Coming in a few days (sorry for the delay!)

This will be well worth the wait in my opinion, just can't wait to see how it turns out.
So, only 10 levels. Will there be monster variety? There could be sub-levels that indicate what type of loot you could receive exploring that planet and such. Planet biome specifics could also have their own level: Snow could be rated as harder due to the fact it has certain living conditions etc.

Will you be adding patch notes slowly over the the days in time periods, say like every 3-6 hours?

Also as a balance suggestion, can you please make some techs such as the 'Gravity Ball' consume far more energy? I feel it doesn't consume enough, thus I was able to keep flying upwards into space for a long time.

 

I can honestly say I love this idea. I've felt overwhelmingly put off by the level system for each planet.

It would be *very* cool if monsters roamed around in packs of easy/medium/hard. Maybe the young ones in the pack could be easy, with the alpha being hard. Something like that.

It doesn't feel right to me that every planet has the same level of monsters. There should be more variation per planet besides day/night and depth underground, or to at least not make it so predictable (ie you know in the day time monsters will be level 2, so at night they'll be level 4).

 

How will planets of different difficulties in the same sector be distinguished? Will there be easy, medium, and hard planets, too?

 

This is gonna be awesome. Armor pen was definitely starting to throw me off. It also bothered me that the armor you get became useless so quickly. Can't wait. I also like the wipe

 

Sweet! The only thing I can really say is that I wish this was happening sooner, but I know these things take time.

 

Will you be able to keep the modifications you've made to your universe, or will they be gone with the character too?

 

Great progress, thanks! But I'll raise the uncomfortable question...

I know this is Beta and everything, but what's the need to wipe characters? Is it because armor/weapons are incompatible after the update? If so, could you just wipe all incompatible items from player inventories? It'll be disruptive, yes, but MUCH less disruptive than complete character loss together with all ships, pixels, codex, quests, and non-weapon/armor items we gathered which shouldn't be impacted by the update.

Yes yes we were warned wipes are possible, but I'd still rather have them be the absolutely minimum number necessary. Less wipes means more chances for us to test content without having to restart from lvl 1 each time, never getting a chance to get to the higher end content.

Thanks for considering!

 

Is there any any any any any any way in this update you could add a parameter to cap the number of users on a server? If I get more than 30 users it lags to no end and pushes my CPU to 100%

 

Weapon with low damage and high speed is not relevant. Weapons with an average-high damage and medium-low speed is much better. 1-2 punch does not give the monster hit us back. If we beat the Mostra dagger, he hit us back 1-3 times. If Mostra has ranged attacks - that the dagger is not highly effective.
The game is difficult to buy recipes for higher levels. What to buy weapons for retspt or 18th level, there must die 10-30 times on the way. Since we only available armor and weapons 15th level.

 

I was wondering exactly how planets are generated, and if none of them are totally 100% random and unique to each player's world, if, in the end, we could have a final sector that randomly generated planets endgame style (and use of a seed would generate that planet in any other user's final sector)?? Also no expert on the 1-100 scale, but 10 always sounds so limiting.. Maybe 20 would be better for variance?? If found equipment will be serviceable for the whole sector you find it in, would that mean that you could drop back a sector and totally demolish anything there, or that your weapons wouldn't be effective early in the next sector? Also not sure what to think about monster's having no level listed :> Its just a number in the end, I guess, but maybe they could be displayed by a circle icon that shades from bright green to green to orange to red type of thing..

I just worry about the game getting soft, as I've seen a lot of players complain of difficulty/loss etc.. At least keep difficulty options available if this ever happens, or even add extra areas that are an obvious risk to attempt regardless of level or gear (harsh environment, enhanced enemy totals/spawns, etc..
)
Also, unrelated somewhat, but some tougher mini-boss type enemy spawning would be cool, where they have multiple special attacks and enhanced HP and loot drops.. An enemy size fluctuation mechanic would be a fairly easy way to get more out of an already awesome enemy system too :>

 

Maybe the fix for this should be letting us start a character generally geared out in the higher tiers, rather than starting out from level 1.

