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Feedback The 1.4 update should....

Discussion in 'Starbound Discussion' started by M_Sipher, Jun 19, 2017.

  1. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    ...NOT introduce huge new systems. It should NOT introduce an all new gameplay aspect. No new minigames either. No, I think we're set for the moment.

    What it SHOULD do is expand on and refine features already there. The base systems are in place, and we're coming up on a year of 1.0, let alone pre-1.0 material. A lot of what's there is... well-worn. Good, but too familiar by now. So 1.4 should be a content patch, an expansion of the whole universe, not merely one aspect of it. Have big stuff working in the background for 1.5 sure, but push forward a "stuff" patch to tide us over and give you more time to perfect the next Big Thing.

    For examples...
    • More planet types, more biomes, and variants/expansions of existing ones. We need some new scenery. Wouldn't it be neat to see a pre-Scorched or pre-Toxic world, high tech worlds before they were ruined? How about a full-metal world. Some psychedelic lands. Floating islands. Simply adding a lot of variants to the Muatated planetary biome so there's all kinds of weird looks (bring back the horrible-sounding Alien Juice liquid!). Expanding on what's underground as well would be great. And don't be afraid to go silly. A 1-in-1000 Candy Land mini-biome or whatever'd be a fun treasure hunt.
    • Tweak weather conditions. It should probably not snow on planets without a snowy biome anywhere on them. Snowstorms should probably slow you down as sandstorms do. Windy conditions, precipitation or no, should push the player, slowing them when they walk against it, or speeding them up when moving with it. (It'd be fun to navigate floating islands in high winds, I think.) Minimally-damaging hail... that used to be a thing, didn't it? Heavy rainstorms should make the sky darker, with flashes of lightning for effect. Cloudy days, smog, thick jungle mist?
    • More villages & microdungeons. There's loads to be added here, and again, variants of existing ones can add to the variety with a shorter workload. Ruined villages & dungeons. Pre-collapse USCM prisons and Hylotl castles. Abandoned Erchius mining outposts/rigs on Moons. ANYTHING on Frozen Ocean and Magma planets, since there's little to no reason to EVER visit either outside of fish & bug collection completion. Floating mini-cities and mining rigs on Ocean worlds. I'd love to see large underground dungeons with no surface entrance. Cultist mini-temples. The random 1-in-1000 Infinity Express just randomly planetside. USCM base ruins would be fine.
    • More NPC races. This goes hand-in-hand with the villages/dungeons. The existing costumes can be a great start. I want to run across settlements of Penguins, Ursas, Maggots, Creeplings, Yetis, those Black Lagoon creatures, the Limestone rock dudes, and new races we've not yet seen. Ability to have them (and the Fenerox) as Crew might be nice but not necessary.
    • More monster types, more RNG monster parts. The first part is pretty explanatory, and space could certainly use a few more threats. I think it'd be nice if the existing "unique" monsters also got some color variety. Slight changes to the pallets, but also maybe the rare albino iteration? Take a cue from Pokemon and have ice/magma varieties of certain pre-existing beasties. I think the RNG monster pool is well overdue for some expansion, and I would love to see the giant monsters teased in past pre-release blog posts. I also think it'd be a good time to record a bunch of new monster noises to play rather than just the "blip!" sound. Hell, bring back some of the "lost" foes, like the USCM bunker robots.
    • Improved AI for both NPCs and monsters. Stop wandering into lava. Have enemies of any stripe have a % chance to run away if they take too much damage in a short amount of time, and some just run or surrender on-sight if they see you kill someone else. The ability to use some more weapon types (which would play into the next suggestion). Larger animals that just run away on-sight. Tenants who don't go wandering into other people's rooms to sleep. And... dare I suggest... romance options????
    • Expand on Tenants, Quests, Crew capabilities. It'd be nice to be able to individually alter the Vanity Armors for Crew and Tenant Guards. I also wouldn't mind being able to give them specific weapons, it'd sure give me something to DO with all those oddities I've collected. I don't mind not being able to directly affect their armor rating, but I won't complain if individually outfitting NPCs like you would your own character became a thing (again, gives me stuff to do with the armors I bought as a completionist). It'd be less aesthetically grating to me than having my Floran guard's room have non-decor-matching high-tech metal beds and stuff. And a few more Quest types wouldn't be bad either, but I admit I've not thought much on the specifics of that one.
