Death Penalty in the Nightly Builds

And what I still don't understand, is why the people who seem to love ore drops (and the ones who insult us for disliking it) are even fighting our suggestions in the first place.

We suggest another difficulty level where you only lose some pixels upon death. Then there could be one with pixels + ore, and then there's the current hardcore and permadeath options.

I really, really, really don't understand what the problem with this is and why those people feel the need to insult us for what we wish to do in a SINGLEPLAYER game.

Why does it matter to them, what we want in our singleplayer, when we are suggesting the option remain there for those who want it?

They are talking like our 'easier' single-player mode somehow hurts their e-peen or something, I really don't understand it whatsoever. Or they are somehow directly insulted/disturbed/hurt by us able to have fun or something. I really can't understand the mentality behind their vocal protests to our suggestions, to be honest.

And they have still yet to actually explain themselves in any clear and concise way that doesn't involve laying down insults.

 

Casual = pixel loss only (or whatever, as there are some demanding death be free.)
Normal = devs solution(which is currently incomplete)
Hardcore
Permadeath
I went along with this solution,.I felt like it fit the naming conventions of difficulty, and got insulted by someone who thinks casual is a dirty word. So no, its not all on one side, and I do see some merits in having another difficulty level.

I am also siding with the devs, and would like to play the game they envisioned, so I'm waiting for the bug to get fixed first. Starbound achievements, like other games of its genre, are less at what you click on at the start, and more with you do with what you are given. Those levels are more for their own discussions, and speak nothing of the character of the player, who can make other characters at other difficulties anyway. Very handy for multiplayer fun, as Admins will likely want a filter for that sort of thing.

I saw a guy recreate an entire stage of Castlevania: Harmony of Despair, on a Terraria console map. Do you think I care what difficulty of the character they used to build it? They made Dracula's castle!

 

Changing an existing difficulty's drops rather than adding a new one, screws players over who made characters of that existing difficulty. That is the problem. This is why their earlier method of ADDING hardcore and permadeath and leaving normal alone was ideal. They should have done the same with this ore dropping crap, and added a mediumcore which is somewhere between 'normal' and hardcore where ore is dropped. Just because the developers make a change does not mean it is a wise change to make if it alienates your existing userbase. And also, I believe you are among the ones that were insulting people, or at bare minimum making snarky little remarks about people who disliked the new death penalty. Also, terraria is a completely different game from Starbound. normal difficulty on terraria=money drop on death. not crafting materials. Normal difficulty on starbound is apparently money loss AND loss of crafting materials if they keep this ridiculous change in. Regardless, this horse has been beaten long enough. Let's just hope the developers either add in a new mediumcore difficulty that has ore loss on top of money, and leave normal alone because frankly this would be the ideal solution rather than messing with an existing difficulty that has been standard since the game's inception, or, if they are going to make 'easy' at least let us change over our damned character's levels, because frankly I did try the nightly... and ore loss sucks and really kills a lot of enjoyment for me for the game, and players shouldn't have to rely on third party mods to remove a system that never should have been added to an existing tier of 'difficulty' in the first place.

 

You know, I wanted to be accommodating, but its not much a point when you're making the use of profanity a privilege.

The game is in development, no one is expecting them to paralyze all measures of gameplay because of the character played during beta testing. I'm not expecting my old character to be relevant after all the changes that have been placed. It wouldn't be much fun blowing through the mission with broke weaponry anyway.

And I want to see what is realized from the nightly more than your complaints. This isn't the first game to have people butting heads with these arguments. That I find more boring.

 

Wow. much ado about nothing. Most likely the devs wanted to test out this method to see how it goes. A good test runs longer than a week. We need to quit assuming the devs are oblivious to the effects their changes have on their player base. I would bet dollars to donuts that they knew some people or even many would be upset. But, better to potentially cheese off a devoted player base while testing a new idea than to cheese off all the returning and new players after 1.0 release. Why is the assumption automatically that things will stay the way they are? Some of us would just be glad to be able to play nightlies right now. (Unless they have gotten around to fixing the bug I posted, nightlies still crash even before splash screen on OS X; going to try again tonight.) Folks, please let's do ourselves and Chucklefish a favor and NOT turn into the Minecraft community.....please. Until now I have been pretty impressed with the maturity, patience and general awesomeness of the Starbound community. Very little vitriol and gall.....untill this thread. It is fine if you don't like it, it is fine if you do. The devs likely knew ore drops (bug or not) would annoy some people and they may likely intend to fix it, but it isn't high priority with all the other things they have to do, I bet. We simply don't know for sure and we need to be okay with that. Be patient, be charitable. It is okay to be bothered or annoyed by changes, but not okay to insult devs or fellow players intelligence because of changes we don't/do like. Ultimately the devs decide not us. If you can't handle it, then why bother with early access in the first place? Yes, we have a say, but we have to realize they have final say.

