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Rocket Arena is the best shooter that you're not playing
- Thread starter Alek
- Start date
Yep, will never get a cent from me just on the travesty of stealing the name.
Judging by the player count, the fact they were giving out keys like candy and granted the full game to everyone who played the beta shortly after release, I'd say the name didn't help their numbers either.
This game is really great. Its a wonderful blend of things you've played into something that feels totally new.
A lot of us paid $40 for overwatch. We got all characters for free and never purchased skins or anything.
You can do the same here. Rocket Arena is $30, they've said all gameplay content coming will remain free, and if you want cosmetics, you can buy them or get the battle pass, but you definitely don't have to.
I'm nearing 30 hours played already. Its seriously great.
(If you do buy it, go into the options and enable Cross Play for much faster matchmaking times)
A lot of us paid $40 for overwatch. We got all characters for free and never purchased skins or anything.
You can do the same here. Rocket Arena is $30, they've said all gameplay content coming will remain free, and if you want cosmetics, you can buy them or get the battle pass, but you definitely don't have to.
I'm nearing 30 hours played already. Its seriously great.
(If you do buy it, go into the options and enable Cross Play for much faster matchmaking times)
It looks interesting...
But man, only 329 players at the last 24-hour peak.* (on Steam)
Between this and that Amazon Games-produced MP game, numbers are bleak. Really hard to break into this market with a MP-only offering (especially because between this game and that game, they both look REALLY polished).
But man, only 329 players at the last 24-hour peak.* (on Steam)
Between this and that Amazon Games-produced MP game, numbers are bleak. Really hard to break into this market with a MP-only offering (especially because between this game and that game, they both look REALLY polished).
Somehow its seems that game is D.O.A.
they should make this f2p fast. strange that EA didn´t even promote this, they are swimming in money but don´t want to afford a big marketing campaign?
they should make this f2p fast. strange that EA didn´t even promote this, they are swimming in money but don´t want to afford a big marketing campaign?
It's a premium priced game with a season pass, microtransactions and it doesn't look like it will hold a population for very long.
Not worth the gamble.
Not worth the gamble.
I personally like it, received it for free because i played the alpha/beta on Steam. But i think the price point when every other competitor is F2P can hurt the game badly (in fact its numbers are really low even in launch, even Crucible had better launch numbers on Steam). I probably wouldn´t have played it if i had to pay 30€ for it. The idea is polished, many modes and maps, even if the characters are a bit generic in design and unballanced. What i like most is the fact that games are fairly short, like under 10 minutes, which i like when i don´t have time for extensive matches from other games.
Full Cross-play could surely help, but i guess it won´t survive long with its current model of paid access, season pass and microtransactions.
Full Cross-play could surely help, but i guess it won´t survive long with its current model of paid access, season pass and microtransactions.
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Amphora is the best character in the game right now, and she's a good all rounder with no major weaknesses. I think she's due a nerf soon though since she's frequently complained about.
Kayi, Topnotch and Blastbeard are other good picks in terms of their potential. Blastbeard is especially good on the megarocket mode where you have to capture the point. Topnotch is a good all rounder with fairly easy to use attacks, definitely recommend him, though he can get pressured fairly easily by some of the more aggressive characters.
Plink I would stay away from as he has lower HP than the other characters, so if you aren't used to being evasive you'll likely get wrecked quickly. Boone is pretty hard to be effective with since he has no good movement options, no team utility and only so-so damage... Mysteen is very hard to play because her projectiles are simply very hard to hit.
Basically, try out Amphora, Topnotch and Kayi and see if you like any of those.
Sure I'll give it a go. Will report back.
Edit: I cannot find a match... sure it's 9 am on a Thursday morning in Asia, but kids aren't in school. There should be something going on. I will try again later today but if it can't find a match I gotta refund it.
Edit 2: Getting games now. only Rocket Ball and Treasure Hunt so far. Rocket ball is decent fun but also kind of bullshit; it's so hard to play goalie.
