This game has become near-impossible to start

Iron bow doesn't OHKO anything anymore.

 

Just had a thought. If people are having issues with monsters...set your zoom to as low as you can go (or edit the file and set it lower if you really want). Monsters will only spawn "off screen" and this should really reduce the monster pop if you have a big issue with them.

 

Balance right now is very much in flux. But yes, damage right now is all over the place, and it's not good. An enemy might hit you for 15 damage, and on the same planet, something else on the surface hits you for 80. Sure, "get good" is what some people say, but imho the game should have a learning curve. Aka tier 1 should be somewhat easy so you can learn the bloody game without teleporting in and going splat within 5 seconds.
Starbound isn't branding itself as "hardcore roguelike survival" or anything like that, so this kind of unbalanced difficulty is only bound to turn away potential fans. I'd much rather there be areas you can seek out for added challenge, aka dungeons. Right now from what I saw, dungeons can be EASIER than the surface (especially birds), and yield better rewards.

Also, it is right now just outright ridiculous that the first weapon upgrades you find generally go straight back to oneshotting everything in your tier again. This needs fixing. Going from 5-6 required hits to one is just not good balance at all, frankly.

Another issue is that you simply are unable to tell what is a threat and what isn't. You can't tell if a mob is hostile until it eats your face, so you're left poking everything just to be sure until you memorized the patterns. Threat levels also have no indication, so you currently can't tell if a mob nearby is easy, normal or hard, and as such are forced to treat everything as a hard enemy. Playing cautiously is all well and good, but the systems should be cleaned up and balanced proper.

Ultimately, what I'd like to see is that risk and reward are more closely tied together. So that the deeper you go, or the more you venture into dungeons or less hospitable planets with environmental hazards, the more you can reap bigger benefits for your tier. You should simply not be able to just run around the surface, find or craft some awesome weapon, and then go around oneshotting things as long as you get the drop on them, lest they STILL hit you for half your HP. Instead, your home world should set you up with some basics, aka at least guarantee access to wood and plant fiber, and have basic ores. Traveling to more inhospitable worlds (moons, desert or ice etc) should yield better rewards for that tier but at a higher risk.

Perhaps even have threat level assessments within the tier. Your home world is always "easy" (or changes once we have a difficulty level setting, which would be nice), and other worlds can have a normal or hard rating, which improves the rewards. This creates more of a progression path within the tiers, and removes the "omgoneshot" issues people are having. And honestly, its just not FUN. Hard is fun, challenging is fun. But cheap is not. And cheap is what the game is right now. The difficulty comes from avoiding cheap damage mechanics and trying to get the drop on the things you want to kill, lest you die very quickly, last but not least also because of the hilariously short invulnerability period.

 

Before I get to my post, I just want to straighten out some things. First, just because someone is experiencing something different then you does not make it absolute or vice versa. With that out of the way I'll get to what I wanted to post about.

The main issue is just the fact that the game currently does have some form of ore-generation imbalance issue, which doesn't really make much sense to me. While I do agree that certain ores should be rare/hard to come by, the most basic of ores such as copper/iron shouldn't be near impossible to find, let alone on at a starter world. I am mainly speaking from my personal experience from last night with a few friends where the planet we were generated on literally lacked resources anywhere beyond surface level.

I dug out about 2000 blocks and explored for two hours underground and the world was only generating flesh/bone at the deepest parts. Anywhere else only dirt and cobblestone was being generated. On the surface, coal could be found sparsely.

Normally, I wouldn't mind it but it just seems strange that the most basic resources would be void. And to simply write it off as 'you got a bad planet, reroll' is not really fixing the issue or a solution. Personally, I don't mind it but from a development standpoint it -is- an issue as it means something is wrong with the game. You should not have to reroll because you 'got unlucky' with the game, as the fault there lies within the coding/mechanics as opposed to the player(s).

Maybe it really is just an unlucky thing, but from my personal experience 2/3 people have had this problem. The other person isn't having any problems at all with the game, where as myself/a friend are somewhat screwed on our planet. Also, we eventually managed to dodge the birds long enough to dig up some coal, from which I went to another moon within the system and currently experiencing the same thing there as there aren't any resources present.