 

The problem is, they promised (?) use "No More Character Wipes".

Ship wipes, world wipes, universe wipes, maybe. But character wipes, they went flat out and said "we are going to try our hardest to not do any more character wipes" (pp).

And last I checked, you cannot modify difficulty once you've started the game. So, everybody out there who have characters that they enjoy, but they hate the ore drop penalty? They're going to have to restart, only because you insist on Ore Drop being the Normal rather than putting a difficulty one slice higher between Normal and Hardcore.

If you did the "one slice higher", then older characters wouldn't be hurt by this penalty that some of us don't even want in the first place.

@MMbsman77: It'd help if the devs would actually respond to one of these threads to reassure us or something, you know. If they're just throwing ideas around, I'm quite sure George or someone else could step in and say "It's okay guys, we know a lot of you don't like this, and we're thinking of ____________"

Then guess what? We'd have some sort of re-assurance on the matter. But until they do... we've no real reason to believe that this isn't permanent, and a penalty this stiff very much does have the power to make-or-break our ability to have fun in the game, it completely changes the whole game around from what it was when we bought it.

I don't want a broken game that I can't enjoy anymore because of the game dumping my progress every time something cheap happens.

 

thy claim we are insulting them just because we disagree with them . I find that very insulting/jerky.

I bought the game too, and the soundtrack .So should they remove the fun for me and those like me?

I was never hiding insults in my posts, its like you are trying to discredit me or something.


Eh, I never really meant to insult anyone, (except maybe with teh whole "Oh so i guess they should remove death entirely now thing", i was mad. sorry.) I just think we should have an easy mode.

TBH, why shouldnt we have an easy mode?
it usually goes
"Easy" "Normal
"hard" "really hard"

Easy would be a mode with no penalties (Or just pixels) normal would be pixel+ore (as the devs intended normal to be) then we have our hardcore (drop everything)and permadeath (permanent death) modes.

Now equating difficulty to the punishment rather then how you died is a bit of a different approach in this "genre" ideally we should have easy normal and hard modes (which equate to amount of damage rather then what you drop on death) alongside what we drop on death. But I realize how EVIL that would be to balence in a game with so much variety/randomness) (even now players spawn on tier 3 planets sometimes, so should that planet be tier 3 or as easy as tier one?)

That or go with the numerous good ideas on this thread from earlier (namely craftable teleports/ore gets put in something on death/only a ceratin type/percentage of ore gets dropped)

It would most likely be very easy for the devs to move all normal characters from normal to easy mode. So taht really isnt an issue either.

 

Actually ship and character both were involved in that no more wipes. universes were a 'maybe' though. But ship and character yes, was protected.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/01/27/s...no-more-character-wipes-does-other-stuff-too/

 

You said we were ruining the game by disliking an idea... That's an insult.

 

Ore Drops were never a penalty before Nightly Builds, so they wouldn't be "Removing" anything for you whatsoever. If they put Ore Drops in a NEW difficulty setting, then they aren't removing/changing anything for your current characters on the current Stable build.

However...

If they DO put Ore Drops in "Normal" (IE, what most of us started our characters in), THEN they ARE taking something away from those of us who don't like ore drops.

Now if they let us change the difficulty of our characters, then this wouldn't be so big of a problem, just as long as they give us the optional difficulty levels where we can say No to Ore Drops.

And of Ore Drops themselves, as I said previously, 80% of the problem with Ore Drops is the very first planet (IE, newbies and fresh characters).

IMO, they should have it "No Ore Drops Until Your Ship Is Fixed" unless you're on Hardcore mode.

