Species Realization, and Race Quest Ideas

(It's a looong post, get comfortable if you choose to read it all. At some point I will learn not to write so much down in a single post...)

So about a month ago I posted a thread about ships and black market penguin people, and only recently have I been able to return to the forums to check on it. After reading the few replys it actually got, I came to a realization...

...the races seem to have a rather enormous amount of consistency with each other. Many races seem like outcasts, others stranded, or simply escaping. Even with their stories this seems to be a constant; they are either running away, forced to go, or exiled themselves in favor of living with their own kind. and playing wise, you all do the same thing; build, explore, go find the nearest outpost, be the servant to all the lazy lords of the outpost, get the big quest, slay the mighty(?) beast at the end of the area, get the thing, return to the outpost with the thing, upgrade your ship, turn ship into awesome base of awesome/surf the cosmos for the best planet to make the best home-base to ever be created.

I forget where, possibly here or on Reddit, but I did read that they (the Starbound Devs) stated that they would like to have a means besides "dungeon delving" as a form of advancement. Such as building. But I don't think it should be a building project you must do; I think it should be race building. Let me explain.

In the state things are in, the Glitch has two choices upon being found to be fully self-aware; stay and pretend to be normal or face death, or leave and be an awesome space traveler. And possibly die to monsters. The Apex is left with an almost identical choice (Yes, there IS a choice) to either stay and be a slave, possibly die if resisting this way of life, or leave and take their chances (and seek vengeance possibly) in the world of outer space. Also to most likely die by monsters. The way this differs is obviously presentation of race, the Glitch being programs stuck in a state of perpetual repeat of a certain time period, while the Apex are advanced to a point where they biologically enhance bananas now that is apparently lethal to other races (yet isn't), and what happens to both if they stay is different. but that's only when you look at it; in either case the first thing you'd most likely see is that they are escaping some from of difficulty. They're basically outcasts or escapists looking to free themselves. And that has NO impact at all to how you play.

So instead of making a building option to advance like normal, why not have a species building bit? Add some diversity to each race not from the beginning, but in the middle so the character might build. For example, the Avian have the starting of exile, similar to the exile of self-aware Glitch (both are generally ostracized for speaking out against tradition or common belief, the glitch being their medieval culture, tradition at this point but could also be belief, the avian against their god, a belief). In the Avian's case, why not have the player have an option of trying to regain his people's trust or denounce their god further? BE THE ANARCHIST, or Saint. Seeing as that touches on Religion though, even in a game, that's going a bit far. Taking it back, the Avian seem to have these towers now, will guards and people standing on the edges, as if preparing to jump. They cannot fly, so this could probably be a form ritual for them, considering what they are based off of. Why not have the option to save them or simply move on? Morally, most would move on, but others who want to be the "bad guy" or something would say "Meh, more loot! In fact I'll give them a helping push. With my gun. LOOT!"... Mmm... Loot... Did I mention loot? Lovely stuff.

Another example; The Floran have a - lets face it - very primitive race, but my God can they reverse engineer. As things stand now, they do everything a civilized race would do. Right from the get go. Constantly. But that's usually just you. You meet a few Floran in the outpost (The outpost. There is only one outpost. There can be only one outpost.) who are generally civilized. One of them tries to kill you though, possibly unintentionally... possibly. We won't count that one. These are pretty much the only ones besides yourself. This can go about multiple ways though; either you've just studied a lot and understand that stabbing someone in the face is not the proper greeting, OR you have figured out that stabbing everything is the proper response to everything in life and fall back to your old ways eventually as the "normal" life others lead just was not good for hunting. yet another option is learning to be amongst the other races through interaction (quests) or living among them (via spawners or making your home on an inhabited planet... or in the outpost.) as they are clearly extremely adaptable to change. If they can learn how to reverse engineer a ship using metal and plant life that can survive in space, I'm sure they can figure out a way to gain knowledge of other races. Hell, build an entire tribe and teach them the ways of the meat sacks! Or stab them. Either works.

I also standby upgrading ships differently for each race to further this diversity. Floran can upgrade by doing what they HAVE been doing - reverse engineering is their thing. they can obviously construct these things, or at least adapt to them in such a way that they function. If taken to the outpost, there should be someone there who MIGHT be a penguin man who could give them some means of learning how to make a ship, and he might also tell him of some prime, illegal ships to strip bare o- kindly ask to give up some spare parts to help enhance your own ship. Nicely of course. With your knife. For the Humans, the outpost is basically now a sanctuary after their planet got swarmed by all the tentacles. It has plenty of humans in it, along with some scientists. The black market can supply you with what you need to further the construction of your ship, and perhaps you can hire people for a proper crew, or find some surviving humans and form a space colony. You're drifters now, my friends, welcome to the endless frontier. Least until we find a new home.

