[GAME BALANCE] Threat Level isn't the core issue!

Armor values need a change. Armor at its core is fine - The armor value is fixed, and it protects you from the current threat level. Currently, the blog post says that they want to fix this by condensing levels, so here's a short rambling presentation on why level condensing is a fine idea, but there is a more pressing matter that will make it unnecessary.

1: LEVEL CONDENSING IS REMOVAL OF CONTENT.
By changing from 100 planned levels of threat to 10, you are removing 90 levels of threat and weapon generation. I understand fully that it is the original 100 changed into 10 rather than 11-100 removed altogether, but this still puts a HUGE limit on the way weapons are currently generated - People will all want one type of weapon, and variation in power will be either glaring or nonexistant rather than having a weapon with 1 more or less AP be just as useful. I know I haven't played with the changes yet, but I've got a good handle on how the game works right now (34 hours of gameplay).

2: LEVEL CONDENSING WILL CHANGE A KEY AESTHETIC AND FEEL OF THE GAME.
I love the variation in threat level, and apparently, so do many other players. Everyone I've played with does. In the last thread I made with a few more feedback notes and suggestions, one reader even said his "Heart sunk" when he read that the levels were being condensed. It will sap some of the charm of the game by reducing the uniqueness of planets.

3: THREAT LEVELS ARE NOT THE CORE ISSUE.
Right now the threat level system has very few flaws mechanically - weapons that can harm enemies drop from that threat level, armor with a value of the same threat level is very balanced for it, and even ores are generated depending on threat of the planet. This system is brilliant and as part of the skeleton of the game (Since the meat isn't there) I feel like changing it would change the rather charming way the game progresses right now. Tier bosses are perfectly good mechanically, and there's one issue:

4: ARMOR BALANCING IS THE ONLY GLARING ISSUE WITH PROGRESSION.
Armor! The way it works is fantastic and I think the developers have a brilliant system worked out. The downside? Your racial armor outclasses the next level up in armor a few times. The maximum armor level you can craft is usually half the maximum threat level of the sector. The maximum armor level you can craft doesn't meet the boss of the sector's damage, causing you immense amounts of grief and pain. You should be able to do a few things to remedy this.

5: SUGGESTIONS THAT FAR OUTCLASS LEVEL CONDENSING.
I have three suggestions. Two of which I believe to be inferior, but other players seem to really love the ideas and I want to leave them here for developers to see.

ALL SUGGESTIONS FIX THE CURRENT ISSUE WITH BALANCE DURING PROGRESSION. Not all ideas, however, are equal in terms of what they add to gameplay.

SUGGESTION ONE:
Allow players to craft a table upon which they can spend more resources to improve their armor, to a limit.
Pros: Allows players to effectively reinforce their armor up to 5 times (Which is all it would take to make it viable for the whole sector with the current system)
Cons: Promotes grindy, repetetive gameplay via mining.
EXAMPLE: As simple as this is, it allows players to construct a new crafting table to take up space on their ship, upon which they can drop an armor. A value will be displayed of how many more materials they need to "+1" the armor. The output is the "+1'd" armor.

SUGGESTION TWO:
Allow varied armor to be dropped from enemies in that sector, similar to current weapon drops.
Pros: Will allow for armor uniqueness between players.
Cons: Promotes a different type of grindy gameplay. Some players would ignore mining altogether.
EXAMPLE: NPCs in towns now drop their racial armor, with an armor value at their threat level. This allows players to advance by moving sector to sector slaughtering foes.

SUGGESTION THREE (Endorsed by the writer!):
Allow NPCs slain to drop blueprints containing a recipe to improve armor you can already craft.
Pros: Promotes both combat and mining, and also allows for armor uniqueness. Fixes the issue with armor scaling.
Cons: May encourage players to slaughter NPC towns if they cannot find a planet with hostile NPCs.
EXAMPLE: Slaying a glitch castle's knight on threat level 10 drops a blueprint - "KNAVE ARMOR +5". You activate it and can now craft a Knave armor (Usual armor value: Not 10, but 5) with an armor value of 10, since the blueprint was dropped at TL 10.