 

Right now the problem with birds (and some other enemies that use range) is that the projectiles are somewhat inconsistent. For example those bouncing balls, that explode. Since this is beta I do lots of experimentation.
So, those bouncy balls they sometimes hit you and explode for no damage, and sometimes for ~80ish (level 1 planet, starting gear same monster).

As far as I understand game design and balancing, things should work more or less even across the board. That is, your starting weapons do ~5 dmg, and you kill a monster in about 5-7 swings. You have ~100 hp, and get damaged for about 15-30 hp, so you also die in about ~6 hits or so. Things are consistent. (I mean games of my youth you had several lives, or better yet a hp meter, that had maybe like 5-10 notches that allowed you to survive that many hits, I think that should be something to aim for).

What hardcore people are complaining about is that the monster AI is still pretty dumb. It still keeps getting stuck in terrain, even without players being able to build nooks and crannies for them to get stuck in.

Right now I would say that the problem with original system 1-100 level was lack of explanation, and some balancing issues. The problem of the current system are bugs (I assume that getting damage from bird corpses, and ~80 damage attacks at level 1 planets are bugs same as with huge damage on crafted weapons of previous patch) and lack of threat level variety. It would be best if there would be 3 or 5 (or even 10 as in the previous system) threat levels per sector, but threat level would translate into monster spawn rate, ore spawn rate, monsters having better ai, and your ~100ish hp being less hits away from death on higher threat planets then on lower threat planets.

Also, lower threat planets would have higher spawn rate of common basic and necessary stuff.

As for lack of progression, I suspect that more armor/weapon levels per tier could solve that. But this being beta, I understand that perhaps there will hopefully be more stuff there in the future. Or since modding is easy, the community would solve this particular problem.

 

Well its definitely not easier than any of the version/patches so far. As for Impossible no its far from impossible its now just takes a lot of planning.

I spawned on a planet with limited wood so my first task was to get a hunting knife and enough coal to travel to a forest. An adventure and not something that happens every game its called game play

Once i had collected enough wood and some surface coal,copper,iron I then traveled to a system with 5 planets so i didnt need much coal to move about.

The Only real Issue in the patch is Ore spawn and its forcing Coal levels to low. (Makes Travel in sector 1 very difficult and slightly Limiting when getting into Steel Armor Weapons)

With the system of 5 planets i farmed my needed gear in dungeons and by mining
Progress Copper > Iron gear and aim for a 12 dps weapon with Low attack speed for High damage 1-2 shots or High attack speed for Knockbacks

Build the Decoy without any traps/platforms or cages I used my Low attack speed weapon for Hitting the Ship and my High attack speed to break up the adds if they grouped up.

I used 2 red stims and 5 bandages for the fight It was lots of fun not impossible and no way near cheesy.

Currently I love the patch

 

The first game i started after patch i dropped down to the surface and b4 i plopped a torch down one of those over-sized boss monsters wandered up behind me. I killed it like a pro and moved on. He dropped a shield too so i didnt even get a weapon upgrade 8(

The flying monsters are a real pita tho. I have been petitioning for the ability to aim melee weapons like ranged ones so that will help with flyers.

 

I hate those bloody birds...

 

Since the patch I found similar survivability issues - it is extremely difficult to avoid attacks by even one creature when it is bouncing around all over the place and charging at you and there is no way to get them away from you apart from kiting, which always seems to end up with me encountering more monsters or getting myself stuck in some hole with an enraged creature. I have just been walling myself in everytime I come across a monster, just leaving a couple of one-block-wide holes to shoot arrows out of, then when they come close you can often hit them with your sword without having to leave shelter. It is kind of lame I guess, but I treat it as a sort of puzzle challenge.

 

I think we've effectively established that birds should not be stronger than their bipedal/quadrupedal counterparts. They shouldn't be attack choppers who completely decimate everything. I saw one instagib an Avian guard for 300 damage in the Delta Sector. Needless to say, I didn't do much better.

