Feedback First impressions of 1.0

Don't expect anything fancy here.

we will start off with the cons, as I feel those are the most important.
1. Hunger depletes too quickly, and takes an all you can eat buffet to fill up.
2. Humanoid enemies need to be toned down. Even with appropriate level weapons and armor, humanoid enemies can tank a ton of damage, and dish it right back.
3. Wildlife spawn rates are a bit high. Being chased down by a swarm of various monsters is not uncommon.
4. Wildlife move speed is faster than you could ever hope to be. This makes con number 3 much worse. This also makes it very hard to avoid contact damage.
5. Apex labs. Just Apex labs. This is gonna be a big one. First off, having to wait around for a elevator is annoying. Waiting around for a very fast elevator, that I more often than not fall right through, is infuriating. Making said elevator the only way to navigate the lab, is...well I am sure you see the pattern here. To top this problem off, when I finally reached the end(top) of the lab, I was greeted with a enemy who could two shot me. Yup that's right, he two shot me, in appropriate level armor and weapons. Needless to say after that nonsense I switched on admin mode, ran back to his lab, rode the stupid elevators again, and then not only killed him and is robot cat, I also tore down his room.
6. Can only change resolution for fullscreen. Why? I would much rather prefer playing the game in windowed mode at 1024x576, rather than 1600x900.
7. Guns are better than they were, but still no contest versus melee weapons. Maybe give them a ever so slight buff? Just so we don't end up in a melee elitist world? It is a bit disappointing to have all these cool guns, and know that I could finish the battle a lot faster by just using a sword. In case you are worried that gun's ranged ability will not give the enemy a chance to fight back, melee weapons already do that. Seriously, from what I have seen so far, melee weapons can knockback lock/stagger lock/stun lock enemies to death. Guns, most notably automatic guns, merely slow them down slightly. Also some melee weapons have ranged special attacks anyway.
8. Too many mountains/sheer cliffs. Even in a biome that you would think would be fairly flat, there are mountains everywhere.
9. The Dash test mission is very problematic due to move speed being tied to frame rate. This makes the mission infuriating to near impossible for players with low frame rate. I personally did not experience this, but my friend had a hell of a time completing the mission.

Now on to the Pros.
1. The new story is pretty interesting so far.
2. Each race now has a noise they make when they talk, avian noises are SO ADORABLE. This new feature also lets me know when a humanoid enemy has seen me.
3. Ummm....the upgradable techs and matter manipulator are cool, I guess?

Was there really so little pros? Oh right!
4. the new crafting stations are very nice, both in appearance and use.
Update!
5. Codex books are no longer one use. This allows you to share Codex books with other players.
That is all I got for now. Maybe I will add more as I continue to play.

 

I agree with the hunger, no doubt. Haven't come across the rest really to comment on it. But the hunger is so bad you can't even leave the game open and go afk for a few minutes. You WILL come back dead. Maybe make hunger pause while sleeping and health regen while sleeping hungry slow to a crawl? We need something better than save and exit every time we need to step away for more than a pee.

I imagine there are so little pros because this is not a new game for us. Yeah 1.0 and official release happened, but it's just like i said long long ago when we were waiting for early access: Release doesn't mean what it used to to video games. Release is just a big update and another day. It's still largely the game we've all been playing this whole time, just this patch arbitrarily is called 1.0 instead of 0.9. So a lot of the positive things about the game are just commonplace now and it's hard to really know to make mention of them.

 

Well said. I suppose that would be why I couldn't think of any pros.

 

Yes I think sleeping should make hunger decay a LOT slower (while sleeping). If anyone can make a mod for this I'd love ya!

 

1. I think the hunger decays quick enough, but I disagree with having to devour a buffet to refill it. All you have to do is munch on a few bowls of rice, or maybe some canned foods, to refill it. At which point the "full" debug lasts for a fair while, and thankfully increases health benefit on the side. I do however heartily agree with making beds slow hunger to a crawl, or something similar. Full stomach and resting while letting slow healing items do their work 5x as fast is pretty great.
2. I think they actually need to be toned up. Not in terms of equipment, but in terms of skill. Like seriously, and enemy you face can either just be totally cheesed out, defeated by you just ducking under their shots, or you can stun lock them with either automatic weapons or dual daggers to the point where you can literally just defeat any number of them. The dark glitch provided a very good example of what I mean by "good AI". I don't know if this was intentional, but I noticed that sometimes the archers would sprint back behind a shield bearing glitch, and shoot while being provided cover as the shield bearer closed the gap.
3. Nah. I'm fine with the swarms. Personally, I am comfortable with any challenge added to the game.
4. I think my only gripe is honestly the act that there is no infighting with monsters. That's something that I think would totally work or a game like this.
5. I'm sorry if you felt that way, but I personally had no problem with the labs thanks to having a bunch of climbing rope. You can use that to entirely skip the elevator. That, or use wall jump tech.
6. Yeah... I understand where you're coming from with this...
7. I dunno. Being able to backpedal away from enemies is a pretty big advantage compared to melee...
8. I agree here. I like the mountains and all, but I'd personally like some massive sand dunes please.
9. I can't speak from your friends perspective since I don't have any lag issues with the dash tech mission...

