I love the concept of a dungeon with a sort of start and end. When I spawned into it on the nightly my first thought was "Oh this is cool! Well, it's going to be!" The jump puzzles (not nearly as frustrating as the ones in other games, or even as frustrating as the ones in the Apex tech labs) added a good challenge dynamic that wasn't 100% enemy slaughter. Players who want to bypass the challenge of the puzzle with dirt or diamond drills can do that and cheese their way through the dungeon but I don't think that's up to development to stop or concern themselves with - if a player doesn't want to be challenged it's not up to the gamemaster to force his/her hand into accepting it. ^ My two cents.
The way I understood it; Starbound will have a 'main over arching story line' this would be like the main campaign, each stage ending with a boss, such as the Flying saucer first boss. Following the campaign would not only provide an array of storyline pre determined quests but a way to progress though the tiers of gear and diffiuclty. Quests were to be 'side quests' and I assumed, randomly generated, to suplement / distract and otherwise fill out the content in the massive empty and seemingly pointless universe. But I share your low expectations following recent revelations. I initially pictured an abundance of missions, quests, objectives and achievments. Now I'm expecting 3 or 4 Mario styled platform levels as 'missions' followed by infinate 'craft 10' quests.
Spawned in a glitch platform dungeon yesterday. Was awesome, already, well excited to play the finished ones. Strangely it reminded me of Doom with all the hidden rooms full of enemies that come out when you press a switch to do something else. Well smart!
Well the pet ai can double for an escort. Quests can also be a good way to spawn mini bosses again. I don't think they respawn as quick once killed. There can also be set/defuse the bomb missions, with the added threat of changing landscape! Or loot and plunder a town for the pirates/a bed of hay for the farming glitch/meteorite specific to the planet. Plenty of stuff to throw in, hopefully repeatable with other NPCs.
On August 24th, we'll have seen 1/3 of a year pass without so much as an unstable branch update. This means that the people who were told and thus haven't switched to nightly haven't seen so much as a bugfix in almost 122 days. For reference, Dwarf Fortress, a game known for huge and sweeping updates that take forever to release, has updated and released two separate bug-fix patches in the time that Starbound has existed in a playable form. The wording of this update also leads one to believe that Starbound is now in rushdown mode, where the developers are pushing as much content and bugfixing into nightly as possible in order to make sure Starbound can see a full release or at least "Version 1.0" (presumably for this holiday season, in order to appease Sony and get them fat stacks).
The idea of " we can gauge precisely how many polished missions we could create in time for 1.0" basically confirms a lot of my worst fears about how this is gonna go. Instead of working to fully flesh these new systems out and doing some really interesting stuff possible in the setting, they're being implemented and jammed in as quick as possible so that a 1.0 version can be rushed out the door- I'm almost sure at this point there won't be any stable updates until the actual 1.0 release. Work on the game isn't dictating a timeline anymore, it's the other way around. I was pretty psyched to see what kinds of things Starbound would do to differentiate itself from stuff like Terraria, because being in space and in a futuristic setting offers all kinds of cool things; space piracy, exploring new worlds and staking claims, researching exotic lifeforms, capturing aliens for a profit... but at this point the only thing it's still got going for it that I love is the random monster generation and the different species, even if they have only cosmetic differences. I think I lost a lot of hope when they revealed the 'new' armor system, but this is still really, really disappointing to hear.
I'm hoping you devs don't work on too many missions before 1.0. It can be fully fleshed out and more missions won't make it more so (after a certain point). Of course, I don't know your game plan, so assuming too much would be silly of me.
Guys! Guys! What are you doing? Hazmat and MakeMeMad Why do you try to analyze the words of a developer/programmer like he is a marketing flippo? Maybe, all he's trying to say is: We have a lot of ideas for missions but we have NO CLUE how long it would take to implement one, let alone all our ideas. So I did some development for that, isn't it cool? Don't forget, these are the same guys that accidentally alienated a part of their users with the Horse joke. They just thought it'd be funny, they weren't intending to hurt anyone.
