Glad Giraffe: A Review

So now that I've had a chance to plug along in Glad Giraffe for a bit, I finally feel like I'm qualified to actually put my two cents in on it. The update as a whole is pretty alright, though it feels like there's more than a little content I haven't dabbled in or found yet.

Combat:

Well, this is the combat update so it'd make sense that I talk about that first and foremost. It's common knowledge that the system has been revised again with changes that are mostly positive and lend each weapon a more unique feel than before. Two-handed weapons getting special attacks helps liven things up too, though on the flip side it can be a bit of a pain to get something with the power/mods you want. Plus one-handed weapons of all kinds got passed over in terms of unique attributes, which I'm kind of annoyed about.

Also, it goes without saying that elemental modifiers extend to weapon skills too.

Elemental Modifiers:

Fire/Poison: Just straight-up damage over time. Honestly these mods still feel about as useful as they were in the earlier builds of Starbound even though they do more meaningful amounts of damage now. Though at this stage I note that they are in fact worse in some ways because the damage ticks don't actually start until you leave the enemy be for a second or two first. You can still kill things faster than these mods will wear them down, but they're handy on guns since you can still get the enemy hurt while you're waiting to recharge. ...Also, I'm pretty sure that under certain conditions, these used to stack in earlier builds too for more damage.

Shock: I haven't had much of a chance to test this one yet, but going from the description it seems like it's gone from being arguably one of the best weapon mods in the game to something a bit more balanced and dependent on the number of enemies present. I'll need to test this one more to be sure, but I almost prefer the older projectile-based version.

Frost: Out of the four elemental mods, this one feels like it's the most consistently useful. Slowing down enemies is a huge benefit to every weapon type that can have these mods as while it doesn't seem to slow down their attacks, it does slow down everything else. Melee characters can kite and charge more easily, while gunners have a much easier time playing keep away with literally everyone. Heck, staff users should probably pack a frost weapon just to give themselves more time to charge up. Pretty much the only elemental mod I am completely happy with.

Weapons: Just to note, I'll only be talking about the weapons I have had a chance to use properly.

Hammers: Changed to a charge-up mechanic and very much worth the slower firing speed. These things look and feel like they hit like a truck, and their range is every bit as good as it ever was. I think only armored humanoids can survive a tier-appropriate hammer bash, and even then never by much plus they get flung away a good distance. Feels like a weapon with solid tactical use. As for special abilities, I've only had a chance to try Shockwave, which is... kinda meh, to be honest. Gives the weapon a bit more range and that's about it. Need to play with the other modifiers.

Spear: Went from being a simple repeating thrusting weapon to being a static source of damage, the Spear can now be held out to keep damaging enemies. Great if you need to fling monsters away en-masse, but the damage is so pathetically low that it's not good for much else. On the flip side, it's easily one of the best melee weapon types so far as I can tell, since it has the range to avoid contact damage and the defensive abilities to make approaching you all but impossible. Flurry is a neat special ability but I am still wondering what the point of it is.

Greatsword: Hasn't really changed much, so I'll just note the special abilities. First of all, I haven't used all of them but they tend to be insanely expensive energy-wise. Unless it's percentile-based, all their moves will nearly wipe out even a Cerulium armor set's energy reserves, which given how melee combat still benefits from techs is obviously a bit of a bad thing. Other than that, Giant Sword is... really iffy. More range, devastating power, but you'd better hope that whatever eats that hit dies, otherwise you're in trouble because your energy reserves are pretty much gone. There's a dash technique too, but I didn't want to play with it too much since it feels like anything that involves charging into/past an enemy in this build is a silly idea at best.

One-handed weapons: They function exactly the same as they ever did, with the exception of axes being moved from two-handed to one-handed. Double the axe, but it's still competing with one-handed swords and daggers for melee. So far as I can tell, none of these have have technique mods on them. Not much to talk about here.

Assault Rifle: Okay, now things are getting interesting. The various guns already have plenty of things to differentiate them from each other, so an overhaul for their basic function wasn't exactly needed. That being said, they do get some of the cooler toys in this build.

Explosive Barrage costs a lot of energy, but you get a nice crowd-clearing weapon for your trouble and it's inexpensive compared to the rocket launchers or grenade launchers. It's a little tricky to get this one to land right without some solid surface to let the barrage impact on, but it's worth learning how to use it.

