The game is way too fast and easy now. Progression got trivialized.

[Darth_Angeal]

Title... and yes we play on a hard world.

Besides fishing, which has become some boring RMB spam:

- Leveling seems way faster in every way.
- Bosses seem to be tuned down
- Less need of food in general.
- Way too many stuff is thrown on you.

I haven´t played for a while, so i can´t say if everything happened with 1.0 or earlier, but a lot of stuff seems kinda pointless now.

Even with experience, i haven´t seen us running through the game like this. Due to obvious changes to the loottable and walls behind less resistent, it´s so easy to get the iron-table within maybe 20-30minutes gametime. The whole "tin-age" got completely skipped in our actual run and copper didn´t last more than a blink of an eye.

So far so good, we started to go for bosses. The slime atleast felt how i can remember it, maybe slower... but Ghorm? Dunno why this boss is even a thing.
It was already cheesable with traps, but you either had to grind them in a hive-dungeon or pay with a lot of tin for it. Now you can simply place some hundreds of cheap wood-traps and call it a day. Not to mention that this boss seem to lack its rage-mode. There is no speedbuff and player-targeting. It just runs pointlessly in a circle, easy killable.

Using that fire-guy as the 3rd required boss isn´t a good choice in my eyes aswell. Again... we already skipped "tin-age" anyway, but the whole hive-mother (tin) - biome has become even more irrelevant at this point.
Of course we went to fight him before we fought hivemother, because we thought maybe they changed or buffed her. But no... it´s completely pointless to do her even gear-wise. She doesn´t offer anything but a statue or the chest as cosmetical options. No new trader or something, nothing.
That we´re also able to skip the whole dungeons-aspect, because we already can destroy its walls without scarlet-gear, makes it even more pointless to go for.

And while i talk about gear, it´s great to have way more options now. But again... the most are pointless. Rare drops aren´t really rare. You just have to run in a circle on Ghorms path and you´ll get like 3 full sets of T6 / T7 gear, if not higher if you´re lucky, just because enemies still kill each other there.

On top cooking and gardening doesn´t feel as it should be. Dunno if all just grows faster in general, but i can also remember that i always looked for enough diverse food for armor / life etc... to keep buffs up, so my hc-character won´t die asap. I also had to play more slow-paced or simply grind some low-level stuff and gardening / cooking to catch some points that boost me just to be safe.
But hell... buffs seem to have double-duration and with all the other changes, fast gear-progress and easier leveling, i don´t even know why i need those food besides "I need to eat something...".

So before i write an endless novel, does cavelings got nerfed? I remember them being fast with a long jump on the player. The jump feels cutted into the half and the cavelings more "dumb" and slow in general.


I highly appreciate all the work Pugstorm put into the game, and also that they try to follow player-feedback. But with all the changes that got made, the overall experience for a decent gamer feels way worse. I don´t even want to know how standard or "easy-mode" are played at this point.

Yes i could start a new world and probably put the sliders on less dungeons / ores etc... (left them on the standard-settings), but i don´t think that it solves anything.
The main-issue lies into easy character-progress coming together with a way too huge loottable and nerfed enemies / bad world-pathing.
Also the "better biomes" seem to be way closer to the core now?!

And yes... i know dozens of poeple never have been fan of the fishing-game, because it was either too hard or progress to slow.... but instead of increasing the XP only, we lost something unique.
It´s about such little details that make corekeeper outstanding. Losing them to mainstream the game just sucks. That the whole survival / progress -aspects got trivialized sucks aswell.

Don´t get me super wrong, this is no hatespeech or something. The game is still good and is probably offers a good experience for new players or not so experienced gamers in general. The overall experience for poeple who either know the game or just being good at games is just way worse and too fast now.

I really hope some changes will be reverted or atleast

- nerf the loottable
- balance around the ore-biomes and the tables
- nerf XP / change it back to EA-standard
- make early bosses a fear again (dunno about late right now)

and just give the players sliders with x1,25 / 1,5 / 2,0 for several stuff, so they can have a faster / easier experience if needed.

