With today’s recent update increasing the difficulty of the mobs in the environment it has proven hard to get much needed resources for portals or food in general. High tier items needed and plenty of time shooting it. This is understandable I get that you Devs want to make the game have progression. Although with progression we need rewards. When a Tier 1 Goat drops 1 meat that took 10 shots and a Tier 4 Goat drops 1 meat but takes 40 shots that is when it gets hard. It makes no sense for player to work to level up to those harder planets when the reward is the same at the higher expense of your tools. So instead of us all trying to go back to what it was, maybe add more rewards from higher Tiers so a Goat at Tier 4 will drop 6 meat and 2 bones compared to a Tier 1 dropping one meat. This would motivate players to actually want to enter combat with the newly renovated mobs. So instead of that CuttleTrunk that takes 40 hits for one Oortstone maybe due to their higher level and how hard they are to kill it could drop 6 Oortstone 2 Meat 4 Dark Blood. This would greatly balance the fact that these mobs are now harder to kill. Especially Oortstone which is a necessity. The hub owner is currently taking a break even due to how hard it would be to provide for the hub. So unless this is changed that could cause damage to the community cause although the hub will be powered for some time it won’t be infinite and none of us want to spend our whole day harvesting Oortstone and wasting hundreds of tools just to be able to power the hub for an extra 2 days. This is what would make increasing the amount that drops from higher tiers more balanced to allow for us to still enjoy the game as intended or if in the next couple months the hub runs out of Oort due to it being to hard to obtain then that would block people off from each other causing more players to quit as they are now confined to their planet unless the grind for 10 hours to open a portal that will only last a couple days. Either way making Oort this hard to get along with other mob drops might be the end of the game community if the hub dies and players are blocked off from each other causing people to lose ambition and their goals then causing the community to collapse and maybe even the game development. This was written on the spot so feel free to add the comments. The hub is being powered for now so don’t worry but the supply of saved Oort will eventually run out one day if the drop rate stays the same and that could mean the end of this community which would be the end of this game.
I have to agree. I can understand the desire to limit the effectiveness of lower tier weapons - e.g. copper slingbow killing level 5 spitter in as many shots as a level 1 spitter but simply making higher tier monsters more of a bullet sponge is not a satisfying experience for the player.
To my mind, there are a couple of options:
1 - Just like with ores, limit harming different tier monsters based on weapon material, e.g. Stone for level 1 and 2. Copper/Iron for Level 3. Silver/Gold for Level 4. Titanium/Gem for Level 5. Using a higher grade material on lower level creatures should be more effective, e.g. Titanium will one-shot level 1. Obvious progression, but limits exploration to those wealthy enough to afford gems. The two materials should be speed + range but weak / slow + short but strong (sort of rifle vs shotgun).
2 - Weapons drop creatures with minor increase in health (level 1 = 10hp, level 5 = 20hp) however, the damage from the creatures is much greater. Level 1 hit for 20hp, level 5 hit for 500hp (basically 1-shot a character with no vitality improvments). Everyone can have a go, but the lower your character the greater the risk. You can kill a level 5 creature with a stone slingbow, but you’d better not get hit. The drawback is why a high-level character with max vitality would use gem weaponry rather than stone. I suppose something like stone drops them in 10 hits, gems in 3.
3 - Massive increase in the effect of putting skill points into the weapon tree. I shouldn’t need to max the tree to feel like I can take on level 3 creatures without massive risk, likewise a max level slingbower should feel pretty damn powerful to make that skill point investment worthwhile. Range and power should be increased.
4 - Some mixture of all of the above!
It does need addressing for the point Jaykubz raises with regards keeping worlds and communities connected. Maybe spitters and other aggressive lifeforms have a chance to drop oortstones on all level worlds, but the amount and chance is much higher for higher level creatures. As it is, either they run out, or the price of them increases significantly to reflect the difficulty and cost in acquiring them. I also like his suggestion of more loot from higher-level creatures, as it is, the risk/reward balance is not adequate enough to warrant attempting to kill high level creatures. This also makes me worry about the idea of some cavern based monster; miners won’t stand a chance on their own, and as it isn’t always possible to find other players who are specialised in combat its going to become more frustrating than fun getting slaughtered down there.
