Starbound [Winter Update!]

 QUOTE 案山子

I'm having major complaints with the game's difficulty. It's complete ass right now.

There is literally 0 feeling or progression in the game so far because there is no such thing as "working your way up". You're either pathetically underpowered or absurdly overpowered. No middle ground whatsoever. You literally either 1~2hit KO enemies, or they 1~2hit KO you. No. Middle. Ground. Just for reference I've been to many planets so far, and gained access and am currently in Beta Sector planets. Nothing changes.

There's also no feeling of reward so far. Anything you encounter on a planet is 100% RNG, so you can waste time and resources going to one that has nothing on it but standard things such as trees, dirt, etc. I don't even want to think about how many times I reach a planet with a single dungeon or what-have-you and there's not even a chest in it. And even when there's loot from enemies that beats my current gear I don't feel reward because of the previously mentioned "difficulty". I get a new weapon then I simply 1hit all monsters on the planet, always. Hard to feel great when I've just obtained "god-mode". I remeber when I found a Legendary Lv5 2H, but it became 100% useless once I got to Lv7 and the new "Crappy and Sloppy" items were 1hitting all the mobs and Legendary Lv5 wasn't.

Ore is far too rare, going back to the 100% RNG nonsense. Gold ore and beyond may as well not even exist.

The game has virtually no content underground. The few caverns found on planets will give you SOME ore at most (Some as in things you need, not ore you've outgrown several tiers ago), and maybe a single chest if Starbound gods love you long time. There's not even any music underground which makes things pretty boring along with the fact that most materials take FOREVER to mine through, even using higher tier pickaxes. Your pick mines in a 3x3 grid but mines that 3x3 grid at least 10x slower than in Minecraft or Terraria. The time it takes you to mine out some of the really common materials even with a Gold pickaxe is pretty sad and takes so long that if I was playing Terraria I'd have mined out a giant hole in the earth. The 3x3 is fast when it's fast, but ragequit-worthy when it's slow. One extreme or the other, kind of like the combat/difficulty.

And yes, it's beta, but at the moment it's not very fun. I can SEE the potential, but it's VERY blurry at the moment. I'd love to see how things are once you're guaranteed at least 1 interesting thing per planet.

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Also, the UFO boss is a threat level 10 boss. Don't bother with it until you've gotten to threat level 8~10 yourself if you actually want to beat it properly without extra cheese.

I pretty much agree with every point you made. These are the exact issues and problems I have with the beta/game thus far. Earlier today I found yet another dungeon and thus far, out of all the dungeons I've done, none had an actual reward or chest. It's sort of aggravating.

In Terraria, as soon as I'd get my initial house set-up, I'd instantly start looking for caves to start spelunking and mining down into, as you went deeper and deeper, you found better/bigger veins of ores and things like mini-dungeons, hidden chests or items, etc. Here in Starbound, I honestly get no fun out of going into caves or digging for ores. Last night, I traversed through a cave system for about an hour and aside from finding small amounts of the same ores over and over, the only difference was a change in biomes and enemies. There was no reason to explore.

Today I've traveled to about 4 different planets, as usually I just go there, see if there's anything worth looting/exploring on the surface, grab some veins of ore and other materials from the surface and then leave to find another planet.

One of the things from Terraria that I also liked, was that every enemy had a chance to drop their own cool/rare items. There doesn't seem to be any kind of drop table for regular enemies on planets, at least, at this point. You either get pixels or meat, that's it. And the enemies who do drop items, just tend to drop repeats, "Oh, look, it's the exact same looking sword, except a little stronger, yay." I realize that their enemy system is built on random generation, but surely there is someway they can implement a strong loot mechanic to rival Terraria's.

Anyways, just wanted to add my two cents in.