Early game too damn hard

im not bragging im saying you need to utilize the game mechanics and not complain that theyre there and hindering you because theyre not.

 

I genuinely think there's nothing wrong with the difficulty. The issue lies in the telegraphing of what the player is supposed to be doing. As I understand it, that UFO boss is meant to be the unlock for the next sector of the game - people are under the impression that he's part of the tutorial and should be defeatable after "9 hours of play".

Difficulty curve doesn't need tweaking at this point. Tutorial text does.

Edit: This is also a game about discovery. You shouldn't have everything spelled out to you in tiny bite-size chunks so you don't even have to think. Figuring out how to do something or craft something is great for that "oh, can I put this with that? I can! And it makes this cool thing? Awesome!" moment.

A fine line to walk. But I think the tutorial is creating unrealistic expectations of the difficulty of that first boss.

Maybe changing the recipe for the distress beacon to be harder to create might be a solution; rather than it just requiring iron blocks (as I understand it does right now) have it require two or three components that are going to encourage players to head to other planets and find out more about the sector beyond the starting planet.

 

It's harder than Minecraft or Terraria yea, but you also don't lose your inventory when you die. I am perfectly fine with that trade-off. Having to pay pixels to craft things is def annoying.

 

Notice that the quest text reads that your ship is not good enough to leave the SECTOR. I read it wrong on my first time as well. (or they sneakily changed it when I dl:ed the game!)

 

I played around 17 hours in one go so I might as well give you guys some tips before I go to sleep.

1. Mining ores.

The mining speed seems to depend a lot on what material the ore is stuck into, the type of the ore isn't as important as it is in Terraria and Minecraft..
Mining gold ore that's in sand is pretty fast,whereas mining copper stuck in that stone near the bottom of the map is very slow.

Even better, if you dig under a huge gravel or sand mound and cause it to flow downwards the ores will actually pop out as items.
Enjoy the ore rain.

2. Getting Pixels.

Getting them is actually pretty easy once you get the 2-handed iron weapon.
It 1-shots many mobs.
What that item actually is depend on your race, but I think that they all have the same damage stat.

Failing that you can still make quite a bit just by jumping on a low level planet and breaking a ton of those fancy sci-fi jars and then getting back on your ship.



With all that said I do think that Chucklefish messed up a bit.
Of course it's a beta so no biggie but yeah.

I think that the problem with the UFO is that Chucklefish pretty much intended to troll players by tricking them into summoning a boss.
It would have been a very funny joke if someone in Silver gear with tons of extra ingots summoned it!

...but it turns out a bit too mean because many people mine with low tier gear and then spend ingots on the relay... just to get one-shotted and waste so much time.

All the steps in that quest are so close to one another, but then the last one feels like it skips a lot of stuff.
If there was at least a step to get Silver Armor and an Iron Bow before the relay that would give the players a better idea on what level of challenge is waiting for them.


But like Mathew mentions on the second page of this thread the actual main quest isn't in this beta stage!

We don't really know what kind of rewards those would have given us and what would they have teached us.
As an example if the main quest gives you a Copper Pickaxe early on that actually reduces the grind quite a bit.
Likewise it's probably safe to assume that the main quest steps give pixels as rewards, too, which of course also help.

 

What would be REALLY useful is if I could put my pixels in a chest or piggy bank or container or something so that when I die I don't lose what I have.

 

The pixels i had no problem aquiring once i put my mind to it, i ended up digging down and exploring a bit and by teh time i had died to a monster near lava i had close to 3k. now the complete lack of silver ore on the two planets i've been too. that is indeed an issue

 

My starter planet had a sewer dungeon with poop monsters #winning

 

It's kinda hard and a bit grindy old school, this is basically good in my book, and probably a lot of other sandbox lovers too.

But I think some people aren't really thinking their strategies through. They don't want to resort to "cheesy" strategies, in a sandbox game, which will of course make it much harder (trying to kite or facetank penguins in laser UFO's with a bow and arrow ). But this is what I consider a voluntary higher difficulty, that you made for yourself.

If you instead tried building some blocks, opening a 1 block hole in the structure and boxing the boss in, you'd find it pretty easy to destroy. This goes for almost every monster I've encountered.

Save your whining for later bosses which I'm sure will have the ability to go through blocks.