Edit: I cannot find a match... sure it's 9 am on a Thursday morning in Asia, but kids aren't in school. There should be something going on. I will try again later today but if it can't find a match I gotta refund it.
Edit 2: Getting games now. only Rocket Ball and Treasure Hunt so far. Rocket ball is decent fun but also kind of bullshit; it's so hard to play goalie.
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Thanks for the advice. I don't know if I can say I'm enjoying myself at the moment. Feels really helpless when juggled, but realize there is much more depth to this then I realize. I'll keep at it, but think I'd probably have refunded on Steam before 2 hours if I hadn't received a free key.
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Weird take. While it takes inspiration from Smash for its damage system, it plays nothing like it.
Mostly due to how you win / have to ring out people and have to damage them to do it. A bit reductionist, sure, I'd agree that it is, but it's still the quickest way to explain it to them.
It sure as hell is closer to Smash than it is to Rocket Arena from 20-25 years ago :).
You can equip artifacts that make movement a little faster. The only time I feel like it's slow is if I spawn on the opposite side of the map from where the action is - but, usually there are booster pads or ways to traverse that'll get you over there quicker. If movement was faster the arenas would probably need to be larger to compensate.
Probably, yeah. My main issue with it just revolves around how so very slow the speed feels and survivability when getting double / triple teamed. I basically want to be able to move faster and for dodge to have a shorter cooldown.
Yes, I know, there's an item for that, but still.
I'm also trying to ignore the fact that there are items which increase your damage, etc., which can only be gained by leveling up.....but one of my first games I was against a level 50.
That was frustrating enough before I knew that he was probably doing more damage and moving faster based on level alone.
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I mean the core mechanism of interaction is the same as Rocket Arena, in that it's a shooter wherein you move your crosshair across the screen and fire to interact with the opposing players. So it's inherently closer to Rocket Arena, than it is to Smash, just on that principle of its interaction design alone.
I think your comparison obviously just paints the game very negatively. Because folks that really like Smash, often prefer items off because of various gameplay implications that items have. So describing it as Smash with items on, is not only reductionist, it misportrays the game as something that has those negative traits of Smash with items. Specifically, slow paced Smash brothers with items on would receive a lot of criticism because of the way that items work in Smash, they're randomly distributed.
So when you say it's 'slow paced Smash with items on' it conveys Rocket Arena as a RNG fest, wherein players don't have a meaningful influence over what happens in the game. But that's not Rocket Arena at all, Rocket Arena is a very skill-based, accuracy intensive shooter.
I think the core gameplay is solid and can be pretty fun, but the game has problems it needs to iron out. I do feel that it's too slow for one, and needs a patch that ups the game speed. It doesn't need to be a high octane arena shooter, but a boost to the game speed would help a lot.
The UI feels like a placeholder from an early build that they never updated and it just makes the game look cheap. They also need to allow you to choose what modes you want to play rather than throwing you into a playlist with all the modes in it. Not everyone wants to play Rocketball or Treasure Hunt. I'd imagine they did this because they figured the player base wouldn't be high enough to sustain having numerous modes up at once. In which case, EA should've had the game be F2P from the start and marketed it better. The fact that this game launched at $30 for the base game, and also has a paid battle pass just means they were setting themselves up for failure as a new MP game in this day and age. It should've been F2P on day one, and the fact that they're still hanging on to trying to sell the base game for nickels and dimes to people rather than making it F2P is baffling. It's already $5 after 2-3 weeks and I got a free code last week by filling out a promo ticket. At this point just make it free and make money off of the battle pass so that the player base can be healthy enough to support the game.
So yeah, if they polish up the game, fine tune the gameplay a bit, and make the game F2P then it'd help a lot with making the game more appealing. I think the characters are all generally pretty fun and have diverse playstyles, plus the maps are decent. It has potential but games like this don't have a long shelf-life if they don't fix it soon. Right now it's a game I'll hop on and play a few matches of here and there but that's about it. It still needs work.
