Unique monsters are more important than random ones.

[DizzyChimera]

I was promised a game with randomly generated weapons and monsters. What do I get? Randomly generated weapons and monsters... Except that there's a bunch of "unique" weapons and monsters. (which is funny, because there's no randomly-generated weapon/monster like it and it's the only thing with those attributes, but there's more than one of that thing, so really neither the hand-made nor random monsters are unique...)

I'd be fine if I occasionally stumbled across a planet with the same hand-made monster, but they're EVERYWHERE! Poptops here, those pyramid-headed robot cat whatevers there, the three blob things in a shell ever-wheres, and apparently only the hand-made monsters drop specific items, according to the (starbounder.org) wiki. (There's another one, but it's way out of date on some things.)

I feel like some hand-made monsters should be broken down and thrown into the generator if possible, along with drops, and they should be less common. Is there even one planet now that has random monsters and no hand-made monsters?

The weapons I can't complain about as much, except that they don't scale. There's only one flamethrower and it's only good at one tier. Why can't we have random flamethrowers, throwing weapons, etc.?

[Rio]

Adding in bunches of unique monsters was a major step in the right direction by far. Random monsters are there but you barely remember them because the basic AI, like hey I'm a dash/charger wearing 50 different and uninteresting skins.

Seriously it got old, they looked different but they all did about the same thing.

Its just a matter of more Dev time creating more unique monsters who thankfully have more interesting loot than random monsters lame pixel, leather, or meat.

[DizzyChimera]

Why can't they have just made the existing random monsters not all act the same way? Almost any quality a unique monster has can be thrown into the random generator. It's a bunch of different skins vs one skin, since these monsters show up in EVERY BIOME OF A CERTAIN TYPE! There's no variety aside from the currently-boring random monsters. There's ALWAYS a rock monster here, always a sporgus in the mushroom biomes, etc., am I mistaken?

[Jakrhovir]

Variety is, like, more work? Uh... players seek novelty but at the same time desire consistency, where consistency is less work than variety and preferred by a larger portion of the population, thus "randomly generated" monsters that behave consistently with aesthetic modifications varying planet-to-planet within a limited set of possible combinations is an optimal solution requiring little effort?

Or like, rocks. Bang them together. Maybe we get sparks. Maybe we get sharp rocks. Sharp rocks good for hunting pseudo-randomly-generated monsters. Monsters drop meat, meat is good, want different meat? Bird meat is different meat! Need more meats? MOD IT IN YOURSELF.

[Atomicbean]

Something to note about the flamethrower: Get a fire spear with Rocket Spear. It's basically a flamethrower with a melee attack.

The "random" items/monsters has never really been a strong point for the game. It's always either ended up making crafting nearly useless or made the random stuff nearly useless.
For reasons unknown to me they never decided to do the nice mix of the two like how Terraria and a few other games have it - Static items that are then randomized upon crafting/dropping.
This would give you an actual use for the thousands of planets with thousands of solarite ore each - Keep crafting the same armor/weapons to try for better versions.

Though the majority of truly unique items (boomerangs, fists, etc. - not the swords, etc.) are upgradable in that one penguin shop, and some of the strongest weapons in the game are uniques, so they don't really need to scale. (Solus Katana, Kluex Staff thing, etc.)

[AvatarOfWar]

I've been wondering what the situation was with monsters as well. Way back when random monsters were first described, it was a SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY moment. Yes, I literally bought this game because of the random monsters. The randomization alone can make some truly formidable enemies. I won't forget the ones I refer to as "Zen Koalas", that are supremely serene... right up until you get close, then leap at you with some Preying Mantis style, coupled with a harsh wind that drastically slows you down.

Thats all the personality of the enemies needs, right there. You don't need to design a unique enemy for that purpose, you simply have to let the system EVOLVE the nemesis to the player, and it would be different for every single player. They could have enhanced it by also adding random name generation so that NPC's could refer to them.

