After 40 hours, full impervium, 43 pen weps, all techs, etc - Here is my opinion on the game state:

I'm not trying to be pedantic, but your examples are forgetting iron.

I know you were more concerned with the overall distribution of all of the ores, but I think that iron is, or at least was, the most improperly balanced ore.

It was very difficult to find without using a method like hellevator in a desert/arid planet with the express purpose of dragging all surrounding ores in the fine sand toward your focal point.

Otherwise, fantastic points and I hope they're implemented. As is, it's obviously a beta and everyone thinks they know what needs the most work the most imminently. Of course, it's just rough around the edges in every sense (or most senses, anyway) and needs major overhauls in all sections of the game.

 

Doh I totally did. My mistake.

 

Excellent post OP. I really hope that the developers take a good look at your thread

 

I agree with all of the suggestions except for all bosses being able to destroy blocks and not being able to create blocks when monsters are in the vicinity,

1. I'd rather not have to fight bosses on a random planet because every single one of them can destroy my fort I made, that is just lazy design. Plus there is the time limit on blocks disappearing after not being picked up after a certain amount of time. The bosses should instead be unique in their tactics, not just flying/running about trying to shoot at you like a headless chicken. The UFO has the ability to teleport so they should utilise that properly, it should also be able to shoot in an arc, not just downwards. I agree with the robot being able to knock through walls, like with a drill of some sort. Not sure what the dragon would be able to do but then again it isn't my job to come up with a solution to the problem.

2. There has been many times where a monster is directly beneath me and falling would make me take 70 damage because of the ridiculous fall damage calculations, not being able to place blocks in the presence of enemies would be a bad idea and get many people killed because shooting at an enemy makes it run under you and start jumping constantly.

Basically, no attacking through walls and better enemy AI.

 

Most of these are excellent points.

However, I don't find the idea of not being able to place blocks in the vicinity of enemies appealing. The easiest (keep in mind, I don't know code) seems to just make attacks not go through walls. However, this wouldn't prevent blocking the bosses up for a minute to let you heal.

In my mind, the best solution would be some sort of internal timer for placed blocks. Blocks placed for longer than say, 5 minutes or so, become normal blocks. Blocks placed for less than the set time frame are able to be destroyed by bosses (but still normal in every other way). Like I said, I don't know code, and as such I don't know if this is a viable solution. But it seems feasible, and it feels like the least restrictive option.

Edit : Although on second thought, I suppose that wouldn't prevent players from making healing fortifications in advance, to be safe from bosses. But you can see where I'm going with this.

 

Pretty much everything you said about balance was spot on, and most of it has been discussed before.

Ores def need tweaking, especially surface ores.

Monsters are obviously getting rebalanced, which is great, but the AI needs tweaking. If a "hard" level monster can't path-find to you, nor have any abilities that can break blocks, it should default to running away. Stabbing through walls and shooting through holes/skyways is silly.

Techs and long range weapons do need massive energy consumption.

In a nutshell, like you said, player skill should always be the biggest factor. Jarring stat progression (one shotting, being one shotted), excessive character progression (god mode techs with no regulation), and exploitative gameplay mechanics should all be avoided.

 

I liked the majority of the ideas present here, with the exception of making building not possible while enemies are near by. Sometimes, all I wanna do is build indoor things, and flying mobs start happening, and I really don't feel like punching holes in my walls to shoot these buggers down every goddamned time they decide to spawn/fly around my houses and villages.

I also do not want block destroying monsters... I think that would be very upsetting.

 

You make it seem like this happens often. 95% of the time this will not be a problem.

 

Great points over all - but here are my thoughts on some things... (No offence intended! )
Here we go! /mario/

Perhaps you can not build when an enemy is aggroed on you? If the aggro range is too short. Fix the build range. If aggro range is too long fix aggro range! If you die before you lose aggro then too bad! Find another planet! Also if enemies cant see through walls.
(Hmm perhaps ill go post this on the suggestion thread..)

 

My solution avoids the need for block destroying monsters. Yes, it would be a nuisance, but that's kind of part of having angry monsters all over a planet.
They could perhaps add mini anti air style turrets that don't necessarily fight air monsters (I feel like automated weapons like that would be negative for game state) but have an electric shock that when hitting a flying monster makes them fly in the opposite direction.
They could also do this for ground monsters, although I prefer having a reason to have guards =]

 

I have a village on a level 17 planet, there are bird things CONSTANTLY getting themselves stuck on my roofs and gettin' themselves lodged between houses, and my guards just jitter around against the walls when they see them...

