Difficulty Seems High

My thoughts excactly. I hope they tinker with the AI a little bit more during beta.

 

I'm saying that this is happening to people that don't understand the game mechanics yet. Some have no idea that they're freezing to death and are trying to hunt for meat drops to feed themselves, but meat isn't dropping and they have no idea how to heal themselves. Doesn't sound a bit overwhelming to new players to you? They don't even know that beds or bandages exist, and the second quest tells you to immediately start fighting mobs with a bow.

 

My thoughts:
A certain level of skill is expected. People learned to play terraria without any tutorial at all and nobody had a problem with that. If you are in doubt, you can always check the wiki.
Basically, you are not worried about new players, you are worried about BAD players. Figuring out what does a bar with a sun do is not really hard. It goes up when you are in cold, caves or night and ges up when you stand near campfire- It's pretty obvious (for me at least). As always, they could add a little more tutorials but then again, if they add too much I would feel like somebody is thinking I'm an idiot.

And there again goes the commom problem of our modern gaming. If you try to make a game that will appeal even to those most clueless people that need their hand to be held for the first half of the game, you would come up with a washed-out product.

Half of the enjoyment you get from this game is EXPLORING things by yourself. I am really glad they don't try to explain every tiny bit of interface and every game aspect when I am trying to do that myself. If you need help, there are wiki pages and oficial forums. You can google anything and you will get your answer in seconds. I don't like tutorials being forcefuly pushed into my face like I am an idiot. Some games do that and I HATE IT.


PS: YOU ARE ALL AWESOME GUYS! I didn't have such an awesome discussion with such cool and inteligent community in a while. I'm cold and sleepy. See you tommorow! Although, I think nobody will be seeing each other because we will be playing the game GOOD NIGHT!

 

I think that the basics of freezing to death can be more attributed to the weird icon used for it and the fact that it doesn't have little statements about how your character is. Like say how it shows off the various levels of hunger as well as states "You're starving" at lower levels.

But charging at 3 enemies is still a bad idea at the start no matter who you are, even if you're starving. Though I do agree about showing that there are ways to heal.

 

That is their mistake right there. Take your time and learn to play before you go charging off into trouble. If you play recklessly you should die. That's how you learn.

 

Again, that's part of the issue. Nobody knows what the "daylight meter" at the bottom on the screen is and you slowly starve to death. People are just following the tutorial, and it tells them to immediately hunt mobs for meat, there really isn't much that they're rushing here, they're following the quest line as it teaches then the game. First it teaches them hunger, but meat drops are rare and they don't know how to heal. I think a tutorial fails if you have to actively ignore it in order to learn the game for yourself just to complete the tutorial. These are issues plenty of streamers are having, and I don't think that helping players understand the game mechanics removes any challenge whatsoever. It's obviously no challenge for you if you understand how it works, but these people don't.

 

I didn't see anything that looked particularly hard. You have to remember that streamers want to make things fun and are sometimes a bit retarded intentionally. Playing seriously isn't terribly fun to watch *generally*.

 

I fully agree to this having grown up with the same games. I really prefer if games don't hold my hand and reward me every five seconds..

 

I really feel like there should be no balances to the game until at least a few days after tomorrow. Judging the difficulty of the game based upon streamers really won't give you accurate answers, as streamers are there to entertain; and apparently it's entertaining to the masses to see some idiot fail terribly at a painfully easy game. (No, I do not have any pent up anger from watching all the streamers die within the first night for no apparent reason beside their own inability to play the game correctly )

From what I've seen, Starbound really is not that hard. We haven't really seen anything beyond the first tier yet as most of the streamers have barely even cracked the first few quests and almost all of them are horrible at the basic mechanics. I honestly enjoy a game that requires a bit of effort to actually accomplish something. I felt that Terraria lacked this significantly as really the only skill required was your ability to know which items to get at what time. Starbound's combat system is far more advanced, and should therefore require more time and practice from the player before allowing them to move forward with the game.

I know all gamers aren't as hardcore as some of us when it comes to difficulty, but I really hate seeing games get easier simply because new players are unable to progress through the game comfortably. I would propose putting in a difficulty setting, but I think Starbound really should take some alternative approach. Give the player a sort of choice to take the hard path or the easy path; Make the progression have multiple paths that will either take you on a more resource and collection oriented progression or another more hardcore combat oriented path. The player could also take both paths, or a mixture of either.

