Removing survival difficulty (and character) from the game.

I'll try and keep this short, so I dont meander and rant all over the place.

But basically, I'm wondering how the community feels about the survival aspects of the game being either removed (cold, hunger) or completely trivialized (dealing with lack of oxygen) Is it good or bad?

I'm not really interested in discussing or debating the details of the mechanic changes either. Just want to get a feel for how the community feels about the direction Starbound is headed in this respect, as it moves towards a more casual friendly type game, and away from being a survival exploration game.

 

Was disappointed with the removal of hunger. It kept me on my toes and added an air of survival-ism.

But I do like being able to walk away from the PC and not die.

It should be a "game option" when making a new character.

 

I think in the old game the hunger mechanic was arbitrary once you built a farm and was growing food faster than you could eat it.

I also think that the only purpose the cold mechanic ended up serving is to annoy me during times I'd be trying to build something up in the stratosphere of a planet where it actually got cold enough to override the cold resist on your armor.

So IMHO the game has never been about survival because these elements just didn't matter when they were there.

 

Bad. For example: The feeling and the atmosphere on a iceplanet are gone.
I loved to sit near my campfire..to know that I cant survive without it.
The need for building a small hideout to explore the planet, a place like "my safe welfare cave" or something.

 

I wasn't a fan of the hunger mechanic, it felt more like a chore than a feature. I'd bet the modding community could probably come up with a more interesting system anyway. Stopping every few minutes to plunk down a campfire on a ice planet wasn't much fun either.

 

But in the end your best crafted armor made sure that you didn't have to sit near a heat source ever.

So those nostalgic days of sitting by the campfire only ever happened a time or two before you had the gear to never have to do it again.

 

Have it as an option. Don't remove it for the hardcore survivalists, but don't force it on people who don't want to be bothered with it.

 

IMO that added to the lure of progression. You started off without any protection, you are exposed and have to work hard for the resource you need. But once you have worked hard and have earned the gear you have the luxury of that protection as you progressed.

--I will say that the warmth drop off in buildings was annoying

 

It sucks. Immensely. Now I don't even want to bother playing on anything but casual until Hunger is reinstated.

 

I will say that hunger mechanic not only encouraged the player to cook a surplus of food, it also encouraged building to create farms for the different ingredients found.

 

While the game is definitely awesome, I do feel like it is a bit... hollow. Not having to survive the harsh elements [cold] having something that gives you infinite breath without having to sacrifice any equipment slots [aka backpack slot] Mostly... What bothers me is that our characters don't need to eat.

If anything I believe that it was removed in favor of allowing people to use the buffs ect and having that cool-down system in place right? Why not make food ineffective for buffs and healing if that's the case while that cool down is in place and just reinstate hunger? :/

 

In a weird way I do miss having to put down camp and make a fire on ice planets every time the cold was getting to me. Maybe it was a bit too excessive in Enraged koala but I didn't mind it.

 

Wasn't it going to return in a modified way for higher difficulty?

 

For me it made farming less of an incentive. The hunger temp dropout. I actually didn't mind the basic form of it, but have heard they are going to put back into the other 2 game modes above casual.

Right now I guess is forming the basis for the casual mode primarily. And in that respects they have done well.

Since things were not put in the other difficulties, it makes them less appealing, as there is not much difference between each game mode. This was also mentioned it will get more variance over time in production.

As for the temperature I don't really like much the way it is, but can understand it being a stepping stone for what is possible. In its' state now it just seems like a base mechanic that can be adjustable or added onto. So in that respects I don't.

However the game overall doesn't even feel like it has much for survival mechanics at the moment in my opinion, so like a step down from what it use to be. At least in respects to survival. The only survival mechanic left really is the monsters, or combat in general that is immediately noticeable, while the other parts seem stunted or like a basic foundation lacking parts of the framework and structure being being a foundation to build from.

Well that is how I feel, and trust me this is the short form... ><

 

I liked the hunger mechanic because at the very least it encouraged you to build something, a farm in this case. The cold mechanic being gone I can understand more with the game's sci-fi version of future spacesuits. Also, note there's a "Radiation" mechanic there now. Normal spacesuits don't take that. I died to it the first time because I thought my first spacesuit could handle some lite radiation exposure...nope. Then I thought, "maybe if I get underground fast enough surface radiation won't kill me?"....nope. I need a better suit. I guess you just have to look at the tech progression you do as also being your survivability in certain environments.

