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Playing Nightly makes me worried

Discussion in 'Starbound Discussion' started by Feathery Dust, Aug 22, 2014.

  1. Curse Starwind

    Curse Starwind Subatomic Cosmonaut

    The particular way combat, crafting, or exploration, etc, works, is what i would consider to be fundamental, and not things you can easily adjust like the rate of ore dropping on death or mining speeds. How much ore you drop or how long it takes to mine something should be easily adjustable, if it's too grindy, they could easily adjust that and they probably will once the fundamental gameplay mechanics are in place. To be genuinely worried about ore drops at this stage is a bit ridiculous, since there's far more important features that should be worked on right now. Ore drops would be annoying, but it wouldn't be game breaking like the enemy birds in early beta were, just as an example.

    The second stage of the beta is when the devs would be adjusting all of the variables for how much ore you drop, or how long it takes to break a piece of stone with a copper pick axe, etc, they explain this in the beta stages thing they posted a while back.

    Source: http://playstarbound.com/how-the-beta-is-going-to-work/
     
    M_Sipher likes this.
  2. Tymon

    Tymon Cosmic Narwhal

    It's ridiculous? Breaking a bunch of stuff, putting in flat out UNWANTED game mechanics, that ends up making the early game tedious, grindy, and punishing, on top of the other changes is ridiculous. As I said, the forum outcry against ore drops wasn't exactly small. To ignore it is thumbing their noses at their community. Wasn't the whole point of pre-orders, early access, etc, to shape how the game develops by getting advice from your users? To ignore the plethora of complaints about this system, and even one of their moderators, dislikes the change, is certainly something to be worried about on principle alone. If they wanted to work on the major stuff, was it really NEEDED to add in ore drops/bar drops? Was it NEEDED to make mining tools get permanently broken? The changes I mentioned will ruin the game for me and others as well. And these changes were unnecessary. This game isn't Dark souls.
     
    Last edited: Sep 19, 2014
  3. Lintton

    Lintton Guest

    The game is still not dark souls with or without item dropping. That is a very simplistic way to look at the many options one has to storing their haul of ores, and while it is fuzzy on how long they last, items can also be retrieved when dropped. I want details as much as the next person, but I won't call the game what it isn't.
     
  4. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    If improved warp in/out options get implemented, ore dropping becomes even less of an issue.

    Honestly, I only die anymore when I get careless and/or stupid. My mining tool only hits 0 when I get careless and don't pay attention; typically I begin repairs come 25%. I'll wait and see how these changes affect a tested (as in "not nightly") version of the game with all the new changes to combat and whatnot before deciding if I don't like them or not.
     
    Lintton likes this.
  5. Full Metal Kirby

    Full Metal Kirby Phantasmal Quasar

    Just going to point out that the loudest party is generally never the majority. Especially not when "anger" is involved.

    On the topic of tools breaking, I'm pretty sure it was either that or remove them entirely. Since otherwise they would either A) Make the Matter Manipulator upgrades useless, or B ) Be made useless by the MM upgrades -- there is no real compromise between the two. Them breaking is pretty much the only way to make them not compete with each other as much.

    As for the reason of ores actually dropping, I'm pretty sure it's because they're shying away from the magic money glue in crafting recipes, and instead shifting to something that makes it so you can't just dig down to the core mining all the things and then decide "eh, I don't feel like pillaring back up. Imma just jump in the lava since I don't lose anything important."

    So yes, the changes are very much "necessary" from a game design perspective.

    As for my opinion on ores dropping, the only issue I have with it is that it doesn't make much logical sense. Throw in a third bag and make it ores/bars only, forbid them from being in the first two, make /reasons/ for it being as such, and then I'd be completely happy. Added bonus of not having to look over the other two bags thrice to make sure you didn't miss any ore.
     
  6. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    Oh man I would be so happy with a third inventory for ores/bars-only. I wouldn't even care about the in-universe fictional justification for it.[DOUBLEPOST=1411160379][/DOUBLEPOST]Errands run now, so I can comment on this further...

    Very true.

    I've mentioned this in other threads, but yeah, it seems like people are taking changes like this without looking at the larger context the changes are taking place in.

    I can see a progressive back-and-forth between the Matter Manipulator and crafted tools being your dominant mining device. Start with the weak MM, develop a pickaxe. Stick with that for a bit as it is stronger, but that comes at the cost of potential breakage (and low range)... until you upgrade the MM's strength. Yay! Stick with that a while... then come drills, which have a bigger area of effect AND are stronger than the current MM. Stick with the potentially-breakable drills as a tradeoff for those strengths until you can upgrade the MM further.
     