The UI feels like a placeholder from an early build that they never updated and it just makes the game look cheap. They also need to allow you to choose what modes you want to play rather than throwing you into a playlist with all the modes in it. Not everyone wants to play Rocketball or Treasure Hunt. I'd imagine they did this because they figured the player base wouldn't be high enough to sustain having numerous modes up at once. In which case, EA should've had the game be F2P from the start and marketed it better. The fact that this game launched at $30 for the base game, and also has a paid battle pass just means they were setting themselves up for failure as a new MP game in this day and age. It should've been F2P on day one, and the fact that they're still hanging on to trying to sell the base game for nickels and dimes to people rather than making it F2P is baffling. It's already $5 after 2-3 weeks and I got a free code last week by filling out a promo ticket. At this point just make it free and make money off of the battle pass so that the player base can be healthy enough to support the game.
So yeah, if they polish up the game, fine tune the gameplay a bit, and make the game F2P then it'd help a lot with making the game more appealing. I think the characters are all generally pretty fun and have diverse playstyles, plus the maps are decent. It has potential but games like this don't have a long shelf-life if they don't fix it soon. Right now it's a game I'll hop on and play a few matches of here and there but that's about it. It still needs work.
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I think at the minute, at least on console, anything that upped the game speed would make it very difficult to actually kill anyone. It's already not that easy to hit folks, especially with some of the weapons in the game like Mysteens or the new characters, and then you also have a lot of escape abilities that give players an opportunity to reset back to full HP.
If you were to up the games movement speed, you'd need to reduce the time to kill.
In any case, the game was in beta for over a year, and this is the time to kill and game speed that they settled on. I really don't think they should be changing the game speed, or time to kill at this stage in development. There will be a large group of people that would lament the changes. The only games I can remember where the developers sought to make large system changes to things like speed and damage are games like Battlefield 5, and Uncharted 2, and if you look back how those turned out... those updates were resented by the community.
It ultimately doesn't matter if you think it's the right, or wrong decision to make those kind of changes. At this stage, the game will have an audience of players that like the game for what it is, and if you turn your back on those players in pursuit of the players that aren't that interested in your game... you'll end up with no audience at all.
Related to this, it's worth noting that the game speed is actually pretty fast if it were in first person. The camera was pulled back to third because players in beta felt that it was often too fast and too chaotic, so rather than slow the game down, the developers decided to make the game easier to follow by using a third person camera.
If you were to up the games movement speed, you'd need to reduce the time to kill.
In any case, the game was in beta for over a year, and this is the time to kill and game speed that they settled on. I really don't think they should be changing the game speed, or time to kill at this stage in development. There will be a large group of people that would lament the changes. The only games I can remember where the developers sought to make large system changes to things like speed and damage are games like Battlefield 5, and Uncharted 2, and if you look back how those turned out... those updates were resented by the community.
It ultimately doesn't matter if you think it's the right, or wrong decision to make those kind of changes. At this stage, the game will have an audience of players that like the game for what it is, and if you turn your back on those players in pursuit of the players that aren't that interested in your game... you'll end up with no audience at all.
Related to this, it's worth noting that the game speed is actually pretty fast if it were in first person. The camera was pulled back to third because players in beta felt that it was often too fast and too chaotic, so rather than slow the game down, the developers decided to make the game easier to follow by using a third person camera.
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It is, though.
You pick up crates. You don't know what's in the crates. They're RNG. All of the items themselves seem pretty well-designed, but when I grab a crate, so far as I know you don't know what's in it ahead of time unless I missed something (VERY POSSIBLE admittedly :) ). Some crates even have mega gifts which definitely seem like even more RNG.
You try and damage people and get them to a point where they can be knocked out of a ring. You're not fragging them, you're trying to ring out them. They can even accidentally ring out themselves if they mess up.
