Boring game mechanics - Definitely need to be worked on

I've tried your way, but it really depends on weapon choice.

In current state, shooting has been giving me trouble outside the lower tier planets, unless you are in a bunker... Guns don't seem to have any stopping power.

Fast attack weapons can be spammed, but don't always offer enough knockback to protect from enemies. They also, in my experience, don't give enough range to kite effectively.

Slow attack weapons knock enemies back, but require careful attack timing or overpowered equipment. If you miss, you need to be prepared to dodge.

 

I agree entirely with the ranged weapons at the later tiers and higher threat planets.
Slow weapons, especially 2handers, require careful attack timing since they were first created, long before video games. Very long ago. Like, the second design of weapon ever made was either a faster or slower version of the first weapon design ever made. Probably a stick and a bigger or smaller stick. So, really you are just relating physics and our human nature in regards to slow attack weapons.

 

Yes you are right. However, the system you refer (in games and in life) allows you to supplement heavy and slow weapons with high armor (and health), yielding a specific class system. Whereas, Starbound's current system is entirely dependent on weapon damage and speed with no mitigating factors from armor or skill choices. Even though guns are currently underpowered, this can be mitigated if we gain armor that allows us to quickly change position, or skills that can trap enemies in place or quickly deploy cover.

Having said that, I am considering experimenting with a gun/shield combo later tonight...

 

Gun/shield against npcs works well. but against mobs they will get really close. you will have to dash or jump to get free. and shoot them.
Sword/shield is fun, i can imagine in Pvp will be great for a nice duel. maybe if they give 2H the ability to knock back/stun, or 2H sword bypass shield.

I guess since my first system was a colecovision adam. my tolerance of games is alot nicer.
You call this lagg? try playing the old nes games. half the time the lagg helped against really tough situtations. (fighting mother brain, megamans yellow devil, dracula in simon's quest[try to beat him without sacred fire lol]
(actually lagg in this game saved my ass more times than not lol)

you can jump around randomly and shoot and it will get boring. but learn to use the dash. and even the sniper rifles and 2H weapons get interesting.
people can say AI isnt that good, but most of the time HI isn't that much better. There is no perfect setup and no golden tactic in this game. which i like because i would just macro it.
thinking about it, one thing to do with shields is giving them a durability. and higher tier energy shield with no encumberance and use energy. or shield fields that translate damage to energy.

 

While I'll agree with that, I don't see the "strategy" in combat that people are saying it has. Even on higher tier, it's still the same- swing until it dies, shoot it with a powerful gun, or hit-and-run. I've never had to do anything other than that, aside from a mini-boss, if that's what you call it.

 

I feel combat and diversity def. need to be fleshed out upon.

Combat:

In the future, i'd like to see aiming added to melee weapons, and combos added to basic melee chains.
Ex: Greatsword would strike Down with the first swing, up with the second swing, and jab with the third.

As well as more diversity in melee weapons. (2-Handed branching off into specifics such as Greatsword, Katana, Zanboto, Mallet, ect.), with each unique weapon having it's own unique combo chain.

I'd like to see new debuffs for players to work with, and against, such as stun, sleep, confusion, ect.
Furthermore, monsters, and players, should recieve a "flinching" state upon being hit by an attack with decent strength. (10% or more health)

These changes alone, I feel, could greatly improve interest in combat.

Diversity:

Give us worm type mobs, creatures that stick to walls, that lurk on background tiles. Give us the fish that attack, the creatures whom flee while spewing projectiles. Give us dem scripted mini-bosses that teleport to platforms, throwing balls of electricity.
In the future, that is.

Currently, i feel there needs to be more uniquety between biomes (Biome music, you know, the ones in the soundtrack, would help this alot). Certain mountains that only spawn on certain planets, lakes that only spawn in forests, structures and settlements unique to planets. Custom, non-randomly generated mobs on planets that vary depending on biome.

This, I feel, would increase interest slightly.

 

Npc's and mobs should have diverse characteristics and natual resistances to give the player some sort of strategy when landing on different planets. Example. The mobs that are generated on a volcanic biome should naturally have harder shells. Incorporate some magma attacks and other abilities. Knockback resistance, Armor Penetration, Health Recovery, Explosive Dmg, Other notable features that require the player to constantly have a inventory of weapons to deal with certain enemies that have such resistances to other weapons. Certain Techs should be applied to the game to further are weapons for upgrade use and armor abilities.

 

Hmm, I just recently downed the Dragon Boss, & it just occurred to me... is there ever gonna be any Boss Battle Music created & Implemented? Bonus Points if each Boss gets a Boss BGM to itself.

 

grooooaaaaan

I'm weary of threads like this.

Sing it with me: the current implementation of the game was thrown together quickly so we could actually play the game. It was never intended to be a permanent implementation. The devs have stated as much, time and time again.

The alternative for a studio in this situation is to not let anyone play until everything is just so. If they had taken that route, you would have experienced Starbound only as a series of screenshots.

 

I can't test or provide feedback on this completely different and amazing sounding game you are referring to.

 

I pretty much came to the same conclusion as you did. Game in this stage is pretty unimaginative and is basically a straight up cookie cut out of Terraria, with space travel thrown in, having one of the developers comming from Terraria its not a surprise at all that this game is too Terraria like, with the damn pickaxes and a lamp on a stick attached to your back, etc when it's suppose to be a sci fi game.

If you want a truly sci fi experience and which has great concepts and fresh ideas check out "Edge of Space". instead of pickaxes they have mining lasers, laser saw instead of stone axe, sci fi weapons like gauss rifles and pulse rifles instead of swords that shoot bones out, drones, turrets, refining materials etc. Also the one thing i love is that resources dont become obsolte. You will always need dirt and rock and sand in one way or another. its a hidden gem and they're suppose to get a huge update today.