    Last edited: Sep 19, 2014
  7. Curse Starwind

    Curse Starwind Subatomic Cosmonaut

    It's ridiculous because it's something that's likely to change to some extent by the time the game is fully released, i don't know why this is so hard for you to understand. All of this worry of the current state of the game just because of literally two annoying features that were added just seems a bit premature, these aren't good indications of how the final game will work. I don't like these two changes either, but most of the other changes mentioned in the changelog sound like big improvements over the current stable build, so i'm just going to wait and see how it develops, instead of rushing to conclusions about how the final game will turn out based on a couple of things i don't like, in a huge list of changes that i do like.
     
  8. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    I also can't help but wonder how people are playing if mining tools breaking once they hit 0 "energy" is somehow a frequently-recurring, game-breaking threat.

    I mean, when I started playing I thought they did break when that happened, so I kept an eye on it and began repairs when they started getting low, not when they hit near-empty. It was actually a shock to find they didn't perma-break; for a game with early emphasis on survival management, this stuck me as rather forgiving. Hell, I just talked with a friend of mine today who's played some (he's on break so he doesn't burn out before the big updates), and that tools didn't break was news to him. Taking a few seconds and like four pieces of Copper Ore to bring a tool back to full power is not exactly a Herculean effort. (Even if things change and you need to start using the same ore type as the tool, that's not hard.) Hell, I tend to restore my drill to full every time I hunker down for the night while on a planet-crawl, regardless of how "drained" it is or isn't.

    And before anyone brings up ore distribution or materials strength or whatever in the nightly build, allow me to put out there that the nightly build is only marginally more reliable a method of foretelling V1.0's balances than scrying via chicken entrails. Nightly is broken, it's the "will this make the game explode yes/no", and judging by the various nightly threads, the answer is often "yes". The polish comes after you're sure the device won't melt down performing its basic functions.
     
  9. Curse Starwind

    Curse Starwind Subatomic Cosmonaut

    Exactly, nothing is really set in stone right now. Like you said in your previous post, the other features of the game like the MM will probably compliment the new changes anyways, so a feature that may seem badly executed right now, may feel completely normal once all of the various game mechanics are working together in a properly balanced fashion.
     
  10. Lintton

    Lintton Guest

    Funny story: I didn't know you had to repair pickaxes and drills until visiting a second human base, 1.5 screens into a huge slab of concrete. just didn't pay attention to the help text.
     
  11. Kevlar98

    Kevlar98 Intergalactic Tourist

    I don't mind dropping ores and losing pixels, it makes the game more challenging. Why should you be able to beam down to a high level planet and mine as much as you can until a monster way out of your league one shots you and then you keep the ore? Maybe try to not die and then you have nothing to worry about. If you lost nothing in real life when you died wouldn't you think everyone would be doing it all the time?
     
  12. Zuvaii

    Zuvaii Heliosphere

    See, you're not taking the new players on the starting planet into account. Like I said earlier, how does losing a material that is finite (for all intents and purposes anyway per planet) constitute a challenge? Please, tell me how. Yes there needs to be consequences to death, but I'd rather the combat and such be balanced out first. I've been playing video games for almost 25 years now, I started out on Super Mario Bros for the NES and went to the SNES, the N64, The Playstation (which thankfully still works, yay Xenogears), Dreamcast (still works, only Sonic Adventure), PS2, X-Box, and a PS3. This isn't counting hand-helds or my PCs, or even my visits to arcades. I have seen the definition of challenge in video games change over the years. It started off as punishing because those devs were fresh from making arcade consoles and it was the only way to pad out the game length to make kids think the game was long and hard. Plus I heard in Japan that even rentals were illegal, so those methods were encouraged.

    So tell me, please, in detail, how losing your ores and bars on death in normal mode is somehow acceptable. I want to know. That way when a new player comes onto these boards and complains about having to make another character because they simply couldn't find the ores they lost on death (SB has no mini-map or tool that allows you to locate dropped items, simply memory alone) and couldn't make enough iron armor/weapons to survive, that I can tell them just how all that frustration is legitimately challenging so I can convince them to stay and not worry about them spreading bad reviews via word of mouth to all their friends who are on the fence about buying the game. Please, enlighten me to the best of your abilities.
     
