This, oh so much this..... Maybe your Ship AI would get requests from companies or their rivals once your bounty-hunter/errand boy fame starts going on? and you could choose from there which ones to get done, earning benefits with one or another "company", special weapons, unique abilities or armor? I want to be a Miniknog assassin by hire
Yeah this would be great. I personally would hunt down the cave planets. Chilling underground for days is something I enjoy.
Not just broad Find/Kill/Craft/Steal/etc. quests, but some race-and-sector specific quests; opening up that Starbound lore in-game would be HUGE! Special titles or gaining a lore book that signifies said title, plus all the boons of extra loot either rewarded or found along the way: --EXAMPLE-- APEX: -Miniknog: After using the Distress Beacon and taking down Dreadwing, players could work to get back in Big Ape's good graces with quests. But said graces are a difficult demand to fulfill... [Sector A] Big Ape sends down a peace offering of a free Brain Extractor and PC follows the typical quest line of building Inactive Robot--s? A repentant Apex willing to collect a lot of brains has to count for something? [Sector B] Big Ape challenges the PC to be the test bed for a bigger, badder, better Fatal Circuit -- (A) tackling two or more simultaneously (with either success OR death meriting a reward), or addressing the design flaws with Floran brains, with more brains. [Sector G] Big Ape is sure that an infiltrator like the PC would have success finding & fulfilling fetch quests with Humans or Glitch -- find Lore books and/or take various scan-able's to help modify the design of Fatal Circuit. [Sector D] Big Ape addresses outpost and laboratory distress signals, and tasks the PC with going to ruined facilities to (A) combat annoying Outcasts, ( cover-up failed experiments, or (C) deal with "Agarans", whatever those are... [Sector X] PvE conquering enemy homeworlds, surface-to-core with new & improved Fatal Circuits (or maybe just Apex mechs named that...) or using said new toys against PvP Outcast Apex... and cleaning up after these mushroom people, too. -Outcast: Realizing the Distress Beacon might tip off Big Ape & the Miniknog to the PC's location, quests rely on disabling or destablizing the network, or finding out there's worse things than Big Ape... [Sector A] Find a Thought Reassignment Center (now with NPC/mobs?) and take (any) Lore book back to the nearest Apex town. Village leader offers pixel reward and craftable weapons at higher-than-normal value. [Sector B] Now with some heavy firepower, quest to either (A) take out a Research Lab (kill everyone!) - ( find a USMC outpost and hijack their communications -- receive coordinates to quest onward to next Sector & find help! [Sector G] Said help has been laid out -- not by Miniknog as feared, but by... something else? Investigate planet surface, or interior if necessary -- what happened at these coordinates?! (Agarans?) Side quests link to main quest line w/ extras. [Sector D] Alert the masses! A menace bigger than the Miniknog will probably be used BY the Miniknog. Contact other races across planets, find NPC spawners, or complete quests with NPC's specifically -- build a resistance! [Sector X] PvE attack on Miniknog, to take advantage of out of control Agarans, or Apex-on-Apex violence PvP who've completed the Miniknog line of questing! Avians could fulfill quests to either further or impede Kluex's influence, or PC's could raise the overall intelligence of the Florans -- or start tribal warfare? Humans could actually quest to regain control over Tentacle planets to discover how to combat them? Glitches advance a simple village to a planetary empire (causing more Glitch Castles/townships to appear on planet or by system?) Overall quests to start taking on the Agarans en-masse or find out the roles of the Rainbow people? Quest to actually have a Frog Merchant talk to someone?! Just a thought.
plenty of goot ones there.. * - Courrier: Take [X] to [Y] on planet [Z] * - Reforest / Rebalance: Take [X]*[Y] diferent tree samples (from [Z] typle planet) and plant them on planet [W] * - Kill miniboss [X] on planet / village [Y] * - Capture creature [X] on planet [Y] and return it to planet [Z] * - Short Supply: negotiate [X]*[Y] "item" on otuer planets / outposts and bring them back (or deliver to planet [Z] as an S.O.S. mission)
Well damn, I find it harder and harder to resist taking the plunge to nightlies... I got stuff to do, I really do, but this is becoming so tempting... ... ... Oh right, sugestions. Earning reputation from quests would require some sort of faction system, will Starbound feature such things? If so I heartily endorse this: Also would it be possible that those titles carry with them certain risks? Like depending whether you side with the miniknog or the rebels, you get hit squads from the opposing forces? Maybe raising the likelyhood of meeting them while traveling from planet to planet. It would work similarly to Fallout: New Vegas, when you piss off a faction you'd get visits from them from time to time, Though you can call upon your favored faction for help if you need it. Edit: And I've noticed we sorta forgot Sector X huh? That whole conquest thing could open up some interesting ideas for quests to further your own Galactic Empire...
