Deep Rock Galactic's Season 4 is just "mid", unfortunately. (In-Depth Review)
Grab a smart stout and get comfy, we've got a lot to cover.
Timestamps:
0:00 intro
2:15 epic gamer montage
🟢 Part 1: The Good Stuff
2:39 🟢 jetty boot (the game)
3:46 🟢 jet boots (the tool)
5:20 🟢 performance pass / cosmetic tree
6:16 🟢 improved input buffering
6:36 🟢 (most) balance changes
7:07 🟢 double barrel
7:50 🟢 snowball
8:29 🟢 plasma burster missiles
9:17 🟢 shield battery booster
9:54 🟢 misc good changes
10:55 🟡 Part 2: Nice Try...?
11:06 🟡 subata
12:10 🟡 neurotoxin payload
12:36 🟡 rocket barrage
14:47 🟡 randoweisser
18:34 🟡 septic spreader
21:17 🔴 Part 3: Needs Work
21:33 🔴 important disclaimer
22:55 🔴 corruptor
23:47 🔴 the corruptor is tedious.
29:11 🔴 the corruptor is ambiguous.
32:39 🔴 the corruptor is underwhelming.
34:58 🔴 RNG corruptor spawns is lazy design.
36:06 🔴 misc corruptor issues
37:37 🔴 lithophage outbreak warning
40:37 🔴 contagion spikes
43:09 🔴 why rockpox feels bad to fight now
45:07 🔴 new rockpox variants
49:06 🔴 button mashing is bad design
50:11 🔴 stingtail
50:43 🔴 the stingtail is too lethal.
52:56 🔴 the stingtail is too tanky.
54:09 🔴 the stingtail is too sneaky.
55:35 🔴 stingtail suggestions
59:35 🔴 season 4 feels like the "wrong" kind of challenge.
1:00:10 decontaminator dlc
1:02:46 a message to GSG
1:04:28 the end.
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'
You know what would be awesome? That the contagion spikes give you some crafting minerals of that biome, i think that would make more players that are grinding for materials to go for infection missions
^ this
^that
Or on the point made in video, that the spikes should at least contain nitra and gold - it could make sence, as if the plaguehearts where expanding their reach and pulling in minerals for their growth
Lithophage Outbreak already has +50% hazard bonus which multiplies gold, experience *and* crafting materials. For reference Shield Disruption and Elite Threat only give +30% I do agree that it's far less satisfying than collectin Korlok sharts or plague hearts so I wouldn't blame anyone for glancing over the honky ass numbers in the end screen
@@mrvandal131 I would have structured plaguehearts and data cells to be valuable inherently past their seasons. Buy appropriately themed cosmetics and past season rewards with those currencies.
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.
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 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.
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
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
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.
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.
@@AutisticBiceps 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.
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 👍
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
The fuckin dev was about to complaint about the septic spreader 😭😭 he didn’t want to hurt his coworkers feelings 😭😭
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! :)
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.
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
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.
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.
You make videos of exceptional quality, all the way from overall design to the video composition, very good!
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.
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.
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!"
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.
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.
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.
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.
The here’s a few ideas to improve the stingtail “no more stingtail!” That was so ruthlessly intentional ha
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.)
About the stingtail: I sometimes struggle at haz 4, I can't imagine what you go through at haz 5. But regardless of the balance problem, it's just an annoying enemy to deal with, same goes for the corruptor, the spreader is kinda fair, your suggestions are pretty good though: it'd be nice to have a practical way of countering its area denial.
I literally uninstalled DRG after spending nearly 1K hours in the game because of the stingtail. AFAIK I was the first person to claim solo completion of an EDD on DRG's subreddit. Been playing since 2018. Solo Haz5 has become a nightmare for me, a stressfull experience that's now unfun to me, just because of that single gameplay addition.
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
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.
Tell me that the name "CRITICAL corruption" doesnt imply something massive and game changing: Like maybe a new 1 hit terrain biome inside a sleeping leviathan bug that rockpox is slowly infecting, and with a new mission type where the corruptor is souped up to be a new rockpox boss, not some random encounter! Or maybe we go to another space rig thats been hit by a pox meteor, mission control mentions that in passing and u can find it in some terminal messages - imagine exploring a space station consumed by rockpox inside of caves consumed by rockpox! Sure u cant drill metal in DRG, but have rockpox permeating everything and im sure aesthetics-wise using terrain carving tools like drills, pickaxes & c4 would make sense That would leave the new glyphid enemies, that are Hoxxes' response to the infection, for season 5 - where GSG could really dig into it, not just TWO new enemies (as fun as they may be)! Imagine new bosses besides glyphid ones, some shit like "mactera flying fortress", or "qronar juggernaut" or "cave leech kraken" or some boss spitballer, all with special attacks and arenas to spice up elimination missions! Im probably underestimating massively but i feel like the updates in season 4 could b comparable to the updates that they churned out before the whole season thing, like every couple of months, as opposed to with every season every 5-7 months! If i didnt know better, and you said to me that the stuff in season 4 was a mid season content drop during season 3, i wouldnt have batted an eyelid - talk about "theming their updates" (Im assuming that the board game and DRG: Survivor are sucking manpower and resouces away from the main game)
Great video but i think decontaminator is one of the best frameworks they've added
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!
