Death Penalty in the Nightly Builds

Make it optional or remove it.
My first action after i lost my ore was alt + f4.
I wont play again with this death penalty.
Its just no fun for me.

 

That's the way to handle feedback, Ultimatums always work.

 

It's assumed until the devs say otherwise that losing dropped ores is not a thing, as it screws up hard mode players as well when they lose their dropped inventory on death.

 

Why not?

A lot of people hold this attitude, but I don't understand it. Why shouldn't an option you don't like exist? It's pretty clear Starbound isn't being pitched at a specific difficulty level, so why not allow this kind of very fine-grained control over the difficulty?

 

I'd say that it would be hard to organize multiplayer play with so many variables to difficulty affecting characters and their experience.

 

Because then you end up with AI War, with dozens of difficulty related sliders and dozens of check-boxes to add/remove the majority of gameplay aspects. It's overwhelming to play the first 20 or 30 times.

 

Or just make it so the server's host determines the settings and everyone on the server knows about it beforehand. That's what I've more or less been saying now for quite a while.

 

Concievably, though I'd imagine that difficulty would be controlled by the server, constraining everyone to the same level. (Hey, look at that, I got ninjad.)

Just split it into basic and advanced modes. Basic is your creative - easy - medium - hard - nightmare continuum, advanced gives you fine-grained control. Arcen's stuff does tend to have an extraordinary amount of tunable options, but I don't think the conceptual space for Starbound's difficulty has quite so many axes...

 

Permadeath servers with mods. I'm pretty sure with so many options that it would discourage change instead of encourage it. Or that players looking for a multiplayer game would have yo look at a list with a fine tooth comb.

Not interested.

 

I...

I don't understand what information you're trying to impart by saying that.

Yeah, you've got a point. I never really play this kind of game on public servers, so that problem rarely jumps out at me. Still, I'd say this kind of thing is what a decent server browser is for. Filter to basic difficulty types. Bob's your uncle.

I kind of led the discussion off to the side by talking about high-control difficulty selection, and never really found out why people shouldn't be allowed to select a zero death penalty if they want. (To me, the death penalty is really the most fundamental aspect of difficulty in these kind of games anyway.)

 

I haven't played nightlies, but I'm hoping that the way they're going about this is closer to a "common" beta process:

Make everyone try things that might be too extreme/broken, just to get feedback.

This way, they get feedback from players of all playstyles, and they can see things like "Oh, the non-hardcore people say this is ridiculous, while the hardcore people say it's just right. Maybe this should only be hardcore difficulty".

I really do hope they aren't trying to make "normal" difficulty into something from the days of EQ or UO.

 

If you want a no risk game then make a mod for it.

 

If you want a hardcore game then make a mod for it.

I don't think either of these is a particularly satisfying conclusion.

 

Not sure how to respond to that because there is already a hardcore (hint Permadeath mode) soo... umm yeah.

 

Guys -- let's try to stay cool, ok? The pattern of reports from this thread is becoming problematic -- and I don't want to have to close it.

 

I like the ore penalty, it promotes building a proper mine, not just rushing to the bottom and digging everything. It should be a challenge, that's what makes fun.

I reckon they should disable saving underground (character can't be backed up when out of teleporter range or something) to prevent the save and quit cheat route to the ship too.

Reckon the ores should drop and stay though, maybe have a gravestone or a backpack.

 

It would be nice if there were a wider range of difficulty options, or even a configurable set of options and not only "preset" levels.

For example, many people feel that losing all the time you've spent in a single playthrough (droppable ores + short despawn timer) is not fun, and would really hurt their enjoyment of the game. Others feel it adds a good "bite" to death, which makes them enjoy successful mining trips even more than they do now. Cool, so the devs can take this as a good option.

Same thing with Pixel loss. The only way to store pixels is through voxels or whatever, but that costs 40% of your pixels. It also is not available in the earliest stages of the game, where pixel gain is the most limited. Again, some players feel that the early-game cost really hurts their enjoyment of the game, and they don't want to grind mobs just to get pixels for their next crafted item. Others feel that it's acceptable and adds challenge to the game. Cool. If at least some people enjoy a feature, I think it's a good idea to try and make an option for it to exist in the game, but if at least some people feel that a feature ruins their fun, I think it's a good idea to not make it a default part of the game.

Hopefully there can be more than three difficulty options. Casual (no death penalty?), Normal (small-medium death penalty), Hardmode (large death penalty), and Dark Souls (dying formats your C: drive). Or let there be customizable options. Maybe you want normal with permadeath. Maybe you want hardcore except for pixel loss. This way, players of all playstyles could find options that work for them.

 

The majority of the games from my childhood had no difficulty setting what-so-ever. Most NES games had one difficulty; hard. If you were lucky, some had a second difficulty; extremely hard. Games have become so gentle and casual and it saddens me a bit that people demand to have their cake and eat it too. Death has been an aspect of games for a loooong time, and you should expect to lose progress. It's like taking a test in highschool, filling in "C" for all the answers and passing even though it was a True/False test. If you do "F" work, you should get an "F" grade. If you can't be bothered to stash your ore every now and then, you deserve to lose it. Even then when this is working properly you won't lose it; It'll just sit there till you saunter on back to it. I can't stand gaming on a bell-curve.

 

Just throwing this out there, but what are the chances that the drop-ore-on-death feature is there in the nightlies just so Devs can test something? Just because something is in the nightlies, doesn't mean it will be implemented into the game. After all, a few weeks ago we had full immortality.

I for one think it would be far more consequential to see other things drop on death, like the rest of our equipment and inventory.

 

I'm saying that it shouldn't be necessary to resort to mods for something that can easily be accommodated - and already is accommodated in the other direction. Just in a needlessly snide way because I was getting overexcited.

Pretty likely, but part of the reason the nightlies are being revealed is to get feedback.