89 Hours In - My Thoughts on Game Progression

I'm currently 89 hours into the game. I've reached the beta's endgame three times on different characters. Obviously, I like Starbound quite a lot to have sunk this much time into it and I've easily gotten my money's worth from it. However, I do have criticisms in areas that I believe Starbound can improve.
Specifically, I have concerns with the game's progression. Much of it feels forced and artificial. I have secondary issues with the tier system, but I won't be discussing that topic since it seems that the current implementation is entirely placeholder given these two statements from Tiy:

So let's get started.
Starbound has some very artificial and restrictive progression. For example, you can make a silver pickaxe but not silver armor without killing a boss. It doesn't make sense. It's an artificial limiter.

In other similar sandbox games like Minecraft and Terraria, the player is paced by the ores they are able to break, based on the quality of their pickaxe. Starbound has no such limitation, and so has artificial-feeling limiters in place in the form of bosses. This creates issues such as the silver pickaxe and silver armor issue I mentioned above.

At its core, the game feels too restrictive for a sandbox. It holds your hand too much. I can't go and explore a new sector until I kill a boss. I can't build armor from the silver ore I collected until I kill a boss. I can't even make a diamond pickaxe unless I made a platinum one before it, and a gold one before that. The game is so wrapped up in its strict rules for progressing that I feel it loses the most important part of what a sandbox should be about - freedom.

These limits aren't intuitive limiters, they're not organic or natural, if you will.

In a game with organic limitations like Terraria, you can go to hell with a fresh new character. You won't survive there, you can't mine the hellstone there, you can't fight the enemies there, but you can go there - and that's the important part; your freedom to explore isn't being limited. You feel like an autonomous entity in the game world, not being restricted by arbitrary limitations. You are still being limited from simply skipping to hell and getting hellstone equipment, but it's not an artifical limitation, it's organic. The game is showing you what you can become, and it's telling you that you need to be stronger to be able to conquer that place.

Starbound doesn't do this. You're simply not allowed to leave areas that fit your current stats. You're not allowed to craft armor that is deemed too powerful for that point in the game. But if I'm not allowed to craft this silver armor, why was I allowed to mine the silver ore?

With Starbound's current progression system, I'm limited to A, B, C, then D.
A is required to do B. B is required to do C. C is required to do D. There is no freedom in your progression, no flexibility. The game restricts you like a linear RPG, not a sandbox.

Going back to Tiy's statements above, I have extra concern for one in particular:

As I interpret this statement, it seems to me like the boss-based progression is set in stone. This is concerning to me, because while your story should be gated by the bossfights, your freedom within the game world should not. It is important to make the distinction between your personal story and your game freedom.
To draw an example from another game, in Guild Wars 2, you have personal story quests, advancing the story of your character. However, you can decide to not do these quests and go on to harder areas without completing these quests. You are given the freedom to go ahead and do them later, or never at all. Guild Wars shows that you can have both story elements and player freedom at the same time.

To me, this is what Starbound is missing: freedom.
Thanks for the read.

 

Beta.

Seriously, though. They said that the current system is entirely a placeholder. I'd be shocked if it wasn't.

I agree with the guild wars part. Perhaps it could take a ton of fuel to travel from one sector to another instead of being restricted to upgrades?

 

White knight brigade assemble....

I agree with most of what you say but still think being limited to a sector untill you craft the needed item to go there is a good idea. I wont shit on your opinion like others.

Thank you for being sarcastic, I almost exploded.

 

Very good read! I agree with all you said. The fact that the whole exploration and progression aspect of the game revolves around bosses isn't satisfyng.

 

Sadly true there's not much to add and I hardly see it fitting as a suggestion (or not ?).
So I'll just agree with that and hope for something to happen =/

 

I read that and now I can't get the word "Limit" out of my head.

 

I would like to say that the game is still in heavy development but people would either white knight or just get plain pissy.

But seriously though if you have suggestions and i mean proper suggestions where you actually go into detail about stuff rather than saying it needs this or that without further explanation than have at it.

 

I whole heartily agree with you.

The current setup is making me not want to play, because all I'm doing is looking for gold. I was lucky and found lots of diamond on my first planet, but hardly any gold or copper, so I can't even make a diamond pickaxe because I don't have a gold pixaxe, it just seems so limiting that I have to beat certain bosses in order to open crafting abilities.

The crafting should be dependent on materials and not bs boxx battles. Boss Battles should just advance the story.

What's the point of all this diamond, if I can't even use it because I can't make anything withit unless I find lots of copper, then silver, and then gold.

It takes the fun out of getting or finding diamond. Now I'm like, well that's great, but I can't do anything with it now anyway, so what's the point.

 

I had the same problem. I went down to the starting planet's core and managed to get loads of diamonds. I was all excited to make something with them until I realized the diamond pickaxe needed a platinum pickaxe. I had maybe one bar of platinum and it took me forever to find enough (didn't help that it looks like silver either).

 

Originally I was going to post this in the suggestions forum, but none of the categories seemed to fit, so here we are.

Unfortunately, I don't have some amazing end-all solutions to these problems. I can point out the issues easily enough, but coming up with solutions is a bit more difficult.

At the very least, the restrictions on crafting items needs to be relaxed. You should be able to make a gold pickaxe without having a silver one beforehand. Pickaxes aren't even combat items, and their having such a rigid progression makes no sense. If you have enough silver to make silver armor, you should be able to. It's intuitive.
If silver armor is deemed too powerful to have that early in the game, then players should not be given access to silver that early. Either move silver ore to higher level planets, or require a minimum level of pickaxe to be able to mine it, just like in Terraria and Minecraft. Those games have that mechanic because it works.

As for planet levels being gated by bosses, perhaps make traveling to them require a large amount of fuel. The boss would then unlock the ability to upgrade your engine, making long distance travel more efficient, instead of unlocking the area itself. This way you can go to higher level planets, but you can't get there as easily as you would go to one with an appropriate difficulty for your level.

Alternatively, don't restrict players at all. Allow players to make any item they have the materials for. Allow players to travel to any planet they wish, whether they can survive there or not. Ideally, I'd like to see one big sector with all the difficulty levels in one. In the beta's current state, the X sector is easily my favorite, simply because there are planets of differing threat levels there. The universe in sector X feels alive and believable because not every planet there has the same difficulty.
The bosses could provide advancements for your story and and drop useful loot, incentivizing players to fight them, without requiring players to fight them to progress.
To prevent players from going to the highest level planet and corpsedragging their way to Impervium gear, place a tool level requirement on mining ores. For example, Aegisalt ore would require a diamond tool to harvest it. Cerulium ore would then require a tool made from Aegisalt to harvest it. Lower level ores such as silver and gold should be exempted from this limitation, but diamond and perhaps platinum should have a tool requirement.

This system would still enforce a logical player progression, but there would not be hard limits, only soft limits. If a player managed to scrape together enough materials for a higher level item, they would be able to make it without having to defeat a boss first.

 

now i don't think it was so hard to provide a post like that to begin with.

I'm just asking that people provide thoughtful insight into what the game could or does need. at the very least you inspire people to come up with even better ideas or simply give the devs an idea on how to improve the game over all.

In the end all ideas are welcome so long as they go into depth on what their idea is rather than say that this or that needs to be added without any further explanation.

So thank you for giving a proper suggestion and helping in improving the game