Starting item scaling

Suggestions Survival
1

I have a suggestion that not a lot of servers do: Scaling the starting items based on current state of progression. This would make it easier for newer players who join in late and suffer trying to scrounge up an item or two and end up making bosses harder.

2

survival?

well this could lead to a few problems, namely creating alternate accounts and selling the now-very-profitable starting weapons, or abusing this new power. Also, this doesn’t take into account the fact that you aren’t supposed to join late in the first place.
Sorry, but though improved weapons and stuff may be cool, but noobs aren’t gonna profit with just weapons, They require armor, accessories, etc, most of which cannot be found easily in the late survival run. I personally don’t think this is necessary at all. This is survival, not the items dimension.

5 Likes
3

This is still against the rules and I doubt this would be a big problem

What?? There’s no rule/generalization about not joining late

5 Likes
4

generally one waits until a new reset to join, i never said it wasnt allowed
besides, alting is a thing and how it could be exploited should be taken into account. In thise case, the bad it could do is greater than the good it could do.

4 Likes
5

This is not a bad reason for supporting weapon scaling; however, Survival is supposed to be a vanilla experience.

Yes, there are a lot of plugins and item bans, but their purpose is to streamline progression so that the Survival experience is as fair and fit for online multiplayer as can be without undermining the essence of Survival. And personally, I just feel like weapon scaling is not appropriate for Survival.

5 Likes
6

Couldn’t you just ask one of the active players to give you a hand? I get that begging isn’t tolerated well but there are ways to circumvent this issue. Don’t directly ask for items, but ask for tips on how to get caught up. For example: Fishing can be done relatively easy, and it does not take a lot of time nor effort to get basic fishing gear. Additionally depending on when you join you could just craft a starter bow and some arrows, and wait until they fight a boss. All you need to do is hit the boss once to get the loot bag. These are some of the things I personally do if I ever join later. Plus the more you play and become known in the community, the more willing people are to help you out in a pinch. Hope this helps.

5 Likes
7

I do have another idea that is similar to this and cannot be exploited NEARLY as much by alting. Instead of Starting Item Scaling, we do Item Leveling. Pretty much, you use the special items engine thingy, and whenever you use a tool or weapon for its job a certain amount of times, it levels up and gets slight stat boosts!

5 Likes
8

That’s an interesting idea, but it would kind of remove the vanilla theme like FAda said

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9

I agree with Fadada and Mado. The point of survival is simply playing vanilla terraria with other people (with some slight limitations and abilities). Warping doesnt overhaul the game, it simply makes exploring and traversing the world easier and faster. Meanwhile, while your suggestion might make a good gamemode idea (assuming the server could handle it), it doesn’t simply add a new ability, it essentially breaks the game. Im being the average grumpy terraria grandpa, do not want to see this mechanic implemented in terraria at all. It simply takes the fun out of vanilla survival, where you have to constantly make and find new weapons, not where you can beat the entire game with your starter weapons.

4 Likes
10

Unfortunately, everyone here is incredibly biased because none of them are the target of this suggestion, so I wouldn’t expect them to vote for this. None of them acknowledge or even talk about these people, which is not surprising because survival players are mostly self centered unfortunately. The real people your suggestion benefits are specifically new people (you mentioned this) who I’d have no doubt would be more likely to stick around if they had something better to start with later on in the week.

The actual problem with your suggestion is it lacks substance, you’ve lacked detail about what you actually think should be specified in the starting items at what stages and most likely also the reason for choosing those items. You should also consider whether this should apply to everyone or just specifically new players.

11 Likes
11

Here’s what I think that ‘substance’ could be like:

There would have to be a weekly boss list. What that does is that it takes count of bosses that have already been beaten so far, and would reset back to none when the run starts anew. This is the info the server will use in order to decide which items to give.

Depending on the boss stage, the game will give different items:

  • Until WoF is beaten, the game will only give Copper Tools.
  • After WoF is beaten, the game will give Corrupt/Crimson tools.
  • After two of the three mechanical bosses are beaten, Molten Tools and a Cobalt Naginata.
  • After Plantera is defeated, Orichalcum Tools, a Pwnhammer, and a Wall of Flesh Boss Bag…
  • After EoL is defeated, A Drax, a Pwnhammer, and either of the few Chlorophyte Melee weapons.
  • After Moonlord is defeated, Chlorophyte Tools and either of the few Chlorophyte Melee weapons.

The starting items should never be too powerful, the players still have to try to fend for themselves. These ideas are only for giving them the opportunity to be able to catch up, not the wealth.

Also, this may have the unintended consequences of incentivizing people to join late, or adding even more bias towards Melee Class when it already doesn’t need that.

I don’t really think it would actually take away from the vanilla Survival experience, it only eliminates a need for others to have to give something they may or may not have, to someone who might or might not be able to take good advantage of those items to be able to help the rest of the active playerbase. There’s very little incentive to do that anyway because of the unfortunate fact that a lot of people aren’t exactly very good at the game, and it’s hard to see at the start whether a new player is good or not. More often than not they’re not the sharpest.

However, I can see that this can maybe just be abused by people making multiple accounts and entering Survival using those different accounts at different stages just to get those free pickaxes/axes to sell for profit.

This idea also doesn’t have protection in case someone decides to beat a boss unfairly, e.g. someone abuses King Slime i-frames or Teleporters in order to beat a boss like Plantera or EoL; or someone abuses godmode and damage hacks in order to beat a boss for himself really easily.

7 Likes
12

alr, thats reasonable. I was thinking more on-tier boss weapons (eg, starting with Terra Blade post-plantera or Starlight post-eol). Having more nerfed substitutes would work xD didn’t think about that.

