Jared Design Lead

On the 10th of March 2023 Lead designer for Rogue Company Jared Sanchez held an Ask Me Anything for the weekend on the Rogue Company Subreddit. The following is the results of the AMA broken down on the 13th to make easier to read. We hope you enjoy the breakdown and look forward to you visiting the rest of the site.

Ask Me Anything
Hello Friends,
Firstly I would like to apologize on behalf of the team in regards to all of the issues that many of you are facing with the new release. We were pretty devastated ourselves by what has been going on and have worked hard to put out a hotfix this morning. Let me know if you guys are continuing to see issues.
So lets get into it:
Unfortunately, I haven’t been nearly as active in here as I should. Things have been rather busy and we’ve been working hard on both current and future releases. Candidly, Reddit is a bit more involved in comparison to Discord or Twitter(where I can respond actively on the fly and they have good notification tools), at least more so than I am able to maintain as equally. I apologize for that.
I do want to work with the Reddit community as you are all just as passionate as us devs and the other community hubs. My time away and the time between patches have seem to have shaken faith, trust and dehumanized interactions and perspectives. So let’s fix that.
In this post, I want you to hit me with feedback and questions and today I’ll do my best to answer as many as possible, no question goes unanswered. You guys deserve at least that much respect and deserved to be heard. We are all here in this community because we love the game, so being able to have good, civil and healthy conversations is important.
 
I’ll kick off with a question that I’m sure some of you have:
“Where and how in the hell did you arrive at these design decisions?”
With this question I’m assuming it’s in regards to some of the changes(Weapons) that have been challenging for us and a part of our community. When I was approached by leadership and the former design lead(whom I’ve worked with for the entirety of RoCo and then some), to take on the responsibility: my first step was to have discussions on what we should do for RoCo to keep it growing, thriving and be the long lasting game it deserves to be. We love RoCo dearly and we want it to succeed.
Talking with Scott, Brad, other former designers, die-hard devs who play everyday, the community, looking at months/years of data and so on. The one big thing that we landed on and wanted to address in the game was depth and identity. Our intentions were to always have characters to have strong identities and our weapons to give unique playstyles. Over the years that intention had gotten muddied as we had struggled to really clarify what our game’s core was to be about(was it tactical? was it casual/arcade-y? what is our game?). It was time to start working towards that direction and it’s going to be difficult.
Change like this is a scary thing to do and something that we attempted at solving previously but didn’t succeed(Speed/Toughness comes to mind). It’s scary because it challenges player comfort zones and forces players endure the turbulence and having to adapt to changes. Candidly, RoCo was sitting relatively untended to for a long time and the core had stagnated. The Will that I carry on from our previous leads was to fix this core and put RoCo on SOME KIND of direction that would bring back our original desire of having depth and identity(and thus, variety) in our game.
These aren’t easy or frivolous decisions to make, they are very hard and carry a lot of weight. As such, we look at the weight of data, how our players are responding to the changes and how we respond to the changes as well. All game studios do this, we are just way more transparent of our intentions and how the sausage is made.
I have been and will continue to be clear and transparent with our decisions for RoCo.
All you have to do is ask.
Discussions can and should be had.
Maybe newer/better solutions spring from it?
Or we make compromises.
This is a joint effort so ask away and give me feedback directly.
So, what are your questions? 🙂
All questions from the Rogue Company subreddit will appear in these gray boxes.
All answers from The Rogue Company Lead Designer, Jared will appear in these blue boxes.
Back in 2021 Hi-Rez said that a new co-op game in the RoCo universe will release in 2022, but nothing has been announced yet. Is there any info on that?
I love the new random old season music playlist change and was wondering if we will get an option to change to a specific lobby music, rather than a random one, in a future update? (also add the alpha lobby music pls)
Will we get any more short event passes like the current one between big seasons or this is an exception?
Any plans on adding another Arms dealer event to the game?
No info at the time, if ever we want to do a PVE part of our game, I would desperately want to fix our AI behavior first. The bots are a bit subar atm(exception being Seeker Bot, he’s cracked).
Music Selector? Yes, in a future release! I also want to listen to my favorite track all the time.
Event passes are the new norm. 35 rewards every 6 weeks instead of 50 every 12.
Maybe, I definitely value more narrative events first though, need to finish the story arc!
Personally feel event passes should be 8 weeks at least, more time for the average salaryman/woman who have little grinding time yeah?
Hope you understand this as a fellow corporate slave
totally understand that, however we are locked in on having event passes go live for major patches which run 6 week cycles. This corpo slave needs to go with the whims of his superiors on that one I’m afraid 🙁
Can you disable matchmaking in Practice Strikeout though? At my wits end and about to join the game crashers and dashboarders since it obviously works for them.
Still don’t understand why there’s mm for practice modes it makes no sense. It should be like the training range, instant join, no MM
That one is more of a technical constraint. I can talk to some people and figure out why that is, could be just a simple matter of “it’s a universal set up, can’t change it without changing all” Game dev be like that sometimes :/
Are there any options for emoting during the mvp screen? And I really love ROCO, thanks for ‘saving-the-day’ lol
Also sorry if it’s been asked before.
We used to be able to do this when we were developing the feature. I’ll see what I can do!
First, and thank you for doing this! I appreciate your engaging with the community.
I know matchmaking is on the list already, but I had one match yesterday where every single teammate on both teams stayed and had over 3000 damage in a five round Strikeout match. IT WAS GLORIOUS! It feels like magic that it happened, but matches like that remind me why I love this game. Having an experience close to that most days would be just chef’s kiss.