THAT I could agree with, because once you fix your ship, there's nearly infinite planets out there and you can't run out of ore anyday soon even if you repeatedly die during each mining trip.

 

personally, there was a comment I saw that combined with other past comments would be the only way I could accept ore drops being put in normal instead of "mediumcore"

This comment right here is the one i'm talking about

Personally, if what is in this comment were combined with a craftable way to safely store dropped ores then I could get behind that being put in, maybe have early tier item saving devices be single time use and break after the ore is retrieved, and then have the higher tier able to be mined up for continued use, but the player only gets one so they have to use the single use containers to save any ores they drop on their way to retrieve the perma saver.

Just to clarify, I am not advocating them keeping the ore drops in normal mode. Personally, I'm quite against it, I'm just saying, if they did make these changes to it before putting it in stable, I might play without a mod that disables the ore drops.

I will also say why a mediumcore can work with starbound to have 4 difficulties even though terraria had only 3, starbound's "worlds" are tied to the characters, perma-death is akin to minecraft hardcore mode which such a mode could not exist in terraria as the characters went between world saves. I do realize this game is not Terraria, but some terraria developers are on the team for this game.

 

You can store 1000 ore 64 times from the moment you start the game. You can save & exit to teleport from the planet's core. You're given the opportunity to reclaim everything you dropped. You have a magical matter manipulator that allows you to build enclosures around any hazard you see fit, completely isolating you from harm.

The game is so pitifully risk free that you might as well argue for immortality. I mean, I'm not one for arbitrary difficulty, but there has to be some downside to dying besides a little bit of time lost.

 

You clearly didn't read all the reasons why ore loss is a bad thing. How it can completely ruin the early game because of ONE misstep or mistake that results in hours of mining work being destroyed permanently. Pixel loss is already enough for normal difficulty and it has been ever since the start of the game. There is a reason the game has different 'if you die this is dropped/lost' modes. If it is your thing to dump your ore every time you die? That's fine. Forcing it on other people who started their characters in normal because they like keeping their items however is wrong.

 

"You clearly didn't read all the reasons why ore loss is a bad thing."

Implying that anyone who disagrees has no logical ground.

"How it can completely ruin the early game because of ONE misstep or mistake that results in hours of mining work being destroyed permanently."

When the game drops all of your ores on death, you act accordingly and don't mine ores until you die. A method of playing is not bad simply because it is new.

"Pixel loss is already enough for normal difficulty and it has been ever since the start of the game."

The idea that pixel loss is enough is just as valid as the opinion that is is not enough.

"There is a reason the game has different 'if you die this is dropped/lost' modes."

And people usually take seemingly inconsequential features like this for granted. The argument that always comes up is "make it an option, it won't hurt anyone", but oftentimes it takes a lot more than what people think.

"If it is your thing to dump your ore every time you die?"

I played on the lowest difficulty with nothing dropped on death. The risk free nature of the game made it very boring though, and I welcome this change.

"Forcing it on other people who started their characters in normal because they like keeping their items however is wrong."

It's a design decision for a game that has 'beta' and 'subject to change' written everywhere in bolded red font. There is nothing morally wrong or even questionable about it.

 

All of your reasons are based upon your own personal playstyle and feel for the game. Again, making it an optional feature for those of us that do not want to lose our ores on death? No. That wouldn't hurt anyone. It's been like this since the game's inception. You're more than welcome to disagree with me, but I cannot possibly see ANY logic behind disagreeing with the idea that more difficulty options so that more people would be happy with the way the game plays would be a good thing. If you like ore drops on death? That's fine. I don't. Many other people also do not. This would ruin the game for a number of us. We are not you. You are not us. You find pixel loss only on death boring. We do not. Some people find even pixel loss to be too much punishment. There is no 'right' or 'wrong' in this situation because what is fun or entertaining to each person is different. THIS IS WHY THEY HAVE CHOICES. This is why forcing a change on an existing difficulty rather than making a new one would be a bad thing. Nothing would be 'lost' for those of us that like things in the way the stable build handles death on normal difficulty. However, forcing the change in and screwing everyone over who dislikes this change rather than making a new difficulty such as mediumcore where ore drops as well as pixels? Everyone wins, because then people such as yourself have the 'higher risk from dying' mode that you enjoy, and people who loathe that change can stick to the difficulty they've come to enjoy. And justifying it as a design decision therefor it is okay... If they decide to make it where you die as soon as you warp down to the planet, is that something you'd be okay with too? People paid money for this game, and if the developers make a change that completely ruins it for them, they have a right to complain.