Yet even more would be race specific quests that you might be able to preform. Oh yes, this taboo of gaming. For some reason race specific things seem to always be annoying for people, but this can generally make you feel more immersed with your character. Unless you don't care at all and simply wish to have that sweet armor set you've been eying for a while now, in which case thank you for still reading but you have now confused me greatly. Again, hear me out; You're a Nova Kid, and your short attention span can't always be held responsible for the damages you preform to your own ship as you fire a new awesome gun that ends up taking out your engine. But you're a Nova Kid! You know how ti fix this stuff. Right? Probably! You just need the materials. Head over to the outpost and find some people who know what materials you need (black market, why does it plague me so...) or another Nova Kid to perhaps just outright sell you a new engine to get your ship updated to the next best thing. Hell now you have a new start AND a better ship. Time to expand right? Go looking for some schismatics so you can upgrade your ship properly, and add your own flare to it possibly. After all, this ship was built off of your families line of ships, right?

My ending point is I don't think it should just be the method of how you advance through the game, but what specifically you advance. Character wise you are a space explorer with a background to start with that is very static and shares many similarities with others on the surface, and forces you to really look to find the difference if you actually start to notice the patterns of how they are similar. I enjoy being a very stab-enthusiastic Floran and like to go around shanking people with whatever I can find - preferably a spoon - so I can pick up new items to fill my ever expanding vault of loot, but that's because I honestly have nothing else to really focus on other then kill and move on. The only attachment I feel to my character is "Awww, you said something adorable when I examined stuff! " and I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd love to see some species diversity actually play a part. There are many, MANY more situations I thought of, but frankly this post is already fairly long and took some time to type up. If you read this far, wow, good job. If not, I honestly don't blame you.

 

I really love these ideas. Worldbuilding with player influence, varied ships and actual player character development that provides meaningful replay value. I hadn't thought about these things and now I'm sad because we don't have them!

 

These seem like wonderful ideas. I'd certainly support such changes.

And I'm absolutely sick of being the maid-servant of those jerks at the outpost, too.

 

all player characters in starbound are enluminated freebuilders.

 

Damn it Taikina, they're not supposed to know this yet. All in due time.

Still, there is a lot that can be done with the characters because they're in a static state story-wise. That's the nice thing about Starbounds characters really; that static state is still mailable to such a degree you could be the ruler of several galaxy, or the owner of a fast food chain. Possibly both. But the problem with it is a huge lack in diversity lore wise, lock proper development, and has no real means of expanding other then player interaction, and most are just interested in hording absolutely everything. Hell, I'm one of the latter most, preferring to strip any dungeon of anything that I find remotely interesting. Which ends up being most the building because I can and usually do find something to build with the material. And while it's fun to make a 64x64 vault and fill it with modded crates and end up being forced to make ANOTHER one, that's all I do. I just take things. The quests don't help at all with diversity - yet - as all you're doing is either odd jobs, or being used to do something simple that they are simply to lazy to do.

Granted, the quest system is entirely new. I think these quests might actually be placeholders and more, more in-depth ones might be added in place of them. OR possibly they will stay but the better ones will be added for later. Either way. If quests focused more on race based themes, based on their own lore, it could make for some very interesting character development. For instance, you now have a reason to be ruler of the known universe, because Apex domination, or perhaps you finally managed to find a new home for your people and start up a new colony. And then subsequently remove all tentacle based anything from your history because planet devouring tentacles. Or worship and fear them as if they were gods, I don't know, it's your world at that point, but now with a sliver of reason.

 

Yes. YES. YES!

I like this idea! Right now, you can terraform entire worlds by hand, destroy entire civilizations, but other than that, the universe is in a static position, with things you do on one planet not affecting what you do on another planet or affecting your "fame" in the galaxy, I'd love being to "actively shape" the galaxy! Like, I would love it if the galaxy moved forward in time and see how the small changes we have made on the universe would later affect the entire galaxy through the butterfly effect! Like if you start attacking enough Apex labs, zombie Apex cities might start appearing in the galaxy! Or like if you trade with a lot of travelers on a planet, small towns would appear!

Like, I already can imagine it, a human would get a quest to create New Earth, and like after you bring in some settlers, the world would dynamically change over time, with settlements becoming towns, and towns becoming great cities! Then the settlers would "remember" you each time you visited!

Like, I'd love it if NPCs start talking to you differently each time you do something. Like, say if you are a player who ends up killing civilians a lot, eventually you will be treated with hostility by NPCs!

I hope someday the NPCs will learn more than one sentence in their entire lifetimes! Or even better, procedurally generating each NPC and giving them a name and simple personality!

I guess the way this could happen simplest is if over time you get a ship-upgrade to "time-travel" forwards and backwards a few years. It would affect how NPCs react and how worlds are generated, but that would be a bit complicated due to how player structures become affected. However, it still would be super-cool however!

