Stopping players from walling monsters in

Creepers are one of the best clues that Notch didn't have any idea what he was doing as he was designing that game

 

I totally get where you're coming from -- and it would probably work to mitigate the dirt-caging issue -- but I've never been a fan of arbitrary design elements being used to fix gameplay issues. IMO, design should be organic to the "real world" of the game, and not break the 4th wall. Ie, if there's no lore reason that blocks flash and are penetrable for a couple of seconds when you place them, then using it to fix a problem is just bad design.

OTOH, letting mobs with charge attacks bust through walls after a couple of hits solves the problem in an organic way. I understand your other worry here is that this solution would mean that mobs are busting through important things... like your house, for instance. But they really wouldn't. Why?

• Not every mob has a charge attack. Only mobs with charge attacks would have the ability to bust through blocks.
• Mobs only charge when aggro'd. They only get aggro'd when they see you. If you're in your house, they don't see you and would never charge through your wall -- or anything else -- randomly. If you're outside your house, they charge you, not your walls. It balances itself.
  • And, honestly, I could imagine a mob charging me outside my house, me jumping out of the way, and the mob slamming into my wall, cracking it. That would be fun and awesome.

IMO, this solution is the best of all worlds. Why?

• You can still employ dirt-caging for some mobs (ones without charge attacks). That's cool and fun, especially when hunting in early-game.
• It won't work so well against other mobs (mobs with charge attacks), though still do-able if you're skilled. That's fun and makes for some tense hunting.
• Mobs already charge when aggro'd and never charge randomly at other times. Therefore, it really only comes into play when trying to dirt-cage.

Dirt-caging bosses is a whole 'nother issue, but I think if players can manipulate dirt walls, bosses should be able to do it too. And more easily than some dumb beast wandering the planet's surface.

 

thats fine, the important part is it would be more engaging to the player

let me try and simplify it.

the basic idea is that, if a creature is charging you and you try to place blocks in front of it, it will plow through those blocks. This only applies to recently placed blocks so no destruction to other player built structures or landscape will take place

EDIT: moved my comments out of the quote

 

The creeper was bad design because Minecraft is a first-person 3D game. Creepers make no noise, explode just be getting close to you, and can literally spawn behind you without you noticing.
There's a bomb throwing enemy in Terraria that is also bad design because it, like all enemies in terraria, knows where you are and will attack even if you're a considerable distance away, blowing up a bunch of stuff.

Giving monsters the ability to destroy blocks in this, if hostile towards you, is entirely sensible. The monsters require Line of Sight, and they can't 'sneak' up on you. Any destruction they cause, will be initiated by the player, where the player can see. It's Fair.

Disallowing attacks through walls isn't enough, because monsters can still be made to get stuck, or the player can attack through a narrow slit in the wall. Someone mentioned that's fair because of castle embattlements? Those don't work if the enemy is literally next to the embattlement in real life! They work because they are high up and out of reach. And even then, it's only useful until the enemy makes it to your door, at which point they must /break/ it down. That would be fair.

Player structures aren't so important that they should compromise difficulty and gameplay. Let the monsters cause grief, that's what they are here for.

 

My only problem with this is that items eventually despawn after they get dropped, so if you somehow caused a monster to come tearing through a floor or something and it broke a bunch of chests, you'd have to kill the monster and then clean up the mess of items all over the floor before they disappeared

 

The best suggestions for this will be those that work with the natural game engine. Some of the suggestions in this thread may sound very 'duh' simple to gamers but not necessarily easy to implement for the devs.

I personally agree strongly that building a 'dirt shield' is waaaay too easy and sucks a lot of fun from the game. This is because Starbound's block placement is lightning-fast as opposed to Terraria. You can basically just draw block architecture on the screen, even in the middle of combat. It really detracts from the combat experience for a lot of us.

SOLUTION: Block placement and construction activities should be restricted when the avatar is in a state of Aggro. You wouldn't build a fence in the middle of a gunfight. So maybe it's a no-go for block placement while Aggroed, or maybe it's just slower... I'll leave that to the designers.

Both camps of player-types should be appeased by this solution. We would all still enjoy the lighting fast 'drawing' ability of Starbound's (very nice IMO) block placement when building our houses in peacetime, but not be able to abuse it during combat.

Plus, this solution utilizes only states from the current game engine and would probably be extremely easy to implement.

Plus, unless I've missed something, this solution solves all the potential problems for all other solutions suggested in this thread. For BOTH types of players.

 

I don't know if you read my second post further describing it but here it goes.

to the "lore"

here is how i explain it.

