Mob What Starbound Mobs should have that Terraria doesn't

Discussion in 'NPCs and Creatures' started by Mazeman911, Oct 11, 2013.

  1. Mazeman911

    Mazeman911 2.7182818284590...

    hi everyone, just another space hobo yappin about.

    i was screwing around in Terraria yesterday, and it happened to be nighttime. i see some zombies and the first thought that crosses my mind is 'meh... lemme just throw around my aqua scepter and they'll die'

    then i realized how when your equipment becomes powerful enough to 1-shot zombies and demon eyes, they are not enemies anymore: they are annoyances.

    this pretty much takes out every single feeling of danger and isolation in night time.

    i mean come on, even blood moons aren't that hard to cope with.

    night time is supposed to be a scary, lonely, dark time where you are supposed to stay inside your home, crafting, expanding, experimenting and trading loot. you're supposed to stay inside your small, cosy home and enjoy as the zombies fruitlessly knock onto your door.

    now here's what you're NOT supposed to do:
    rampage around farming allllllll the fallen stars in the world, one-clicking which bashes zombies into pixelated blood, farming demon eyes for lenses, never coming into your home unless you need something from there (not using your home as a shelter, more like using it as a chest) and pretty much rampaging about in the dark.
    ^^^ THIS. IS. NOT. FUN.
    yes, you're glad that you don't have to deal with them anymore, but shouldn't 20 of them running at you at least POSE a threat to you?
    what i'm getting at here is that there should be a monster-leveling system, they level up the better the equipment you have. OR they could have it so that more of them spawn when you have better weapons.
    i think having to strategically think about how you're going to attack the hoard of cats riding mechs is better than just one-click shotting them with your AoE weapon.

    therefore i think that starbound should have some kind of advantage that is given to the monsters as the players get better equipment.
     
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  3. Autzome

    Autzome Black Hole Surfer

    If you have high tier then you are bound to feel this but no worries! Level cap planets will always be hard, no matter what...like. you need friends to help with the first night hard.
     
  4. Clockwork

    Clockwork Master Astronaut

    This is how the game works, monsters get progressively harder the higher tier planet you're on.
     
  5. xalar

    xalar Big Damn Hero

    like he said. but i could see a natural selection get in the game, the more you linger on a planet hunting, the monsters get tougher or more scarce as natural selection weeds out the once who can survive against your onslaught.
     
  6. Mazeman911

    Mazeman911 2.7182818284590...

    this is actually fucking genius.
     
  7. Clockwork

    Clockwork Master Astronaut

    I feel like allowing the extermination of a species is a bad idea.
     
  8. Trowzers

    Trowzers Existential Complex

    Oh I like that idea. I'm pretty sure the monsters in Starbound are far more balanced that in Terraria (where they are definitely 'quantity over quality')
    But boy, natural selection of monsters on a planet to make them hader the more you kill them is an insanely good idea. I wonder how you would implement it though?
     
  9. DeadlyLuvdisc

    DeadlyLuvdisc Oxygen Tank

    That's what Hardmode is for. Even with the best weapons it is difficult to both harvest materials or build AND fight off your attackers during a blood moon or solar eclipse in Hardmode. The only weapon I've ever seen one-shot a Hardmode mob was the Sniper Rifle, and even then only with a lot of items to boost the damage, and it isn't a very rapid weapon.

    Are the battles actually hard in Hardmode? Eh, perhaps not really, but if they make the game too difficult then fewer people will be able to enjoy the game. As it stands with Starbound, each tier is separated into ten levels, so dedicated gamers can play on level 19 worlds (the hardest in tier 2?) and casual gamers can play on level 10 worlds (the easiest in tier 2?). That -should- be enough to solve the problem, coupled with the fact that you won't encounter weak level 6 mobs on a level 97 planet-- you'll only find monsters appropriate for your level.
     
    Squiddy, CalamityQuote and Zair like this.
  10. goodgame

    goodgame Subatomic Cosmonaut

    Starbound mobs will have complete randomization, so I wouldn't worry about running into zombies unvaried except in window-dressing.

    Starbound was fundamentally designed not to be a Terraria clone, but fully original.

    As for a sense of mob progression, it'd be ridiculously easy to just make a randomization table based off of the items that the player has accumulated/owned since the game started.
     
  11. Forb.Jok

    Forb.Jok Big Damn Hero

    I agree. This is one of the main problems with Terraria once you get past the very beginning.
    You start becoming so overpowered that the lesser stuff is a joke. Once you hit endgame 1.2 gear, even the endgame 1.2 stuff (hardmode dungeon) is pretty much a joke, and you can literally stand inside bosses holding the attack button to win.

