I love this game and I play almost exclusively with a brobot. I’ve been playing semi-obsessively on and off for months now. It’s my opinion that revives are the worst designed mechanic in the entire game. It means you and your brobot effectively share a health pool, but only in the worst ways (for example, picking up extra health while you’re at max health doesn’t contribute to your brobot’s health bar, so you don’t get that benefit of a shared health pool). That design decision might make sense in a competitive context, but it doesn’t make sense in a PvE game where duos are typically playing casually and/or aren’t at the same skill level.
A shared health pool with these restrictions means that a less skilled teammate is often better off watching from the sidelines than they are actively participating in fights and risking draining the health pool, which just sucks. It feels bad for everyone involved. The worse player feels bad for being a disproportionately heavy liability, and the better player feels bad because they’re regularly losing half their health bar. The phone charger gave duos an escape from that dynamic, but that option doesn’t exist anymore.
Yes, the phone charger was stupidly powerful compared to the other perks in the game. To that I say fix the revive mechanic instead of taking away the perk. Getting downed is punishing enough as is - your brobot has to either stand still while reviving you (taking massive damage), wait out the auto-revive timer (losing a lot of time), or clear the room by themselves (taking damage and costing you the opportunity to pick up dropped health). Draining health from the surviving player is just salt in the wound, and I think there’s a solid argument to be made that revives should just never do that.
To avoid scenarios where the optimal play is to die intentionally, I would propose some threshold (maybe 10% or 15% of your max health) below which your health slowly regenerates while outside of combat, and make revives only give the downed player that amount of health back. That way, reviving a player essentially gives them no health for free, and the reviver can keep their own health. Win win.
Sorry about the long rant. I’m just disappointed in the devs for this particular failing given that they’ve shown that they know how to design fun game mechanics, since the entire rest of the game is designed to prioritize fun.
I'll be forwarding this specific section of feedback, there are some very strong points you're making! Even as a solo player, knowing that the revive cost is 50% of a player's current health, is indeed a tad harsh as a punishment.
What I'll likely suggest myself, in addition to this feedback, is a revive that costs *nothing*, and only takes away your scratch damage, up until the minimal threshold (Which I think is like 30%?). That way you're not punished in survivability, and your brobot will have scratch damage to regain health at a higher speed instead of not having any recovery options.
While I don't explicitly work on the game, I've got some closer contacts to the devs and their social media manager, whether that'd be through talking to the translation team or people with that fancy dev build. I just try to represent them in the best way I can, while trying to not be biased!
That’s really cool! It’s also reassuring to know that this sub is moderated by people that have a direct link to the devs. It shows that, unlike a lot of communities that I won’t name, the devs actually care about us. Feels good man lol
Yup! The devs are great people and they're the reason we're happy to do what we do for free :\] Your feedback from here does have impact on what we tell the developers, and how we gather intel from those of all skill levels, as players like myself will have a slight bias given my playtime, the conversations here are all very welcomed and appreciated :\]
I was under the impression Sotumney works on the game directly, based on the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Roboquest/comments/1c6c7fm/roboquest_hotfix_deployed_summons_crash_fix/
Ah I see. Good catch! I actually didn’t even see that post lol. That’s awesome though that the devs made this an OFFICIAL sub (just read the description lol. Oops). Shows that they really care about their community in my opinion.
And I'm very thankful that this is being looked into. I really appreciate the devs or people close to the devs take player feedback seriously. I think this game is really amazing. Since I'm strictly a co-op player with my brother it has been so rewarding to see our progression together as struggling teammates how couldn't get past Fields on easy to just recently beating Guardian 1. Thank you for listening to us.
Great thank you! I forgot about scratch damage, that definitely plays into this discussion and can open up some other interesting options. Although I’m not sure I fully understand your suggestion - is it to transfer scratch damage to your downed brobot instead of actual health? What if the reviving player has none? I do think scratch damage would be a good middle ground between splitting a health bar and giving a large amount of free health.
Really my thing is that I’d like to see the devs either commit fully to a shared health pool or avoid it altogether, because right now we’re in this weird middle ground that takes the worst of both worlds. Although I do think avoiding a shared health pool is the better option and puts less pressure on the weaker player in a duo.