There you have it. I hope everyone reads and takes time to think on this. I'll even be making a reddit account to make sure some of the devs read this, since I know they browse it.

 

I have to agree with the points that you have made. The armor/armor penetration stat balance is the biggest issue.

Though I guess that won't matter much now that they will be getting rid of AP, along with armor on monsters. Which seems sort of weird in that the monsters will then have to have higher amounts of HP to counteract that fact, and they didn't want to do hp only in the 100 level threat way due to creatures having ridiculous amounts of hp. Even though they could have done some more gradual hp change in the 100 threat level route.

As for the suggestions, I think I like suggestion 1 the most. As it would allow armors to be able to be upgraded in a sense without having to have more armors fill in the gaps, along with making the ability for people to be able to make their armor fit with the sector in question. Sure you would have to mine more to upgrade you armor, but no pain, no gain (and it isn't like people don't grind right now in getting building materials to build houses and bases and the like).

 

I agree with your suggestions on improving the current system but I can't agree with the doubt that the new system will take anything away from the game, we don't know that yet. I'm not saying it will be better or worse until I've tried it so we all really need to hold off the judgement of this system, going off just the description (as detailed as it it) will not always translate to how it works.

In terms of the three suggestions I would agree with the third one the most, I would prefer blueprints to being able to just upgrade the armour as it involves both combat and mining.

 

The new system will take two things away, actually: 90 levels from random generation, and 90 levels of charm I feel are important to the game.

@MyLittleBurger - I appreciate your feedback and hope that you realize that Armor Penetration has no balance issue - It works fine when you can have equivalent armor! This means that, as we were promised, level 100 content (We were promised level 100 content) will always be difficult. I think level 96 or 97 should be the maximum armor level, but if we have 10 levels of content instead, that'll mean progression will be all streamlined all the time. It removes hours of gameplay and a lot of content.

 

I would much prefer if they did something more akin to this, if it could be edited into the first post that'd be cool, but moving on:

Right now, I've seen it stated somewhere that a TL 6 mob, hitting an AP 5 player, does 50% more damage. 50%!

To smooth the slope in an easy way, change that +0.5 damage modifier to something more like 0.1 or 0.15 for each TL difference.
It will remove the "one-shot or be one-shot" feel while still maintaining an engaging difficulty level. For example.

As it is now: I'm AP 5 and a TL 6 hits me, it's a one shot kill, +50% damage (if TL 7 could be +100%, unconfirmed)
How it would be after: I'm AP5 and a TL6 hits me, it does 10%(or some other number the devs could agree on) more than it's base damage would be.
If I have an AP 5, DG 10 weapon, and I hit a TL 4 monster it will do 11 instead of 10. TL 6 it would do 9 instead of 10. This multiplier could be tweaked obviously
but this would be both easier to implement, and would provide more slope to the "cliff" people are having problems with.

This, in conjunction with the armor improvement idea, I think would be the most balanced way of doing it.
You could take more damage overall (not necessarily OHKO) or improve your armor to close or eventually
nullify the gap in AP/TL. likewise, if you're going to be able to improve armor, weapons should be improvable
as well. Increase the AP a little if you have a favorite weapon you want to keep using (such as a racial one)

The above would make weapons/armor a bit more "long term" instead of "absolutely useless" and
smooth out the curve as well.

 

I'm sorry, but if you think the games balance in its current state is anything but a complete trainwreck you're being really silly.

 

Did you even read my post? consider the implications? It'd be the same system yeah, and yet, completely different.

 

Power level already rises too precipitously with level, so I hope that by condensing the level scale they don't make it even worse. Right now if you go to a TL 13 planet with AP 15 gear, you oneshot everything. Go to a TL 17 planet, and you're going to die in two fast hits. Only a 2 level difference, out of 100, means utter domination one way or another. It is fundamentally broken.