    • More blocks & decor & vanity armors. Just go nuts folks. Make loads of silly pointless things for us to decorate our builds and ourselves with. Make the Frogg Furninshing store have two sets of furniture a day and double the number of sets available grand total through it. More sloped blocks, or the ability to MAKE existing blocks sloped manually (especially glass). Bring back spiderweb blocks and cloud blocks because why not, even if they don't occur naturally but only in the workbench. I love this big loony Lego set of a game, and more to play with will only make me happier. Some more tram rail looks would be cool too. Wooden, rusty, industrial, etc.
    • Racial/"vanity" weapons. Look, I really liked the Floran plant-weapons. I dug the Glitch maces and Avian crystal-blasters. The folding chair was a particular favorite. I don't care if they don't have special powers. They looked good and fit the themes. The ability to craft/collect those again would be great. And I'd love to be able to, say, take a powerful hammer-type weapon I found, but then apply the visuals of a weaker hammer-type to it so I can keep the look I want without sacrificing attack power. Kepp the generics and the generics you can craft now, but let us personalize weapons... and like the armors, let us get our hands on other races' stuff with a single character.
    • Make vendors more specialized. I miss specialized vendors. Food vendors, clothing shops, weapon sops, furniture shops. Having every shopkeeper you encounter sell a random selection of whatever is... ugh. Wouldn't it be fun to run into a roaming toy vendor?
    • More space station & ship varieties. Why not hostile space stations? Cultist stations? Why not spaceships twice the size of what's there now? Hostile ships with external blasters and targets you need to take out to open their mech door?
    • Vanity Mech slots. I'm enjoying the whole mech thing well enough, but my motif for my main character is tacky, cobbled-together junkshop kitsch. The Golem mech body is PERFECT, but if I want better stats? I have to abandon that. And I hate that. Vanity slots for Mech bodies, boosters and legs would be fantastic. (You'd wanna keep arms as they appear for real.) And on top of that, more Mech bodies & boosters & legs whose stats are no different from any of the others but they LOOK different and that's the important part.
    • More hoverbike & boat options. Don't care if the stats are the same. Just give us more visuals to play with. Well, maybe make the wooden boat catch fire if you dump it in lava because come on.
    • If you see it, you can make it. That there are decor items that are unprintable/uncraftable drives me up the wall. I don't like admin-ing in items. Let us make the numbers on the wall. Let us make all the Spaceship Greebles. Let us craft the modern kitchen tables. Let us be able to craft/upgrade racial armor sets once we've obtained them from vendors, including Vanity armors. Lemme make breakables. I wanna be able to place bushes and hanging vines and wild plants, or wall graffiti. Let us plant blooming flowers that drop petals so we can make more dye. Those decor items you can only get as quest prizes? Let us scan & print those, PLEASE.
    • If it lights up, it should be wireable. There's already lots of bio-lights you can Wire. Let's make ALL of them capable of that, please? If it looks like a console with controls of some kind, it should be a wire on/off toggle.
    • Add in unused decor assets somehow. There's a buncha chests in the game files currently unused. Bring 'em forward. So many chests, lights, and just random, non-game-changing stuff. Plug 'em into the workbench as default-unlocks. Make them prizes for Quests or bought from vendors. Yeah, yeah, someone's gonna be "you can just admin" but I don't think we should have to do that.
    • Let us display more stuff. The mannequins are great, let's do more of that! Empty weapon racks that let us display neat guns or swords or whatever on the wall. Plates that let us put food items on tables. Plaques to mount fish we've hooked, giving us something to DO with that whole process beyond fill a checkbox.
    I don't think I'm asking for huge changes, and hopefully nothing terribly difficult. I just want to see the variety found in Starbound grow further. Y'all have set up one hellaciously-huge universe, there's so much room to put stuff. I've been playing since the Koalas an I've been loving it, but would love to see some of the stuff that hasn't had much added to it since then get expanded on.
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2017
  2. [curly] servo

    [curly] servo Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    it should add various foods, weapons, items, lore entries and dungeons they took out is what it should do but they won't. it'll be some neat new thing to do.

    i'l like it if they made wiring and colony deeds invisible outside of a certain screen.
     