    I disagree. Monsters should not under any circumstances adapt to the player's gear or "power level". That's an offense against good game design, and would completely undermine the point of upgrading stuff at all.
    This is exactly what ruined Oblivion, and to a lesser degree most of Bethesda's other games post-Morrowind (and including Morrowind's expansions).

    Hopefully the existence of planets of different "danger levels" that the player can choose to take on will server to counteract the fact that you'll start becoming overpowered for the place you're exploring.
    Maybe also employ some sort of consistent "diminished returns" system in order to ensure that you don't easily outgear enemies to the point of them becoming irrelevant. (dealing 1 damage always, dying in one hit, etc)
     
  12. MyLittleBurger

    MyLittleBurger Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    Actually I think the various random pieces of parts the mobs are made out of should have a multitude of random effects from the get go, that way instead of the enemies just having abilities endgame, they already have them from the get go. So for example one wing set for flying enemies will make them fly faster (along with whatever attribute the mobs randomly start out with), or say some leg set for quadruped mobs that allows them to walk on walls and ceilings, maybe even a part that allows for the shooting of multiple or homing projectiles.
     
  13. Mazeman911

    Mazeman911 2.7182818284590...

    Hmm.. yeah the higher tier planets should effectively solve the problem, but still all ears for that natural selection idea; thanks to Xalar :)

    maybe to implement it we could start off like this: on a certain planet certain monsters will spawn, BUT for example if you kill like 50 purple dragons on that planet, you get a formula. with this formula you could craft a virus, then inject the virus into the nearest purple dragon, the virus will infect ONLY purple dragons, the purple dragons will then die off from the virus, therefore wiping them off the planet.

    on the other hand, once the virus kills all the purple dragons, the first purple dragon to have been infected will drop an egg which, when activated, spawn purple dragons, bringing them back into the ecosystem !

    TIY YOU ARE READING THIS RIGHT?!
     
  14. Clockwork

    Clockwork Master Astronaut

    That sounds like the easiest greifing tool I've ever seen.
     
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  15. Forb.Jok

    Forb.Jok Big Damn Hero

    Like every other game that can be used as a building sandbox, I'm sure there will be server-side tools for the purpose of stopping griefing.
    IMO, the developers shouldn't concern themselves with that as far as content goes - just leave it to the people running public building servers to turn off problematic features.
     
  16. DeadlyLuvdisc

    DeadlyLuvdisc Oxygen Tank

    You know what I just realized? Autoturrets.

    Now you can ignore weak enemies = no annoyance.

    Can't really use this as a griefing tool if PvP is turned off, doesn't permanently alter ecosystems, and doesn't require any justifications based on radically misunderstanding how the laws of nature work. Also, the virus idea could be abused to eliminate all of the species on the planet, allowing you to mine and raid dungeons without any danger, which is lame.
     
    Trowzers likes this.
  17. Sirfailalot

    Sirfailalot Void-Bound Voyager

    I really don't want to see this game ruined by scaling mobs. I love being able to be overpowered. Going back once you reach a point of power where you can outright decimate enemies that once posed lethal threat and obliterating their entire species on that planet is just too fun an idea. I'd love to see them eventually start running from you and then going extinct though. >.> Literally let you annihilate them if you pressure them too hard. Harder planets SHOULD deal with the feeling of being OP. :p
     
  18. Autzome

    Autzome Black Hole Surfer

    because not everyone will be in over tier for multiplayer.

    i find that if you put scaling, one party tends to be excluded from the fun in some form! now because they have to fight tier 31 baddies when their just out of the cloning pods, why? because you built a nice little hut there.

    inb4: "Server option"! having it as an option would need crazy amounts of code. it's either in or it's out.
     
  19. DracoHandsome

    DracoHandsome Tentacle Wrangler

    I don't play video games for realism such as natural selection and extinction.

    The concept of enemies becoming stronger as your character does in a game like this is laughable. It's completely counter-intuitive and is what kills games like Elder Scrolls. What is the /point/ of having tiers / levels if /EVERY/ enemy gets stronger as you do? Shouldn't you just put everything in the game at the same power? It'll have exactly the same effect.

    I like to feel like I am actually progressing towards something when I play a game. That's the entire point of a game. Auto-balancing the difficulty completely destroys that experience.
     
    Trowzers likes this.
  20. Sirfailalot

    Sirfailalot Void-Bound Voyager

    I hadn't even considered the multiplayer issues with scaling. That's yet another issue with it >.> At least with higher level planets rather than scaling you can always skimp on your own gear and leave it in storage, go to a low level world and hang with your newbie friends.
     
    Autzome likes this.

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