A suggestion, can we get a melee only mode? Or melee and limited gadgets at least? Bludgeoning someone with a sledgehammer in this game is a true joy. 😂
Can we get “play ranked games” out of Daily’s? Solo que’r here and I hate the wait times and it’s matchmaking seems even more spotty.
Can you fix STD? I understand taking a life from the team you’re helping, but it’s a crazy disadvantage to be spawned with only a pistol and your ability on cooldown. I get wanting to get us into the action right away, but it’ll take me less than 5 seconds in the shop and if you’re already taking a life, at least let me spawn in fresh with everything ready to contribute and you know, save the day.
Thanks again Jared!
Lmao, I do want to introduce fun arcade-y BS modes like that. Or gun game? Ctf? Who knows? Quickplay is a good queue for it, I feel.
I’ve heard that a couple of times, I can look into removing that from the pool. Ideally our dailies should be a bit more simple.
We are definitely looking at improving our logic around reconnects and mid-match joining(which is the core of the issues you’re encountering). I do want to make sure our heroes are decked out ready to kick ass.
With Strikeout being the more popular mode, is it possible to have 6vs6 strikeout and/or 6vs6 koth implemented in the near future?
And thanks for the Q&A. Reddit can be very “blunt” to put it nicely, overly negative really so keep that in mind with the responses. Takes thick skin and wouldn’t take everything to the heart so to speak. Some just lashing out because they care and want the project to succeed.
“Some just lashing out because they care and want the project to succeed.”
^ this is the most important point I always keep in mind. Devs and Players are in this together, we both want to succeed and make an awesome game!
To answer your question: Yes! In a future release I’ll want to have more 6v6 modes available on rotation. I was always a personal fan of 6v6 KOTH!
Have you ever thought of doing 5 man. I feel like that could be a happy medium.
We’ve done that before in the past but didn’t quite click. But we are happy to revisit it.
Will we ever get kill quips back to the way they used to be? I miss hearing “Weak like American drink” 😔
First Blood and Multi-kill Quips are coming back! I wanted them back and worked with our audio designer to get em hooked back up.
First of all thanks for this and the communication! I’m a fan of the game and play regularly but more focused on the competitive side of it. When I’m playing Elos, custom games or private tourneys I’m having a great times and the matches are thrilling and awesome. Until the servers give up, lag kicks in, shots don’t register, claymores/barb wire disappear… you name it. Basically what I’m saying is please focus on fixing bugs and server issues and implement a proper ranked system. Fixers passive, Skins for seeker, and what skins come in the pass shouldn’t be priority for now. After fixing bugs and servers there game needs proper marketing (or support the streamer (Elvyn) who host tourneys with prices like bucks or skin codes) and advertise the comp side as well. This game has enormous potential Jared! Please do something with it.
Absolutely, my team is constantly working to address the issues you listed. It’ll take a bit.
Our team is comprised of many disciplines and skillsets. Programmers, Operations and backend devs are highly focused and equipped to deal with those problems.
Designers like my team and I, are not. Instead, we turn our focus on continuing to support and balance the gameplay while our other devs work on their responsibilities.
Thanks for coming out, appreciated! Short answers would do:
Do you think cheating is a significant problem in this game?
Did the dev team shrink or expand in January?
Cheating IS a problem, one that we contend with every day and they do get their comeuppance. The nature of cheating is very loud and very impactful, no matter how small the actual # of incidences are.
The Dev team did see a headcount shift, the industry at large(you could look to many other big game studios) encountered tough times.
Do you guys plan on returning mythic skins to the event passes?
Yes! I want mythics on all of my guns! Just hang in there!
This might seem like a small one, but will the STD music bug ever get fixed? Every single time I have to turn off music because it keeps playing throughout the match and it’s been this way for many seasons, every STD game only.
Definitely a known issue and something that we’ll look to fix when we can
First of all thank you for opening a communication line to hear our feedback and try to answer our questions. Much appreciated.
I think many of my questions have already been asked and answered. 🙂
But i have 1 question about PC Xbox Controller and 2 questions about the streamers (behavior) that support and play this game on live stream or recorded videos that they share publicly on YouTube, Twitch and other platforms.
1st – Is there a way that your system could “force” the streamers (TTV and YT) to play with our player name incognito? What i mean is they record/stream videos of their game (with several other normal players) and publicly share it in many platforms without our consent and with our name visible in game and in the score board.
I usually would have no problem with that but i have assisted some streamers being extremely toxic, offensive, calling names, humiliating, simply degrading other players publicly and i do not think that is very nice. Be it because they get a more unexperienced player in their team or they kill very easily another player and then just start joking or offending that player.
Everyone should be able to play a game to have fun without having to watch in a recorded video being offended or joked about the way they play.
I think there is an option in other games (i think paladin) to not show the name of other players if you are a streamer so i was wondering if you could do that for RoCo.
2nd – Also, as many of TTV and YT streamers are always complaining about playing with/against new/unexperienced players maybe would be a good idea to make an option matchmaking queue only for those “pro”/very experienced players. Like a competitive pro queue only for streamers/expert players.
3rd – I play in a PC but i use a PC PC Xbox Controller and i have no possibility in applying aim assist. I chose it but it does not work. Is that only applicable on console or should the system recognize i am using PC Xbox Controller an so allow me to use aim assist?
