This game is just too f***ing hard

Terraria is definately not easy to learn unless you have already played a game like it, there's no direction at all. I'm personally not finding starbound the slightest bit difficult. It honestly puzzles me why people are

 

The core gameplay of Starbound and Terraria is quite the same. People who play both games will always compare Starbound to Terraria.
In addition, Terraria is also a challange. Even if you know everything about the game, the hard mode bosses are still really difficult. Even normal enemies can easily overwhelm you if you don't pay attention. But it has a very good progression and feeling. Every upgrade help you to survive and you can feel that. A slime dealing 15 damage with no armor can be dangerous because you can't heal up as fast as in Starbound. Wearing full copper armor, that slime will only do 12 damage. Instead of dying after 7 hits, you can take 8 and still be alive.
That is satisfying. You "worked" for your armor, you can feel the difference.

As i wrote earlier, the armor in Starbound doesn't seem to work. An enemy who kills me with 4 hits with no armor also kills me with 4 hits with copper armor. In addition, i need about 10 shots with a wood bow or 4 hits with my sword to kill an enemy, but once i got the -first- upgrade (iron bow, 2 handed sword with 5 amor penetration) i oneshot most of them. That doesn't feel good.

Yeah, right. Terraria does not have a tutorial. But at least you can give any materials to the guide and look what you can craft with them.
But i didn't mention Terraria because of the player guidance. I did mention it because of the difficulty curve. The first Slimes are only dangerous if you don't pay attention to the game at all. The more you explore, the stronger the enemies become. You don't need much money until late game, so dying is not as frustrating as in Starbound in the first few hours. Also, you can recover the money you lost.

But the most important difference is the healing. You regenerate health over time in Terraria, but you can use a healing pot only every 60 seconds. That's why even a slime can be dangerous. You die if you get hit 7-8 times, but you can't run away, heal up to full in a few seconds and fight again with full health.
Starbound is too hard at the beginning when you don't have any bandages (or even don't know about them) and only the starter weapons, once you got bandages and new weapons (iron bow, the craftable weapon), it is way too easy - until you change the planet and you can't oneshot things anymore befor they oneshot you.

Do you mean they are too weak or too good? Because i found a legendary weapon (3 armor pen, 0.8 swing speed, 39 damage), but i don't use it. With my crafted sword (5 armor pen, 1.92 swing speed, 28 damage), i can one hit any enemy. I can't do that with the legendary weapon, so it feels useless, even with the ranged attack it provides (throwing bones).

tl;dr:
Don't make the game easier per se. Healing and armor penetration are way too overpowered als well as the enemy damage. Give Bangades a cooldown, reduce the damage dealt by enemis (but fix the armor bug at first) and reduce the effectiveness of armor penetration (weapons with 5 armor penetration and the same base damage deal as 3-4 times the damage of weapons with 1 armor penetration).
That should make the game much more balanced, accessible and fun without making it easier.

 

I have created a very official graph of Starbound's difficulty.

 

This about sums things up.

Thank god it's like the first week of beta, so you can bet your sweet asses the game will have some major improvements (gameplay, balance, etc.) by the next stage.

On a side note, I hope they increase material spawn on planets... I am running out of trees to chop.

 

I'm seeing a lot of threads on the forum that discuss the game's difficulty, scaling, etc. After playing for a few hours and experiencing the starter planet for myself, I've made my own opinions of the game's difficulty at the time of this writing.

COMBAT: The game's starting combat difficulty is fine. Yes, I do mean starter planet mobs. From what I had read before playing, I went into the game expecting to be completely destroyed. That turned out to not be the case. The starter sword grants more than enough knockback to keep melee mobs at bay indefinitely. Once I got the bow, taking careful aim and kiting served me very well. Timing jumps and ducking to avoid the mob leaps kept me alive and reduced the number of deaths I experienced significantly.

I can safely say that every death I've had in the game thus far has been 100% avoidable and due to my own error.

RESOURCE HARVESTING: Early resource acquisition does feel a bit too tedious, especially with the Matter Manipulator. I believe that adjusting the time it takes to mine through materials like cobblestone could be reduced slightly in order to make the game a bit less time-consuming. I'm perfectly fine with ores being hard to mine by early tools, however.