  3. DraikNova

    DraikNova Spaceman Spiff

    I agree with you on pretty much all of this except weather. Weather already causes major lag for many players, and even when it doesn't, stuff like snow covering and silt blocks getting into builds because the game doesn't realize there's a wall offscreen annoys people already. More of that stuff would be a bad idea.

    But yeah, more sloped blocks, more biomes, more minor race settlements (I'd especially love it if we got more themed versions of the storage lockers; Hive locker anyone?) and above all, mech vanity slots.
     
  4. STCW262

    STCW262 Heliosphere

    Mech stuff should also be integrated with the rest of the game, as, right now, the only reason to upgrade Mechs is to obtain higher-tier Mech parts.
     
    krylo and DraikNova like this.
  5. Tjamanarlong

    Tjamanarlong Void-Bound Voyager

    For me adding Fenerox to the playable race menu would be my most wanted thing for a next update as then i never have to wait for the mod i have running to update :3
    but seeing more bioms would be nice to.
    maby they can draw insperation from the populair mod frackin universe?
     
    ShadowDragon8685 likes this.
  6. DraikNova

    DraikNova Spaceman Spiff

    Also to earn millions of pixels by refining ores obtained using the ridiculously powerful beam drills. Seriously, I tried those out in an asteroid field and got 400 each of copper, gold and silver in 15 minutes. That's 36k pixels per hour using a refinery.
     
  7. STCW262

    STCW262 Heliosphere

    Talking about those, Asteroid fields could also use some monsters so that it's not just a lot of ore sitting there waiting to be effortlessly taken.
     
    Your Intuition, krylo and creeper22 like this.
  8. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    ...don't they? Last time I went to an asteroid field, there were those blue ghosty monsters.
     
  9. STCW262

    STCW262 Heliosphere

    Skimbuses aren't anywhere near a match agaisnt Mechs.
     
    Your Intuition and creeper22 like this.
  10. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    A few minor things I forgot...
    • Toggle Head Armor visuals on/off. There's a ton of neat-looking "hair" options, and maybe the player doesn't want to cover them up. Simply allowing the player to go hatless visually would be nice. Yeah, there are some small head Vanity Armors like glasses, but what if you don't WANT your character wearing glasses? Vast player visual customization is one of this game's strengths.
    • Light-casting Armors in Vanity slots should still cast light. This would be extremely beneficial to players in early game, when EPP Augments are rare as hell, monsters are tough, and light is limited. Forcing the player to suffer a massive armor rating hit just so they can have a mining helmet's light active is... ugh. If this means that late-game a player can have a Health-III-augmented EPP and slap a Xenon pack over it for double the effects... so what? They spent the resources (presumably) and it's not like it's game-breaking. I LOATHE having to make the choice between seeing underwater and moving at anything faster than snail's pace. I mean sure you can pack glowing stims, but those too are not readily available early-game. Redundant options are fine.
     
  11. Falkenhayn

    Falkenhayn All Chuck Norris backward gets you is Sirron Kcuhc

    There are a lot of points in this thread that I agree with. We could do with more variation that expands through the start of the game up until endgame. With the space stations obtainable midgame due to the nature of the quest to receive a Transponder and the unrelenting accumulation of resources, and the mechs generally at a weird spot, we need something different and more rich in content.
     
    LtBlujay likes this.
  12. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    My general feeling is that Starbound's core strength is its sheer variety, and its ability to expand that variety. The universe you play in is functionally infinite and its procedural generation means they can add new stuff -be it features or general content- for years and years, and we can experience all that without having to re-start the universe or our characters or anything. The gameplay features may be basic, but the draw is the player's ability to choose the visuals they want for what they need. A simple shed to store stuff can be a dirt hut, a Japanese-style pagoda, a hollow tree, a medieval fort, a high-tech mini-bunker, or a blend of any of those and more. (I've been considering seeing what I can do about making Grecian-style stone temples and whatnot.) And that's glorious.