 

I think your right Jovial i see allot of these guys wanna faceroll the game with copper armor and a hunting bow lol

 

Scale down the difficulty and in 3 days these same post will be complaining about the lack of content. The game has been in beta for 24 hours. Do not expect to be super heroes already.

 

So many of the posts in hear read OMG I HAVE TO THINK FOR MYSELF or OMG THERE IS NOT A LITTLE BOX OF TEXT TELLING ME EVERY STEP OF THE WAY or OMG I CAN DIE AND AM PENALIZED FOR IT! Seriously guys it is not that hard. Go play megaman or battle toads then come back if you find this any bit hard. But most importantly instead of crying that it is hard why dont you try figuring out how to play instead of being too lazy to experiment.

 

I don't really mind the millions of really hard monsters on the starter planet, i'm fine with that. Its just that it takes FOREVER to get ores. When
you are able to get them it depletes the planets resources because from my experience the starter planet seems to be
fairly small but you need tons of ore to make the beacon and the tools too. The UFO boss is to hard, I mean yeah sure
i can try to trap it in a box. but thats more of an exploit than anything. (I know everyone pretty much already said this I'm just agreeing with everyone).

 

omfg battletoads /shutter..... i still have nightmares about that game talk about taking forever to beat

 

The UFO boss is not too hard, you're attempting to take on what is meant to be later-game content with a very early game character.

As I understand it, that boss is supposed to be taken on once you've visited a number of different planets, significantly upgraded your armour and abilities, and then you build the beacon. It's not a 'this is the end of the tutorial!' thing.

What is obvious given the level of complaints about it is not that the boss is too hard, it's that the current tutorial quest is misleading players into attempting it far too early on in their playthrough.

 

ah yeah I just figured out how to zoom out of the solar system I'm in. lol.

 

The game is much less difficult if you don't blindly throw your face into enemies. Seriously, these threads complaining about the difficulty are ridiculous. This isn't Terraria, you actually have to avoid getting hit.

 

My only issue is the inability to heal at the beginning in anyway.

 

i dont understand why early game is so difficult ? If you have played a game like Teraria this game is easy, build everything you need, thats stone axe pickaxe etc, your sword you get given 3 hits the monsters at the beginning, the bow i agree is difficult at first but i got an iron bow within the first hour of playing and now i one hit most things, there is iron everywhere remember every planet has different masses of resources, and iron is normally located near the surface, so dont panic be patient farm and within hours you should be up and running.

 

Here are my thoughts.

The pixel cost for crafting it, in my opinion, completely unwarranted. You already have a rarity of ores in order to craft gear. Why add a second 'grind' by requiring pixels? It feels like a completely artificial addition to the progression.

I don't find the game too hard but the difficulty curve from your starting planet to the first tier boss is a bit unintuitive. The quest goes from making a furnace to making the beacon. When I tried the boss the first time, had the second bow and a broadsword. Both were doing ~100 damage and one or two shotting everything. I was in a mix of copper and silver armor, sure. But I wasn't taking that much damage from things. Then with the boss, I'm suddenly doing ~14 damage a hit to the spawned enemys. They're ranged and the only ranged weapon I have is the bow. And when I die the expensive boss summoning item is gone. That's a pretty steep curve there. There's nothing indicating that I should fuel my ship and hit up other planets. If that's the case, shouldn't we have a quest to fuel the ship before the beacon?

I'm not suggesting that anything be made easier, but I did not expect that when I was trashing anything I found on the starting planet, that I would be that unprepared for the first boss. I don't think he should be changed but perhaps creatures on the first planet should be a bit more difficult as you get deeper so you have some idea of what you're going to be in for when you get to the boss. Plus, I don't understand the crafting. The progression seems to hop around. The stats on the weapons seem unintuitive (IE why does the beginning sword say it does 28 per swing and so does the iron broadsword I crafted, yet the beginner sword does ~32 damage and the crafted broadsword does ~100? I didn't craft the thing for the longest time because the stats seemed to indicate it was worse than the starting sword in all but the armor penetration.)

I don't think the beginning game is too hard. In fact it should give you an indication you need to leave the starting planet if that's what's required to prepare for the first boss. And the progression as you go deeper into the core needs to be MORE difficult so you aren't blindsided by the difficulty of the first boss.

So, that's my initial $0.02 on the subject.