Energy Lance lets you get in people's faces and launch them across the room. Has a stupidly short range for a ranged weapon, but on the flip side it's the most powerful direct attack the Assault Rifle could have, and it sets your victim up for a follow-up blast of rounds right to the face to finish them off. Love the combo potential for this one.

Not sure if it's really a mod for this weapon yet, but I thought I saw a Flashlight mod? Seems kinda silly since the Xenon Pack takes care of nearly all your lighting issues.

Though this does underscore one major issue with how the weapons in the game work. With so much variety, it's incredibly difficult to find the weapon you want most since shot power, firing speed, (and if applicable) energy cost, and mods vary from one weapon to the next even within the same weapon class. Further aggravating the issue is that it feels like the challenge doors are the only way to net the best randomized weapons, and the previous unique legendary weapons seem to be missing in action. It would still be quite nice to take apart weapons you find for certain modifiers and slap them together to make a dream weapon.

Plus elements still feel imbalanced, with certain ones being more useful than others, and still no sign of the combo status effects spoken of in the past, even though icefire was confirmed to exist at one point.

Colonists:

They honestly feel like they still need some fleshing out before they can really be considered a valuable asset. At the moment they're good for making a place feel more 'alive' than you could make it before, and they can be a good source of pixels and cosmetics that would normally be a bit hard to find, but it feels inconsequential overall since they're still kinda just there. There has been talk among Starbounders for something like delegation, jobs, etc., so hopefully we can get something like that in the future. Once you pull in the right tenant you could have them build structures so long as you have enough blocks available for them to work with, farmers who can raise crops without you needing to be there or rely on an automatic waterer (or make the Gardenbot mod official,) miners who can pull up valuable ores for a cut, lumberjacks, you name it, there's probably some task you could delegate off to the proper NPC.

Guards exist, and honestly they're actually fine as-is. Tier-appropriate furniture makes things relatively easy to work with, and unlike the guards from earlier builds they can survive even on Tier-6 worlds if you called in the right one. Having quests to upgrade lower tier guards might be worthwhile though.

Pets:

Now this one kinda gets me. For all the talk it's been years since anything has actually been done with the Capture Pod system, and now even that barebones system has been almost completely disabled. Doubly jarring since Capture Pods are a reward for beating the Erchius Mining Facility, meaning that it's implied that pets are supposed to be introduced at around this point so hopefully you guys are planning to work on this and make it into a full system before 1.0 hits. Though to be honest, considering how long it's been since any work has been done on this system at all, I'm not sure whether I should expect something mind-blowing that's worth the wait, or for this to get tossed into the dustbin altogether.

I mean, seriously. Though clunky, mods have done more with this than the devs ever have.

Teleporting and the Underground:

To be quite frank, I wouldn't have bothered going for the challenge doors or mining nearly as much if you hadn't removed the restriction on teleportation for the time being. It gave me a chance to dive around the underground and look at all the work you've put into making the place look nicer and more active, and grab furniture from the poor souls down there for the sake of decorating my builds better. Ores are nice and dense, especially on Tier-6 worlds, and it's fun to see all the various microdungeons and search for challenge doors to get unique/better weapons. It's... nice being able to mine with impunity and be able to jump out rather than mine back up every single time without hauling teleporters down with me every single time. While I know it's not going to stick, it is nice to see that you're giving players a chance to run around under a planet's surface without worrying for once.

Biomes:

Still need to track down some of the new ones.

Perhaps I'll update this more when I see more of the new stuff, but for the moment it feels like a step in the right direction. Except contact damage, but I detest that mechanic on principle unless there's a good reason for it.

 

Couple of quick notes:

So far I've encountered the following specials with hammers: Energy Pillar, Energy Wave, Energy Aura

Energy Aura is by far the coolest. Creates a field of energy around you (small-ish but cool), that damages enemies that touch it. Energy Pillar creates a giant... pillar of elemental energy right where the hammer smashes down. Can't say I'm a huge fan. And Energy Wave is like a shockwave except it only goes forward, but is a greater distance and height.