    Updates don't need to be huge and game-altering to give us plenty of reason to get hype.

    You know what I've spent most of my (limited) gameplay time doing since 1.3? Playing with the new blocks and decor items. I've never been super-happy with the way my ship has been internally decorated, but the new panels and whatnot have REALLY inspired me, and I'm well on my way to the interior matching the cobbled-together scrap-pile of the exterior. That makes me far happier than any amount of space combat could ever hope to do.

    For my money, every "big" content update that introduces some new system should also come with a spattering of new stuff NOT directly tied to said new system. Some new microdungeons for existing biomes. Some new Vanity Armors to find in random chests on random planets. Some new crafting stations that do the same thing as already-existing ones but just give us some new look to try out. An additional Frogg Furnishing furniture set. Some new tree types, the odd bit of RNG monster bits, etc. Stuff there is zero gameplay function to, but it adds variety and makes the universe look bigger and constantly new in small ways, a little extra excuse to play in "older" features again.

    And they can better-integrate certain features so they blend into the whole game better.

    Now that we have mechs and space-based stuff in the game and functional, there can be more polish and addition and better integration into the game as a whole rather than an odd side-arm. Like mechs on planets. I DO think that mechs shouldn't be easily recharged on planetary surfaces just to prevent OP-ness, but it should be doable at cost. (A non-stackable recharging item, or perhaps a placable charging bay that forces you to get out of the mech for it to charge up again perhaps.) As for space, some of the anomaly destinations are pretty neat, and I would honestly love the ability to "save" them into the system, make them bookmarkable and build them up (or tear them down) as you can most any terrestrial structure. Sure, place limits on how many you can have "saved" in any system just to prevent overloading, but let us save that space arcade.

    Just some rambles. How feasible some of this is I dunno, I have the coding skill of the average whelk, but still. I'm not really looking for any new huge OMG GIANT CHANGE with this game at this point. I think it can afford to spend some time on numerous smaller-scale, lower-key, but still noteworthy content and polish updates.
     
  13. Blevruz

    Blevruz Phantasmal Quasar

    Some stuff I wanna add to your list
    • More procedural weapon abilities. And perhaps tie that in with an eventual reintroduction of racial weapons, so that racial procedurals have race-related abilities.
    • More procedural monster abilities. Even if it's only for, say, big monsters or something. Give them characteristics that make them worth catching
    • More stuff in arctic oceans specifically. They're pretty much pointless as of now. (Gigantic water creatures, anyone ?)
    • Gravity generator to build in asteroid fields.
    And some stuff that may be harder to do.
    • Custom weapon crafter - Something like the ability to tear a procedural weapon apart and assemble it for a new, custom gun (maybe, but not necessarily, have stats tied to used parts ?)
    • Community contests for the content mentionned before - Since the modding scene is so active, why not have a contest of sorts for procedural parts, dungeons or object, and add the best ? That'd make more variety for the game and less work for the devs !
    • More lore. As hard as making an interesting backstory can be, it really adds to the immersion. While that probably shouldn't be a priority, It'd still need some work.
     
  14. RancorSnp

    RancorSnp Seal Broken

    For me the very most important thing are player build colonies.
    More quests, more tenants, especially racial tenants, there is really not that many of them. Getting all the possible Floran tenants for my floran colony was waaay to short, especially since most tenant roles can not be fulfilled by all races.

    It would be nice if different tenant roles had some impact on your colony, but to be honest I do not feel motivated enough to think of the details, while knowing it would most likely go to waste.

    And please for the love of god, give us an option to decline potential crew member once and for all, it is very annoying when your colony of 40 tenants consists of 30 crew members just because you spend time helping them.
     
  15. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    There is a very easy solution to that.

    Pull the Deed off the wall. The Tenent will go away. Replace the Deed. The Tenant will be replaced with a new one of the same stats as before.

    Got a Tenant whose looks you like and wanna keep? Then just don't do quests for them.
     
  16. KennethImagine

    KennethImagine Void-Bound Voyager

    For me, more prepared food but don't add more crop. (Balance, making some crops more useful) Also making bacon drop from pig like procedural generated monster would be a good move.