I do miss hunger a bit though. It also would have promoted the player to explore more about what the better food buffs do. Now with no hunger, cooking and getting better types of food is made null and meaningless because other items/techs provide all the buffs really needed for gameplay.

 

Really missing hunger and cold... I really liked having to eat, take care not to starve...
Also trying to keep warm, it's just realistic!

I can understand that it (in some way) restricted what you could do... but then again, it's realistic. And I like myself a little bit of realism in my games
I'd wish this comes back, maybe a little bit different than it was just so it fits in the game now with the buffs food gives you...

 

I waver between raging indifference to being being glad they moved to the new system. Some very basic prep was all that was needed to render most of these "survival" elements either impotent or "nigh-pointless ongoing chore".

Hunger was little more than an annoying egg timer. I didn't find it added character, I found it made mostly for a Pavlovian experiment. Hear the beep, stuff a thing in your face to shut it up for a little while. Good dog. And its threat was put to bed in the first half hour of the game, if that long. Crafting/cooking enough food to keep you going was never a problem, thanks to inexhaustible supplies of monsters, inexhaustible supplies of arrows once you crafted a bow, and starting you right out of the gate with farmable seeds that replenish when picked. It was nothing more than a chore for the sake of being a chore.

Temperature was similarly so easily mitigated by armors pretty early in the game that the move to an always-on tech to counter cold/heat was at WORST a lateral one. (The old system didn't even allow for overheating, actually.) In the old build, the only reason I'd need to change to a warmer armor is if I decided to check out the space-space areas, but the rewards there were no better than what I could get on literally any other planet, so what was the point? Without the tech the game would need higher-durability warm armors to keep up, but again, that's a one-time thing again.

Now, as far as temperature/radiation go, I could see them making "levels", and you need to upgrade your tech to handle higher tiers of cold or whatever. Low Cold, Heavy Cold, Extreme Cold. But still a straight delineation rather than the guessing at exact numeric degrees needed.

I'll be honest and say I don't get the "but this was survival" angle. It never really was, no more than any other video game where death is an option. Any genuine "SURVIVAL GAME" style play that would make any of this anything more than an egg timer would require massive, fundamental changes to the entire game. In what hunger and temperature actually does beyond just kill you after a bit (there'd need to be a good laundry list of stat hits), how injuries work/heal/affect your mobility, the addition of ongoing sicknesses, dehydration, severely altering the availability of food and settlements where food can be obtained, your ability to travel to new planets, etc.

And all that's better for the world of mods than the core game.

 

But you didn't have to work hard for the resources you needed which is the problem with your argument.

Seriously, the cold element is still there. Its just gated in a different way than it was before. The hunger element has honestly always been a joke just as soon as you gathered up 3-4 seeds of any kind.

 

Hunger needs to return somehow, heat protection, cold protection and apparently "brief protection" (however that works, you are protected from breathing...) needs to be tweaked...
That nanosuit stuff they put it might be good for endgame... of course a Hazmat is there to protect from Radiation, theres not much you can do about that. But against cold and heat... maybe go the course they did with the ship fuel. Put in some fictional substance at the very least. Something to work on. But not something you need to grind for. Maybe some orange substance stopping your body from cooling down too far and a light blue colored substance stopping you from heating up too far. For names... no idea, aslong its not Pyrotheum and Cryotheum since that is already taken. But not "Hey put this unexplained piece of technology on which does not run on anything and is basicly a perpetual motion device and you dont freeze anymore.".

Really... for those people who want it easy. Make an optional "Ultra Easy mode" and call it something like "Abomination mode" which indicates that you are... immune to heat, cold, radiation, no need for oxygen aslong you put on some other type of skin (nanoskin)... but for people willing to have a survival feeling keep those things in... This game needs immersion... which it greatly lacks currently, atleast in my opinion. And with quests like the coffee fetch quest its hard to... immerse in this game... said that already, I feel with stuff like that that the game is just sorta trollish and not taking itself serious for just... one... bit... That doesnt mean it should be dead serious though, just get more immersion, less grind, less grind, less grind, and no stupid coffee fetching quests... or atleast serious ones behind those...

 

...and for those who want to pretend that it was ever hard, make an optional "I'm in imaginary winner" mode.