TUTORIAL: The tutorial is a step in the right direction but it is equal parts misleading and vague, making a player potentially new to Terraria-style games completely clueless to the core mechanics of the game. I think the tutorial should at least mention temperature; perhaps as a quest introducing the campfire.

OVERALL: The game is suitably challenging at early levels without being impossible and it rewards clever thinking, positioning and mobility over face-tanking like in Terraria. While the tutorial could be improved and fleshed out a bit to better introduce the game's core mechanics for players unfamiliar with the game, it's a good start. Mundane resource harvesting (cobblestone, wood, etc.) is more tedious than it needs to be and harvest time with the Matter Manipulator could be improved a bit to make the early game more productive for time spent.

I'm impressed with the game's depth and hope that the difficulty will continue to provide a meaningful challenge as I progress through the game's tiered planets.

 

I feel the opposite. It's way to easy and way to exploitable right now.
There is no need for health regen when you can carry a bed and fire pit to camp. I actually like this, and it has me a lot more immersed in the world(s) when I occasionally have to set up camp. The AI right now is terrible. I took out a whole building full of threat level 6 Apexs just by sitting behind a door and slashing through it. The knockback on weapons is way to strong, makes it impossible to get hit if you time your swings right. There are far to many ways to exploit your way through as well. You can box enemies in small grass boxes and just kill them without fear of dying. The only issue I've had is drops and finding ore. Everything seems to either drop a shield or 2h weapon with the worst stats. Both legendary weapons I've encountered weren't even close to being as good as the iron weapons you can make early on. And silver seems to be incredibly rare or I'm just terrible at finding it.

 

Dungeons give ridiculous amount of pixels. Just go to another planet once you upgrade to some iron weapon, and the game becomes fine.

 

For those who are in the dark, armor does not stack up in the beta. Hopefully this will get patched soon.

 

Armor is working as intended. The armor value is the average (mean) of the three pieces you have equipped.

 

Only brick wall I've met so far is the Boss. He can't really kill me, but even with the strongest weapon I have found or forged, there is absolutely no way for me to destroy it before it just leaves.
Everything else is grueling, but otherwise quite doable once you figure it out.

 

No need to be mad, it will probably be fixed!

 

The first Boss is rly fun tbh! i landed on a new snow planet (difficulty 6). While i was jumping from spot to spot with my camp fire i randomly ran into an anchor with a Long chain into the air. I build ala Minecraftstyle a wall into the space and found out the anchor is attached to a big airship city like place. . There were like 20 Npc with guns on it and luckily one vendor too who was selling me a sniper rifle (50 dmg 0,7 AS for 1000 Pixels). There i saw my Chance to kill the lil penguin. I built my self some sort of watchtower with a campfire in it and spawned the Boss. My bird friends stormed out to kill the Mobs and tanks while i was aiming for the UFO. All in all it was a real great experience you just Need some luck and smart Plays.

 

I have no luck, just skill.
Guess I'm shit outta luck huh?

 

Keep searching man! i think the game (in this current state) is much more enjoyable if you dont try to rush through the tiers like i wanted to do in the beginning. After this random Encounter i understood that the game is not about progression its about exploring new places... From now i Keep myself far away from all the wikis or how to find this and that informations cause its ruins the idea of the game....

This is an oldschool game. So maybe it helps to pretend that there is no Internet when you Play that game. What would you have done after searching 3 planets with no luck in loot. Stop Playing? Hell No! you would have searched another 3 planets only to kill that Boss on your own. without a tactic guide or YouTube streamguide how to, lets Play ^^

 

"Oldschool" games are known for being unfair and unbalanced.
The good type of difficulty is that found in games such as Super Meat Boy.
You die a lot, but it's YOUR fault, and you don't feel cheated.

 

If you die in Starbound it is your fault.

 

But it's NOT your fault if you cannot find the "magic ticket" weapon that kills the boss.

 

Keep searching for better loot! as i said there is a gun vendor on this Tier with good Equipment for the guy.

 

I haven't faced the sector boss yet, myself, so I can't say anything about the boss. However, from what I've read I can clearly tell many players have no desire or patience to build up their strength before trying to face new challenges.

 

Heh. I can understand why you'd think that then.
The game is perfectly fine* up until the boss.

*not really, but in terms of difficulty, it works alright.