Starbound inventory system allows you to hold tons and tons of dirt is this "matter manipulator". for the sake of lore lets say it moves all the molecules to another dimension for storage and instant access to its contents. you could say that when you place blocks, their molecules are temporarily unstable due to the retrieval from wherever they are stored. they wont blink. they don't even need new animations. this ties in perfectly with the sci-fi setting that this game takes place. it also removes the issues of monsters getting stuck in instantly created boxes.

with my implementation, you can still trap mobs, but you have to create a pit, build a tower with firing slots. The point of my implementation is removed the instant boxing off of enemies

 

Nahhh

If you're attacked by something in a deep cavern and get knocked into a pit, you should be able to save yourself by placing some dirt if your reaction is fast enough

 

Yeeaaaaaa.......

/beta

fast-walling is good, so they F****** better not change it. IF anything, just make weapons not go through walls... even that suggestion I disagree with though....

clearly emergent gaming is the bane of starbound, HOW DARE WE USE THE TOOLS WE HAVE AVAILABLE TO PROGRESS.

 

Exploits cheapen the experience. would it not be better if they balanced the difficulty so that you dont have to resort to exploits. and further more, this creates balancing issues. if you can just block everything off on more dangerous planets, then they arent more dangerous. if they arent more dangerous, then they shouldnt have better loot.

if you want cheats, hopefully they will add cheats. that way, you can get tech and resources far beyond your current level WITHOUT BREAKING THE GAME FOR EVERYONE ELSE

seriously, i dont understand why you would want this.

 

Remove the ability to attack through walls (except with very special or unique weapons), but keep your filthy hands off my impromptu bomb shelter building ability.

Walling yourself off when low on health and swarmed by a bunch of angry monsters is basically a staple of this genre, it is not only expected but needed.

I don't give a rat's behind about your preferences, neither should you about mine. I won't ever tell anyone how they should play and have fun, I expect the same courtesy.

Don't ever tell me how I should play my game.

EDIT: Also, every time I see someone using the word "exploit" to describe clever use of game mechanics, I want to slap them. There IS no exploit in using systems to your advantage, it's called being inventive, sadly nowadays there is a thing called the fun police, and we can't ever have fun because it'll offend someone.

 

Situations like this would cause the player to put their belongings in a safe location, maybe in a basement or tower. And they would avoid letting a fight take itself to that spot (and desperately hold their ground if it did). If the player makes the wrong choice of putting their hard won loot in a place and brings a hostile monster towards it, any punishment wrought belongs to them. Emergent gameplay at it's finest!

 

I'll throw my 2 cents in here, perhaps melee player weapons should cause damage to blocks much as ranged weapons do, but to a much higher degree, this would stop people from attacking a mob from behind a wall because the wall will simply break, after all smacking a thin wall of dirt or wood with a massive axe/hammer should cause some sort of damage to it no?

 

I don't understand why people feel the need to police how other people play.

If you don't like boxing enemies in, don't do it. Don't tell me it cheapens my gameplay experience, you don't know what my gameplay experience is like. Only I do. Everyone experiences games differently, so just because it cheapens YOUR experience doesn't mean it doesn't enrich MINE. Being in a multiplayer server and seeing someone else box in an enemy and that annoying you is NOT an excuse to take enjoyment of the game away from another player.

What cheapens my gameplay experience? Being one hit KOd. Having someone steal my ship. Being told by other people that how I play is "wrong" when it is clearly allowed within the mechanics of the game. Being told by other people that they know more about my experiences within a game than I do. You know about YOUR experiences, and it's perfectly within your control to not use this mechanic, but there is NO reason for you to start policing my gameplay.

If it's "cheating," I'm only cheating myself. I'm not cheating you or anyone else. Why do you care whether I'm "cheating" when it doesn't affect you in any way shape or form?



That said, attacking through blocks is clearly a bug. Bugs should be fixed. Legitimate features, like boxing in enemies, should not.

 

I hate when people use the word punishment when talking about play incentives in games.

Possibly losing a bunch of valuable items that took time to get is not an appropriate penalty for making a mistake.

 

Well in that case, close the forums. We'll all send our opinions straight to the devs from now on!

 

you don't understand why people dislike the idea of NPCs destroying their homes? Your opinion does not necessarily reflect the opinion shared by many other players.

Enemies such as the Clown from Terraria and the Creeper from Minecraft are often very disruptive of the more creative efforts of various players and are generally regarded as a nuisance to many.

 

If you wall yourself in, sure they can't attack you, but you can't (effectively) attack them either.

If you're so bad at the game that you've resorted to this tactic to win fights, you're just going to find another way if it's "fixed".

Besides, it's good to be able to wall yourself in when you have to go AFK for a few moments. Many of us have busy lives and with no pause button we might find ourselves having to leave the room temporarily.

 

Perfect!

At least that way, they'll get the feedback directly, and you won't be in the situation of having told a bunch of people (probably the majority in this case) that you don't like the way they're playing, it's wrong, and YOU want it changed.

 

Do you have access to other weapons if so then don't use the god weapon.[/quote]