemy spawn - like a detonator or a dreadnought.
Otherwise all the options outlined in this video are absolutely viable. I really hope GSG does something to fix it. Every time I hear the sound of a Stingtail it’s like nails on a chalkboard. I dread every encounter now; not out of fear but of annoyance.
Okay that’s the end of my Stingtail rant. Again, exceptional video! Very well done. ⛏️
I heard someone say that the stingtail is designed around being a frontline enemy but it for some reason sticks in the back
And yeah I feel that too, why is it so heavily armored and dangerous if all its Gona do is stay in the back?
4:33 i feel so represented rn
5:00 I wanted to provide my reasoning for why you have to play Jetty Boot to unlock the jet boots. I think of it like a Captcha, "Are you a Dwarf?" sort of check. So, you have to play a little bit of Jetty Boot to prove you're not rival scum, or some glyphid that just happened to press the "Open" button. Maybe this helps you recontextualize it.
Idk why but I really really suck at Jetty Boot, to a point where I havent been able to ever get past 4 walls. In soloplay I just skip them all togheter when I find them and otherwise I ping teammates to solve the problem. I just wish it was some normal hacking thing which is fairly easy
that's a pretty creative way to think about it and I like how it fits into the lore of the game!
Randoweiser is for veterans who have mastered the game and can pub-stomp with any build. The "high" cost isn't really high at all, since most players with over 1,000 hours have like 5k starch nuts (speaking from experience). You noted that it's essentially a "meme beer," and that's really all people want from it. To put this a polite way, there's two groups of veteran DRG players - those who don't care about anything anymore, and those who only care about optimizing/grinding levels. You're the latter, the beer is made for the former. Nothing wrong with that, just an explanation on who the beer is aimed at.
I really do like the idea of a more "precise" Randoweiser like you suggested, that gives actually _useful_ builds to Greenbeards - perhaps it doesn't have to be a beer at all, though. Maybe we can get a new terminal called the "Loan Terminal" where (lore-wise) veteran or retired Dwarves loan their gear to Greenbeards to help them learn the ropes. A Greenbeard could loan a loadout (either for a cost of 5k gold, or on some sort of daily limit), giving them a fully-tailored build with Overclocks and everything. It would be random, but custom-built, and last only 1 mission.
I'm a DRG boomer who's been around since 2019, and I'm inclined to agree, I really have not enjoyed this season (nor Season 3 to be honest)
I actually liked the robots, and sabotage, but the new clean up stuff just feels like a chore, and has actively made this the only performance pass I have not and likely will not 100% complete.
I agree with most of this but your takes on randoweisser are completely off base.
1) It's not for "optimal builds", it's for challenge runs. Assiging meta builds for each OC that you roll into is completely antithetical to the idea of randomizing your build. You even had a clip where you were at first disgusted with your perks, but then later found use for berserk to kill the oppressor. That was a perfect example of why randowiesser is fun but it seems like it went completely over your head.
2) Your criticisms of how it will affect greenbeards perception of overclocks, or using it as a teaching tool for new players is completely out of pocket, i don't even know how that's relevant or what made you think that's what the beer is designed for.
3) Your idea to lift from all possible items, instead of just ones that you own, isn't bad but I also don't have any problem with it's current iteration.
4) The price is high but you say this as if we all don't have insane stockpiles into the hundreds for these beer ingredients. If the beer cost like, 20 starch nuts maybe i would be bothered by this. Yes you can do it for free but the beer adds a ritualistic element to it. It's very obviously less fun to just hit a button on a menu compared to the beer pouring and drinking animations and the fancy particle effects that you can share with friends.
5) The streak idea gives me ick. I hate this tendency to turn everything into a progression or a score for clout. Every fucking video game is full of meters and challenges and bars to fill up, and that includes good games like DRG. why can't we just have one thing that's fun to mess around with.
I agree with almost everything else you said and the video was well made, so it's crazy to me how much you triggered me by talking about the funny meme beer. I didn't even realize that i liked the randoweisser so much until i saw how wrong someone could be.
I think your points 1 and 5 kinda go together in my head - because right now Randoweisser goes completely against the only vanilla endgame we have (optimizing play for blue rank grind faster), and I just felt like for me, as someone who leans heavily into that playstyle, there is very little internal or external reason to use the Randoweisser. With DRG seemingly being allergic to fleshing out endgame activities I tried to imagine a simple way to adapt Randoweisser into an endgame-esque ability. And if you think about it, DRG has essentially zero "flex cosmetics" - stuff like calling cards in COD or portrait frames in Vermintide where you see a rare one and think "dang this guy must be pretty good". Blue rank *can* be an indicator of skill but it doesn't always. So the idea was that Randoweisser could've been something along that vein (even though I get the vibe that GSG is extremely scared of introducing something like that to their "non-toxic" playerbase lol).
Point 2 - I guess my assumption of the randoweisser might've been a bit off - if the beer felt so useless between me and my graybeard friends, my natural assumption was that the beer was designed for newer players then. I still believe there are outright "wrong" ways to build weapons and OCs, and it feels icky for me to use a weapon like that (if I have nothing to show for it - which goes back to the streak idea).