Worst case scenario, if they reduce it to 10 tiers instead of 100, it makes it possible to have gear at each of those levels, and then absolutely require you to get that gear in order to play at that level.

I would rather see a sweet spot where I'm feeling challenged, but can rise to that challenge. A sweet spot where players can dial down or dial up the challenge by going to a weaker or stronger planet than their own level, without the combat system simply breaking.

Right now there is little reason to support teaming up with other players, because if you can't kill something alone, three more players won't really help. You'll just be chipping away at nigh-invulnerable basic monsters, players will die frequently and lose too many pixels, and all for a 2 TL difference that doesn't yield any appreciable gains in loot or mining drops.

Case in point, I teamed up with a couple of my friends (that I bought the game for no less) to take on the first boss. I had a silver helmet, silver pants, iron chest piece and an iron bow. My friends had a mix of iron and copper gear. They were dropping like flies, my friend that still had some copper armor was getting one-shotted constantly, I only died once because I stupidly didn't stock up on bandages. I did about 90% of the damage, even though my pals kept coming back and were fighting just as competently as I was. That's messed.

My point from that example is that teaming up with people who don't have identical gear right now is also pretty pointless, and that makes multiplayer kind of hard. If I don't advance in absolute lock-step with my friends, then we can't engage the same content.

 

~Tiy front page.

So how is content being removed exactly? I don't understand where your logic comes from.

I like the new system being developed because the current one is kind of lame. A level 9 is EXACTLY the same as a level 1 planet (in some cases, I find WAY better stuff on a level 1 planet than a level 9 planet). The only difference is that a level 9 planet has monsters that will kill you in one hit versus the level one planet with monsters that die in 1 hit but kill you in 3/4.

Not to mention that you can be on a level 3 planet and find level 6-8 monsters. The level system feels artificial and inaccurate as is. The differences between 1-10 is barely noticeable, and at times, inconsistent with what you would expect at the planet's level.

This new system is basically taking the current system and simplifying it to make the representation of the planet more accurate... level 1 = tier 1 (makes sense). Easy/medium/hard shows the general strength of the mob without some artificial value that has little meaning. Saying something is level 9 versus level 5, especially in a game that's built around equipment, has no meaning what so ever. Giving a difficulty rating makes things MUCH more clear right away. And this makes the whole "finding level 7 monsters on a level 3 planet" make a lot more sense because they'll be represented by a rating instead of a value. And about that armor, they have no level value so it is literally impossible to compare how effective they might ACTUALLY be against various monsters until you use them. Copper armor could be considered "level 5" armor just as much as silver armor may be considered "level 5". No one knows until the armors are tested a lot and are artificially evaluated by the users,

I welcome the removal of such arbitrary, artificial, and deceiving numbers in turn for something that makes more sense. The difficulty of the game is NOT changing, it is only being more obvious to the user what they should expect. And in this way, a player won't try attempting a planet that is too hard for their new copper or iron armor/weapons instead of misunderstanding how difficult a level 6 planet is (because of the lack of comparison)."

 

I like this idea on the AP, it actually seems like a good fix for it instead of just scrapping it altogether like they are going to do in the next update. I don't see why they didn't try something like this first before scrapping the idea altogether.

 

The way I understand the new system is you still have 10 tiers (like you do now) but instead of defining each planet with a level, they will be three levels of difficulty with different monster difficulties too (easy, medium and hard). So if you find a hard monster in sector 1, it will be the same strength as an easy monster in sector 2. Also the weapons will have DPS so you can see how much it does and the reason the levels are being dropped to 10 is to make the damage and HP easier to manage so you don't have people hitting 50 billion damage and walking around with 80 billion HP. But that's just my take, I could be completely wrong and it might be something totally different, I don't see why people are getting so pissed about a system that hasn't even been implemented yet. It's all assumptions and speculation, it might be an amazing system and it certainly can't be anymore unbalanced that the current one. And if it sucks, it will be changed. Maybe it's being put this way while they work on the important bugs and problems and will work on the combat when the game is stable across all platforms? Their priority is a working game, content comes second.