Thank you 🙂
Sounds like you want a “streamer mode” for anonymity right? I get that, it’s on my list
Weird, you should have Aim Assist on PC when using a controller. What kind of controller are you using specifically? Like what kind of hardware exactly?
Jared, I know it’s something small but a lot of my other questions have already been answered from you responding to other comments. When you nerfed the S12Tactical’s range why didn’t you change the Mastery Milestone to down enemies beyond 15m which is now impossible due to the range.
Sounds like an admitted miss on my part friend. That change definitely makes that milestone harder. I’ll do an audit on our milestones and see what I can do!
When players complain about guns not working well or voice opinions on things, it feels awful to be told by a representative of the game that they’re wrong because “I still shred with this gun and get 3000 downs per game with SMGs”
How hard is it to make every gun feel like it’s viable? Ideally every gun would be able to be used in some scenarios, but it feels like some guns are just objectively better than others in all scenarios so why would you ever use the weaker ones? Both within a class and currently the way SMGs can get outclassed by ARs up close and obviously at range. I want to be able to play different guns without feeling like I’m putting myself at a disadvantage
My personal opinion is that when you as devs pick up that something is OP, you hit it a bit too hard with a nerf hammer. For example, the HRM getting nerfed in every possible way all at once. Why can’t you nerf it slightly and then see the stats, rather than leaving it being OP for ages and then completely overhauling it. Makes it feel unrecognisable. Same with SMGs, why not make smaller changes to test the waters of making the worse at range, rather than more falloff, horrible bloom, smaller mags etc
Why can’t Scorch throw Rosie? How am I supposed to get thrown melee downs with Scorch? (I joke). I appreciate the communication and am 1000% more willing to put up with frustrations when you are open and communicate with us about what’s happening. All the best, and don’t let the toxic people keep you quiet. I’ve seen it happen in other games where the community is toxic and then the devs don’t communicate anymore. Thank you.
If the implication that was had from my casual twitter postings of my scoreboards is “you’re wrong” then I sincerely apologize. That was not my intention and I agree, it’s a bad look. People can feel how they feel about something, good or bad.
Short answer: it’s difficult. Because what we change here will affect things over there and vice versa. I think every weapon should have a place in which they cater to distinct playstyles and behaviors. There’ll be growing pains to get there as we are seeing with the SMG AR conflict at close range
I can understand you feel that way. Some of the changes were of the global adjustments on ARs to not stomp in SMG ranges, others were more of balancing it against the other ARs. I’m sure you would feel different if the HRM was needing a buff and I paired that with the global adjustments. Refer to #2 about your SMG sentiments, additionally they’re getting one more global bump on base accuracy and fall off ranges in the next update
Lmao, a rocket punch would be pretty rad. I appreciate your feedback and I know change can be challenging. We’re working on this together and we’ll get to a good place.
I’ll keep mine short & sweet :D!
Any new changes to ranked? mainly for matchmaking & rewards? if so you able to give any details or hints? or will you guys be doing a showcase to explain maybe?
I’m very excited for the rewards for 3.2 ranked, all I can say we’re hitting a good point of “these are awesome rewards” than we ever did before. At some point I’d like to do a vid on it when we are closer to the launch date 🙂
How does the matchmaking system work? I feel as if it intentionally gives a team of players with good stats that one player who has about half or even a quarter of their abilities to play. It feels intentional, even if it might not be.
Could we see a melee rework? I think it could be cool to see a power swing, with each melee having its own unique one. Melees now feel somewhat jank. Sometimes you’ll lunge and hit them but not kill them, I’ll throw melees that miss and still kill people, things like that. I love melee but if you like identity, power swings could do that.
Will we ever see new interactives in maps? Things like tutorial turrets that shoot, breakable surfaces (in maps other than Breach) and possibly elevators? I feel like a map with these unique features could provide new opportunities for players.
Does bulletproof make any difference in the amount of bullets it takes to kill? If so, I think the difference for rare, epic and legendary is negligible, if not non-existent. Maybe they could be buffed on the condition of an increased price.
Could we ever see legacy battle passes? And legacy events?
Still no quite equipped to answer MM questions, it’ll take a bit before I can make time for that.
Potentially, I do want our melee functioning better and your suggestion is neat. We’ll see what we can manage.
I do like interactables.
They can make some difference of requiring that one more shot from an AR which can mean life or death. I’m keeping an eye on things since we’ve removed speed/toughness.
Legacy stuff: not at this time.
Thanks for the clear comms! Firstly me and my friends used to love this game, used to love squading up and playing, grinding for nova it was so fun. But after a year with no major changes or updates it became stale and we moved away but we keep 1 eye on news about the game.
We really enjoyed the ranked game mode as it felt more challenging but unfortunately the que times were often far too long.
Is a zombie mode in the works and does it have a rough eta? As a coop zombie mode similar to old school cod games is something that would definitely bring us back to the game.
I definitely want to address the stagnation issue. RoCo deserves more fun stuff for our players to do and grind on.
No ETA on PVE stuff, I want to get our bots in order first before I even consider anything like that.
My only question to you, not about bugs or guns…..but, do you see there being more worthwhile rewards for MVP breadwinners? I.E – Like maybe an MVP badge/calling card or title that shows the current number of wins…MVP skins with the number of MVP wins, MVP Gun wraps etc, MVP poses or specific dances unlocked by achieveing a certain amount of MVPs.
Ofcourse those are just examples as I’m no Dev and wouldn’t comprehend the technical juice required to make it work, but yeah – any chance of MVPs being rewarded more than just a snapshot at the end of a match?