It was ridiculous until now, oneshoting high tier mobs with iron sling on high tier worlds. When more drops or other payoff feature gets implemented it will all make sense.
At no point did I say previous combat was as it should be? I even started by saying " I can understand the desire to limit the effectiveness of lower tier weapons - e.g. copper slingbow killing level 5 spitter in as many shots as a level 1 spitter." i.e. “one-shotting high tier mobs with iron sling on high tier worlds.” in your words.
Your comment seems to suggest I’m wanting a return to the previous combat setting, which I don’t - hence the list of suggestions for improvements. Also, your point of simply increasing the loot drop, or other payoff will not change the mechanics of the combat which is the problem - it simply isn’t fun to shoot the same sprite 40 times whatever it drops, that is a grind.
I’ve actually just managed to finally log into the game to give the amethyst slingbow a go on the higher tier cuttletrunks and I absolutely love it! The 3 shot means you have to get up-close-and-personal for it to be more effective - love it!
This is honestly where I would expect their difficulty to be - I am able to attack them on my own because I have the right tools for the job. Lower level players that aren’t on higher level tools/weapons yet will definitely need to either get good at dodging attacks or bring a friend.
One of the main reasons why I built on Munteen VII was so that I could easily test the higher level creatures when they were implemented. So far, so good IMO. I’m going to go pick a fight with a Wildstock … and then maybe … a hopper if I can find one.
If anyone wants to join me for a slightly more difficult attack run, I’m at Miner’s Bluff enjoying myself 
COME GET SOME
Exactly my point !
Again, I like a good fight but shooting something 40x or more is just no fun.
We all understand that using these high gem tier items would make it slightly easier although with portals being such a main selling point of the game with planetary travel and such it would not make sense to require a player to first put in a couple hundred hours to acquire gem tools due to the rarity [Rare to Find], skills [Learn the skills for machines and tools all by grinding enough experience],a and time [Blocks now taking more time to break on hard planets with gems along with then finding the gems]. These all account for 100 or a little over in hours to acquire these tools. Buying is out of the question here still due to a standard price being around 4k-5k for these slingbows that would equate to hundreds of hours in the other aspect of objectives or selling resources to shops. So regardless put in 100+ hours or so to get these gem tools. Then go and fight these Cuttletrunks which take around 40 hits. Along with a player missing shots you might take down 3-5% on that give slingbow allowing for around 20-25 Cuttletrunks. Then those Cuttletrunks only have a chance of dropping that Oort. Giving you in the end maybe 17 Oort. This 17 Oort would be enough to start a portal and run that portal for a decent time although imagine the hub. The time needed for managing the hub with how few Oort you now receive is nearly impossible. As much as we want to believe that the community will come together to provide Oort in the end most won’t go spend hours upon hours wasting their time and resources just to upkeep the hub. This core aspect of the game, these portals that are shown and so heavily talked about should be emphasized in the game as something for every player to use. Not just those you put hundreds of grinding hours into it. Allowing players to have easy access to portals by making the Oort dropped in high quantity’s would allow for more community interactions and players teaming up to build together also. But seeing as portals are a main part of the game they should no in many of our opinions be this time consuming to manage they should be fun and entertaining at a level everyone can use. This could be starting off you pay for portals with temporary ones but maybe then you go out with a group hunt down a Cuttletrunk or two and have enough Oort to last one portal weeks to come.
I’m only 3-4 days into the game and the changes in the mob setup has put a big damper on my willingness to play. I can barely kill lvl 1-2 things with how aggressive they are and running all over the place. Along with the 10+ hits it certainly has drained the fun out of things. I was stuck on a high area trying to kill 2-3 creatures and it took forever… now I just run as fast as I can and hope there is nothing by my house. But, even that doesn’t work because they agro from far away and I hear them outside and I don’t even want to step out the door.
There clearly must be mob progression, but if they are too hard to kill then there no reason to play because I won’t be able to gather the resources to build a shop and support the community. Added to that the drops must be worth it or I can’t have the resources to even build anything (e.g. It takes forever to make glue, etc because of a bone here or there, etc…) I can only imagine how the higher level people even create stuff to sell. I can barely make what I need to play.
