Coming in a few days (sorry for the delay!)

I completely agree with this, it's just...going from 100, to 10... it just makes the game seem a bit more...empty

 

I don't mean to drag this out of the bug forum, but when is the Windows XP fix supposed to happen? i thought it was supposed to be fixed last night, but i still get errors when i hit the logo, but this time it stops on a "Loading" screen

 

The simplification for planet threat level is very welcome IMO, I do hope that will smoothen out the difficulty curve.

Also hope that ore spawning is also addressed, make the ore that is relevant to the tier you're on more abundant and available.
Currently, you hardly find any ore for the starting level in the planet tiers you start with.
Only when I got to Beta and Gamma sectors, low level ores like copper and iron started appearing everywhere, but by that time i've already passed the need for copper, iron or silver, which just results in annoyance, especially when i'm hard-pressed to find gold, platinum etc.

 

Nothing says it's going to be the "FINAL DECISION" for the combat system. They're just testing how well it does with the current players. The main issue I have is coming to the website to post feedback and bugs, when I would rather hit a button to get a window that sends the bug/feedback to someone. On a forum, it just feels like you'll never get your post read.

 

I can't believe how hard you guys are working at putting out new beta patches the whole time! Thanks for all your hard work!

 

I was wondering if you guys will ever make Mac OSX 10.6 work. Can you please do so as fast as possible? I cannot play with there limitations.

 

i have a question idc if the awenser is not for a loooooong time but when are nova people and pets are in game

 

Its nice to see that alot of stuff will be simplified in the update, although I am saddened by how our characters will reset cause I just literally beat the UFO boss a few minutes ago :c

 

I was wondering if you guys will ever make Mac OSX 10.6 work. Can you please do so as fast as possible? I cannot play with there limitations.

 

oh and i forgot are galaxys going to change i fond a exelent world

 

seems like a very good change.

BTW check this link if you are an XP user it will solve everything! (specifically archonlyra's posts!)
http://community.playstarbound.com/...plash-screen-freeze.35401/page-7#post-1392620

 

Please at least add windows xp compatibility sooner! i have been waiting a year to play this game!

 

Sounds Good. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with the old system, but then I barely die in darksouls soo..

But will there be a easy way to determine which sector a weapon will be appropriate for, other than where you found it? As armor pen and damage done was a pretty big indicator to GTFO or that monster will shred you.

I would say stats (Like DPS) could tell you, but with the different variables like damage, speed, range, status effects etc... I.e one sword might have better stats than a gun, but both being from and useful for, the same system.

So will it have alpha, beta etc.. somewhere on it's description to let you know which sector the weapon is from (In case you forget or it's from someone else)?

Or is it something else entirely.

 

This pretty much sums it up for me. The system was neither hard nor confusing to deal with. I'd much rather see a push for bug releases and added teir content than a complete rewrite of a system that is just fine but is broken due to other issues aside from the system itself. As pointed out the issue of platinum. Though i have to say its more like taking diseal and igniting it to take care of a stain than just using lighter fluid.

 

Getting rid of the armor penetration system.....?

 

Observations regarding the topic of balance and changing the system:
- I agree with removing armor penetration. It creates a really weird progression curve that, as has been stated, either you one-shot your enemy or they one-shot you. I do agree with the removal of armor penetration as a whole.
- I don't agree with the removal of levels in favor of a Easy/Medium/Hard qualifier. I think this is going to generate more confusion for you than the current system, which, despite being unbalanced for fun character progression, does outline really well what planets you will want to go to.
- I like having different difficulties on planets within a sector. It adds a bit of flavor to the sector, and choice as to what planets you want to go to. You fly off to a few planets, gear up, then realize "Hey, I can go back to this threat level 19 planet I couldn't touch before". It's fun.
- I worry that reducing the game to 10 levels and just having easy/medium/hard per sector will really cheapen the experience and remove the need to really adventure to many planets within the early sectors.

My suggestions:
Threat Level Suggestion One:
- Reduce the planet threat values by a factor of 10 then multiply it by two. Have each tier occupy two of those levels (Same 10 tiers, but planet threats go up to level 20).
- Each sector now has planets that have threat values measured in increments of .2 (IE, Threat 1.2, 1.8, 2.2) and each sector accounts for 2 levels (Alpha = 1 and 2, Beta = 3 and 4, etc.)
- This creates a smooth curve with some differences in planetary difficulty within a sector, without having to scale up to 100 levels, and without crushing them absolutely flat so that each world in a sector is roughly the same difficulty. I want to encounter harder planets in my sector. I shouldn't be able to use a single planet each sector as my jumping point to the next. Crushing the levels flat discourages early-game exploration.

- Monster Difficulty:
- -Keep levels visible and do away with the Easy/Medium/Hard tracker.
-- Keep the visible levels as they are right now (IE, 1-100, fighting level 100 aliens will just feel epic), Each .2 of a planet's threat level increases the base level of the monsters there by 1. a Level 1.0 planet would spawn level 1 monsters as the base, up to level 5s at night. A level 1.6 planet would spawn level 4 monsters, and a 2.8 would spawn level 10 monsters. 2.8 would be the highest threat planet you'd find in the Alpha sector.
-- Instead of increasing armor, slowly increase health pools (As you've suggested) by small increments.
-- Reduce damage by about 1/5th of current overall on all attacks, giving some back and forth between battles.
-- Either offer some sort of character progression that allows the increasing of health, or, as you suggested, add padding to armor that increases maximum health when worn, in addition to damage reduction.

