RiskyMod feedback

[MeatMorning]

First of all, allow me to introduce myself. I’m MeatMorning, and I used to be a co-creator of CVO, a balance overhaul mod for Deep Rock Galactic, so I’m fully aware how hard and time consuming it is to make overhauls and balance on such a scale. For a reference: those are the links to the changelogs and explanations why we’ve made each change https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z2Q6HRbABIeIFJWWe1am2FJ26FDWKTdAHAK-tuEfqY0/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TdPtTDgauz1orTwVddEBtPNrgguhq2HlMziyjESobag/edit#

Regarding ROR2, I’m used to “fix” gamedesign faults and fails via mods (a lot of them) while making the game overall harder to myself. For a record, any of my mod profile always use: tropical storm (-7.5% to all stats at the start of the game with no compensation), experience and gold multiplier (x0.6 gold gained), proc chain disable (almost all items have proc coef. equal to 0), custom spawn chance for interactibles (x0.75 total amount of interactibles to prevent getting too many items per stage). You’ve done a massive job, and me and my Deep Rock band are really interested to see where it will end up.

1. Ally scaling: You’ve made a massive oversight – at some point your allies become immortal because HP scaling is faster than damage scaling. E.g. stage 10 monsoon Mithrix deals 1/5 squid turrets’ HP with his hammer attack , Voidling can’t break through Empathy core probe”s shield and so on. All allies' health scaling must be adjusted down.

2. Scythe, pauldron and harpoon. Currently, all 3 items are OP and have gamebreaking potential on their own. One of the stated main goals of mod is to prevent autoplay, but combination of these 3 is the autoplay but from a different angle. What’s happening in vanilla - kill some small enemy - it procs Will-o-Wisp - proc chain kills everything else. What’s happening in mod - kill some small enemy - get your damage doubled - kill a group of enemies - get your buffs prolonged - kill everything else due to tripled damage (pauldron buff). Do you see - result is the same but with 1 extra step - you need to keep killing monsters (something you gonna do regardless). And unlike vanilla where you need to have a lot of different items to kill everything on sight, current implementation requires only 2 items: scythe and pauldron Smaller buffs with longer duration are much easier to balance because they won’t have such volatile chain reactions capabilities. I propose the following changes: Scythe: +5% crit chance on kill (stackable) 5 seconds duration (+3 per stack) Pauldron: +5% attack speed and movement speed per kill (stackable), 5 seconds duration (+ 3 per stack) Harpoon - movement speed buff 125% -> 50%. Each suggestion provides huge combat benefits when killing large groups of enemies, but small impact of each individual buff won’t allow to explode everything right after the first kill.

That’s few issues I’ve managed to find after playing exclusively riskymod (both solo and coop) for whole day. Really like character changes (especially acrid and commando - your ideas are much better then vanilla both design and implementation vise) I’m going to test more mechanics and changes, especially concerning difficulty scaling (does it scale fast enough) and difficulty at different points of a game (early game in particular). I’m open to discuss balance and design choices at any time. MeatMorning#6024

[wheeshkurs]

Just adding to this:

Many changes, when isolated, feel very good. In conjunction, however, they can contribute to On-Kill balance issues.

• Lower enemy HP (from difficulty scaling changes) makes it easier for players to satisfy the condition. Generally allows for much more uptime on those effects.
  • EliteReworks' changes to tankiness could play a part in this?
• Faster spawnrates unintentionally exacerbates this. Because there (seems to be?) more active enemies at any given moment, On-Kill & AOE are active more often.
  • The mob density allows players to hit more enemies w/ AOE effects. Seems to offset the removal of range scaling from item stacking w/ how easy it is to get multikills against tightly packed groups.
    • Makes items that were already strong (i.e. Bands, Wisp, etc.) even more impactful.
    • During TP events, this can sometimes get out of hand with how many enemies spawn. Frame drops when dozens of enemies die at once to On-Kill domino effect.
• Certain survivor changes are too strong in conjunction with aforementioned points:
  • Changes to "Slayer" interaction w/ items makes Bandit's strength skyrocket when considering innate crit synergy, high mobility, good proc, low CDs, and permanent On-Kill DMG buff.
    • Sidenote: do you think Persistent Desperado might benefit from scaling similar to your Infusion implementation? :o Or is it good where it stands?
  • Acrid's alt. passive is thematically fitting, but is a bit strong when Epidemic can proc items (on tick too, I think?). Spreading on death just lets him have his very own "proc chain". There's little reason to run DoT duration passive.

