The 1 hit KO Shrines have gotta go.

A Shrine (or anything, really) that instantly kills the player shouldn't exist in a game with a death penalty. Period. The death penalty shouldn't exist, either, but if you're gonna force players to put up with that crap, these things have to go. Because no, they're not funny, they're frustrating. They might be slightly funny the first time, if there was no loss of anything on death, but as it stands I'm likely to be ignoring all shrines in the future as long as cheap death is a possible outcome of using them.

This is nothing to say of the masochists who decide to play on Hardcore. They have no option of using shrines, period, because any single one of them could result in instant death.

 

You played the lottery. You lost.

Get over it.

 

Just like with real TNT-filled slot machines. When you lose, you blow up. (though it is really annoying, I don't like sudden death, especially when the rewards they give you aren't even that great)

 

I personally don't see the point of any of the shrines. A very very temporary boost to a random something or death? Just ignore them all as they are trivial.

 

Nothing these shrines grant is worth death.

This is the real face of Shrines in Starbound:



Also, last I checked, there were no grand pianos strung up over the places you usually buy lotto tickets. So no, I didn't "play the lotto."

 

I propose a color scheme or symbol system that makes it less of a gambling sensation and more of a mini game memory sensation.

 

I'm of two minds on this matter.

1st: I like that it's a big unknown. Sometimes I've just ignored the shrine as I wasn't prepared to gamble with the pixels I had.

2nd: I get how it seems arbitrary to just click something and you're dead. No chance to avoid it, just automatic death. Seems a little silly.

I know more people are going to start to complain about these. I guess I would like to see a system in place where it took 90 percent of your maximum health away. If you were already injured, death would be almost certain, but at full health, it would almost kill you. This would scale up to whatever your maximum health was. I'm not sure though, I personally don't mind them, it gives me that "uhhhh, is it worth it?" feeling, which I do enjoy.

 

While I have been ignoring these wonderful slot machines, I must agree that having a few nice boons at the cost of having a chance to kill isn't good for the game design. What is good, however, I have no idea.

 

These shrines do give techs and some items on the rare occasion. Myself and some mates have had incredible luck, but also a lot of bad luck. Maybe if they nerfed the damage and made the 'prize' worth it theyd be a nice part of the game.

 

It *might* be worth it if the buffs were actually useful instead of just "jump a bit higher for half a minute" or "glow for a bit". If it lasted ten minutes, maybe. I usually click on them because I live on the edge and don't care 'bout no rules, but I understand that if you're not an ice cold player like me you might not want to suddenly die because you had the chance to be shiny for a moment.

 

When in doubt, balance it out.

Every negative effect it can grant should be scaled in some manner against a positive effect it can grant. As a rule, positive effects can be greater than the negative effects, in order to grease the spoon a bit, but the negative effects should never be better than the positive ones, at most they should be equal.

As it stands, nothing positive it does matches instant death, which in turn results in pixel loss. That's two negative effects in one, making it horrendously imbalanced. Hence, suicide booth in disguise.

 

"If you're incapable of using your brain for two seconds, don't bother posting on these forums."
Wow, you're a wonderful person.


Anyway, I somewhat agree with this topic, Afterall sudden death is too much for an otherwise pitiful boon.
I wouldnt mind so much if the rewards where greater than or equal to the penalties. But they're not.
So for now I just ignore them.

 

Well, just ignore the shrines for now then? That's what I do if I don't feel like risking death using one. I only bother taking a chance on shrines when i'm probably going to die or something anyway.

 

I have kept a log of good and bad effects from shrines so far. Lately I have been getting more positives than negatives but still my ratio is awful out of 46 shrines I have encountered 13 of those have done something good in my last reroll it was 5 shrines 5 good effects so I have hope. Also, if you are full of health (dont know if armor is a factor but race iron set was on), and have a heal buff on you can live through an 'insta kill' just as long as the area is mob free.

 

Random death is simply bad game design, period. There's no reason to ever implement it. It doesn't make the game more challenging or enjoyable, just more aggravating.

 

I don't think these shrines "have to go" personally, but I do think they are kinda worthless at the moment. I doubt anyone actually uses them anyways. I'll use them if they have a chance to drop some kind of rare weapon or a buff that doesn't go away after only a short while :/

 

Yeah, the benefits of a shrine aren't good enough to warrant the poison cloud doing 167 damage initially and then poison ticks of 17 damage. Here's a workaround until this gets adjusted: hold up a shield when using a shrine to block most of the damage from a bad one.

 

Personally, I click them and immediately jump back, and if it isn't the death color, run into the cloud to get the boost. You can avoid it, just jump back.

 

Have you agree with the OP about this, as shrines are pretty much useless in their current state, and is mainly due to the instant death possibility.

I wouldn't call it "gambling" really since the point of gambling would be to have extreme risk for great reward. At best, the shrines give a minor benefit for a few seconds... that's totally worth the chance at dying, right???

I don't mind the other negative effects as they are fair. But as the OP said, pretty much any effect that instantly kills the player despite everything isn't good gaming principle. In the current game, I wisely ignore them completely... not exactly a great gameplay element if smart play is to never use them at all.

 

eh, for what it's worth, I got killed by my first "shrine" today, laughed, and never activated one again.

Whether it's fine for it to randomly instakill you or not is irrelevant, because nobody in their right mind is ever going to use them unless they have zero pixels and it's right next to the teleport in point on the planet.