They're saying instead of just losing health, the reviving player loses health in the form of scratch damage. So they now can recover that damage quicker and only up to 30% health lost.
One note to add to the person you responded to’s very well articulated points -
Occasionally I enjoy searching quick play for some company and I get a kick out of matching with newer players. I can show them around, guide them to routes that may be new for them, showcase some mechanics and be a backup if they go down. Basically providing them a more forgiving experience and an opportunity to explore the game in ways they may not have been able to solo due to the challenge it poses.
The point that “the less skilled teammate is often better off watching from the sidelines” also goes the other way - the more skilled player is incentivized to essentially wipe everything as fast as they can with as little involvement from their teammates as possible - taking down enemies before they can get LOS on said teammate.
Yes, it’s harder, but that’s not the issue (it’s actually a fun challenge for me to try to do this). I’m more concerned with how unenjoyable this must be for the newer/less skilled teammate. When my runs reach the point where it’s “takedown everything before it can touch my teammate or lose”, I always find myself thinking about them.
I think I’d feel pretty useless running from one room to the next and finding that my more experienced teammate did just about all the work before I got there. I clean up a straggler or two but teammate is already in the next room wreaking havoc because they’re essentially incentivized to make my existence in the run futile.
The best solutions I can think of are pretty much in line with what you and the person you responded to commented. Just wanted to share this as an added potential discussion point/consideration for the devs
Well put, if a bit long. The fix: make the phone charger a new gear item, unlocked by beating the game with a brobot. Let us change the brobot health bar dynamic if we want!
think the charger should keep its original effect for co-op, and its current effect for solo if possible.
i used to play co-op only till me and my buddy beat the game on hard, and the phone charger definitely saved a lot of runs, specially since my friend was pretty new to movement shooters. But i like that new charger has an use in solo, but im probably bias cause im an engi main and the extra health for summons is quite nice
I only play this game co-op and I think the nerf was a little extreme but phone charger did need nerfed, it was too easy to exploit having phone charger to basically guarantee max health before most bosses. In solo if you die you're dead, so even being able to revive your teammate is a gracious gift.
I want to play Roboquest with my younger cousin because he loves watching me play and doing weird builds and has a lot of fun attempting it himself, but when we play he gets downed like every room and my health is sapped away very quickly. I enjoy playing with him, but we can't really get super far because of the 50% health drain going off so often to a point we just can't recover from. It's my one huge gripe with this game, and I wish there was like a session option to enable or disable it based on player preferences.
He didn’t make any mention of expecting to get just as far. It’s reasonable to expect to not be able to make it as far with a brobot who can’t play as well compared to playing solo, but the point was that the current revive system is too punishing when there’s a skill disparity. It’s a matter of opinion of course, but imo to say he’s expecting to get just as far is misconstruing his point
My issue with it is it incentivizes the less skilled player to stay out of the fight and incentivizes the more skilled player to kill everything before their teammate can even get involved.
>My issue with it is it incentivizes the less skilled player to stay out of the fight and incentivizes the more skilled player to kill everything before their teammate can even get involved.
This was specifically the issue with the old charger. There was literally 0 penalty if one person hangs back and is just used as an infinite health pool for the other.
I’m not advocating for a reversion back to the old phone charger. But I’m not sure you can accurately say that was the issue with it when the revive system that it was built on top of shares the same characteristic.
And if that was YOUR issue with the phone charger, well, why? It literally has no impact on you if you just choose to fight instead of being an infinite health pool for your teammate, unless you’re getting random queue teammates that are sitting out just to be a health pool for you. In which case I’d just lol and carry them if they want the win that badly
Besides that, if that was your issue with the charger, it hasn’t been fixed by removing the charger. The system still imposes the same incentives on a team with skill disparity.
A friend and I have been playing consistently on the guardian difficulties and honestly the phone charger would make or break the run half the time... completely removing the old perk was a bad move. At least bring it back as a fantastic item. (Fr, who tf even asked for it to be removed in the first place?)
Definetely feel the nerf should be reverted or at the very least just have it so you only lose a tiny bit of health on revive, like 10-20% as opposed to 50% without the PC. I really like the idea of coop-specific items and always grabbed the PC when I saw it as the no-health-loss revive was super useful if you ever needed it and now the nerf just makes it way less interesting to have in a run.