Wisp, Scythe, and Pauldron have stuck out as the run-changers across the mod's updates. These items could probably use some limitations on how much their effects stack/how often they activate, especially with Forgive Me Please absurdity.

Some directions to take these could be . . .

• Basic time cooldown
• Basic stack cap (Predatory treatment)
• Recharging charges (Shuriken treatment)
• "Killing X enemies in Y second(s)" (consecutive kills)
  • The reason it feels weird w/ Pauldron is the sudden leaps in atk+move speed. Maybe multikill conditions coupled w/ some sort of cooldown would feel OK on items that don't affect self stats?
• "Enemies affected are granted X second(s) of immunity to the effect" (like Aetherium's Nail Bomb)
• "Every activation causes the next to require X more kills" (like Infusion buff)
  • could reset each stage if too weak?

Was originally going to include this with other feedback in a seperate post, but MeatMorning explained the issue quite well!

[Moffein]

Thanks for the in-depth feedback!

• Ally Scaling Good point, I missed the discrepancy between their health scaling and enemy damage scaling. I'll be adjusting it.

• Scythes I've definitely felt Scythe is in a weird spot right now. Increased duration and having it only give crit chance instead of guaranteed crits seems interesting, I'll be trying this out, along with capping its max stacks as you mentioned.

• Pauldron This item went through a few different iterations in this mod. Originally, it had capped max buff stacks but would reset duration on each trigger. This led to it being too easy to keep active, so it got changed to the current version where there's unlimited buff stacks but no duration reset.

• Harpoons I need more time to get a better feel for where these stand. As of now, I'm not too concerned about them since kills only reset the duration of the buff and it doesn't affect damage output.

• Wisps/Mob Density I'll keep this in mind, will take a look at it in a later update.

• Bandit I think the Slayer changes are fine with the default Passive, but make Desperado and the alt Special scale really hard with it. Making Desperado scale like Infusion sounds interesting. Alternate approach could be to lock Slayer to the default passive, but I'm not sure if that would be too much.

• Acrid Admittedly most of my testing with him was done using his default passive, so I'm not as clear on the current standing of his alt passive. What you're saying makes sense, so I'll be taking a look at it. To confirm, Epidemic procs with 0.5 proc coefficient on every tick.

For the next update, I'll try to get in the Scythe/Pauldron changes since they don't require much work to implement.

[breadguy69]

I agree with a lot of this feedback, and I think that Pauldron and Harpoon would be fine with simple duration nerfs (3+2ish seconds per stack for pauldron, and maybe 2+1 seconds per stack for harpoon). Scythe might need some more significant changes, idk I haven't gotten it enough to say.

Also, like you mentioned in your patch notes, shield gating is likely too strong with the OSP buff and the new items like Opal and Safer Spaces (which I think are just kind of OP in their own right); makes it really hard to die with just a few items. In the same vein, I think blind pest damage got hit too hard. 30 damage might be too much (though I didn't think they were so bad after the ignite bug got fixed), but 12 feels too little.

Btw, brittle crown's new vanilla functionality causes it to have no downside. You only lose gold when an enemy hits you and steals it, but you get all the gold that they hold back when you kill them anyway, so you don't actually lose anything. Idk if hopoo is going to fix it, but I figured I'd mentioned it since you've done some BC changes already.

I don't have any feedback on survivor changes since I've basically only been playing railgunner since the DLC release, but you mentioned that she has no CC in your changelog. IMO her specials are plenty of CC since they're wide and pierce and pretty much instakill anything. Plus lining enemies up for a good overcharge is really satisfying. If anything, she's too strong, but idk what I'd do about that since nerfing any of her kit would just make her less fun. She's got major loader syndrome, but i think your band and atg nerfs and such are good

[Moffein]

I've definitely noticed that post-DLC RiskyMod is a lot harder to die in compared to pre-DLC (and compared to current Vanilla). I'm still trying to figure out the specifics of how to address this, as the items that enable this (Opal/SS) are DLC items that people aren't guaranteed to have. I have a suspicion that part of this may also be caused by the changed spawn pools, which include a lot more weak trash enemies on most maps, but I can't say I'm 100% certain about it.

I'd like to keep shieldgating in since I like the dynamic it adds where it's possible to clutch even when you don't have much healing items, but at the same time it enables 'win harder' gameplay when you do have good healing. I'll need to get more playtime in to figure out a proper solution.

