Poll: Option to enable hunger and/or switch back to extreme weather gear (please read top post)

HALO is a great FPS game. It focuses almost entirely on gun combat, has only a few ways to recover health, and is not the worse for it. Since Chucklefish has to worry about melee combat and balance and building blocks and cooking recipes and a billion other things, they can't focus on ranged combat enough to make it as good as they could have otherwise. Of course, removing all of those features changes what the game IS. It would no longer be the "do everything" game that you seem to want, but it would be very good at the specific things the developers chose for it to do.

The saying is "A Jack of all trades is an Ace of none."

Building is a game mechanic that is very directly benefited by superficial variety because it allows players to gain meaning from things that are functionally the same. Combat and Survival don't have that same dynamic to them. You might benefit a great deal from having 20 different types of blocks in your inventory while building, but having 20 different types of food in your inventory pretty much never helps in survival or combat. Even with a hunger bar included, there is never a good reason to carry more than three types of food, and even then it is only ever beneficial to carry more than one kind because of the different buffs they provide.

 

Hey, you know what another solution to that is?

Don't keep them.

There's a "trash" slot in your inventory. I use it all the time. I couldn't even begin to tell you how many weapons I've thrown away, let alone terrain blocks. But I'm not about to say that they should remove all those options because I didn't use them.

Citation needed.

Again, seriously. Explain to me exactly how, with all the huge big changes they've had to make to major core systems like questing and combat, it's "there's more than a few healing options" that's REALLY holding up the stable build. Because as said before, adding items to the pool is a process so simple and fast I can do it in short order, and I have the coding skills of raw bacon. Nevermind that we KNOW the devs often work off-clock on stuff when inspiration strikes.

Again, why are we not seeing more complaints about Vanity Armors existing? What purpose do they serve?

Alirghty then. What is it? You didn't say. Because the % is MAP COVERAGE, and again, that's only netting an ending and bragging rights.

And yet in that game you can lug around a whole Golden Corral's worth of food. Especially towards endgame when the blood-drinking spell and a coupla potions'll fix you up better than, say, a peanut.

 

I distinctly recall hearing about Kyren's changes to the food and status system for like a month, followed by another month of Tiy and Mollygos' "updates" that mostly boiled down to "wow, these new recipes and loot tables are taking waaaay longer than we thought they would." Of course, I still doubt we'd have the completed game by now even if there weren't these delays.

 

So don't carry them. I'm not seeing the problem here.

So far. Because the game's not done, and there's still tons of rebalancing and playtesting to do. I don't expect any system in play right now to be "finished", food's benefits included.

And lest we forget, they plan on making alternative progression methods to tomb-raiding and the like. Food variety could very easily play heavily into a more economy-based style of play, as you farm or craft food to sell. Maybe Avians will pay more for Exotic Food X than the Floran will, who will prefer Exotic Food Y and would pay through the Floran-equivalent-of-a-nose. Maybe that whole "rent rooms to NPCs" will require a functional kitchen.

 

Maybe is your favorite word and yet you don't realize it works both ways

 

@M_Sipher

1. I know, right? I'm using the trash slot a lot recently. You know, useless food stuff.
2. It took them a long time to do the farming system being what it's now (and yet isn't finished.). Am I wrong? Vanity armors can be collected for fun and they aren't too many in the end (I-LOVE-CAPES, GIMME A CAPE NAO ).
3. Okay, you got me on that, 1x2 for you. Still, how will you explore everything and don't collect the items? Explain to me, SiIiIIr.

 

Short of actually having a "balanced diet system" or complex economies that rival those of EVE Online, I don't think there will ever be any reason to make more than two or three types of food. Maybe while you are experimenting in the kitchen to find recipes, but that's more like a mini-game than a meaningful dynamic that adds to the rest of the game, and I detest mini-games because they are less fun than just playing a different game that is actually designed for that one thing. For example, I'd rather play Harvest Moon for farming when I want to do that instead of dealing with farming in Starbound, since a dedicated farm game will do farming so much better.

