Subset Games Forum

snarke wrote:I don't think that word means what you think it means. As per my previous comment, what Rack is getting at is that there simply isn't any information available as to whether to choose, in any particular instance, Option 1 or Option 2 for many of the scenarios. If you've played the game often enough that you've seen all the events repeatedly, and tried both branches of the decision tree, you can choose a branch based on which outcomes you can handle more easily, but you're still dodging a coin flip. Because each event is a black box, the decisions you make are quite arbitrary. (def. Merriam-Webster 3a)

I did know what the word means but since you challenged me I did look it up again.

The thing about events is that they give you a choice to walk away if the risk is not worth the reward in your situation. Don't want to risk the random weapon for 65 scrap? You can either fly away or shoot up the ship. Don't want to deal with spiders? Leave the station to handle itself. It does not take any stretch of the imagination to realize fighting spiders or purchasing a weapon from a stranger who won't give you any details would be a risky choice anyway.

Events were not what rack or I were talking about anyway.

snarke wrote:Happily, there's really no reason why FTL can't be the "anxiety and tension" game you enjoy as well as a game that Rack and I would like. You could play FTL in "Hard" mode with no saves (that is to say, just like it is now), and we could play it in "Easy" mode (which doesn't presently exist) with checkpointing and/or other features that would make it less pointless for us.

I want a game with real difficulty that requires skill not time to beat so this game is good for me. If you want a game to provide a more casual, relaxing difficulty level to distract you for a few hours this is not the game for you. Why not play one of those instead of complaining this game was created to suit your tastes?

mrguy888 wrote:Why not play one of those instead of complaining this game was created to suit your tastes?

Well, despite how much rage-inducing the game is, the game is good after all...

Anyway... One can just cheating to make the game easier as well and no one will ever complain about it. But I guess 'cheating' isn't going to sit well in people's conscience, so...

One can also trying to actually get better at the game instead. But this require some effort, a willingness to adapt and learn, and patience, which apparently is what many people seem to be lacking.

snarke wrote:"Oh, it's the ship with the unknown weapon for 65 scrap. Is this one of the times he's going to take my money and then flip me the bird? Who the %(#$ knows! It's a random choice by the computer, and thus an arbitrary response from me."

My first encounter with that guy netted me a Glaive Beam or something equally awesome. My second encounter, he jewed me out of my scrap--and I promptly blasted his ass into dust, leaving me with only a net loss of 20ish scrap. Now, whenever I meet him, I blow him the fuck up like every other ship I meet--it's just not worth the chance that he might give me something that might be nice.

I do that for a lot of encounters, actually--only takes the loss of a couple crew to encounters to hardwire decisions. Crazy dude? Leave his ass on planetside. Mantis pod? Jettison, every time (though to be fair, I did just do a run with the Mantis A where I got a human out of a Mantis pod that I ended up needing because one of my combat Mantises got fried.)

Yeah.. From a Gameplay perspective, the price it's asking for is far too much for the chance of you even getting anything at all...

From a Narrative perspective, however, it made perfect sense.

Vuliev wrote:My first encounter with that guy netted me a Glaive Beam

Funny that I also had the same experience, in my first ever playthrough, no less! ... Which I promptly sold it because of multiple reasons; but mostly because I'm still noobish at this...

Which is precisely why I fell for the same ruse over and over again in a great number of later run, made worst by the 'it's just bad luck' mentality..., before I had enough with his BS... Die, you criminal scum!

Hi! I'm waiting for a topic I created about changing names of new crew members to be "approved" (it's been 2 days), so while waiting on that, I thought I'd share some thoughts on this topic, since the difficulty of the game was one of the main selling points for me.

I bought this game 2 days ago and started playing on Medium and died in sector 1 on my frist try. I died a couple more times in sectors 2-4 , and at one point was really tempted to switch to Easy, but decided to stick it out on Medium a little more. The thing is, once you figure out a couple tricks, the game becomes very easy even on Medium difficulty (at least up to the boss).

I never looked for help online (except for weapon descriptions that I found a little unclear, and if there's a way to change names of new crew members!) After a while, this became my set of goals:

- To get the most powerful ship possible by the end, you need a lot of scraps.
- To get a lot of scraps, you need to visit as many beacons as possible and spend as little as you can on repairs.
- Visiting as many beacons as possible and spending as little as you can on repairs are both facilitated by avoiding damage as much as possible and visiting the shop only when you need to.

Saving scraps from repairs and gaining more from visiting more beacons early on has a sort of snowball effect. This is compounded by the fact that the game is very luck based in terms of which beacons you run into and the RNG for some of these events. If I got a pretty bad start, I would just restart. Even in the end there can be some pretty devastating bad luck. There was one time when I lost one of my key crew members in Sector 8 to some stupid event and I wanted to uninstall the game. xD

Anyway, if you can get off to a good start and get cloaking early on, you can pretty much avoid *almost* any damage to your ship until the boss fight. Again, avoiding spending scraps on repairs means you can spend more on weapons and defense, which in turn means you kill faster and take less damage, which means less money for repairs, etc. See how it all snowballs?

I guess my main point is the game's difficulty curve does not seem to be a standard slope or parabola. It seems to have two peaks. The first is when you start out and die in the early sectors. Once you get the hang of it, all the sectors suddenly become easy up till the final boss which is suddenly a lot harder. I think the reason is mainly because the boss ship is entirely new, so while you've already had tons of experience with normal enemies and can pretty much snooze through them, the boss is something entirely different. And with no save/retry, the first time you get to him and die can be very, very frustrating. However, after seeing the boss again and recognizing the patterns/weaknesses, it becomes easy again.

Well, this is just my 2 cents. Long post, I know. But I have nothing better to do here while waiting to find out if there is, or ever will be, a way to change new crew member names.

Its funny to notice that those that complain the most, about FTL difficulty, are usually those who know less about the game.

LazyMonk wrote:Its funny to notice that those that complain the most, about FTL difficulty, are usually those who know less about the game.

There are certainly people who have played FTL for dozens of hours, have read up lots of info about strategy etc. on this here forum and on the wiki, and still think that this game's difficulty could use some adjustment. Are those people all wrong? I don't think so.

snarke wrote:Happily, there's really no reason why FTL can't be the "anxiety and tension" game you enjoy as well as a game that Rack and I would like. You could play FTL in "Hard" mode with no saves (that is to say, just like it is now), and we could play it in "Easy" mode (which doesn't presently exist) with checkpointing and/or other features that would make it less pointless for us.

It is amazing how many people fail to understand this. Optionality is King.

Are you serious? If it were easier, would not have any fun. The difficulty levels are well balanced, play it in easy!!

I think the game needs to be harder and more lengthy, not easier.