 

Issue is, if you just wipe all the incompatible items, then there are people who could easily get stuck and without a way to deal with it. This would force them to HAVE to restart.

As you say, we were warned they could happen. Besides, a wipe will let us test this content as well, and test the progression. Hopefully there's also a bit of tweaking in the way Platinum spawns, instead of high 30's. It looks like it was meant to spawn earlier.

 

This seems like a reasonable thing to do, specially for testing purposes!

 

So wait, there are 10 tiers in total? woah I thought there were just 4 for some reason.

Anyway, this sounds a lot like how you were going to make the level system last year(?) and it sounds really great. I think the 1-10 level planets are easier to understand, if I read it correctly. (each sector has planets from lv 1 to lv 10, sector 1 lv 10 planet is easier than sector 2 lv 10 etc...)
All in all, go for it!

 

I know you've already addressed the issue with your plans, but for the purposes of weapon comparison, you could have a craft-able target dummy like in Torchlight II on which damage can be logged or something. Just a thought.

 

This makes a lot of sense. One thought would be to make sure that there is still some variation on difficulties between planets in the same level, maybe as an additional parameter in planet generation (maybe just re-purpose the existing level of the planet). So instead of having planets levels 1-10, the monsters on each planet in a sector have slightly different ranges of health. Establish a minimum and a maximum for each tier, and then create different sub-ranges which are randomly assigned to planets. So in the same sector you could have Easy enemies that take anywhere from 40-100 damage, depending on the planet.

EDIT: Just playing around with some numbers this gives a nice distribution and scales pretty well from 60 to 25000 with easy overlapping with hard from the previous level, sample output http://plnkr.co/edit/jPdOFgrOh59fSRBncJrM?p=preview ,

Code:

var levelMultiplier = [1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89];

var difficultyNames = ["easy", "medium", "hard"];
var difficultyMultipliers = [1.1, 1.5, 1.9];
var difficultyMultiplierVariances = [0.1, 0.2, 0.1];

var baseHealth = 40;

function getMultiplier(difficulty) {
    var absMinValue = difficultyMultiplierVariances[difficulty] * -1000;
    var absMaxValue = difficultyMultiplierVariances[difficulty] * 1000;
 
    return difficultyMultipliers[difficulty] + Math.floor(Math.random() * (absMaxValue - absMinValue) + absMinValue)/1000.0;
}


function getHealth(base, lvl, difficulty) {
    return (10*lvl + base) * levelMultiplier[lvl-1] * getMultiplier(difficulty);
}

 

I haven't travelled off the level 1 planets yet ( I like to take my time) but even then I could seen how the current armor system was difficult to work out, and I've seen others complaining about the difficulty progression.
Will be interesting to see how the two compare- after all balancing things like this is what the beta is about!

Also ok with the character reset - wipe away!

 

Wipe it all! Cleanse the universe!
I can't wait to test out the new damage/armor system, level scaling and ore generation.

The current system isn't that bad, but it does really restrict players to very specific level brackets for things to feel balanced depending on your gear. If you end up fighting something just a few levels higher than you then you usually end up getting 1 or 2 shot and that's almost never fun.

 

You guys are sill the best but I'm not exactly happy because I have to wait longer as an XP player. At least my character will not get reset!

 

I had no problem with the damage system ONCE I figured it out. I look forward to the changes, but I wouldn't dismiss the current system forever. A better instruction on how damage is done would be very helpful so players understand what they need to do. As for the difference between levels, I'd rather see the addition of some kind of reforging method where you can boost your weapons and armor a bit until you can make the next set or get substantially better gear.

Also, I am not 100% that monsters don't have fall damage, but if they don't please give it to them. I hate knocking them off a cliff to have them return while I would have died. They already get lightning acid exploding bubbles, why do they need Longfall boots?

My largest issue is ores, I have a lot of copper, iron and titanium, a little silver and stupid tiny amounts of gold and platinum so I can't make the armor to match the levels I am at, while my weapons are fine. Hopefully ore gen changes will alleviate this. A probe to scan a planet for some idea of what's on it for ores would be nice,.

 

I've already started over once, I can do it again, can't wait to test the new system~