To me this feels like a key feature... gutted.

[Skyblade799]

It's a bit odd to see random monsters practically gone away with, considering how much work went into them. I think it would have been better if they spawned more then they do so that you see 50% randoms and 50% uniques on average; it lacks variety when you see too many of the same 1-2 ((rarely 3) unique enemy types selected for an area, and it also lacked when too many randoms appeared in beta since they started feeling too much the same. A good balance would work better I feel.

[slaideri]

Originally posted by Alice Of The Twist:

Variety is, like, more work?

I love the smell of burned dreams of procedural content generation in the morning.

[DizzyChimera]

Unique monsters need to not be on every single planet. It's very unlikely that those stupid rock things got space travel, and I don't know why anyone would transport them intentionally, so why are they everywhere?

EDIT: The complaint that was here was just removed today/yesterday (the rock things doing contact damage while invulnerable)

[Ice Coldas]

Having the same unique monsters repeat on a lot of planets did take away part of the uniqueness of each planet. They could probably add some random features and colours to these unique creatures to make them at least feel a little different, even if they do the same types of attack.

[DizzyChimera]

Originally posted by Ice Coldas:

Having the same unique monsters repeat on a lot of planets did take away part of the uniqueness of each planet. They could probably add some random features and colours to these unique creatures to make them at least feel a little different, even if they do the same types of attack.

I feel like they should just break them down and throw their pieces in with the rest of the monster pieces, except for the ones that really just can't mix with others, like the poptops. There's a place for unique monsters, and it's in dungeons and in much smaller numbers on not every planet.

[LionShard]

Non-unique monsters are all the same because that's what you get when you randomize instead of designing. Not to mention them not having any flowing animations either, as it is required to animate whole body in order for the creature to not look like it's made out of paper.

Case and point - "random" monsters are AWALYS forgetable. You have to design a monster in order for it to be memorable and fun to fight, and having something randomized completely takes that out of the game.

"I want random monsters for sake of random monsters" is not an arguement, especially when the idea behind it is so flawed.

[Astasia]

I think a lot of hate for the random monsters is from people who spent too much time on low level planets and the way the game designs monsters based on their levels. The starter planets always have essentially the same type of random monsters with the same easy to counter melee charge type attacks. Higher tier random monsters look truly interesting and can often have 2-3 different projectile attacks, some quite dangerous.

I don't think making all these unique monsters was the right call for this game, and I think they handled it in the worst possible way. If they really wanted unique monsters in the game I think they should have been limited to specific dungeons and missions. Throwing the same "unique" monsters on every planet makes them the opposite of unique. In fact it's the random monsters we should be calling unique and interesting at this point since they are so rare and unpredictable. Most planets are 90% trash you have fought thousands of time, and rarely you stumble upon a random mob and have to actually stop and wonder what it is, how it will behave, whether it will attack on sight or not, what skills is has, etc.

[Syndicake ☠]

The game has both and I think that this is better. The problem with randomly generated monsters is they look quite generic and weird. Having some custom designed ones makes the game more interesting to me and thematically relevant. Except for the poo monster which is a bunch of S*** and should be removed. I mean really it's total poop.

[DizzyChimera]

Originally posted by LionShard:

Non-unique monsters are all the same because that's what you get when you randomize instead of designing.

Non-unique monsters are all the same because they haven't put enough things into the randomizer.
I don't care how they look as much as I care how they act. I want random monsters to do interesting things. They did, at one point, what happened to that? Some would have two or more special attacks, and now I haven't seen a single special-attack random.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Super Suit 12:

They did, at one point, what happened to that? Some would have two or more special attacks, and now I haven't seen a single special-attack random.

They moved them to higher tier planets. People were getting wrecked by projectile spitting stuff on the t1/t2 planets so they nerfed the generation heavily on them. The more complex and interesting parts with the special attacks start to appear in the higher tier planets now.