Hopoo Games DevBlog

Blog of Hopoo Games, developer of Risk of Rain and DEADBOLT. Currently working on Risk of Rain 2!

[hopoo]

As a proud member of the Southern Hemisphere of this wonderful globe of ours, I was just wondering what the 'Summer', 'Fall', etc in the roadmap are referring to. Is Summer the Northern Hemisphere Summer? In addition, are there any more concrete dates for the Skills 2.0 update now that the first update is out, and more importantly, what sort of feedback are you looking for from the community until then?

Yes, sorry this is Northern hemisphere summer. Next update is coming in September. In terms of feedback, QOL is typically the most actionable one. We do listen for overall community ~feeling~ on things like balance, but QOL is stuff we would individiually address

[hopoo]

Stop saying soon give us real updates and don't say stay tuned to our social media then not use said social media for two days. Why can't you just say that "QA found some bugs and we are working on them" why do have go soonTM soonR say tuned soooooonnnn and then nothing. I know you dont even read these but what else can we do you don't responded to anything

Fair question - first, I’ll assume that this response is presumably coming from a place of excitement. The reason we say “Soon” is because we actually don’t know when outside of it being actually soon - when we went to E3, we were hoping to have it approved by QA by then, but it actually wasn’t because the build was a bit bigger than expected. We don’t want to set dates and then have to push them back, so we opt to not have dates at all until its 100% ready. It’s not to be super cool and hype it up - however, it’s possible that maybe we’re being a bit TOO cautious on that front. Please keep letting us know how you feel, its really important! We’ve never really had a live game before, so this is something we’re learning to do as well.

[hopoo]

There are currently four open slots for characters, all of which will be filled by the time of release. Are you planning on continuing to add content after the game has been released? Have you considered making payed DLC? If you are going to make more content, will there be a steady release schedule, or will it be mostly by ear?

Yes, we plan to support post-release! As for the structure of it... I dunno, if I’m being entirely honest. We’re just focusing on our content patches - we will most likely see how those pan out first. I think that Early Access is a big learning experience for us, and hopefully we can adjust as we go for what the community wants

[hopoo]

What exactly does skills 2.0 mean in your early access forecast? Will it be simple tweaks or will it be big changes or even scrapping a skill and making a new one?

Its a big change, and something I’ve been wanting since RoR1 :)

[hopoo]

Love the game, pretty much did everything possible right now, when exactly in June will we get the content patch? I can't wait!

Internally we’re at the bug-fixing and community suggestions combin’ part of the patch. We will announce beforehand, it won’t be a random drop in the middle of the night

[hopoo]

Please Hopoo, deliver me from my thoughts. Is Sniper ever going to arrive to RoR 2? I remember a gif of how the charge was changed from early on in the development posts.

I still think its a neat gimmick to go into FPS mode, but it most likely wouldn’t resemble very closely to what the Sniper was like in RoR1 at all.

[hopoo]

This is kind of a question/feedback, but I was wondering if the future characters are planned to be designed with more team-play in mind? I find that the multiplayer in ror1 felt kind of the same as playing by yourself because there were very few characters with support skills (acrid speed buff being the exception, and enforcer technically aside from being so bad that you couldn't really play him), and ror2 seems like a good opportunity to remedy that. New engineer is a good start, but only 1/6.

Ultimately each class is supposed to be fully functional in singleplayer, which makes a dedicated support-style class difficult. BUT we hope our next character pushes the envelope a bit farther!

[hopoo]

How big is your team right now and do you have any plans of recruiting more people to join your team seeing as the game is a major success already?

We have 3 full-time in office, and we also have our sound guy Nick and our music guy Chris! We also have a ton of help from Gearbox in terms of QA, PR, marketing, etc.In terms of recruiting, not really - if it’s going well, why rock the boat? However, we HAVE begun shopping around a bit to see if we can contract out any work to help make the game bigger. Nothing on that front yet.

