Dumbest Idea in the History of Dumb Ideas

The entire concept of "bosses" being linked to technical progression is insipidly stupid.

If someone wants to flame me for that opinion that just fine but far as "bosses" go, they should be guarding tech upgrades and interesting and/or rare blueprints at worst...the star charts make sense as something they might be guarding, but the idea that I can simply conjure these deus ex machina at WILL to allow me to progress technically is vapid and makes no sense whatsoever.

The entire idea that I have to inflict a rather stupid fight on myself simply to increase my tech tree is ridiculous. Whats more is the boss mechanics are always going to be completely game-able and cannot be made "difficult" without making them impossible which would force them to be gamed even more to produce a positive result for the player.

So just cut that stuff and put the star charts and interesting blueprints behind random "bosses" that we might find while exploring....I mean wouldn't that force a need for exploration? Isn't that what Starbound is supposed to be about? Exploring the galaxy and seeing whats out there? Cause..yeah I never left the first planet I showed up on and was able to get the Beta and Gamma star charts right there on Alpha Butthairis Majoris II...the very first planet I'd apparently run out of fuel over..and I never ONCE needed to go anywhere else.

Listen the whole Penguin thing was cute during the Yogscast pre-beta stream at Gamescom and all that but theres an entire GALAXY out there for me to explore and certainly my technical capabilities should only be limited by the resources I am able to obtain.

So in short, radioing in a Penguin Death Squad simply to be able to build a metal working table is.....stupid. Its beyond stupid, its not fun, its not interesting, the fights are boring, onerous and will never be exciting. They are dumb progression mechanics taking away from an otherwise pretty brilliant idea.

TLDR: Force me to explore to find better opportunities, but don't force me to fight inherently retarded AI battles to progress in technology. Technological capability should only be limited by resources and available resources should unlock basic blueprints for anything that might use that resource. The super shiny blueprints and star charts? Sure, put those behind bosses. Just force me to go find them, cause its an adventure after all and phoning in your enemies is hardly adventurous.

 

I think the issue is that while exploring for bosses and therefore rewards is more fun, it's leaving a lot up to random chance so some people might be held back in progressing by their own bad luck. I think things will be better later on when mini-bosses are added to dungeons or rare encounters that give us rare loot as a reward rather than something necessary for progressing to a new sector.

 

I would much rather fight a boss to progress to a new tier than scour the galaxy for a random monster to hopefully random drop an item. There's way too much randomness is your suggestion for it to be valid.

The first boss makes sense as far as progression and technology is concerned, you're (semi stranded) on a planet, and you fashion a crude and rudimentary distress beacon to hopefully call for help, instead you summon the penguin overlord who you fight to the death. Conveniently his ship has a molten core for (presumably an energy source), and you're able to fashion a metalworking station out of this.

The next two bosses to me I will agree make no sense, why does a robot that I built, drop a processor? Why did I not just build a processor? Dragon boss, why would I randomly be summoning a dragon who has a starmap? Both questions are most likely to be answered in the actual story of the game. You have to remember a few things, 1. This is a beta test. 2. There is actually a main story line, and side quests in this game despite it being a sandbox.

 

so wait, youre complaining about a very VERY common game mechanic? what do you want? do you want the bosses to be pointless to fight? if they became pointless to fight then why have them at all? its a good idea to make you have to fight a boss in order to advance is a good idea but i do think perhaps the bosses should have more relevance

 

3. This game is about as serious as MST3K, and you should be using largely the same mantra every time you start thinking it isn't.

 

So you...as a member of an advanced space faring race...simply cannot grasp the idea of creating a microprocessor from available resources...without having to build a robot first...then kill it, then get said processor?

I can see how that totally makes sense...if you were perhaps in an episode of Red Dwarf.

 

I wouldn't use the OP's harsh tone but... he does have a valid point. I would rather kill bosses who may drop hidden star charts, so that I can later investigate and raid for my REAL loot as opposed to summon it and kill it for its rares..

Despite being a beta, this is what forums and feedback are for - to be reported BEFORE it reaches the launch stage, otherwise we would be forever stuck in beta because some people are apparently too afraid of pointing out the negative issues in a game. Mind you, being respectful goes a long way too.

 

I agree with the OP. The boss fights as they are set up are building a big fat fence around us in what is SUPPOSED to be an exploration game, not an ARPG. A boring fence too. The bosses should be dropping rare and cool items as a reward for beating them, not just being an arbitrary obstacle blocking us from advancing to the next tier and sector. Ideally there should be no hard limits on when we can advance to the next tier and sector except the limits on crafting materials and our ability to handle tougher aliens.

 

I think what he's saying, is that most if not all good games have bosses that you NEED to beat to progress. Just cause this is a Sandbox game doesn't make that any different. Yes the logic behind a robot you build dropping a processor you need is a bit wonky. But that's not the issue here is it?