Thanks man and yes I want to look at making MVP more rewarding
I remember there was Canals map in the game, will it ever return?
Canals will return later this year new and improved!
Hi Jared, thanks for posting here.
I haven’t had time to read through all the questions and answers yet so I apologize if any are repeats or were answered elsewhere (feel free to skip answering those) but I wanted to toss out some questions from my gameplay last night.
Ronin’s knife has been bugged for a long time when I shoot the enemy’s knife then run by it a second later and still die – is this being looked into?
How can Trench seemingly throw down infinite barbed wires, old ones don’t disappear.
Are you thinking about removing the cooldown on gadgets in 6v6? I liked it a lot better when the gadget cooldown was reset on death instead of a static cooldown.
What’s the rule on when you can forefeit? With the way matchmaking has been since this update, I feel most of my games are my team losing by 20-30, shouldn’t there be an option for us to surrender if it’s like 40-20? Right now I think someone has to leave before the option is available.
Does Anvil having two shields make sense?
I think Talon’s dart was better before it blinked like a landing strip, has there been any thought to removing the blinking but maybe keeping the notification that you’ve been revealed? I think the OG version of the dart was maybe a bit too advantageous but I think this weakens it quite a bit.
Has there been any thought into removing Glitch’s ability disabling gadgets map-wide? I think this was done for comp purposes because they could use it to find the location of people nearby, but having it destroy everything on the map seems ridiculous too.
Ronin knife – yep thats known and is on our big list of issues to fix
Hmm trench should have a total of 3 limit, if thats not happening let me know
we could reconsider tuning it if thats appropriate, but refreshing on death runs counter to our intent
For TDM I believe the surrender option kicks on at a 40 point diff
Yes, but will keep an eye on his frequency
Theres alot about Talon that we want to think about
Yeah, we want to probably take it in a different direction. Both versions of it have us thinking differently.
Is Wingman being made a permanent mode?
I adore it and it’ll at least be on rotation
Hello Jared, first of all thank you for doing this Q&A.
My question is very simple and you started answer it in your post :
“Over the years that intention had gotten muddied as we had struggled to really clarify what our game’s core was to be about(was it tactical? was it casual/arcade-y? what is our game?)”
So my question is the same as yours in this sentence,
What is Rogue Company ? And where do you want it to go ? More tactical “hardcore” gameplay or more of a “casual” shooting game ?
Thank you for your time.
The core of roco is defined by it’s rogues and the weapons they use. Each one should be paramount in their distinctive playstyles, strengths and weaknesses. It is a fast moving action-y third person shooter with tight mechanics. Game modes are a vehicle that can dictate how hardcore or casual the experience will be(think Halo’s BTB vs SWAT).
Is there a plan to give a “save-the-day” its own queue option?
As well can we please have a practice with no queue? Where you go in solo or with your party and everything is filled in with bots?
Candidly, if we had a “save-the-day” option(i.e. a player could opt in or out), how likely would you personally opt in?
I can look into the feasibility, what is the thought around wanting a solo-practice queue?
Can I have the option to turn off the hit effects and tracer rounds? These effects are like flashlights pointing to my eyes, and I tend to lose focus mid-fights.
I’ve heard this a couple of times so I’ll add this to our list
Why hasn’t there been a new 4v4 map in a whole year since Meltdown?
Why were Wanted/Palace/Meltdown created if they were never going to be added to Ranked Demolition?
Any chance on expanding Battlezone to 3 or 4 teams fighting in one match? Even if it means lowering the team sizes to 2 or 3? I feel like it could work on the bigger maps.
Ranked Wingman or Ranked Wingman Strikeout?
Maps take a long time and we are definitely looking at some ideas
Fair point, I’d like to talk to some more competitive players to see what they think! I’ll take your vote into consideration 😀
We’ve thought about it, need to find the right map for it. 2v2v2v2 seems fun!
Maybe!
I have two questions/suggestions.
Do you guys have any plans for new modes? I would love to see a VIP mode. Something like Guardian from Gears of War. Where the team can respawn as long as their VIP is alive.
Specifically Nintendo Switch. Some maps like Meltdown are subject to crash due to a lower frame rate. Would it be possible to give Switch players the option to lower the resolution or frame rate? Maybe 720p and/or 40 fps?
Again thank you for everything. RoCo is among my most played favorite games!
Yes!
Not sure but I can ask our engine team
Surrender button: Do devs feel the surrender button is in a good place? I started out playing 6v6tdm where the game hardly ever surrenders, but after forced cross play, I moved to strikeout where it seems like games Surrender for no reason at all and sometimes it’s hard to get in complete games, I’ve mentioned in other threads where it seems to be a mixed bag, but I get frustrated over the quitting, I’m curious how the devs see Surrender
It’s definitely in a weird place as what you’re experiencing is player-driven. We want to make surrender available in the circumstances where appropriate. But it seems like some players are a bit more trigger-happy in regards. :/ We’ll have to revisit this at some point.
Hiiiii when will you fix the shotgun issue? And maybe an idea sometimes I would love to give the enemy player of the match a heads up or good game, could a good Game button maybe be a thing but only positve ability to use. Maybe possible for giving everyone a thumb up or so cause it’s nice to tell someone they did good espeacilly when the board doesn’t show, cause sometimes the peopel stay back and give backup and you don’t see that so well on the board ❤️ I live the game pls make sure it doesn’t die ❤️❤️❤️
Elaborate on “shotgun issue”
I do like a Kudos feature, that’s neat! Being able to say GGs at least would be nice. Love the suggestion!
