i have been playing the winter update and even with the best armor available at my current tier, there are still a ridiculous number of cheap instant kills, prior to the revamped progression system it was poorly balanced spam damage such as the afterburn from dragon breath that did more damage than the breath itself in particular is that quest where you have to go fight that one penguin mech, which asks you to go out and make the best armor at that point before you go fight it, and when you do, most of it's attacks will still instantly kill you from full health even with that armor, shields are useless and break instantly unless your timing is absolutely perfect 100% of the time, it spams missiles that you have to shoot out of the air that follow you indefinitely, it moves WAY too fast around the arena and can instakill you with a dash punch faster than most people can respond without a block bot script not everyone has a bunch of friends who owns the game they can call on to spam an enemy dead, and if i wanted to deal with an enemy with BS movement and cheap attacks that make your heard earned armor pointless with zero margin for error, i'd play dark souls there are also a large number of commonplace enemies that can do the same, especially if you have to go mining on a new planet to get the new tech tier, a huge number of enemies will smack you to a tiny sliver of health in a single hit. what happened to the idea of "slower, more tactical and contemplative combat"? being instakilled from the far end of the room, and methods of blocking damage being rendered null doesn't leave much option other than cheese every fight from doorways, cracks in the wall and raised platforms out of enemy reach. i thought we were done with that sort of headache once the planet levels were revamped i know you intend to rebalance armor for attacks of different speeds, but how about toning down the frequency of instant kill boss moves, or at the very least make it so an imperfect block doesn't result in your shield being instantly smashed and THEN be instakilled. these enemies have WAAAY too much health for the amount of damage they do to you and how little leeway you're given when fighting them disabling the death penalty on such missions would be a HUGE step in making them less one-sided, so i don't lose 30,000+ pixels to BS instant kill dash attacks without warning
Instakilled? I can't say that's ever happened to me in unstable, short of falling off of the world. Definitely never happened from regular planet mobs/mini bosses either. Also, pixel compressor. For all of those mostly worthless pixels. While armor/weapon balance is far from perfect, it isn't that bad if you are on tier. Unfortunate to say, it sounds like user error.
Actually i didn't experience instakills either but i have to agree with that the boss and the overall damage / defence system needs a lot of tuning. Sometimes i experience some unfair behaviour of some mobs and bosses but it is not that major. I think the main problem here is that most of the combat features like the defence properties of some armours and the damage output and overlay of different weapons are cloudy. Currently it's hard to relate to a certain combatstyle because there isn't such a clear way between certain weapon types which would make you understand what kind of advantages and disatvantages you would get and which advantage you would more relate to. For example most of the melee weapons in the game right now are ALL THE SAME. The only valuable mechanics are their hit/sec nature whether it will do a huge blow with high charge time or do lots of weaker blows in a short duration and their aoe like in the case of a spear it's a line or in a case of a lonsword it's aoe is all from the characters head to the ground. However this hit/sec nature of the weapons is spread all over in such an unclear fashion that you simply can't be happy with one type of weapon you found and can't have your own playstyle for long time because you might found a spear with a lower hit/sec nature you like but as you progress and get to higher tiers the spear you would find there may have a completely different hit/sec nature you may don't like but forced to stick with. I don't understand why is this has to be the way it is right now. Why can't every melee weapon types have a fixed hit /sec nature and only differentiate in hit damage. Also why is knockback removed? Knockback is an awesome combat mechanic which could be related to heavier weapons and a really nice utility mechanic. The other combat elements which have unclear overlay are the ranged weapons the guns and the staffs. If you think about it the logical thing is that melee weapons require the wielder to move close to the target which will most likely end up with the wielder taking damage. In this case to balance out the difference between a ranged weapon user and a melee weapon user the melee weapon user should be provided with either higher BURST dps and higher mobility ( where the mobility factor is missing from the game ) OR higher sustain and lower mobility ( where the sustain part only comes up when the highest tier of armours divide into 3 sub tiers where the armour for melee wielders actually have a higher defence multiplier but still totally unbalanced ). ((( This division should start at the beginning tier and clear out the way how a player