I was originally planning to give Blind Pests 15 damage, which is the same as Wisps if all 3 shots hit (uncommon due to the spread), but I ended up going with 12 because when compared to a Lemurian, they're objectively better in most aspects (faster projectile, less telegraphed attack, flying), with their only downside being a slightly slower fire rate. I might consider revisiting their damage later, since defensive item mechanics are skewing how things play right now.

Wasn't aware of the new Brittle Crown functionality. Don't have plans to touch it as of now, but I'll keep this in mind for later.

[breadguy69]

I have a couple more items of feedback after playing some more:

• I think ATG would be okay with a 0.5 proc coef since it has a low, unstacking proc chance and is a single target attack. It won't be sending off major proc chains like multihit/aoe items do (eg. willowisp, thorns, disciple, fireworks). Also, for some characters' loadouts, its their only way to proc bands outside of resonance disc.

• Now that H3AD-5T scales damage per stack, I don't think there's a need for it to reduce recharge time per stack. Also internal cooldown is just a strange thing to stack IMO, it has low stack effectiveness and feels unintuitive.

• Guillotine feels weak currently, though I think it just needs some number buffs.

• Volcanic Egg might be too good. It got quite a bit of buffs with your mod, and though I do like the buffs, all of them at once feels too strong to me. The ignite/stun explosion is definitely the coolest change IMO.

• Now that Crowbar has a damage minimum to proc to avoid being ruined by small hits, it doesn't fit a different enough niche from bands for me. I think the vanilla functionality of a health threshold damage buff can actually work, but the vanilla numbers make the proc condition too restrictive, requiring an OP damage buff to compensate. A damage nerf to 50-60% per stack and a threshold decrease to 80% health for the vanilla item would make it's effect less potent, but easier to utilize without getting ruined by allies or accidental chip damage(as a white item should be IMO).

• I know you haven't touched these items yet, but Shustice and Death Mark would probably be better if they stacked debuff strength instead of debuff duration. Also might be improved if they had a different proc condition, but I wouldn't really know what to change other than stuff people have already done (eg. justice proccing on >500% damage attacks, or deathmark stacking damage increase per debuff).

• In the same vein of avoiding duration stacking debuff items that feel ineffective after a stack or two, I had a Chronobauble idea: Having the debuff strength scale with enemy missing health down to 0%. Eg. "Debuffs enemy movement speed, attack speed, (and cooldown recharge speed?) by up to 30% (+30% per stack, logarithmically) based on enemy missing health. Lasts 2 seconds."

• Lastly, I feel as though I gain gold extremely fast. I end up with more gold than I can spend in the time it takes me just to explore in the early stages, and will often finish a stage one tp event at 6ish minutes with 600ish gold and no chests left. This is somewhat remedied by turning off the SceneDirector monster rewards config option, but I figured I'd mention it anyway. Also might be different in co-op, I haven't tested with more than two people.

[Moffein]

• I'm pretty against giving AtGs proc coefficients precisely because it changes the band activation threshold. While some characters have no way to activate Bands if they choose certain loadouts, that can be resolved by picking up equipments that can. The only thing I'd consider adding procs to is Ukulele/Meathooks. I tested with that early-on but came to the conclusion that it ended up resulting in a similar autoplay situation to Vanilla.

• Been meaning to remove the H3AD-5T cooldown scaling after I added the damage scaling per stack. I'll likely make it handled via a cleansable debuff for consistency with other cooldown-based items.

• I can take a look at Guillotine's stacking. 30% per stack at the very least would be fine I'd imagine, since it's conditional. The item inherently will have diminishing returns on stacking since there's only so much effectiveness to finishing off low HP enemies, but I think that's fine for a Green multiplicative damage boost item.

• I'll play around with Egg a bit to get a feel for it. My current impression of it is that it's useful but doesn't reach the same level of always-take as some of the other equipment items, so I'm not too concerned about it.

• Main challenge with scaling debuff strength is that the game isn't designed to keep track of who applied each debuff, which adds a whole lot of extra overhead to attempting something like that. On the subject of Shattering Justice, I'm considering turning it into a damage bonus or something like that so that it doesn't anti-synergize with Scorpion (due to diminishing returns of armor reduction). The 5-hit activation condition of Shattering Justice is pretty unique and I like that part of it.

• Bauble debuff strength scaling based on missing health sounds interesting, though the same issue of scaling debuff strength that was mentioned previously remains.

