1 year later, another batch of suggestions

About a year and a bit ago, I made quite a large post with lots of little suggestions about the game, not much big-picture stuff. Here's what did and didn't get addressed since then:

Things that have been addressed afaik (because they were popular ideas, don't think I'm taking the credit for any of these)

• High level drills shouldn't be so easily repaired using low level ore
• Petals shouldn't be chest loot
• Throwing weapons shouldn't be useless for the level of planet they're found on
• Trees shouldn't grow on falling blocks like fine sand (I think this is fixed..?)
• Bone Hammer shouldn't destroy platforms so easily
• UFO boss is over in seconds with a handful of bombs
• Lightning uncommon weapons and Bone Hammer (and probably some of the other legendary weapons too) shouldn't hit through walls and doors
• Craftable guns, rocket launchers, plasma weapons, grenades
• Directional melee attacks
• More exotic weapons
• Mob defense mechanic
  
• Robot boss makes no sense
• Being pointed towards a special planet for a dungeon crawl or boss
• Put good ores deeper into the ground
• More regen items
• More merchants
• More offensive techs
• Being able to tell how good a shield is from the description

Things that have not been addressed afaik - perhaps they will be implemented in future, maybe they were just unpopular ideas. I still think they're all valid ideas, though.

• Poison is devastating on low level mobs but pretty useless against high level ones (I haven't properly checked this one, actually.)
  
• Shotguns are underpowered (though I noticed some shotguns have a tight spread, which is good)
  
• Bullets that split in two are useless and should be removed
• Mining out a matter block dispenser or status pod shouldn't make them disappear without noise
• Wired explosives
• One-handed spear
• Special craftable consumable ammunition with special effects
• Starting ship should be inconveniently small to incentivise ship upgrades
• Ability to sell things to merchants
• More RPG elements like character leveling, stat points
• More factories and industrial areas

Some people seemed to like the old post, so here's a new one. You might notice this one takes a little more of a 'big-picture' focus. You'll also notice that a lot of these suggestions are not original - just interpret them as voicing my support.

Suggestions

• Small mobs no longer have cool abilities, making monster catching boring. Give their abilities back, or allow catching medium-sized mobs using a more expensive capture pod. I need my pokemans!

• End-game, if you want good loot and a combat challenge, you HAVE to go to a dead / magma / volcanic planet. This makes the end-game extremely tedious, no variety of biomes to visit. It looks like fixing this is in the roadmap, so cool.

• The defense system still makes fast weapons poor, which is a shame because they're fun to use. This seems to stem from the defense removing a fixed value off of every hit, rather than a percentage. Minecraft and Skyrim show you an "armor rating" of some kind which translates into a damage percentage reduction which is capped at 80%. This seems to work well for those games, why not adopt a similar strategy? There could be a mix of absolute and percentage damage if you want to bias it towards slow weapons - or, just buff fast weapons then have a mix of lightly and heavily armored enemies.

• There shouldn't be any weapons slower than ~0.8, they're boring to use but overpowered (see above) so you're forced to use them. For perspective, the absolute slowest weapon in Terraria (Sluggish Sniper Rifle) has a speed of about 0.98, while you can find weapons in Starbound with speeds as low as 0.3.

• Jumping detaches the grappling hook unless you're touching the ground, in which case there's no way to detach other than swapping weapons (afaik?). Can detach be changed to crouch (or something)? I'd like to jump against walls to abseil, that'd be very cool.

• Some players want a proper sandbox, while others want to explore and fight bosses as a progression. Moreover, the "difficulty modes" don't _really_ make the game more challenging in a satisfying way, they just try to create tension by penalising you more for failing at the same challenge. Barely anyone seems to actually play on any mode other than Casual. There needs to be a few more game modes, eg:
  Creative: see: Minecraft's creative mode.
  Casual: No hunger/cold/heat/radiation mechanics. Easy progression. Missions/bosses are easier and also optional - beat them to earn unique items and trophies to display in your house. Lose nothing on death.
  Survival: Hunger and tough environmental conditions. Gated missions, bosses, etc. Lose pixels on death.
  Hardcore: Enemies are tougher and more plentiful. Environmental conditions are more unforgiving. Permadeath.

