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[Farce]

What alternative to wild swing combat in a 2d platformer type game like starbound is even possible?

Apart from the other suggestions, we could hop into the Wayback Machine, and take a look at how the 1989 Prince of Persia handled a deadly and reflex-intensive fencing-style combat system, despite their technical limitations, serious frames-per-second limits, and lack of game design precedent to pull from.

They created a simple, fast, and surprisingly deep 2-button combat system, with an Attack and a Parry button, and basic forward and back-stepping mechanics, designed to simulate the movements and techniques of fencing in a simplified form. The attack animation has a tiny warm-up; if you hit an enemy while they were preparing to attack, their strike would be interrupted and they'd recoil a bit, preventing you from being hit. The warm-up time on Attack also gives the defender a cue to quickly Parry; if the enemy is Parrying while you attack, your attack is deflected, and you have a short recoil time during which the defender can quickly follow up with a free hit. Parrying has no warm-up time, but instead leaves you vulnerable and unable to act for a tiny bit afterward, meaning you can't spam Parry without the enemy timing an attack to come in during the cooldown after your Parry ends.

We see a few straightforward fights at the 13:53 mark. Though it's tough to see how challenging it is when you're watching experienced players instead of playing it yourself, you can see the mechanics in action. When the swords tip up, that's a parry. Successful attacks make a Thwap sound, and Clanks mean an attack was successfully parried. At 15:56, we see the Fat Guard; they parry almost perfectly, so the only way to hit them is to parry their strikes, and quickly counter-attack, which takes serious skill and reflexes.

Full Playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv20j8ChtRY

In short, you could create a system that emphasized timing, positioning, and reflexes, by creating a front-loaded delay on attacks and a back-loaded delay on defense (preventing you from holding it down), and a recoil time when successfully hit or blocked against. Looking over the dev blog, they're planning to implement something like that already, but we'll see how they adapt the idea for non-linear attack angles, ranged combat, and relatively more quick, jumpy characters.

Precision/'timing/positioning/reflexes' systems might break down a little bit in the face of multiplayer network lag, though, no?

[Mattk50]

What alternative to wild swing combat in a 2d platformer type game like starbound is even possible?

Apart from the other suggestions, we could hop into the Wayback Machine, and take a look at how the 1989 Prince of Persia handled a deadly and reflex-intensive fencing-style combat system, despite their technical limitations, serious frames-per-second limits, and lack of game design precedent to pull from.

They created a simple, fast, and surprisingly deep 2-button combat system, with an Attack and a Parry button, and basic forward and back-stepping mechanics, designed to simulate the movements and techniques of fencing in a simplified form. The attack animation has a tiny warm-up; if you hit an enemy while they were preparing to attack, their strike would be interrupted and they'd recoil a bit, preventing you from being hit. The warm-up time on Attack also gives the defender a cue to quickly Parry; if the enemy is Parrying while you attack, your attack is deflected, and you have a short recoil time during which the defender can quickly follow up with a free hit. Parrying has no warm-up time, but instead leaves you vulnerable and unable to act for a tiny bit afterward, meaning you can't spam Parry without the enemy timing an attack to come in during the cooldown after your Parry ends.

We see a few straightforward fights at the 13:53 mark. Though it's tough to see how challenging it is when you're watching experienced players instead of playing it yourself, you can see the mechanics in action. When the swords tip up, that's a parry. Successful attacks make a Thwap sound, and Clanks mean an attack was successfully parried. At 15:56, we see the Fat Guard; they parry almost perfectly, so the only way to hit them is to parry their strikes, and quickly counter-attack, which takes serious skill and reflexes.

Full Playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv20j8ChtRY

In short, you could create a system that emphasized timing, positioning, and reflexes, by creating a front-loaded delay on attacks and a back-loaded delay on defense (preventing you from holding it down), and a recoil time when successfully hit or blocked against. Looking over the dev blog, they're planning to implement something like that already, but we'll see how they adapt the idea for non-linear attack angles, ranged combat, and relatively more quick, jumpy characters.

i wont quote all the replies but fair enough, theres a lot of good options for it. One thing im noticing though is that the movement system is inherently linked to these combat systems (particuarly KAG) and the starbound team would probably also do well to change the way characters move and jump and float around midair.