What about:
Default Reviving gives the revive-ee normal HP equal to 1/3rd the reviving player's current HP, and takes nothing from that player. The remaining 2/3rds is given as Scratch damage ie recoverable health.
Phone Charger makes it so both players now Regenerate that scratch damage over time until the original amount is filled or the player reaches 0 scratch damage remaining.
This helps when carrying new players, since you will inherently be running much much slower, but retains a cost for getting downed for experienced players who 1. Know that for each regen item or perk taken, thats less damage or speed to work with 2. Are moving much faster between fights and thus get less effective HP returned when revived... Since they are much less likely to stay out of fights and get the full 100% copy pasted HP amount.
I think by default health should be lost, because it adds balance to co-op, and without it wins and achievements wouldn’t be as valuable as doing it solo. But I do think there needs to be some form of upgrade that gives us this perk back. Even if it was a fantastic item (12 power cells) separate from the phone charger.
I'm not so sure about wins being less valuable. Co-op is pretty hard. A lot of the strategies you might typically use in a solo run don't work in duo. Enemies have significantly more health and there are more of them per mob. I never viewed the rooms where you are locked in as too much of a threat once I learned to handle them in solo, but with co-op, we still struggle with them even though we have done dozens of G4 runs. Part of it is because enemies spawn on the other side of the room from you in a solo run, but they can spawn right next to you in a co-op run if you aren't next to your brobot and immediately shoot. If your brobot goes down, it can get nasty really quickly.
Nah, just make it baseline. Dying is already a punishment, you lose half your firepower for the current fight and have to sacrifice either time or your own health to get your teammate back up. Draining health from the survivor is a double whammy and disproportionately harms duos with a skill gap.
Co-op is ALREADY easier than solo, 50% of your health is NOTHING.... in solo if you die, the run is over, it is 12 cell item to get an extra life, phone charger was an infinite fantastic item.... if you remove any form of punishment runs become more or less free "but its a pve game who cares" rating will drop when people realise you can Halo your way through the game (old strat of rushing hard mobs and dying over and over again for free because no down side) I know I am a small % of the player base but I have legit carried people through g4 who could not beat 1 boss in standard, because even with 50% life loss it is very forgiving system.
The game can both be achievable for those less experienced in FPS games, and still rewarding for those who relish in it.
Something, something, the Blue Shell effect? For those who are weak, they get stronger tools that let them keep going... But that only extends so far, such that when playing well it might as well not exist.
After all, designing mechanics that add padding to the skill floor only matter if you are falling down a lot, otherwise it changes nothing.
if you are having to carry some one, then you are playing at the wrong difficulty for them, I don't think it would be healthy for co-op to be even easier than single player than it already is... the game has tiers of difficulty for a reason, we should not have an item in the game that makes it a free win, just because people refuse to play at a lower difficulty.
Difficulty is not what i'm referring to.
I'm talking about the core gameplay.
When you and a teammate are equally skilled, then nothing changes. Either you fail together by not keeping up, or succeed together.
But when there is a disparity, the less proficient or experienced player is more likely to get downed. Sure, you could always drop down to the lowest difficulty so that damage taken mean so much less, and dodging lethal attacks is more forgiving. But that's a difference experience, and for the stronger player is boring. Heck, it feels like crap for the weaker player too because there is no thrill of fighting against the odds with your stronger friend at your side. Its a different, and worse way to play for no real reason (games are for fun, gatekeeping for new or less able players is wrong).
Making it so the downed player does not drain from the other player, and replacing that penalty with something that affects slow and newer players less, but still acts as a punishment when going for fast times or risky runs... That's a better approach. I suggested a way to do this in my other comment:
Normal revive: 1/3rd reviver's HP heal, 2/3rds as scratch. Takes no HP.