I think the “shotgun issue” is two fold… the Arbi is incredibly strong at range (one shots from 15+ meters) and range generally for all… they’re doing more damage at 30+ meters than smgs do and that feels weird.
Made some adjustments to the SKL6 in the next mid-patch. Let me know if this alleviates some of that.
So the backgrounds. You mentioned in the patch notes that you where gonna try to get music that we wanted to select? Are you able to get swappable backgrounds as well?
Backgrounds are a bit more complicated as we have to maintain only one due to performance concerns and game size. Limitations that we have to work around I’m afraid 🙁 that is a cool idea though
What metrics do you guys use to gather and gauge player feedback and responses to changes? Do you only base feedback off of reddit and discord? If for example people complain about a certain thing, how do you know if this is just a vocal minority that doesn’t represent the majority of the player base?
We talk with and observe Reddit, Twitter and Discord. We also compile and crunch on hard data that we pull every update. Lastly we talk to a large collective of content creators and TOs that have their own communities to get as much outreach as possible. Literally every change we do gets shown first to The Board members and many key creators that have large communities.
The combination of all of those things paint pictures of “is this a vocal minority? Is this trending positively/negatively? Is the sentiment backed by data?” It feeds into one big abstract formula to help drive our internal discussions and evaluations.
Can we get a ping counter with numbers? If possible also throw It on the scoreboard as well. When I get matched in another region It would be nice to know how much ping I’m getting vs other people
It’s definitely on my list!
I love this game and a big cosmetics. I haven’t had a lot of issues and don’t mind the changes. I don’t think I’ve ever been upset other than maybe anvil losing restock and been playing since beta.
can we get a second scroll wheel for emotes/sprays I have too many.
2)I wish this battle pass had a legendary gun skin and would love to see the love spread for legendaries, like the Sahara already had one from the Rambo bundle and the HRM has none. and then the Sahara got a second legendary skin. Can we get more legendaries?
3) Would love some gold(rarity) skins for more rogues. And is there even going to be legendary rogue skins when the more kills you get it changes the rouge
4) I think it would be dope if we could have different poses for the mvp screen
5) Hoover board and wing suit also need some rarity love too.
6) gun charms could be sick too.
The anvil choice was hard as I am also a long time Anvil main. I can’t let my player bias influence decisions :’)
Its on the list
Mythic gun skins will come, hang in there!
Thats a neat idea, serious tech needs to go with it, but I like it
Agreed
Right
They would be!
I love this game and a big cosmetics. I haven’t had a lot of issues and don’t mind the changes. I don’t think I’ve ever been upset other than maybe anvil losing restock and been playing since beta.
can we get a second scroll wheel for emotes/sprays I have too many.
2)I wish this battle pass had a legendary gun skin and would love to see the love spread for legendaries, like the Sahara already had one from the Rambo bundle and the HRM has none. and then the Sahara got a second legendary skin. Can we get more legendaries?
3) Would love some gold(rarity) skins for more rogues. And is there even going to be legendary rogue skins when the more kills you get it changes the rouge
4) I think it would be dope if we could have different poses for the mvp screen
5) Hoover board and wing suit also need some rarity love too.
6) gun charms could be sick too.
The anvil choice was hard as I am also a long time Anvil main. I can’t let my player bias influence decisions :’)
Its on the list
Mythic gun skins will come, hang in there!
Thats a neat idea, serious tech needs to go with it, but I like it
Agreed
Right
They would be!
Hope I’m not too late to the party after reading through the other stuff. I tend to give a lot of (perhaps needless) exposition, so I’ll try to bold the actual questions/relevant bits. Sorry about the quote boxes, if it makes it harder to parse or anything. Reddit didn’t agree with my breaks for some reason
Not so much as question as it is my main concern: matchmaking and servers. Dead horse, I know you know, you know we know you know. Been playing about 2.5 years now, so I’ve been through it. Servers Down emote represent. Matchmaking is rough, often feeling like a 1v4/1v3/2v3/2v4/etc, with wide, wild gaps in player skill on the same team, much less between teams. This is massively exacerbated, especially for me as of the late, by server issues. I can break my back and maybe carry an effective 1v3 or 1v4, but it is made infinitely harder and beyond infinitely more frustrating when I rubberband and toss my molly at the wall I’m using for cover, or walk off a roof and off the map, or teleport past the corner I was hoping to hide at, just standing there like I’m Anvil at the shooting range.
2. How do you feel about weapon passives? The Conviction has the passive of becoming more accurate as it fires. Do you think this type of thing could be implemented across the board, or at least more broadly? As the team explored weapon identity, I don’t doubt there will be some overlap, especially in the wider classes like SMGs and ARs. Passives, whether on all guns or just some, could help further push a weapon’s intended identity. That being said…
3. Better communication of in game mechanics. I was talking about this elsewhere in the thread with commenters. Weapons with higher headshot damage, like the Riptide and Knight, might currently hint at these things, they don’t really spell it out. If this would be too much to fit into a description in match store, maybe make the Weapons pages give more info. Longer descriptions or maybe just more stats/bars, like headshot damage, recoil, hipfire (is this Handling, or is that something else? I’ve never really known in any shooter I’ve played). This also goes for things like what defines a multikill, or damage over time. Yeah the latter is a grab since it’s somewhat obvious, but I’ve has to ask myself if Trench’s wires or Juke’s drone were considered DoT or were in fact separate instances.
