[2021] U35 new gamemode - constructive criticism& the fundamental flaw. [Warning: long post]

Before I get into it, I want to remind people to be rational - I get it, the gamemode is brand-new and a lot of you haven't even played it yet. Right now it's the new shiny thing, so it's exciting, so criticizing it is likely to be off-putting for many, but I ask of you to hear me out anyway and give it some real thought.

Many of DRG's gamemodes are very replayable and varied because us players have a lot of agency and freedom in how we tackle our mission objectives. Take Oil Refining for example, you have near-total freedom and control over how exactly you lay the pipes, you can follow the generated terrain, you can dig directly through it, you can intentionally create some crazy rollercoasters, you can stack all the pipes on top or side by side to make it all fancy looking.

The terrain is your enemy as much as it is your ally, and even though you're following the same process of locate liquid morkite --> create the pipes --> defend them --> escape - your gameplay experience still varies wildly, due to the unpredictable terrain and all the challenges it poses, and due to your choices in how you navigate it, manipulate it, and how you constructed the pipes you need to defend.

The first part of the new gamemode is actually very enjoyable, you're tasked to find 2 big constructs, call in a hacking pod and then it's like a two-stage objective; first you toss around beacons which feels like a fresh take on constructing liquid morkite pipes, and then you're defending the hacking pod which feels like a new take on the existing blackbox/uplink/refuel objective. This buildup is fun, and the gamemode is great during this stage.

Where the issues arise is the last stage of the gamemode, which is a bossfight called the Caretaker. To put it simply, Caretaker is a large-scale OMEN fight. It is a big construct that throws a lot of threats at you, while you take out specific weakpoints to advance the fight forward. It's actually more comparable to the Ommoran fight, because like the Ommoran fight, the sequence of the fight is identical every time you play against it. Every single battle against the Ommoran feels identical every time, because of two fundamental flaws:

1. The fight is predictable - you know phase 2 is rocks, you know phase 4 is beamers. There is never both beamers and rocks, there's never beamers on phase 1, there's never rocks on phase 4. There's never a 4-phase beamer fight, there's never a 4-phase rock fight. There's never a rock-beamer-rock-beamer fight. it is always the same.
2. The arena is predictable - it's always one circular zone, with the same pillars, with the same mostly indestructible terrain, and the Ommoran will break any kind of engineer fortifications you might have built. You are in an open field, fighting the same fight, every time. You do not have agency to be creative in this fight.

Why am I so focused on the Ommoran then? Well, the Caretaker suffers from the same flaws. The order of the fight is always identical, once you learn the stages of the fight, perhaps after 3-5 times of fighting it, you will no longer encounter any kind of surprises and the fight will no longer be exciting. Additionally, the Caretaker also uses a premade arena, just slightly differently. This time instead of a near-indestructible platform you fight on, you now have an indestructible platform that kills you, with a pre-generated outer-rim around the platform where you are expected to fight from. The gamemode, just like Ommoran, also heavily discourages player terrain manipulation, in several ways;

1. The Caretaker shoots some kind of pulse shields that go through any terrain and deal high damage to players, forcing you to have line of sight and a lot of space to dodge them.
2. The Caretaker summons enemies which are basically Naedocytes without the stun effect, which seek out anyone no matter where they are.
3. The Caretaker summons enemies which are basically robotic Stabber Vines, which not only can be spawned right next to you, they can also damage you through the walls (even if unintentional and fixed, #1 and #2 still exist and are highly unlikely to change).

Now to address a few important things; neither of the gamemodes make it absolutely impossible to manipulate terrain. You could still put platforms on walls during Ommoran, you can even defend Doretta from the rock phase with them, that's fine, but that's literally the only practical application of it, and only accomodates the Engineer, not the Driller, which is the second terrain-modifying capable class. Similarly, the Caretaker fight does allow you to dig around the arena, set platforms and whatnot, but outside of simply giving yourself more flat surface to dodge stuff, you don't have anything else practical to do. It's not viable to make any sort of bunkers, trenches, defensive pillars, walls, tunnels, bridges, whatever people come up with.

Unfortunately, the Caretaker is designed as a guardian of a vault, and it is meant to give a sense of grand scale, so I don't think the arena aspect will ever change. If it was up to me to solve these flaws of this gamemode, here are the changes I would propose:

• Make away with the vault and store the data rack within the Caretaker itself. This now opens up the opportunity to generate significantly more complex terrain around the Caretaker, which would provide gameplay variety due to challenging terrain, while also encouraging and rewarding terrain manipulation, which plays into giving players more agency and freedom.
• Surround the caretaker with spawnpoints for the Stabber Vine robots, kind of like how the Korlok's sprout locations are randomized. This would preserve the purpose and style of this enemy type without demanding a giant platform for it.
• Randomize the stages of the phases, not only in order, but also frequency. While getting the hardest phase 3 times in a row would be tough, and the easiest phase 3 times in a row would be rather easy, mathematically these would occur rarely and it would add significant unpredictability and replayability, would distinguish individual Caretaker fights from one another, and would create more unique gameplay memories. ''Hey, remember that time when we got the hardest phase 2 times in a row, and with our last ammo and no resupplies, we were blessed with the easy phase and won? I bet Karl had something to do with that''

I could probably keep writing my thoughts about this topic for much longer, such as addressing how even the OMEN fight has more freedom than Caretaker because you can choose in which order you take out the modules, but this post is already rather rambly, and I kind of expect my opinion to be in the minority anyway. Or kind of a ''hot take'', as they say. Thoughts? I'll be reading all.

External link →