New System/Patch - Pros and Cons (Constructive Thread!)

NOTE: Let's try to keep this thread constructive. Ya know, like BETA TESTERS are supposed to do, provide constructive feedback and ideas and point out issues))


First off, I LOVE the new weapon and armor system. Don't ever go back to the old system. Let's work together and get this new system nice and balanced, and maybe throw in some features and toss out ideas to make it easier to understand. Yes, the new patch made the game super easy mode...but the number tweaks haven't happened yet, and that's what we're here to help with. Share what you like about the new system, and what you don't like.

Pros

• Weapon and Armor stats MUCH easier to understand and self explanatory.
• Arial mobs are MUCH more awesome and actually pose a threat (at least in the first 10 minutes).
• Mob action/fighting varies a lot more from mob to mob, I like that.
• I like the new giant mobs/mini-boses. They seem a lot less rare. Had never even seen one in the old version.

Cons

• While the Weapons and Armor are easier to understand, combat, mobs, and difficulty assessment impossible to understand.
• The ranges of weapon DPS you can obtain from a single planet is ridiculously vast (10dps-120dps)...confusing.
• I have no idea what mobs I stand a chance in killing or what planets I should avoid (they are all the same now).
• No more planet level makes it "feel" like there's a lot less to accomplish.

Ways to Balance

• Need a way to /consider a mob or otherwise identify if we should fight or run.
  • Maybe a colored nameplate above their heads like, a different boarder for mini-bosses.
  • Floating health bars, more info on hit.
  • The "N" key can provide better info on mobs (ie: "This looks like certain death" or "I could squash him with my big toe.")
• We shouldn't find weapons that do 60dps on the starting planet if 8-10dps weapons are capable of killing the mobs there.
  • I'm sure this will all be fixed with the upcoming number tweaks.
• Make NPC Guard nearly impossible to kill. Can kill them with a 30dps weapon (found easily) and end up with weapons that deal over 100dps.
  • NPC Guards, like in most MMOs, should be as hard to kill as the gear they have...or harder and require effort.
• Really need to find a way to make planets of varying difficulty as well as identify between them. No planet levels zaps all the excitement and point out of exploring. Why go to another planet if it's just as easy or just like the first one? If one is harder than another, how can we tell?
  
  • We need some incentive to explore other planets beyond a biome change. Need a sense of danger. And it needs to be seen. Fuel is expensive now that we can't use wood. Too expensive to waste hopping planets and not knowing a difficulty. And if there is no difficulty change...we need one!

My Big Super Awesome Balancing Idea

I know the problem with the old system and changing to DPS was that the armor, armor pen, and planet level were all tied to the mobs that spawned and their gear/stats/etc. The new DPS system is a much better base, but we still need a tangible difficulty difference in order to make progression less confusing and a lot more fun.

How impossible would it be to implement a planet difficulty based on ranges of DPS? Say, assign planets a difficulty of Easy, Medium, Intermediate, Hard, Very Hard and such. Assign mobs to a class (DPS range) attached to the planet. Easy planets would be survivable with weapons in the 5-15 DPS range, and items found there (besides Legendary and Rare items) would be comparable to that range. Medium would be the next step up, 15-30 DPS, etc. The Navigation screen could easily show use the planet's difficulty, this making it more rewarding to explore and giving us a clearer picture on where to go, when to go, and what to expect at least in the way of survivability.

I think this would enhance the DPS system and make it translate easy in regards to difficulty. But I'm no coder, so I have no idea how impossible this would be or not.


Anywho, awesome work Devs! It's a pleasure to be taking this ride with you and helping you guys create the best game possible for release!

 

PS: If anyone happens to know how the mobs range in difficulty now (or the plan for them) please let me know. I'm not sure if I've found any notes on how they plan to vary the mob difficulties now that the AP is gone.

 

I love this thread. And agree with it.

I think the balance could be fixed if they reimplemented threat levels for planets, but they kept everything else and tweaked the numbers.

 

I agree with most of what you said, how the patch changed how the weapons/armors are handled. However I liked how the mobs were easily identified with their levels, same with planets. Also is it just me or it seems they reduced the digging speed, digging regular cobblestone with a normal pickaxe takes 7 seconds? I thought it was faster than that before.. takes ridiculously long to just go down.

 

Well the problem they said with the threat levels is that it would be too impossible to manually number crunch 1-100. But I believe that was because the threat level was linked to the AP of weapons and the Armor of mobs. 100 levels is a lot of numbers to tweak. I think using difficulty in ranges would be a lot more manageable and they can recycle it once they get to the next galaxy/sector tier. Thus, Alpha, Omega, Gamma etc would all have the Easy, Medium, Intermediate, Hard, etc tags on planets within their sector.