4. Input methods. I don’t have much issues with forced crossplay. I get along without too much issue. My only real concern is how fast MnK can turn compared to most controller players. Makes you feel like a tank. The recent Throwing Axe meta has massively exacerbated this, at least for me. I don’t think separating MnK into their own queue would really be on the table for the devs, as it would chunk the PC base pretty hard, I’d imagine. This is more just a gripe I have as of late; I might just need to git gudder.
5. Separate rogue weapon wrap customization! Someone else said this, and I upvoted. Just wanted a more vocal tack on. Save the day, look good, get paid. Also, would it be possible to change the weapon a rogue carries at walk-in to change based on the weapon you set as your favored in the Arsenal?
6. Save the Day. I saw you commented on this aspect of it already, but joining in without getting to buy and no ability sucks. Also, I feel the starting cash should be adjusted based on number of rounds that have passed. It can be hard to save the day sometimes when you join in the third round with only $18k (not sure if that’s the right number off the top of my head). I’d kinda want there to be a way to scale it based on your average performance, too, on top of a baseline. But I’d imagine that is complicated to implement and would allow good players to snowball a bit.
I’m sure there’s more, and I’ll edit it in if I think of it before I see a response. Thanks for taking the time to touch base with us!
Ongoing efforts to improve them, you as the player have avenues to report server issues! Ingame and in our discord! Do your civic duty as we need as much data as we can get!
I am looking at things to make the guns even more unique so stay tuned
I get that and we’ll keep this in mind
noted
I want this back as well, on the list!
Yeah I want to fix it so that the joining player is financially “caught up” with the other players
Thank you for taking your time for this Q&A and for the recent changes in RoCo, we love it!
I have a question regarding RP. Me and my husband and the friend we play with play all our matches together. Usually we are pretty close together on the scoreboard. But since a few seasons i get less points for a win and loose more points for a loss. Same rank, same games played. Never played alone and never on the bottom of the scoreboard. Could you clarify this for me?
Otherwise, been playing since closed beta and really appreciatie your hands on approach and outreach to the community! Thank you!
PS: will it be possible to customize your weaponskins per rogue in the future again?
Hmm that is a bit weird on the surface. I’ll have to do some serious digging on our ranked system to better answer this questions since anything I’ll say would mere be an assumption.
I am a little late so hopefully I’ll get a response…
My question is is there some way we can get dedicated spawn locations. By that I mean the current system seems to punish players at times by respawning at locations that are at a disadvantage. For example on Skyfell I have had it spawn me 100m from the objective as my team is at zero tickets and by the time I get there they are all dead or half gone. The system also will spawn teammates away from each other which puts them at a disadvantage because they can easily be double teamed which costs the team a ticket. I think the system should have a dedicated spawn location (with spawn protection) that gives equal distance to the objective no matter what side you are at. Is this something you guys would consider?
I have another question as well can we please tie accuracy/bullet spread to fire rate. You made all the changes to the SMG’s but the SL-C is still a laser even at a good distance. The higher the fire rate the more spread (I guess that would be bloom) that occurs which makes it hard to land consistent hits and/or make a player rely on burst firing in order to offset.
I will look into spawns at a future date, we feel they could be improved.
They actually are, the levers are tuned different per gun to give them variance in their behaviors. I’m keeping an eye on the SL-C and am making adjustments to the others.
Will match MVPs ever get bonus xp? I feel like that would keep me playing after consecutive losses due to bad teammates.
I definitely want to reward MVPs more 🙂
Hi, thanks for taking the time to speak to us. Sorry if this has already been asked: Have yous managed to work out what you want the game’s core to be, or is this something that’s still being worked out? And how would you decide make such a decision, by looking to the community or just internal brainstorming?
I really like this game as it seems a lot less sweaty and more forgiving than stuff like VALORANT or CS:GO, but you can still sweat buckets if you want. Though I don’t know if this just limits the game to being a niche enjoyed by a relatively small few.
We feel that our core needs to be one where players can gravitate to characters and/or weapons by what playstyles they represent. Characters need to be, well, characters: iconic and impactful. The gunplay needs to be dynamic, diverse, feeling good to use and fun. We definitely see ourselves as more forgiving than valorant or CSGO(games were sheer pixel perfect aiming and disciplined executions can make or break a whole match).
Any plans to add a theater mode where we can go back and watch our games?
not at this time, but I understand its value
What are you guys going to do to gain more attention/attraction to the game? I always see the same players and in an aspect it’s fun bc it creates like rivalries sorta but I wanna play against different people tbh. How many people still actively play this game on a weekly basis?
My advice to Jared and the team. You have to treat the game like you’re building a house to sell it, the game needs lots of work because the foundation isn’t good or stable. You need a good foundation and then you slowly add on to it because if you don’t, down the road it’s going to eventually fall and collapse and all the work put into will be for nothing.
Foundation(good code and stable servers) –> Framing the house (rogues/ weapon identites and maps) —> staging the house (skins, dlc and whatever else and that’s what will gain attraction because it’ll show potential)
If you just slap together a house and make it look good but people notice these core or minuscule issues with a house, they aren’t going to want to buy it. I love rogue, it’s my favorite game and I don’t want it to die. I would go as far as if the game needed to be shut down for a month in order for the foundation to be fixed, I’d be willing to wait.
You’re on the money. Much of our team is dedicated to fixing the core and the stability of our game. If you build it, they will come – as the saying goes. It’ll be a long effort but an effort that we want to invest in!
