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Your favorite class
This poll is closed.
Gunner 0 0%
Driller 0 0%
Scout 0 0%
Engineer 0 0%
Goku 1 100.00%
Total: 1 votes
[Edit Poll (moderators only)]

 
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Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!


Deep Rock Galactic is a neato co-op game from some dev you've never heard of published by those cats who poo poo out Goat Simulator. It's In Early Access so if that's anathema to you it's disclosed early so you can hit the back button. If you're less zealous than that, it really doesn't feel like it's in EA at all. There's less jank and frustrating weirdness than many non-EA games out there, and definitely more game content. If you want specifics: DRG beats Vermintide 2 on both.

This OP will be fairly sparse to start out with in order to encourage discussion and make it easier to call out stuff as things get added in EA. Let's get to the important questions.

What the hell even is this game's thing
This is a really important question because DRG is very different from any other game on the market right now and it's really hard to sum it up in a single sentence. So I'm going to put it in a couple of bullet points and tie it together after.

Deep Rock Galactic is:
  • 4-player horde co-op
  • With multiple objectives that play radically differently (6 of the time of this writing)
  • In procedurally generated, fully destructable caves
  • That encompass 5 different, distinct biomes
  • With tools available to all players to navigate and destroy the caves as it suits them
  • And a progression system that relies only upon harvested minerals and completed missions/XP

It's a dash of Left 4 Dead, a pinch of Minecraft, and a scoop of Payday. You play as a miner for the titular Deep Rock Galactic mining company. The planet you are sent down to crawls with unstable ground, environmental hazards, and an endless supply of native bug-monsters to shoot. You are deployed to mine minerals, salvage lost equipment, kill particularly dangerous bugs, recover bug eggs, and more. In return for your work, you are paid credits (which you use to buy better equipment and fancier cosmetics) and awarded experience (which is lets you unlock higher tiers of equipment to unlock and other fun cosmetic trophies).

I've played this game for 10 hours now and every single mission I have been on has been distinct and memorable in its own way.

Minecraft what the gently caress
One of the ways this game distinguishes itself from other horde shooters is that your objectives are sometimes literally out of reach and require engineering through the environment to access. If you're planetside to harvest Morkite and there's a big vein halfway up a wall that's 200 ft tall, well get your thinking cap on sparky because your challenge now isn't the acid-splitting bugs or the swarmers attempting to eat your ovaries it's getting up there and getting back down without killing yourself.

It differs from normal Minecraft because there is no persistence in the caves, and there's no rewards for elegance. Any piece of poo poo tunnel or jury-rigged solution will do. Just get the minerals and get them back, miner, you've got more work to do!

This is one of the ways the game also 'forces' co-op without resorting to lots of the outright disabling enemies like Hunters, Smokers, or Chargers like Left 4 Dead. A dwarf that is mining has a face full of minerals and is frequently restricted in mobility. It's bad news bears for a swarm of warrior bugs to ambush him while he's working like that! Watch out for your co-workers, they watch out for you!

Wait there's no disablers?
That's not ENTIRELY true. There is one disabler - a polyp like ceiling hanger that is not unlike the thing from Half Life 2 that tries to slurp you up and bite your head off. He is incredibly goddamn annoying and I personally don't feel he's very well designed, but beyond that, no. There is no enemy that can disable you without recourse and you will never all lose control of your dwarf.

If there's dwarves there better be beer
You better believe there is! The way you can get pre-mission buffs is buying a round of beers for the team at the bar.

OK but what about this progression system
There is no randomness at all in the progression system - no more running a single mission to get a specific thing you want. You do missions, and you get paid. If the mission is more dangerous, you get paid more. If you do secondary objectives, you get paid more. If you bring back Gold, you get paid more. You use this money to buy static upgrades that you can switch to and from at will. Some upgrades also require exotic minerals that you sometimes run into on missions, but the effect is the same - get the minerals, get the money, get a result. This game saves the randomness for the missions themselves.

Who can I play as

Yeah let's talk classes.


The Gunner

He has a loving minigun. Enough said. In practice, the Gunner is the team's jack-of-all-trades. He rarely has the ideal tool for a job, but he always has one that will work. He's good in heavy engagements (but not as good as the Engineer), he's good at navigating the caves (but not as good as the Scout), and he's good at resisting the bugs swamping the team's position (but not as good as the Driller).

He carries:
  • A loving minigun
  • A heavy revolver, 4 shots is enough to kill anything that moves :ocelot:
  • A zipline launcher, that makes reusable, permanent connections between two spots.
  • A shield generator, which provides the team a safe spot. No enemy fire - or, indeed, even enemies themselves - can penetrate it.


The Engineer

The Engineer is who you call for the big jobs. He specializes in heavy engagements and building bridges. However, he lacks a good option for dealing with the more mundane jobs that the team tends to run into, and as a result has a lot of reliance on ammo drops to keep him fresh as he overexerts himself against minor enemies or uses precious platform ammo on objectives that are just out of the way.

He carries:
  • A slugthrowing shotgun
  • A grenade launcher with some serious punch behind it
  • A platform throwing gun, that will create easily jumpable platforms on the wall
  • Sentry guns that bring the pew pew


The Scout

The Scout moves quick and travels light. He's the exact opposite of the Engineer in that he is fantastic at lighter engagements and solving one-off engineering problems, but he struggles when the furball hits. His movement item is unique in that it only affects him, as well, so it's easy for the Scout to leave his team behind and get screwed over if he's not careful.

He carries:
  • A sweet assault rifle
  • A sawed off shotgun
  • A grappling hook that will pull him pretty much any old where
  • A high intensity flare gun with flares that will stick to walls, lighting up a cavern for the entire team
  • A special slowing grenade rather than a frag


The Driller

The Driller is a big believer that bustin' makes you feel good. He carries an absolute slew of close range weapons and tools, but suffers horribly at range. His power drills are ideal for making quick tunnels to access new caverns or carving a staircase into the rock for easier access to a room or a mineral vein.

He carries:
  • A flamethrower
  • A random sidearm
  • Fist-mounted power drills that grind rock and bugs with equal ferocity
  • Satchel charges
  • (in addition to normal frag grenades)


Alright this sounds good, where do I go to play this with people

GOOD NEWS, there is already a goon co-op discord group that dates back to Payday 2! Some folks already play DRG! This isn't yet another one-off discord server that will die in a month! Join it you glob!

https://discord.gg/2AWxTwp

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Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
reserved for whatever the gently caress maybe

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
oops there's already one of these threads i just missed it cos it was back like 4 pages

e: it's here btw: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3851689

Coolguye fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Dec 28, 2018

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