@@chanceIIors fair enough. like I said I agree with nearly everything else so I totally get where you're coming from when you say there's no end game content, there's very little incentive for a player to push themselves beyond just playing on hazard 5.
I do see the potential in a style of "challenge run" for a clout reward, but I think that would be better suited towards something like challenges in Binding of Issac where you have to play a run with a crazy restriction in place, or challenges in risk of rain 2 where you have to go out of your way to something noteworthy in a mission.
Personally my friends and I use randoweissers as a way of challenging eachother. Every now and then someone will order a round and then it's a game of, "Whats wrong bro? you're not going to drink your randoweisser? Do you really need your neurotoxin build to carry you that badly?" etc. Like the other beers, its purely for jokes with your friends, basically. That, at least, is better than the fortnite dances or funny fart sounds so it elevates it highly above the other beers, but it's still just a beer.
sorry if my first comment came off as hostile, I've had a shitty night. You made a good video, truly. i appreciate all the relevant gameplay clips that you included for all of your talking points. i just got tilted about the meme beer for some reason.
@@chastermief839 no worries mate, glad to hear about how other use randoweisser and that you guys are enjoying it! After reading comments from you and some other people, I can definitely see it being kinda fun seeing how scuffed a build can get and trying to work through that as a team with your group of friends. Maybe there can be a "smart stout" version of randoweisser that has the min-maxed weapon mods like I suggest in the video, and the existing one could remain as is.
Personally, I would love if the stingtail would be weak to power attacks similar to an oppressor.
instead of having one tool for foaming and another for vacuuming, they could be combined into one tool where players switch between modes after a short animation using the reload button
49:10 the button mashing on controller is way way worse, because it's not even a button you have to break, it's the joystick, it's not as fast getting out of rockpox as it is on PC, you have to spam it from one side to the other fast enough to not die, in the process ruining a joystick, if you have stick drift then pray to god you don't get infected bc the more you do, the sooner you're gonna have to buy a new controller.
I dont think the stingtail is overtuned stats wise, its a bug you NEED to target, or it WILL fuck you up, the range should be smaller though.
However, rockpox enemies (especially the mactera ones) are so stupidly annoying to kill, unless youve got the breach cutter, because for some reason the blisters have a lot of explosion resistance.
That is true but for such a high priority target does it really need that much defense when its offensive effects do so much. It takes an insane amount of time to kill it without armor break.
The problem with targeting it is that it's always way in back shielded by the swarm, so you can't focus it. It's a backline support bug, but it's tankyer than everything bar bosses and minibosses while having a huge reach and a potential to kill with a single grab, either directly or indirectly. They don't even always telegraph the attack, much less that they have spawned, so your first hint of danger might be when you are yanked to your death. It's a hugely annoying fk you like no other bug in the game that can randomly spawn bar the exstreamly rare dreadnought that at least halts other spawns and bulk detonators that are much rarer and aren't a huge issue unless you are doing a defense objective.
They are a colossal pain every time they are in the spawn pool.
All the other high priority bugs are squishyer, trijaws, spitters, mactera, spreader, shellbacks, and wardens.
It's weakness on its head requires for you to get close, strafe, break armor off, then you have a weak point. It's tail weak point is a lost cause to hit, as it's small and moves erratically ad the stingtail goes across the rugged terrain that DRG is known for.
Meanwhile, it can quickly yank you extreme distances, usually giving you some fall damage, melee damage from the stingtail hitting you itself, then damage from the large group of bugs that you got yanked right to the center of.
Fuck stingtails.
I guess you people really don't understand that every comment on this damn website is subjective, if you have a problem with the stingtail, make your own comments and suggestions discussing why you think it's not well designed, overtuned, undertuned etc. The only reason why I say what I say is because from MY experience of playing haz5 I have almost no problems with dealing with a stingtail.
@@antynomity I think the heart of the issue that I try to explain in the video is that, if you can put aside your subjective experience with it and think about how it relates to the OTHER enemies in the game, the stingtail is just much stronger *relative* to the other bugs in the game. It's got 80% of the health of a whole ass praetorian while being 3-4x more disruptive than a grabber. It just doesn't really fit in when you compare it to existing enemy design in the game.
1:03:15 Fully agree with your message here. The game has become bloated with tons of gimmicks and shiny bells and whistles, whilst making combat more and more frustrating thanks to first robots and now insanely tanky, unfun to play against rockpox enemies.
The few additions to normal enemies like Stingtail are in a bad shape and this may just be my personal opinion but the game has too much visual clutter on screen more often than not. It's very hard to lose oversight in a hectic fight and I hate it.
Wish we'd go back to a regular update circle with just some new maps, weapons, tools, more customisation etc.
Would also alleviate GSG from having to bring in tons of cosmetics and skins every time and instead focus their artists' efforts somewhere else.
The crisp, clean feel of DRG has been buried underneath a pile of scrap that I never asked for.