You get artifacts which can increase damage and movement speed. These are character based and require leveling up. You do this by playing the individual characters and the artifacts seem to need to be equipped to level up. XP is not shared among characters. A level 50 character is probably going to be doing more damage / moving faster than the same character at level 1, which we experienced on day one.
I actually do like the maps....they're my favorite part of it, but the slow speed is just killing it for me beyond mucking around on it with a party of friends.
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But those crates, aren't the main means in which you interact with the opposing players. I wouldn't even say they're a big influence. Crates are infrequent pickups that generally don't have a huge impact on the game. Plus, in ranked play these crates aren't random at all, they're fixed pickups that are dotted around the map.
I don't think you understand the artifact system either, artifacts can only be taken up to level 3, which doesn't take too long at all. A character that's level 50 won't be doing more, or less damage. But aside that, artifact levels are only factored into unranked play. In ranked play, all artifacts have a set boost and these are all unlocked for all players.
The difference here is that this game is not Battlefield 5. It's not Uncharted. Those are massive franchises with hundreds of thousands of people playing them. Rocket Arena doesn't have that luxury and needs to be flexible if they want this game to survive. Not to mention, multiplayer games put out major balancing patches all the time. Changing TTK and game speed isn't unheard of with AAA games anyways, and can often be well received if done right. Destiny 2 had a "go fast" update in 2018 that was very well received because the community felt the game's pace in PVP had slowed down too much. Overwatch has done similar changes with various heroes in the past.
The point is, if they want this game to succeed, they need to listen to player feedback. Having a beta for a year and settling on TTK and game speed is fine, but that doesn't mean it can't change. And again, nobody is asking them to make it a breakneck speed twitch shooter, but a slight increase to movement speed is not going to make it that difficult to kill anyone. This isn't a change that would fundamentally break the game and alienate the player base who likes the game. You're acting like changing it would be "turning their back" on the players who like the game already, and it isn't a big enough change for it to make people dip out. It simply makes player movement more fluid and less of a slog to get around the maps. There's not much that's controversial about that.
The crates have pretty good items in them. I've actually killed people with the bomb, I've used the magnet to protect myself from shots. They do have a decent impact on the game. I can only imagine if people get good / coordinated with trip wires. If they're not random in ranked, that's a good thing for ranked.
That's great that everything is maxed out for ranked, but the artifacts in casual game modes are not. They're also not all initially unlocked. It may not take a lot of time to get them leveled up once you have them, but you have to level up to unlock them in the first place.
And yes, a character with all of the artifacts unlocked and leveled up will do more damage or have higher move speed than someone who doesn't . Some are based on conditions (bonus damage after x etc), but that is how it read.
1st point. This is just straight up objectively wrong. I have about 40+ hours in the game so far and I have been on plenty of teams where I have won single handidly because I was going for the items. I can get the ninja headband which drops my dodge cooldown to 1 second and it increases the range. That item alone is extremely crucial. Such as items in smash. So this is wrong.
2nd point. This is just a weak argument. Yes someone that has a level 50 player is objectively going to be a better player whether they actually are or not because of the artifact system and how it functions. There are artifacts that straight up make you do more damage and recover faster. How is that not giving them an advantage?
3rd point. Who is jumping into a new game and thinking man, I really need to start playing ranked? Ranked may have the items not be RNG and may have the artifacts at a similar level to all the other people playing it but then the issue comes down to oh, it levels up what I have in my load out. Well I don't have the artifact that increases damage unlocked but the guy who is a level 50 does. So he again has an advantage over me. This is insane to think that its more balanced when its not. ( I haven't played ranked, because I didn't think I need to bother with ranked in this game.) But even then if does give everyone all the artifacts in ranked? why not just do that period? In not doing it you alienate the new player that goes in to a casual match and gets wrecked by the level 50 who has more time. As an adult I see that I don't want to bother, as a kid, my nephew sees that and he goes back to fortnite where there is no inherent advantage other than skill.
