A Proposal With Purpose.

This will be the direct link from "Starbound Isn't Playing In The Sandbox" Thread in General Discussions. First a thank you for anyone who will attach themselves to this suggestion and dedicate their time to make a more adaptable progression system for the developers to review.

There will be two posts one in general and one in suggestions both should be looked at the community and replied to in a professional manner. The post in General Discussions will be about the overall FEELING of Starbound and its soft and hard barriers of the progression system.
The suggestions post will consist of three elements formated into a progression system.
These elements are the Open World, Storyline, And Tool Progression. Once the post is made by the person. Like or dislike the main system. Whatever system gets liked the most by the community that person will make a seperate thread with a poll to implement his or her idea to the developers. And hopefully they can revamp their system to gives us all what we want in Starbound. This is not just for our satisfaction but to say that Starbound was a unforgettable experience in the future.
Edit: Im very busy atm so I will post my idea on the weekend.
Remember to keep posting regularly on both these to avoid them from from being lost in the thread pit.
For those who think the system is fine please keep your comments to yourself unless you bring an a suggestion. This is why I am also creating a thread in general to dicuss why this is important to the majority of viewers. Post your comments there. This is mainly for suggestions. Thank you.

 

Open World:
My general idea is perhaps an expanded form of the devs' plans, centered around tier-introduced hazards. To quote the post:

"each tier introducing hazards that can only be overcome by progressing through the previous tier and completing a mission at the end of each tier"

I love the basic idea, but it also sounds extremely simplistic and restrictive.
My idea of improvement is to not think of hazards as "tier x" hazards but "tier +x" hazards, and planets of a particular tier could have combinations of hazards.
(Assuming tier 1 planets have no hazards)
For example, a tier 4 planet could have a +3 hazard, or three +1 hazards, or one +2 and one +1 hazard.
So by working towards gear that overcome specific hazards, the tiers essentially become a "tree (or web) of hazardous environments", with multiple ways of advancement through them.
IMPORTANT: Players should be able to land on any planet (on the planned unified starmap) even without the corresponding gear for the hazards. This way players can experience and evaluate the hazards, feel their full wrath, and likely be defeated by them. Then, when players can finally overcome the hazards, the sense of accomplishment will be greater.
Finally, this should also give the sense that planet "tiers" are something space travelers use to describe planets. Heck, might even rename "tier" for planets to "threat rating" or something to that effect.


Storyline:
In the AMA, Tiy answered about the linear progression:"Mostly the boss progression is fixed to give us a running main mission/storyline. Which makes it difficult to change. "
And my idea for solving this problem is:
Do NOT follow the main story in order to advance through tiers. Advance through tiers in order to follow the main story.
So, think of the story as something you can do in each tier, but not something you have to do to unlock each tier.
Under the framework of the "hazard combinations = tiers" system I proposed above, story boss fights in each tier could take place on planets with specific hazard features or combinations. This way players who want to follow the story can work towards conquering those particular hazards in order to defeat the story boss. Players who don't can progress through the tier by overcoming other hazards and gaining access to the tier's resources.
In addition, the devs can tailor the design and behavior of each boss to the hazards they appear with, making the hazards features of the fight "arena". This should open up possibilities for more refined, intense and attractive fights.


Tool Progression:
You should be able to obtain gear used to overcome tier hazards in multiple ways (akin to the planned multiple ways to obtain pixels), including crafting, purchase, loot, etc. Story missions / boss fights could still be a guaranteed and straightforward way to obtaining them.
The gears can take multiple forms instead of all being techs, for example:
Oxygen tanks can be worn as backpack.
Radiation suits are worn as armor.
Going to a planet with molten surface, you deploy an anti-gravity platform to provide a starting point for standing and building.
On tentacle planets, you upgrade your ship with a distracting transmitter, to avoid being constantly attacked by angry tentacles.

More advanced gear can combine effects against 2 or more hazards, e.g. a suit resistant to both extreme cold and deadly radiation.
There also can be gears used in different forms but against the same hazard. A simple example would be campfire and warm clothes both acting against cold environments.


So to summarize, I propose a tier progression that emphasize on the variety and combination of hazards introduced in each tier. The variety and combination enables multiple possible pathways of progression through tiers. Story bosses can be reserved for specific hazardous environments within each tier, providing possibilities to refine their behavior with respect to the hazards. They can also be ignored by players that prefer a more "free" format, who can choose not to approach their specific environment.


