They've now made the game too hard

General discussion about the game.
Elhazzared
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Re: They've now made the game too hard

Postby Elhazzared » Tue May 13, 2014 1:07 am

spacecadet13 wrote:I've run into the ASB often enough, nearly always by choice, sometimes because I messed up, sometimes because I got unlucky. When you mouse over the hazard marker ' ASB Danger" on the screen, it says " An anti ship battery on the planet is targetting you"...so it definitely isn't on another rebel ship. Guess if you get your own planet, it comes with an ASB too?

With beacon paths shown, there is - almost - no reason to face an ASB or the elites, UNLESS you choose to. Sometimes you might run into a event that speeds up the fleets pursuit, or have a ship jump away and advance them towards you faster than you've budgetted for, but even then, with a reasonable level of engines, you might take one hit from the ASB before you can jump away, and with 5 or more (and/or Advanced FTL Nav) you can jump away before it even locks. What's too hard about that? It would be unbalanced if you had no choice in the matter, or no chance of not being hit by it.What you're doing is like playing the DA-SR12, seeing an asteroid field in one of the beacons ahead with the LR Scanners, choosing to go to that beacon and then complaining that the asteroids destroyed your ship!

And yeah, sometimes through no fault of your own, you might end up having to face an ASB when you really, really don't want to. Yeah, it's unfair, cruel, mean. Kinda like the whole rest of the game, right? I like that it makes taking in those extra beacons risky, especially early on when you're relatively weak; are the rewards of those extra beacons really going to be worth the risk of facing the ASB and an elite? And the extra pressure NOT to run out of fuel by blowing all your scrap on repairs or upgrades, or to take out that auto-scouts helm before the sucker jumps and advances the fleet.

And elites tougher than the flagship? You can just jump away from elites, no harm, no foul. Jumping away from the flagship just postpones things at best, at worst, game over. And if your ship can't handle an elite, how is it going to handle the flagship?


It is a generic message which they only made one rather than one for the rebels and one for the other events... Consider this. Many beacons are far away from planets. Sudenly they are all near planets when you face the rebel fleet even though before they weren't near a planet? No, that's ludicrous of course. More importantly pay attention to the background and exactly where the shots are coming from. Or as diet water said, there is sector overview warning.

Beacon paths are shown, but it does not cover things like, going into shops, distress and quests which are very much where you gain most stuff. Often paths that look like they should be possible to take end up having no connection after all. You weren't planing to go there so you didn't checked the movement at the intial scan of the system and path planning but circunstances ended up taking you there... Other times you have maybe 10 jumps until the fleet gets to the beacon, but the only path available to get there allows for no more than 7 or 8 jumps hich means lots of wasted scrap cause you had no choice but abandon beacons for the safety of getting out.

And no, the rest of the game isn't unfair. I've never felt at any point that the game was unfair. Cruel and mean at times... Sure, RNG will do that... Actually that is a lie. I've had only one complaint about how unfair the game was prior to AE and that was the requirments to get the crystal cruiser. It was a completly unfair quest in how much RNG tied into it. It is solved in AE, but now there is the ASB which is completly game breaking. There is a much poorer sector seeding which makes it very hard to always get your full number of jumps before leaving. The exit beacon now can be closer to the fleet than before which means now you have a chance for losing even one more jump than you could before. Last but not least the game now adjusts the enemy ships towards the ship you are piloting. This is especially noticable on the mantis B which gets a ton more ships which boarding is not gonna cut it and especially the stealth B which now get tons and tons of ships with drones, especially the beam kind and beams of their own, add usually fast firing weapons, dodging less than what it normally should and being hit in your weapon system a lot more frequantly than with any other ship.

My problem with the stealth B will be solved as soon as I unlock the C version cause I'll never touch it again though it just feels that as it is a ship that became a waste of development type since a ship which was already used very little cause it offered so little when compared to others got majorly screwed for no reason.