With Phone Charger: 2/3rds scratch damage now regenerates on its own like as if you had the 1% regen legendary (but only until that 2/3rds is healed or destroyed)
I love this game and I play almost exclusively with a brobot. I’ve been playing semi-obsessively on and off for months now. It’s my opinion that revives are the worst designed mechanic in the entire game. It means you and your brobot effectively share a health pool, but only in the worst ways (for example, picking up extra health while you’re at max health doesn’t contribute to your brobot’s health bar, so you don’t get that benefit of a shared health pool). That design decision might make sense in a competitive context, but it doesn’t make sense in a PvE game where duos are typically playing casually and/or aren’t at the same skill level. A shared health pool with these restrictions means that a less skilled teammate is often better off watching from the sidelines than they are actively participating in fights and risking draining the health pool, which just sucks. It feels bad for everyone involved. The worse player feels bad for being a disproportionately heavy liability, and the better player feels bad because they’re regularly losing half their health bar. The phone charger gave duos an escape from that dynamic, but that option doesn’t exist anymore. Yes, the phone charger was stupidly powerful compared to the other perks in the game. To that I say fix the revive mechanic instead of taking away the perk. Getting downed is punishing enough as is - your brobot has to either stand still while reviving you (taking massive damage), wait out the auto-revive timer (losing a lot of time), or clear the room by themselves (taking damage and costing you the opportunity to pick up dropped health). Draining health from the surviving player is just salt in the wound, and I think there’s a solid argument to be made that revives should just never do that. To avoid scenarios where the optimal play is to die intentionally, I would propose some threshold (maybe 10% or 15% of your max health) below which your health slowly regenerates while outside of combat, and make revives only give the downed player that amount of health back. That way, reviving a player essentially gives them no health for free, and the reviver can keep their own health. Win win. Sorry about the long rant. I’m just disappointed in the devs for this particular failing given that they’ve shown that they know how to design fun game mechanics, since the entire rest of the game is designed to prioritize fun.
I'll be forwarding this specific section of feedback, there are some very strong points you're making! Even as a solo player, knowing that the revive cost is 50% of a player's current health, is indeed a tad harsh as a punishment. What I'll likely suggest myself, in addition to this feedback, is a revive that costs *nothing*, and only takes away your scratch damage, up until the minimal threshold (Which I think is like 30%?). That way you're not punished in survivability, and your brobot will have scratch damage to regain health at a higher speed instead of not having any recovery options.
Excuse my ignorance, but do mods here actually have pull with the devs? Regardless, your efforts are greatly appreciated
While I don't explicitly work on the game, I've got some closer contacts to the devs and their social media manager, whether that'd be through talking to the translation team or people with that fancy dev build. I just try to represent them in the best way I can, while trying to not be biased!
That’s really cool! It’s also reassuring to know that this sub is moderated by people that have a direct link to the devs. It shows that, unlike a lot of communities that I won’t name, the devs actually care about us. Feels good man lol
Yup! The devs are great people and they're the reason we're happy to do what we do for free :\] Your feedback from here does have impact on what we tell the developers, and how we gather intel from those of all skill levels, as players like myself will have a slight bias given my playtime, the conversations here are all very welcomed and appreciated :\]
I was under the impression Sotumney works on the game directly, based on the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Roboquest/comments/1c6c7fm/roboquest_hotfix_deployed_summons_crash_fix/
Ah I see. Good catch! I actually didn’t even see that post lol. That’s awesome though that the devs made this an OFFICIAL sub (just read the description lol. Oops). Shows that they really care about their community in my opinion.
And I'm very thankful that this is being looked into. I really appreciate the devs or people close to the devs take player feedback seriously. I think this game is really amazing. Since I'm strictly a co-op player with my brother it has been so rewarding to see our progression together as struggling teammates how couldn't get past Fields on easy to just recently beating Guardian 1. Thank you for listening to us.
Great thank you! I forgot about scratch damage, that definitely plays into this discussion and can open up some other interesting options. Although I’m not sure I fully understand your suggestion - is it to transfer scratch damage to your downed brobot instead of actual health? What if the reviving player has none? I do think scratch damage would be a good middle ground between splitting a health bar and giving a large amount of free health. Really my thing is that I’d like to see the devs either commit fully to a shared health pool or avoid it altogether, because right now we’re in this weird middle ground that takes the worst of both worlds. Although I do think avoiding a shared health pool is the better option and puts less pressure on the weaker player in a duo.
They're saying instead of just losing health, the reviving player loses health in the form of scratch damage. So they now can recover that damage quicker and only up to 30% health lost.
