Difficulty-related opinion of starting out in the latest update

Wow sounds EXACTLY like my starting planet. I had to dig to what feels like almost the core of the planet to find enough coal to leave and when I left all i found was another super hostile dry world where i rinsed and repeated the whole ordeal. My homewolrd also had the giant flowers, very litle wood. I had to find superaggro mobs which all one or two shotted me and had special attacks. My weapons doing 5 damage to them at best. Birds agro from really far away (and respawn like crazy) and all have some sort of ranged attack which instagibs me. Ditto on the acid pools.

Right now i'm at the stage of trying to get enough iron to get some better things, which will probably help me only very little, and it's being impossibly greedy with the ore.

I don't mind hard, but this is crazy. I feel like i'm being locked in a circlegank by the monster son my world. Everytime i go off screen and come back a bunch of respawned monsters block my path and i ended up earning a free ride back to my ship.

 

I suppose that's where we differ. I've felt the same thing in every game I play save for a very very select few. They all seem to do it the same way. If it's on hard mode, things do more damage and have more health. If it's on easy mode, things do less damage and have less health. Why is that? I mean.. it makes it harder and easier, but that seems silly. Why don't games actually make the AI harder with higher difficulties and the AI easier in easier difficulties? I mean, it's the same bad guy, he should do the same damage and have the same armor and the same amount of blood in his body. When I ask for someone harder, I don't mean someone that's beefier.
If you're familiar with Perfect Dark, I'd refer to the Perfect Sims as hardmode, but not quite the Dark Sims (which were quite honestly just a sick joke, headshotting on sight) and the Meat Sims as easy mode. They all have the same health, do the same damage, but they act differently and are subsequently harder or easier.
Maybe I have some pride here, but I think a developer making hard mode just giving guys more health and more attack power is just taking the easy way out.

 

There's a reason everyone does it. Because it works all across the board.
If you're going to use real world analogies, let's use this one; I flick the hardmode switch into on position. The guy shooting at me is now suddenly smarter and more aggressive!
Not really working, yeah.

Monsters should all equally want to kill you no matter what mode. They should just be given the tools to do it better in harder modes, hence higher damage/more hp.

 

Fair enough-- I'll defer to experience.

I think this is mostly a matter of personal preference-- either method can work well.

 

I don't think a real world analogy discussion is going to go anywhere, because let's face it... non-military gamers today would not fair well against an actual human being shooting at them. Moving on. >_>
Health isn't a tool, for one. And I don't think damage should inherently jump or drop automatically. If you want to give hardmode guys better weapons or better attacks that normally do more damage, that's fine. An example would be a bird using Gravity Ball versus a bird using Blood Vomit. One being easier to dodge than the other, and the other being capable of dealing multiple hits in one shot. That's the kind of balance between difficulties I'm referring to. Blood Vomit on Easy shouldn't do less damage than Blood Vomit on Hard... it should just be found more frequently/earlier in the game on Hard..

 

Health is certainly a tool. If we both do the same damage and I have more health I win. If you give an enemy more health that means it takes longer to kill and ups the chance I screw up and the monster eats my face.

Why shouldn't it? Why should a monster in easy not know how to shoot a stream of blood, then suddenly learn how to when I click a button? Why not just have the monster pack a little more oomph?

 

That made me lol for some reason.
Your health isn't a "tool", it's a "benefit". Having more health doesn't make a monster any more difficult. It just takes more hits. I dunno... maybe I'm the only one who didn't see much change in difficulty when we went from 2-shotting to 4-shotting. I just have to hit it 2 more times.

Why? For the same reason they would suddenly have more health or suddenly be capable of vomiting blood at 100mph versus 10mph.... when I click a button.

 

And in the time it takes for you to hit it 2 more times it could turn the tables in it's favor, especially if you're fighting something that can 1-2 hit you.

But see, monsters are capable of adding in oomph in all modes, theoretically. An easy monster to a hard monster doesn't suddenly go "whoa, I can shoot fire from my eyeballs", it goes "Hey, maybe if I put more effort behind my bloodstream it'll shoot faster".

 

Ooookay... I can play the monster having an epiphany card too in favor of a new move. >_>
In all honesty, if you want more HP, go for it. It would only improve my experience, personally. But I still stand by the fact that simply increasing health and damage is not the solution. It's overdone, boring, and every game that I've played that doesn't do that in favor of changing AI or bringing new content (even if from later parts of the game) into play (earlier), is far more enjoyable for me.

Edit:
After playing the update, and feeling the improved AI... I gotta say, trying to spear 3 birdmen toting rifles that could actually hunt me down, was a blast. And yeah... they could 2-hit me (Copper goggles and starter clothes. Self restrictions FTW )