Lava just killed my session

[Terra Blade]

Well after playing for hours after picking up the game, a slip into lava just killed any enthusiasm to continue. Lost hours of effort mining, lost all my crafting stuff, and after a last ditch effort to try to reclaim my stuff by carefully building a tunnel into the lava to hopefully get my stuff...there is a bottom that you can't go past but your inventory sinks past. So, can't even put in a major effort to reclaim your inventory.

I'm...just done. I reinstalled the game for some fun but after numerous cheap deaths losing pixels to upgrade my ship, the annoyance of how fast food spoils in your pack and how fast the hunger meter deplets, it's just enough. Maybe I'll come back in another year or two...yeah.

Having a drop where you can't get out of the lava? Yeah...killed my character and killed any inclination to continue.

[joviper]

Originally posted by Terra Blade:

No it doesn't require the devs to fix it, but it doesn't mean I have to keep quiet in pointing out the inconsistency of the system or the fact that overall it comes across as bad game design. If games are a form of art, anyone can be a valid critic.

Cool, then we agreed that the problem is subjective, you think it's bad game design, others think it's fine the way it is, it's not like everyone jumps into a planet's core that often anyway.

Originally posted by Terra Blade:

The point is that the deaths are inconsistant, and the "survival" aspects get handwaved as much as they are enforced. So overall the experience isn't really player friendly as you try to make it out to be. Can it be modded? Sure. But that doesn't change the fact that "as the developer's intended" leaves a very inconsistent and overall misleading experience.

I disagree, it's not inconsistent to not be able to recover your stuff from a planet's core, sure you don't lose anything in the vacuum of space or on boss missions, but that's because they're instances with different rules, you lose your items everywhere on a planet, why would you suddenly be unable to lose them when you get to the core?
Besides, like I said previously, there are plenty of survival games with out of bounds places that might make you lose everything, it's not that unusual and it serves as a lesson to not be careless when you're exploring.

[Terra Blade]

Originally posted by joviper:

Besides, like I said previously, there are plenty of survival games with out of bounds places that might make you lose everything, it's not that unusual and it serves as a lesson to not be careless when you're exploring.

Except those places are clearly marked are they not? As I said, I discovered a planet just the other night that dropped straight through the magma strata all the way to the core. But...not like in a vanilla game that would be a problem right?

Never mind that this is not even counting the fact that unless you go find the PLAYER MADE fix to the stutter problem, it is pretty easy to lag out to where you end up where you don't want to be, or have the game say your character didn't respond fast enough.

Combined with both aspects, the death simply comes off as cheap. While you can say "well people just need to be careful you honestly are glossing over the very serious flaw that every other death is recoverable, and you can even begin a tunnel in the lava to recover your stuff, but the devs made it impossible to get to where your stuff is.

This simple fact means that the game devs designated core death to be the one, ONE, death you can't recover from outside of a hardcore run. Where no other death remotly punishes you like this. You can say that isn't bad game design, but again no other death the game gives you up to this point punishes you this severly. Ergo you have no reason to believe that recovering items lost in the core would be impossible. Difficult to the extreme, but not impossible.

That is the core issue here, and even on a magma planet you can still go the extreme and build a tunnel down through the magma to recover lost items given time and effort. But the only reason you can't do that in the core is because the screen won't scroll to let you. Thus making it different in the most crucial ways from any other death...you can't put the effort in to recover from it.

[Seraphita]

Originally posted by Terra Blade:

Then play casual if you don't want to drop stuff in a mission. It isn't "survival" if dying in a mission simply gets you a slap on the wrist of pixels now is it?

I think you fail to understand the most logical thing. You seriously complain about "nothing" here.

[joviper]

Originally posted by Terra Blade:

Never mind that this is not even counting the fact that unless you go find the PLAYER MADE fix to the stutter problem, it is pretty easy to lag out to where you end up where you don't want to be, or have the game say your character didn't respond fast enough.

Oh, the stutter problem is a real one, it should definitely be fixed.

Originally posted by Terra Blade:

Ergo you have no reason to believe that recovering items lost in the core would be impossible.

Not if you play similar games with a out of bounds place, like Minecraft for example, if you're not careful at the End and fall through the world, you lose everything.

[Terra Blade]

Originally posted by Zero:

Originally posted by Terra Blade:

Then play casual if you don't want to drop stuff in a mission. It isn't "survival" if dying in a mission simply gets you a slap on the wrist of pixels now is it?

I think you fail to understand the most logical thing. You seriously complain about "nothing" here.

No if survival should be about dropping inventory where you can't recover it, how is dropping into the core that different then dropping inventory in a mission where you can't recover it?

[Terra Blade]

Originally posted by joviper:

Not if you play similar games with a out of bounds place, like Minecraft for example, if you're not careful at the End and fall through the world, you lose everything.

....That isn't exactly a mark in the favor of your argument. You can't dig out the bottom of the world int he normal map, why would you suddenly be able to in "the end"?

[joviper]

Originally posted by Terra Blade:

....That isn't exactly a mark in the favor of your argument. You can't dig out the bottom of the world int he normal map, why would you suddenly be able to in "the end"?

