Current Armor Penetration Mechanic Vs The New Proposed System

First of all, the open beta has been out for less then a week. Unless the developers are receiving a vast amount of complaints more then what I've seen from just browsing the forums and reddit (entirely possible) or if they've always had this other system on the backburner and are looking to test it out (also entirely possible), this system change as a whole seems unnecessary.

The current system is limited currently by two main things, balance and lack of understanding (no documentation or tutorial about how it works). Balance is something that comes over time and the other just hasn't been put in yet. I guarantee if the armor penetration mechanic was explained in game, complaints about it would decrease (probably significantly). It is a new and different mechanic from other games, it makes Starbound unique. A 1-10, easy-hard system would feel much smaller then the current 1-100 system. While the 1-10 system would have buffed health and such, to me that feels more like other games that increase difficulty by just tossing health at things. Starbound, as it is right now, feels different from other similar games and I love that. I have to play it differently then when I play Terraria or Minecraft or whatever and that's great!

I believe in the developers either way, but I really don't think a major change is called for. Instead of working to change what's there, they should work to balancing it and perfecting it. Give it a month or so, if they can't get it to work satisfactory by then (at least in the early tiers), then they should look at other options. This is definitely not something that should be decided the weekend after the beta is released (I hear people with XP could use some love ).

Also as a side note, is it wrong that I don't want a game that anybody off the street can pick up and play? I want a game that you have to think about and understand, perhaps even research a bit before playing. I don't want it to be cruel, but I do want it to be difficult. I don't want to be handed a basket with tons of goodies, I want to work for my goodies. Search for them high and low! Actually READ the menus and journals instead of having my hand held everywhere telling me about all the sparkly stuff and how it works. Possibly even learning through trial and error. Or you know, looking something up and understanding it before complaining about it.

Bah humbug!

TL;DR: Current system good! New proposed system bad. Because reasons

 

Could not agree more. sadly most of those who DO like the system are too busy playing the damn game to come here and make themselves heard so that the whiners don't ruin the game.

 

I disagree completely. The current system makes armor penetration more important than weapon damage by far, and in 15 hours all of the weapons I crafted only improved armor penetration rather than damage or attack speed. The current system's numbers are confusing (my weapon does 28 damage, but because of how armor works I'll do anywhere between 2 and 100) and unnecessary. If anything, the new system will open up new possibilities because enemies will have more varied stats instead of just having 100 health and an armor rating. The armor system we currently have is terrible in my opinion and I'm excited to see it go.

 

Those who cry the loudest and all that. Many a game have been hindered my the vocal minority though on the flip side, a decent few have been helped as well. Hopefully the devs will hear the call to keep the current system and just refine it.

 

The lack of increased damage is because they are within the 100 limit and there is no getting around that. Frankly I don't see the need for higher damage then what is within the scale, however the attack speed is most likely a developer choice and won't change. I ask you, why shouldn't/can't armor penetration be more important then damage? What is the fixation on doing more damage? I can even argue that the change they are talking about is mostly semantics and the enemies will not be more varied then what they are now (probably less since easy, med, hard are 3 variations. Right now Lvl numbers can go as high or as low as you want thus changing armor resistances with more variation).

 

The current system has multiple issues that make it not so great, in my opinion. Those issues are as follows;

Obsoleted Gear-While it's normal for gear to eventually become obsolete and useless, it happens too fast in this game. Tier 1 (Levels 1-10) lets you craft gear up to Lv5. This means you're going to run into stuff after Lv5 your crafted gear is useless against. While it's true this does encourage some exploration to try and find nicer gear, it's still annoying because some gear cannot be found that will bypass this limitation. IE, your Iron Hunting bow is going to be worthless for Lv6 and beyond. And even when you unlock the Steel Bow, it's INSTANTLY useless because it's only Lv10. Similarly, armor becomes useless far too quickly, with Lv15 armor not being able to take any hits from Lv16 and beyond. So good luck with that Lv20 boss that's going to steamroll you and oneshot you. Speaking of which:

Oneshotting-Both sides have issues with this. Bring a high AP weapon somewhere and suddenly you do 100 to everything, becoming nigh unstoppable. Reach the end of a Tier where your armor cannot match the level, and the opposite is suddenly true. I'm all for challenge, but getting killed in one hit in a game where you are expected to take hits on a regular basis is not challenging, it's just frustration incarnate.

Less sense of progression-Static health just makes one feel like they aren't getting anywhere. In many cases, it's simply better to have defense and health both be a factor. You actually feel like you're getting stronger that way.

 

I also like the Armour Penetration system, while some may find it hard to understand at first, when you sink as many hours in as I have into the game you gain a -basic- understanding of how it works, and I honestly think it's one of the simplest mechanics for damage/levels I've seen in games. I was honestly disappointed when I found out they had plans to change it.

 

While I do feel that given time, the currently system can be balanced to avoid such large spikes in damage, as well as give some explanation to how it works in the tutorial, I see nothing wrong with the new system.

They should easily be able to balance the new system so it does not feel smaller than the current just as well as the current system could be balance to not feel spiky.

