Death Penalty in the Nightly Builds

I think it's also worth taking a moment to point out that this makes the very beginning the hardest part in the game, effectively reversing any kind of healthy difficulty curve and making any kind of mastery/learning cycle difficult, if not impossible to create.

Basically, you're more susceptible to death as a new character, as you have no armour and a 'half-tier' weapon with no abilities, no healing items, no techs, etc.

As you move on to new planets you might still have one tier back armor and weapons, but you'll also have swords with projectiles, shields, techs that can be used to dodge, very high damage/Knockback weapons that are good into the next tier, a cooking table, hamburgers/banana bread, a store of coal. . .

Basically, enemies will never be as dangerous as they are on the first planet.

This had always been a problem, but the ore dropping makes it worse because now you can't advance until you've become good enough that enemies who out gear you are trivial to defeat.

You need to start by skimming the surface for trees and coal, which will have you running into many enemies and getting caught out at night, before you can even really attempt to get copper; how are you supposed to light a mine with ten torches?

Dying during this time means you lose all your coal and start over.

To even make torches you need to be able finish the majority of battles without loss of hp, without armor and with poor weaponry.

And, unless your first planet has a jungle biome, getting enough bandages to help you through this is going to be enough of a slog that it changes nothing.

Now you can finally start digging, but you can't mine iron until you get a copper pickaxe, so you've still got quite the unarmed slog before you can make an anvil and finally gear up.

Now, (almost) all this was true before, but the game maintained a learning curve because you could die in the beginning and power through. That's no longer an option, meaning they need to either make the starter planet enemies much weaker, or drop this mechanic to make a learning curve.

By the time you've survived all this without dying, the rest of the game isn't going to offer a challenge.

 

Man, I just want to play the game at a normal difficulty level with basic penalty for death, if I wanted Super Star Wars level of difficulty then I'll just go play Dark Souls. The smartest thing the Devs could do would be to simply add more difficulty options or a hardcore mode, but if that's too much to ask for then I don't think I want to play this "game" anymore. (game is in quotations because no game should punish you for simply playing it)

 

Just how difficult are the mobs in nightly compared to koala? I just don't see this being comparable to the souls series, or even super star wars being comparable to the souls series.

 

It's still a Koala, but that one on Nightly lived up to its name: Rampaging, to take advantage of new combat movements we can do.

 

In my opinion, the dropped ore penalty basically turns normal difficulty into hardcore difficulty. There's hardly a point to play on normal difficulty anymore, and there's no longer a difficulty for people who just want to play more casually. It makes me wonder what style of game the developers are intending to make this game. The way I see it, they are approaching a design that compromises adventurous and survival styles of gameplay, which are complete opposites. Adventurous games should encourage exploration and have a minimal or trivial death penalty, while survival games should punish the player harshly for dying and discourage taking huge risks at all. This leaves me confused on how I'm expected to play Starbound, and I would honestly prefer a movement towards one direction or the other, rather than being a mix of both.

 

Tip: it's possible to teleport to the ship through background holes if we're not too deep (it's not too deep if the background hole can "emit" light and the cavern ambient sound is not present), so there's no need to dig up to the surface.

I don't know if it's intended or not, because I can teleport from pretty deep caves that way.

 

Decided to go play a round of the nightly and take a look at this.

With a new(And different haired) Lintton I tested out the beginning melee combat, and I think its a lot better now, but not where it should be. One concern is blocking with the 2hander. It's unavailable when using an uncommon weapon?! why?

Now back on topic:

On my first planet I decided to go right until I found something to get killed on with coal on my person, I picked a fight with the local Glitch king and lost. As stated, ores were dropped and pixels were lost.

I won the rematch and then found that the ores were missing, and yes, the loss of materials and smelted metal presents a problem. particularly coal, which is vital to traveling underground.

I then decided to play a hardcore Novakid, and lose to the first critter I see.

When I beam my loser Novakid named Lemonrocker back, I notice that all of the items he carried were gone, not laying on the floor, gone.

The problem (And I too would like a confirmation if this is broken or not) is that the "items dropped" are in fact also lost, possibly as a result that respawning takes you back to the ship instead of the planet.

That these dropped items include stuff that isn't seemingly relevant to pixel gain (Smelted metals, fuels, coal) raises the first question of why they should be affected on Normal difficulty. This presents two issues for the casual player: 1. losing items of progression(mah diamonds! I need those for drillz!) 2. losing items related to exploration(mah coal! but I fell down the well 5 minutes away!).