The ASB and map seeding problems however is something of a problem no matter what ship I play and it seriously sucks the fun out of playing the game... I rarely get caught by the fleet but if I see I even have to go through 2 sectors of fleet I just quit the run immediatly. If I have to go through one sector of enemy fleet I am already feeling itchy to just quit though I endure it with soul aggravating consequences.

And yes, Elite ships are more dangerous to me than a flagship now. True you can flee from them but that isn't the point. The point is that the flagship isn't even scary compared to an elite ship + ASB. Sure speaks to how overpowered the ASB is.

First stage of the flagship usually deals no damage

Second stage usually deals no damage either.

Third stage usually gets some in because I have to blow through the super shields first.

Elite ships + ASB if I'm fighting to kill just like I do on the flagship will usually deal more damage than the flagship at any stage... Prior to ASB they dealt a little bit less damage than the flagship but then again you are not fighting the supposedly tough boss, more like something between normal ships and a boss so it's fair... Without the ASB that is.
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The stars cried out
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Diet Water
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Re: They've now made the game too hard

Postby Diet Water » Tue May 13, 2014 2:42 am

Elhazzared wrote:Beacon paths are shown, but it does not cover things like, going into shops, distress and quests which are very much where you gain most stuff. Often paths that look like they should be possible to take end up having no connection after all. You weren't planing to go there so you didn't checked the movement at the intial scan of the system and path planning but circunstances ended up taking you there... Other times you have maybe 10 jumps until the fleet gets to the beacon, but the only path available to get there allows for no more than 7 or 8 jumps hich means lots of wasted scrap cause you had no choice but abandon beacons for the safety of getting out.
Your hastiness when mapping out a sector and planning a general path does not make a feature gamebreaking. If you get a bad sector layout, you have the same choice as always: hit beacons for potential scrap and risk (fleet) damage, or miss that scrap and jump to safety.

Elhazzared wrote:There is a much poorer sector seeding which makes it very hard to always get your full number of jumps before leaving. The exit beacon now can be closer to the fleet than before which means now you have a chance for losing even one more jump than you could before.
This is clearly a case of confirmation bias. You happen to be getting more bad layouts (I've had many terrible layouts as well, and I sometimes don't realize it until a non-ideal path is necessary), so you assume something is different. To my knowledge the sector seeding has not changed, but if anyone can find proof either way that would be great. You may feel that the exit is closer, but that's probably just because the map is bigger.

Elhazzared wrote:Last but not least the game now adjusts the enemy ships towards the ship you are piloting. This is especially noticable on the mantis B which gets a ton more ships which boarding is not gonna cut it and especially the stealth B which now get tons and tons of ships with drones, especially the beam kind and beams of their own, add usually fast firing weapons, dodging less than what it normally should and being hit in your weapon system a lot more frequantly than with any other ship.
Okay, this is completely and utterly wrong. The is no way the game can change what it randomly generates to counter the ship you are flying. And your dodge chance is your dodge chance, sometimes you'll dodge more, sometimes you'll dodge less. Believe it or not, but even with an evasion of 20%, there is still a slightly greater than 10% chance to be hit by 10 shots. The AI's targeting might aim at systems more often; but again, we have no proof.


A final reminder: this thread is supposed to be discussing how ASB makes the game too hard. The ASB in no way adds difficulty to the game itself; the game was always to stay ahead of the fleet while preparing yourself for the flagship. The only time when you are actually forced to fight ASBs or risk losing is in the Last Stand, and if you don't have 6 engines or can't survive an elite fighter for 20 seconds by then, well, you probably don't deserve to beat the Flagship.
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5thHorseman
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Re: They've now made the game too hard

Postby 5thHorseman » Tue May 13, 2014 3:15 am

Diet Water wrote:
Elhazzared wrote:There is a much poorer sector seeding which makes it very hard to always get your full number of jumps before leaving. The exit beacon now can be closer to the fleet than before which means now you have a chance for losing even one more jump than you could before.
This is clearly a case of confirmation bias. You happen to be getting more bad layouts (I've had many terrible layouts as well, and I sometimes don't realize it until a non-ideal path is necessary), so you assume something is different. To my knowledge the sector seeding has not changed, but if anyone can find proof either way that would be great. You may feel that the exit is closer, but that's probably just because the map is bigger.


Sector seeding is different now. While Beta testing I was still playing the old version for my YouTube videos, and I went back and forth between versions for 6 weeks or so. It is very obvious that there are more dead ends now than there were in the old version.

To call it "poorer" though is a misnomer. I personally call it "more interesting."
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Ghaleon
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Re: They've now made the game too hard

Postby Ghaleon » Tue May 13, 2014 9:56 am

Actually I find the sector seeding downright infuriating at times lately.

one time I entred a new sector with no scraps at all because I had just visited a store as my last trip in the previous sector to get something really good like a cloaking device.

*enters next sector*. I could go one direction, which was a dead end... or another which was a store... I had no scraps, and...no choice of where to go after that beacon, but to another effing store, when I could FINALLY choose between 3 beacons.

Now I know roguelikes are supposed to be random, and sometimes random gives you the middle finger. I understand this...But they also generally give the players lots of choices, and sometimes the sector generator just doesn't really give me much choice.

I also had a sector with a quest, and the quest just so happened to be at the very end of one of those annoying 'C' shaped sectors where if you're on the wrong side you have to backtrack like 6 beacons just to get to the other side (with the exit). Even knowing this ahead of time, and b-lining straight to the quest, I basically had no choice but to miss out on like 6 jumps, AND I had to suffer thru the rebel fleet being in my beacon for like 2 jumps. Incidentally, the quest was a dud. I can't remember the exact text, but it gave me like no reward at all. blargh. I think it was some abandoned something or other.

I don't like it, neither of them make the game unplayable, or unwinnable, but is being forced to enter 2 stores in a row when you have no scraps at the very begginning of a sector so you can't even revisit them when you DO get scraps later because the rebels will be there (since they at the start) interesting? nope.
shadowcrust
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Re: They've now made the game too hard

Postby shadowcrust » Tue May 13, 2014 10:09 am

I also feel the sector layout is more restricted in AE than it was before. I understand they fixed the algorithm to address the unreachable beacon problem, but now you're not only chased by a more serious rebel fleet, but sometimes end up at the exit beacon prematurely as the other half of the sector divides already at the very left part of the sector, so you can't really explore half of the beacons. Also, quite often (happened three times in my last run alone) the first jump in a sector only got one beacon to jump to, and sometimes even the next jump is restricted to a single option. In my experience, this very rarely happened in FTL Classic.
Elhazzared
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Re: They've now made the game too hard

Postby Elhazzared » Tue May 13, 2014 4:24 pm

Diet Water wrote:Your hastiness when mapping out a sector and planning a general path does not make a feature gamebreaking. If you get a bad sector layout, you have the same choice as always: hit beacons for potential scrap and risk (fleet) damage, or miss that scrap and jump to safety.

This is clearly a case of confirmation bias. You happen to be getting more bad layouts (I've had many terrible layouts as well, and I sometimes don't realize it until a non-ideal path is necessary), so you assume something is different. To my knowledge the sector seeding has not changed, but if anyone can find proof either way that would be great. You may feel that the exit is closer, but that's probably just because the map is bigger.

Okay, this is completely and utterly wrong. The is no way the game can change what it randomly generates to counter the ship you are flying. And your dodge chance is your dodge chance, sometimes you'll dodge more, sometimes you'll dodge less. Believe it or not, but even with an evasion of 20%, there is still a slightly greater than 10% chance to be hit by 10 shots. The AI's targeting might aim at systems more often; but again, we have no proof.


A final reminder: this thread is supposed to be discussing how ASB makes the game too hard. The ASB in no way adds difficulty to the game itself; the game was always to stay ahead of the fleet while preparing yourself for the flagship. The only time when you are actually forced to fight ASBs or risk losing is in the Last Stand, and if you don't have 6 engines or can't survive an elite fighter for 20 seconds by then, well, you probably don't deserve to beat the Flagship.


A feauture is game breaking when it is supposedly to majorly screw you over whether you go about it one way or another. You go at it safely, you miss scrap, you miss upgrades/weapon, eventually you lose due to a poorly upgraded ship. You risk for the scrap and you get caught by the fleet for several jumps and die to the broken ASB.

Also as others clearly stated before me. No confirmation BIAS. The seeding was changed and for the worse... Before your only possible problem was that there was a 1 beacon or a very small cluster of them inaccessible as no beacons were in range of them. This was rare but there was rarely dead ends, now you have tons of dead ends and most of the time they just screw you majorly.

And no, it isn't completly wrong. Most of the time I play non stealth ships because I don't like the playstyle of stealth ships. In fact I never even by stealth for any of my ships. Because of that I know exactly how I get my enemy ships. Since AE an increase on missile ships was noticed by everyone... Why? Because no ship starts with anti missile drones... the idea is to force players to take a bit more damage there. But you know what I also notice? I might get 1 encounter, maybe two with ships carrying offensive drones on any non-stealth ship in the first sectors. I guarantee you that EVERY game I play on the stealth B I get over 50% of my encounters have offensive drones. I also tell you for a fact that the number of ships which fire slow are reduced and it's incredibly improbable for me to get hit on the weapon. In average on a run from begin to end I get hit on the weapon systems maybe once or twice. but I get on the stealth B and I get hit on the weapons 2 or 3 times just in the first sector... If it happened once or twice, ok, coincidences happens. It's not once or twice this happens however, it's nearly every game that I am being constantly hit on the weapons and getting drone ships. Also my 75% dodge to start with? I probably don't get to dodge more than 50% though i've never did a count on that nor do I care cause once I manage to unlock the layout C I'll never touch that again.

And yes, this thread was about the ASB. Just the heading of it lead me to point out other things. However as I pointed out earlier. The ASB is a broken feature. Not only is it bad (and yes I can avoid it for the most part, doesn't means the feature isn't broken anyway) but when we take into account the poor sector seeding the problem is severely amplified.

5th - You may call it more interesting. While I do respect your opinion it's not a misnomer in my opinion. The game should always give you plenty of opportunities in which routes you take instead of saying. Take this path and lose a possibly big amount of scrap to get out safely or take this path and very likelly be destroyed... if it was up to me there would be no dead ends, the end sector would be realy close to he edge of the map and there would always be at least 4 beacons in range of it so you could hop around them until the rebel fleet caught up so you were sure you got as many before having to leave and without fighting the rebel fleet.
"The heavens burned
The stars cried out
And under the ashes of infinity
Hope, scarred and bleeding breathed it's last."

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stvip
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Re: They've now made the game too hard

Postby stvip » Tue May 13, 2014 7:25 pm

Elhazzared wrote:
A feauture is game breaking when it is supposedly to majorly screw you over whether you go about it one way or another. You go at it safely, you miss scrap, you miss upgrades/weapon, eventually you lose due to a poorly upgraded ship. You risk for the scrap and you get caught by the fleet for several jumps and die to the broken ASB.


And yet this terrible, unavoidable game-breaking feature does not have a significant impact on the majority of us.
It's a most a perplexing conundrum, though perhaps the fault lies not in the ASB-laden stars?
project_mercy
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Re: They've now made the game too hard

Postby project_mercy » Tue May 13, 2014 7:56 pm

There's some things in the game that get flouted as "roguelike" that I feel are just lazy. That said, the new/crappier pathing in the sectors feels more roguelike to me. Sometimes you end up with that awesome grid with nicely spaced nebula and great shop/ship placement. Other times you end up with a giant X where 2/3 of the sector is basically unaccessible. That's how she rolls.

It would be nice if there was a shadow of all the paths in the sector instead of having to mouse over them all. This is especially true when mousing over the node causes text to pop up that obscures nodes that are near it.

Just to kick the horse. I think the ASB was a great addition.
Elhazzared
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Re: They've now made the game too hard

Postby Elhazzared » Tue May 13, 2014 9:10 pm

stvip wrote:
Elhazzared wrote:
A feauture is game breaking when it is supposedly to majorly screw you over whether you go about it one way or another. You go at it safely, you miss scrap, you miss upgrades/weapon, eventually you lose due to a poorly upgraded ship. You risk for the scrap and you get caught by the fleet for several jumps and die to the broken ASB.


And yet this terrible, unavoidable game-breaking feature does not have a significant impact on the majority of us.
It's a most a perplexing conundrum, though perhaps the fault lies not in the ASB-laden stars?


I never said it was unavoidable. I've said that to avoid it you are many times at a loss that you shouldn't be in the first place.

And yes it impacted everyone of us or do I take it that you play exactly as before and think of being caught by the rebel fleet exactly in the same way as before?

You like it? That's alright for you. Doesn't means that many other people don't find the feature game breaking and start looking at te play button with less and less will to click it... Granted the ASB is not the only reason, but it's one of them.

What does ASB archieves after all? Does it makes the rebel fleet challenging? No, It just makes them overpowered and you're not supposed to be fighting them anyway.

Does it makes the game more balanced? No because once again, it just makes the rebel fleet overpowered.

Does it discourages players from fighting the rebel fleet? Well, tecnicly yes but you were already highly discouraged before by not gaining any rewards except for 1 fuel and the fact that you were already fighting a much stronger ship than normal for that sector. it's not like any more discouragement was needed.

Does it stops farming the rebel fleet for points? Yes. However a much more game balanced way to go about it would be just making them worth 0 points... Still, what is the problem with farming the rebel fleet? If it was up to me there would be no points in the game. This is not a multiplayer game, the score have no meaning to them past you wanting to look at a big number. What matters is the pleasure of the jorney.

So once again what does the ASB archieves? Making the game less fun for many people.

If it wasn't for the ASB, the poor seeding and the changes that made the enemy ships be more specific against your type of ship (Example, lots of drone ships against the stealth) i'd probably be playing the game much more. By now I only try a run or two a day at best and that's only because I want to unlock everything. Otherwise I wouldn't even be playing anymore.
"The heavens burned
The stars cried out
And under the ashes of infinity
Hope, scarred and bleeding breathed it's last."

For my Let's play series of FTL please follow the Link
spacecadet13
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Re: They've now made the game too hard

Postby spacecadet13 » Wed May 14, 2014 3:51 am

I don't find the seeding any different from before AE. In a normal run on vanilla FTL, I'd expect to get +/- 100 beacons in a successful run across 8 sectors. Last 5 successful AE games have ranged from 94 to 105. Some sectors you get gimped because the exit beacon is more to the middle, or the path to it is less than optimal. Others have the exit at the extreme right with a nice cluster of beacons and some 'bonu's nebulas. It averages out - maybe not in individual runs, but certainly overall, and seems no different to me than previous. Though I do tend to favor paths with more red sectors now in the hope that one will be the Rebel Stronghold, that half-built mothership is money for nothing..

I'm not seeing more of specific ship types based on the ship I'm using. Have run into ships with minibeams and beam drones playing stealth, but no more than usual, and I've run into them while playing shielded ships too. Biggest change is the new ship layouts, some of which make dealing beam damage difficult (shields or weapons?), others make it very easy.

The ASB has only slightly changed the way I approach sectors. Early on, I do not even contemplate messing with them, it isn't worth the risk of facing it and the elite when your ship is weak and slow vs possibly gaining extra scrap/rewards from a few extra beacon jumps in the sector (though aren't there some sectors where you won't face an ASB anyhow? I'm too chicken to find out!) . But in normal FTL, early on I'd also avoid missing the exit unless there was some really, really good reason not to (3-4 extra beacons, a store I needed or a quest). Late on, I do take the extra beacons where available, and while in normal FTL I'd take out the elite just because I could, now with the ASB, it just isn't worth the extra 10 points to the score to risk taking damage. Just jump away.

That's it. The only differences to the game the ASB makes to me, and it hasn't changed the number of beacon 'visits' I make in a run at all. I just don't understand how it can be such a gamebreaker for you.