Upbeat Giraffe

That is because it's made at the anvil (and ONLY the anvil. Later versions will not create a hoe - or copper to silver pickaxes). Took me some puzzling to find that out.

 

Totally. It shouldnt exist.

 

yep, think I can agree to everything in this

++to bringing hunger back, temperature too

 

The only thing I don't agree is bringing hunger back as a mandatory mechanic. The issue with making mechanics meaningful by making them mandatory is that it will make the game less fun for those that don't want to deal with them.

Now, it could be brought back as a character or, even better, server setting. That would allow it to be meaningful for those that enjoyed the mechanic while not hindering the experience of those that don't like it.

 

That depends on the balance of the mechanic.

 

I actually disagree about perfect block. Preventing shield breakage is a big deal especially when you're not wearing the latest tier of melee armor or are fighting any of the bosses. Why are you passively holding your shield up anyway? You can attack while you're blocking! So if you perfectly perfect block you can't be killed *and* you still have offensive options... that's super powerful, it doesn't need any more buffs!

Parry with 2h swords, on the other hand, is less ridiculous and actually feels kind of clunky due to the length of the parry combined with the CD and being unable to attack. Maybe they could make it so that you held the button to maintain the parry, allowing you to release it early to unleash your own attack if you see an opening. I think that's better than the options you listed.

Still, there's still plenty of room for improvement on combat, I just don't think that perfect shield/parry are the major problems. The most important problem is probably the armor mechanics that are wrecking havoc with weapon balance at the moment. Even aside from the armor balance issue axes/hammers feel kind of naked (they do a lot of damage but not much else, perhaps hammers in particular could do less damage but get knockback again?) and daggers are pretty much useless. More interesting monster AI/difficulty would be nice too although it's harder to do.

 

This is actually my point though -- most of the time, I don't have any reason to seek a perfect block. Because I can attack while blocking and continuously (passively) hold my shield up during combat. Sure, preventing shield break during a major fight is a concern, but so might be gaining back some health or giving yourself breathing room for options.

This isn't about balance right now. Balance comes later. Elaboration and improvement over the current system is the feedback.

 

I don't think there is a single balance that can please both those that absolutely don't want to farm and those that want farming to be meaningful.

It's kinda like balancing the player economy in MMOs. If the devs make it important enough for the players that like that aspect of the game to enjoy, I will stop playing due to wasting too much time with an economic element I not only don't care about, but also find it to be something between boring and frustrating.

The advantage this game has over a MMO is that it can allow players to be under different rules. Hence why I think hunger, if it's brought back, should be an optional rule.

 

Monsters: Hooo yeah, I definitely feel you there. The most honest interest I take in monsters is scouting out what small ones would make for interesting companions once I get my grubby little mitts on some Capture Pods. Beyond that? I either only go after them when I need pixels, but even then that's mitigated by the existence of the refinery and I don't even need to take them out myself anymore now that I have some wall-mounted turrets attached to the side of my house. All I have to do is wait a minute or two and odds are good I've got on the order of a few dozen pixel drops to pick up, although I've seen birds drop things like Platinum Pickaxes and Platinum Ore of all things when killed by a turret. Though I'm counting those drops as flukes. The only reliable monster drops are pixels, meat (which the lack of a hunger system completely negates the point of), and Hardened Monster Plates/Cell Materia (which are useful for crafting two or three tier three armor parts in total.) All the rest work just fine getting tossed into a turret grinder, getting slaughtered by the dozens offscreen by top tier turrets.

Heck, even minibosses fall under this since the vast majority of the time they don't even drop good loot. Remember when Starbound beta first came out and the minibosses were dropping legendary weapons? That alone made the risk worth it because you were getting something good out of the deal, and because of early progression all that changed was what kind of good loot you got. High threat levels swapped those melee weapons out for guns. Plus, don't forget that even though we DO have unique monsters, they're generally out of the way and not often worth the trouble. Anything out of the sewer dungeon is a good example, as are the mechs in the UNSC bases.

Combat: This is just painful right now. If you want to go in melee, you either have to have techs to help you evade, know the timing of enemy blows, or just tank through their blows if they're bosses. Or sword and board them, since that's the 'cool' way to do it apparently. I have to bring up older builds of Starbound again, specifically ones that still had the knockback mechanic. Yeah, getting knocked around was annoying, but being able to do the same to enemies was the entire point of going in with gigantic, hard-hitting two-handed weapons. Your damage was only about average (especially after you factored in dual-wielding one-handed weapons) but you had an easy time getting enemies away from you too. Dual-wielding was risky, but you could at the same time lock down enemies and shove them up against a corner with a little skill and then finish them off from there. Guns had a real point because not only was the energy mechanic actually less restricting than it is now, they had knockback to slow down enemy approach and buy them more time. Taking that away and basically nerfing guns with a terrible regen mechanic means that the SnS playstyle feels like it's the favored playstyle.