 

I disagree with hunger depleting too quickly.

And it does not take an all you can eat buffet to fill up. It does depend on what you eat though. Some foods are more filling than others. I've noticed steaks fill a ton. Also, I like how they made different foods fill different amounts. That subtle complexity adds some interesting food choices.

 

Oh, and I forgot to mention how the pressing need for hunger really emphasizes the need for a farm, or some way to acquire plenty of pixels. It really puts emphasis on having a home planet when paired with the need for silk, wool, leather, etc.

 

RE: "Melee Elitism":

I will say I was hugely surprised in early-game when I found some stone hunting spears in a chest and just for kicks threw one at an enemy. It did 34 damage... you know, my sword only did like... 12.

I was like "whaaat?"

So I made a bunch of them and now my character has almost a dozen hardened carapaces, half a dozen phase matters, and some other junk. Oh, and... a food tab full of raw meat.

I know that will change later in the game, but dude, all you need is some wood and stone and you're set early-game. Who needs to farm when you are getting more steak than you could possibly eat? Carry a campfire on you and you should never go hungry ever again.

EDIT: You'd probably also want to carry a foraging table around, along with a large stack of stone&wood so you can keep making more spears. Seriously, 34 damage a pop is ridiculously awesome, there's no reason you should have trouble surviving for the first 3 tiers on that kind of damage. And even if you did run into enemies that take more than 1 spear to kill, you could always whack em with another weapon and THEN throw the spear.

 

5. con
That one frustrated me at first. Then again I just keep trying, even if that particular person at the top had a flaming squirrel. ><
I guess I am just patient, and in no rush to do anything. Yes I am one that could watch grass grow... Self-entertainer. Although watching grass grow is not quite entertaining. It is what I do while waiting...

Can't say much on the hunger as I have yet to make a normal mode character just yet.

the monster count varies greatly... sometimes it is a mob, and sometimes it is here or there. From my experience... I don't mind, now since I have the multi-jump & a spear to keep most at a distance.

I do use a couple guns, but only when I have a platform to work from and out of reach of the enemies. or have companions with me to help the frey. I don't use guns all that much, and love my spear; now only if I can find an upgrade for it... I will eventually.

 

Honestly, since you can dual wield them in separate stacks, throwing weapons are seriously OP. Have you tried the throwing daggers yet? Or the axes? I'll bet even the grenades have been rebalanced.

 

I'm torn on the mountain part. I love that i'm then able to get use for my spikeball tech. Just roll up the hills.

And yeah dash test was much harder than the rest, and i don't have any issues with framerate.

I have few more notes:
- It should be much more obvious for how to get fuel for ship at the first time. I had to look up some links with google and i found out there is a shop in outpost that sells liquid fuel. Much later then i was able to craft atmosphere suit and go mine the fuel (both liquid and crystal) myself. I thought the Echeron something mining station would give me fuel. So after i finished the boss once and at town noticed i had no fuel i went to do the boss allover again to see if i missed something. There is a deceptive activatable drill at the end which is only decorative too.
- All forest planets i've been to so far have had same monsters. Starting to get tired of those yellow pokemon creatures and those other ones always breaking in 3.
- Foods don't stack? That makes them impossible to be placed on actionbar you know. Maybe if one is consumed, make other food of same type move to same slot. Because of this (and the fact that they get old) i sell every food i find and carry a hundred medkits.
- Steam doesn't let me start dedicated server and client same time. Only way i can do that is to start dedicated server other way from its executable.

Combat-wise i stick with 2-h shotgun and its alt fire grenade launcher. Been using same weapon for a very long time now even while mining titanium. I don't see how melee would be able to survive with monsters like these. If all else fails i'd bunker myself and shoot from a small hole.