3 Likes
13

Precisely why this post needed more substance :sweat_smile:

4 Likes
14

Im pretty sure this will eventually lead into people asking for other gear for late-joiners… would that even be reasonable?
Accessories is out of the question, that would essentially be free boots, wings, or shield with zero effort, but would armor be balanced?
idk, just brainstorming. Weapons are no use if you get one-shotted, after all.

3 Likes
15

But tecnically this happens even without gear ¯_(ツ)_/¯

But yea… Actually this is a good idea, The few times i joined Mid game (More specifically , Hardmode/Monday) I usually Rely on trashcan contents, which in some way,is the same as starting gear, But sometimes better or worse, and even if you dont have a decent armor, Is Way easier to get 400HP with a decent pickaxe and a weapon to at least survive, with these tools in hand, Its posible to at least catch up with the other players

This helps a lot, Mostly if you want to play survival but you are being killed by school, this saves at least 6 hours i would say lol

Now if we can guarantee the loot, Would be more consistent being able to join any run,rather than just waiting till someone sents anything to the trashcan Or selling all you can find to buy a NPC weapon

And also im pretty sure a lot of you hate beggars , this could at least stop some of them xd

5 Likes
16

Side note but, alting is not allowed under Section 7 Rule 1:

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17

i’m thinking that the registration timer would make that kind of thing more of an inconvenience, then again we can’t deny the possibilities of preparing accounts beforehand–though you are risking yourself of a ban for doing it, so would it really be worth the trouble…

I’ve checked a bit on the prices of the tools you listed, and they aren’t honestly the most profitable stuff until Post Plantera stuff, which would definitely attract people that will exploit it. I’m thinking it could just be kept to the level of Post-WoF to Post-Mechs tier

  • Players who get Corrupt/Crimson Tools will go for Molten and then HM ores to catch up, so they can still do other stuff in early HM

  • Players who got Molten right away would go straight to HM ore gathering, it speeds up their progression because they are late and need to keep up because Mechs are an incentive to do

While it’s a fact that a lot of people aren’t good at the game, i think the bar shouldn’t be set low for them, we can expect results if we give them the proper tools at the right progression. I can see how daunting and very demotivating it can be when you see most people in Post-WoF having excellent equipment and you only having slow copper junks. Might make them stay and commit even if they joined late.

6 Likes
18

I mean to be fair don’t a lot of players fish up hellwing bows to disperse to everyone so the Wall of Flesh is easier? I always gave away a ton of spare loot (especially from crates) trying to catch people up and prepare them better for progression. The reason I don’t approve of this post is because many others are doing just what I’ve done, and people that are severely behind for some odd reason never answer when I offered free items. They wouldn’t say they needed a weapon for the Wall of Flesh, and then proceed to complain about being ill-prepared. You can lead a horse to water, but cannot make them drink. Automatically giving players items at certain progression points will just make the majority lazier, which is already a serious issue. Everyone wants the best gear but only few wanna work for it.

5 Likes
19

i used to be (kinda) one, i was too laggy to honestly do anything in survival before I changed devices xD

I think that is the primary problem. Beggars and stuff arent gonna stop- even if they get better items, most aren’t going to work to get anything else. It will reduce the number of people complaining in chat about having low tier gear. Unfortunately, human nature is kinda in the way. Most people on survival (this is actually the reason I don’t like it) are;

  1. Selfish. They aren’t gonna give away anything without a good trade or price, no matter how desperate the recipient is. Unless the person happens to be well-known or a moderator, they won’t give anything for free. This does discourage laziness, but it is also slowing late peoples’ progression down significantly.

  2. Lazy. Even if they are given decent items to work with, most people on there are the ‘i get free items and i think im so cool’ type. I’ve noticed an influx in laziness in terraria players in the past year, and being a terraria ‘you want it you earn it’ grandpa, I’m not a huge fan of this trend.

  3. Honestly, just bad at the game. I’m not sure if i fit into this category when it comes to survival, but one thing that (by the way, isnt really their fault) irritates me is that most of the players in survival probably haven’t even finished a single Expert Mode playthrough yet. The majority of them have little experience, and when combined with laziness and selfishness in the actual decent players, these people get barely anything if they join late, even if this (honestly, pretty decent) mechanic was introduced.

Summary: If this was introduced, it wouldn’t help survival newbies all that much. The only people it would benefit to a certain extent are the pros/decent players who can take what they have, have the motivation to continue, and have good reputation so they can get items for good prices. The newbies, while the target of this suggestion, may be benefited if they have proper motivation and determination, but unfortunately, that is particularly lacking for reasons I cannot explain in most terraria newbies.

This is not intended to offend anybody, by the way. I’m just pointing something out.

3 Likes
20

It won’t help a lot of them, but it would definitely be good for some of them so that they’re more likely to stay.

And regarding the reasons you’ve given… Yeah, I feel that there’s a decently-sized wall between 1 and 3. The better players often tend not to give to others mainly because if they did those people would still keep begging anyway and wouldn’t help very much with bosses either. On the other hand, there’s that laziness issue that you mentioned. If this idea were to be implemented, perhaps that imaginary wall could have its size decreased, because there’s a decreased need for the better players to have to worry about the weaker ones bringing them down, and also an increased chance for the weaker players to be able to really prove their worth, but who knows?

All of this is on paper and looks possibly alright in theory, it’s maybe worth testing it out for a short while then returning back to normal and asking people how they felt about the system in practice. In that case it’d also be better to consider everyone’s views on it and not just the target audience, whether it killed the experience (which might be likely, we don’t know of other servers that do that anyway) or improved it (because in the end it’s a kind of innovation.)

4 Likes