 

Also remember, these are the people playing this game for the very first time, as well as being the very first to do so! They don't have the assistance of being able to look at what someone else did and learn from them, nor the help of a Wiki to give a guiding hand when they don't know what to do next. Personally even after watching several streams I'm still stumped about how to get to tier 2 technology and the guns! It seems you almost need a gun to kill the UFO without cheesing the game, yet their are folks that say you gain the ability to craft them after doing so, THAT seems like an unfair difficulty curve, though the only one i've seen thus far!

At most i expect Starbound to be about as difficult as Monster Hunter on a good day, which is to say not very difficult at all, though intimidating. When we normal folk get our hands on it it'll look significantly less scary as we build up a data base of information that the streamers we watch now couldn't even imagine, explaining how tech, crafting, teir progression etc work. It looks hard because of the durth of information we have, is what i'm saying.

Edit: I didn't realize how apt the connection to Monster Hunter was when i made it, but it IS kind of similar in its difficulty, isn't it? You're expected to know some things where others are actually explained to you (I.E how to craft, carve, advance, make health potions etc). As well as that from the streams it looks like their are mountains and valleys of difficulty, some spikes (I.E, UFO as compared to Barroth) and some lulls (fighting creatures you have before). As well as this, theirs no real levels as applicable to individual characters, equipment gives all your stats, just as in Monster Hunter.

 

I look forward to a little challenge. A lot of games these days seem to be 50% tutorial.

 

I really do hope they keep the current difficulty, or at least keep it an option. Really would like a challenge.

 

It's good for a game to get easier as it progresses.

Too often games get harder or just more complex without the difficulty changing. By the end of it you feel like the most powerful being in the universe, you could take on anything.

 

A spoiler that actually contained a spoiler? You're screwing with me here, TvK....

 

Not a good idea. That's basically saying let's rid ourselves of the fourth quest or so for about.. how long is the day/night cycle?

 

I think a lot of the players are just new to the game and don't know what to do. Most of them start roaming around doing the initial quests without making any kind of defensible building. Me personally I hate dying, so I tend to alter the landscape every few screens to give me a good position to fight enemies from.

 

I've watched about 5 or 6 streamers that have defeated the first boss constantly dying on planets lower than level 10 and for some reason none of them had any armor equipped and constantly ignored huge veins of iron/copper. One of the guys when asked about copper armor just said: "nah copper sucks" and continued to die every few minutes for hours and hours. Although they must be new to Starbound, surely they aren't new to Minecraft/Terraria? - I mean rule number one is you gear up so you don't get slaughtered. I'm fine with waiting till tomorrow but some of the lets players are frustratingly bad at this game.

 

that's true you would think most people are a little smarter than that

 

Seems like it's a combination of poor players (if I can figure out what you should be doing without ever having played or even looked at the game before, except for this past day, then I question why they haven't) and a lack of newbie tutorials.

I know people don't want to be hand-held or whatever, but even if you've played terraria/minecraft and can sort of figure out mechanics, other stuff is not as easy. Things like the buttons at the side (beam up / observe / etc) are not explained -- saw one streamer wonder how to beam up, and then spend a while trying to figure out why he couldn't while there was a backwall present. Small things like holding shift to place down 1 block instead of 4 at a time doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere. Hell, I've seen quite a few streamers not know how to use the L/R section of their hotbar. And then things like bandages -- I may not have known they were a thing unless I decided to look through all the crafting list or unless I was told, like another streamer was. Some people still don't know how to plant things. A LOT of people had issue with the temperature bar since the sun symbol is more reminiscent of light rather than warmth (when I first saw it, I thought it was a meter for how charged the flashlight was!) Etc etc. Yeah, you can look this up on a wiki later, but these are all things that can easily be taught through quests and probably will be later on in the beta/full release.

I imagine with a more proper tutorial and more info available, the game will have a slightly more forgiving difficulty curve.

 

I think that the difficulty should scale with level. You should be facerolling level one planets even from the start, but a level 100 planet should be nigh impossible with the best gear.
EDIT:
Ex.
Level 1-25 Cakewalk
Level 26-50 Somewhat challenging
Level 51-75 Hard
Level 76+ Megaman