I personally expect more when a game comes with 3 difficulties at this point and not "easy, easier, braindead."


Thanks for reading.

[Darth_Angeal]

Originally posted by Lorska:

So yeah you got gud and know how to be efficient in your progression.

Originally posted by NorionV:

I read your whole post. As others have pointed out, the game seems more fast paced and trivial because you've already played it before.

That's not a flaw with the game design, though. I just know what to do, because I've already done it.

Here some parts from the patchnotes. I guess i´ll find even more looking deeper into it:

- Food buffs that have a duration of 5 minutes have generally been increased to 10 minutes.
- Increased the duration of Enrage Potion, Keen Potion and Unusual Potion to 1 min.
- Max health reduction from starving is also reduced to be less punishing.

- The health and damage reduction on blocks/walls as well as the mining damage done by mining tools has been balanced throughout the game so that it generally takes fewer hits to destroy walls in order to make the game feel less grindy.

- Reduced the amount of hits required to max out the Mining skill.
- Reduced the amount of catches required to max out the Fishing skill.
- Reduced the amount of hits it takes to max out the Melee combat skill.


- Increased the amount of materials and potions gained from chests throughout the world.
- and also to increase the chance of finding useful items such as equipment or crafting materials.
-Slightly increased the minimum amount of items bosses are dropping.

- Increased attack speed overall on equipment and consumables to be a more competitive stat.


Now for the last time, this has nothing to do with experience or "being efficient".

You get more stuff for doing less, your character grows faster for doing less, you can pretty much ignore a whole biome just because of reasons and since we play in the wilderness / ocean-area imo, things didn´t got better.

Originally posted by Lorska:

sink the rest into automation stuff.

Just other changes that make the progress somewhat worse.

There was a time drills have only been a thing with scarlet ore (same with tin-traps, now you spam woodtraps). Teleporters make minecarts less interesting to use, etc...

A lot of stuff got placed earlier into the game or got earlier versions.



I remember us having trouble getting enough tin for carts and other stuff, we simply had to explore the whole area that got smaller now. Same for iron, when cavelings have been more of a threat. Not to mention that you get mechanical parts and all the other blue items on mass which drop from them. We had like 90 of the parts for the first spawn of Maluz.
I´m sure they have been more rare in the past and you needed 10 to spawn him?!

Yes the game was never that hard, but the progress-speed is way too fast now and way too many drops trivialize stuff. And i´ve 6 worlds, multiple characters (2 hardcore ones) and the whole game felt never so fast and kinda pointless to explore as it does right now even after 1 year of staying away from it.

Dunno if you guys can understand it now or not, but it hasn´t anything to do with experience, when it´s also proofed by the 1.0 patchnotes.

If you like the changes, fine... enjoy them, that´s why i asked atleast for more sliders in the open post. The current game is even on hard not really enjoyable due to the changes which got made. The inventory is nearly always full because everything is thrown on you, chests are exploding after 1 hour of gametime and again, progress is trivialized.

[Shao]

What about hard mode?

[MikeBob2013]

Originally posted by Shao:

What about hard mode?

Originally posted by Darth_Angeal:

Title... and yes we play on a hard world. (...)

👆🏼

[Shao]

Originally posted by MikeBob2013:

Originally posted by Shao:

What about hard mode?

Originally posted by Darth_Angeal:

Title... and yes we play on a hard world. (...)

👆🏼

Hm in that case what about Mods?
Arent any in work to make the Game more challenging?

Or i often do some kind of challenge runs.
Like Dark Souls 2 with Staff and Magic only, no Melee allowed and stuff like that.

[Jay Ren]

None of those changes make more then a slight change to the speed of early game progression. If you are skipping things, it's because you've played it before, and know what you are doing now.

Skipping stright to iron, or even scarlet, was just as possable before the changes, minus it taking a little bit longer to dig the paths.

