Hello Reclaimers,
Back again with your monthly bulletin! Today we’ll be taking an in-depth look at the new Mission Map and Intel progression path, as they’ve been a big focus for the past few weeks. This blog will be a bit longer and wordier than the other ones, so now’s a good time to find your reading glasses.
But before we get into that, let’s talk about The Case of the Missing Playtest.
What about that next playtest?
When last month’s Dev Diary came out we estimated it’d be three weeks until Playtest 04. As you may have noticed, those three weeks came and went. It’s taken a bit longer to get to a point where we’re ready to open things up for feedback.
The new plan for the next playtest (and next round of Closed Alpha invites) is early November, which is to say next week. Right now we’re polishing what we’ve got and fixing as many bugs as we can. When Playtest 04 launches we’ll invite another couple thousand people in via random Steam selection – but just to set expectations, individual odds of getting picked for this are still low.
We know there are a lot of eager folks itching to give Rogue Core a spin, and we’re very glad for your interest and your patience. Thanks for giving us the time and space to cook.
Q&A: Digging into the Mission Map and Intel system
We’ve mentioned that we’ve been busy with the new Mission Map and Intel system, and that they’re pretty important for the rest of the game. But we haven’t really taken the time to explain to everybody why it’s important, or how it all works. So here’s a Q&A interview with Mike, Lead Game Designer, to break it down.
As always, we should mention that everything discussed below is still a work in progress.
Any game features and screenshots shown here are not final versions and are still subject to change.
What spurred a rework of the Mission Map? What’s new with this one?
[Mike]: So the fundamentals are similar to what we’ve got in Deep Rock Galactic. Players select missions on a rotation timer, with the option to choose attributes like mission length, cave complexity and difficulty level. But with Rogue Core we wanted to evolve from DRG’s flat 2D interface, and make this new Mission Map a living 3D model – to make it feel like you’re actually interacting with the hologram you see projected at the terminal.* That’s made it a lot more involved in terms of art direction.
As we’re putting it together, we’ve had to make sure we get that cool hologram aesthetic while still making it functional. It needs to be easy to visually distinguish between different biomes, to select different mission options, stuff like that. We want the cool factor, we want all the functionality, but we don’t want it to be overwhelming.
Reworking the mission map has also made us think about some other important fundamentals, like how people progress through the game from the start, and how you unlock and experience new stuff. That’s why we made the Intel system as part of the Mission Map.
*Editor’s note: We are enabling unprecedented degrees of orb pondering
Screenshot of the current version of the Mission Map. You can't see it here, but the globe is 3D and animated, and you can spin it around and explore different depths.
What is Intel?
[Mike]: It’s how you progress through the game. You get Intel points for completing certain milestones, and that’s how you unlock content. When you gather Intel for OMEGA, you are granted higher Security Clearance levels. This is what allows you to access new biomes, new cave lengths and mission difficulties, and interact with new events and equipment down in the mine sites. Intel works in tandem with the Enhancement tree, where Enhancements make the player stronger, and Intel balances this by unlocking stuff that makes the game harder.
You don’t always need to successfully complete a facility to get Intel, either. You just need to live long enough to complete certain tasks. Compared to DRG, Rogue Core’s game design will likely mean people failing more often, so we also wanted to make failure less punishing than in DRG. You’ll still get experience for as far as you managed to get, and will still progress in your Enhancements and your Intel. There’s no score penalty for failed missions like in DRG.
We’ve got some new terms here: Intel, Security Clearance, Depth, Enhancements. What do these mean?
[Mike]: Intel we just discussed, it’s the points you earn to unlock new content. Those bring you through different Security Clearance levels – these are basically milestones of progressing through the game. You need certain levels of Clearance to access grenades at the start of the run, activate Expenite Events and other stuff in the mines, or play on certain biomes and depth levels.
Depth is Rogue Core’s difficulty level (think ‘Hazard’ from DRG). At higher Clearance Levels you’re allowed to go deeper down toward the Core, where things are getting weirder and more spicy.
Enhancements are player upgrades that make you stronger and boost your survivability. All Reclaimer share this Enhancement tree to unlock and experiment with, but each Reclaimer has unique Enhancement slots.
You’ve mentioned game progression a couple times. How does that factor in here?
[Mike]: One big feedback point from our earliest playtests was that the game was super overwhelming at the start. We essentially threw you into the deep end, and you had to learn all these new game systems and mechanics while also dealing with a lot of tough enemies.
Part of this new Intel progression system is a response to that, so we introduce game mechanics piecemeal. It’s a sort of player onboarding. The idea is you progress smoothly until you run into game content that drops your success rate, at which point you visit the Enhancement tree to get a closer look at building strength and optimizing your build. An experienced player might breeze through a couple Clearance Levels right from the start, where a new player might take more time on it.
A lot of the Intel tasks don’t require that you complete an entire facility, so you won’t be stuck playing the same run over and over if you can’t beat it. You can progress to harder difficulties and new biomes and still earn Intel unlocks, even if you fail the run. We’d rather incentivize challenging yourself and failing at harder Depths rather than grinding easy ones.
So is this why we’ve had to push Playtest 04 a bit back?
[Mike]: It’s not the only reason we’ve been delaying Playtest 04. Character design, voice recording and implementation is also taking a lot of time, for example. But this is a big part. It’s taken a lot of work to get the art design balanced with proper functionality. Plus, the Mission Map intersects with some pretty big parts of the game: Difficulty levels, mission selection, content unlocks and game progression all funnel through this system, so there are a lot of moving parts that are up in the air until we get this sorted.
Putting this mission map together has also made us think about the player experience of game progression, and ‘beating’ Rogue Core. I wouldn’t say Rogue Core is going to have a distinct story arc, but compared to Deep Rock Galactic, I want to give players a more meaningful experience when they’ve progressed through this Intel system and beaten the game. We’ll of course have an end-game experience, but I also want to design a point where if you’re not the type to play a game forever, you dust your hands and move on. But if you do like that end-game grind, you can get it. We’ve got some cool ideas for this “final content” part, but I don’t want to share that just yet.
Editor's note, 31/10: Corrected a sentence to clarify that Reclaimers share the same Enhancement tree.
Mark your calendars: On the Horizon - November 13th
Before we go, an important announcement: on Thursday, November 13th we’ll be doing another On the Horizon broadcast. That’s our developer livestream series where we usually share some big news.
What’s the big news? You’ll have to tune in. Save the date and see you soon. 🙂
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/548430/view/521980066604781467?l=english
With love,
-The Ghost Ship Crew