One suggestion I made awhile back and I know the dev team has experimented with is the toggle zoom option on Snipers and I would also like to see that feature for other scoped weapons or previously scoped weapons like the Arren and MLX Mark 4.
Is this something you would still want to implement?
My suggestion would be as follows:
Fullbody and Tyr: toggle between two levels of first person zoom.
Arren and Mark 4: toggle between 3rd person aim and first person aim through scope.
This would also leave room to swap the fire rates on the MXR and Arren, so the MXR is the close/mid range DMR and the Arren more geared for mid/lomg range because of its damage nullify upgrade.
My advice to Jared and the team. You have to treat the game like you’re building a house to sell it, the game needs lots of work because the foundation isn’t good or stable. You need a good foundation and then you slowly add on to it because if you don’t, down the road it’s going to eventually fall and collapse and all the work put into will be for nothing.
Foundation(good code and stable servers) –> Framing the house (rogues/ weapon identites and maps) —> staging the house (skins, dlc and whatever else and that’s what will gain attraction because it’ll show potential)
If you just slap together a house and make it look good but people notice these core or minuscule issues with a house, they aren’t going to want to buy it. I love rogue, it’s my favorite game and I don’t want it to die. I would go as far as if the game needed to be shut down for a month in order for the foundation to be fixed, I’d be willing to wait.
I think you mentioned this to me before or someone else has…
But I can put this on The List^tm and see what kind of tech-work we need to do to make that happen. Need to also gracefully figure out how to make that work for controller(we’re runnin outta buttons)
Can we get an XP update? Please make the xp skill based and not time based
I do want to do that! It’s in the ideation stages and will come later this year I hope!
Hey Jared! I appreciate this Q&A. I don’t know of any other game that is as transparent as you have been in the past two months! That being said, I have some feedback and some questions for you.
Feedback:
I love the clear sense of direction that you and your team are giving this game. Keep it up!
I know that you are bumping up the base accuracy for SMGs in this next update. For the future of balancing, I think an increase to recoil (not bloom) and range would be best. I have no idea how difficult that is, but I think the players would much rather that.
I do love that quick play is available and that Wingman is in rotation. I would love to see a filter be added to quick play (dodgeball is my favorite mode) so that I can avoid the modes I don’t like (such as battle zone and extraction)
Questions:
Can each class have a universal perk? For example, duelists all have replenish, intel has tracker rounds, support has lifeline, sniper has evade, breacher has bulletproof, and defenders have gadgeteer/energized. In the same vein, what about intrinsic perks per class? Such as duelists have faster health regen, support revives with more health, breacher has larger ammo capacity, defenders take less damage, and intel moves faster. These probably would just over complicate things but have you thought about something like this?
Would you consider adding a “full auto” setting to DMRs?
Can you make the lobby menus an endless scroll?
Can you add Rogue Mastery challenges similar to the weapon mastery challenges?
Once again, thank you so much for this time that you’re setting aside for us. It is greatly appreciated!
Potentially! We are actively looking at locking in certain perks by role or certain qualities of perks by role. Something to think about and I like your suggestion!
Not sure, the semi-auto nature one major component that makes them distinct(sans mamba). We might stray to far into AR territory but we’ll see!
Explain? Not sure I’m following
Neat idea, I can pass that along to my systems designer to think about that!
Appreciate you taking the time to give feedback and as questions!
Another question I’ll get downvoted for, but I’ll ask anyway.
Is there any plans of having rogues interact with each other? Such as after getting a down or while waiting in the spawn ship. I really love the lore of RoCo and would like to see more of it
I love banter and I’d like to look into that when we’ve the room to do so! More lore and more CHARACTER for our characters!
Please remove any noise or music from the main menu screen, we have that terrible drone of the aircraft hanger right now with no way remove it or change the volume.
cheaters are a thing, please add game replays? maybe the last 5 ranked games can be replayed/spectated, kill cam and play of the game could also be added very easy, reply system is built into the engine its not hard to implement.
let us see our ping in game
i love ranked, how about we have a leaderboard ?
thanks for your time
The second 3.1 went live and I heard it, I let our audio team know to turn that down!
Replays and kill cams are a feature that we used to have but haven’t been able to properly support(it takes a dedicated strikeforce to maintain and improve) and it has deprecated overtime as we added more an more complexities to the game.
Ping yeah, I want it
Someday 🙂 stay tuned
What’s the process of getting in idea in the game normally like, and how long does it take?
It requires setting a goal that we want to achieve, extensive research, discovery and ideation. Then it gets pitched to production and leadership who evaluates it’s priority. Afterwards, it gets picked up by devs who will iterated on it until we have a solid version to test and then iterate that further until it satisfies our goal. Lastly it gets improved upon, cleaned up and ready for shipping. Takes a loooooong time and many things do fail out and fail out fast
Any plan to rework Glitch ?
Is putting fixed spawns on Strikeout (along with better spawn protections) something imaginable ? I really don’t like the randomness it has (you can spawn right next to the point, or on the other side of the map), and you still get spawn killed from time to time.
Do you have any plan for a whole economy rework ? I always felt like this was the weakest and lest interesting part of this game. Basically I more or less always buy the same things at the same time, there is no thinking involved in the process.
I really need to thoroughly figure out how best to make glitch’s ability. Both incarnations aren’t really hitting right for different reasons. We’ll get there.