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
Most shows don't have more than 10 seasons because they run out of ideas, not because it's a bad show now. The devs might just be running out of ideas because the game is pretty much perfect the way it is.
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
Personally, I would love if the stingtail would be weak to power attacks similar to an oppressor.
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?
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.
you speak 100% out of my heart. im lvl 1100 on console, had no prob to get 400-600 levels on each season pass. i just loved the game so much. here i am. season pass lvl 35. it has come to a point where rock pox annoyed me so much that it took out every thing i enjoyed in that game. at least u pc gamer have some very nice QoL mods i really wish i could put my hands on, would improve my game exp. a lot. sadly this ll never happen. i was praying they would rework the mods, or maybe a bit more creative and introduce eg. something like an artifact like in destiny (it gives u special power but also goes away after the season). and i thought: it doesnt matter how bad the season is, at least i finally have movement options as gunner i never had before (i thought the air shoes would be permanent and also avaiable 100%). after i got my reality check, i ordered one last black out scout beer, farted one more time , dancing to one last song. see u in season 5 , hopefully !
Rip right there with you. After I switched from PS to PC, I would still try to finish the battle pass on both platforms. This season I can't be bothered to do it all over again on PS with no mods.
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.
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
Personally I like to think the Jetty Boot game is a CAPCHA for the jet boots. Any dwarf can access it with a simple series of inputs, but the Rivals wouldn't be able to, because flappy bird is clearly an impenetrable security system. It's a mix of a joke and a real security purpose.
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
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
Great video, love the editing especially I would say I’m a new-ish player, having played since Christmas 2022, I overall have a pretty positive view of the season, but I remember being kind of disappointed with how little there was after hearing that the first 3 seasons added new weapons and was expecting a bunch of new content. In hindsight, I don’t think *new* stuff is the best thing, as that could add bloat down the line, but maybe improvements to some overlooked sections of the game, the biggest thing I can think of are perks.
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
Been playing A LOT! I agree with everything. Haz5 stingtails are way to broken. When climbing walls after grabbing you it doesnt pull you half the time but shoot you straight up to die from fall damage. They have to nerf the fall damage at least 80-90ish percent
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 KZhead career goes far.
Appreciate the support and kind words!
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!
My biggest gripe has been with the new enemy types, as I personally like the contagion spikes, I think they would be pretty fun without the rockpox being a constant annoyance. If I look back at when I started(season 3), the leeches and grabbers gave me genuine spooks and are fun to play around in missions. The new disabling/displacing enemy, the stingtail, fires constantly, feels tankier than a grunt guard(IDK if thats the names, but the ones that put their front legs up like shields when running at you), and has a generally worse effect when hit than the other 2 disabling enemies. I sometimes play league of legends(sorry not sorry, I only play casually with friends), and the worst new additions to the game are characters that feel like they have an intended "best combo" as their default way of attacking. This reminds me a lot of the stingtail, which is meant to pull you, probably deal fall dmg, probably into some other melee enemies, and also into it's head spikes, which seems to damage the player on touch (or it just melee's you like frame 1). I really do think that if they want to stick with the current new additions and not vault them or something for new ones(which I personally would want), they just need to dial things back for all of the new enemies. Stingtail yoinks people like half as often at LEAST, and its slower so players can actually react to it, and also make it way less tanky, because why is a disabling enemy tankier than a grunt? sceptic spitter should fire way less often, seeing as it has a damaging AOE that cant be countered, and it's range should be fixed so you dont have to go hitch-hiking to find it on a hilly terrain mission. The boss guy, harold, should move way less, be tied down to a certain area(like a disabled contagion spike, it wouldnt be able to path a certain distance from the spike), make it's attacks more telegraphed, and just a personal gripe because I find it annoying, WHY DOES IT LEAVE ROCKPOX SPIKES THAT DEAL LIKE 1/4 OF YOUR HP ON THE GROUND? Kiting enemies, the new sceptic spitter, previous enemy hazards(praetorian death farts, goo bomber juice, etc.) is already a lot of things to look out for and avoid, and adding a pretty hard to see, heavy hitting floor hazard is really sucky. Also, after hearing about the idea for breaking it's tail I'm 1000% for it, and it would make the fight with it way more fun. The easiest to hit and most important part of the stingtail SHOULD be it's weakpoint, and being able to one tap one with a revo on crit weakness would completely forgive the warcrimes that it's committed when I try to rez teammates.
Really good point about the "horror" element of leeches and grabbers, it's kind of a "less is more" design philosophy that lets suspense build for the player. The stingtail is just so cracked and attacks so often that it doesn't elicit the same emotions from the player.
