1. If you're looking for help-related things (for example, the key rebinding tutorial), please check the FAQ and Q&A forum! A lot of the stickies from this forum have been moved there to clean up space.
    Dismiss Notice

The problem with the armor wasn't the system itself, it was that the game never explained it!

Discussion in 'Starbound Discussion' started by Baleur, Dec 8, 2013.

  1. Baleur

    Baleur Phantasmal Quasar

    I'm sure the new balance stuff will be great.

    But i would just like to say that once again, just like with the Distress Beacon (where the game doesnt tell you that it is NOT part of the tutorial, that you instead should explore other planets BEFORE activating it).
    It's not really a matter of the armor levels being "confusing", it's just that the game never once did any attempt at telling the player how it works!
    In most other games armor values are more complex than in this game, and usually dont have simple correlations to enemy levels.
    For example a player might have 201 armor fighting lvl 30 enemies, and still die. In most other rpg's.

    What was needed to make this relatively simple armor system in Starbound explained, is if the game just told the player how it works..
    Just once. Please.
    A simple tooltip when hovering over your armor value stating "10 average armor, you're equal to Lvl 10 enemies".

    That was the problem, not the armor system in itself.
    The problem was that the game never ever told the player that the armor and weapon damage was in direct connection.
    It never told us that, never. Never said anything of the sort.
    A simple tooltip after the weapon armor penetration value stating "8 armor penetration (full damage to Lvl 8 enemies)".

    That's it, done. Now everyone and their 7 year old daughter would understand it.
    There's nothing confusing or complex about it. You lovely devs just forgot that none of us knew the code you wrote behind the curtains, there were no tooltips or no mention anywhere in the game about how it worked.

    That is why it was confusing, not because it was a complicated system, because in reality it is one of the most simple armor systems in gaming.
    Armor = same armor as same enemy level.
    Armor penetration = full damage against same level enemy.
    Couldn't be more simple.
     
  2. Boshed

    Boshed Cosmic Narwhal

    Its not about that, its about the symptoms caused by how it works (atm). Go read some of the many other topics that explain this in more detail, but fundamentally this system (in its current form) inherently causes 'one shooting' issues.
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2013
    Braken likes this.
  3. Attribule

    Attribule Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    Pretty much this. OP totally missed the point of the upcoming changes.
     
    Braken, Kitty Box and Boshed like this.
  4. Machop

    Machop Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    I highly disagree. Getting one-shotted and one-shotting everything does not feel rewarding, or good. Besides, every monster outside of bosses/minibosses possessed 100 health. It made them feel samey.

    Stacking more health on higher level monsters is one method of making them feel stronger than their lower level counterparts. Plus, going from one sector to the next felt awful because your weapon that used to one-shot everything suddenly does 1-5 damage each swing. The drastic change caused the game to not flow well between sectors.

    The upcoming system that they intend on implementing isnt a catch-all fix. However, it will feel and play out better than their current one.
     
    Kitty Box likes this.
  5. AdamJ

    AdamJ Big Damn Hero

    Perhaps I'm late to this party, but the game DID explicitly tell me to "make sure I was prepared for any eventuality when making the distress beacon", because obviously, excrement is going to interact with a ventilation device on deployment.
    My assumption on reading that, was that the tutorial was over when I built it.

    Although, the armour penetration system could have done with some explanation, as this was the first information I've seen on it.
     
  6. GardenOfSilver

    GardenOfSilver Master Chief

    Certainly, clarifying the information in the tutorial and tooltips would help but it is hardly the issue with the current system. And unlike what many claim the access to propperly ballanced armor per teir is not the issue with the current system.

    How the way the system scale is the issue.

    Damage towards higher target oponents tappers of at a resonble pase, though damage towards lower targets runaway at a dramatic rate. The fact that armor beyond the first teir is insuficiently scaled to handle the full teir and that material requirements seems backwards (copper for cheap first teir armor, followed by iron -> silver, steel -> gold for teir 2 and platinum -> titanium for teir 2 and so on seems a lot more plausible considering the proportions of materials to build these armor you do find) only compounds the current issue.

    I do rather like the idea of the in-teri 10-level proression though I will acknowledge that it is poorly implemented at the moment. Lets see what the proposed changes does to gameplay then formulate and informed opinion on which works best and how to improve them.
     
  7. MithranArkanere

    MithranArkanere Space Kumquat

    The scaling is too extreme. Your weapons, hunting bow and armor become useless after a few levels, and lower level enemies become trivial at higher levels.

    Armor should determine the max damage enemies can do to you, but not so much the minimum. With the maximum armor, level 1 enemies should still be able to kill you if you are not careful. Armor should be a gating to reach higher levels, but not a way to make lower levels trivial.

    Increased difficulty should come from enemy skills, AI and aggressiveness more than stats.
     
  8. PoisonZO

    PoisonZO Astral Cartographer

    They could have prevented one shotting by just flattening out the scaling on level differences.

    Everyone saying that one shotting is the real reason this had to be done. That could be stopped in this current system by just preventing one shotting until like 5 or so levels above the enemy instead of the current 1 or more levels needed.

    I really liked the current system once I understood it. I just wish the damage didn't scale up/down so fast like it did currently.
     
  9. Madzookeeper

    Madzookeeper Void-Bound Voyager

    they never even said you could explore other planets before doing that though. the way it was presented suggested that you had to do that to even GO somewhere else. they didn't tell you that you could use wood or coal for fuel. so a lot of people assumed, since they were following a tutorial, that they had to do the distress beacon to leave the first planet. this was a major initial problem.
     
  10. Joottiming

    Joottiming Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    It never said that you had to do it to go somewhere else, just that your ship wasn't good enough to travel very far, or something along those lines.

    Edit:The fuel thing probably would have been a good thing to say though.
     
  11. SinisterAura

    SinisterAura Star Wrangler

    Well quests won't be worked on until Phase 3 of the Beta so don't expect them to be a full guide to the game right now.
     
  12. Midnight Tea

    Midnight Tea Phantasmal Quasar

    As others have said, the system as it is has overly extreme matchups. Not just that but due to how it works, exploring is heavily restricted because 99% of the planets sector you're in will have environments that are either useless to you resource-wise or are prohibitively difficult to explore.
     
    Braken likes this.
  13. Dr. Toros

    Dr. Toros Existential Complex

    OP is wrong. The system is the problem, not the explanation. Everyone figures out pretty quickly that armor level = level. But it's too extreme a system to begin with. Anything more than 2 levels above you will always insta-kill.
     

Share This Page