A list of things I would like to see or not to see, in Starbound.

So I've been a big fan of games like Minecraft and Terraria, and had been following Starbound for a fair while now, and after playing the Starbound beta, I've discussed this with my brother and best friend who are also playing the beta and who have played both Minecraft and Terraria, and we came up with some things we wanted to share with the community and developers regarding entries we would like to either see included in the game, or removed/changed.

So here goes (warning, it's fairly long):

Block Diversity: We would like to see different kinds of blocks of the same material type (such as stone, dirt, and lumber) have different names and colorations/patterns. Some of these already do come in different colors, and some of the stone patterns when placed do look different, but right now their icons are often identical. We would like to see these blocks have different names too, even if just something as simplistic as, "cyan dirt", apposed to just, "dirt".

We would also like to see really rare block types on some really rare worlds. Maybe for example, you could come across a very small moon that is made out of a material known as Titanstone, which once acquired, you could research to find that if combined with magmarock and smelted together, it forms a new building material.

Superior Creature AI: There has been some changes in combat lately and that is good, but all three of us feel that in its current state, one of the biggest problems with Starbound is the combat. Some sub bosses still one shot even when you have the best armor a tier can offer, and their drops ALWAYS seem to be far below that of the weapons you can EASILY craft during that tier. Actually fighting sub bosses or bosses is trivial and superficial because we all know that everybody just uses walls to their advantage to defeat these opponents.

The creatures of the world are also so simple and stereotypically the same. In Terraria as many of us know, the monsters were so much more diverse in comparison, and that's saying much since Terraria's combat was so simple too.

In many ways I feel that the AI here should follow some similar patterns as some of the AI and creature mechanics in Terraria do. For example, I mostly skip several tiers of armor because I just don't need them because I can dig my way past the enemies of the worlds to better ores. If some creatures in the world could either travel through, or shoot blasts through blocks though ala Terraria, that would change.

I also never, ever, ever want to get one shotted. One shotting is dumb in every single book if you ask me. If a mob wants to even two shot me, fine, but no one shots please.

More Item Drops: We would like to see bossess drop special equipment or special, rare ore that is used to craft special equipment. We would also like to see bosses that come out on rare occasions that aren't just always spawned from an item we craft. Right now the weapons you craft seem to be the best out there. Not a single one of us three in all our time playing so far have come across a single weapon we would use over our crafted weapons. The craftable items are sooo easy to craft too.

Dangerous Worlds: We would like to see rare, exceptionally dangerous worlds. Maybe a type of biome that's sinister simply in appearance, which holds monster types that no other biome can hold. These worlds can have for example, bursting geysers, severe electrical storms, huge dust storms, or other natural disasters that make visibility limited, or great darkness with sinister appearing glowing fauna. These worlds would be very rare, but when you find them, you know right off the bat that they're meant to be unique and challenging. The rewards on these worlds could be much more extravagant as well, ranging from new unique stone and metal crafting materials, to sub bosses that drop some of the best items the game has to offer (or better yet, components for them).

Perhaps a huge flying, gas-gulping monstrosity guards an ancient spaceship that holds ancient alien technology can be found on such a world, and that ship can hold artifacts found nowhere else.

More Lightsources: We would like to see more lightsource items in the world. The flashlight is fine for early on, but in the future, I feel like it's just unjustified that our best lightsources are a flashlight and a light on a stick, or torches.

"Unique Worlds": We would also like to see worlds that aren't necessarily auto generated, but that are static over the course of any server. Perhaps a homeworld of a specific species, a capital city for a given race, or the only known location in the universe of a given type of fuel source that could spontaneously regenerate over time (to ensure that these worlds would not just be completely mined out in every server). Or with these worlds, the actual location of these worlds could even change so that they cannot just be located by the community and shared.

There's something neat about randomly generated content and how it always appears to be different, but there's also something exciting about familiarity too. When you play a game and have familiarity to a piece of content, you develop an attachment that helps you become more enveloped in the atmosphere of the game's world over all.

Towns and Quests: Forgive me if any of this is planned or has been discussed mind you, but we would like to see an option for player-made towns where different npc's would move in and offer different types of services. We would also like to see more quests in pre-existing towns. It's just so under-utilized right now.

Faction: We all thought it would be a cool idea to instill a faction system attached to your character. If you kill Florans for instance, then eventually, all Floran people would be aggressive to you, but on the flip side, if you do good deeds for the Florans, perhaps by completing various quests, the increased faction might get you additional quests or open up vendors that sell unique items that they normally would not sell to you.

Space Pirates: We thought it would be neat if occasionally your ship got attacked later on by space pirates. Two ships could be docked together and you have to defend your ship.

Unwanted Items/Blocks: We really would like some way to dissolve unwanted weapons for instance into crafting materials or pixels. Maybe a few pieces of iron from a simpler weapon perhaps, or the option for npc vendors of specific types to buy our unwanted equipment. The same for building material. Maybe we can obtain a Spacial Compression Device (S.C.D) that could take our dirt blocks and convert a bunch of them into say, a single Titanium Ore piece. It's just one idea of how to perhaps go about it.

"Space Biomes": We thought it would be neat if we had the option of exploring things in space. Derelict space-ships for instance, or high flying asteroid fields (not just the ones already in the game in existing biomes) connected with titanium bridges or what have you. You'd need special space-suit equipment to do this, and maybe you could even build your own official space station in such a location instead of having a home base on a planet.

More Ranged Weapons: Seriously this is a nightmare right now. Out of the three of us, only one of us has found any guns, and of those we find, they're so terrible by the time we find them that they can't kill anything. We really should have crafted firearms.

