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

I'm sure the balance stuff will be great.
But i would just like to say that once again, just like with the Distress Beacon (where the game doesnt tell you that it is NOT part of the tutorial, that you instead should explore other planets BEFORE activating it).
It's not really a matter of the armor levels being "confusing", it's just that the game never once did any attempt at telling the player how it works!
In most other games armor values are more COMPLEX than in this game, and usually dont have simple correlations to enemy levels. For example a player might have 201 armor fighting lvl 30 enemies, and still die.

What was needed to make this SIMPLE armor system in Starbound understandable, is if the game just TOLD the player how it works..
That was the problem, not the armor system in itself.
The problem was that the game never ever told the player that 10 average armor in your character panel = your weapon will do its full damage against enemies up to lvl 10.
It never told us that, never. Never said anything of the sort.
THAT is why it was confusing, not because it was a complicated system, because in reality it is one of the most simple armor systems in gaming. armor = enemy level. Couldn't be simpler.

 

Maybe I'm someone who dislikes change, but I feel that the older 100 level version is more rewarding in some cases.
Firstly, the 100 level system makes the game seem much more expansive. The climb between levels is relatively short and the player always gets a sense of achievement as they gain levels at a relatively quick pace. Compared to the 10 level system, I imagine climbing from level 10 to 20 would match the same time as going currently through 11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18 and 19. However with the new system, one would not feel the rewards of having to best these progressively "harder" places until level 20 is achieved.

All that I have just said can probably be negated if the 10 level system does have its own rewards and is very expansive, but as for armour penetration-based systems so far, I've actually enjoyed this system a lot. Currently I am on level 13 armour and level 15 weapons, but one of the funnest and craziest moments I've had in game has been trying to explore a level 30 planet while trying not to get insta-killed... Okay, that's probably not a good reason why you should keep the old system.

Oh and as for character wipes, it's an inconvenience, but I say do what must be done.

TL; DR: just make sure the 10 tier system feels as expansive and epic to complete as the 100 level system.

 

Hey there my first reply, i haven't read all the posts but i wanted to put my two cents in here , because as Tiy posted , by doing it the way listed , my fear is that the sectors will be to bland in difficulty , if all the planets in sector 1 are level 1 with monsters , classed easy
med and hard based on the sectors difficulty.

Once you get to sector 10 endgame and you can deal with the hard mobs in that sector the challenge is gone thus the endgame aswell, siince you can defeat all the mobs with ease. Also it will take away the excitement of exploring a higher level planet in the same sector.
What i mean by that is that it's nice that in the same sector you have the sense of "i am going to embark on a new exciting quest on this difficult planet."

So my suggestion would be , with these two things in mind , why not have the sector as general difficulty level 1- 10 , and in that sector , ie sector 1, have planets saying a difficulty level easy - medium - hard . on those planets you will find the monsters as Tiy said, easy -
medium - hard mobs . So what you end up with is that in sector 1 you have an easy planet, and your fighting the hard mobs and it's challenging but do able, but that hard mob on the easy planet is equal to a med mob on a med planet in that sector.

To close my two cents, i think the balance that would be ideal is that based upon the tier that corresponds with that sector, on the hard planet a hard mob will be a challenge, thus when you reach end game (originally level 100 planets), level 10 sector with best
possible weapons and gear, aa hard mob on a sector 10 hard planet will be a challenge to fight, but not impossible .

This way you will keep exploring these planets , because they are fun to do and explore , even when you crafted all you can. The rest of the post i completly agree with and i think getting rid of armor penetration is for the better.

P.S.: Freaking love starbound and the beta, so worth the two years wait and following you guys!!