Oh right, i still haven't managed to beat the UFO bonus mission. There's no cover at all and he just comes down and slams you to ground.

 

Yes, the guy at the top of an Apex Lab hurts like a *beeeeeep*, but the chest in his room usually has something nice in it.

If you run afoul of him on your first forest, be prepared for pain, come with bandages (not Salves, lol) and a shield+throwing weapons would be nice. Try to get his squirrel to follow you out so you can deal with it separately (he can only throw one) or get it to fall way down to where it's not a threat then go up there and kick his butt. Use the elevators outside his room to give you time to heal/regen your shield, etc.
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Why do you want to run dedicated server and client simultaneously on the same computer? Isn't that kind of redundant and/or hogging resources?

The client can run as a server itself, so there's no real need to run both pieces of software and if you want to run a SB server that's meant to be on full-time, you really should be running that on another PC on your LAN to be honest.

 

@Xylia yeah, it would have been nice loot if it wasn't a hammer... ><

i don't like using hammers or axes. But did have some other things I was looking for at the time.

I actually used the ledge below and open closed the door widdling away at the health keeping the pests inside. Oh I mean enemies... Basically some fancy jumping back n forth open close door, and repeat.

 

I like how most of the cons are about the game being hard, I like it that way better not implying that I am a pro or anything, quite the opposite, but I just love challenge, unfair challenge even...

I agree with lots of what you said though, about the frame rate being unreasonably low, the way mountains are generated is not immersive at all, but I can see some people liking the way it is right now.

 

On the food front: The inability to stack most food items drives me crazy. I just want to make a bunch of one or two things and toss em into one quickslot, so as not to have to reorganize my food tab every time I get hungry.

On randomization: I love the fact that the new starter worlds have some real procedural deviation again... but it can mess up the first quest. Out of my three characters so far (I know, I'm weird... but I have one per computer I play this on, and I have a few desktops running a few different OSes in different rooms of my house), two found enough core fragments in the mine to move forward, the third found an outpost sandwiched between a flower biome and an underground desert tomb with no lake and only 15 fragments... so I guess he'll be digging to the core.

Aside from that... I love the new intro, weapon generation and specials are much more fun than last time I played, and I'm loving the more fleshed out farming system. Oh, also, performance is much better than it was. Still drops frames, but not nearly as bad. I can even do fancy stunts in the outpost now.

 

There is no justification for the hunger timer, we are literally expected to be some guy carrying around 10 cooked steaks in his backpack so he doesn't starve to death. Do our characters all have metabolic disorders or what?

Definitely needs to be fixed, is it still playable? Sure. Is the timer silly and nonsensical? Definitely.

If you really want something sensible then make a thing like dried meat and fish - stuff you would actually eat and carry when 'surviving' that slows down the hunger timer.

 

I played Starbound like 1.5 years ago and liked it back then. Didnt expect at all that you will put so much effort into story mode and boss fights. Thought even in release it will be "whatever go where you want" gameplay. Absolutely loving story arc, varied missions and boss fights.

As for hunger issue. Im not really struggling with it, but I wont mind if hunger rate would be nerfed by 20%. Probably its just in the beginning and in mid/late game you will be full with free food. Anyway, you can always buy food with credits at SPace port.

Also cooked food definetly should stack. Not sure why it doesnt.

 

It actually doesn't. You can get all the food you need from hunting and gathering. Agriculture is not necessary

I like how the creatures seem a bit stronger on the first world now. My friend and I were talking about how monsters are more awesome now. I hope they don't nerf them.

I know people don't like this word, but I hope they don't make Starbound even more casual. Some of the things they have right now are nice, and the last thing I want to see is the devs making the game even easier.

 

^^
This.

Just throw spears at everything. Problem solved.

Meanwhile, an NPC demands you grow crops for them and it takes 20, 30 minutes to do so because of the ridiculous grow times on these crops. 15 minutes and counting for a sugarcane and pineapple a quest NPC wanted. At this rate, I might have a crewman in 3+ hours.

 

I haven't messed with farming yet, but I did notice the hunting spears received a nerf. They have a nice long delay between spear throws now, which is good. The item was too strong.

I almost solo'd dreadwing on my first try against the boss before this game was pushed to 1.0 with like only a bit of armor and a few salves and HUNTIN' SPEARS.

I have been telling people this over and over again. The huntin' spear is too strong. At least they nerfed it some.