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[Gothars]

One thing Starsector is often criticized for is the way the game difficulty develops - it starts hard and gets progressively easier. In comparison to many classic video games this is backwards, these games start (objectively) easy and then get harder. These classic video games are usually linear, though. The point is to get to the end of the game, a journey during which the player skill increases, and the obstacles can and have to get more challenging to keep things interesting.

Starsector on the other hand is not a linear game, but an open world game. The goal ist not necessarily to get to the end of the game, but to grow and progress your character to increase the ways in which you can interact with the world. When the point is to get stronger, isn't it a inevitable consequence that challenges get easier?

I mean, is there any open world game that really got more difficult over time? I can't think of one. Skyrim, Fallout, Zelda BotW, they all follow the same pattern. It's so much of a standard you can even find comics about it:

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So, if Starsector has a normal difficulty curve for an open world game, can you really call it "inverted"? Ok, there can be some mean spikes at the start right now, but that's a different problem all together.



If anything, we should maybe look at other open world games and ask how this type of out-leveling difficulty can be used to make for the best possible game progression.
An example would be soft-locked areas, which are filled with hostiles that are far too strong for you at the beginning of the game. Coming back later when you're stronger and "unlocking" these areas gives a great sense of progression.

[Ranakastrasz]

The main difference I see is that in other games, your location balances the difficulty. You have to intentionally go to dangerous locations if you want to be in serious danger above your level, while the expected path tends to match your own skill and stats.

In Starsector, you start out with low stats, but any enemy of any level (fleet size/power) can attack you, and ambushes due to sensor mechanics make that even more problematic. You don't have any safe locations to gain power, its all hardmode all the time. Gaining power makes it easier, but since the difficutly in the entire gamearea is roughly the same, the change is universal, unlike a normal game where you go to the more difficult areas when you get stronger..


Thats the way I see it anyway.

[SCC]

Yeah. There is no clear low-level grinding area, there are just points in space where you may encounter pirates of varying difficulty. If you want to fight with factions it's a little better since you know that bigger markets mean bigger fleets. It would be nice if Alex added some "noob cave"-ish system where you start and where are only pirate scavengers or some automated hostile ships that were supposed to do some thing and now nobody know what exactly (it happens). The fact there are threats of varying degree in one spot would be easier to go around if we actually could see every one of them, but now we sort of have to pray that whatever that signal was, it was a small fleet. Then there's the fact that fleets can hide in rings and belts... I think easiest way to balance this would be to make pirates apathetic to fleets much smaller than them.

[Tartiflette]

Pretty much, there are many open world games that did the difficulty right via zoning or some story progression: Freelancer, Wayward Terran Frontier, I-War 2 just to point a few space based ones.

[orost]

I'm not so sure that Skyrim's or Fallout's progression is necessarily something to look up to.

Starsector has the advantage of changing scale throughout the game, you start all by yourself and end up with huge battles that resemble strategy games. Perhaps that's an opportunity to provide more varied and relevant threats throughout than typical RPG games, which are stuck at personal scale.

[Seth]

I personally like Starsector's approach to difficulty and progression. It needs only couple of tweaks like Pirate Armada shouldn't be chasing after two tiny frigates across 3 sectors in bloody rage. SS is open world and it's also a sandbox. It's important to point out because not every open world game is a sandbox, but SS is attempting to aim at X series in this IMO, and would be great to get at that point as more updates come out. Judging by change log of v0.8 I see it slowly gets to it, and I'm really happy about it. But nevertheless it still has it's own unique vector that makes it stand out and I really enjoy.

My main point is that it shouldn't obstruct player from becoming ultimate power in the galaxy, you should have all the freedom you can have. When in Skyrim or new Fallout games levelling and becoming more powerful is an absolute goal of the game and progression, in SS it just a choice and not mandatory. In several playthroughs I've been basically roleplaying small trading fleet when I already had enough funds to build fleet that can wipe out entire factions off the map, and that was fun (with some quirks here and there).

Main focus of SS with difficulty should be making early game slightly more forgiving and simply adding more content like missions and stuff to do for later game plus expand roles you can pick. I'm talking about escort missions (in both ways, where you can hire it or provide your own services), mining, building stations, having ability to have your own impact in world economy if you will it and of course being bloody murderer as pirate or bounty hunter which is pretty much possible as it is. There are already lategame challenges (bounties) + extra hard added by mods, so content is getting there too.