Spawn logic is on my team’s to-do list for sure. I agree that spawn camping can still happen and that also the spawns can be too far or too random, especially in modes where there are shifting objectives.
You’re on the nose with the economy. I’m slowly chipping away at it so that players need to make more meaningful choices. It’s a big picture thing that I need to approach slowly and carefully
Why did the rogues speed all have to change to equal? It makes no sense that Lancer is as fast as Anvil or Cannon. If Lancer doesn’t have massive mag sizes or a ton of armour she should at least move faster.
Also Cannons power is OP and is almost impossible to kill when that is activated.
Speed and Toughness existed to offset each other. You can’t have just one. Buy Legendary evade and enjoy being 20% faster in combat than any other rogue.
I’ll look at cannon for potential identity adjustments and tuning down his minigun in a later update
What happened to Login rewards ? Will they return or will they be gone ?
Also, i think the Spitfire Pistol should get a bit Buffet again, because damage reduction has a bit of a big impact on it since the update
Thank you for taking time to read this ^
They will return, an unfortunate issue has caused them to disappear, I’m sorry for that 🙁 hang in there
Despite it still being in the top 8 of weapon winrate still, I’m increasing the falloff ranges a bit to help it. so give it a look next update
When are we getting a ping/latency indicator if ever?
Text chat for accessibility, inclusivity
For mute players? (good PR)
Increase in server tick rate so hit reg is better? Rogue bucks sale? Zombie mode ETA? PVE Modes? Steam game status/Discord Rich Presence Integration? Hardware telemetry? (CPU, GPU, Ram, VRAM)
I’m slowly coming around to text chat, if mainly for that reason only. I’ll put it on the list
We are continuously addressing stability, hopefully we get some traction and things improve
I want to fix bots before even looking at PVE
Hi! Any updates regarding the bug where the game freeze and crash after “X amounts” matches played? No matter what map is, I play only Deathmatch Mode, and when our team or enemy team reach the score around 52/60 kills, the game crash.. and of course, all the progress are gone..
This happens on xbox one and PS4 since many months.. 😣
We have ongoing efforts to improve stability across the board. If you happen to know or see a pattern in the “X” amount let me know.
Any plans for a Coop similar to Mass Effect 3s Objective based coop?
Will the store be updated to include items from the rogue crates?
I want to fix bots first before considering any PVE stuff! We’ll see!
I can’t answer in regards to the store and content. But I can pass this along as feedback to the team who can!
When we will get individual rogue customizations for weapon wraps? My weapons never match my rogues 😔
Definitely on my list to address, it was a feature we sadly lost when we rolled out WM. It’ll take a bit but we do want to bring it back
Part question, part comment. I hope you realize the Maw is overpowered now. We spoke about it a few weeks ago, and now we have a hydra/maw meta. Kill feeds in TDM are swamped with it and it feels like a cheat code using one.
That being said, I understand and thoroughly appreciate your ambition. Project saint was promised to us and provided us with initial relief. I haven’t heard a damn thing about that initiative in a long time. Address some big issues & Meta stuff, but please focus on the things that will scare players away faster than any OP weapon or imbalance.. connection issues and cheating. We know about the connection issues, but I ran into FIVE obvious cheaters within a few hours the other night. The worst I have seen it recently. Hell, I’ll work for y’all for free to go through reports of cheaters if you spend some time with me to explain that algo we had spoke about weeks ago.
Connection has to be first and foremost though. Keep your head up. We know you are trying, that’s why we are here still. Just try to make time for transparency when things aren’t going as planned. This thread is exactly that. You are trying and will get it.
ppreciate the feedback friend
The spirit of project saint remains, We are invested in fixing the core and all the issues around it, including stability. For cheaters we actively deal with them and we succeed on that front when our players report them, keep up the hard work on doing that and we will nail em as they crop up!
Why remove Speed/Toughness in the first place? I may be in the minority who actually liked it but it doesn’t make sense that the professional runner Lancer can run at the same speed as thicc boi Anvil and can tank the same damage
I get that, that current system just wasn’t quite hitting right with what we want to do. Hang in there, we have future changes coming. For now, enjoy that lancer moves 20% faster when in combat with the legendary evade perk :), anvil certainly can’t do that!
Jared, MyMan….. WhatsUp Bro….. Just got Up & seen this😂😂😂😂. I appreciate all the help We can get from U guys……… The PS5 Crashes been going Crazy… I see that a Hotfix is otw tho, Soooo thats good. Hopefully, it resolves our issues….& We can Finally use ArchangelJuke & WickedGlimpse without anything bad happening????
The archangel and wicked skins should be fixed in this update!
We are still investigating the uptick in crashes for playstation. We have our best programmer on it(he kicks ass).
This is great to see that so much work is being done on this game. I’m new to RoCo. I first tried RoCo like a year ago and really just wasn’t feeling it. Gave it another shot a few days ago and am really digging it now. So some of the changes are definitely a step in the right direction.
Have you guys thought of adding a social hub?
Would love some progressive weapon skins. Maybe that come with unique quips and maybe burst into flames and flash a skull on the screen when we get a kill once they are leveled up. I got the season pass to support the game, but honestly wish the weapon skins and cosmetics were a little flashier.
Lastly is there any plan to add some detailed stats so we can track our kills in a season or how well we do with certain weapon types vs others?
Sounds like you missed out on some of the mythic weapons! Stay tuned as we roll some out! 😀
Hmm, we currently don’t partition stats by season but that isn’t a bad idea potentially, I’ll keep it on the list.