______ EDIT______

my other things i would like to see changed or implemented;

* fix the hostile npc hostile drops, even when i have guns , all they drop is melee

* a craftable IR probe that you can plant on the planet to beam to, instead of in that one spot. You can still opt
to not craft it and / or use it so that you always beam down to that spot. But the largest planets tale 2 hours to traverse fully , so when an hour in you find a dungeon and die and you have to rewalk it, it makes your face go

* i know that there are more tiers of stuff coming, but the diamond pickaxe is really bad, when i am deep down it still feels like i am punching rock with a butter knife

* UI optimisation and general optimisation ; i miss being able to click and only drop 1 at the time of a specific selected item . so as example. i have a 1000 copper ores , but i only need to smelt 20 of those in to 10 bars.
Now i have to halve them the whole time, really annoying . Please give me a QUICK TRASH SHORTCUT.
I spent sometimes 10 minutes clearing my inventory , this can be made way easier with a trash shortcut.

also why does starbound take so much CPU please fix

* lady like attire, clothing is like super masculent

* please make it able that i can change the cursor colour, i am colourblind and because of all the red tones i loose track of where my red cursor is most of the time

 

I just want to point out to the devs to not forget the loyal fan/vocal minority situation. These people that are posting are mostly saying they don't want the game to be too easy.

But that's because they saw this post of change and were displeased. All of the people who thought it was too hard like the change and don't think they need to post because they agree.

Basically, you'll always see the vocal minority and anything they're saying does not necessarily affect the player base as a whole. I really hope you guys will make the game at least more clear, but also easier. I'm assuming you didn't attempt to make a roguelike.

 

Having a high difficulty doesn't make this a roguelike. This is nothing like a roguelike.

And what you are doing, inferring that the only people who want the game to remain difficult are the people in this thread right now? That's just as bad as anybody inferring the opposite.

I'd rather have an option in difficulty so you can enjoy your easy mode, and I can enjoy my normal mode.

 

I sort of get what you mean but i think this would be very annoying, like others have pointed out. So imagine you're leaving your first planet, probably wearing copper gear at most, and this random system of which you speak takes you to an otherwise threat level 7 planet, or something like that. There is no way you are going to enjoy this, unless you love playing games where you have to work for a week to get anywhere at all. You wouldnt be able to defeat enemies and unless you're very lucky you won't make any significant progress. This system of randomness would only mean it takes a lot longer to get anywhere.

 

Its on the fine print, you gotta look bottom left of your item (( I do agree with you to a point, but the way the game is set up made it fun trial and error and not being spoon fed like other games, but I do agree there should be a little bit more info but beta is beta. ))

 

I don't know having 100 levels made it seem vast, never ending, and interesting. Only 10 levels.... so bleh. It won't feel like there's as much too work for.

 

ElvenAlchemy, the armor system appears to be based on level of armor, not the classical AC rating (sum of all AC). Your armor level is an average of all of the armor you have equipped. It works in the inverse way as the weapon level vs. monster level (you can think of your armor level as your character's level). If a monster is level 9 and your armor level is 5, then it is going to take full penetration as well as a bonus for every level higher it is than you. A level 5 monster should do its weapons damage to you and lower than that will get damage reductions. Hope this helps (nothing official, just what I've figured out).

 

Maybe this update should give the player a 'tour' of placing fuel in the fuel compartment. I see a lot of videos showing people don't know how to, or what to put there. People think they nees the beacon to get fuel - and die because of it or get their homes broken to bits It's entertaining to watch, but....

 

As someone that has goofed around with making games and modding, these changes make a lot of sense. One of the most important things to get right about a game is making it intuitive to play. The existing armor and penetration system, while it is possible to work with it, isn't really challenging as much as it is obscure. It's very confusing to see a weapon rated for 15 points of damage do 100 points of damage to a target. It's counter-intuitive. However, damage minus armor is easy for anyone to understand. Accessibility is the foundation, and then layers of challenge can be built upon it. The best games are easy to learn, tough to master.

 

I think this patch may be a case of overcompensating for player frustrations. I understand that the changes would make the armor/weapon systems more self explanatory but a lot of these problems could have been solved with something as simple as a codex entry to explain the purpose of armor penetration. This seems to be coming up again and again; Activating the Distress Beacon instakills new characters and the warmth bar confused a lot of people (including myself).

Personally I would like this game to have it's own systems to set it apart from the competition. I liked the idea of 100 world levels because of the granularity it allows in searching for suitable worlds and calculating acceptable risks. Not to mention that it made the universe feel so much BIGGER.

It's sad to see that armor will now be increasing the size of HP bars. Will that increase the size of the bar? And does that mean that beds and bandages will now take longer to completely heal you? If not, doesn't that give high HP characters a distant advantage?