I will say this as someone who actually spent money on the game and told his friends to buy it so we can play it together. The game is fun. It NEEDS a TON of improvement first of being player speed, second most important being balance.
As Bizazedo said. It's literally 3rd person shooter smash bros, in 1st gear, with items.
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1st point, yes an item can be influential, but they aren't anywhere near as influential as they are in Smash. An item can single handedly kill someone in Smash, and they often stack with players having multiple items at any one time. The items that are available here only compliment your core abilities, none of them can take you from 0 to kill, or anything like that. Moreover, they're not applied to the game in the same way, aside the bomb, items aren't projectiles, they don't disrupt the playing field and send everyone flying. I don't see how their application is anything like Smash.
2nd point. I didn't say anything about whether a level 50 player would be more or less skilled, or more or less effective as a result of their personal ability. The poster I replied to was talking about the damage benefits they could get as a result of their artifacts. I'm not sure what you're talking about here. Whether or not someone that has 10 hours experience on a character or 1 doesn't make a big difference. I for instance play all the characters, and I have a level 7 amphora, yet my amphora is still usually way better than most 30+ amphoras, it doesn't mean much at all, and that number you're referring to has no direct impact on gameplay.
As far as the artifacts increasing damage go, yes they do have an impact, but that's in casual matches.
3rd, I didn't say everyone should play ranked. But the casual mode, is for fun, it's okay to allow randomised elements to have an influence on the game, but I think it's farfetched to suggest that items are the defining influence. Casual is for casual play, where there's no skill based matchmaking and no stakes. Because there's no SBMM, the winning team here is almost always going to be the whichever team happens to have better players (usually the skill gap between teams is huge in casual), matches are very rarely matched so closely that items are going to be the determining factor.
Whatever though, if you want to reduce the game down to 'smash with items on' and that's helpful to you, then go nuts. I think it reflects a shallow understanding of the game personally, but we all have different views on different experiences.
I never quite looked into this game, but I like the look of it. It's mechanics look interesting! Ever since LawBreakers died, I haven't played a multiplayer shooter that really drew me in. I think I'll give this one a shot this weekend!
Already... wow...
Funny thing that I was expecting kids to play this game, but in almost every lobby, I can hear grown-ass men like myself playing this and doing their best :D
It's beautiful.
Items are absolutely a defining part of the game, if they weren't, they wouldn't be in ranked, and overall as a whole they just wouldn't be there unless you were to host a custom game or join a game mode with items. Period. And you can say that saying its smash with items is a shallow understanding of the game, but its a comparison. God forbid someone else use a reference point to impress upon someone a frame of reference. Or should I quote your original post where you say its overwatch smash and quake?
The game has items and it makes sure to impress upon the player that they are vitally important as they have the ability to swing a match from one teams favor to the other.
The artifacts give a player who has played longer an advantage over a new player because they have them levelled up and they give benefits such as causing more damage and faster recovery and however you try to turn this into a "no it's not that big of a deal," let me inform you that those two alone are the ENTIRE point of the game.
And as for you not saying play ranked, thats fine, then why bring it up at all. Your previous post was thrown at biz as though it was his problem for playing casual and going up against a 50 with stronger artifacts, his solution should be to play ranked? Why? Why would any solution ever be to play ranked?
You can defend this game.