Lastly, I just found the portals because someone was nice to leave a door open and have it active. I was so excited to look at all the cool stuff people have been building… hours of exploring and just amazement. I donated some Oort to help support but now with the mob changes I know I will never get any because I am stuck on the beginner planet. I was so excited to travel around the worlds and look. But if portals aren’t easy to run and the hubs disappear then I will leave the game because I wouldn’t be able to explore or even create my own shop hub. I am fine with a progression to get a portal but if I have to grind hours to keep it running then it will be turned off. Shops are great but actually having an economy to support it will not be easy if I am stuck without being able to create traffic to it.
You will never grow the game user base if the core functionalities aren’t supported in some way.
Spoygg, this is beyond ridiculous in the other direction.
Things vary from 10 times (tier 1 planet) to something like a thousand times harder to kill (Tier 5 cuttletrunks, who have over 500 flat damage threshold).
For reference, with maxed out power and agility but no mastery, a copper slingbow will do 450 damage on a normal hit, or 495 on a crit, and will crit around 30% of the time in my experience.
Now, I think that Wildstock are close to okay. They seem to have no armor or resistance to normal projectile attacks (slingbow), so they have, (at Tier 5) say, 15 health “orbs” at around 1,500-2,000 health per “orb” of their HP bar. With these stats and this copper slingbow, that’s an okay-ish 22,500-30,000 HP, so around 45-60 shots to bring one down. They hit for 3,600 damage if they manage to connect with you, so if you have a high health pool you can survive one or two hits, and with agility you can evade effectively most of the time.
Conversely, Hoppers and Cuttletrunks have a very high “damage threshold”. If you don’t do more damage than that, you won’t even scratch them. Actually no damage at all done. A Tier 5 Hopper appears to have 400 flat damage threshold, meaning that same 100 power/100 agility slingbow will do 50 damage on a normal hit and 95 on a crit. These guys have a bit less health than the T5 Wildstock though, say 10 “orbs”, and I’d estimate that their “orbs” are only around 800-900 HP each, so that’s about 8,000-9,000 HP, or 160-180 non-crit hits with the same slingbow and stats to take out.
Cuttletrunks are the worst. The Tier 4 ones have Threshold and HP almost identical to the Tier 5 Hoppers. They have even less health “orbs” (5), but each orb is about 2,000 HP. They also have identical Threshold to Tier 5 Hoppers, this means that it’s about 200 hits with a copper slingbow, max power, to kill one. Tier 5 Cuttles have a DT so high I can’t even hurt them on crits with a copper slingbow, so >495. I’m currently building a batch of diamond bows to see what I can do with them and how they scale when I divert points slingbow mastery and auto-fire (I already have maxed Agi, so the crits ought to be pretty good).
So, Tier 4 cuttles are quite literally 100x harder to kill. We’ll see about Tier 5 when I have the tools to even scratch them.
I’d also like to add that due to cuttles’ new tractor-cone attack, you MUST fight them while using a grapple, even on flat ground (let alone the Nasharillian flying mountains or something…) because they throw you upward and you’ll take from 10%-20% max HP damage on impact with the ground even on flat terrain.
This makes no sense, Stretch.
Lower level player won’t have a snowlflake’s chance in hell against the Tier 4 and 5 Cuttles. Dodging is one thing, but you can’t evade that vacuum attack at anything about 20 meters or below, which is at or above the effective range limit of those lower tier slingbows. You’ve got to have a better bow like Diamond or Sapphire to even have a chance at dodging that if you ever want to hit them at all.
And don’t pretend that amethyst is a “common” high tier material that high level people would just “have”. It’s not. It’s harder to get than Sapphire, and I’ve got enough sapphires to build about 2 slingbows, each of which required hours of time exploring in areas I KNOW spawn sapphires in Nasharil.
All to have even a chance against the Nasharillian or Munteenian Cuttles. No, that’s overkill to the max.
I’ll say it again.
High Tier Titans should require that type of literally ultra-rare high-tier tools and levels. Normal high tier creatures should be considerably easier than Titans.
Edit: Once I get those diamond slingbows in about 3-4 hours, I’m going to set up a Creature Compendium thread to catalogue the health, DT, DR, and attacks and damage of each type and tier of creature. This should make it much more plain what the current problems with balance are.
