Pandering to newbies

You know... this could have gone a better route then spiraling into a flame war... instead of fighting how about trying to brainstorm things that could do to improve it for all without all this fighting?

I mainly don't like that teleport to home feature because my computer is slow so I constantly get that 'port-back-to-ship' thing and now I can't just spam the E key to finally be able to teleport to the surface... Yes it's a minor annoyance and I'll most likely never use that feature because it just makes sense to put your ship in orbit.

Maybe they could make it something in the config file you could turn off so there isn't that teleport to home option? That would fix the problem right there for all. Those that like it can keep it on, those that don't can turn it off.

Well we're at it, you may or may not have noticed the "Mode: ????" thing by your character... that means they will be adding difficulty modes... so everyone will be able to play at the level they want soon enough. Even I figured that out right away... they are merely keeping it at one level well they try and flesh all the mechanics and features out right now...

 

Nah, based off of his original post (the one you quoted originally), I highly doubt that.

 

^Lawls

The think the single biggest idiotic aspect of these "pandering to newbie" threads, are players repeatedly telling THE DEVELOPERS how a game is supposed to and was intended to be.

 

You whiners got the free coal you wanted PLUS the teleport. That's pandering to the highest degree and no amount of rationalization will change that

 

Yeah, how dare people hate tedium! Don't you know that if you don't spend at least an hour of your gameplay a day doing pointless, annoying, and repetitive tasks, you're not a ~REAL GAMER~?

 

When they're blatantly insulting people for liking a casual playstyle, that's an issue too. There are ways of discussing issues without calling casual players weaklings, OP.

I was saying casual is fun?

 

That's a problem with your mentality. Mining for coal is pointless? Funny I thought it was so you could fuel your ship so you could see the next planet. Oh what's that? You don't feel like cutting down the SCREENWIDE FORREST YOU CAN NOW GROW IN A SINGLE NIGHT? Gee wilikers maybe you don't want the next planet bad enough then. It's got nothing to do with being a true gamer. It's something far simpler. You people are lazy and want instant gratification. You want a sandbox where all the toys are there from the start. That's what mods are for. There's even a whole game based around that. It's called Garry's Mod. Starbound is not Garry's Mod in space meets Side SCroller block game. But you lot sure are trying to turn it into that.

 

Thank you, that was exactly my intention. Honestly I don't know why the huge angry (and hypocritical) backlash of some people. Other than calling bad players weaklings, I don't see why people are upset. I made valid claim and was open to discussion.
I really don't think I'm a good player at all, which is why I think the game is too easy, hell I often like to think If I'm the MVP, I must gotten stuck with beginners. It does seem like most people just want to place blocks and not have a care in the world, inst-gratification like no other, I for one would like a challenge, to go where none has gone before, and all that. Real one, not "beat the game with tier 1" because to me a game is something that is supposed to be challenging, a match with rules. Not overly difficulty, ala Ninja Gaiden (even Dark Souls annoyed me), but no "lets try to get 99x 1ups! Since the game is too easy", cause that's what I'm doing right now, hoarding money.

 

The quick jumping back home is not for saving fuel, it saves my time. So you call this waiting in the ship doing nothing a hard game experience? And by the way how could you decide which play style that others prefer? Many guys love building a base. “This is not a game can players build”, who told you about that?

 

Then wait for creative mode or director mode. Don't turn the base game into something it's not.

 

You're right, nothing wrong with skipping the wait and getting to your planet, but if you want to teleport for your planet there should be a fee, pixels at least, not a FREE teleport.

 

Thankyou for making me feel bad for sucking!

 

I am also ok with someone saying his opinion and don´t want to be a dick, but again in your post you called other players names.
I for myself understand your post this way :
You think the game a too easy.
Everyone not thinking that, must be a bad player.
Everyone who is a bad player is a weakling.

Thats just not nice.
I also don´t want the game to be too easy. But i don´t want it to be unnecesary annoying. I want to build a base, a home, a planet i feel comforting with and i think the warp home is a great step in the right direction there.

Not to offend you but thats a bit silly and not really constructive.

 

1, Answer my first question please.
2, Is building not in the base of the game? Is it contradictory with exploration and survival? Have you ever see introduction of the game or watch the game trailer?

 

The main reason there was a huge angry backlash was because of your attitude.

Let's be frank. Who would you want to politely debate with the most?

1- "That game is difficult. You only think it's easy because you losers have no life and spend all of your time playing games."
2- "I personally think the game is difficult. I consider myself a decent player, yet I find myself struggling to survive. I know some players may find it easy, but I feel the difficulty should still be toned down a bit."

Now, of course I sort of took two different extremes, but I guess you get my point.

I'd say, if you can keep with the good attitude, you'll find people will be less tempted to act overly negative. After all, negative attitude encourages negative attitudes. Now, of course that doesn't mean everyone will play nice and stuff, but you're less likely to cause inflamed debates that way.

Your point is valid. Just don't act overly negative for no reason.

 

Oh wait. Seems I was wrong it doesn't even take me one night to grow a forest. here, Screenshots for proof

Before Taken at 199 :



After Taken at 19:43 :



4 minutes. in four minutes you get over 1000 wood to convert into 100 coal. 4 measly minutes. It takes you longer to wander around the surface looking for dungeons or villages than it takes you to get coal.

Update: I even timed how long it takes me to chop all those trees down with a stone axe. Another WHOPPING 4 minutes. And that forest yielded me over 1500 wood. So you're telling me that all of that in 8 minutes total is TOO much for you casuals? Seriously?

 

The thing is, that you can't with the current approach.
You have to understand that you cannot make a game "more enjoyable for EVERYONE" by balancing it, because it works both ways. The easier they make the game, the less enjoyable it will be for people who like a challenge. The harder they make it, the less enjoyable it will be for casual gamers. End of story.
The smartest thing would be the introduction of a difficulty setting.

The thing is, that the game went from "a bit too hard in certain aspects" to "far too easy in general" with the balancing update and everyone on the server I play on agrees. Before you end reading right there and say "It's only your opinion that it's too easy and therefore you're wrong (because I disagree)", let me tell you that we're all just talking about our opinions here.

Let me compare the game in its current form to how it was before the last big balancing update. Again, this is not the universal truth, just my (and other peoples) observations.

• Armor penetration vs DPS: Good change. "Hard" and "overly complicated" are two different things; and "streamlined/simplified" is not the same as "dumbed down". At least now you know which weapon is better without having to possibly find out the hard way.
  
• One Threat-Level per Tier: Bad change. Not only have they made the game significantly easier with this change, but also shortened the game right there. I'll come back to this one later since it's my main sticking point.
• Armor system: Good change, same as armor-pen. vs DPS. Splitting the head-, chest- and foot-gear up like this was a smart move.
• Ressource-distribution 1 (Ore): Still far from good. Before the update, diamonds and platinum where almost nowhere to be found. Now you get too much ore on the surface. Besides that it's unbalanced too. When starting I could barely get enough coal to leave my system because coal and copper became incredibly rare. However, on the later systems you get so much uranium and plutonium right on the surface you will never ever have to specifically search fuel. You'll always have far more than you could possibly need.
  
• Ressource-distribution 2 (Plants): Still a mixed bag. Even a tiny jungle planet will give you enough plant-fibre to craft so many bandages you won't ever need a bed/tent anymore. Since you can dual-wield weapons you can have a weapon in one hand, bandages in the other and essentially enable "almost-godmode". This is hard to tackle, because, after all, a jungle is full of plants and a jungle without plants is no jungle. Maybe make the crafting recipe require more than just plant-fibre? I don't know.
• Ressource-distribution 3 (Trees): Good change. 1 coal for 10 unrefined wood is fair; and now you can regrow trees which solves the other problem. It could cause abuse if the trees grow too fast, but that's easily fixed: slower growth rate and/or less unrefined wood per tree and/or limit how many trees can be planted next to each other.
• Enemies 1 (Generic enemies): Bad change. It goes hand in hand with point number two. The thing is that almost nothing poses a threat anymore shortly after visiting the first planet of a newly unlocked sector. I'll come back to this later as well.
• Enemies 2 (Bosses): Bad, bad, bad. If anyone told me that the bosses were too hard, I would have agreed. Nerfing them was a good step. However, they went like a million meters too far. Having to rely on glitches and other tricks to beat bosses was bad already, but being able to defeat all of them like it's nothing is worse. The first UFO and Robot battles we did were really intense; just like a bossfights should be. Right now, they're nothing more than fancy, slightly more annoying enemies that take a bit more hits but are no real threat.