You're saying that having something you need to do to progress is stupid, because you want it to be completely handled by RNG. You know what that does, it makes more people bitching because they aren't finding what they need after grinding 100+ planets. At least this way you can progress when you KNOW you're ready to progress, not earlier or later. You get your gear, you fight the boss, you continue going up the tech tree. Not being stuck on the same tech tier for 40 hours just cause you have bad luck with drops.

There ARE reasons for having bosses in games, it stops people from just rushing through them or people getting stuck because they have bad luck on RNG. Plus, this is NOT a finished game yet. It's not balanced, once it's more fleshed out I'm sure it will be better.

Though I do agree that the bosses should drop some interesting weapons or something as well as the Tier objects.

 

Well, there are technically mini bosses around, although i see your point, if they made these mini bosses more dungeon specific and specialized to their surroundings, it could be fun and bring in new incentive to explore as much as possible while still keeping the bosses as a way to progress. Majority of games use bosses as a way of progression so without that, i cant really see a way for players to progress to different sectors besides us just crafting the material and that would be even more boring without some sort of obstacle.

 

Making story progress rely on entirely random encounters? Why, that kind of sounds like the

Boss battles do suck right now though.

 

You're right, that doesn't make sense. However the issue isn't that you have to defeat a boss to progress, but that there needs to be an understandable reason. As stated, the Penguin Boss and the Molten Core make a lot of sense.

The robot boss and the processor? Not so much. However, as of this moment, tier one is the only tier which is complete enough as far as storyline goes. Tier 2 and beyond don't have any story provided to allow it to make sense. It's possible things can be modified later to make more sense.

But the fact is, there's nothing wrong with having to defeat a boss to progress.

 

So true. And why are gold pick-axes better than copper ones? Why are silver? That doesn't make any sense. And why do all the planets have the same gravity? And why do they all have breatable air? And how come all of these atmospheres are all breathable by people from different planets? And doesn't FTL travel violate basic laws of physics? And what's with chopping down trees that independently break into small logs? How is it possible that I can dig to the center of a planet in a mere ten minutes? How come sand falls, and dirt doesn't?

Oh right... because I'm playing a game.

 

Someone claimed this in another thread:
"We're making a robot from alien schematics we found. We're making a clean chip to have the data written to after we activate the alien technology robot.
We're not making a chip. We're making a robot to write data to our chip."

Not sure if I agree with that, but if you bother with the lore, you will discover that not all races are that "advanced". A bunch took technology from other races, meaning they had no idea how to create things without outside help of any kind.
And most importantly:
Do you know how to build a car? If not, you shouldn't judge aliens for not being able to build microprocessors.
There is no quest to explain how it all works yet. Wait for that before you complain about things not making sense. And since this is scifi, you'll have to suspend some disbelief anyway.

All that aside, bosses are a good idea in the current form, I do believe that the bosses themselves can be improved though.

 

You hit the nail on the head. Think of this game as less "Star Trek" and more "Red Dwarf" and you'll be more in line with the intended tone. This is not a spacefaring simulation game, it's a sandbox adventure game where you kill plant people and monkey people and fish people and robot people and people people and a bunch of monsters whose very existence would be an affront to whatever god you do or do not believe in.

Also, while you are of course entitled to your opinion, the tone with which you express it will be what raises the ire of those who happen to hold an opposing view. The flaming you were expecting (or perhaps hoping for) can largely be avoided by expressing yourself a bit more eloquently than using the words stupid and dumb every other sentence. $0.02

 

I think basing the entire objective argument around the fact that I'm arguing for random encounters is kind of not taking into account that the entire process of "random encounters" in todays technology is to ensure they're random enough, but not so random as to force people to "grind 100+ planets" and not find what they need.

There are thousands of planets out there, there is no specific impossibility to putting these "key resources" for progression behind a multitude of potential "boss encounters" on a multitude of worlds in the Alpha sector...and...once the player has actually achieved the goal of finally finding the Beta sector star charts on a boss somewhere, the game just simply removes those charts from any other boss for that player. Its not hard to code at all.

The entire argument of "RNG" deterring progression is fallacious...cause who the hell would use RNG for something that key to game dynamics anyways?

 

Mmm, I love seeing the word insipid used. Don't see that very often.

 

You did suggest the blueprints and star charts be put behind random "bosses", you can't blame the other posters for interpreting that literally the exact way you wrote it.

 

Just make the bosses drop engine components as well as the tier upgrade. 1st boss drops a capacitor to increase the ships range, 2nd boss drops a "pacified" Artifical Brain that does the advanced computing to get you to the next sector, dragon drops a better warp drive or whatever.

 

It would be better if we had to go to an arctic world to find the penguin boss, for example, and distress beacons were scattered around sector 1 arctic worlds instead of forcing us to craft them.