Hence the reason why I said “Bring a friend” … or probably multiple friends if you’re far less equipped. The point being, you need the right tool for the job (or more players using the “less right tool” to get the job done) - it’s the same with mining, you can’t mine gold with a stone hammer - why should combat be any different?
Also we already discussed being able to negate the cuttletrunk vacuum attack with a grapple in another thread.
Look up Rift and Blink - those will form the high tier tools that you are referring to for Titans. Also Centra-forge, which will modify state on weapons/tools. Also Lance and Bombs has not been brought into the mix
Personally I would like to see the lance and bombs introduced next, as a priority, so that combat can be fully realised.
Then this is not entirely about creature balancing - it’s also about resource balancing as well.
The problem here being, without both either top tier skills and a high tier tool, or top tier tool and high tier skills, you can’t even scratch a T5 cuttletrunk. That’s flat broken. Look, I know there’s a group of what some would call “fanboys” that like to defend the Boundless team, but that’s not always helpful. Constructive criticism exists for a reason, because if people don’t get it, they self-destruct and/or produce things that aren’t as good as they could be. I only mention this because I get that “vibe” with you here.
“Can’t mine gold with a stone hammer” yes, but I can mine gems with a gold hammer and no skills at all, so why can’t I kill T5 cuttles with a gold slingbow and minimal or no skills? It should probably take 30 shots or so, but it should be doable. This is where your analogy - and hence your argument - falls apart, because you’re trying to make molehills out of mountains. That T5 Cuttle is completely invulnerable to my no-stattributes gold slingbow shots, and the T5 Hoppers and Spitters are too, to be completely honest.
Mobs shouldn’t be balanced around things that don’t exist yet. Particularly when you HAVE to interact with those mobs to play the game. And yes, I know about rift, blink, dark, and oort materials, I’m not some uniformed pleb…
Agreed, that still needs a bit of work.
This argument drives me nuts in absolutely every case not involving Titans, in case you haven’t noticed. I don’t play at typical (or even regular) times, and the player numbers aren’t super high pre-release. There’s no one to bring.
In addition, I’m not a low leveled player with bad skills and equipment, and yet you’re talking as if I am.
I did, in fact, mean to say players. Plural. They still can’t scratch that T4-5 Cuttle, or the T5 Hoppers and Spitters.
I never assumed you were - that is your interpretation of what we were discussing. Your arguments have been based around lower level players not being able to progress to the current highest tier worlds though, hence my reasoning to your given counter-arguments.
If you happen to play at the same time I do, I’m more than happy to do some reaming up with you to test different play styles in group combat. Ideally, I’d love to get a group of people together to test out high tier world hunting, with different weapons. I’d like to see how easy / difficult those creatures would be then.
Then I’m sure you can forgive my response to something you meant to say but, in fact, didn’t.
Again, never said you were. For completeness sake of other players reading this thread, it’s always best to have the full facts of what is planned as opposed to just one side of a debate.
I’m not defending anyone here - they’re all big boys and girls and are fully able to defend themselves, if they had to, I’m sure. I’m expressing my opinion. For you to try to devolve that into something you can justify as being lower than your opinion is just wrong on every level. I’m not some gooey eyed teen or a yes man “fanboy” - I just happen to have a differing opinion to yourself. Constructive criticism is not one-sided - there’s no point just listening to all the “I don’t like…” comments when that would change all the “actually, I do like…” comments from other players.
Now that the personal gripes are over with, let’s get back to discussing the game shall we…
Simple answer … Gold does not try and hit you back.
Just out of curiousity, were the creatures you were attacking the Elemental versions? I attacked corrosive ones yesterday and they seem to be affected differently by different weapon types (i.e. not at all by a corrosive amethyst slingbow).
Simple answer … Gold does not try and hit you back.
No,but it still takes damage, and I think this is the point @AzureHelios is making. The L5 creatures shouldn’t be impervious to gold slingbows just because they’re creatures. The creatures can hit back, and they hit back hard - that is the difference and the challenge, they should still be reasonably killable if you are using the materials that work on other items on the planet tier.
