Page 1 of 7

I think FTL should be easier

Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2012 5:28 pm
by EveryOne
I'll just cut to the chase: I think the game should be easier on the "Easy" difficulty. (Yes, I'm serious. No, I'm not trolling.)

Some people on the forums have asked for less RNG, some want to remove or change the final boss, some want to make the shops more standardized, so on and so forth. It seems to me that they are all just dancing around the central issue: the game is really, really hard--for most people--even on the misnamed "Easy" setting. Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting changing the "Normal" setting in any way, just the "Easy" setting.

Alright, let the flaming and ad hominems commence.

Re: I think FTL should be easier

Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2012 5:49 pm
by Milkshake
I'm not going to flame or call you a troll or anything because you raise a valid point.

But I really thing some of the appeal of the game comes from the fact that is in fact hard to do. And that is something not a lot of games have anymore. It might be frustrating to die in a stupid way because of simple bad luck, but most of the times it is because you did something stupid, and that is the way it should be. Everything is indeed hard: gameplay, victory, achievements. But that is what makes it so much more rewarding when you do win. It makes you feel like you accomplished something.

Anyway, Yes, the game is hard, certainly the first couple of times, but that is also what keeps you coming back.

(And now for an actual answer: how about an extra mode, so: easy, normal and hard. Make current easy normal, and current normal hard. And the new "easy" can be a sort of practice mode.

Re: I think FTL should be easier

Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2012 5:55 pm
by ugur
I don't think the easy mode should be easier since a lot of the charm of the game comes from the challenging situations one gets into. I wouldn't like that to be changed/reduced for the existing modes. What i'd like would be having an additional easier mode though, maybe even with different types of challenges or gameplay and different rewards.

I like unlocking ships for example but i feel like that side is stretched out too long and too difficult so that a few friends who played the game actually gave up due to lack of variety of options when getting stuck/failing too often and then loosing motivation while it could have helped at that moment if they could have tried more other ships earlier or gotten some other form of reward or gameplay variety option introduced earlier on for trying again and again. In all cases where some of them tried other ways like some of the mod stuff to get the other ships or custom made ships earlier they got back into the game again then so such things can help.

Re: I think FTL should be easier

Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2012 6:13 pm
by UltraMantis
Welcome EveryOne

Kind of a friendly forum you stumbled upon. :D While i prefer playing or Normal and sometimes whine about a possible Hard mode (nothing that a failure in DA-SR12 cant cure), i realise that games should be fun to play above all else. The developers of the game designed it to be very challenging and i'm glad thaty did so, because there are not a lot of hard games out there. At least not ones that are painfully hard and equally satisfying. FTL has it's moments where it just plainly stomps me, but i forgive it.

I have nothing against the idea of a Very easy (or a more accurate Easy, Normal, Hard split) setting. More people would enjoy it. But in it's heart FTL is a very hard game and in some way should remain so at every setting. That doesn't mean that a possible tweak is impossible, or that it can't be made a little more forgiving. Currently the only way to vary the difficulty is to fly a different ship, although none are easier than the Kestrel or truly 'Easy mode'.

Modders have come up with some overpowered ships and maybe they could come up with a solution.

Re: I think FTL should be easier

Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2012 6:24 pm
by EveryOne
Milkshake wrote: ...
(And now for an actual answer: how about an extra mode, so: easy, normal and hard. Make current easy normal, and current normal hard. And the new "easy" can be a sort of practice mode.


I think that would be a good compromise. Heck, you could even make the new "practice mode" end after sector 5, or something. In fact, why not extend the Tutorial into the new mode? That way people can get tips and info while they're putting what they've learned into action. :)

@UltraMantis

Yeah, I lurked for a while before I posted. Let's just say I saw the wagons circling even before I started the thread. In complete seriousness though, I do see a lot of kneejerk reactions to criticism (real, perceived, constructive or otherwise.) I think it's a great game (especially for $10) but I don't think it's perfect. :D

Re: I think FTL should be easier

Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2012 6:41 pm
by ugur
I'm not a big fan of the over powered ships, as you explained nicely the difficulty is quite a big part of the game which would get easily reduced by such things. So me wondering whether unlocking other ships or other things earlier on or in a very easy mode would help was more thinking about the notion of giving some additional variety/options to try other things earlier on when one is just stuck at that point and annoyed too much (for a maybe short timespan) to try the same thing again right away.