 

well good news is
http://community.playstarbound.com/...ies-take-your-ore-with-you-when-you-die.2244/
for those who want it

 

Yes. there's a couple of those out. Thankfully. Thank you for directing us to it (Although it was listed earlier too!). But, as I've said and a few other people also have said, it kind of sucks that we have to resort to mods to remove a penalty that was never there in the first place. Either way, thank you for the link.

 

If you have logical ground, you kinda have to state it to stand on it. Which you haven't done.

So what are you supposed to do, go down into the planet's core (something that takes several minutes to do), mine a few ores, save&quit, and do it over and over and over again to get the several hundred ore you need on the off chance you MIGHT die? Good God, that'd take HOURS just to avoid a crappy mechanic.

And your point is...?

It isn't that hard to put an extra checkbox and an extra If/then/else statement in the code.

sub Youdied()
If (hardcore=true) then do_hardcore_stuff();
if (mediumcore=true) then do_mediumcore_stuff_including_ore_drops();
else do_normal_mode_player_death();

Psuedo-code, of course, but you get the point. Not hard. Any entry-level programmer could suss that out.

Then tick the extra option for ore drops.

Beta, and "Subject to Change" should not include "Let's force everybody into a change that could easily be given out as an OPTION and potentially lose customers".

There's zero reason to not do an OPTION, and every reason we Should make it an Option.

 

"If you have logical ground, you kinda have to state it to stand on it. Which you haven't done."

If someone makes a ridiculous claim like "the only way people could disagree with me is if they didn't read what I said", you are allowed to point it out.

"So what are you supposed to do, go down into the planet's core (something that takes several minutes to do), mine a few ores, save&quit, and do it over and over and over again to get the several hundred ore you need on the off chance you MIGHT die? Good God, that'd take HOURS just to avoid a crappy mechanic."

You're supposed to play smart, not try to muscle through using tactics from an older version. Do you actually think that people are going to mine for hours on end to get a copper pickaxe, and in the event of death, completely abandon hope of retrieving their ores? People cope with the pixel penalty, and they will cope with this, especially since it is more forgiving.

"And your point is...?"

My point, as you so rudely put it, is that his opinion is just as valid as mine. They're both worthless.

"Beta, and "Subject to Change" should not include "Let's force everybody into a change that could easily be given out as an OPTION and potentially lose customers. There's zero reason to not do an OPTION, and every reason we Should make it an Option."

The reason not to do it is that I don't want my screen cluttered up with 73 checkboxes denoting difficulty levels. There are people who want to drop only worn items on death. People who want to drop only ores and worn items. Only tools. Tools and pixels. Tools and armor. Armor and consumables. Everything but worn items. Do they all get check boxes? Isn't 3 enough?

Is my house going to burn down because of the update too?

 

Ya'know, I don't quite get this. I skipped to the end because I'm sure the body of this story was just build-up to this climax I believe I'm looking at. If this ain't the climax, I don't want to see the real one.

ANYWAYS!
Normal too easy? Go to hardcore. It's meant for the Hardcore gamers. Normal is for normal play. Normal is supposed to make death easier, if not ever so slightly making it trivial. "Drag your butt back down into that mine and get your money."

Hardcore is built to make the player CAREFUL. Normal is there to enjoy the scenery and have reasonably difficult challenge, since the game itself has built-in challenges (food, temperature, air, health)

Heck, I enjoy this game immensely. A ton of people enjoy playing normal. Why? Because it doesn't make the game annoying. (At least in my opinion.)

Hardcore, to me, trivializes playing the game. I don't play Starbound to have the crap beat out of me on a regular basis. So do many people. It's not inherently designed to kick you repeatedly in the balls. Ore drop does that each and every time you die.

Lots of people would agree with me. It's fun with a challenge. If you want harder, play Hardcore.

The needs (and wishes) of the many outweigh those of the few. To implement a system that raises the stakes in a way most of the community would not appreciate is just not good. Most would see it as further trivialization of an already trivial, yet necessary, system: death.