As I said earlier, my main sticking point is the removal of the multiple threat-levels per tier.
Right now the universal manual for breezing through the game is this:

1. Travel to any planet and start digging down right next to the spawn point.
2. Collect the new ore type avoiding caves and, by extension, confrontations.
3. Once you got enough ore, craft yourself the armor set and possibly some weapons.
4. Congratulations, you're now equipped to explore any planet, any dungeon, at any time and kill all the monsters including the next boss.

Before the update we needed to work our way up through multiple threat levels, mostly one-by-one. It took a significant amount of preparation, before we were even remotely equipped in a way we could stand a chance against the next boss. Exploring was a necessity. Right now, it's almost optional.
You unlocked the sector bit for bit, whereas you unlock it completely right now.
Yeah, technically you unlocked it completely before too, but I won't count it since every enemy on higher threat level planets was able to kill you with nothing but its fart.

Wow, this post got longer than I expected...

 

No, you're right. The way you play the game is totally the correct way to play it, and everybody else is super-wrong for trying to do anything different.

 

I don't see how building a base isn't what the game is about. The great thing about this game is that you don't have to build a base if you don't want to, but you can if you do. I don't see the point in building a base. I make my ship into my mobile house that has enough storage for the stuff I want, a small plot of dirt for farming, and all of my crafting stations, plus a small bedroom area above the teleporter. A friend of mine loves base building, so he made a base on his homeworld and goes back to it to store things and farm and all that. Our ways of playing the game aren't contradictory so why can't we just play the game the way we want to? I don't want to use the home teleport and I don't have to. If he wants to use it, then fine. If not, he can always FTL his way to and from his home base instead. He has the choice to. I can cut down trees and cook them for charcoal or I can mine up surface coal or I can get coal while diggin down into the ground or a mixture of all three. There's choice. Choice is good. Unless you're a huge "I must play this game is the most absolutely optimum way possible" person you can choose not to cook trees for charcoal, make a home base, or use the home teleport function but it's there if you want to. You can even mod those functions out of your game if you can't just ignore them. I don't see what the big deal is either way.

 

People are becoming really hyperbolic, especially when talking about "tedium" and "time-saving", but I'll try to be reasonable and civil here.

Honestly, the "tedium" and "time-saving" excuses could really be used to get rid of basically any and all resource management, since all resources are gathered in a similar fashion. It only takes a small adaptation to the argument to make it a complaint about pixel gathering and material mining, advocating for cheaper everything. It's a slippery slope for sure.

And my problem with free home teleporting is less the feature itself and more the attitude behind it, which along with the removal of the AP system seems to be a preference to sidestep problems as opposed to trying to work on and fix systems. Maybe it's just a placeholder, maybe it's just the embryonic state of something which'll grow in time (this being beta and all), but the home teleport option is a cheap, cheesy workaround as it stands, and I would've sooner made coal more common (or see the impact of plantable trees) before implementing such a thing. Now, at the very least, I'd slap a distance-dependent pixel cost on it.

Can I choose to not use the feature? Of course, but I'm free to believe it's a shallow mechanic with no substance, and that its presence doesn't benefit the game's quality. It's a workaround to existing systems more than an integral part of one. Functionally, it's very similar to having a machine that periodically produces coal on your ship, for equally no good reason.