[hopoo]

Hopoo Games Development Thoughts #3

hi

It has been nearly 1 month since we launched Risk of Rain 2 in Early Access, and I think we can safely say it has been a crazy time for us. We have lots of exciting news that we will be sharing - lets dive in!

NOTE: Developer Thoughts is a way for us to touch base with the community - consider these to be candid thoughts from the development team. We will be breaking down our thoughts into Major and Minor Points, along with things we have been working on internally. A lot of these are community suggestions coming from emails, Discord, Twitter and other sources - thank you all again for being so active in the Risk of Rain 2 community!   

===**Major Points**===

Content Roadmap - players understandably wanted to know the cadence and size of content updates throughout Early Access, and we hope the “forecast” image matches those wants. We will provide details about specific updates as we get closer to their respective release.

Official Localization - it has been inspiring to see community localization efforts and a playerbase around the world, so we’re working on adding official localization in the next patch

Gilded Coast is unclear and unrewarding to most players.

Game stutters when picking up items for the first time.

Some players are still being affected by save file corruption, especially if the game shuts down unexpectedly via crash or power issues.

Noting some players having trouble readying up in multiplayer and private games.

Noting sometimes settings are reset after closing and relaunching the game.

===**Minor Points**===

The changes made to blazing affixed monsters seem to be positive and feel more balanced.

The changes made to freezing affixes are welcome - a good sign!

Some users are still getting really low performance, while some are not.

Noting the Mercenary sometimes launches Greater Wisps / Brass Contraptions into space.

Noting players want the number of Stages Complete displayed on the HUD.

Noting general feedback about drone / TC-280 AI needing to be improved.

Noting players want to include the Engineer turret damage into the end report screen.

The game should ideally keep the difficulty that was chosen in the character select for the next run.

Noting player thoughts about specific white items (APR Rounds, Medkit, etc) feeling weak. Will have to make sure the game isn't slowly power creeped by continually buffing underperforming items.

Specific controller setups are missing glyphs.

===**Stuff we are working on**===

Our first content update!

Official Language support for French, German, Italian, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish.

Updating the Director to make sure monsters don't stop spawning late into the game.

Preventing monsters and bosses from spawning behind closed gates on certain stages.

Pinging issues.

Gesture of the Drowned firing equipment every frame.

Wake of Vultures granting weird overshields.

As always, please let us know if we missed anything! We are really excited to support our international fans, and we hope that the localization efforts are a good start. We also hope the Roadmap matches everyone's expectations - please let us know if it missed the mark. We intend the Roadmap to be an active part of development, and will be updating it as we get closer to major milestones. Again, thank you all so much for the amazing support over the first month!

-Hopoo Games Team

[hopoo]

Hopoo Games Development Thoughts #2

Hey!

With our first week of Early Access in the bag we thought we would share some more of our thoughts we have gathered over the week. We also want to thank everyone again for all of the support, emails, tweets, and feedback in such a short amount of time. Thank you all.

Similar to our first Developer Thoughts we wanted to break things down into Major and Minor Points, along with some things we have been working on.

===Major Points===

• We want to get our content roadmap available to users as soon as possible - we will be working on that this week. • Noting a LOT of people are dying very suddenly to blazing affixes and not enjoying it, and it will be tuned down. We do have concerns that the fire affix is artifically gating the difficulty and the game will be much easier once it's been normalized, but we will have to address that as it comes. • Noting people want a legitimate way to actively pursue lunar coins • Fighting Worm isn't fun, even though it is one of our higher effort bosses. • People have gotten far enough into the game that things just... stop spawning. For context, the game skips spawns that it deems is too easy for the number of "spawn credits" it has. If you've gotten to that point congrats, the game thinks Overloading Worms are a bit too easy for you. This will naturally be fixed once higher tier monsters and affixes are added to the game. For now... it means that you terrified the whole planet. • Some players falling through the floor on level startup • Noting a large amount of players whose primary language isn't English who we want to support with localized text

