Fighting

Fighting... Yea. It's the best part in games. What we know about fighting in Starbound? Only this:

and < He is awesome ;D

But... I decide to create video from Tiy's Live and post it here



What's the best thing in fighting according to you? I like monster attacking animation ;D

 

The best thing in fighting, to me, is the variation of weapons. Some will have faster speed and higher damage...
Some shoot freakin nukes, some shoot bullets at light speed.
And gruesome deaths . If deaths are different according to how the died I will be so freaking happy

 

I hope that they don't make it so at endgame you can't just swim though seas of low level monsters as they all die. because it looks like they may have an interesting combat system but I don't want to be slowed down.

 

afaik, combat is still heavily wip, so many things could change.

 

Yes. It's only alpha.

 

What makes good combat needs more than a few things. In fact, I couldn't possibly point everything out just by thinking about it a few minutes and writing a few lines.

One of the most important factor is to feel like you're in power of your character. This is kind of a weird one to explain: A game that limits how you can defeat an enemy so much can feel absolutely horrible. Making your character fast and agile is generally a must. You need to have more than enough tools and abilities to defeat your opponents. Some games have the tendency to make you feel pathetic and slow, and that might make combat more difficult, it can easily just become dumb and limiting.

Another very important factor is enemy behavior, coupled with enemy variety (and variety in the possible behaviors). This was one of Terraria's biggest downfall. Especially early on, every monsters felt the same. They're a different blob with different HP that just tries to bump you. So essentially they're all the same. That is awful.

Platformers have a LOT of possibilities in terms of enemies. Think Castlevania, think Mega Man. There are tons of possibilities beyond "I run into you and bump you until you die". This is a most crucial element.


After this, you could say its all about the variety of tools you can use to defeat your opponents. But not quite. Having a heck of a lot of different things to annihilate your enemies is fun, BUT, by itself, doesn't actually improve combat at all.

This is my next factor: Having different abilities, tools, weapons, that actually serve a purpose other than being cool. This means some enemies that can be much easier to defeat with certain kind of weapons or tactics. This goes hand in hand with proper enemy variety. Its fine to have some things in game for flash, but if no items ever feel necessary or VERY helpful to have, then you can make your way through the game shooting the same straightforward gun -> and that means less depths. Games like Darksiders have this problem: It gives you dozens of different combat moves, yet they serve no purpose, since the basic combo is far enough.

Starbound didn't receive much work in the combat yet, so I hope they have some of those things in mind Making a perfect combat system is quite the challenge, I assure you.

 

I do agree, this combat seems to be a very basic form of what the game will be in the end. Though just from the look of every monster behaving the exact same was a bit off setting making me dislike their completely spontaneous looks.

 

yea, right now it doesnt look all hat varied, but thats probably going to change a lot later on

 

To me, it seems like having the weapons be randomized will make combat really interesting, and will add replay value to the game on its own. It reminds me of the Borderlnds 2 weapons - all gun stats (and even appearances, to some degree) are randomized, so it makes players want to hunt for any weapons that have even better stats. Borderlands 2 got boring for me because there was only one way to fight: shoot the crap outta baddies. I think Starbound will be better because it offers multiple ways to attack (and defend, for that matter). After all, shooting people in the face is fun and everything, but there's a certain satisfaction that comes from kicking a big boss in the nuts and watching him squirm.

 

Seeing as how the combat system is "very much WIP", we can expect to see the combat system improve greatly. After watching the stream, the combat seemed kind of like Terraria, with enemies just trying to bump into you (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just not that fun). However, Tiy states that enemy AI is a temp and combat is heavily WIP, so by the time the game comes out "combat should feel more like Castlevania", which will be great.

 

I really like how creatures don't run into you but actually attack.