 

I think we should also remember that a difficulty of a monster not just depends on how much damage they make. I think that the developers should really sit down and talk about the monster AI.

Here's what I mean... Let's say you have a small creature who has a strong attack, but is very slow and only moves on the ground left to right, this means that you will be able to kill it easier if you time your attacks , although they can hit you and you can die easily , you'll make sure that you don't get hit .

So let's recap:

Small Monster
Attacks do 50 damage
HP is let's say 100 HP
Movement Slow and Horizontal (doesn't Jump)
Attacks horizontal two tiles when seeing player (however cannot easily change direction to the other side)

So in this situation, the player would have to jump over to the other side of this monster to attack it, the monster won't be able to attack the player because it takes the monster about 10 secs to switch sides.

So as you can see, the variety of monsters/creatures that this game can have is very open . I just hope that the developers don't just focus on the numbers, but also focus on the behaviours of monsters.

I think right now people are dying a lot is because most of the monsters have the ability to jump and just bum rush you, no matter if its a weak or strong monster.

I believe this game should be like a megaman style battle, where the difficulty of monsters also depends on their movement and ai.

So for example, let's say you have a very fast and agile monster , it would have more hp like 200 hp, however its attack will not be as strong...

 

Good:
Armor is balanced and has a logical progression now
The amount of damage you take feels much more reasonable, while still challenging

Bad:
Crafted weapons have absurdly high damage (1shotting bosses, pretty obviously a bug)
Given how low enemy health seems to be, a lot of random weapons seem broken too, although their numbers aren't quite as absurdly high (possibly the same bug)
Flying creatures seem unusually aggressive and damaging (although they actually divebomb you now, which I'm not sure if they did before, but it's cool)
If due to a nerf, oversight or a bug I'm unsure, but shields seem nearly worthless now.
Pixel drop rates feel a little low, but not prohibitively so

I imagine a lot of the "bad" are just oversights due to the level scaling. Flying creatures I'm guessing are actually bugged in their aggression.

 

I like the new system.. in theory.. But is seems like they forgot to balance the weapons...

what I mean is that, before the patch, Iron weapons was level/tier 5, out of a 100, which of course isn't alot... and I might be wrong, but right now, It feels as if iron weapons are STILL level/tier 5... but out of 10, which seems to be coursing the balancing problem.. plus, if this is true (which it might not be) late game weapons are probably still level 20-40.. in a 10 level game..

Well, that's what i think, anyway, and I'm sure it's something they are working in as we speak.. so yeah, I like the new patch.. ore's seem to be easier to find, and hey, pets!

 

I can't help but wonder if there were ways to make the old system work out in the end. The level-difference damage modifiers were insane, but those could always be tweaked-- just like the current DPS numbers we have now.

...Then again, it wasn't discarded for being imbalanced. It was discarded for being counter-intuitive. It was hard to tell at a glance whether the Lv9 dagger with 8 damage was better than the Lv10 sword with 20 damage against a Lv8 target.

There WAS an intuitiveness benefit in that you knew almost all monsters will have either exactly 100HP or exactly 80HP, so you knew how many hits you'll need to take down a same-level monster. That advantage is gone now that monster HP is variable. Still, it's probably an acceptable loss in exchange for now knowing exactly whether weapon A or weapon B is more effective. The new system is probably for the best.

 

Yea, I'm not arguing that the new system is not good, but I'm saying that the new system will need tweaks in the numbers but also in the AI of the monsters, which is a huge way to have variety in monsters .

Right now all monsters act the same, they just rush you and jump at you really high!

Monsters should have different speeds, and have different behaviours that makes the numbers less important and makes combat more satisfying and makes the player think instead of just hacking away with the left click mouse button.

Here's another example:

Let's say we have a tiger monster who does 25 damage, but is also very agile , however they can't jump vertically very high, maybe only 2 blocks.

However, horizontally they are very fast. They're also pretty smart. If you move towards them they will walk backwards a bit, before attacking...

During the crucial moment while they are ready to attack you is yoru chance to attack them....

On the other end of the spectrum, you have really weak monsters that do weak attacks, but have a fairly good amount of HP, they will just rush you like the current monsters, but because they are weaker , they won't be a problem, so you can still hack away.

Also, let's not forget knock back effects of different weapons. For example, slashing weapons that do an arch have a larger knock back effect vs weapons that allow you to just stab.

