A little critique of the update so far

I'd like to start this off by saying that I LOVE the update. The progression system is infinitely better, the outpost is fun and interesting and makes the game feel less lonely, ship and MM upgrades are just plain cool, etc. Starbound has taken a huge leap (I didn't go for the obvious "bound" pun!) forward.

That being said, there were a few things I was a little less pleased by. These are some minor objections I have to the new update.

• Making the pickaxes a temporary item means that they're more trouble than they're worth, and makes most ores obsolete. Copper, silver, gold, and diamonds are practically useless, because previously you could at least use them for tools and armor. Now, however, they just get dumped into a chest, and occasionally into the refinery.
  • Alternate uses for these ores, such as bargaining tools, or crafting more powerful weapons?
• Now that ore doesn't appear on the surface, surface exploration is boring as hell. Before, I loved scouring the surface for ores while running into the occasional dungeon or village. With the motivation of ores gone, I don't do that as much.
  • Make ore appear on the surface again, or make dungeons more common?
• Pixels are practically useless. I never buy anything and I never have less than a few thousand pixels in my inventory.
  • Additional stores?
• With the addition of ship upgrades, there is now even less motivation to have a home base. Currently, my home base is a barren world that I covered with a gigantic farm and about seven billion fiber trees that give me an infinite supply of bandages.
  • Some sort of special advantage to having a home base.
• The tech system, while improved, still has a few problems: Blank tech cards are too common, and the player already starts with the best overall tech: Invulnerability from fall damage, breathing in liquid, moving quickly, and extending jump height. In addition, equipping the gravity bubbles makes navigating platforms a pain.
  
  • Introduce tech upgrades to burn off those extra cards, and make late-game tech more valuable.
• Optimization is still very poor. In previous versions, it showed less, but the update has made it painfully obvious. I know devs have said they're working on this one, and the game is still playable.
• Difference between separator, accelerator, and manipulator armor is not very pronounced. Rather than specializing in a class, I took my preferred armor and then the best items from each respective class.
  • Make the classes more distinct.
• Boss fights are broken. Dreadwing and mech can be killed by standing at edge of combat and just shooting. Not only that, but this is pretty much the ONLY way to beat those bosses at the level the player is at.
  • Bosses should have less health and damage, but be smarter, making them interesting instead of a frustrating grind.

There are one or two other things I wanted to say that I forgot. I'll remember them eventually.

 

1. I personally found them pretty useful, especially on the first planet struggling to find copper and iron, but more uses would be nice

2. Agreed ore on the surface was great. It should be nerfed, but not as majorly as it was. More dungeons would be cool, especially if certain planets were 'claimed' by a specific race (for example, Planet A has a human prison and two USCM bases, planet B has some generic micro dungeons, planet C has several Apex labs and an Apex village)

3. More stores would be awesome at outposts, I want to have to gather up pixels and really work towards that awesome item the guy at the vender sells

4. Haven't gotten that far, but I know Tiy has said that they're working on lots of stuff for bases on planets

5. Not that far in

6. They haven't optimized Unstable whatsoever yet

7. Not that far in the game

8. Also haven't fought a boss yet.

 

Since there's no point in telling you what I agree with, I'll only detail what I disagree with.

Techs: Starbound is, at it's core, largely a platformer. A double jump is practically a necessity, so I don't see a problem with that. Now, what I would like to see in later tiers of tech is multiple jumps as per Terraria. Stacking jumps was wild. Of course, yes, techs should convey some pretty sizable bonuses late-game. An item that gives you a mechanical advantage is always more interesting than an item that gives you a numerical advantage, after all.

Bosses: I think Dreadwing is fine the way he is. I'm going to be blunt here, and people are probably going to cry "troll!". People who claim that Dreadwing is too difficult are quite honestly terrible at video games. He has three real attacks. Two of which can be avoided simply by not being underneath him. The penguins can be a minor nuisance, but honestly I had leveled armor and they didn't do that much damage. They die in two or three smacks, too. I beat Dreadwing my first try by jumping at him and repeatedly smacking him with an axe. There are little to no tactics involved in the fight, but that's okay. He's the first boss.

The mech, on the other hand, is interesting. Up until that point in the game, much of the combat has been based on twitch reflex, Dreadwing included. In this context, the mech does seem VERY difficult. The problem is not the difficulty in and of itself, but that the mech demands an entirely different skillset from the player. The fight is not about twitch reflex. It's about pattern recognition. It's a very classic style of boss fight. You see his attacks, learn how to respond to them, and at that point he's pretty easy. I will say that I think the mech is a bit poorly designed in this regard. In the context of classic side-scrolling bosses, it's GREAT, but with the way Starbound's combat is presented up to that point, it seems out of place.

On the note of the mech's combat: get used to it. Blocking, parrying, etc. were redesigned solely for this kind of methodical, deliberate combat, and seems like THAT is the direction Chucklefish is taking the game. I think we're going to see quite a few more fights like the mech fight in the near future.

 

Okay, two stupid question here:

Parrying. How do you do it? It's not in the codex, and while it seems like "right click" would be the most logical choice, that just attacks, same as left click.

Second stupid question: How are you supposed to survive sustained combat with the mech? The missile barrage kills you in two or three hits, and your shield can only soak up two hits, max. Even if that was the only attack he had, it's almost impossible to survive the first volley. What am I missing here?

Oh, I remember that other thing I was going to say.

With the addition of fuel-filled moons, it seems like fuel has become little more than nuisance. Every couple of trips, you stop at a nearby moon, load up on gas in minutes, and you're set for a while. I think acquiring fuel needs to be either moderately difficult or not in the game at all.

 

Well, I guess it's not so much parrying as it is a different block. With a shield, you can hold the block. If you get hit, the shield health goes down. With two-handed swords however, when you block, a bar appears and immediately starts decreasing. During that time, you block attacks. You can only parry, as far as I know, with two-handed swords. Hammers, axes, and one-handed swords do not have a parry.

If the missile barrage is killing you, shoot down the missiles. It's difficult with melee weapons, but it's trivial using a weapon with a high rate of fire. You can also perfect guard through the missiles (and most other attacks). It's really not that hard--you get almost a full second where your shield glows white when you raise it. During that time, if you're hit by an attack, you don't lose shield health, and rapid-fire attacks continue to be blocked. The only thing you have to be careful about is that, even when perfect guarding, you're still vulnerable to status effects, e.g., the burn effect from his flamethrower.

And yes, I agree about fuel. You can get literally thousands of fuel in a couple minutes on a moon. And at that point, why even bother having fuel in the game? It's just a nuisance.

 

Okay, thanks for the tips on blocking and parrying. Combat should hopefully be a bit easier now - though that information should probably be in the codex.

 

Defeating Dreadwing partially relies on where you choose to fight him - at least, it did in the old Koala. Fighting him on flat, featureless plain is a lot tougher than fighting him above a Crystal Laboratory.

 

In the winter update, it chooses the combat terrain for you - a fairly level plain of snow.

 

[quote="Wyvern, post: 2349283, member: 9042"

On the note of the mech's combat: get used to it. Blocking, parrying, etc. were redesigned solely for this kind of methodical, deliberate combat, and seems like THAT is the direction Chucklefish is taking the game. I think we're going to see quite a few more fights like the mech fight in the near future.[/quote]

I hope so... I hope they make you really work at it at higher levels, read codexs to learn about the enemy, make preparations, hire support...