Rotwood Launch Feedback Action Plan

Hey everybody!

We want to quickly follow up on some of your feedback from the launch of the game into Early Access.

First of all, a big thanks to everyone who has picked up the game and played so far. Since launch, we’ve had over 200,000 players and we’re humbled by the reception. We’re proud of what we have done with Rotwood and we’re thrilled so many of you are enjoying the game and those of you who are on the fence are letting us know.

We’ve gone through your feedback for Discord, forums, reviews and submitted F8 feedback. We’ve been working on this since immediately after launch, but we want to keep you updated on what we’re doing.

This is not a full list of the feedback we are addressing. There are several things we’d like to address in the long term but for now, we are only going to discuss what we are immediately focused on. Everything mentioned here has either already gone in or is imminent unless noted otherwise.

[h2]Difficulty and Progression[/h2]
Rotwood is designed to be a challenging game. While many players are enjoying the balance as it is now, we recognize that there are points in the game that can feel frustrating. We are working hard to smooth out the experience for all players, while still providing the challenge this game is designed to bring.

We’ve pushed an update that will provide more information about the intended difficulty of a hunt compared to the current gear that you have equipped. We believe that exposing more information about the intended progression will allow players to better understand the challenges they can take on and make more informed choices on which hunt to take on next.

We’ve also made some balance changes and have a few more coming that smooth out the early game a bit more. Certain actions by enemies are being moved up to higher frenzy levels.

For players that enjoy these mechanics, don’t worry. We’re also working on even higher Frenzy levels and challenges that will come in the future as well.

There are also aspects of the game being roguelite that players have expressed could be better. While we no longer think of Rotwood as strictly a roguelite, we do have many shared elements, and are working on making this better. Specifically, we are working on more interesting early and late game powers. Some of these will come soon, and others will be available in future, larger updates.

[h2]Playing Solo[/h2]
Rotwood is extremely fun with your friends, but should still be very rewarding playing solo.

We’ve noticed that some players were having more trouble than we expected while playing alone, and some of our most recent balance changes were made to address that, such as reducing the healing capacity of the Gourdo and recent Frenzy tuning and hitstun changes.

We will be continuing to watch feedback around solo play, and will continue to make tweaks to improve this experience.

[h2]Mouse Aiming[/h2]
We have seen players who are having difficulty with mouse aiming in the game. Mouse aiming determines where your character is pointing while using the mouse. We have seen that some players are having difficulty with learning the controls on mouse and keyboard because mouse aiming moves their character direction when they aren’t expecting it. Mouse aiming increases precision and provides players with quicker and smoother control. However, it is harder to master and may take some practice.

While we still recommend mouse aiming as the default way to play, we've added messaging that allows players to turn it off, in the case that they find mouse aiming unintuitive. Players can always experiment with either control scheme via the Options.

[h2]Matchmaking[/h2]
Our intention is to provide players with the ability to control their lobbies so that they can choose specific groups of like-minded players they would like to play with.

These are permanent groups. Once you enter a group, you can be matched randomly with anybody in that group.

[h3]For example. [/h3]
Players from Brazil can start a Brazil lobby through Steam groups
People who want to focus on the toughest challenges.
Players that love Fallout
Your old WoW guild

We expect player-created groups to be the best way to play the game however we are making a public lobby available for everybody that owns the game. This is a default public group, with no moderation that anybody can play.

Selecting the Rotwood Public group will match you with our best match that we can find, first by region and then with a game that is of a similar progression level as you. This will be available by default and you will be able to instantly find somebody to play with without having to seek out new curated player groups.

[h2]Loot[/h2]
Some players have let us know that it is challenging to find the loot they are looking for, and even after repeated attempts are unable to obtain enough loot to upgrade their equipment.

We are actively reviewing this. We’ll post more details as we roll out those changes.

[h2]Crashes / Performance / Bug Fixes[/h2]
We have already put out a few updates to address the most immediate technical issues that we have found and we will continue to do so until we’re ready to continue work on the next content update.

We have added a performance profiler in the game for players who are having exceptional performance issues to send us more detailed reports on their system so we can better diagnose what may be causing the problem.

We will continue improving and fixing these issues as we move forward.

[h2]What’s already happened[/h2]
- Mouse Aiming Popup
- Recommended equipment, and improved display of Armor and Attack Values
- Gourdo Balance
- Removed confusion spores
- Made it easier for players to find important NPCs
- Several performance and bug fixes

[h3]What’s coming very soon.[/h3]
- Hitstun resistance removed from elite mobs in current Frenzy levels
- Frenzy tuning
- Better visibility on upgrade paths
- General matchmaking lobby
- Loot adjustments

This is not a complete list. We have a lot that we’re looking at going forward, when we finish off focusing on the immediate feedback we mentioned above we will let you know what we’re up to next.

Once again. Thanks a bunch, everybody. Keep hitting F8 and letting us know what you think!