 

Don't forget that there's loads of not yet implemented stuff from the not yet implemented Tiers, & that's bound to be where the bulk of the Sci-Fi Stuff is gonna be.

 

So what you're saying is that the current implementation is nothing like the final version and we're basically playing a completely different game?

You may think a little bit before you reply to this.

 

That's exactly what happened. How the hell is that so hard to believe?

combat mechanics are near done, loot and enemies will be completely rehauled

 

No disrespect intended, but I think the point of this thread was that we can only test and/or give feedback on what is in front of us. You concede that combat mechanics are "near done" yet the OP specifically addresses combat mechanics.

(edited for grammar)

 

Incomplete. The game right now is a placeholder! We are simply getting a feel for the game and it's mechanics, a lot of it will be different. I admit the game is a bit redundant progressing through the tiers, but they've said that's not even the final form of progression through the game. The "lack" of combat mechanics doesn't compute for me, it's a 2D side scrolling game, what more do you want for combat?

I think the combat isn't the weak part of the game, rather the lack of difference in the planets. Sure they have weather effects and what not that do change the "feel" a bit but not enough for me to be convinced I'm on a different planet. I think that the distance we travel or the animation for travel should relate to how far we're traveling. If I'm jumping from sector X to sector Alpha, I shouldn't be able to do that just as quickly as trying to jump to the planet next to the current one I was at. Things like that I think will flush out what we don't like about the game.

I think it's way to early at this point to be labeling the mechanics as boring. Once the game is closer to being finished, then we can sit back and analyze the mechanics. So perhaps close to phase 2 or 3 of the beta.

 

Greetings again chums!

I've been reading this thread and think I may have a unique insight into this issue.

In Terraria personally my desire to destroy creatures was fueled purely by the promise of loot. Getting money and and the unique items that only certain monsters would drop was a major part of that experience.

Let me examine that in more detail. First off money in that game was useful to a certain degree. There was always ammo to buy for the various weapons and even some tools, and certain luxury items were sold at high prices giving the player an incentive to get dat cash. As well the money could be spent on potential upgrades to the items that you could get from the enemies.

Currently in Starbound the only items that end up actually being viable are the ones that are acquired through the metal progression crafting system which does not require you to combat anything to make (Even at high levels a player with no armor can simply land on a high level planet dig themselves a mine and be relatively safe from danger while mining the necessary minerals and any pixels required can be gotten from the refinery.) This is compounded by the fact that enemies have no possibility to drop ANY combat upgrades at all, and farming them for pixels only allows you to purchase weapons from vendors which again are almost all inferior to the crafted weapons. Even the guns. To push this issue even further, while the crafted weapons are effective against the tier of enemies they are designed to be used against, they become a hard cap on a players ability to deal with threats. Foes are a terminal nuisance because they cannot be engaged at range due to guns being drastically inferior to melee weapons due to their low damage and high cost, some requiring an entire energy supply to kill one, when you might be facing down up to 5 opponents. Bosses are right out because they are faster than the character and there is little that can be done to mitigate their speed and HP rather than using a shield or building a barricade. And even then there is no incentive to kill them because again the weapons they can potentially drop are inferior.

Drawing up again the comparison to Terraria, and why in my opinion its combat ended up being engaging is when you reach the top tier of weapons and armor you were capable of engaging literally HORDES of enemies in the form of the moon events, where you could really exercise your world devastating power while still being threatened by being overrun and killed. The prizes from these events became worthwhile then less as straight damage upgrades and more as trophies of your victory while still being comparable to endgame weapons if you chose to use them. The bosses in Terraria were dogged and relentless, using the space in which you encounter them effectively so there was some forethought and planning into their fights, calling up images of tunnel arenas designed to fight the Destroyer of Worlds, as opposed to the open space with scattered cover needed to fight Plantera.

In conclusion I would like to put forth my suggestions. As my analysis goes, merchants will alleviate a large portion of this "dead end" by being able to trade your unusable items for currency, and hopefully offering either meaningful upgrades or what I personally would like to see a weapon upgrading system a la Parasite Eve, where weapons can be combined to develop machine guns with low cost that shoot shotgun shells. I had a lot of fun with that system. In the vein of monsters I would say that the school of thought that more is more applies. I think more monsters that are easily destroyed and less effective by themselves but attack in large droves are actually more exciting than a group of 5 that are all equally combat effective to the player.

What do you guys think?

 

Having read this wall of text small novel, I agree. As Chucklefish continues on development of placeholder systems it would be nice to see further item customization and meaningful currency sinks. Invasion-type events would also be fun, if they provided adequate rewards, beyond a small mountain of alien meat. This is not too far-fetched, considering rudimentary base defenses (turrets and guards) have already been implemented. However, you are right, we do need more incentives, on all of the games mechanics.

 

I prefer to think of them as simple essays.

I don't intend to sound like I am trying to say Starbound should follow Terraria's example, which is unfortunately what drawing comparisons tends towards. Its just my opinion that if you want a 2D action game to be "punchy" you want to have the player constantly doing things. I think the healing system, which is a major part of that whole combat animal, needs a rework as well. Any system that takes your player out of the game and forces them to sit down and wait before they can do more stuff seems like a detriment to exciting gameplay to me. I can't think of too many games in the same vein that have an action stopper like that. You usually see that kind of mechanic reserved for larger more socially reliant and tactically organized games like MMOs. And even those are trying to find ways to keep people playing longer while still keeping their gameplay formula intact.

 

Funny you mention that since Terraria does the EXACT same with healing potions.