As for being unique, this is no different then taking a game and changing all of the explosive barrels to blue instead of red. Yes, it's different, but it's not intuitive. If someone sees a red barrel vs a blue barrel in a game, they're more likely to assume it's explosive, and use it as such, like it was designed for.

There's no reason to muddle up communication between the game and the player for the sake of being different, if the end result doesn't change.

 

I agree with you, but i think the current system could be fixed by smoothing the influence of armor penetration a bit. IMHO, reducing the multiplier could have that effect (currently, a difference of one level results in a 50% increase/decrease in damage if i'm not mistaken, so changing that to lets say 30% might do the trick).
However, if the devs think that a smooth progression (no "they oneshot me until i get the next gear and after that i'm oneshotting them") isn't possible with the current system (or the whole armor penetration thing just isn't intuitive enough), i'm absolutely looking forward to the new system.

 

Now the game is:
stage:
1-10
11-20
21-30
etc.

Each stage has three difficulties:
* 1 - * 3 - easy (example 31-33)
* 4 - * 6 - average (example 34-36)
* 7 + - hard (example 37-40)

If you leave only the first digit of the level, and for a place to write the second digit of the "easy", "normal", "hard" - we do not lose anything. Another thing that all monsters, all objects, etc. - The same ... Strong dependence on the level of objects. For example an excellent weapon 19lvl worse than a broken ax 21lvl.

Forgot to add. You retrogrades!

 

Current system is fine it just needs to be a slope with damage increases/decreases and not a god damn cliff.

 

It's an illogical system to start with. Armor penetration is a stat that should indicate how well effective a particular weapon is at, well, penetrating armor. Damage should be the stat that indicates how much damage a weapon does. If a mob is wearing a suit of plate armor, armor penetration should be important. If the mob is an animal without any sort of natural armor, armor penetration should have little to no effect. Currently, armor penetration basically means item level. An axe has the same armor penetration as a sword, which is illogical. The system 'makes sense', in that it works (or it would with some much needed balancing and tweaking) but calling it armor penetration is just wrong.

There's nothing wrong with the 'old' system of large health pools and damage. Ending up having a pools of tens of thousands of health and weapons doing thousands of damage is not a bad thing. It is just common. They say "don't fix what ain't broke". This doesn't mean you can't innovate and be different, but being different just to be different and having the game suffer for it is a bad idea. On a side note I think I would prefer if they managed to get it keeping the level 1-100 scale rather than 1-10. Only ten levels doesn't give enough room for scale, and the easy medium hard thing I'm not sure about. Maybe just go for 1-30? I don't know whether they need to keep it on a factor of 10 for any reason.

 

I'd argue that both issues are balance issues. This is a beta. If the gear was balanced to lvl better, you would keep it longer and it would retain its use longer. This would also curb some oneshotting. The oneshotting would happen regardless of the system, though instead of armor pen killing you, it'd be pure damage.

I'm not really saying there is anything fundamentally wrong with the proposed system, just "why the change?". Changing the system will not fix balance and it's back to the beginning of needing to balance the game. That's what the beta is for, balance and bug fixes.

 

But it is broken. Stat inflation is a nightmare and eventually breaks whatever it's attached to. Try playing Borderlands 2 after about lvl 35, it's a nightmare. Hell even WoW is going to fix their runaway numbers.

 

So if it was called Weapon Level, you'd be alright with it? (Also, "natural armor" is still technically armor.)

 

I'm with the people who like the original system because it's unique, and all of its mentioned issues would simply be ironed out over time if the devs chose to work on them. Curves can be tweaked, and information can be added so not to puzzle the player with an obscure damage system. The fact the original system currently has issues doesn't mean the whole set of mechanics should be scrapped in favour of something entirely different.

 

The way I see it is that most people that want the new system, are just looking for a terraria expansion imho. I don't know, I like the system as it is, it's new, it needs some work, but it's original and original is good when all we keep getting is yearly clones of games. Like CoD, or BF. Except this is an RPG.

It needs more explanation so people can understand how it works, and the players available armor needs a balancing. But don't dumb everything down just because you can. It's a beta for a reason.

 

I think the system should be fleshed out before they start on any core changes. We need more information before the whole thing gets revamped, but I do agree that a lot of it doesn't make sense. The armor stat in itself seems out of place, why do these seemingly squishy/fleshy creatures have an armor statistic? (I'm not poking at realism) I mean I know you need something to determine the strength of a monster, but I don't think that should be shown through it's armor. To me, armor just seems like a gimmick that's used to stop you from killing anything and everything with your basic weaponry and that's ok, but I think something could be changed here.

 

Well I've seen some monsters with turtle shells, or other similar armor platings. That should count as armor. But I'd rather see more different reasons to either use a sharp sword, or a crushing hammer. Maybe the squishy things could well, get squished by a hammer like how you do more damage to slimes with magic rather than weapons in most RPGs. And spears should poke heavily armored enemies better than a hammer. While swords could be a somewhere in-between.

 

Someone else that understands a beta!!!!!

Armor should perhaps become Toughness and Armor Pen should become Badassness (or Sharpness or whatever...)?