[Retropunch]

Precision/'timing/positioning/reflexes' systems might break down a little bit in the face of multiplayer network lag, though, no?

Dark Souls 1/2 revolve around such systems and lag is a big, big issue when it goes wrong. Dark Souls is an extreme example though as everything has to be so perfect, whereas something like Starbound which is a bit more arcadey would probably do alright.

[Darkmere]

Right, so Tiy just posted his thoughts on what early access means and posits the question "do we really know what 'release' means?'"

http://playstarbound.com/some-thoughts-on-early-access-release-dates-the-big-1-0/

I've heard this line of thought somewhere else, before.

[Sergarr]

...I feel we could have released what we currently have AS 1.0...

Oh boy.

[Neonivek]

I hate the time argument for "worthwhile experience"... >_< "Well people have played on average 26 hours and some even as much as 500 hours" yeah thanks Tiy... solid...

As always I say a game to meet its price needs to be tall AND wide. I don't look at a game see 40 or 100 or 500 hours and go "well obviously this game was well worth my money". There are plenty of bland long games out there, and incredibly fun short games...

Starbound should ESPECIALLY know that given how much the game stretches out its content, often taking 10 hours to do what another game would do in 5 minutes. Not that the game is unlikable, just that the game easily .1 fun unit per time unit.

Ohh well not much else to say... really Tiy's post just amounts to "Yeah we are just going to keep pushing back our release date as we see fit, because we are constantly changing what we believe justifies version 1.0... but 1.0 is pretty arbitrary as it is... also STOP Criticizing us! here are our counter arguments instead of just sticking to our guns". Or rather Tiy should just have said "yeah we are pushing back our version 1.0 because we are increasing the content for that version".

...I feel we could have released what we currently have AS 1.0...

Oh boy.

WOW... I barely read it... mostly because I thought this was just "yada yada, this is a beta" but wow do I wish I spotted that.

But really? REALLY!?! Did they READ their own promise list?

Thanks Tiy, you really know how to take my mind off of The Sims 4 and its "Psh, you don't need toddlers or create a style. Can't you see our game is superior?"

[Darkmere]

...I feel we could have released what we currently have AS 1.0...

Oh boy.

Got it in one.

[Reudh]

...I feel we could have released what we currently have AS 1.0...

Oh boy.

Got it in one.

i... wow.

[Reverie]

How could they possibly consider the game as 1.0 if they haven't worked out late-game progression, or even replaced out the placeholder bosses?

[Seriyu]

I have to admit I fled the thread after the hate boner grew in intensity, but yeah, that 1.0 junk is patently ridiculous.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I suppose it's useless to point out here that the actual sentence, in context, said that if it weren't for the planned feature list, the game as it is right now could have been released without Early Access, rather than implying they are considering it complete?

[Neonivek]

I suppose it's useless to point out here that the actual sentence, in context, said that if it weren't for the planned feature list, the game as it is right now could have been released without Early Access, rather than implying they are considering it complete?

Does that make it any better even slightly?

[alexandertnt]

I can't see anything controversial in Tiy's post.

They screwed up the horsetits thing so now people seem to be reading malice in things that probably don't contain malice.

[Sergarr]

If this was 1.0, it would be a very trashy game. Pretty much a grind-fest. Boring. Without actual content or storyline progression. This cannot possibly be considered as a version 1.0 unless you consider this a flash game.

[Retropunch]

1.0. mhmm.

This is exactly why I hate the open early access model. The games never become complete because of insane feature/content creep and no real need to bring it to a finish. How many sales are they really going to get by calling it finished?? It's much easier for it to stay in perpetual early access, as it allows them to shrug off criticism by saying it'll be fixed later and allows for slower progress to be made.

This is the case with most early access games, although Starbound is a prime example of that. I don't believe it's done in a malicious (or maybe even conscious) way in many cases, but it annoys the hell out of me.