===Minor Points===

• No one seems to notice Ice affix explosion on death • Some users are still getting really low performance, while some are not. • Prismatic Trials leaderboard change seems to be positive! • Noting a lot of concerns that characters will continually get nerfed in a PvE game • Engineer's weird dependency on Bustling Fungus to be viable has always been a concern for once we add more items - he will have a smaller percentage fungii in the pool. How will we make sure every item patch doesn't make Engi worse? • Noting the Mercenary sometimes launching Greater Wisps into space • MUL-T seems to have issues going up specific slopes with his lower speed • Noting players want the number of Stages Complete displayed on the HUD • Noting some Equipment are activating multiple times repeatedly over the network

===Stuff we are working on===

• Content/Early Access roadmap • Improving the way we save data to further prevent save file corruption or the game not saving at all • Players falling through the floor on entering a new stage • Wake of Vultures taking half your health • Improve MUL-T equipment swapping logic • Changing burning calculation • Improve the other elites (Ice, Lightning) to be threatening as well • Improve Worm fight to be fun • Changing the way some languages handle specific characters and fonts to make sure they are consistent • Some inconsistent proc coefficients for certain survivor abilities (Artificer is very very low for no reason) • Lots of bug fixes and quality of life improvements • Adding in some Community Suggestions we have gathered from tweets, emails, and the official Discord

Please let us know if we missed anything - there is lots more going on behind the scenes but we wanted to make sure we get some of this information shared with the community. Again, thank you all so much for the amazing first week. We are so excited for the future of RoR 2 and what's to come!  

-Hopoo Games Team

[hopoo]

Hopoo Games Development Thoughts #1

HOLYMOLY O L Y M O L Y

Uh, ok. First, I just wanted to say from the whole team how absolutely floored we are with the reception so far. I was personally hoping for something to match at least half of the original game: apparently we're doing a LOT better. It's absolutely surreal - thank you all again.

We want to make sure the community is aware we are listening and in touch, so for the format of this post and subsequent ones in the future I want to try something new. Consider Development Thoughts to be an honest brain dump of the team. Excuse us if it's a bit scattered in formatting.

===Major Points===

Overall, we're ecstatic with the gameplay of Risk of Rain 2. There are some crashes we are trying our best to address, especially on game boot-up.

A goal we are currently trying to figure out is the most appropriate Customer Support path going forward. We've been helping players manually, but a lot of players are falling through the cracks. DMing people through Discord isn't the most efficient. Will update everyone with info once it comes.

Another goal is a general roadmap for the game: what does the future of Risk of Rain 2 look like? How frequent are patches, compared to Content Updates? Will they be major chunks of content or trickling in over time? What would the community feel would keep the game the most enjoyable throughout Early Access?

We have internally finished a patch to address a lot of initial feedback and critical bugs - it is in QA and hopefully available to everyone early next week.

===Minor Points=== • Happy with progression rate for classes - a touch faster than intended but still OK • Happy with Rainstorm difficulty - haven't seen much of Monsoon content to know. Drizzle is very easy but also fine. • Pleasantly surprised with people saying performance is good - have to narrow down why it runs poorly on some high-end machines • Happy with in-run decision making (3D Printers, Mountain Shrine, Order Shrine, etc). Should try to brainstorm more big decision points like this.. • Happy that new teleporter event rules don't seem upsetting to RoR1 players • Curious about content distribution - are players progressing through unlocks too fast? How long do the more difficult item unlocks take? • Very happy with secret progressions - players are finding it at the ideal rate • Noting lots of feedback about 4+ player lobbies. Have to consider best way forward - most likely would be a private game only option with a disclaimer. • Noting sometimes monsters get stuck behind a closed door on Wetland Aspect • Noting people like going fast • Noting a lot of Quickplay Lobbies have an insane time to launch of 4000+ seconds • Noting people like ruining their build with Shrine of Order or 3D printer • Noting people want to be able to automatically continue sprinting after rolling • Noting people don't enjoy getting blasted as soon as they enter a stage