It'd be nice to see "instanced" or pre-rendered planets and the ability to add quest markers or a tracker of some sort, as well as the ability to turn those off. A quest marker being available or unavailable could provide the difference between "find the hidden ruins" vs "find the source of the distress signal". It'd also be nice to see quest descriptions fully customizable, like showing the player something along the lines of "Kill the 'varmints' in the shed" instead of "Kill 5 Rats". Though there's the danger of a quest showing something silly like "I'm a banana " instead of "Find [x] unspecified location" and leaving the player stranded in the quest line, leave that for the player base to rank and sort through.
I like this idea. Maybe we will find he has been running one of the market stalls on an outpost in order to get travel finds. I mean, all this time he has probably been moving around looking for Yongzhi2000.
find npc A to obtain special weapon A that only damages monster X which drops item Y to be brought back to npc A then return to npc B to complete quest
Yes! That's one of the great things about Terraria, that to help you progress in the game you can build houses and rooms for them. Currently the only motivation to build a house is for fun/aesthetics, but since I'm not really into that stuff I would like an actual need to build them.
I know I'm a couple days late for this, but I'd like to see NPC fetch-quests that require you to go to other NPCs. Templates: 1) Talk to [npc 'X'], then return for your reward. This would be simply delivering a simple message. You would be given the general location of the NPC you have to find. Make it better by forming a long chain of NPCs that could span several planets before you return for a proportionately larger prize.2) Deliver # unique items to [several NPCs of a specific type, in a certain village/dungeon on the same planet], then return for your reward. Maybe you are delivering advertising flyers or brochures for an event or product. You could also be delivering food to prison inmates, refugees, guards, etc... Alternatively, you could be making deliveries to other planets, Planet Express style!3) The quest-giver immediately hands over [# item(s)], then you return after ['X' time] and pay the quest-giver [# pixels]. In this one, you are given the reward up-front, encouraged to sell it all, then give the quest-giver a cut of the profit. They might be hiring you to fence stolen goods. There could be another version for laundering money. A more ethical version could be buying an old lady her groceries, with her giving you pixels up front and you delivering her food. A key feature is that it should easily repeatable (thus the time element, to prevent abuse).4) Talk to [npc 'X'] and solve a multiple-choice quiz, then return for your reward. This would be used to create a diplomatic mission, or intelligence gathering, or just about anything. It is basically a dialogue tree-- you are talking to somebody and have to say the right things to get the right outcome. The results of the "quiz" determine the quantity or quality of the prize. Another nice thing to add to quests could be rewards not directly effecting the player. Maybe instead of giving the player items or pixels in exchange for the bricks he/she just delivered, the NPC instead uses those bricks to build an expansion to the village, like another floor of the house with some loot inside, or a new NPC that sells items or can join your crew. This specific example could be even better if you have to wait a certain amount of time before the construction is finished.
Late to the party, I know, but in case anyone is still reading this thread, THISTHISTHISTHIS! I would absolutely LOVE to see quests revolving around building things. As it stands, the building element of Starbound is basically completely separate from the other systems - the only things you need to "build" are crafting stations, maybe simple farms. I would really like to see a game with block-based building which actually had a PURPOSE to building structures! And what better way than to have a simple template for quests to require building a structure with specific (or minimum/maximum) dimensions, materials, objects, etc.? Also, to encourage adding detail, allow rewards to vary based on WHICH objects are used, which can either be specified up front, or even left for the player to discover! The simplest version would be the one I quoted: build a simple colony - a farm, an animal pen, and housing for 20 people. Bonus rewards would come from adding things like bookshelves, comfier beds, etc. More complex versions could be: build a research complex. You could have bonuses for various items like the Cool Shelves and the various flasks or the plasma disc. Players would have a set of basic dimensions, would build what they considered a cool research complex, and then be rewarded based on how many cool things they put into it above a certain minimum. More difficult tasks could even PENALIZE players for adding inappropriate objects - building a Hylotl colony and adding an Avian Emblem, for example - or worse, some Floran furniture!