In NO WAY there should be soft locked areas or enemy level compensation/power creep in correlation to your fleet. There are some mods which solve some of these issues and picking certain ideas from there wouldn't be a bad choice to improve core of the game. There MUST be areas where you can go at high risk and be able to lose much. Space must be generally unpredictable and dangerous, that's how you make things exciting. That being said, I had way more fun in early to mid game than in late game, but that's only because of lacking content.

Still can't believe one person could come up with such ideas and be able to flesh them out so well. I bet Alex is an alien. In no way human could represent space in such immersive and exciting way. All those who make arts, music and mods are probably aliens too...

[Toxcity]

It seems exploration will help to mitigate some of these issues, though there probably won't be obvious indicators for easy or tough encounters.

[Megas]

Finding appropriate enemies that your one frigate can kill can be hard, and even if you find them, you are weak enough to be killed by them, partly because it will likely be two or four of them against your one.  Even if kill one such fleet, you need to kill a few more before you level up and loot enough to confront bigger and stronger fleets.  Everything is a threat in the beginning.  In addition, you have no skills of significance (only when you get perks is when skill power spikes) and you may not have the best weapons either.

[Sy]

i think the issue isn't really so much the game being more difficult early on, but rather more punishing/unforgiving.

reacting half a second too late when a pirate burns right at you can mean certain death to your early-game fleet (or at least an unavoidable loss of some of your ships while trying to escape), and in some rare-ish cases it's not even really possible to avoid this at all, even if the player immediately reacts correctly. likewise, failing to predict/avoid a single Antimatter Blaster shot or torpedo can be a death sentence to a skill-less frigate, as can maneuvering to finish off a wounded enemy and getting surrounded a few seconds later as a result. and regardless of how or why, the loss of a single ship can be crippling when your fleet is still tiny, whereas in very-late-game players often have enough credits saved up to replace several capital ships if necessary.

the actual combat and campaign mechanics don't really become easier as the game progresses, but to get into real trouble in late-game, you usually have to either intentionally seek out dangerous situations or make a series of bad decisions. in early-game, a single mistake can and often does mean "game over".

[Tartiflette]

I also think the uniform Burn rates really made the early game way more difficult than it used to. Remember a couple of versions ago before the campaign abilities when frigates burned at 10+ and caps were limited to 3-4? There was no way a large fleet could catch you early game and it was fine. But now even a massive fleet can match the speed of most frigates using their Emergency Burn. Of course it had other issues like the impossibility to catch anything once you got a large fleet but frankly I think that was a lesser problem.

[Megas]

Also, most open world games place the player in the "noob cave" or other relatively safe place where you can train, and you need to deliberately look for trouble or just explore without preparations.  For example, in Star Control 2, after Sol is done, much of nearby space is relatively safe, and the most dangerous opponent you will likely find early on are those self-replicating probes (which appear anywhere).  More dangerous opponents are a bit further away.

In Starsector, Corvus can have fleets of all sizes.  There is no safe spot where you can build up power, and things much stronger than you can ambush you, or a scout (which can kill your level 1) can catch you and a slower armada gets sucked into an extended battle.  Even Corvus is a decent place to chain-battle Hegemony late in the game if you are enemies with Hegemony.

[Inventor Raccoon]

Yeah, I feel like we might need a few randomly-generated systems where practically nothing but small (1-5 ships maximum) pirate scouts and smugglers spawn. An early game player can challenge the small fleets and loot smugglers, but once you're a higher level and have destroyers and slower ships, you won't be able to chase them down and catch them without expending enough supplies to make it unprofitable.

[Megas]

Also, a few times, I chased a small pirate fleet, and by the time I caught it, a much bigger armada that was previously hidden appears nearby before the moment of contact and joins its small friends in an extended battle, turning a reasonable fight into an unwinnable fight.

[xenoargh]

Escape Velocity handled this fairly well, with areas close to the start where threats were low.  In SS, the big problem is that it probably needs to be structured like that, and then re-adjust as players level and buff their fleets.  Given the changes coming to Skills, I have no idea what exactly that should mean, though.

[DatonKallandor]

It's not a coincidence those bad difficulty curve comics are all of bethesda games. They are famously bad at balancing difficutly in an open world.