I know they are killable with gold, and that’s why I brought in the term “reasonably”. You’re fighting something that can kill you with two or three blows, they should take a good 10 blows or so, becoming easier as you get more resilient or better armed. At the end of the day, they are a mob - you’re going to find another soon after killing that one. If they all take 10 minutes of epic battling, you’re getting nothing else done that day! Epic battles for epic creatures, risky but quick battles for standard mobs. Those poor epic beasties are going to have nothing to play with otherwise! 
Yeah, but lava and fall damage hit you back if you go hunting gold. Also, these T5 mobs (Cuttletrunk/Spitter) will one-shot anyone in the 1,600 hp or less range (or the 3,600 hp or less range, for Wildstock, or the 10,000(plus?) range for Hoppers…). If hitting is what you’re concerned about, they already hit plenty hard to deter newbies. I’m not really focusing on that.
The problem is that they take NO damage with similar tier tools, while any sort of ore takes at least some damage from gold tier tools, even with no skills to back them up.
I don’t think I’ve seen anything BUT the corrosive versions on high tier worlds.
I’ve seen a few of the non-elemental versions, but I think the elemental ones spawn more frequently than I would expect. They seem to require a counter-element tool to fight them effectively. Maybe elemental versions should be confined to a post gem level world?
To my mind this is the harshest part of this update (well, besides the portal cost thing). I like having harder mobs than the old one-shot cuttles, but they should be an optional part of the game rather than blanket spitter stampede of death everywhere. 
@james and other devs – seems like a lot of the recent and historical outcry-episodes come from updates that introduce a significant change without either commensurate rewards or a way to avoid/mitigate the change. Examples: hard and evil creatures without combat-avoidance mechanisms; leveling xp steepness without non-grindy ways to gain xp (feat xp, contracts); block scaling without [enough] reward scaling. Might be worth keeping big changes on Testing until a perceived nerf has a perceived buff/escape to go alongside?
I assume because you mention @james and the other devs that they are active on these forums. I’m still new (1 week in) so I don’t know how the interaction works here…
I think the above response really boils down the issue. Everything really is interconnected here and you need to consider that.
One thing, though, with this whole thread is there is a lot of talk on the higher ends of the spectrum. In one way it’s helpful to see, another its annoying. From my perspective, just seeing all that makes me want to quit now. I’m only 3 days in and I have all that stuff to deal with for “progression” sake? I think everyone needs to start a new character and remind yourself of the challenges down here! 
Here is my experience just yesterday – unable to gather many resources because I spent most of my time dodging or hiding on a ledge while I tried to kill a level 1-2 that took tons of shots to die. This burns through my weapons. I’d use stronger stuff than stone but can’t because I have to use the limited resources I have to work up the skill tree. Basically I’m stuck in a constrictive cycle that isn’t easy to get out of. I can only imagine what it would be like with gems or other types that are even harder to find. I’ll never be able to have nice gem statues or things because it all goes into weapons.
Here is the best way I can state where I am after my limited experience here… A lot of time needs to be spent on the “initial experience” in the game over “later” for the one reason that you need new people to keep this game going. If their experience is ■■■■ they will leave and you won’t even need a “progression tree.” In some cases you are putting the cart before the horse. Later is important and needs to work on it but right now you need to balance the beginning even more because I and definitely others won’t stay around to for Tier 4-5 creatures or elementals, etc.
Lastly, the devs need to decide if this is a building game or a survival game or a community game or what mix of them. What most do you want to support. Because if it is “survival” where I die to a creature and can barely get resources after hours of grinding then I will just go play Rust. I thought this was more of a community, building, and portal to worlds game based on marketing. Yet based on the progression I’m seeing the “resource availability” for nicer stuff is restrictive that portals, community, and pretty cool places won’t easily be built or managed.
In an ideal setting, that would be 100% appropriate. Thing is, I doubt those counter balancing features are being developed in tandem. You can’t exactly keep these features unactive until their counterparts are finished in all instances, because you need to start testing them early on to make sure it works on its own before you start adding extra variables. The imediate result may be a broken feature that is horribly unbalanced for a 1.0 release, but… I know I say it a lot… that’s what we signed up for. Good or bad, the data and feedback acquired is still valuable.