• Make stacked suits canon. Changing between nanosuits before changing planet environments is just a chore, not a game mechanic. Just let players hold all the resistances at once. Older builds with snow infantry armor etc made more sense (you could choose to sacrifice defense for cold resistance and so on). How about a compromise between the two, eg. your nanosuit contributes towards your cold resistance, but you still need to make an effort to stay alive on the coldest planets and in blizzards.

• On that note, I'd like to see some more interesting survival mechanics here too - eg. to stay warm in an environment without an atmosphere, simple clothing shouldn't work as well because there's no warm air to trap close to your skin. More advanced methods should be employed, like air-tight spacesuits, actively heated clothing that saps your energy, etc.

• Related to the above, there should be more low-tech ways to breathe underwater than a nanosuit (eg scuba), and to improve survival on hot planets (eg reflective clothing). We should be able to explore these planets *a little*, but it should be difficult until you get that nanosuit.

• So... can we have racial bonuses now? The original argument against this was that races were intended to be only cosmetically different, but with the races all having a different ship structure, some races having ships with significantly more space than others, and Novakids crafting a completely different weapon set from other races, that's now out the window.

• The ability to choose armor paths was a good move, but in making the progression wider, it became less deep. More progression tiers and armor set options would be nice. In particular, armors that have a special effect instead of just a stat balance would be good.

• Just one standard attack per weapon is a bit bland. Even a simple Super Smash Bros. style 1-2-3 combo and the ability to hold and release for a power attack would do wonders. Right clicking with axes and spears is currently unused, you could do something with that too. There should also be rifle butting and pistol whipping somehow. Because reasons.

• Still no laser guns? At least, I haven't seen any proper ones, only plasma. Why not? Laser guns that had proper physics interactions with transparent/translucent blocks (reflection, refraction, diffraction) would be incredible.

• Back slot is underused. There's only a small set of items that have a function, the only craftable one afaik being Lantern Stick. Even a high-tech Lantern Stick would be pretty cool. What I want to see most of all is a real backpack, you know, the kind you can store items in? Also, how about a quiver to improve bow firing speed, a back holster or sheath to allow you to attack quicker after swapping weapons, or just something for your pet to ride around in and look over your shoulder?

• You should be able to change your techs around at any time, like you used to be able to. Currently, the less-useful techs go unused because they're mutually exclusive with the essential (imo) techs like blink.

• The long missions need to have a checkpoint in them. Losing to the boss and needing to start from the beginning is brutal.

• Wiring is now quite solid on the logic side, but extra logic things like registers, muxes, en/decoders, binary-to-7-segment-decoders, PWM controllers etc would be nice.

• The above is not strictly necessary though. What we need is more peripherals to interact with, to make it more practical (pushers and grabbers, explosives, display screens, lasers, liquid dispensers, item dispensers, RGB lighting, sound-makers). Right now, wiring is kind of a niche toy for people to make machines for fun, which is cool and all but it needs to be more applied for a wider audience to enjoy it.

• The wirable alarm should attract the attention of NPCs, they should try to make their way to that area if they hear it (or run away from that area, depending on whether they're a guard or civilian).

• If your ship's fuel tank has spare fuel items sitting in it, it should fuel up automatically without needing to manually walk up to it and press the "Fuel" button.

That's all I got for now, maybe I'll add more later. Let me know what you think.

 

So much yes. I've been trying to get a space airlock working but the unreliability of handmade edge detectors is dismaying. So counters, delays, reliable edge-triggered devices would also be nice.

 

Really? I thought these guys were pretty solid, especially with two-tick pulse outputs. SWS's are good with two-tick pulses as well.

Single-block counters would be convenient as heck.

 

Sure, right up until you need to interface them with devices on a slower machine. Then it all becomes a big ball of ****.

 

Interesting mix... I agree with some and disagree with some...