Incidentally, it's a common problem for farm games to provide incentives to farm more than one type of crop. In Harvest Moon, for example, I only grow Strawberries in Summer, Eggplant in Winter, etc... because they have the highest profit margins, and I can just buy ingredients for recipes using all the money I make. It requires very deep focus on this dynamic to prevent this problem, and the Chucklefish team simply doesn't have this kind of focus.

 

Problem solved! Except, you know, they still serve a USE, just not one you personally care for. Words mean things!

They've said the change has taken longer than they anticipated, but that's pretty vague as far as "how much time IS that" is concerned, and again, in light of everything that's been changing, the phrase "drop in the bucket" comes to mind. And it's not like every coder at CF is fixated on a singular aspect of the game at any given time. The quest-hub gate-base didn't get held off because they needed to determine what buffs orange juice gave.

So why can't you collect food for fun?

Monster drops. The obnoxious, 1-in-10000-or-someshit monster drops that all but necessitate the luck cheat and a pair of Lapiz Lazuli and what was it, the Alucart Armors?... in the hopes of maybe getting one after a hour of killing the same thing over and over.

 

@M_Sipher...

1. NO, NO and NO. You still don't get it. I'm paying for the full game, I want use the content on it! Heck, is that so hard to understand...?
2. I can't wear food. (Otherwise it would be great? )
3. It's all about the challenge. *puts sunglasses*

 

I'm starting to suspect that the argument might be based on the fundamental disagreement of all history: idealism vs pragmatism. Some argue that in an ideal world, the game would have a near infinite variety of truly functionally unique items/features that are all interesting and worth collecting/experiencing. Others argue that this takes so much time and is so difficult to actually do well in practice, that it isn't pragmatic for the developers to even try because it wastes development time that could be spent on making just a few really excellent features. Both are correct, but they are different perspectives that lead to different actions, causing conflict.

And I want to stop this whole thing about Castlevania: SotN, because SotN had flaws but at least it focused enough on the few things that were central to the game. It had clear design focus, but IMO the vast variety of items in it were quite distracting. I loved it dearly, and I think it was better than Starbound is in it's current state, but that doesn't mean it was perfect.

 

Then you're setting yourself up for disappointment if you feel you need to use every iota of game content in a game as open-ended as Starbound to be satisfied. How much time you got? The game universe is huge already. You're gonna have to explore every inch of every planet, both underground and aboveground... way aboveground. You did know there's asteroid fields above various worlds, right? Gonna use every weapon you come across, wear every armor, Vanity or no? Place every decor item?

The "you" was the general "you". Why can't someone collect food for fun?

So, why not the challenge of collecting all that food, farming it, if people dig it?

 

Because it isn't a challenge. The only real obstacle is finding the first seed and that can be achieved by doing one full circumnavigation of a planet and be done with it.

 

Wasn't the subject something about hunger bars and weather armor? People can still collect food for fun and have an endless variety of useless food regardless of whether there is an optional hunger bar mechanic, which is the real subject of this thread. Let's not get too distracted.

My original point was that if developers have to carefully balance food items and hunger mechanics as well as weather armor as well as combat balance as well as level design for missions, etc, etc... then they'll take forever and end up with mediocre design for every element, rather than focusing their effect on making a product that excels at just a few things. While I also find the food to be pointlessly various in the current build, I'm optimistic about the food buffing system the devs have promised.

 

@M_Sipher... *sigh* Okay, Round 3.

1. No... We're talking about a feature, A FEATURE THAT WAS SCREWED RECENTLY. Don't change the subject, bro.
2. Who in the world collect food...? If all the dishes could be placed on tables as decorations I would be quiet, seriously.
3. Isn't challenging when you have like 215426436357375354 items, this means that you need to get a hobby immediatly.