I'm assuming that the ore rebalance will mean better availability of higher tier ores in the lower sectors. Perhaps I'm playing wrong but I COULD NOT find the ore I needed to progress above silver armor and that was difficult in itself.

 

For the future will starbound come out for iOS and android?

 

Cool, balance was one of the bigger issues I've been having so far. Pacing has been rough in the first tier, I found it almost impossible to get out of alpha sector solo.

The fuel system is nifty, but as I was just dumping coal into my reactor to planet-hop torches didn't seem worth making (I want to get gear and see content, so my ship constantly needs fuel). On the other side of that problem though, having to switch to a flashlight from a weapon or tool meant that I couldn't effectively fight any nasties that I came upon in a cave system without blindly swiping with my two-hander, and I couldn't dig and see where i was going. I would use a one-handed weapon and the flashlight, but the one-handers I got were slow and not particularly effective, even against low-level monsters. I'm betting that'll be better in this update, but the light problem is a big issue. I think the recipe for torches either needs higher output for what you put in, or needs to use different materials. As it stands using raw wood is a tradeoff because not only did I need to keep a supply of raw wood (taking up inventory real-estate) but that wood could be used for the far more useful planks instead of just becoming two torches.

So I'm happy to see the crash issues addressed (and so fast!), I haven't had issues since that update. I'm also happy you all are tweaking the balance as that was a huge problem for me as a solo player. The game is really awesome and I'm glad to participate in beta, really really eager to see all of the racial stuff you guys have coming out. There is one thing though, I think access to console commands might be a good idea in the early stages. I know bugtesting is about thoroughly checking to see how everything works from the lowest tier items to the shiniest, most complicated tech but knowing my character will be wiped at some point during the beta means that I have a small window of opportunity to get to the upper tiers during the current build. I'd like to be able to get my hands on some of the bigger toys in the game to see what they can do, so I think a "creative mode" with access to commands would be a good idea. maybe it's a choice at creation that that character is locked into. Whatever you guys do though, I know I already enjoy the game and will continue to enjoy it as the builds become longer and more stable.

 

This is pretty much what I'm thinking about. The armour and weapons are getting simplified, and I'm worrying about it making the game too easy. If it becomes too easy, I'm going to get bored and drop it really fast. As it is, I'm really doing quite well, though. I don't expect the game to be Nintendo-hard, but if all of it ends up stripped in the name of accessibility, even a lot of casual players could feel the game has become lackluster.

That said, there's people who do kind of need it. I think the best idea would be to make multiplayer and solo-play scale differently somehow, because when you're playing multiplayer, you're really pooling resources and power with other players, giving you a fighting chance against almost everything. That's actually how I've been doing so well.

Voxl made a point about console commands, too. Those would be helpful when testing, yes. I found several crashes which would be easier to recreate if I could use the /reload one which was apparently ousted. Content creators would also benefit from that one.

 

wtf ! i made decoy princess and i dont see her in my bag and enywere !

 

Tiy did say update would be in a day or 2.. so lets hope its today.. ,but doubt it.

 

Uhmm...can we get to keep our planets/starship at least? I still have to explore the Gamma sector...

 

listen dude, you where told way before beta, stage one wasn't for you if you got too attached to your character, no you cannot keep your ships/world.... its all wiped.

 

I really would like to know whether the Tier 2/3 armor scaling problem will be addressed with this update too. Platinum is close to being non-existant on world lv 1-30. And even the tier 3 armors require the platinum armors as part of their recipe. Its not really about the game being hard/easy or challening - but monsters strength and level doesnt mean much if they one-shot you anyways. Also the snow patrol armor is way overpowered, considering how easy it is to aquire the necessary materials.

But considering the actual point of discussion:
I agree the weapons system so far was quite confusing. A Tutorial/codex entry should be made regardless of whether and how stuff is changed. I would like to see a system that keeps the armor penetration value of a weapon, but gives it a new function. Enemies could have stats based on their body structure. Big creatures having high health, attack speed and movement speed also being part of how their body is built.
If for instance you consider a turle-like armored creature, it would make sense to have a high armor penetration weapon rather than a high damage weapon with low penetration. Same thing for side effects by the way. The way the penetration and level of weapons is handled right now feels rather forced