BBQ Keeper and the playstyle conundrum. (Games Playing Right Now #10)

Looks like I have an interesting story to tell for this one. Me and my friend have decided to start a new game of Core Keeper as it has been a while since we last played together. Friend especially missed me and was really looking forward to what's to come. We didn't expect to run into the clashing playstyle issues as hard as they were though. I think it's due to how Core Keeper is designed. 

Fundamental designs

Core Keeper similar to Terraria in a lot of ways with the main difference being 2D top-down instead of 2D terrarium/platformer. It has a lot of stuff you can do to find treasure and get stronger for fighting bosses or making pretty stuff like bases, buildings, and outfits. 

What makes Core Keeper different though is that characters have stats that grow stronger as various activities are done and mini skill trees with points gained from those stats for extra bonuses. There are stats for activities like farming and fishing as well as class based stats like melee and summoning. At first, I didn't think much of it. I was expecting them to be extra bonuses that had minimal impact outside the buffs to the activity. Even if they did have impacts, I didn't think they would be too hard to level up if needed.

As we played on for longer though, the level system was starting to create more issues. Not only were the stats granting bonuses that were extremely strong at higher levels, the fights in the game past the great wall were balanced around having those bonuses. Unfortunately, the stats don't get easier to level up in later areas like you would think. For example, you would think you would get more mining experience if you mined stronger blocks. Instead, it's only each block you break that levels your stat up. Combine that with the stats requiring more experience each level and it makes getting mining levels require grinding in early areas with poor loot just so you break blocks in one hit. There are similar problems for most of the stats or at least what I think.

The consequences

We both had our own ways to play the game that would conflict with each other. I play more like a treasure hunter who looks for new experiences and challenges. I would try to prepare what I needed to fight bosses or find treasure that I think was cool. My friend plays the game more like Stardew Valley and other similar games doing other activities like farming and fishing. They only really fight when absolutely prepared or when needed, like if a boss spawns naturally or if an enemy/boss had something they needed for example. Normally it's fine because it ain't hard to prepare my friend or we are greeted by enemies anyway like in Don't Starve Together. Plus I am not good enough at Don't Starve to be able to fight bosses or explore with confidence so I end up just resource or food gathering for the whole time anyway. Core Keeper on the other hand punishes the players when they lack skillful/strategic play and lack of stats which has widened our personal progression gaps further than most games normally do.

Stats aren't even the only thing contributing to the gap though. I neglected to mention what classes we are playing. I tend to pick classes by effectiveness as they come. In Core Keeper, I did need to pick one at some point because of stats so I picked Summoner. My friend on the other hand picked up Melee for the flavor. You would think that Melee would be an easy class to play considering all you need is good armor and health to keep swinging. For some reason, Melee doesn't actually come with everything my friend needs to succeed with it though. The high health and armor actually come from the Vitality and Crafting stats which they haven't leveled up much. Getting those stats up required them to engage the game in ways they didn't naturally do from the start while I was cruising ahead with my combat ability (killing enemies granting vitality for heath buffs) and scouting (torch spam that grants crafting levels for armor buffs).

Ultimately, when I was ready to fight bosses, my friend would be much farther behind or dying quickly during fights. Our current playthrough is now just me playing on my own character on my own world while my friend is grinding end game levels and gear before we can begin fighting Morpha and Ra-Akar. In fact, he working on getting the Phantom Spark for Ranged splash that was recommended online to keep up. I should probably tell them we left one of the parts needed for it at one of the broken cores unknowingly. Whoops.

A few final words

Don't get us wrong though, we still enjoy our time and try to work around each other. Although once we finish doing everything we want in the playthrough, we are defiantly gonna curate future games we play with the insights about each other play. Probably through mods or better game selection I don't know.

Oh yah, the game is really good too. Don't think the game is bad because of this weirdness. It's getting rolling updates even after launch so keep that in mind.

Wait, what's the BBQ part anyway?

Go play ENA: Dream BBQ. It's free. Nuf said.