So, one of my first reviews for Xbox Tavern was on the most recent Rogue Company update at the time. To read it go here.
To summarise – Rogue Company is another game released by Hi-Rez studios that takes a popular game and puts a spin on it. In this case they have taken Valorant and given it a 3rd person perspective with a roster of heroes that had their own abilities, weapons and unique Ultimate’s – abilities that can shift tides of combat.
At the time of my original review there were three main game modes: Extraction, Demolition, and Strikeout with Ranked versions of them. I was a big fan of what was there and gave it a hefty 9.4.
One of the things that impressed me was the following:
“What continues to be impressive with Rogue Company is that that last paragraph is true as of when I wrote it, but due to the developers’ constant attention this might not be the case for long.”
This quote ended up biting me in the arse, as what I considered to be the quintessential mode in Rogue Company – Extraction – was removed a few weeks after my review and relegated to a Limited Time Event. This has fundamentally changed how the game is played, and in many regards I think that this has changed the whole game for the worst.
The updates have continued unabated, seasonal challenges, and weapon mastery grind have been added to the daily challenge and battle pass treadmill. There are new Rogues to unlock and play such as Umbra, a cyborg with an explosive spider drone, and Glimpse, an elfin woman who can go invisible.
The problem is two things – the framing of the daily and seasonal challenges, and the Time To Kill (TTK), which are entwined like a snake eating its own tail. The daily challenges signalled the death of Extraction, many of them required longer play times and higher kill counts that were only available in Strikeout and 6 Player Team Deathmatch, which has led to them becoming the dominant game modes. 6 Player TDM is a terrible addition to the game with each of the maps feeling too claustrophobic to house that many players. The dailies and the intent to keep people engaged has robbed Rogue Company of much of its personality as it becomes another twitch shooter.
The TTK ties into that. In Rogue Company’s original iteration it only took a few blasts to take someone down. This added an element of caution – running in without a plan will result in death. A good player was no match for a well co-ordinated team.
Except now the TTK is so high that it allows for showboaters. In the original iteration I would laugh when someone jumped or tried to duck because it was not really going to stop them getting shot and more likely to make them a target. Now, it is common to see players, duck, dive, jump, and twist out of the way of shots. It is conceivable that a good player can drag a terrible team to victory.
It is a common occurrence to see the above screenshot where one player outscores their team by twice or three times and becomes the centre piece for the team’s success.
I think this is what the avid Rogue Company players wanted; to be show offs and dunk on other players. The result is that it makes the community worse.
In the last couple of months, I have received messages and/or voice chat abuse over Xbox Live with people lashing out at me for a bad series of rounds in which I didn’t play as well as I could have. This was something I had not experienced at all in Season 0 and 1. I see this abuse as directly caused by the changes to how the game is played. From my original review:
“The shortness of the rounds makes the game feel like low stakes in terms of commitment; this is not a game that needs 30-40 minutes to conclude a match, and there are no painfully long games where I had to watch as a superior team grind another, slowly, into dust. This lightness to the process indicates that simpler can be better.”
Games can now drag on thanks to a bug/design whereby failing teams can’t surrender. Too frequently I’ll be on a winning team only for a person to get disconnected/crash and then this causes a cascade of rage quits as the fully manned opposition slowly grinds the smaller team down. I’ve dutifully sat through 3 rounds of drubbing, just to collect my dailies and it makes me resent the game for it.
The thing is Rogue Company can still be fun, the feel of the shooting is still solid, and there can be great back and forth between teams. The cool spin on Battle Royale called Battlezone would be cool to see as a main mode. It is just that it feels like the worst elements of the Rogue Company fanbase won over and now we have a bad 3rd person version of Call of Duty. The world does not need another one of those.
Oh yeah, and they aren’t good at getting rid of the racists (the person playing Dahlia below has played it enough to max out her level with no reprisal).
Conclusion
Still good, but losing more and more of its personality everyday. Rogue Company has lost most of what made it unique in the last couple of years, and yet, I am still playing it.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox Series S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
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