Star-map tiers are...lame

Shouldn't we be growing out from our starter planet, scanning and analyzing nearby planets, taking notes of places we may need to go in the future, and slowly growing out our little area of space into a big map of conquered and explored planets to be proud of?

As it stands now, we build a little base (maybe), hop a few planets (maybe) then fight a boss and move on. New map, effectively a new universe, start over as if the last sector never existed with no incentive to go back. Even if there was a reason to drop down a tier or two, the current system would just be cluttering up our experience by having us manage 10 coexisting universes. It reminds me of playing a single player campaign in an RTS, which is nothing quite like Minecraft or Tererria which have substantial permanence AND mass exploration.

Why cant there be a single universe filled with diverse planets of a variety of difficulties. From candy and bunnies to "Oh shit its Godzilla!", all randomly strewn about? I want to see a high threat planet with high risk goodies just one star over that I've been eyeballing for real life days, just waiting for my opportunity to raid and loot, hopefully bringing back all sorts of new treasures to my chosen home-world (which I can have for real, because my map is a constant).

There are a million ways to have progress, and I don't feel the current system is ideal. Even if you want to limit progress through tiers, you don't need actual new universe maps to have them. For instance, threat level 10+ planets could have an arbitrary "toxic atmosphere" that requires some "air purifier" tech that acts as a permanent passive buff. Hell, maybe you have to get it from a boss that requires summoning with items only found on frost planets, giving people an incentive to explore and build new armor types. Just an example, there are a million ways we can go about making a game that doesn't have 10 disconnected universes that make the previous ones pointless and forgotten.

Anyho, thanks for reading my rant, maybe someone feels the same =)

EDIT: heres a mockup of a better map. Didnt bother with new buttons or getting rid of the "random" feature for this quick example.

Orange rings meaning you added a note, green rings meaning you added a bookmark, and a nifty fog to show unexplored areas.

 

They are trying many, MANY different systems out
It's nowhere near done

 

And? I tihnk he knows that, Hes offering constructive feedback ont he current system. What exactly was the point of your post? Also please change your avatar.

I agree with the OP...This game feels so bland because all planets are way to much alike. I want high tier planets to have completely different enemies and attacks. As it stands, a tier 5 planet is no different from a tier 1 planet, Just bigger numbers and different ores.

 

They want to do something with space battles post release, if they mix all the planet difficulties together then how will the difficulty of said space battles be determined? However I do like the idea of hazard planets that you need to get equipment to be able to survive on it, like snow is already lol

 

Theres a million awesome ways we could do that, like maybe show little ships around the system/planet you are veiwing on your starmap whenever there is a chance of battle if traveling. Then you just have to mouse over the ship to see if it is hostile and what threat it may pose.

 

I completely agree that we are not there yet - But this IS development time. Gotta break a few eggs and make some horrible cookies, before you make a perfect batch.

Difficulty should be more fluid in my opinion - Animals shouldn't be tied as strictly to a level tier as they are now. There should be easy animals, even animals and a few tough ones on each planet. But roughly balanced to a Tier. Enviromental hazards should also play part in the difficulty calculation.

 

Agree completely. Feels like a very short rinse and repeat cycle to me.

Guy's offering feedback, people. Stop telling people who offer opinions on the state of the game to stop and be patient. We all know it's in beta.

 

Yeah, I didn't like how the sectors are seperated by an item that's only completable by a boss. Why are the universes only accessible with an item? I suppose to prevent brand new characters from jumping to max level planet and boxing their way to high tier items, but there should be other ways to prevent that. There's too much artificial depacing.

How would you go about preventing the aforementioned tier jumping though?

As for space battles, perhaps having a way to quick escape space battles before they start with no penalty. Like, you see the enemy and you choose to escape the battle before it starts, but once you start the battle, something keeps you in the fight and unable to escape (like a hyper-powerful magnetic field that prevents hyper-jumps from triggering or something). And if you escape a battle, you can't visit that planet (which would act as a better artificial pacing than the current boss system, which makes the game not as open).

 

i must agree as of right now i kinda hate the star map not alot of things good about cant keep track of where you been or havent been not alot of growth cus once u decied to kill the boss you stop exploring that sector almost completely im sure it will be changed later but makes me lose interest in the game after the second sector its rise and repeat

 

Well there are definitely more biomes in the works. I could see some limited to higher tiers. And Ty has confirmed there are going to be monster abilities only seen at higher tiers as well (including monsters with a large variety of attacks.)

