The soon to be implemented difficulty system - Your opinion?

The poll is about the following Twitter post: https://twitter.com/Tiyuri/statuses/416420756470239232

There was a thread about this earlier by somebody else, but it didn't take off as expected, so I wanted to start this.


My personal opinion is that they should not just copy over Terraria's "difficulty" system in such a cheap way, they should implement something more inventive instead with multipliers that would affect things like damage and speed, based on the difficulty.

Along with that, additional behaviors for monsters and environment (such as "blood vomit") could be reserved for higher difficulties. Then, what Tiy mentioned in his post could be implemented as game-modes rather than difficulty levels, to make everybody happy (i.e. you can play on "hard" difficulty with "lose items on death" mode, or you can play on "easy" difficulty with "lose character on death" mode).


What do you think? Vote on the poll and perhaps leave a comment!

 

I really like this system and am happy they're going with it, though I'd still like to see an actual difficulty slider that just makes gameplay in general tougher or easier.

 

I agree with the new system, with a but...

Firstly, I agree that with the implementation even if it is the same system as Terraria. Games fall into a convention because it has been proven to be good and work well. An argument based solely the fact that Terraria has such a system is a rather absurd argument. Look at it this way, I could make a similar argument to save files: Would it not be more interesting if, instead of saving, there were a gesture recognition system that acted as a password? It would be novel. It would be unique. It would certainly therefore make Starbound stand out from the competition... But not in a good way. Inventive does not necessarily equate to good. I'll agree it's taking an absurd argument and stretching it to an even more absurd extreme, but I hope it gets the message across... The three modes are like Terraria because it's a system that just works.

However... I do also understand that not everyone finds the prospect of greater penalties makes a game harder. I personally do, and would disagree with those that don't, but this shows just how subjective "difficulty" is. What one person may find hard another may find to be artificial or just annoying. I definitely liked your suggestion in the other thread of difficulty-based attack sets (in addition to a simple multiplier). In fact, a lot of people would be happy with just a multiplier... Although that to me seems artificial. Like I said in the other thread, TES has such a system but I find that it just draws things out rather than actually adds proper challenge.

There is a place for both game modes (which I still argue can make the game more challenging themselves) and "traditional" difficulty settings. With two settings, everyone would be happier and there would be that much more control over your experience. And choice and control is delicious.

edit: In the short term, it''s still a heck of a lot better than what we currently have. At least there's now some choice as to how punishing a person wants the game to be.

 

I just thought about something else too now.

There are certain pieces of equipment in the game that require you to have the previous tier before you can make them. Say you lose your stuff, and you won't be able to retrieve it, you'd have to make the previous tiers of equipment too then (think of diamond drill).

This means the game will exponentially punish you harder the further you get. I know some people like punishment, but I wonder if this is still going to be a viable system if punishment gets out of hand like that.

I don't think the system will be much of a bad thing once they address the above issue and once they make sure that 1-hit kills cannot happen, but it still feels a little bit bland to me.

 

I would like to make the game a little more challenging for myself. However I feel that just making harsher punishments for dying is just barely brushing at difficulty increases. Pixels, Inventory, and character loss are just arbitrary time sinks. When you die your just rolling back the grind some or a lot. I would personally prefer to see actual changes in the difficulty. More than just doubling the health and damage outputs of monsters and bosses. I want to see improved AI, group/herd tactics, status effects (stun/paralysis/poison/burn/blind/etc), an increase of environmental hazards. I rarely die as it is now and I'd hate to see higher difficulties just punish my eventual death more. There is no increased challenge in that.

 

It's not even difficulty, it's a choose your punishment system. Punishments I might add that radically alter the way you'd play.

Dropping pixels is nothing, death is a cheap teleport and it just lets you drift through the game lapping up the content. Dropping items makes you think about what you're doing. No more hellevators you can't get back out of. Can't just brute force your way through encounters.

Permadeath is a challenge mode, counter-intuitive to the game as it would be played normally, becoming more a pure survival experience filled with planning and paranoia.

Meanwhile your idea is to gate off the more interesting things for those who want a challenge. It goes against everything a sandbox should be.