Also, Flurry is easily the best special for spears. First of all it can hit enemies right up against the player, which the other stabs can't do. Also it offers great attack power combined with great hit-rate, like a midway between the regular stab and the holding-out attack. Great burst damage. makes the spear feel like a weapon that can go from being a strong, slow hitter to a rapid responder at the drop of a hat! easily the best weapon type in the whole game just because of Flurry.

Greatswords I feel got a nerf. The defending mechanic should've been the default move for crafted swords, honestly. I like that a lot better than the quirky spin-slash.

 

As for pets its already being worked on in the current nightly. Watch this video (pet talks starts at the ~3 minutes mark) for the current status:


Also this blogpost shows some new pet stuff if you haven't seen it allredy http://playstarbound.com/stable-glad-giraffe-hotfix-dev-blog/

 

Since they were also added in this update, how do you feel about the vehicles? I'm still forming opinions since the pixel cost to buying the first one is quite a bit of a barrier to entry, but so far my own impressions are that they seem almost necessary for navigating ocean planets and planets plagued with sandstorms. At least without becoming horrendously bored.

 

I think that Blade Whirl is the best spear mod because it kinda acts like Energy Aura as it hurts anything that tries to come near you so long as you're spinning, however, this mod tends to consume a lot of percentage based energy. I also miss blocking with a great sword.

I don't know if I am the only one experiencing this, but I feel that the AI on some of the old unique mobs are got broken entirely, like finding clumps of pixels and stimpacks on the floor of bunkers and labs leave me to believe that the AI are infighting(ex. rouge sentry bots and apex experiments, just a theory tho). I was also just in a sewer to find that the muk monster was completely unresponsive, just standing there starring at the wall, that and a crap load of not normal lag upon entering.

Also, you did not mention the new consistent monsters. Some are quite cute, but I'm quite tired of running into the snake spitters and rock bugs. I did manage to find a Ocuglop trophy however, those are new.

And my final note is that the flash light mod rifles are good for early game when you don't have a xeno pack yet.

 

On consistent monsters:

I honestly like the idea, but at the moment they're kinda haphazardly implemented. Unique monsters are everywhere and you always have the same varieties on the same worlds. Plus they fact that they're fodder for the new weapon types that can only be obtained through Ancient Trials makes it a little more aggravating, because things like Volcanic Cores have no other use. I figured at the very least one could learn a recipe to make weapon mods, but not at the moment at least.

On AI:

I saw that too. The AI for whatever reason tends to get remarkably aggressive with NPC entities they're supposed to be friendly with, which as far as I've noted is nothing new... but the extent is. Turret AI, for example, has always been hyper-aggressive and will shoot at anything that's not a player character. Guards have, in the past, attacked Capture Pod monsters. I'm thinking they're probably close to a revamp of the AI system, or are at the very least busy editing how AI combat works so that glitch civilians in castles don't need to worry about the armed military Glitch cutting them down for no appreciable reason.

On Vehicles:

To be honest, the prices are a bit on the crazy side so I'm not gonna talk about Vehicles that much other than the fact that it is as you say. Boat tech is needed to quickly cross ocean surfaces while Hoverbikes kinda feel like a 'hope the terrain didn't generate too many massive valleys/pits' type of deal. Though at the core, I'd say sandstorms need a nerf. Lasts too long and impedes you too much considering how rough the terrain gets.

On Pets:
I saw the blog post that went up not long after my initial post and yes, I am happy to see these changes. Looks like there's not much to worry about at this point, though I hope they give monsters a proper status screen so you can see what their stats are/current health is.

 

I don't like that I can't use weapons from vehicles anymore. I understand the need to steer, but can we at least use a 1h weapon while driving, 2h while a passenger , and that weapons used while mounting vehicles do not injure the vehicle?

 

In my tinkering of weapons and random spawned ones, I find machine pistols to be quite awesome, where as before they were pathetic pea shooters. Also, the Assault rifle ability "Spray and pray" is glorious fun.

 

Latest nightly gives them a health bar in your inventory screen. Also allows you to see what creature is within a ball without having to use it. So i think pets are golden (they seem to have hit most, if not all, of your concerns regarding them at least).

 

The ability to reverse engineer available weapons and create new ones preserving (or transforming) mods is surely much needed. I so loathe to throw away my trusty ol' shotgun when the progression makes DPS meh.
Goes without sayin' that watching my collection of outdated melee weapons with cool mods always makes me one sad cloud.