    More tenant type, now we can only invite villager, guard, merchant and chef. There should have more tenant type like doctor and farmer.

    Making furnace work on background. We can just put ore into furnace and wait furnace complete crafting ingot. To be honest, after long mining season, watching 4000 ore turn into 2000 bars is pain in ass.

    Populated planets. I want this planet type. Each race has their own civilized and populated planet. (or a planet which is covered by cities entirely)

    AI improvements. Making the NPCs more intelligent on some tricky situation, especially in combat.

    New vehicles like driller or hover miner (for zero gravity) to ease mining work.

    A version which focus on game performance and optimization is welcome.
     
    Last edited: Jul 3, 2017
  17. RancorSnp

    RancorSnp Seal Broken

    Yes this is indeed some solution, but getting a floran aristocrat is quite time consuming (lazy to reset them every time), and well they all look good so I'd love to keep them all.
    I just can't stop myself from doing all the quests they have, feel like I'm responsible for that colony (The floran one, the mixed one in the underground I couldn't care less :D)
     
  18. DraikNova

    DraikNova Spaceman Spiff

    creeper22 and RancorSnp like this.
  19. IonTichy

    IonTichy Master Chief

    A lot of the suggestions are interesting and good.
    But I for one would be sufficiently happy if the game's performance would be optimized.
     
  20. Eridhan

    Eridhan Space Hobo

    Hi, First please apologise my approximativ writing (not mother tongue) :), and thanks dev's for this Great Game.

    I Agree with M_Sipher on the principle to expand arlready existing content and create new one, the idea of dungeon variation is awesome, but I think we need more High Tiers things to keep the pleasure of playing, I find, when you reach the last Tiers and finish the main story (even Vault), the game loose some interest, exploration became little boring when you see all dungeons and biomes, the colony/station system is awesome but very poor, is not usefull principaly when you have complete ship crew.

    some idea for that the interest at the end of story keeps the great pleasure felt at the beginning:

    - Planet, Colony and Space Events : Random and spontaneous event can really are awesome for expand the interest, some limited in time, Other Long, I think unexpected things with good reward can give a good purpose to exploring, search materials/Maintain resource stocks, give interest to the colony/station system and keep the player on guard, ready for any threat. Event is the most easily realizable idea, without Huge work.
    Some ( or few lol) example:
    - "Save hostage before the Outlaw kill Him/them"
    - "Some Cultist try to reborn The Ruins, Stop Them"
    - "Your ship are boarding (space pirate?), defend him" (working with idea of ship defenses)
    - "Your Colony/Space Station are under attack, kill the invaders"(colony transponder)
    - "Your Colony/Space Station needs Food/Material/Weapons" (idea of colony chest)
    - "Zombies(lol) /Erchius monster Invasion on planet, find a cure or stop propagation"
    - "Your Colony are infected by a plague, help them to cure it" (make X antidote and put them
    in colony chest)
    - "A ship send you a distress message, Investigate the ship" (ambush or real distress)
    - "The seeds of Ruin Infect a planet, if you don't make something, she's lost" ( Kill MiniBoss
    and terraforming quest maybe?)
    - etc...

    - Factions : reputation and diplomacy system can improve the interest to make NPC quest in end-game, the possibility to be friendly or hostile with some faction (and create our own of course), be friendly with certain make you ennemy of another one, etc... and can add the siege(attack and defense) event.

    - Colony/station Research Tree : For add colony/station maker and specific object like Farmer, blacksmith, Chemist, colony/station defense and production stuff etc... the colony/station really need more interest, it's wonderful system which deserves to be fully exploited.

    - A custom weapon : Like Shotgun? Prefer Sniper or Medieval sword? The possibily to have one customizable weapon, which can improved and changed over time, with many different pieces and the choice of special abilitie (assault rifle with grenage launcher for example), that can be is a good reason for material research/production and awesome for create personnal playstyle.


    Well it's done for the moment (lol), it's just some personnal's ideas for better game's experience and lifetime. I love this game, it can be one of the most complete game. thanks for reading.
     
    Roskii Heiral likes this.

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