Meny of the things you are quoting as being 'more difficult' are from even older versions, and they're not even difficulty, they're tedium. Killing 100 dudes vs 50, or taking 10 minutes to mine a path vs 4, doesn't make the game harder at all.

All that said, Poor Ghorm could use some love. All the 'challange' right now is doing enough damage to get their attention, one he starts running in circles um... well.... he runs in circles?

The only /really/ significant change in the current version is that fishing is a lot more accessable, so theres a much higher chance of new players encountering the slime immunity fish.

[Darth_Angeal]

Originally posted by Jay Ren:

None of those changes make more then a slight change to the speed of early game progression. If you are skipping things, it's because you've played it before, and know what you are doing now.

Skipping stright to iron, or even scarlet, was just as possable before the changes, minus it taking a little bit longer to dig the paths.

Meny of the things you are quoting as being 'more difficult' are from even older versions, and they're not even difficulty, they're tedium. Killing 100 dudes vs 50, or taking 10 minutes to mine a path vs 4, doesn't make the game harder at all.

I know you was able to skip stuff if you know what to do, but compared to now, it didn´t happened normally. Right now it happens pretty much automatically.

You can call the old balance tedious, i´m fine with that, that´s why i want more sliders or / and a hardmode that lets me play in a slower pace.

The issue is simple...
You get too much stuff in a short period of time, no matter if it´s gear, XP or materials. It makes exploring several biomes unattractive unless you want to find that one dungeon for a weapon, which is outperformed within 5 minutes in the next biome anyway.

I agree that atleast the character-progress needed a rework, the pointless grind in gardening, cooking and fishing was kinda pointless. But it should´ve happened in other ways, with other possibilities or whatever than simply minimizing the grind so hard, that the player will outscale the enemies somewhat automatically aswell.

Originally posted by Shao:

Originally posted by MikeBob2013:

👆🏼

Hm in that case what about Mods?
Arent any in work to make the Game more challenging?

Or i often do some kind of challenge runs.
Like Dark Souls 2 with Staff and Magic only, no Melee allowed and stuff like that.

It´s more about the general vanilla-experience that got worse due to a bunch of changes than needing a souls-game. (Which will this one never be so x) )

[NorionV]

Originally posted by Darth_Angeal:

Here some parts from the patchnotes. I guess i´ll find even more looking deeper into it:

- Food buffs that have a duration of 5 minutes have generally been increased to 10 minutes.
- Increased the duration of Enrage Potion, Keen Potion and Unusual Potion to 1 min.
- Max health reduction from starving is also reduced to be less punishing.

- The health and damage reduction on blocks/walls as well as the mining damage done by mining tools has been balanced throughout the game so that it generally takes fewer hits to destroy walls in order to make the game feel less grindy.

- Reduced the amount of hits required to max out the Mining skill.
- Reduced the amount of catches required to max out the Fishing skill.
- Reduced the amount of hits it takes to max out the Melee combat skill.


- Increased the amount of materials and potions gained from chests throughout the world.
- and also to increase the chance of finding useful items such as equipment or crafting materials.
-Slightly increased the minimum amount of items bosses are dropping.

- Increased attack speed overall on equipment and consumables to be a more competitive stat.


Now for the last time, this has nothing to do with experience or "being efficient".

You get more stuff for doing less, your character grows faster for doing less, you can pretty much ignore a whole biome just because of reasons and since we play in the wilderness / ocean-area imo, things didn´t got better.

Right, so these patch notes you're pointing to here don't negate what's being said. The experience factor is still monumental.

The only stuff in your list that even touches "progression" are the gear drops. And let me just say, that I didn't get my Azeos set pieces until after I killed the titan, and had to kill Hive Mother around 15 times to get the specific item I was looking for.

But man, maybe if I had to kill Hive Mother 20 times? Or if I'd just never gotten the set I needed from Azeos. Then maybe the game wouldn't be so... easy. Or trivial. Fast? Whatever word you choose to use here, because apparently this isn't exactly a complaint about difficulty, even though you talk about it multiple times.