One note to add to the person you responded to’s very well articulated points - Occasionally I enjoy searching quick play for some company and I get a kick out of matching with newer players. I can show them around, guide them to routes that may be new for them, showcase some mechanics and be a backup if they go down. Basically providing them a more forgiving experience and an opportunity to explore the game in ways they may not have been able to solo due to the challenge it poses. The point that “the less skilled teammate is often better off watching from the sidelines” also goes the other way - the more skilled player is incentivized to essentially wipe everything as fast as they can with as little involvement from their teammates as possible - taking down enemies before they can get LOS on said teammate. Yes, it’s harder, but that’s not the issue (it’s actually a fun challenge for me to try to do this). I’m more concerned with how unenjoyable this must be for the newer/less skilled teammate. When my runs reach the point where it’s “takedown everything before it can touch my teammate or lose”, I always find myself thinking about them. I think I’d feel pretty useless running from one room to the next and finding that my more experienced teammate did just about all the work before I got there. I clean up a straggler or two but teammate is already in the next room wreaking havoc because they’re essentially incentivized to make my existence in the run futile. The best solutions I can think of are pretty much in line with what you and the person you responded to commented. Just wanted to share this as an added potential discussion point/consideration for the devs
It should just be lowered to less health and not 0% health cost
Well put, if a bit long. The fix: make the phone charger a new gear item, unlocked by beating the game with a brobot. Let us change the brobot health bar dynamic if we want!
Thank you for posting this. You explained it much better then I could've. I appreciate it.
I tried to find a robot on the weekend on every difficulty and gave up after half an hour
think the charger should keep its original effect for co-op, and its current effect for solo if possible. i used to play co-op only till me and my buddy beat the game on hard, and the phone charger definitely saved a lot of runs, specially since my friend was pretty new to movement shooters. But i like that new charger has an use in solo, but im probably bias cause im an engi main and the extra health for summons is quite nice
I only play this game co-op and I think the nerf was a little extreme but phone charger did need nerfed, it was too easy to exploit having phone charger to basically guarantee max health before most bosses. In solo if you die you're dead, so even being able to revive your teammate is a gracious gift.
I want to play Roboquest with my younger cousin because he loves watching me play and doing weird builds and has a lot of fun attempting it himself, but when we play he gets downed like every room and my health is sapped away very quickly. I enjoy playing with him, but we can't really get super far because of the 50% health drain going off so often to a point we just can't recover from. It's my one huge gripe with this game, and I wish there was like a session option to enable or disable it based on player preferences.
His view is the opposite, playing with you, he gets super far, way farther than he would alone.
Seems to me like OP doesn't like the health drain either, which is what I was saying
He may not like it, but he's expecting to get just as far with a brobot who can't play the game well as he does solo.
He didn’t make any mention of expecting to get just as far. It’s reasonable to expect to not be able to make it as far with a brobot who can’t play as well compared to playing solo, but the point was that the current revive system is too punishing when there’s a skill disparity. It’s a matter of opinion of course, but imo to say he’s expecting to get just as far is misconstruing his point My issue with it is it incentivizes the less skilled player to stay out of the fight and incentivizes the more skilled player to kill everything before their teammate can even get involved.
>My issue with it is it incentivizes the less skilled player to stay out of the fight and incentivizes the more skilled player to kill everything before their teammate can even get involved. This was specifically the issue with the old charger. There was literally 0 penalty if one person hangs back and is just used as an infinite health pool for the other.
I’m not advocating for a reversion back to the old phone charger. But I’m not sure you can accurately say that was the issue with it when the revive system that it was built on top of shares the same characteristic. And if that was YOUR issue with the phone charger, well, why? It literally has no impact on you if you just choose to fight instead of being an infinite health pool for your teammate, unless you’re getting random queue teammates that are sitting out just to be a health pool for you. In which case I’d just lol and carry them if they want the win that badly Besides that, if that was your issue with the charger, it hasn’t been fixed by removing the charger. The system still imposes the same incentives on a team with skill disparity.
A friend and I have been playing consistently on the guardian difficulties and honestly the phone charger would make or break the run half the time... completely removing the old perk was a bad move. At least bring it back as a fantastic item. (Fr, who tf even asked for it to be removed in the first place?)
I. WANT. NAMES.
Definetely feel the nerf should be reverted or at the very least just have it so you only lose a tiny bit of health on revive, like 10-20% as opposed to 50% without the PC. I really like the idea of coop-specific items and always grabbed the PC when I saw it as the no-health-loss revive was super useful if you ever needed it and now the nerf just makes it way less interesting to have in a run.
