What difficulty do you play on, and why? (Poll)

I've seen people making complaints about the difficulty of Starbound, saying it's too easy or too hard, so I wanted to find out what difficulty setting people are playing on.

I know the different difficulties really only change what happen when you die, but I would definitely say that playing on casual and playing on normal are two rather different experiences. In casual, death doesn't really mean anything as all you lose are pixels, and they're so abundant it hardly matters, but in normal there's the threat of losing all your had earned ore which changes how one might go about on their spelunking adventures.

 

Until hunger is reinstated in higher dificulties I find no reason to play in anything but casual

 

I used to play on hardcore, but now I always play on casual. The game is just not in a state where it is actually rewarding enough to play on higher difficulties. Losing items in general is annoying, but losing your items due to some bug is extra-annoying!

 

I am playing on casual till they put in hunger to normal. Then I would play normal. As it is there really is no reason for me to play the higher game modes. I never play permadeath when that is an option. I just see no point in it for myself. I am ok with ore drops, but that is the only difference so far, and not enough to get me to play normal.

 

That is assuming they actually do put hunger on normal. They've never actually said they will xD

That being said I play on casual. Once they get things balanced and the content finished up I'll switch to hardcore but for testing purposes (which contrary to people's opinion is actually what early access is for...) casual is all that's needed.

 

"Urgh...casuals...."

Seriously, tho, games like these can be just very relaxing, so that's why i play pretty much on casual only.
I can still make a new char and ramp up the difficulty at any time, if i'm in for some manly tears of frustration.

 

I try to play on Normal sometimes, but then I remember that things like meteor showers and Shockhopper exist, so I use Casual instead simply because I don't want to have to grind a full set of armor again every time I die.

If I wanted that level of tedious, I'd watch paint dry. While on fire. Upside-down. Tied to a woodchipper.

 

Something writen by TIY mentions at a later point. So it will be back, but how they go about it is another matter. I am going by what was mentioned by the company.

 

You seem to be confusing the difficulty of the game with the "difficulty" in character creation. In its state the game will continue to be easy no matter what difficulty you play. They could just instead put a question in the game "How much time do you want to waste when you die?"
1. Little 2. Plenty 3. All of it
Seriously though, I don't even know who came up with the idea of permanent death in a sandbox infinite game. It could make sense for challenge if it was a linear X hours playthrough start to end game. But that's not what Starbound or even Terraria is about.

In a hard game you're supposed to die. Dying gives you experience to not die anymore. I only really die in Starbound when I fall in dark holes with monsters I can't see and whatnot.

 

My appologies, I was mistaken. I hadn't seen that piece. Good to know they're planning to bring it back.

 

What do you have against casuals? They are gamers too.

I play on casual because I just want to play for fun, i'm not looking for bragging rights.
Apologies if I sound rude.

 

yeah it was brought to the attention to people in another thread. that is where I first even noticed, since I don't usually go to reddit. not sure how to spell that one. So it was good to know an overview, and glad to see it myself.

 

I die plenty enough that I don't want the game to suddenly get harder every time I do.
Also, permadeath games are THE shit, but permadeath in games like this is just shit.

 

filthy casuls

 

I've never played Terraria in Hardcore cuz due to bugs you could die suddenly, out of nowhere (especially in multiplayer). Never will do this in Starbound too, I guess.

 

Killing gravelord nito felt pretty casual to me.
2 EZ.

 

I play on normal, though I make it a point to store all my ores and metals before going to a mission, so in that regard, its no different than casual.

I also don't go in guns ablazing in most games, unless that's what's needed.


As far as the difficulty in the game. I'd say the missions and bosses are promising, cheese tactics notwithstanding. I think if there were different ai for different kinds of mob behaviors that would help. I don't know how involved that would take, particularly on a world of various environments, but the missions could be a good place to test out varying the AI's tactics past "run up to dude before raising shield, and attack standing in place."

 

I made my Unstable character on Normal and really wish I didn't.

The second planet I've gone to has mobs that spit a Spice Cloud. This single cloud locks up my game so hard (with a fairly good GPU and all-around good PC) that I stand there while they two-shot me. I can't imagine how many hundreds of ores of Copper, Iron, Silver, and Platinum I've lost because the game performance is still bad.

At this point I'm just boxing mobs in with cobblestone to avoid them.

 

I play on normal, in hopes that it will one day regain it's hunger settings.
And so I won't loose my character on death.

Also, I don't think you drop ores in casual anymore. That's just in normal and hardcore.