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?
100% with you with the Corruptor spawn chance. I got through 13 levels of the pass and coutless BET-Cs, Tyrant Weeds and even a Data rack before encountering one. To me this speaks mostly about how diluted the pool of random encounters is becoming. All new in-mission content added since Industrial Sabotage fits into that category (save for the Rival Threat and Corruption warnings), and while I recognize it's a good way to naturally blend in new content into DRG's gameplay loop, GSG has kinda been relying on it too much lately. Not only it sucks to play for potentially hours before getting to see the new additions, this system also heavily reduces the chances of older seasonlal content to appear, and that's a pity because it's stuff that the devs have worked on (and I still enjoy) that's now being thrown to the wayside. Feels kind of wasteful
That is true overall I think gsg have a great live service model but its just not filled and relies WAY too much on rng just in general throughout entire game there is way too much rng.
But even if you get the old season event spawns you get nothing from it but a bit of XP. Not even a crumb of current season performance points (or even just some crafting materials) ultimately making them feel less engaging than if just current season events were to spawn. Often i see pubs just completely ignore season 1 and 2 events if they do spawn and i can not fault them for that in the slightest
Another issue with the bloated random encounters is that I must imagine it becomes even more confusing to newer players, the later they start playing. I kinda had this issue when I tried getting into Path of Exile a few months ago, which has so many seasonal endgame events added throughout the years. Sure, they make the game really fun for longtime players, but my group of friends kinda just got overwhelmed by them all and didn't know what to do and we stopped playing not long after that.
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
There is a little bit of counterplay with the stingtail as a driller. Just like drilling a spitball infector's projectiles, you can block the stingtail's attack. Assuming you're the host or have good ping that is.
I do agree with pretty much all of this as I feel recent updates have been designed with game mechanics specifically made to annoy you during matches. Robots with their super quick hard to shoot movement, the caretaker being the most painful mission by far imo, and now rock-pox with the constant button mashing and contradicting designs. I do love this game I have hundreds of hours and I still very much enjoy these updates, just a bit suprised with the designs decisions made. And overall for season 4 all the content feels very rare to actually find in game, like you said corruptors and jet boots just take too long to find and dont effect most matches and honestly the new rock pox enemies dont add much to the contagion spikes either. The only thing that feels really significant that effect matches are the two new enemies which I overall like but I do agree with your feedback on them. Although pretty much the only thing I disagree with is your take on the randoweisser because from what I can tell you play relatively competitively on haz 5 mostly so of course a random loadout is not going to work but most people play more casually on haz 3 or 4 and a random loadout is a lot of fun in those cases as its not as necessary to get a min maxed build. And making it so the randoweisser gives you a more synergistic loadout so that its more viable in higher haz I feel does not make much sense as that loadout will never be as good as a loadout you could custom make. So in the end, the randoweisser is a meme beer and that's ok, its a casual one off beer for when you want a challenge. This is of course my opinion I am not saying that you are wrong.
Great video Cannot imagine how long it took to edit
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.
Great video! I like season 4 overall, but you make a lot of really good suggestions. Really cool cinematography, too. I'm curious about how you did two things: 1) How did you get the camera to smoothly rotate around a point in space? 2) How'd you make that black/bedrock sandbox-like area?
I dont mind the corrupter fight but I hate the stingtail. It would be fine if it had less HP/Armor but it takes so much work to kill.
It was not only these issues, but as the seasons keep releasing its getting increasingly more difficult to run the game as a whole on my pc. It used to run perfectly. but now it's so bad this season made me leave the game :/
With your suggested change to the tools for cleaning the rock pox, I honestly hope that maybe GSG could implement a way to fight rockpox bugs with the foam. I think it'd be more interesting than just wasting all your bullets trying to pop some boils on a reskinned bug. Otherwise, there's just no real way to deal with a swarm of rockpox enemies without wasting all your AOE to kill just a fraction of them.
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.
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.
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.
Great video, definitely valid points, agree. Also, can I see the list of mods you use?
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
Guaranteeing jetboots alongside every corruptor fight would be a good call. It'd be like bet-c, where the random miniboss initially makes things harder, but gives you a unique powerup when you're finished with it.
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.
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
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.
I do agree with most of the criticisms here, though I haven't found myself enjoying the game any less just because the core is so fun. I do that they will add some new overclocks for existing weapons, as I find that experimentation the most fun part of the game. At this point I think that they should add a new way of unlocking the old battlepass cosmetics, as otherwise the collecting will take too long.
Rockpox bugs would be like zombies, right? So maybe they should be much slower than normal variants, but when they burst theres a small meter that fills on nearby normal enemies that when filled could turn them into Rockpox zombies too.
iirc the dreads slam has a similar effect to the corrupters slam, there will be similar small rock particles before it slams alongside the scream audio, although visually the dreadnoughts attack is also much better choreographed. might be entirely wrong and insane though
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!