You don't dig through bedrock in the end, the dragon can fling you out of the edge.
There's also the nether, if you aren't careful, again, you lose all of your stuff if you fall into lava.
My point is that it's not unusual to have one or two places in games, in which you drop items when you die, that can easily make you lose everything without any chance of recovery, you can either rage out at them like you're doing or you can take it as a lesson to be more careful next time.

[Terra Blade]

Originally posted by joviper:

Originally posted by Terra Blade:

....That isn't exactly a mark in the favor of your argument. You can't dig out the bottom of the world int he normal map, why would you suddenly be able to in "the end"?

You don't dig through bedrock in the end, the dragon can fling you out of the edge.
There's also the nether, if you aren't careful, again, you lose all of your stuff if you fall into lava.
My point is that it's not unusual to have one or two places in games, in which you drop items when you die, that can easily make you lose everything without any chance of recovery, you can either rage out at them like you're doing or you can take it as a lesson to be more careful next time.

Losing your stuff to lava is different in minecraft though, as it activly burns ANYTHING that is flammable and/or dropped into it. They don't just sit there under the surface for yout grab, unlike say on a starbound magma planet. Or where you can mine and jump in and out of the lava to get the mined items in any area that has lava. Again, suddenly the rules change when you get to the core and only because the screen is locked. Not even because of the lava itself.

In short, your comparison is fundimentally flawed.

[Supernovae]

If you die by falling into a deep lava pit, you can't get your stuff until you drain the lava. There is, for game purposes, and infinite amount of lava in the core (not just a puddle). The amount of damage you would take to said lava, even if you could go in it as per usual, would still kill you before you got to your stuff a long way down. Instanced maps are kinda like minigames. You can respawn with no issues there, and that is consistant throughout the game.

[joviper]

Originally posted by Terra Blade:

Losing your stuff to lava is different in minecraft though, as it activly burns ANYTHING that is flammable and/or dropped into it. They don't just sit there under the surface for yout grab, unlike say on a starbound magma planet. Or where you can mine and jump in and out of the lava to get the mined items in any area that has lava. Again, suddenly the rules change when you get to the core and only because the screen is locked. Not even because of the lava itself.

In short, your comparison is fundimentally flawed.

The comparison to the end is not flawed, I added the nether to give a better example of a situation that you can either learn from it or rage and stop playing because of it.

[Terra Blade]

Originally posted by Cadillac ATS:

If you die by falling into a deep lava pit, you can't get your stuff until you drain the lava. There is, for game purposes, and infinite amount of lava in the core (not just a puddle). The amount of damage you would take to said lava, even if you could go in it as per usual, would still kill you before you got to your stuff a long way down. Instanced maps are kinda like minigames. You can respawn with no issues there, and that is consistant throughout the game.

Except in case of point it is entirelly possible on a magma planet, which is the same as the core in being an 'ocean' of lava, to build a safe tunnel all the way down through it. It's hard, it's not practical, but you can do it. The only reason you can't do this with the core is the screen is locked. So no, it wouldn't inherently kill you to try to get your stuff back, except you can't because of again said screen locking.

The fact that instanced maps don't drop your stuff ANYMORE isn't the issue. The issue is that said aspect was taken out because you couldn't recover your stuff...much like a core death. This was found to be to punishing...but somehow core deaths being unrecoverable are OK? If people are going to throw "it's survival, you drop stuff" as an excuse to why it's ok to have ONE area where you can't recover stuff. Then that same argument could be applied to why you should lose stuff in the depths of space or on a mission.

[Terra Blade]

Originally posted by joviper:

The comparison to the end is not flawed, I added the nether to give a better example of a situation that you can either learn from it or rage and stop playing because of it.

The fact it exists does not make it good game design though, and in fact many arguments can be made (and I am sure they have) to why it isn't good design. Again, it generally is NOT considered good game design to have an inconsistant death system, period. Even Dark Souls doesn't break the rules of death simply because you fell into lava or off a cliff. You don't just lose all your souls and gear to where you can't recover, it doesn't even break your gear.

So saying that it's ok because another game does it doesn't make the flaw OK, it's simply now you have two games in a discussion with the same flaw over having stuck to the one.

[joviper]

Originally posted by Terra Blade:

The fact it exists does not make it good game design though, and in fact many arguments can be made (and I am sure they have) to why it isn't good design.

This is exactly my point, people can make plenty of arguments for and against such death mechanics, whether they're good or bad is a matter of opinion.
It's not a problem to have a critic about something you're not happy about in the game, fortunately for you, there's a player made fix for it, so it shouldn't be a problem anymore, unless you want the devs to acknowledge it.

[Terra Blade]

Originally posted by joviper:

...so it shouldn't be a problem anymore, unless you want the devs to acknowledge it.

If you are trying to draw out me saying that the devs should have a more consistant death system and own up to it...yes, I do.

[joviper]

Originally posted by Terra Blade:

If you are trying to draw out me saying that the devs should have a more consistant death system and own up to it...yes, I do.

Originally posted by joviper:

Whether it's consistent or not and whether such inconsistency is a problem or not, it's subjective.
It's your opinion and it's fine to have it, but it doesn't require the devs to change the game to fit it.