Unsure of the difficulty bit, as I think of them as game modes. casual being the lesser involved one, normal being more involved, and permadeath mode(which probably should have other things added as well beyond what is in normal) I don't mind the pixel drop being across the board, since there is not really a whole lot you can do with them at the moment. Not only that it is simply everywhere... Soon with other types of progression even more obtainable. I like having that compressor to in a way to store a portion with a cut. Maybe they should add a bank to the outpost that works in the same way, or similar. % to deposit but nothing to withdraw. That way at least would make it more logical to a customer.

Everything in and around the weather thing with suits, I actually liked the old system to be improved and mixed in with this new system. I was generally thinking suits should have the stats %reduction. For each type of environment ailment. O2, radiation, hot/cold, etc... However probably just having the major ones being used as gates done that way.

• The hot/cold the % would affect how slow/fast you with freeze/melt per say. I don't think one should die from it though... At least not completely. If done with death I can only hope it is more lengthy or diverse in the way it works.
• O2 they pretty much have down, but maybe a general lengthener or more atmosphere. As in being more a threat so you would have placed to make O2 chambers. Airlocks making more sense. Items to produce it, and be utilized. Maybe not to the extent where you have to constantly keep timing breaths. But like above with cold/heat, just more variance. thin air, heavy air...
• Radiation I can see similar to being a poison if exposure is too long. The more radiated a person gets the more bewildered and disoriented. At least past the danger zone. This would make it so items could be added to heal that accumulated radiation. ok I am almost thinking of fallout to a lesser extent. This would be a % reduction in how much does accumulate. At the last stage is when damage would begin to hurt as it eats away at you, until levels reduced.

Basically the 4 major ones in the game right now, or at least the notion of them. I would rather having effects when in danger zone of each added. Like slowness, mining speed, and various other things. Maybe not all of them, but enough to make each stand out differently to a degree.

Also to add, putting back in hunger, but improved from what it was. Based on action. If done that way, then those standing still will not survive. I say this due to it being a game, and gives chance to those to look away from screen being in a safe zone a bit. Although have it pretty much slower time before hunger sets in. This would not kill, but would have adverse effects like those mentioned above for environmental things. So it as well would be a separate thing different from the rest. Plus gives more sense to food, even if minor.

Eventually having almost full protection in end game would be the goal of environment things. Not full immunity like the suits give now. I would also say leave the suit thing in for casual, as that means a bit more than creative with fighting. One reason I don't think creative mode would fit. Casual was meant to be for ease of playing, normal with the challenge or struggle of survival elements being the base game, and permadeath being the extreme or I guess hardcore as some put. Well the way I see things, and not really implying anything beyond my own thoughts.

Back slots... yes much more. vanity, function, all of it. Although storage I would have done in separate, but could work that way as well; especially if there were upgradeable tier for them. Basically space would be added in 1-3 separate tabs. 1 for the backpack if used, that will vary up to the max slots a tab usually have. The other 1-2 would tabs would be gained through questing or other means to upgrade your storage you can carry. Well at least that is my idea on it. izzy had a decent one as well on that I believe.

I am one to still dislike putting abilities to race. ships is still a cosmetic thing, and it really doesn't matter on how much space each has; it is the general look. Not every one would even want big ships; as someone actually wanted to not upgrade, but felt forced just so that more quests would open up. I however do agree though on the not that nova gets guns, albeit not really all that well. However it is not really an advantage, and right now some even mention it being a disadvantage... At least in the way they are balanced currently. I really don't know, as i don't intend on playing one for a while... Not my interest. Adding racial abilities would give advantage more than a ship upgrade would ever. That is a huge step. I prefer something like that being tied to their armor sets.

Quests really should and will get expanded in time. Right now it is a decent starting point I think. Armor sets in general really need to expand, and sure they will. Although would be nice to see some beyond racial abilities tied to them. As in if and when they put those racial ones with their intended abilities; that some sets you would find out there may have other bizarre or various abilities tied to them as well. creating a numerous amount of choice of mix and match. Same goes for back items.

