Difficulty Seems High

I can't believe some people are already complaining about the difficulty... don't worry it will be like in terraria, the early game will be harder than the late game...

 

I think the main problem with this is that it takes quite a bit more time to figure out than Terraria, and right now people are dying to monsters, freezing, and nearly starving to death before they even figure out how to get plant fiber. It's frustrating to die to three different mechanics before you even figure out how to survive one of them.

 

Well, I think people aren't doing what's obvious.. For one they start you off with seeds.. and pretty much GUIDE you in the direction to survive.. Here's how to hunt.. Here's seeds.. Here's a tool that breaks everything..

Do Quest, Get Hoe, Plant seeds, Hunt Monsters, Learn how to fight them.. It's not that difficult really.

 

Why are so many ready to slam on the easy button already? Nothing I've seen so far looks difficult. I've mostly just seen a bunch of reckless LPers who don't think much before acting. If you play dumb you should expect to die so when I see these guys picking fights with passive monsters when they haven't even got together the stuff they need to heal up their life they deserve to die. Maybe a quest to make bandages after the crafting bench would help but honestly if the crafting bench quest completion text just said something along the lines of "Now that you have a crafting bench you might want to consider a new set of tools to aid in collecting resources, a yarn spinner to make bandages, or a bed to heal up after you build a shelter" this should be enough to set a person on track although I think it should be a pretty obvious first move in a survival oriented game.

EDIT: Besides, it is not as if death is such a major consequence in the game... it is a very clear "hey maybe you need to think about what you are doing to survive."

 

You would get so many strange looks if a person didn't know you were talking about a video game

 

I personally love how it currently is. Tutorials do have a place in games, however being told how to handle every possible situation at the beginning of the game is something I'll never agree with.

 

Haha, that's something to keep in mind here: death is a feedback mechanism in a video game. It says you screwed up, you shouldn't do what you did and need to consider other options in approaching the problems you face. An early death is a chance to reevaluate your priorities. It is a teaching lesson just as much as the quests.

 

I think the main problem is that a lot of these things aren't obvious to others, and I'd hate to see people criticizing the game due to a lack of understanding. The heat mechanic, for instance... A lot of people new to Starbound don't understand what it is. They see a "daylight" meter dropping and then abruptly die when it gets too low, which is obviously frustrating if you have no idea what's happening. I think the icon needs changing and that the game should start you off with a handful of bandages (so that you know of their existence) or a bedroll to help you heal. We don't need to make it super easy mode,but some extra guidance never hurts.

 

Its not like death is very punishing in this game either: you don't lose any equipment currently. Only coins which you can gain back relatively quickly.

 

It's hard to overstate how hard I rolled my eyes at OP. I literally have to go see an ophthalmologist now because I think my retinas may have detached. In every single case I have seen somebody die they either done a suicide jump off a cliff or walked up and face-tanked a mob without really doing much to damage it back. Or both. I have yet to see people craft even a single piece of armor and I've watched streams that have gone on a considerable amount of time.

Oh well, in that ca-

Uhuh. Yeah. Sure. That's totally what you meant.

Most assuredly not, from the look of it. But you know what I say to all this dying? Good. If they breezed right past the tutorial to a new tier they'd still be in the same boat as before. People still die in the starting area of WoW and that game's starting area is probably the easiest imaginable. People die when they are new to a game. They learn from it and adapt from it. It's what newbies do.

 

Maybe it is that I grew up playing games where I had to figure stuff out myself, but when something gives you an item usually your first reaction should be "alright, how do I use this?" or something along those lines.
Game gives you seeds? Alright I should figure out how to plant them.
Vines fall and break apart into fibers? Take them back to base and see what happens when you try crafting them.
Solar thingy freezes the screen and kills me when it drops too low? Maybe I should try to get it to stop dropping? Oh hey standing near this furnace makes the bar go up, perhaps that was my heat level.