More range and quantity of fuel sources: Coal for a fuel source for a spaceship? Oh alright I suppose, but we would really like to see more fuel types of more abundance, maybe even some we can craft from known materials.

Hunting: Bows just don't do enough damage later on to hunt with. It makes it just annoying to have to melee a monster down, then switch to your bow (which is really clumsy to use in itself) to hopefully finish the creature off. It feels unintuitive and sluggish as a game mechanic and none of us are really very fond of it.

Planet Log: We would like a planet log system that lets us log any world we find. Once logged, this data would tell us the planet's location, what kind of planet it is, if it's inhabited and by what race, or what kinds of minerals may be more abundant there. Maybe we would need to make a planet scanning device or something to get more information for our logs and maybe that device is really hard to make, but that would be OK. We just want a way to save more than one planet we've visited that may have held interest to us other than our set homeworld.

True Lava Biomes: Not the preexisting ones, but lava biomes that are exceptionally harsh and built almost exclusively with stone brimming with molten liquids. You should need a special suit to even drop down on such a planet or burn up almost instantly.

Also, science warning here: You don't sink in molten lava, lava itself is too dense. While you would die almost instantly if standing next to a pool of lava, and most likely burst into flames from the sheer heat of it, if you tried to jump in, you would not sink, you would sit on the top of it and just burn.

Bigger Ships & More Ship Building Options: Self explanatory really.

More Purposes in Bases: Right now we just feel that our bases we build hold so little value. We made a base our first time through the game, but now we never do. We just feel that it's a better use of our time to use our ships, and our ships are so small that the customization options become so limited.

Fish: They do nothing right now and seem to serve no purpose. Can they get a purpose? Please?

Minimap/Radar: We would like to see a minimap and or a radar showing us where things might be in relationship to us. Maybe we can get new tech to enhance this mechanic to show us certain ore types or creatures. It could also show us where we are in relationship to say, a main structure on a planet, or how far down we are from the surface.

Mining Time: I've noticed that a lot of the stone in many worlds just takes too long to mine. It just feels very tedious to me. I counted like 8 seconds per block once, and that seemed rather insane to me. If you're mining a rare ore, fine, but a regular stone block? Eh.

Food: I kinda feel like our characters get too hungry too quickly. Just in the time it's taken me to type this (and I've type tested at about 140 words per minute), I've had to eat 3 steaks here (still logged into the game) just to stay alive.

Ore: I personally would like to see all ore types on all worlds unless they're meant to be exclusive to a given world type. I see no reason why suddenly, planets in some specific sector all of a sudden have ore X type, but other planets did not. All we need is to make it so that you need a certain level of extractor to mine it like Terraria did. Stronger ore should be rarer too. Some of this stuff seems so overly abundant, and did even prior to the latest patch.

Sleeping: Sleeping restores health far too slowly. I just see no need for this.

The Pixel Compressor: I feel that the Pixel Compressor is eating up too many pixels right now. I understand and accept that it eats some up so as to not trivialize the penalty for death, but taking 2,000 out of 5,000 for instance just seems overkill. I would be much more comfortable with 1,000 out of 5,000, especially when there are so many other ways to bypass losing pixels by either leaving pixels in the Refinery or just not refining your ore until you need it.

More to come!

 

A pretty good list, some of this might already be planned like Towns and NPCs with Quests, but not really scheduled for the 1st stage of beta. I especially like the Homeworld and dangerous planets (+ actual lava planets!).

I think Tiy has stated that he would like to implement a space combat system (The human ship already looks to be equipped with a weapon as well as the glitch one).

Having some planets be more rich in certain ores makes sense to me, so I feel like it can stay as is. Certain equipment for certain ores, yeah that might work, as long as it is reasonable. Ore distribution is still being balanced as far as I know.

As for the mining map/radar, I'd rather have some sort of metal detector tool. At least early on.

There are multiple fuel sources, but they don't appear before sector 3-4.

Better creature AI is, yeah, anyone who claims that the creature AI is fine... wrong! Last I heard; they were still working on it.

All in all I agree and like most of your suggestions/ideas, but this should be posted in suggestions rather than general discussion.

 

Alright way to many things for me to cover so I'm going to pick a few and I'm gonna start off with: This is just a beta things are still being worked in, mostly Mechanics and the sort.

Dangerous Worlds: Tiy just posted a tweet that they're working on Environmental dangers which I assume means acid rain and the sort. Soo that's already on the way.

More Lightsources: Still beta, I'm sure there's MUCH more and will probably be implemented.

Towns and quest: Already planned.

Unique worlds: If I remember in the lore the reason why they don't actually have major cities and the sort is because "The Beast" keeps eating their planets.

Fuel Sources: There's Coal, Uranium, Plutonium, and Solarium right now, I'm sure the developers intend to add more or a way to convert coal into better fuel.

Planet Log: Already planned.

Minimap/radar: Come on? Where's the fun if you know where the monsters are gonna be and you can see what's up ahead, I'd rather landmarks and memorizing.

Mining Time: Urgh yes Mining can be so slow, I'm sure they'll balance it at some point.

Just things I heard or read while the game was in development.

 

About the food system...
Ocumelons: Never starve again.
Seriously, I found one planet with ocumelons whenI started a playthrough and since then I have not had to restock my food at all.

 

Eating eyeballs will solve all your hunger needs!

 

I would eat them but.. I dunno I don't like them watching my Tummy :c

One thing I want? THAT GLITCH HEADMOD IN THE GAME! -throws a table at the nearest miniboss-

 

I agree! *Throws a chair at the same miniboss*

How is the beta supposed to intensify when I can't wear the correct helmet!?

 

http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?forums/suggestions/