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

what about changing gravity on planets depending on their size?

 

Totally with you guys!

 

sad that i'll be losing characters but i'm also glad this big update is coming. for everyone complaining about character wipes, remember this is the phase 1 of the beta, this is to be expected, yeah it sucks but we gotta go with it since the game is being built in front of our eyes. keep up the good work devs!

 

Please read the forums/ updates. Man this is getting sad. Tiy warned everyone. This is just how betas work. Please read! Why won't it read?!!!!

 

I was under the impression at the start that it already was. I think they are things that are left out for the time being, because they haven't found the right range for it. There are also many biomes that were shown in videos and screen shots that I don't even know if they exist as no one has mentioned it. Frozen Ocean, or any type of Ocean? Tentacle Planets apparently exist, but haven't found one yet. Maybe they are in Sector X, as I'm still in Gamma trying to do something about the platinum.

 

I like these ideas but I want to see the XP issue fixes as fast as possible becouse I just want to play no matter that chars will be deleted.

 

nice to hear! I've discussed the same topic with a friend yesterday - the current level-based system just feels like being forced into some arbitrary gear/progression system. It kind of takes the power and freedom away of the player. I like the proposed solution, can't wait to see it implemented.

Regarding the lower number of difficulty levels: I too think that this may reduce the will of exploring the universe. I'd love to see a system that does this exact thing in the background, but still display a danger level between 1 and 100, based on different factors (temperature, amount of damaging blocks like lava or tesla spikes in the world, roughness of terrain). A danger level 3/10 planet with rough terrain and lots of lava would be displayed as level 38, for example, while a level 3/10 planet with mild climate and no dangerous terrain would be displayed als level 31.

The new system will definitely improve perception of monster variety. At the moment, the monsters on each planet feel exactly the same (given you're not exploring overleveled planets). I think that there need to be other changes to really make the monsters feel different, though. One thing I can't quite agree with, for example, are the killmethod-based drops. Kill it with a sword, get pixels. Kill it with a bow, get meat and leather. It just boils down the vast range of thousands of different species into one single thing: meat-and-money-givers. Instead, the generator could look at the monster's overall strength to decide a tier of drops, and at it's appearance and stats to decide a kind of drop, as well as a drop chance. For example, a big, armored monster on a level-1-planet could drop "cracked scales", while another armored monster on a high-level planet could drop "inpenetrable scales", which could be used for different crafting recipes. Just something to give the monsters more inherent variety.

Overall, I love the game and the pace at which it is progressing. I just feel that the universe is a bit empty and lifeless at the moment. Despite the different block types, every planet feels pretty much the same - you've got a few flying monsters shooting something at you, a few peaceful ones, some bodycheckers and a few ranged ground monsters, on every single planet, and all with the same drops. Can't wait to seeing the game grow with every update!

 

I think that bartwe is working on that.

 

Certain environmental effects, such as gravity, I imagined were just on the waiting list for a later point in beta. We'll see it soon, hopefully! It'd nice to have a solid feature list, but I doubt we'll see one.

 

I support this idea fully. While I am sure the damage system will see much refining, I think you are headed in the right direction.

 

the wipe is ok though ive kinda grown fond of the current system in its brief life. but please:
ADD A DOUBLE CHECK FOR SET HOME in navigation 1 accidental click and planet lost, also a planet bookmarking system would be nice.
Also go ahead and wipe the characters but do u have to get rid of the

"stuff" weve collected like maybe leave planets and chests alone except for weapons and armor? so i can at least not have to go through matter manipulator mining hell.

 

I'm sad I'll lose my little Avian , but I guess it is beta. Good work on updates. One thing I wish for though, being able to delete saves.

 

Before deciding to write a long post myself, I found this. ^
I absolutely agree, especially with the second threat level suggestion.

Although it has felt extremely imbalanced at certain points - I understand that this is a beta and balances are still being made, thus I want to give my feedback regarding the situation currently and the proposal to "fix" it.

The armor penetration, although initially interesting - proves to be ultimately confusing, seemingly silly, and unbalanced the majority of the time. A weapon with 5 armor penetration and X damage will do VASTLY lower damage than a weapon with 10 armor penetration and the same amount of damage. Sometimes the difference between 1/5th of the monster's health bar, or the entire health bar. You ultimately end up choosing weapons with more armor penetration, and pay little to no attention to damage (unless of course they have the same AP). Combat is along the lines of first-hit to win.