 

I like this suggestion. However I feel that all non-tier 1 planets would need to be hazardous to the player in some way that requires some progression(be it crafting or boss fights) on lower tiers.

 

This could be nice... The boss battles could just be a way to open up the advanced crafting recipes and let you progress, while keeping the sectors themselves open from the start

 

This is such an amazing idea. I LOVE it!

 

As long as you can't get to that planet before advancing to that tier this sounds like a great idea.

 

We are actually going on a rant about this topic on my poll thread as well. It is a poll about weather traveling to the next sector provides any reallly new content or just forces you to another random planet in a random place, but now you just get owned by all of the mobs. Cast you vote, we would like to find out if this is a real problem or a very subjective preference of some: http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/next-sector-a-loss-poll.48372/

I agree that the planets right now do not provide any real incentive to travel to them. They are all themed ''random'', the mood is ''random''. Although they try to be unique, be with a personality, they get only as far as ''random''. There is not enough incentive to go there. You can accomplish everything on any planet you choose. No reason to explore it is just more randomness. This goes to mobs as well. In the spoiler section of my post and in some replies you will find some really teasing ideas, suggestions on how to solve this. And sectorless galaxy is a very hot tease. Please share your inspired ideas as well.
I saw your post and thought about this

Bon Jovi



Oh, and this:

 

I would much rather see this game become an open world game like op is saying.I would love to play the game and feel like I am in control of my character.Worlds to be scanned and explored with hidden dangers and all that.Dont worry about keeping people from progressing to a certain part.Let the player choose to skip if he wants.Whats the harm.Everyone can play and progress how they want.Besides the natural deterrent from skipping is that things will be to hard.So basically each player can make his own difficulty settings to a degree by progressing at his own pace.

 

This is a good point! You know, I think they should merge the ten tiers together into one unified starmap. That way, we'd be able to find "patches" of planets of the right tier. Finding a T10 system would be a challenge not to be taken lightly, and might require quite a bit of exploring. We should have to actively seek out good planets, rather than wandering aimlessly.

Unfortunately, the downside is that you might end up in situations where there simply aren't planets of the correct tier. You could get stranded in a small T1 area without any way to reach the rest of the galaxy, or being unable to find planets of a specific tier at all. Balancing and rebuilding can reduce this, but not entirely eliminate it. There's major downsides to both systems: It's a bit of a toss-up to which would really be better.

 

I really like the idea of only having a single sector. But something I noticed from messing around in the current X sector is that it would be nice to have a filter of some sort that makes it easier to find the type of planets you want to visit.

 

Disagree on the starter planet bit; my starter planet is just where I 'crash land', it's by no means my new home. I want several planets under my belt before I even consider declaring somewhere a starter point for some kind of empire. To be honest, I'll be pretty happy just living out of my ship, once the ship upgrades come into play. Have to see what they add with an expanded home planet system though. Figure my eventual home base will be in the biome of my choice in the highest sector, and everything before then is just a camp to help me get by.

Right now, the sector system adds a definite feeling of progression. It might not be the best possible system, but I want that feeling of progression to remain in some capacity. The RPG aspects are what got me playing Terraria, and the lack of kinda made other similar titles--like Minecraft--completely pointless to me. I guess the expanded story content for Starbound will really help with this too.

Easy way to do not being able to beam to stronger planets, if you go the sectorless route: make it so the teleporter won't function or the ship won't be able to enter orbit without upgrades. Add some kinda 'resistance' force on stronger worlds, whatever sci-fi mumbo jumbo suits. Change starmap upgrades to teleporter/ship power/resistance upgrades. Definitely stay away from stuff like "all tier three and higher planets have poisonous gas", should want to keep it away from being gear-centric outside of specific biomes.

The 'random' coordinate feature system would have to be entirely rebuilt for a sectorless design though. Current system makes finding suitable planets much easier by making it guaranteed. I imagine that'll be a massive pain to code around. They can't random seed for every game, because the idea of sharing coordnates with other players is amazing and shouldn't be abandoned. So they'd have to reinvent the coordinate system and the navigation system to work around sectorless coordinates without sacrificing scale or ease of use.

Lower tier worlds still seem like a viable option for a degree of tech acquisition and for vanity object 'farming'. Think the bigger problem with them feeling worthless is that they're pretty much gone forever once you leave, unless you write down coordinates. Game needs a history of visited planets and some kind of means of marking a list of worlds as important/favorites. Bookmarks for Space Explorer, I guess.

 

+1 to op on this idea i love the thought of exploring progressively outwards instead of
boss kill...get map....new sector. thats what i want to feel like im exploring
not "Unlocking"