Though, right now I guess like we are living in like the beginning of a new age. Like, I'm thinking the timeline of the universe is sort of like, the universe was sort of similar to what we have right now, with space-travel just barely being discovered, and the races initially developing on their home planets. Then came a sort of golden-age where space-travel became common, and many settlements were founded all across the galaxy and many races met for the first time. Then after that came the "Fall" where all the bad things started happening: Big Ape became dictator of the Apex, the Glitch and Novakids had their memories reset or something, the Avian religion became corrupted, the Florans and Hyotyl began war, and Earth was destroyed. So like, we are living in a time maybe a few decades after the Fall of the galaxy where the races are scattered across the galaxy and in a sorry state.

 

This is AMAZING! So much yes

 

Lot in this to go over, and believe it or not you actually added to the idea.

See I was simply talking about basic quests that change the character and races a bit. You're talking about that, but on a scale that effects EVERYTHING rather then just you as a player. And it's awesome. having a few settlers go throughout the day doing things, such as building (would be AWESOME if you could see it) and possibly making a full on settlement (mining, buildings, deforestation if they're glitch because dear sweet Jesus they have so many wood houses...) would be awesome. It would also be nice to see how these settlements dynamically change based on your actions. Building on your human scenario, you'd actually probably be considered the leader of these settlers. As humans, though we often don't like to admit it, if the leadership is good enough, we'll often follow by example. You're leading them to a new home and this could drastically impact what they do and how they build. They could be peaceful or hostile to other people, or they could build tall, skyscraper like buildings or low, in-the-ground homes. as it expands it gets new additions, via houses or farms or mines, whatever. It just expands until earth is made again. For the Apex, you have so many options it's not even funny. Actually that honestly goes for just about any race except the Glitch, most of whom are stuck in a set program, and the Nova Kid, who probably wouldn't care. though I could be very wrong.

Having your Reputation change would be awesome as well, but it would be very difficult to implement. For instance, is it bad if you go through a prison and remove a lot of humans, who are near extinct probably? Probably not. You'd need to discuss a few gray areas in everything, and possibly add an enormous amount of new content around this in general, which could be equal or greater to what this topic is about will variability alone, unless you HORRIFICALLY over-simplified it, in which case kill the hoomuns. Perhaps it should get it's own thread.

Time-Travel would be interesting, but perhaps not forward, but back so you can alter the future. You could then jump from timeline to timeline and become the Lord of Time/Time Lord.

Considering the timeline, some of it fits, some of it doesn't. The Floran have always been Floran. They slightly changed with space travel, but not exactly by much; they still hunt, they still kill, and they are still savage by nature. It's also possible that bugs in the programing existed for a long while, and as space travel was probably possible at this time, it's also technically possible that the Glitch are one of the longest living, if not THE longest living races lore wise, as we don't know what really happened to the race that made them. Everything might have gone to Hell rapidly at the same time, or happened over thousands of years; we really can't say with how spaced and static the current lore is. It will evolve with time, THEN... then we make time machines and go back to the race that made the glitch and steal all their stuff.

adding to this, what if your reputation didn't change in certain distances, or on systems with limited tech. For instance, if you don't see an advanced Apex lab and signs of basic tech, nothing high grade enough to get into space, would it be possible to assimilate these people into one large empire? Think about it; you could have many systems eventually linked and taken into the advanced age if you could get by the future shock. Another thing is you can hide on these planets and shake off your infamy that way, or find peace in simplistic lifestyle. Options change when your reputation doesn't reach infinatly as well, because you can be completely good in one section, and people will still try to murder you in another.

Adding FURTHER to the idea, what if racial stereotypes (they exist in game, ask any Avian while you're a Floran to see, or the attitude of Florans to all other races. Hell even their own...) effected your standing from the get go? I get the "everyone gets an even start" thing, but it would be more interesting to see the lore have a larger impact on your at-large reputation, and could drastically change how you interact with certain races. You could also give the NPCs diversity by breaking slightly from the normal stereotypical lifestyles of their kind, such as, yet again, the Floran in the outpost who's apparently smart and civilized.

 

I'm liking the expansion of racial stereotypes idea! I remember when I switched from a Human character to a Floran character and realizing with delight that a bunch of other races treated me differently! I especially loved it how many Florans "generally" accept foreign Florans into their tribes so easily! If this could just go more in-depth with all the other classes, it would be just beautiful1

I seriously like the idea of having the universe becoming less static and more dynamic! It would take a massive update + a ton of work on NPC's and the entire game however! Right now, they are working on the "quest" progression, but I really hope there is a "Living Universe" sort of thing next!

 

Started with quests, now I keep considering reputation. I'm going to end up posting yet another thread aren't I...? Eh, maybe next month or so.