 

Duplicate even though you started your thread more civil. Also all if not the majority go games have difficulty settings why go straight to terreria?
http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/difficulty-setting-de-valuates-the-game.60410/

 

I know many sandboxes that implement difficulty like that and that are quite successful at doing so, most famous example being Minecraft, so I don't get this argument.

If anything, it gives people more choice, they will choose how to play their sandbox adventure. Ontop of that, the punishment system could be included too, further enhancing this sense of choice.

It's not me that started that one, that's why I wanted to start this thread so the discussion would be more focused on the topic and less focused on flame/derailing because of wrong wordings in the OP.

This thread should become useful feedback to the devs eventually, with a poll showing numbers too.

 

No Option for: I agree with the system: it's essentially the same system already used in hundreds of other games since the dawn of gaming.

Really, I know the Terraria comparisons are inevitable, but doing it on difficulty settings? They're about as generic as they come.

 

Minecraft is an example of what not to do on pretty much every level of game design. It's only successful because it got big while everyone was still starving and now simply rides on the backs of modders hammering square pegs into round holes.

 

Still duplicate

 

Does this bother you so much?

 

Preventing clutter on the forum is not a bad thing.

 

I'm glad to see a hardcore mode.

 

That's correct, but what you are currently doing is not preventing anything, it's just polluting the topic.

It's the only game I know that uses this difficulty system, so I used it as quick reference to give people a good idea (since it's a pretty straightforward example).

All other games I played/know use a system based on variables/behaviors.

 

I didn't play terraria, i don't mind if they have copied it, it seems it gonna work well imho.

 

Not really

 

Its better then nothing, it allows people to pick a bigger punishment for dying. And that really makes a diffirence, if you know your character is going to lose his stuff or even get perma-death you will play diffirently and its going to add tension.

But its not really a difficulty setting in and of itself, the game is just as difficult to play as before but you are simply dealing with a bigger penalty when dying.

Truely higher difficulty settings would be if it involved for example a faster hunger decay, insta-death upon running out of air/hunger/heat instead of taking damaging.
Having things a bit modular would be great, but this would also complicate things something aweful for the purpose of online play.

I'd personally like it if they upped difficulty in general, but through gameplay mechanics and not arbitrary numbers. Like, suffering a slow-down as your heat diminished below a certain point (slower moving, less energy regen, that sort). Giving mobs some more abilities and more variation in these abilities, altough i think this is planned anyway but just not something they came around to doing yet.
And i've said it before, but i'd like hydration as a mechanic aswell. From an immersion standpoint, aswell as to add a difficulty to warm and dry planets.

Also weather and calamities should probably be a seperate event. Any planet in a system with an asteroid field has a chance of getting hit by a meteorite shower, with a rarer chance of larger meteorites. Planets adjecent to asteroid fields have a higher chance. And things like acid rain could probably be a more global risk, altough considerably higher chance on magma/volcanic planets. And ofcourse other such calamities, that dont conflict and mutually exclude actual weather.

Additionally more hazardous biomes such as toxic, radioactive, eternal dark, extreme gravity, dying planets or planets near a dying star that deal damage if you are on the surface during the day or in sunlight. And maybe some rare planets with extremely dangerous mobs that you want to avoid rather then fight. Just some thoughts on how to add difficulty besides arbitrarily raising penalties or numbers.

 

I'd personally prefer XCOM:EU's Second Wave system, something that Daikaze suggested in the other thread (a system I also advocated for during the debate about racial traits). With it you get the base experience and add whatever extras you want to challenge yourself with: monsters do double/triple/quintuple damage, no regenerating energy, resource-poor universe, quest reward roulette, crapsack starter world, slowing down when injured, etc. That way, instead of choosing a difficulty with a set of rules inherent to it, you can tweak to a point you feel comfortable with. It should be fully detailed so that people know what they're choosing to get into. The only difference would be possibly that unlike EU the option to do this should be unlocked from the start.

I'm pretty sure that by the time we get closer to the complete release there'll be plenty of player-made mods tweaking things that the devs can incorporate the way they've been incorporating other ideas right now, so some effort can be saved while doing it.

 

It can be difficult to make a gameplay attributes focused difficulty mode. It means they have to balance the game twice. The easy way is to just up the penalty for dying or increase damage numbers.