 

After some more thought I really think that having all boss fights be on a certain planet that's designed for the specific boss per tier level would be the best solution. It will make more sense and then they can actually design the full encounter they way they think it should be.
You could have really cool bosses like a giant plant that you have to fight in a floran arena where you've been tricked into participating in blood sport, lol. For instance you could have to go to coordinates 8055,8055 which would have a system with 1 moon on it where you have to place the ufo beacon on a certain platform to spawn the boss, there you could have the full layout that you'd like for the encounter. I don't know if building should be disabled or just give all bosses block breaking.
The point here is no matter how tailored exactly to you you want this game to be, it needs to have balance and fluid game play. Some fully controlled environments for certain encounters ensure that a particular experience is generated, thus giving this huge free sandbox game a little more direction and focus for the way weapons and armor are balanced for combat. There needs to be a challenge and a rewarding feeling. If you just want to build crazy structures and ignore combat that's fine, but you're going to need to do it in the first tier system if you don't want to participate in the game, and it's not fair to have an entire game tailored to your style of play when you only want to engage in a portion of the intended game experience.

 

Have you tried tiering platforms that can be jumped through at a height guards can reach with their jump and lining the outside of your buildings with these platforms?

 

I agree with most what you say I have only been to the second sector for a lil bit tho (I stopped playing after hearing the character wipe soon) I don't have any techs tho never found any so I cant give my thoughts on that, But I definitely agree that SB plz for goodness sakes fix the ability to attack thru blocks I do not know if its intended but if it is plz change it I never use it so yea its not an issue to me but I hate knowing it's there and I accidently hit or killed things with it sometimes, its just a dumb easy exploit to do and makes survival meaningless and going to higher lvl planets way to easy.

Ore hmmm I have mixed feelings about it, at first it was really hard to find iron but for awhile I never committed to actually strap down and dig, when I needed the ore I had a hard time finding it but after I don't need it it was easy lol but idk I like it but hate it same time since I enjoy digging in those caverns and finding so many strange things as I dig.

Lastly, the UFO boss, my bf and I spawned it for lol's and got bodied obviously, we read the many complaints how it was impossible to beat it even in silver armor, we took our time to gear up and i guess 10hrs later or whatever we got our full armors and semi decent weapons (he got a armor pen 10 weap tho while I had a 8) my bf had the best weapon so we decided to try it again expecting to have a hard time but, we were kinda disappointed how misleading the forums were it was too easy but it coulda been because of my bf's weapon only reason why I don't use that as a reason is cuz I heard complains mostly because the boss hurts and the penguins, that was completely untrue they barely did damage at all after getting silver armor so I was left with wondering why the heck did ppl complain that it was impossible with silver armor when he did only like 10dmg or something to me (also this was prenerf btw we never updated the patch with ufo nerf nor did we cheese it with blocks we fought it in the open and even grounds) not onyl did it do lil dmg we even used only our bows with the occasional slashing on the penguin tanks.

Oh I forgot I also hope they make the planets actually be randomly geerated so the coordinates sharing can stop, I kinda get the feeling of being mislead into thinking this game is randomly generated each playthrough or server creations....Snipers should shoot like snipers and not act like they have semi autos also they can keep their damage ofc but they should actually be "snipers", and maybe my solution to cheesing bosses would be to do what terraria did (been trying to avoid using terraria for anything but I gotta for this) make bosses go thru blocks Idk if that would be bad since it leads to more of they copied terraria but what else can they do? If I forgot anything sorry >.< its cold here my hands are freezing

 

That's a huge issue with forums and feedback and also a reason why it's very important who the actual developers are and who they choose to listen to. From what they've posted I believe they will hold their ground with difficult content. The matter of the fact though is some people are plain terrible at games. Instead of wanting to increase their skill level, they will expect a handicap so everything is tailored to them. These people cannot think outside themselves and are cancerous to game design. It will all depend on the devs. I have faith =]

 

I agree with just about everything in this post. I especially like your idea of there being special planets you visit to fight the bosses, it would also make it more clear how advanced you should be to fight the boss because you would have to survive the enemies to get to the right location.

 

Really like the idea of static worlds where the boss is. Unable to plant or destroy blocks on specific worlds removes the ability to cheese them and also gives the team the opportunity to create interesting and memorable combat scenarios. I know read once where Tiy said he wanted some Mega-Man type fights, so this may be what he meant. Good post, a lot of what you said I felt exactly the same way while plundering through the universe.

 

Thanks for the suggestions, we're indeed implementing and fixing a number of these.
For example, #1 i fixed and will be in the next patch.

 

Fantastic!

 

The only reasons I do not agree with this and do not mistake this for insult.

Is that the universe that is created, is so insanely vast , that making it random would be pointless and also would detract from wanting to explore with others.

Being able to share places you have been with someone else gives the game a sense of depth that you wouldn't get from having randomly generated universes.

Also if the universe was randomly generated bit by bit, hosting a server would take a while and be incredibly system taxing I imagine.

*Don't quote me on that though I didn't develop this game.

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If you manage to explore all of the sectors and every single planet in every solar system please tell us because I feel like that would be a hell of a feat.