Risk of Rain creators Hopoo Games join Valve
Risk of Rain creators Hopoo Games join Valve
Exciting times ahead for Valve and Steam as most of Hopoo Games, the creators of the Risk of Rain series, have now joined Valve.
A bit sad their next game is on hiatus, but I'm happy for them. I assume they'll be working on Deadlock since it's sort of similar to Risk of Rain 2.
I have a strong feeling they’ll be working on Deadlock given their experience with third person hero shooters with crazy items that change your build.
Which is a shame because Deadlock is destined for the land of toxicity most other MOBAs exist in unless they do something meaningful to change the game’s design.
I've got a solution!
Just refuse to play those games and go dig rocks and stones instead!
Did someone say "rock and stone?"
I think we oughta wait for the game to at least leave the alpha, where huge changes happen from night to day, before concluding how toxic the game and mechanics will be
Totally, my comment is with regards to the current state of the game and so far they’ve fallen into the same pitfalls as other MOBAs.
Personally, allowing the team to vote to concede and to get rid of increasing respawn timers would help a lot in getting rid of the biggest causes of frustration noted so far however these were comments about DOTA2 and sadly Valve never implemented them there either.
Deadlock is destined for the land of toxicity
I don't think we should assume this right away. TF2 isn't really all that toxic (that I am aware of). Valve tends to attract less toxic people in general. OW2 however, hoo boy... that game is agonizing to play. People will not hesitate to insult you.
TF2 isn't designed to be as competitive as deadlock. It's a goofy game that's mostly just designed for fun. (Competitive TF2 does exist and I am a fan of it but it's not really officially supported in any meaningful way.)
Deadlock on the other hand is designed to be a very competitive MOBA where individual decisions will greatly change a games outcomes. I would look at DOTA as a better comparison than TF2.
I play both overwatch and counter strike. While overwatch does a great job of making sure I don't see slurs most of the time, the community is toxic af. I can't go a single game without someone saying "tank diff, DPS diff, support diff" and whatever else directed insult they got.
Counterstrike on the other hand, surprisingly wholesome. Many games players will say good try after you fail and be pretty supportive. Sometimes you get assholes who just say slurs cause they can of course but that's like, once or twice a month. Overwatch is literally every god damn match minus the slur part.
My experience playing it so far has been pretty overwhelmingly positive. No one really cares who wins, it's more fun to just make cool plays and do well individually.
I felt the same way about the finals. The beta was amazing and i played it every day. It was just good fun. When the game released it was all meta builds and abusing every mechanic known to mankind.
Counterpoint: RoR1 was a 2d sidescroller
RoR2 over 6x as many copies as the others.
How so?
Snowballing
30/40min games where you’re unable to concede when loss is clear early on (causing other team mates to become stressed and rude). Games can sometimes be decided in 5 minutes yet there can potentially another half hour to go before you have a chance to requeue with different team mates.
One team mate’s mistake early on can lead to the opposing team snowballing and the rest of the team becomes toxic due to the first point.
The respawn timer increasing in length penalises the team further for being behind the enemy team, and the downtime as someone is waiting to spawn gives them time to type and be toxic. By mid-game, I’ve seen some players spend as much time waiting to respawn than they did playing.
Losing begets losing.
Macro and Meta
The volume of items leads there to be objectively better builds (and meta after each patch as items stats are changed) leads expectations on all team mates to follow that meta and know which build to play otherwise they get raged on.
Map awareness is more important that aiming and it takes the whole team to remain aware of the map for success.
The lack of transparency as to why a person is losing to another (item selection, ability upgrades etc) irritates players into feeling cheated.
Competitive
As a competitive game, players are trying to prove themselves yet, as a team game, individual performance can’t make up for a weak team thus rage. Competition drives emotion.
Note: I played Deadlock for about 15 to 20 matches but all the typical MOBA issues emerged within a couple of games, I’ve already bounced off of it.
There will never be a "Risk of Rain 3"Looks like the RoR IP belongs to Gearbox.
Don't get your hopes up. Apparently the latest RoR2 expansion was made by the new Gearbox crew and that didn't work out so well...
So just like other Valve projects, the third one is gone forever.
RIP this dev team, they can join Campo Santo in the "doing shit all" club.
Release a mediocre special hat effect animation to keep a dying, starving fanbase barely alive