Re: I think FTL should be easier

Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2012 1:16 am
by DullHuman
I don't think it should be "Easier" per se, but I do think it should feel less unfair at times.

For example, I've just had two really good play throughs, but both were dictated by me finding a pike beam in Sector 1, so I could concentrate on shields and progress well.

But when things go wrong, they REALLY go wrong. Landing in a node with a sun is a prime example: It's never JUST a sun. It's a sun, with a powerful enemy ship next to it, who teleports invaders. You get thirty seconds of watching your shield get pummelled, your crew being slaughtered and then your ship getting set on fire. Early in the game you have literally no answer to this except but to lose, quickly or slightly less quickly. Staffing is a big problem. When you lose staff it's not easy to find replacements and you very quickly go down the hole. I just lost my second good game because I had 4 staff and 3 mantis's boarded. Despite opening air locks and having blast doors the mantis's just shredded my crew in seconds. I fail to see what decisions I could have made differently to "win".

Luck should play a part in the game, but good skill should be able to overcome bad luck, and good luck should be a bonus not a necessity. I think FTL gets that balance wrong sometimes.

But it's a great game. Reminds me of some of the impossible games from the late 80's early 90's!

Re: I think FTL should be easier

Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2012 1:27 am
by EveryOne
DullHuman wrote:Luck should play a part in the game, but good skill should be able to overcome bad luck, and good luck should be a bonus not a necessity. I think FTL gets that balance wrong sometimes.


This is another idea that I've toyed with; removing the "outliers" on the far end of the "bad luck" spectrum would keep the game refreshingly random without needing lots of new code, or sacrificing core game mechanics like perma-saves. I love the game, too, and that's why I'm here: I want it to be even more fun.

The sun example is a great one. Ion and Breach missiles is another, especially when they hit your engine, and then your shields. There are lots of these and, yeah, individually you don't see them often, but when they do show up it's generally game over. I think they stick out from the rest of the game not because FTL is "luck-based," but rather because there's so much player driven strategy to minimize that bad luck. When the situation is such that none of your preparation/risk mitigation matters, it feels like the game is jerking the mouse/controller out of your hands. :cry:

Re: I think FTL should be easier

Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2012 1:38 am
by ugur
I agree =)
The best moments i had in FTL (and other games in that vein) were almost all situations where i just (extremely) barely made it through an extremely tough situation. But the feeling of accomplishment is way bigger the more it feels out of own accomplishment and the less about pure luck (Sure lucking out in between is cool, too though =) ). Next to that it is also only rewarding in the longer run if one can actually afterwards at least sometimes recover. These two points are not always (nor even just most times) nicely achievable, like for example many times i only had one crew member survive an extremely tough situation and while that felt awesome in that moment it was kinda sad (and on repeated occurrence a bit annoying) when i could then hardly ever recover to a usable state again afterwards. So in such cases i often wished there could be a way to restock the ship/ crew again in more other ways and with higher likelihood, cause (to stick with the example): man would it be awesome to get smashed down to one guy remaining and the ship totally beat down and then level that up again to make it where one can actually stay alive and complete the game run =)

Re: I think FTL should be easier

Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2012 5:44 pm
by DullHuman
Just had a classic example. Early in the second sector I beamed to a sun, being attacked. I was slightly on fire but not too damaged with a few doors open when I beamed out of there rather than fight.

I beamed to a nebula (my only option - so I couldn't tell what was going on in my ship really although I knew I had fires) which had an ion storm going on (so no power) and a rebel ship with a pike beam or something, which took out my O2, my door control, and my engines.

Reshuffled my crew to save lives, took some more hits, and as I marched my crew through to the medi bay there wasn't a single compartment that wasn't on fire or ruptured.

Please don't do that to me game, it's not fun when you're in a no-win situation. I don't mind losing when I've screwed up, but don't just decide it's time for me to lose. :evil: