Holy cow... Normal Difficulty?

[Rob3y]

Hi, I purchase this game 3 weeks ago on Steam sale. I've been enjoying this game a lot but there are a lot of things that really stands out, and I hope you, the developers, should be made aware.

This game's normal difficulty is really HARD. I mean really unreasonably hard, I got the Federation Cruiser just got to the second jump on the 1st sector, and I got att by a Zoltan cruiser with Zoltan shield, 3 weapons sys active(ion,a bean,a missile) all while fighting under solar flare.

Some would say it's time to run, but under the circumstance, I only have 2 bars on engines, it will take maybe 1:30 to charge up my drive. I was overwhelmed by atts and fire mid charge.

Suffice to say, your game depend too much on luck and not enough on strategy. One min you salvage a weap and the next your fighting a impossible opponent which you simply can't run away. Like a rebel drone that got 2 shield and 3 weap active and it's going to FTL to warn rebel fleet about you. Your default laser(3xshot) can't even touch him!!

...

Good game but terribly unbalanced and luck is 75% of any outcome. And at the end of sector 1 if you don't get a free weap or 2 crew(one of them Zoltan) you better just hit the restart button...

[BKT]

Fed ship sure can be a very frustrating ship to play at time, eh...? 

[Vindaloo]

LOL, welcome to FTL.

Anyways, while yes it is possible to have terrible starts in this game (I've had my ship blow up on the first fight), once you get to understand the game it really isn't that hard. The initial hump is to get shields lvl 2 ASAP, and a bit more offense then you're good for a while.

I find it best to learn the game on Easy (which isn't all that Easy anyways); once you beat the game on Easy then move on to Normal.

[Lieber]

LOL, welcome to FTL.

Anyways, while yes it is possible to have terrible starts in this game (I've had my ship blow up on the first fight), once you get to understand the game it really isn't that hard. The initial hump is to get shields lvl 2 ASAP, and a bit more offense then you're good for a while.

I find it best to learn the game on Easy (which isn't all that Easy anyways); once you beat the game on Easy then move on to Normal.

There is no easy difficulty, you must have added a mod.

[UltraMantis]

eh... of course there is an Easy difficulty. It's right next to the start button.

[BKT]

Of course there is an 'Easy' button right next to the Start button!

But I couldn't find the 'Normal' and 'Hard' though; I was certain that I saw it somewhere around that area not too long ago... Now all I can see are 2 'Easy' button, and I didn't installed any mod!


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[SDEngineer]

This, in addition to (and partly because of) permadeath, is pretty much a defining characteristic of "roguelike" games.

[Mr_Crac]

Suffice to say, your game depend too much on luck and not enough on strategy.

I completely agree. Randomness should play some role, true. But having instances with no chance of winning means that a game is not balanced well enough.

[dkvn]

FTL is very much a strategy game. Your strategy is about managing risk. You will not win every fight; you will win most fights. It is always possible to lose to a perfect storm of conditions that you can't handle, but that doesn't mean that luck dictates your outcomes.

But having instances with no chance of winning means that a game is not balanced well enough.

What does "balanced" mean in this context? That every game is winnable, no matter what previous strategic decisions were made? That renders overall strategy meaningless, as none of your decisions matter when any mistake can be fixed later. Does "balanced" mean that every ship is well-rounded? Many ships are fun precisely because they aren't balanced and overcoming their weaknesses is a challenge. For instance, the stealth ship has huge gaps in what situations it can handle, but that makes doing well with it incredibly rewarding and ratchets up the tension of trying to win a fight. It's up to the player, not the game, to balance their ship.