• I'll need to take a look at the gold/director spawn functions sometime. The current values are the result of eyeballing to try to get similar values to vanilla, but I'd like to redo it with a more mathematical approach.

[breadguy69]

Aye I didn't think about the debuff stacking in MP, and had the same thought about Justice and Symbiote which is partly why I considered the Justice proc condition change. Fair enough point about everything else, cheers

[gaforb]

Having played with the changes in the recent update, I think Scythe's healing feels a bit lost with all the other on-kill effects like brooch and monster tooth - I'd suggest moving the regen to a buff that stays up as long as you're landing criticals, and maybe reduce the amount it heals for a bit to compensate. Altogether it would be something like:

Gain 5% Critical Strike Chance, plus an additional 10% chance for 4s when you kill an enemy, up to 30% (+20% per stack). Critical Strikes increase your base health regeneration by 3hp/s (+1hp/s) for 4s.

For changes to Chronobauble, Shattering Justice and Death Mark I think there's probably ways around that by having the buffs themselves stack. Take an example for Death Mark:

Enemies with 3 or more unique debuffs are marked for death, increasing damage taken by 30% (+20% per stack) from all sources for 5 seconds.

In this case, if player A has 1 stack of death mark and player B has 3 (and we assume the enemy has 3 other debuffs), then player A hitting it would apply 1 stack of Death Mark. If Player B then hit the enemy, it would apply 3 stacks, overwriting the original stack for a total of 3 stacks. Player A hitting the enemy again would now refresh the duration of all three stacks, but wouldn't add any more stacks.

Chronobauble could be like so:

Slow enemies on hit for -60% movement speed for 3s. Enemies slowed this way also lose attack speed equal to 25% (+25% per stack) of their slow.

In this case, the movement slow just checks for any stacks of the buff, while the attack slow checks for each stack of the buff.

Scorpion does kind of invalidate shattering justice, especially since the 5 hits already required some amount of attack speed and in most cases scorpion will be more effective after only a few seconds. Maybe having justice apply the armor debuff in an AOE explosion could make it more distinct and better at handling crowds of fodder, where scorpion can continue excelling at higher health targets that have time for the debuff to build up.

Hitting an enemy 5 times in quick succession Shatters them, reducing the armor of all enemies within 8m (+4m per stack) by 60 for 8s

As a red I think having range scaling is acceptable, especially since the effect won't stack if applied multiple times. A a hidden buff, I think item stacks should also increase the time it takes for buildup stacks to wear off, to make it easier for slower-hitting characters to land all 5 hits in some edge cases. Ideally this would only cause the shatter explosion when 5 buildup stacks become the full shattered debuff to prevent it going off constantly on already shattered enemies, but this would prevent triggering it again to refresh the duration so some testing might need to be done to see how it feels. Maybe just have further hits refresh the full debuff on individual enemies?

[wheeshkurs]

Small notes & lower priorities:

• Item Proc Coefficients Bug? Shuriken, Egocentrism, & N'kuhana retain their vanilla values. (just in case they weren't intentionally kept)

• Engi - Pressure Mines Config Bug Tooltip is still changed when set to false.

• Re: Density & AOE Walking back on my earlier mention of Will-o'-the-Wisps. The item itself feels fine, further nerfs would just make CC worse for some survivors. Concerns had more to do with the amount of low cost, low HP enemies on some stages. Since you're planning to look at spawn pools & role overlap, disregard those concerns towards AOE items. Sorry!

• Lepton Daisy

  • Added Lepton effect is fine, if you really had to leave it as-is. For parity w/ Warbanner, could at least allow it to activate during Mithrix/Voidling somehow.
  • If ever revisited, the 2nd effect shouldn't be locked to holdouts. Hard to compare to other green healing items, when Seed is always active & Scythe provides more than just regen. To retain Lepton's burst heal identity, tying a 2nd small heal to a predictable condition like time intervals might be interesting?

• AtG Should orb change be reflected in tooltip? The procs lost probably wouldn't make or break a run, but is still a consideration. Could be less restrictive to avoid overlap w/ Bands threshold.

• Bandit - Rack Em Up Have always felt the camera motion was jarring for how often you use this skill. If so, is it possible for the Screen Shake Scale setting to affect this? Not really a balance issue. Don't know if this affects how its spread's handled, but lowering the intensity would be appreciated. Understand if it's too much of a hassle to change.

Thanks again!