On a side note: the diversity of explosive throwers of sorts is also inspiring. So far I've found:
- One-hand "bouncy" grenade throwers
- Two-hand rocket launchers with self-guided projectiles
- Two-hand launchers with guided projectiles
- Assault rifles with "thermobaric" alternate mode (hey, Ma', look at all the colors ). These explode both on impact and when reaching targeted point.
- Assault rifles with "bouncy" grenade alternative
- Shotguns with "sticky" grenades (explode on enemy impact, otherwise work as landmines triggering on hostile contact or after some delay)
- Shotguns with frag grenades
The latter two are my favorites so far.

Edited: Oh, and a manual triggered two-hand sticky grenade launcher I've just found. Guess it's sorta "special" weapon untouched by the patch. Needs a revamp to get in line with all the other stuff, but even now it adds another option to the pile. That's nice.

 

Managed to find two more Spear specials:

Blink Explosion: Feels a little unwieldy, but it DOES give you the benefit of the Targeted Blink tech without actually having it on you, and leaves behind a rather powerful explosion behind you when you teleport. Seems to be subject to all the same rules as Targeted Blink as well, but is... not that much more expensive, so far as I can see.

Barrier: This one's pretty neat. Right click lets you place an energy barrier in front of you that hurts enemies and throws them back for about the same amount of damage as a held out spear. Drains energy at a pretty solid clip, but the barriers last a few seconds and can be used to bounce enemies around even more than what the Spear can already manage. I'm not sure if projectiles can cross the barriers or not, but I wouldn't bet on it.

 

Can confirm. AIs are infighting.

 

Personally, I've noticed some performance issues particularly when riding hoverbikes. Not really conventional framedrops, but rather some kind of stutter.

And the fact planets tend to be pretty mountainous severely limits their utility. Quite a disappointment, for 11000 pixels.

We need VTOL micro-aircraft more than hoverbikes, to negotiate most planetary terrain.

Yeah, friendly NPCs fight hostile mobs. I've seen it many times in my current Glad Giraffe playthrough.

 

I don't mind that consistent monsters are found in consistent biomes -- it just makes sense that x organism evolved to live in x biome. I just wish for more variety. Maybe less of the "standards" and more randomly generated ones. It seems that 1/6 monsters is randomly generated and 5/6 are the "standards". I think that is what is making the planets very "same-y".

I also don't mind having the unique materials. I do hope that there is some sort of expansion on using the mats, say you need Volcanic Cores to craft a fire-elemental version of multiple different weapons. At this point, it also gives us something more to farm.

Vehicles
For a while, I've been wishing for some item or a vehicle to facilitate and speed up undersea exploration. Personally, I would prefer something on the "personal" side -- like diving flippers. (Maybe even an item you can equip and unequip). At present sea mobs are so innocuous we can afford to ditch one piece of armor to make swimming faster. (Of course, a full-fledged vehicle like a submarine is also an option, however, it is not my personal favorite because of all the hassle summoning -> mounting -> dismounting -> desummoning.).

Also in this category: I feel like the vehicles shouldn't take damage. It is sooooooo annoying when you accidentally misclick and suddenly your boat is 1 hp from sinking because you've hit it with your own weapons!

I also would like an easier way to summon mounts -- in any MMO, you can press a single key and you are automatically mounted on your favorite mount. When you fight you are automatically dismounted, (and the mount is stored away). At present, the hassle (described in the first paragraph) is so cumbersome to me that I don't even use hoverbikes. I will use boats, but always take a spare because of the damage issue. (I do understand that if you have a passenger, you may not want mounts to desummon automatically, However, maybe we can get some solo mounts, or toggle an option on an off?)

 

@Shadow86 Infighting. IN-fighting! Open the spoiler, its a USCM grunt fighting a bunker sentry, and they are not supposed to fight.

 

My bad. Haven't seen those bunkers yet.

 

Imo, it would also help if they came in slightly different forms. For example, capricoats could have different horns or fur colours and patterns, depending on the planet you found them on.

 

I agree at least as far as friendly fire goes. It really is annoying to have to burn repair materials and costs because "whoops I misaimed that spear thrust"