Changing the threat levels of planets from 1-100, to 1-10 (1 per sector), would be the wrong move IMO. That's half the fun in arguing with my buddies that a threat level 9 planet would be too much for us to handle, and would be better off in a planet /w TL of 5 or 6. It felt as if we needed to progress within a sector (by creating the better armor sets available to us) in order to reach the boss. Having a flat rate of difficulty within each sector would seem to limit the amount of progression, wouldn't it? So, as Zolon suggested - make a rating system out of asterisks or stars. 5 stars marking the more difficult planets in the system.

As for the Easy/Medium/Hard markers on monsters - wouldn't it be misleading if I had sector X gear and revisited an Alpha planet? They would all be easy, Haha. (To my knowledge there's no internal leveling system to regulate this cross-sector)
- Keep the monster levels and how they distinguish the difficulty of a planet in the sector. Level 1-4 monsters found on Alpha (*) planets, Level 13-16 monsters found on Beta (**) planets, etc. Each level of monster would have gradually increasing HP, start with something like 25 for level 1, increasing by 5 per level. I'm sure you'll find a number balance to it that works without TOO MUCH work. Maybe give a little "armor" to higher level monsters to negate weaker weapons, making it much more challenging to simply jump from sector to sector.
- Have weapons do a range of damage (12-15 for a starter wep), instead of the current flat rate - in order to make predicting exactly how much damage you'll do with each swing slightly more exciting. It will also make combat more back and forth as it was intended if health values are increased and damage values are lowered. Armor penetration isn't the way to do this.
- (Keep in mind, monster damage is high too! Having to bandage after EVERY encounter to ensure you won't die during the next battle isn't cool, bro!)

Some players will find lower threats easy when they upgrade their gear, and want more of a challenge in their respective sector. As a reward for these players? The increased amount of pixels at each monster level as they are now & whatever other things that increase when in higher threat levels.

I completely agree with removing armor penetration. But let's find a better system to replace it before doing so.
Don't sacrifice the progression! We don't want the game to be more horizontal at each sector! At least, I don't.
I want more of a reason to make that iron armor, over the copper armor - OTHER than the boss & going to the next sector! A reason to craft or find better weapons! Starbound is vast, don't start to limit that!

Oh, and by the way - the game has been BRILLIANT so far.

 

My current thought is that you should REALLY NOT WAIT to patch the Microsoft XP issues because I think my friend might strangle me out of spite if she has to wait any more than she has already...

 

Maybe this wipe will get rid of the crybabies that have impregnated this forum as of late...

Glad the systems are getting a revamp. The level jumps are just too severe right now.

 

One change to combat I hope they will make is the knock back. Currently using very fast weapons like daggers are almost pointless since the enemies will get knocked back a pretty big distance anyways so you can really only hit them with one swing anyways. I suggest adjust fast weapons in some way or making the knock back amount determined by the weapon speed so slow weapons knock back further and faster weapons have less of a knock back.

 

Aww character reset means planet reset too? my farm?

 

How about thinking about it like this. Each Tier could be compared to a world in Terraria. There is still a lot to do in that two-tiered game no matter if you are in normal or hard mode. There can and will be progression within the tier. As Tiyuri stated, there will not be a removal of content, just a rescaling.

 

So does this mean every planet in the system will have the same difficulty with the only variety being easy/medium/hard monsters? If this is the case I am very disappointed as choice just flew out the window. Please tell me I am wrong and the game did not just become incredibly over simplified.

 

Heh, thanks. You summed up a lot of my own thoughts I failed to put into coherent words, as well.

And ultimately, your final statement is one I agree with. Unlike most of the betas/early access games I've tested, This one feels like it's much more stable and much less.. alpha than a lot of the things that pass for beta these days. You guys have done it right, and should be proud, despite all of our suggestions/tweaks/comments.

As for weapon damage, I'd suggest even lowering initial weapons down to 2-10 damage if necessary. The lower your start, the easier it is to build progression and make things feel more epic at the end.