Npcs will scan their surroundings and determine how much that space he's renting is worth. That could be used for quests to determine your reward. But... There's one fundamental problem I see in build [X] quests: how would that be worth the while? More especifically: how do you properly reward creativity? Would throwing together a mudshack yield the same reward as a cobblestone house? Would a straight block house be worth the same as a nicely built home with the same amount of materials but with nice architecture? How about a steel bunker with little variety? Would that be more valuable than a nice house mixing modern and wooden furniture just because a bunker uses more valuable materials? I wonder if coding a complex algorithm for analising those nuances would be worth the effort. Doing it as a contract work with specified materials and furniture could ensure that they'll pay adequately for what they're asking for (and spare the aimless mining/chopping/spelunking), but wouldn't it be more profitable to just build stuff by yourself the way you want and then rent it? Anyway, sorry for pouring a bit of cold water there, but I would like to see if can flesh out this idea because it is a very good one.
I felt like the answer about materials is pretty evident within the "pay more for different items": there's no reason that different materials can't yield different rewards - in fact, I think one of the most basic types of this quest would be "Build a [insert race here]" outpost." If it were a Glitch house, for example, you'd get rewarded for every block and item that comes from the Glitch set (check out the key for a Glitch village to see a list of them). More specific tasks would have their own themes, either more broad or more narrow. You're rewarded for each block or item that fits within the theme. There's no "complex algorithm" - you want to use the materials appropriate to the structure you are building. These are easily defined parameters of the quest - a list of blocks and items. Trying to sort building materials arbitrarily by "value" is an absurd idea, not suggested anywhere and certainly not necessary for a successful structure-building quest. The game checks the materials and items used against a list defined in the quest parameters, simple as that. You could even have the list tiered so that while some materials are "acceptable", others might LOWER your reward - a simple list of the basic "soil" blocks, for example. Imagine: there is a "good" list, which is all of the materials which yield a reward on a per-item/block basis - stone or brick or thatch for our Glitch house, for example. Then there is a "bad" list, which includes items which will specifically be penalized - for most structures, this would include any kind of dirt, mud, flesh, sand, etc. So you COULD use common dirt to make the house, but your payout would significantly decrease. As to parity with the proposed rental system, renting is a long-term source of incremental income, probably with maintenance or protection required down the road - building a colony could yield a much, MUCH higher up-front payout, making it better for quick cash. Also, many structures you could build don't fit into the "rental" model - how about a lava pit for human sacrifice, built for a local cult leader? Or as I mentioned previously, a laboratory? Or a temple? Or a construction/mining facility? Again, building and OWNING one of these things is a source of small payments over time, but building them for-hire means a large payment now, and no maintenance or hassle down the road.
Long term profit over quick reward is a factor to consider, especially in the beginning. Also, again, that does not address the point I made about creativity. It is not only what materials you use, but how the final product looks. If a quest simply rewards you more for better or appropriate materials, then all you have to do is a big tower made of iron and you're set. Just slap some blocks together, put some background, put doors here and there and fill it with crap to maximize gains . Any further effort would be just for your own amusement. To reward such creativity in architectural planning would require a more complex scanning for certain aspects like proportion, shapes, access to diferent floors, furniture disposition, window positioning, does it have an attic or basement or other unique structures, etc... Maybe that idea as presented just isn't appealing enough to me. I'm one of those who likes to explore planets and don't settle and build bases or dig too deep for ores (Though I enjoy decorating my ship with loot and stuff). But that's just it. It isn't appealing to me. And I wish it did. I'm trying to offer some insight from someone not overly excited about this and come up with ideas that would make building a viable and fun activity to those like me. Take that as you will. The new mini-dungeons underground are looking very nice, and it might make me look underneath the surface more often. But building right now isn't doing it for me.