Threat Level Suggestion Two:
- Planetary difficulty notated by a symbol system such as one of the following:
- Asterisks/Stars (We are starbound, right?) Ranging in a given sector from easy planets (*) to difficult planets (*****)
- A ranked letter system (Rank A through Rank E, A being the easiest and E being most difficult)
- An alert system based on your current equipment level (Ultimately much more involved to code, but: Blue = Vastly Underpowered, Green = Underpowered ,Yellow = Equal level, Orange = Overpowered, Red = Vastly Overpowered, in regards to the creatures that call that planet home, IE, Red = Monsters are vastly more powerful than you.) You could tie this into the ship system where the lighting in the cockpit changes colour as well as you orbit a given system and changes as your character progresses (An amalgamation of the DPS of your weapon and your equipped armor, I'm guessing).
- Monster Difficulty:
-- Again, keep some semblance of the current level system but augment it either by reducing it by half or a fifth, but still keep the original numbers visible.
-- Monster spawning on a given planet would then rely on the rank, IE Rank A (*) in alpha would spawn monsters of 1-5, Rank B (**) might spawn 3 - 8, etc.
-- Monster health and damage increases slightly based on the level.
-- Again, offer some level of character progression offering increases in health. Perhaps track the highest level monster that has been killed in order to set the alert level of a world.

Again, these are just some rough suggestions. Ultimately the goal I'd seek was one where there is diversity in threat levels between systems and planets within a given sector, instead of a flat difficulty, and one where monsters still carry some sense of level to allow for a player to feel that they are progressing against harder creatures. Going Easy/Medium/Hard has much less of an enjoyable sensation to it - however dealing with numbers is much more enjoyable. Squishing the threat levels to prevent for wildly scaling monster health is perfectly acceptable, but do just that - squish it, and diminish the difference between monsters in a given sector without completely neutralizing said differences on a planet-to-planet basis.

Adding progression inside the progression (Threat levels in sectors, harder monsters in sectors) will add some life to the game. Otherwise you run the risk of it becoming Start Alpha, stick to one world, spawn boss, kill boss, go to beta, stay on the first world, spawn boss, stick to boss, etc. Until Omega (Or whatever you want to call 10) is reached. People are going to need more than finding pre-generated villages and dungeons to raid in order to keep them occupied in a given sector, instead of simply pushing to advance. With a game like this (And most survival sandbox adventure type games) providing meaningful content in each tier extends the life of your game greatly - reducing that content in the slightest sense can land you in a situation where players just rush to the end then complain about lack of things to do.

Combat does need to be revamped to allow more back and forth, so that an encounter isn't kill or be killed on a constant basis when exploring a new world. Reduce damage by a fifth or so, and give us some wiggle room. Scale monster health up a bit by level, and give us a little bit more from using armor or even shields. You originally stated that you wanted combat in this game to be much more back and forth than certain other 2D adventure games; to do that, you will need to reduce damage and offer ways to increase health (Obviously without letting it get out of hand by the end, and keeping things smoothly progressed along the way for 10 full tiers)

EDIT: Also, to those who are complaining about losing their stuff/avoiding a reset: sorry. As Tiy has said, this is a beta. This is not the final release of the game. Sometimes files will be incompatible. Sometimes the stuff you have on your character might be different or might not exist at all. Sometimes items in the world might be completely changed. There are going to be numerous periods where everything will need to be wiped as the game develops. That's the nature of a beta test. If you really don't want to see your stuff gone, you're going to have to sit out and wait until we're out of this beta phase. If you haven't already, go read Tiy's post about how the beta is going to work. This part of the test may not be for you, and you might fare better by waiting for awhile.

 

:-( please don't oversimplify the damage system. The AP/Level system you defined is perfectly reasonable - it just takes a second of thought to figure it out rather than a trivial inequality comparison... I think this game should retain the original damage system; perhaps with a simple comparator popup like how Borderlands does for weapon stats? I'm just concerned that buffing out on health only kind of forces the current 2-dimensional enemies into simple vectors.

Please consider just adding clarifying comparison features rather than upsetting the deep and rich leveling system.

 

Why Not Just Remove and tweak the items that need tweaked Please dont reset i love my character PLEASE DONT RESET

 

I am really put off by the sectors. Having a set number of levels/sectors that stuff can scale to seems to be limiting the game. Why not just have the game randomly generate sectors based off of the players current stats, and make the new generated sectors have appropriately
challenging but fair equipment, monsters etc. They could still have a random threat level but this would be based off of the player's current ability (I.E, the player is perfectly wrecking face of the planet he is currently on, so it has a threat level 1, and the next step up has a threat level 5, meaning it's a lot tougher compared to his current stats/equips.) Players should have normal armor and hp values that go up with better armor and weapons. I think this would be best in my opinion.

 

We already do. People including myself have already been working on mods.

 

Tiy's post earlier mentioned "we're working on it" in response to someone asking for an XP hotfix before the main patch comes out.

 

When I first heard about Starbound, I personally though that (most of) the actual alien races were going to be randomly created, something similar to Spore where any creature/species could have a village and chat with you, randomly generated quests/requests etc.. :> At this point, listening to the way some people talk (about getting to sectors too early, "unlocking" sectors, messed up progression being some nearby examples :>) it seems much more linear than I imagined it'd end up being.. (Of course, I've got the testing/beta status in mind here, but still mildly worried )..

More on weapons, that upgrade to Terraria that added randomized bonuses/negatives to equipment was awesome, if not a little bit under-fed.. I'd love to see that here, along with equipment slots/augments/jewels/enhancement items to socket/add in, unique (infinite, if that's how we're going here) arrows and ammos for the ranged weapons, all that stuff For every (ranged) effect the enemies possess, there should be weapons that utilize all of that too..

Was just wondering how "random" the worldgen was if all seeds point to the same places for the whole playerbase.. I'd imagined seeds would basically be unique codes that represented the full-on random creation of a world/cities and dungeons/items, everything.. In this case it seems like they're a lot closer to regular coordinates :>