True, two-handed swords can block too, but axes, hammers, and spears? Nope, those are all hosed. Especially axes, which tend to not have as much reach as the other two-handers. I'm fine with SnS getting fine-tuned, but I would love to see options for other playstyles. Knockback, stun, slow, something for the non-blocking two-handers to give them something to work with that aren't half-useful status effects. One-handed swords and daggers in the dual-wield configuration are only really viable with the shock modifier to give them a range bonus and a little extra damage, so why not give them something to debilitate the enemy? Maybe carve the enemy armor up for a bit so they take more damage. Guns? How about the energy system gets something that isn't junk to work with and maybe pulse jump and energy dash for free and maybe it'll balance out with melee. Staves? They just feel too awkward outside of the Orbs.

I wanted to cover more points, but I just lost my train of thought.

 

But there IS a balance that can please both. I even provided it in my feedback, literally addressing your concern lol.

 

I don't like it, and i even make farms.

 

Yyyyyyyyyeah. The first thing I'm gonna do when I find my ideal setup is rebuild the greenhouse to farm foods... and I'll be totally happy to play a game sans hunger mechanic.

 

There's no point putting down a plausible idea without attempting it first. We are still in a testing phase after all. Experiment! Play with something until it works! Izzabelle's idea could work, with a few additional tweaks in my opinion. I myself want hunger to return as the buff system's pretty redundant with stimpacks and other stat boosting/healing items present. Give me my survival elements again! Depending on how its brought back, it could be less of a hindrance than it was before its removal, in my opinion.

 

As you phrased it your complaint sounds like a balance complaint: "I have no reason to perfect block, I can get by just with normal blocking". You then say perfect blocking should be more rewarding, which implies you want it buffed in some way so that you actually do it. You then make suggestions that obviously buff it. If your complaint wasn't balance, but conceptual you could have said something like "combat is too simple" or "we need more mechanics to open up more depth, I think shielding is a good place to do this". But that's not how you structured your argument, you structured your argument as a balance discussion.

Aside from that I think it's unwise to ignore balance while trying to think up conceptual additions especially when you're basing it off of playtest experience. Maybe perfect shielding only feels crappy and incomplete because normal shielding is too strong right now. Maybe it's the combination of melee armor + normal shielding that's too strong... did you try it in mage armor and still feel like your experience was lacking? Conceptually how would your experience be different if you couldn't shield and attack at the same time? Do we really need to tack extra features onto perfect block in particular to address that? Shouldn't blocking *without* perfect blocking still encourage a more "active" style of gameplay than the current mode?

Balance hardly has to be great at this stage of the game but you can never entirely avoid it.

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As far as hunger goes, I'm very happy without it. Food just needs more different kinds of buffs and longer lasting effects, that's all the reason I need to farm.

 

You misinterpreted then, as I have already provided the reasoning.

 

Few things irk me more than spending an hour trying to understand someone and engage them over the internet only to have them respond to my effort with a one sentence quote with a one sentence answer. How am I supposed to engage that? Did you read the rest of my post? Did you start but find it irrelevant? Or did you read and understand everything and consider everything else I said a good point? There was plenty in there that stands on its own without the part you quoted.

I have a feeling this is going nowhere though so I guess I'm just going to leave.

 

Sorry to be curt -- I just find discussion based on misinterpretations are tangents that lead to off-topic posts. To be blunt; I won't engage in a balance discussion, because that is not what my thread is about -- to an extent.

 

So far I'm pretty happy with the way the game has played out. I agree with most of the Izzabelle's suggestions.

I definitely agree about bringing things to life. It would be great to find people who'll give quests not just at the outpost but also when exploring. Also the recurring creatures/villains would be awesome.

Another small tweak would be to allow ship upgrades without doing all of the quests. In my opinion, quests should be more about unlocking special crafting recipes and occasionally getting vanity items. This could make the game feel much less linear.

 

I agree with a lot of these points in OP(was good pacing and presentation too!), and so far 2-3 major things have really sprung at me as needing changed/tweaked asap after playing through again.

1)Any melee weapon without block/parry is completely inferior. I cannot stress with one enough. I love 2hand axes and hammers, and have used them all game. But should a hard enemy or boss come about? Sword and Board. I mean, I HAVE to, it's too good and it feels like the only way to not eat hits as a melee. You can literally sit behind a shield, no need for perfect guard(though its not really hard to perfect guard either.)

2)Hunger/temperature needs re-instated as a mechanic. This one I'm seeing a lot of different opinions on, but I can personally say to me it feels like wasted potential. Tweaking the mechanic imo is a good idea, but it needs to be in there. Temperature wasn't a big deal, but it was a really unique touch. They've spent so much time adding so many cool new foods to the game, but there's no reason to ever cook. It's not long at all before you can one-shot your current tiers monsters, absorb any hazardous lava or tiles, and feel bored due to being a demigod who can't die. P.S. I wanna chug a cup of coffee and get a green stimpack effect also LOL

3)The planets have either gotta be randomized again, or else we need to add more variety to the types. Hardest tier is on molten lava planets with evil critters? Sweet....the first time I run it. Then I run it and only it over and over, until I'm loaded with lava and gravel. We're gonna be needing a TON of variety to spice up those planets, or else we're looking at the most bland endgame a sandbox has ever known. Placing different biomes to certain difficulties was a cool idea, but....at best it's getting to run a biome once or twice before never seeing that tiers biomes again, and at worst it's never getting to see half the content as you head(quite easily) straight for the volcanoes.

Just my 2 cents worth lol

 

I updated the Navigation section of my feedback.