[snakeboy]

New player here, and I def agree with some of your points. I never bothered with tin because I already had iron, and after defeating the 3 bosses, which was pretty easy, I noticed I could get from scarlet workbench to galaxite workbench in a very short amount of time.

Not that it ruins my experience of this game, but the progression does feel like some steps where edited out. I also noticed the world is rather small, and reaching the shimmering frontier was pretty easy as well. For me it is more about base building anyway, but if it's about the challenge I can imagine the disappointment. I played V Rising before 1.0 and that was a totally different experience. This is ultra casual in comparison.

[Ishimuro]

if you want more players, make it easier, that's it, ofc you also gather more players if your game is hard but their number isnt just as big as the casual players, we also have to keep in mind that they limited the world to better add more expansions, that also indicates that they dont want to touch the current content that much anymore otherwise they would just force a restart with new stuff
my guess? they lowered the difficulty curve so they can get a better progress into future content, maybe we are back to "normal" with the next set of biomes at the outskirt of the passage

[Jackal]

I also find it weird how early in the game we get the rift lens. It's a far better active off hand than Azeos' feather.

I do miss the old fishing game.

Portals could be made with the octarine and the price was exorbitant but worth it. not so much now that there are waypoints at every boss.

[TheDoctor]

plays the game for 127, "omg this game is so easy now". NO ♥♥♥♥ SHERLOCK!

[ProjetoB5]

Are u playing in hard mode with a new character? If the asnwer of this two questions is "no", your opinion is invalid for me.

[Astral]

As a new player, played like an hour or so in early access to see if I'd like it, game seems fine to me. Don't see why someone with over 100 hours in the game is complaining about it being too easy. Terraria is exactly the same, get more than 10-20 hours of play time in it, especially beat the content once, and playing again is just going to feel easy.

Yes, you're saying this is apparently because of buffs that occurred for the players into the 1.0 release, but honestly? The grind for some skills feels plenty long enough. Fishing alone was like a 4-5 hour thing even doing literally nothing but fishing. Gardening was fast enough, but my primary skills are at like 90% at nearly 60 hours. Are there probably ways to make it faster? I'd assume so, but seriously, what do you want here?

Do you want to spend 100s of hours maxing out a skill? Just wait for a mod to make everything take 10x longer, or however long you want it to take. This feels nice enough as a new player.

[NorionV]

Originally posted by Astral:

As a new player, played like an hour or so in early access to see if I'd like it, game seems fine to me. Don't see why someone with over 100 hours in the game is complaining about it being too easy. Terraria is exactly the same, get more than 10-20 hours of play time in it, especially beat the content once, and playing again is just going to feel easy.

Yes, you're saying this is apparently because of buffs that occurred for the players into the 1.0 release, but honestly? The grind for some skills feels plenty long enough. Fishing alone was like a 4-5 hour thing even doing literally nothing but fishing. Gardening was fast enough, but my primary skills are at like 90% at nearly 60 hours. Are there probably ways to make it faster? I'd assume so, but seriously, what do you want here?

Do you want to spend 100s of hours maxing out a skill? Just wait for a mod to make everything take 10x longer, or however long you want it to take. This feels nice enough as a new player.

People need to also consider that the game should appeal to a wide range of people, otherwise it has less chance of being successful.

Hardcore grind is just not in fashion for gaming these days. It will definitely be nice if/when mods come about, though. Imagine the possibilities. On the level of Terraria and such.

[Astral]

Originally posted by NorionV:

On the level of Terraria and such.

I was just playing a Terraria Master Mode run before this hit 1.0. I don't really see that as being a grindy game at this point, even with only cosmetic mods. V Rising was listed in this thread as a grindy game, but that's pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥ grind honestly, due to their implementation of mechanics, specifically how late game stuff is time gated. I'm not going to say this game is perfect for grind, but I think doubling it would be ridiculously dumb.