===Stuff we are working on=== • Corrupted save file preventing people from playing is very high priority to fix - this is addressed in the Monday patch. • Happy with (mostly) class balance outside of MUL-T being a tad too strong. I think it's worth noting here that we have a stat per attack called it's "proc coefficient", and it essentially defines how strong or frequent procs happen on an on-hit basis. MUL-T's nailgun has a low proc coefficient per nail of 0.4 compared to most character's 1.0, so he isn't proccing stuff a ton faster than other characters. • Very happy with Discord community aspect, but may need management help as it grows. • Imp Boss is a bit grindy, same with Worm • Some concerns about cheaters in Prismatic Trial. Excited for when seed rolls over. • Hearing loud & clear about Teleporter being hard to see - want to make it still an aspect of the game without it feeling like a mistake. Players are not really noticing the passive particles - will start with a soft approach first.

Please let us know if we missed anything - our brains are a little frazzled right now. Again, thank you all SO much for the amazing launch day, and an enormous shout out to Gearbox for their absolutely great support and efforts. Crazy.

-Hopoo Games Team

[hopoo]

Devblog #13 - 3, 2, 1, LAUNCH

Hey!

Today is the friggin day! Risk of Rain 2 launches on Steam, in Early Access right now!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/632360/Risk_of_Rain_2/

For those of you that are new here, the team and I have been working on Risk of Rain 2 for almost 3 years. It's a co-op, roguelike, 3rd-person action game packed with content.

As a big "Thank you" to all our fan, we are running a big "Buy One Get One Free" sale for the first 48 hours on Steam. Buying a copy grants another coupon for a free copy to give to a friend - we wanted to make sure as many people as possible could get into the game and play with their! This offer expires on March 30th at 12PM PST.  

Also as many of you have (now) learned, we have partnered up with Gearbox Publishing to make RoR2 the biggest and best version of Risk of Rain possible. Gearbox has contributed greatly to helping market the game, designing community outreach, and guaraneeting that the game is as stable as possible on launch. We're really excited with this partnership and hope you are too! For those concerned, don't worry: RoR2 is entirely created, designed, and written by the Hopoo Team. You will get an authentic Risk of Rain experience.

We are planning on doing a lot of community engagement through our Official Discord. Join us and be up-to-date on the lastest patches, news, content adds, and chat with other players and developers. This Discord will act as our main hub for communicating with players as well as gathering feedback during Early Access. Come join us HERE!

If Discord isn't your thing feel free to follow Risk of Rain 2 on our Twitter or Facebook to stay up-to-date on the game.

Last but not least, we wanted to highlight our Composer Chris Christodoulou for all of his amazing work on the OSTs for Risk of Rain, DEADBOLT, and now Risk of Rain 2. Check out his bandcamp page right HERE for the Early Access version of the OST, available now!

Again, thank you to all of the fans, players, friends, and family who have made our dreams possible over the last few years! We couldn't have gotten this far without you - and this is just the beginning!

See you on the planet.

-Hopoo Games <:)

[hopoo]

Whats the forecast today?

Weather is startin’ to look pretty bad

[hopoo]

Are you guys planning early access release late or early Q1? Sorry if this has been asked 2000 times.

It will (clearly at this point) be late Q1. Still on track.

[hopoo]

I'm going to PIRATE your game and there is NOTHING you can do about it.

D:

[hopoo]

how strong is the confidence level on the Q1 2019 release date

Still on track! There’s just plenty of polish left to do.

[hopoo]

are you guys gonna go into detail about any of the new classes soon?

Nope - we don’t want to reveal all the content for early access ahead of time :) Plenty of stuff left to discover.