I honestly think people are taking the "we can gauge precisely how many polished missions we could create in time for 1.0" statement way out of proportion. What Armagon is saying is that he made a test mission and played it through to test how long it takes to build them and how long it takes for players to complete them. This all seems fairly straightforward to me; you test things out before you start building with it so you know exactly what you're dealing with. Note also: "and to highlight any issues we may run into." They're not saying "we have a secret deadline for 1.0 and are rushing the rest of the content to squeeze it all in in time for release". They're saying that they'll be able to gauge the progress of missions and compare it to the game's overall progress. Presumably, missions can be created as and when possible, in what would otherwise be "down-time" while waiting for various things. So then when 1.0-time starts closing in, they can decide whether or not they they have enough time to make just one more mission.
I can only see escort missions working if whoever you’re escorting is immune to damage and can warp to the player if need be. Granted it probably wouldn’t feel so much like an escort mission and instead more like the usual “get to point B” type of mission. While the dungeons would have a fixed design, that wouldn’t account for the path finding once you’re outside the dungeon. It would be all too easy for NPCs to get stuck on any random piece of terrain or probably fall into dangerous liquid like lava. I don’t think I would be very fond of having to smooth out terrain or cover up liquid just so the AI doesn’t get confused. Oh yeah, would the liquid tool from the previous news update be able to drain liquid from unfinished dungeons? From the dungeon in the nighty build so far, you in theory could drain out the acid to at least make it somewhat easier. I suppose that wouldn’t be so bad since you’re not flat out cheesing the dungeon like if you could just mine your way through. Then again in a game as opened as this, you can only do so much without feeling overly restrictive or not allowing the player to gain any sort of edge outside of superior equipment.
so we are here, I am anxious to find out what the story starbound will speak ... many race, the story of them, many way become one for all, gate, npc we can get to our home planet, donjon, and most important, who is the big bad guy and what this plan to get or destroy all univers ? adventure must be sized, hope not just a short tuto...
Because people have the urge to keep hammering on tiny little details that have little to nothing to do with the main post and then make premature conclusions out of them to cause a fuss somehow... I guess it's some kind of a fetish, popular habit around steam forums etc, although there they dedicate threads to it (which is better). On-topic though, I do love this idea of missions, I assume they're tied to the dungeons then, like randomly found? I remember from a while ago that they also mentioned a protection system for these dungeons that was in the works thanks to the engine rewrite, so people worrying about breaking traps 'n stuff in the mission area don't need to worry : D
Even as someone who doesn't play the nightlies, I don't really care when it comes out as 1.0 or when the next update is released. I'll play it when it's ready. That being said, newest developments look pretty radical, and quests are something I especially look forward to.
So I don't know if anyone has written it already, or the devs know it anyway, but I am new to the nightly Updates, so here I go: I made a new character (Permadeath, because hey why not?) and started in this dungeon. I thought hey how cool is that. Well not so cool... My matter manipulator couldn't mine the bricks (but I thought that was probably by design so it couldn't be destroyed) The dungeon by itself was awesome but needless to say I died. (Permadeath). So I made a new character (also permadeath) only to spawn in the same dungeon again?! (I guess they made that so they could test the dungeon) I tried to escape, and found out I could mine at least the background, so I did that and build myself out of there. Just to see that I also couldn't mine outside the dungeon, and since that includes trees I am screwed. A pretty severe bug I would say. Just to be clear: THIS IS NOT ME COMPLAINING! Nightly is nightly and I knew what I was getting into. This is solely FYI ! And just as footnote, I think the Idea of starting off in a dungeon is awesome, but problematic. With my first character it took so long to get out that I would probably have died anyway of hunger even if I had managed it. (And with only starting gear I was nowhere close) So I guess I wait until the next update and try again... Thank you for all your work, keep it up