should set up his/her gear to match his/her combat style and provide the necessary stats he/she should have for specific setups. I will show some example of these setups or builds later. ))) As from the range weapon wielder's view it would be either high mobility with sustained dps and low sustain or low mobility with burst dps and higher sustain. In this wide scale of weapons it would be really necessary to understand what builds you can come up with and what logical nature these build should have in order to maintain balance and have different playstyles presented for the player which he/she can choose from and understand what advantages and disadvantages these style might have. At this current state of the game to achieve this it would require first of all more combat mechanics to be addad like the knockback and mobility and many many many armour stat changes and weapon nature tweaks. I thought i would share what ideas i have in mind for these different builds which may not even be balanced but could be a good overall example how they should set up. The point is to find the balance between the DAMAGE the DEFENSE and the UTILITY these certain sets provide. I will include mechanics which are not currently in the game but in time they SHOULD be. I will try to set up these sets from weapons which are currently in the game. Melee wielders : Two handed weapons : -> Broadswords -> BURST DAMAGE BIG AOE / HIGHER SUSTAIN / MEDIUM MOBILITY / LOW KNOCKBACK / -> Hammers -> BURST DAMAGE BIG AOE/ MEDIUM SUSTAIN / LOWER MOBILITY / HIGH KNOCKBACK -> Axes -> BURST DAMAGE BIG AOE / LOWER SUSTAIN / HIGHER MOBILITY / MEDIUM KNOCKBACK -> Spears -> BURST DAMAGE LONG AOE / LOWER SUSTAIN / HIGHER MOBILITY / LOW KNOCKBACKS These classes should be about charged big AOE burst blows with heavy knockbacks and heavy armours but singificantly lower overall mobility. One handed weapons : -> Daggers -> SUSTAINED DAMAGE SMALL AOE / LOW SUSTAIN / HIGH MOBILITY -> Shorstwords -> SUSTAINED DAMAGE MEDIUM AOE / LOW SUSTAIN / MEDIUM MOBILITY -> Shields -> LESS DAMAGE / HIGHER SUSTAIN / LOWER MOBILITY -> also just as an idea with shield equppied you could use it to do a little knockback with it in occasions during fight. These classes can be assasin like dual wielders with more burst like damage but less sustain or tanks with shields to suck up the damage but with lower dps and mobility. The upper hand compared to the two handed weapons is that the other hand is free. Ranged wielders : Two handed weapons : -> Assault Rifles -> SUSTAINED DAMAGE / MEDIUM SUSTAIN / MEDIUM MOBILITY / MEDIUM ACCURACY / MEDIUM RANGE -> Sniper Rifles -> BURST DAMAGE / LOW SUSTAIN / LOW MOBILITY / HIGH ACCURACY / LONG RANGE -> Shotguns -> BURST DAMAGE / MEDIUM SUSTAIN / MEDIUM MOBILITY / LOW ACCURACY / SHORT RANGE -> Bows -> SUSTAINED DAMAGE / LOW SUSTAIN / HIGH MOBILITY / MEDIUM ACCURACY / LONG RANGE -> Rocket Launchers -> BURST DAMAGE BIG AOE / MEDIUM SUSTAIN / LOW MOBILITY / MEDIUM ACCURACY / MEDIUM RANGE -> Flamthrowers -> SUSTAINED DAMAGE / HIGH SUSTAIN / LOW MOBILITY / MEDIUM ACCURACY / SHORT RANGE Ranged weapons wielders compared to melee weapons should have a more sustained damage nature and should give less mobility and sustain. One handed weapons : -> Pistols -> BURST DAMAGE / LOW SUSTAIN / HIGH MOBILITY / MEDIUM ACCURACY / SHORT RANGE -> Machine Pistols -> SUSTAINED DAMAGE / LOW SUSTAIN / HIGH MOBILITY / LOW ACCURACY / SHORT RANGE -> Granade Lanuchers -> BURST SMALL AOE DAMAGE / LOW SUSTAIN / HIGH MOBILITY / LOW ACCURACY / SHORT RANGE This can be mixed wit melee weapons to create interesting high dps classes with many different variations. Their overall strength is either their high dps and high mobility or their enchanced sustain. Again the other hand is free. It would be really nice to see these mechanics unfold in the game like the knockback the mobility the accuracy and range. These mechanics could balance out the differences between certain weapon types and how they feel and clear out that how can you utilize different aspects of theirs and create your own combat style or styles. Currently combat in the game lacks from clear advantages from clear styles and obvious balances. Most weapons feel the same sometimes provide less or more than the other. It would be nice to see the monsterts combat to change as well to have more diverse and dynamic attacks which would nicely point out what advantages you can use of your combat style againts them and what disadvantages of your's you need to care for. Many many changes expected on this field and hopefully those changes will come.
no, seriously, that 1 dash punch from the penguin mech when wearing the armor the quest REQUIRES YOU TO MAKE before you go fight it results in an instant kill, regular punches other than that overly fast rushing dash leave you at a tiny sliver of health, and the same goes for attempts at blocking with an on tier shield unless your timing is absolutely perfect. when you have durasteel armor and need to go to a planet to mine violium/rubium/aegisalt, the larger enemies(read: NOT mini-bosses) come VERY close to one-shotting you, which is not good when it's mandatory to go there to begin with i shouldn't be forced to completely throw away half my pixels on super lossy compression just because the fight TO PROGRESS THE GAME has crap damage balance. save that nonsense for optional sidequests