 

Problem with that is the fact that they can't give too useful of a buff to foods lest it renders TECHS irrelevant. There is a no win situation in the current state of things.

 

Maybe having tons of useless things to collect is a dynamic all to itself. If the Starbound devs decided to stop wasting time with combat balance and missions and instead spent all that effort and time expanding the amount of useless collectibles, would that make it a better game? I suspect it would please all the folks who collect different colors of dirt, all the types of food, etc...

EDIT: They could add every single flavor of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream (tm) to the loot table.

Ah, good point. This is exactly what I'm talking about when I say "sometimes different mechanics step on each other's toes."

 

Well, maybe there're quests planned for collectors of all kinds of universal crap.

Pretty sure there will be quests for farmers/chefs. Otherwise the vanilla will suck, no offense.

 

Perhaps, but I really don't expect the game to spend all that much time on maintaining a particularly high percentage of functional differences on the majority of its content. I mean, I was lugging around a sledgehammer for a while til I managed to get a folding chair weapon from a USCM prison. Functionally identical... hell, the chair did a little LESS damage, and it's not like the chairs have added effects like poison or lightning bolts like "normal" weapons.

But damned if I didn't enjoy using that chair to bash in skulls WAY more than any hammer you'd care to name... at least till I got the bone hammer... but even then, I'm hunting down a Lvl-10 folding chair because WATCHA GONNA DO BRUTHER. Chair will be my weapon of choice when not engaged in highly-and-quickly-lethal-to-me combat despite there being better weapons.

Much of the game is in its aesthetics and malleable appearance and vast options. It's pretty clear CF likes giving a vast variety of looks to things, practical redundancy or no. Like the weapon graphic generation; it'd have been easy for them to just make every big sword look the same, or every pulse rifle. There didn't need to be a half-dozen different varieties of simple stone-based brick blocks before you even get into the tomb-marked stuff.

But damn I'm glad it's there. And given this game is open-ended (barring some kind of horrible catastrophe), we'll doubtlessly be seeing add-ons and the like even after the "done" 1.0 that are all about the look than the function.

(And, you know, there's the modability. I love that it's there. It open so many doors.)

Oh, it has flaws, no question. But I brought it up as a beloved game that has a metric buttload (that's .5 shit-tons) of redundant collectible stuff that may technically be useful but odds are you're at best gonna try the overwhelming majority of them once outta curiosity, but man do people spend hours trying to get it all because you CAN, and I've never seen a huge blowback against that "feature".

There is no denying that "gotta catch em all" has been a highly effective lure for a long, long time before Pokemon made it the catchphrase.[DOUBLEPOST=1419847515][/DOUBLEPOST]

You still have to find recipes. Hell, I was still finding new ones after months of play.

 

M_Sipher, wouldn't you still admit that increased superficial variety has diminishing returns? For example, the addition of the chair weapon is hilarious and brings enjoyment to many, but if the developers added over 1000 flavors of ice cream (definitely NOT the trademarked flavors of Ben & Jerry's of course!) would that bring the same enjoyment? It seems like the ability for the item to stand out is important-- I wouldn't be bothered by the removal of one particular iteration of a gun piece from the set of possible pieces the guns are made of, but I'd be pretty bothered by the removal of, say, the avian feather plume decorations, or the chair weapon. At some point the variety is no longer capturing my attention. Maybe if we figure out exactly where that tipping point is we could provide a more specific suggestion for the developers (it's likely not the same tipping point for different people, but we could find a guideline maybe).

On SotN, I think maybe the reason there wasn't much blowback about the variety of useless items was because it wasn't released in an open beta with a web forum that welcomed feedback from players. Don't even mention Pokemon, cuz I'll have an embolism just trying to fathom how poorly balanced it is.

 

I would like to add that it's very strange to see, for example, vanity armors where only the colors change. I mean, isn't planned the ability to dye clothes? It seems so pointless...