The second question(and more important) is why they disappear and are not recoverable, even if silly Lemonrocker get headbanged to death 5 feet away from their beamdown point. This may be a broken feature, but in case it isn't: Dropped player items should be recoverable items, even on hardcore difficulty. That we can face our end on a large planet several thousand feet up means that these items need to last, even if a meteor storm happens on the way causing more dropped items. Even if we aren't getting ourselves killed this can cause problems for people raising a pet mob, since they can and do get lost.

So yes, I do agree that not losing ores and materials on Normal difficulty is the better choice and that this is fake difficulty. I would also point out that this is a larger issue of dropped items being lost on beamout, which can affect other aspects of play just as badly.

 

For the record I was directly beside my beam point when I died went back to the surface and my ore was gone. I was not expecting that to happen and didn't recall reading it on the main page. Not a big deal when its just coal but if I spend an hour mining just to die by some monster and I lose all my ores on NORMAL mode I probably will just stop playing. Heck those small birds that now die at you take no knock back it seems so I always seem to get hit by them, so dying seems easier than before. If you want to do this, put all the ore in a chest and have the chest disappear if you die before reaching it again. I don't like that either but at least there is a chance at recovery.

I agree there should be a way to stop death elevator, but to be fair we already lose pixels on death and no one with a lot of pixels will die just to get to the ship faster they will probably just save and exit. I just think the ore penalty isn't something worth having on normal mode. It takes a game that can be long to start with and makes it longer when you have to go back for ores. I understand the reason for it and I am all for it on hardmode or even the medium mode (not sure what the modes are called), but not on normal. The only people punished by this are normal mode players who can't mod their way out of the problem. Not saying stopping death elevator is bad just saying pixel loss is already a punishment and people who don't do that are being punished also.

 

That's concrete conclusions using abstract cement.

 

After reading some of this thread, I have to agree that having resources drop on Normal mode is too much. I've been playing the current nightly and I do like the improvements except for the ore drops. I've not been so angry at a game in quite some time. And if this mechanic is intended to dissuade suicide teleporting; well, I guess the devs forgot you can Save and Quit and be back in your ship anyways. Ore dropping is a dumb mechanic in any light.

 

the combat feels very off in the new nightly build..enemies are WAY too easy to kill because they attack like they are covered in dry honey and can only move half a centimeter each second (while attacking, it feels like).. what improvements were you talking about?

 

the enemies in my client move like the wind! I have a hell of a time killing them with the half-busted starter sword or bow. The improvements I am referring is overall game performance and content versus the current beta build (not nightly).

 

Performance has been improved greatly for sure.

On planet:
Really? We appear to have planets that are polar opposites of one another.. heck ..on my current planet there is an enemy that does an "attack" that does no damage. it just moves you like a foot and makes a pretty wind noise. And enemies that just bite me once,.. then sit there for like 20 seconds before biting me again.
we should switch. lol

also on topic:
It appears fall damage has been removed?
Its probably temporary though.

 

Nope! I fell to my death just a while ago (while carrying a ton of ore...)

 

really? I am not taking any fall damage in the current nightly build....

no matter how far i fall.

planet coords perhaps? (i would liek to see those enemies)
also, caves have been removed from the surface in the current nightly build for me (started new char/new universe tonight, so that may be our difference)


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after this back on topic lol.

 

All your fault for not putting down a wooden box to ensure that you dont lose all your stuff if you die.

But yea, they should add a "easy mode" difficulty with no death penalties for people like that.

 

Man, I swear, people just don't get it. Jonesy, others, and myself are perfectly fine with a death penalty such as losing pixels, but when a death penalty directly kills required progression (losing ores needed to progress to the next armor/weapon/bow/tool) on the first planet, that will ruin many new player's on the game. All it does is force them to spend more time doing the same thing to get back to where they were.

Watch this video. In fact, everyone should.

 

Sounds like you're still in admin mode Untrustedlife. Type /ruinthefun in chat to toggle it. It is true that the new combat can be a bit of a grab bag though, less mobile creatures are pushovers and ranged attackers are useless once you've got a feel for their individual attack types. I suppose it makes sense they're not too hard though, they're just wild animals.

 

>not played in many months
>read changes on the front page from time to time.
>see gasbags officially in game, if barely playable
>enable nightly, download game
>make character, enter world
>spend 30 minutes digging a hole because I can't find any fibers on surface and no visible caves
>get some ore in the process
>>4 hostiles drop on my head, I die
>>>Ores Dropped, huh, no problem
>go back to hole thinking, foolishly, that I can get my ore back
>ore despawned 5 seconds after it dropped
... ... ...

Screw it, wake me up when the game's finished, or the devs get their heads out of their hardcore behinds, and maybe remember this was supposed to be a sandbox meant to be fun as opposed to a bloody survival game.

I don't particularly enjoy using mods or cheats to bypass intentionally implemented brain-farts, but I'll do it if I must.