  13. Tymon

    Tymon Cosmic Narwhal

    They also aren't taking into account dying at the bottom of the map, having your ore drop into oblivion where you can't retrieve it, and the fundamental point of, if you end up dying to a swarm of monsters, because your armor and weapons aren't sufficient, how are you supposed to retrieve your materials to make better weapons/armor to get your stuff back if it's being protected by a hoard of things that killed you in the first place? Furthermore, they aren't taking into account 'multiplayer' modes. Die in multiplayer, drop all your crafting materials, someone comes along and steals it. Or worse, someone intentionally kills you to steal it. As I stated in another thread, forced ore drops will encourage griefing and pking in public servers, because now killing another player will net you all of their ores and bars instead of simply just 'lulz' so to speak. I want to play a game that I have fun in. And I don't find it fun having to be paranoid when I'm playing with other players.
     
    Aquillion, garpu, Pingeh and 4 others like this.
  14. Lintton

    Lintton Guest


    You would have to go pretty far out of your way to mine out an entire starting planet of resources. I mean, a completely intentional lack of planning and inability to learn game mechanics.
     
  15. Zuvaii

    Zuvaii Heliosphere

    That's kinda what people do in sandbox games. Strip-mine an entire area (how I put it anyway) and move on.
     
    DrakeWymulf and Tymon like this.
  16. Tymon

    Tymon Cosmic Narwhal

    A: The entire point of his thread is discussing worry over the next release. If you don't want to see people expressing their concerns, why the hell are you even here? and B: Coming to a thread specifically labeled that it makes people worried and calling their concerns 'ridiculous' is quite frankly, being a troll. You really think waiting 6+ months to get 1.0 and then, the changes they added, ruin the game for someone that spent money on it, ISN'T something to have some measure of concern over? I don't want this game to be a frustrating pile of crap that I do not enjoy playing. So unless you're going to somehow make them refund the money I spent on it back, if the game turns out to be a steaming pile of crap, you have no right to call my worry over something that will ruin the game for me 'ridiculous' in any way, shape or form, especially when the changes are in the official changelog.
     
  17. Lintton

    Lintton Guest

    The ENTIRE planet? and then do nothing with it? Because in my experience, even on nightly, I was able to find more than enough materials by mining from under my house, which is a small section of what can be found below ground.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 20, 2014
  18. Zuvaii

    Zuvaii Heliosphere

    Well yeah, if the weather system isn't what I like, or the gravity is too high, I'll take all it's natural resources and move onto another planet and see if I like that one. You need to keep in mind, a sandbox game like this will potentially attract a lot of people. WH40K people who might wish to bring Holy Exterminatus to worlds full of mutants, xenos, and heretics following Chaos, people who strip mine entire worlds so that the one planet they find can be given the perfect conversion into a planet-wide city-base structure. People who want to re-enact Planet of the Apes, Godzilla movies through screencaps involving carefully created structures and Hytlotl villages, it's mind-boggling just what can be done with this game. Maybe they want to have their character be Dr. Blight from Captain Planet (seriously) and just screw around.

    Too punishing of a death penalty might push them away. Of course there needs to be one, but if ores and such dropping on death are gonna be a thing, I'd rather they be an option you choose when making a character.
     
  19. Lintton

    Lintton Guest

    I'm just going to agree to disagree. As a builder I don't see this interfering my fun.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 20, 2014
  20. Zuvaii

    Zuvaii Heliosphere

    Different people have different definitions of builder. I still say the biggest issue with ore drops on death is when the planet you start on ends up with meteor showers those can kill you suddenly no matter how cautious you are. I still remember making a brand new Munari character months back and beaming down, happy at the sight of so many tall trees to make a base/loads of torches and not 15 seconds after I beamed down and used that Matter Manipulator to start cutting down a tree, a meteor shower starts and the very first one hits me right on the head. If I was on a Nightly build and just nabbed a bunch of ores and went to a safe place to deposit them (instead of my preferred save+exit strategy) and that happened, how would it have been my fault? Granted, that's more of a world/weather generation issue, but a punishment for death might seem okay if you go to too high tier of a planet as someone I quoted mentioned earlier. At that point, it's purely the player's fault for getting in over their head by such an insane degree, but a new character that spent anywhere from 15 seconds to 2 hours farming ores suddenly becoming a no-name Bystander in Michael Bay's Armageddon? That's no fun at all. No control over that, and being punished in death for something largely beyond your control (not you specifically, in general) isn't gonna sit well with others.
     
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