 

No I am specifically talking about posts like this:

They add nothing, they are insulting, and it is beta, balance issues are a thing, and there needs to be feedback. I have no issue with how you present your opinions, they civil, well thought out and generally add to the discussion. But posts like the above don't add anything to anything.

The argument invalid part was to people getting better. Aka, people not putting in the time, because not everyone has the time. I play games to have fun, if I'm not having fun, I don't play the game. Currently I do not find Starbound fun for about the first 5 hours, because it is horribly unbalanced.

Anndd before the whole "well you just want easy mode" stuff comes around, as I have pointed out, I enjoy challenging games. I adore Risk of Rain on hardest difficulty and that stomps on your face with heels.

If I were to have my way, there would be easy, medium and hard. But, my issue isn't with that the game is hard, as I've pointed out, I enjoy hardness (HUEHUEHUE), my issue is that it's superficial. A truly hard game is hard because it relies on the player to be skilled at it. Starbound in its current form doesn't, it just has various mechanics that no amount of 'skill' (a term which I hate with a passion) can make you much better at, and they make progressing harder/impossible to the point of frustration. Like the birds, they agro in flocks, and you can get 1-2 hit very fast on starter planets. There is no way to deal with that early on, especially if you don't get the chance to make a bow. That isn't challenge, that's just unfair gameplay.

 

The good news is if you die in the beginning you don't really lose anything.

 

I think half the people responding that the OP needs to "Learn to Play" don't realize that they just FIXED all the bugs with OP weapons and such. I think they did something to the ore spawns too because they really are quite a bit rarer I find gold like I used to find copper but can't do shit with it because I can't find enough copper. =[

Patch notes:

 

I am aware. Im also aware the t1 guns i have found are absolutely unusable yet the first melee weapon i found is is truley epic and has a ranged attack for no energy. Also the ranged attack does 8x the damage of my guns. Needs balancing majorly or guns are going to be worthless.

OT i know

 

Mingnon, not trying to belittle your point of view of make fun of you in anyway, but that sounds AWESOME! I am getting a familiar feeling in my head not unlike that thrill of dying in Dwarf Fortress. Seriously, I agree tat the birds may need a little nerfing and the monsters a buffing, but that is AWESOME. TWO elites??? Incredible! Starbound just got so much more !!FUN!!

Agreed. It's hilarious and ridiculous, honestly. You've got pink flying bananas with wings spitting red blood that kills you instantly. While the bigger creatures take four to five hits to rip you apart. I think that npcs also should have a stronger attack. They're wielding the same weapons you are, right? So they should at least be as strong as you, if not stronger.

Amen, brother. Also, death to heathens.

Shit, we've got a cult following....

 

Starbound is now the Dwarf Fortress of voxel casual sandboxes.

 

Yeah balance is fucked right now... they just rebuilt the difficulty scaling, damage and armor systems. They broke a few things in the process. There's a fix on the forums for the Super-Mega-Death-Birds.

 

Super-Mega-Death-Birds: Thanks for the name of my new death metal band!

 

I've been noticing that monsters hit crazy hard initially. My first world consisted of purple giant ants with the Bloody Vomit ability, who could hit anywhere from 70-100 damage on starting armor. Then there's what I call "death bats" which are small Zubat-esque fliers that spit streams of bubbles (50-70 damage) or streams of lightning (70-90) damage and are impossible to shake off. There's also Acid Toucans, which are also fliers and have Acid Spray for 60 damage and Acid Spit for two shots of 40, and enjoy attacking in flocks. Finally, there's the Frostfire Butterflies - fliers armed with Fire Spray for 50+ damage & burn, and Ice Spray that I've luckily never been hit by and don't want to.

What should be readily apparent here is that my first world was chock-full of critters that could easily kill me in 3 attacks or less, many of them able to two-shot me, and a couple could outright instant-kill me. Most of these enemies take at least 4 hits with iron weapons to kill. It was basically a matter of luck as to whether I'd survive any given fight.

Had a friend of mine who's further along not helped me out with some silver armor, chances are I'd have never gotten anywhere.

 

Atleast they don't destroy your homes like creepers! I built a tree-house so all i have to worry about are flying monsters.