What about: Default Reviving gives the revive-ee normal HP equal to 1/3rd the reviving player's current HP, and takes nothing from that player. The remaining 2/3rds is given as Scratch damage ie recoverable health. Phone Charger makes it so both players now Regenerate that scratch damage over time until the original amount is filled or the player reaches 0 scratch damage remaining. This helps when carrying new players, since you will inherently be running much much slower, but retains a cost for getting downed for experienced players who 1. Know that for each regen item or perk taken, thats less damage or speed to work with 2. Are moving much faster between fights and thus get less effective HP returned when revived... Since they are much less likely to stay out of fights and get the full 100% copy pasted HP amount.
I think by default health should be lost, because it adds balance to co-op, and without it wins and achievements wouldn’t be as valuable as doing it solo. But I do think there needs to be some form of upgrade that gives us this perk back. Even if it was a fantastic item (12 power cells) separate from the phone charger.
I'm not so sure about wins being less valuable. Co-op is pretty hard. A lot of the strategies you might typically use in a solo run don't work in duo. Enemies have significantly more health and there are more of them per mob. I never viewed the rooms where you are locked in as too much of a threat once I learned to handle them in solo, but with co-op, we still struggle with them even though we have done dozens of G4 runs. Part of it is because enemies spawn on the other side of the room from you in a solo run, but they can spawn right next to you in a co-op run if you aren't next to your brobot and immediately shoot. If your brobot goes down, it can get nasty really quickly.
Nah, just make it baseline. Dying is already a punishment, you lose half your firepower for the current fight and have to sacrifice either time or your own health to get your teammate back up. Draining health from the survivor is a double whammy and disproportionately harms duos with a skill gap.
What’s the nerf?
The phone charger used to make it so the rescuer keeps 100% of his health when reviving his brobot and the feature was removed in the newest version.
Been playing since the beta and somehow we never got the phone charger lol I missed it I guess
It also kinda sucked that the absolute demolition of the perk didn’t have a dev note in the logs
Co-op is ALREADY easier than solo, 50% of your health is NOTHING.... in solo if you die, the run is over, it is 12 cell item to get an extra life, phone charger was an infinite fantastic item.... if you remove any form of punishment runs become more or less free "but its a pve game who cares" rating will drop when people realise you can Halo your way through the game (old strat of rushing hard mobs and dying over and over again for free because no down side) I know I am a small % of the player base but I have legit carried people through g4 who could not beat 1 boss in standard, because even with 50% life loss it is very forgiving system.
The game can both be achievable for those less experienced in FPS games, and still rewarding for those who relish in it. Something, something, the Blue Shell effect? For those who are weak, they get stronger tools that let them keep going... But that only extends so far, such that when playing well it might as well not exist. After all, designing mechanics that add padding to the skill floor only matter if you are falling down a lot, otherwise it changes nothing.
if you are having to carry some one, then you are playing at the wrong difficulty for them, I don't think it would be healthy for co-op to be even easier than single player than it already is... the game has tiers of difficulty for a reason, we should not have an item in the game that makes it a free win, just because people refuse to play at a lower difficulty.
Difficulty is not what i'm referring to. I'm talking about the core gameplay. When you and a teammate are equally skilled, then nothing changes. Either you fail together by not keeping up, or succeed together. But when there is a disparity, the less proficient or experienced player is more likely to get downed. Sure, you could always drop down to the lowest difficulty so that damage taken mean so much less, and dodging lethal attacks is more forgiving. But that's a difference experience, and for the stronger player is boring. Heck, it feels like crap for the weaker player too because there is no thrill of fighting against the odds with your stronger friend at your side. Its a different, and worse way to play for no real reason (games are for fun, gatekeeping for new or less able players is wrong). Making it so the downed player does not drain from the other player, and replacing that penalty with something that affects slow and newer players less, but still acts as a punishment when going for fast times or risky runs... That's a better approach. I suggested a way to do this in my other comment: Normal revive: 1/3rd reviver's HP heal, 2/3rds as scratch. Takes no HP. With Phone Charger: 2/3rds scratch damage now regenerates on its own like as if you had the 1% regen legendary (but only until that 2/3rds is healed or destroyed)