Whatever though, if you want to reduce every criticism of this game down to "items aren't crucial, speed would make it tougher to kill people" and that's helpful to you, then go nuts. I think it reflects a shallow understanding of the game personally, but hey, we all have different views on different experiences.
it looks like another generic hero shooter with a fortnite art style and it isn't f2p. It has no chance in a market this saturated
everyone has access to all fully-leveled artifacts in ranked though
But why play ranked? I want to play casual not inherently at a disadvantage, thats my point
In a world where I can play warface and have everyone start off on the same playing field in standard play, and fortnite and apex starting everyone on a same playing field, and even older examples of arena shooters like halo that starts everyone levelled in casual play. In this game you start at a disadvantage unless you've played before, not accounting for skill obviously
Played it for a bit and the rockets felt so tamed that it feels more like I'm shooting fuzzy balls at my opponents then rockets. Over all, it got rather dull rather fast.
yeah i don't like it either, i'd prefer the cosmetic-only csgo or dota model, but i understand why they do it. at least it preserves the integrity of the ranked system.
developers feel games need progression or else people with mouse-brain instincts don't feel like they're being "rewarded" for the time they're putting in. even apex players complain that they're not getting rewarded because they have almost nothing to spend legend tokens on
Gamers never should have happened. lol
I'm posting all this stuff btw as someone that likes this game and there's a lot of potential to it, I want it to succeed, but it needs to be in a better place
yeah...after every game of rocket arena there's all these bars that fill up (thank god there's a SKIP ALL button) and i really don't give a shit about any of that
I do the same, I have my character looking how I like and I check my stats right before match end anyways. But then again im like that in literally every shooter.
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For perhaps the 4th time across two posts you've misquoted or misrepresented something I said. I didn't ever reduce any criticism of the game down to 'items aren't crucial', if we want to talk about items and their role in the game, that's fine, I was just debating the point that this game is - again, in my view - very far removed from Smash Bros.
I don't mean to be impolite, but it's truly difficult to speak with you when you're not following along.
For example, at the end of your previous post, you have this...
That wasn't what he said, or what I took issue with in the original post and yet somehow this became the basis of your argument? He wrote that it was a 'slow version of Smash bros'. How does that align with what you wrote above? You're persistently arguing against a perspective that no one has expressed, in one direction or another.
Not only did you reply here putting words in my mouth, you even distorted someone else's post. It's very difficult to discuss anything with someone that simply isn't reading the material put in front of them. I don't know if it's intentional, but honestly it makes it hard to talk with you.
In any case, I'm not disagreeing that they give a player an advantage if they've played longer, but I am saying that that advantage is relatively small, and given that it does not apply in ranked play, it's of lower consequence. When something is on the line, everyone has access to the same artifacts. This is similar to something like Injustice 2, where you have regulated and unregulated matches. In my view it enables folks to have fun with their equipment and feel rewarded for playing.
The reason I was saying it doesn't matter if you're level 50, or level 10 is because artifacts are not levelled up per-character, they are per-account. So you can be level 1 and have level 3 artifacts. I think you seemed to misunderstand my point here. Artifacts do matter, but I don't think they're overly influential, but character level does not necessarily indicate anything meaningful.
It's also worth noting that you actually start out with three very helpful artifacts maxed out. So even if you don't change your artifacts, you're not terribly disadvantaged. Let's say you encounter an amphora that's changed her supercaviator to unstable canister... up to 10% damage increase on shots depending on blast meter. So lets bear in mind that amphoras primary shot deals 40 damage when fully charged, you're looking at 40-44 damage per shot. Even if you had this ability at its maximum, she would still need 4 direct blasts to kill her target, you'd have to use all three damage boosts, and proc them, to have any real difference in her time to kill. The artifacts like unstable canister and boom bit, are far less impactful than they might seem at first glance.
As far as items go, I don't disagree that they can be impactful, but I think in casual games where items are randomly distributed, you are not losing/winning games on items. I don't think the item distribution is determining the outcome of the game. Unless your team is getting completely destroyed, you'll be getting a fairly even distribution of items, and most of the time, these items are not going to make or break a combat encounter. And for those that want something a little more competitive, the ranked mode turns this into a fixed powerup mechanic, something that I don't think is without note.
Jeez couldn't be anymore condescending or demeaning if you tried. Thanks dude. I'm good. Keep defending the game. Not worth my time.
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