Shields for ore types would be nice. tiered shield made from the ores you gather. Especially for the separator table, since that is based on defense. Maybe even for the Accelerator as well, due to it having daggers in it. And have those shields race like the armors.

The last thing even though you noted, the current version of end game is not even end game yet. That has not been added, or so way mentioned. Always nice to see what the developers and others have in mind.

 

I don't really see how this is different from a pixel compressor though.

I'm cool with more or less all of these.

This is the only thing we properly disagree on. The difference between the biggest and smallest ships is 620 blocks of space, that's pretty significant. Also, compare, say, the Novakid ship structure with the others.

How about racial bonuses that eventually get more or less balanced out by the endgame?

Agree. It's a bit of a crapshoot finding a good shield if you're a sword n' boarder.

 

well the only difference with the bank bit is it makes a bit more sense for reason it takes a bit of money per say. After all it maybe a bit of realism or in life mechanic of banks in this world. Far as my experience goes.... but that is it.

Can't really agree on everything, but at least we can agree on some.

 

I still like the idea of racial armor buffs, such as more energy, gun damage, etc. depending on race.

In general, armor needs to have more effects, and we might need to be able to find or craft special armor.
There are so many effects that could be added to armor, it isn't even funny.

....Might I contribute something?
I would be very interested in mod slots for armor/weapons. Like gems in Diablo/Torchlight/whatever? They don't have to be powerful, but it would be cool anyways.

 

Just a small note on this one. Since there is no atmosphere (presumed vacuum), then there is no medium for your body warmth to escape. Therefore your only concerns are really pressure and oxygen supply. I've read somewhere that Guardians of the Galaxy's depiction of "what would happen" if you went vacuum w/o protection is quite accurate apparently. It always perplexed me how on Earth am I freezing when exploring a freakin' asteroid field in EK. Made no sense to me.

 

I agree with this - the Lantern Stick is nice, but a direct upgrade in the late-game would be useful. Maybe they could modify clothing like the hiker's backpack to be an actual backpack. Or the scuba gear to actually provide a limited amount of oxygen.

 

You're still radiating some heat into your surroundings via light, air or no air. Plain warm clothes would block some of that radiation and keep the heat from escaping as quickly, but it wouldn't be nearly as useful as it would be on a planet with an atmosphere, where you can have a trapped warm layer of air close to your skin.

Haven't seen GotG, I really need to.

Sounds good to me!

 

It would probably still take way longer for a human to go cold this way. That is only my assumption though, may be completely wrong. How long would it actually take? Anyway the solution is clear! We just need a cuddle button! Warm yourself up by the force of friction. Of course only works in coop.

 

I have another idea for gaining warmth via friction in co-op, but I don't think ESRB would like it very much.

 

That's why we have modders. Plus, in a way, you want to avoid the actual friction.

 

I just realized bit more, there is few mace r 1 hand. sorry barge in like this, but I think the game need 1 hand mace and also 1 hand axe, which follow reducing amount dmg then yes and increase the speed for it. I wished for 2 hand melee weapons such as mace, spears also can do parry which all depends which weapon it is.

Noted plz put some NPC vender stuff into the employer station, note make the guards completely stay where you post them at, its most annoying when come back from ur home planet, reason why so I don't have to kill trillions NPC who try kill me and aren't to try look for some vender spawner.

As by follow I hope u put thous next for improvement on the list.

 

After a break i come back to Starbound, happy to hear about the new stable...

I will write a complete review soon.

Now someone tell me i was\am unlucky for not finding even "1" single Hylotl village\city...

Many other things good as well as bad happened in my oppinion, but that really makes me feel like you r making fun of us\me....

Where da fudge is the Fish stuff? I even saw an extra Mod Table to you can change to headgear for Hylotls?! Not cool that.

Ohh so yea: the suggestion: Give me\us some Fishstuff maybe? please? (2yearslater...)

 

There is yet no Hylotl presence in the universe other than the player and lore.