Also shock guns would be a bit weaker then a pistol, but be more effective for crowd control cause of the larger knock back area.

Basically, what I'm saying is that there is so much that the developers can do to make the battles much more interesting.

 

AND! I think I should write this, because balancing is balancing, but there's one issue I'm mad about and was mad two days ago.

Sniper rifles, shotguns and assault rifles.

Their stats should be changed.

I found a lot of quick assaults, but they can hardly damage anything because of low damage of one projectile. You can fire them about a minute, but the monsters of the same level die in half of that minute. So rifles (and 80% of pistols) are not needed - sniper rifles and shotguns have great damage and do 3 or 4 shots to kill creatures of their lvl, and do that in 6-8 secs. So FIRST - assaults and pistols should get more single shot damage.

And SECOND. Between shotguns and snipers. I think it's clear that sniper rifles are for long ranges, and shotguns kill closer guys. BUT! We have quite the opposite. Why?
Rifles' energy cost is VERY low, they shoot one bullet at a time, it does heavy damage. Shotguns fire spreads of projectiles, they do heavy damage and cost much, but only one projectile put on target counts, maybe because of invulnerability time after being shot. SO! It's hard to shoot someone at a long distance with one bullet, but you have enough time to reload. So you will use a shotgun - its cost will not matter, but the spread will get the target and do heavy damage one time (multiple particles don't count, so you won't use them in short distance). And if they're close, your chance to miss will be almost as good as with one bullet because the spread is not very wide to compensate bad aim, but you'll need to shoot as fast as you can, so you'll choose a weapon that uses less energy, and snipers use ten times less.
Result - sniper is good at shorts, shotguns - at long distances. Assaults and pistols just suck. PLEASE rebalance that:

- give shotguns the opportunity to bang several projectiles on target, doing heavier damage, by cancelling invulnerability after being shot. This will also make using two pistols any good, because now second bullet will not hit.
- give shotguns lesser damage, so they will be useful only when target is hit by several projectiles and they will not be useful if the target is far.
- give the energy cost based on projectile damage, so the snipers will drain it for good and you have to use assaults/pistols.

Sorry for my english, typin' very fast.

 

Shotguns already get more damage according to how many pellets hit. The tooltip lists the damage across the full burst, not the damage per pellet. You can test this by intentionally aiming so that only half your burst hits, and you'll see that you're not getting the listed firepower.

Shotguns are just really really weak compared to their energy cost.

 

I actually did that, and the damage was equal. I'll try it after the new patch though. And I've tried to use two pistols - without any effect, if i don't fire them one after another.

 

dmg for crafted items is way off and they have tweeted that they know and are working to fix it and it will be another character whipe. thats fine but a whole galaxy map with the same threat level? i dont understand. no reason to explore. can anyone explain to me why i should explore other planets except for biomes and new furniture mabye? am i missing some hidden threat level thing? this seems like a step backwards imo.

 

I like what they did with the dps, but i wish there were still planet levels

 

I agree with John Doe. After the devs rebalance the weapons next patch, they should then focus on the AI (and animations) before tweaking numbers any further. AI and animations should play a big part on any game's difficulty, more so than numbers.

Look at what makes Cube World's combat system so satisfying, for example. It's exactly that, different monsters have different traits, some are slow and strong, some are fast and weak, and they have animations that tell you he's about to charge or jump or simply attack. If you know the monsters you can even brave the toughest ones with a newly created character.

Here every monster is just as fast and agile as any other, some of them do projectile rapid fires that are too fast to dodge unless you're already moving in the correct direction before they shoot, and all of them are plain kamikazes. Not to mention that one can't aim melee attacks, it's just... forward attacks, which makes any weapon besides 2-handed weapons useless or at least not at all advantageous. The combat system needs a lot more to become satisfying, and numbers won't do much without that.

 

That's one of my biggest concerns. Before the patch, I had an goal to get to the next threat level planet. Now, the only real goal is to get to the next sector...which, as you said, takes away all the fun in exploring the Alpha sector. Now, I do understand that there's technically not "less" content, but it definitely feels like less mini goals to achieve. Perhaps it's just a mental thing...less progression.

 

Another thing I was think regarding a way to judge difficulty would possibly have mobs progressively get harder the farther away from the center of the planet you are. We know we can run around the world, so there has got to be a center point. At some point you are farthest from center, in which the mobs would be the hardest. Have no idea how that'd work, but it's one way for a single planet to contain multiple difficulty experiences.