Everything can be solved if you think about things for a little bit before rushing in and getting killed.

 

*Only read first page, so kudos to those I share opinions with*

I'll start off with a quote:
"Losing is Fun!" -Dwarf Fortress

For me, I actually enjoy playing difficult games. Growing up with a Playstation 1, there were some brutal titles for that system that would never show you mercy. In that era, complex puzzles weren't enough, oh no, you had to deal with enemies, obstacles, and most of the time some sort of harsh time limit.

Hell, I'm making a half-a$$ed game right now and I made the first level pretty darn difficult because that's what I'm used to and what I am most comfortable with.

Another thing, is that difficult games feel more rewarding. If balanced right (Notice the IF), it actually feels very rewarding when you finally kill that annoying enemy or solve that near-impossible level.

Maybe it's just me, but I find dying in a video game more of an inconvenience than a set-back, so to speak.


Also, kinda off-topic, but the first days in Terraria are pretty brutal too. The zombies and demon eyes hit for a good 20-25 damage, plus they come in hordes most of the time. Plus the underground is hell for the newbie. Dart trips cut you down to half in seconds. And boulder traps? Good luck. And it's not just the traps. As soon as you're in the caves, black slimes hit you for 15 seconds of darkness, and then you get swarmed by cave bats, knocked into holes, skeletons rush you, and mother slimes finish you off. I mean, I've been playing for a while, so this is all easy to cope with because I know how to deal with all the traps and enemies, but if you're new, then you can be easily overwhelmed first night.

But here is the point I want to give based on all of that: It's all that dying and failure that makes you WANT to continue on. This is where balanced difficulty comes in. You KNOW you can beat all those enemies, you just have to figure out how, and after that it's easy.


*Just my thoughts, don't stab me :c*

 

I think the difficulty is just fine, the lack of death penalities compensate for this.

 

This is hyperbole of the worst order. All I was seeing was careless play and no armor on the players' behalf. Fact of the matter is that you die with what looks like no penalty whatsoever, other than having to walk back to where you were. The challenge looks completely acceptable; all you were seeing were player-made mistakes.

I dunno, that bit about Terraria seems largely on-topic to me. I think people tend to forget that most survival games come with some kind of difficulty curve. Starting out your first character ever is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from starting a new character after you've played the game for hours and hours.

 

I'd say its probably a bit too hard at the start (though I like harder games) but at the same time I don't think theres enough of a penalty.

To be honest, the penalty needs to be higher if we're going to complain about difficulty. Yeah, you'll die, just that there isn't much to worry about.

 

And, so it begins.

Gotta give credit to you guys, this has got to be the earliest "nerf everything that's even remotely difficult" movement I've ever seen.

 

I guess it's different for everyone, because I ****ing suck at RoR... like horribly so, and that's just on medium too. Sandbox games on the other hand are so easy they need a high difficulty setting, I can't even remotely enjoy minecraft unless it's on hard.

 

I LOVE IT PLZ DON'T MAKE IT EASIER CHUCKLEFISH! besides the more dangerous the outdoors are, the more homey the shelters will feel

 

I think part of the issue is that you have a time limit to figure everything out. Some streamers are running into three mobs at a time while simultaneously slowly freezing to death and running out of hunger, if you already know the game it's fine, but if you don't then you're going to die from one of the three elements before you figure then all out. Some people don't know where to get plant fibers, I saw one streamer frantically breaking trees, bushes, and grass and not understanding why they couldn't get plant fibers, and some don't think that their matter manipulator is working on the vines because it takes so long to harvest them. The same streamer later ran into a mob that took what felt like two minutes of solid bow shooting to kill only to have it drop nothing. Random mobs are great and all, but they shouldn't be tedious to fight and not even drop meat, the thing took 2-3 charged bow shots to knock it's health down by one pip, it was a day time mob.

 

Didn't GeorgeV say that he agrees with the OP on page 2? That should say something about the balance of the game.