 

The tier system changing is not a result of difficulty. Changing the naming of the system doesn't change the system... all they're doing is making it easier for newer players to understand how hard something is. Because there's no comparison or accurate way to judge how hard a level is, especially with such a large, exponential difficulty curve that Starbound currently has.

Basically, combat mechanics =/= the naming scheme.

 

I agree with the armour points completely. I won't comment on the content removal or anything else that is pure speculation because it's just that - speculation.

However THIS is what I think would be the most appropriate fix long term for the entire issue. The armour you get itself is very all over the place, and the one thing that annoys me the most is that if you were to equip three pieces of say 25 defence armour, you will only get 25 armour. That confuses me to no end but is not the point. Having a more intelligent damage system would solve the problem and not force the developers to have to add in a couple thousand randomly generated armours. Going up one threat level shouldn't be like jumping into Nightmare mode every time you advance and it will just force players to navigate to the highest threat level planet with merchants to buy the gear there and faceroll through the rest of their time in that system (as has already been mentioned multiple times on these forums).

Change the damage modifiers and players wont be forced to go to end-system merchants just to survive the higher tier planets in the system.

 

I can't say I really agree with your post. It IS changing a core mechanic that they planned for a long time, but I'm sure the devs actually thought about it and discussed it before deciding to rewrite the entire structure.

In direct reference to your argument, I can't say I agree that those "in-between" levels are part of the charm. As it is now, I simply want to jump up to the max level weapons and armor for a given sector. The rest don't really matter. When I clear out some form of dungeon and have a ton of weapons, they just waste space because of their lower level. It would be nice if these weapons were actually relevant. The way the system is designed now, the only main stat for a weapon is the level. That's the first thing I look at before I even consider using the weapon.

So why do those other levels even matter? Once I get a higher level weapon for a given sector, I simply ignore all the other lower level planets. In that case, I'm missing the charm of exploration! It could be fun exploring an entire solar system rather than jumping away because it's time to find a better weapon.

The current system makes me feel things are temporary. I don't get attached to any of my weapons or armor because I'll want to replace it quickly. I'm grinding my way upwards without pausing to think and relax.

 

I simply think you should give the system a chance before jumping to conclusions, are it's always unwise to shoot down a plane that hasn't arrived yet.

Also, Foggernauts eh? I prefer Rogues.

 

They could have done the same thing with the threat level 100 setup, but balance it out more. Like the having the extra damage due to AP be balanced (like someone above said), along with balancing the monster hp/weapon damage out more so they actually correlate between each other better.

 

Did you even read my post/s? The naming scheme doesn't have anything to do with the balance/mechanics.

The naming scheme doesn't have anything to do with the balance/mechanics.

The naming scheme doesn't have anything to do with the balance/mechanics.

The naming scheme doesn't have anything to do with the balance/mechanics.

Is that clear? They're CLARIFYING not BALANCING when they change the tier system.

 

So are you saying they are using the exact same system but just renaming it? Or am I missing a trick here?

 

Actually they are able to balance out the weapons for each sector due to the scheme change. Along with balance out armor protection vs monster damage due to the scheme change.

And the only reason there is even some issues people are having with understanding that each threat level will have a more difficult creatures, is mostly due to balancing issues between armor and damage gained/done.

 

You didn't read the blog post - They're CONDENSING not CLARIFYING. They are rebalancing.

EDIT: It's also clear you don't understand what condensing each tier's threat to one difficulty means. It means that threat level 1 will be threat level 1, no questions asked - monsters will be the difficulty and 9 levels of progression will be removed from the first tier.