Original threads where I posted these ideas:
http://community.playstarbound.com/...-introduced-hazard-system.69405/#post-1770819
http://community.playstarbound.com/...-with-open-ended-gameplay.69680/#post-1770862

 

though I think that the resistancies of a certain piece of armor should either be able to be stripped off the armor and put on others, or be a module that can be crafted, and attached to an armor. this way you can still wear your impervious and be able to breath underwater or something like that.

 

I think the bosses should be optional quests. Then the people with the non-aggressive play styles don't have to do this.
The people who would like to fight the bosses though, could easily be assumed that they like to fight things (seeing as they've chosen that quest), so the bosses could drop stuff geared towards that, some special type of armour, a collection of various weapons from the corresponding tier, random loot & gear.

This would mean it is not necessary to fight any bosses, they all become optional, you only need to get the set number of pixels to 'level up' into the next tier.
But if you do wanna fight the bosses well hey they give you a cool penguin hat and a decent sword to set you up for the next section.

And if you are a peaceful character who wants the penguin hat? Well you'll have to do that quest then, but its going to give you no different of an advantage or experience whether you have a fancy hat or not. Random weapons and gear can be found by just exploring the surface for materials anyway.

All that would mean that the only limit to areas would be pixels, which if they are going to stay true to their word, will be able to be acquired through a large variety of ways.

 

Open World:

I think the biggest problem here is how we define sandbox and open world gaming. Different games of this genre have different degrees of freedom. Tiy’s idea for those genres probably differs from what many other people will think of it as. It’s also a little too easy to jump to extremes and act like open world means you can go anywhere from the start and if you can’t say, be allowed to fight the final boss with nothing but your wits and knowledge, it would be considered restricted.

I think the vast majority of the world should be opened up from the beginning, which includes planets of all levels being in the same sector. I say the vast majority because we could get creative with the hazards aside from the ones already in the game. For example, perhaps you can’t even land on a planet without a special upgrade for your ship because the planet is too hot to withstand even within its orbit.

Now hear me out. I know that would count as a hard gate as opposite to the soft gate of cold or airless planets. A hard gate doesn’t always have to be considered bad. I think what’s important is how it feels. “You can’t go here you don’t have enough pixels” is not the same thing as “You can’t go here because you lack the technology to do so”. My reasoning for this is to add more of a mystery to the game. Who knows what lies on the planets you can’t even land on unlike the ones where you may struggle to breathe or stay warm. Maybe even secret stuff like rare races could be lurking out where you easily can’t reach.

Even in Minecraft and Terraria you couldn’t access all the biomes right from the beginning. In Minecraft, you would need to create a gate to the Nether before you can enter; otherwise there is no other way. You’re not restricted to just mining obsidian with a diamond pickaxe either. You can use the bucket trick as well, but regardless, you’ll still need to gather the right materials first. Just because there is a linear end goal doesn’t mean the methods of reaching it are linear.

In Terraria, you can visit dangerous biomes from the beginning like the jungle and Hell, but the dungeon requires defeating the boss that guards it. Should you enter without defeating it, a guardian will spawn that is very hard to kill and can kill you in one hit. Okay so that counts as a soft gate, but is it really a soft gate when it would be very hard to dodge the guardian in the small spaces of the dungeon? You could gear up for the boss and take it on then or if you’re really good, defeat the boss on your first night. Then there is the Hallowed biome that doesn’t exist in the world till the Wall of Flesh is defeated, which is a hard gate in itself. My point is that is it really so bad if you can technically access 90% of the game’s content from the start, but not the other 10%? Challenge and speed runs are still possible even with hard gates.

Storyline:

I know Tiy wants a storyline focus here. However, I don’t the storyline should restrict your progress. In games like Skyrim, the main quest only makes up a small amount of the overall quests and you can still access almost everything without touching the main quest. So you have to somewhat progress in it to unlock shouts and random spawning dragons, but otherwise you should be able to complete all the other quests. Starbound could still have its main quest and bosses required to get through, but that doesn’t mean tech progress has to be restricted by it.

Tool Progression:

I believe the Metroidvania route is the best one to go. Here is where I think the game can really shine. As the game currently is now, this applies at least up to tier 4 since everything else after that is placeholder. Different tools would allow you to deal with hazards on different threat level planets. Aside from what Tiy mentioned of needing an oxygen tank to deal with the lack of air on tier 2 planets, we can get really creative with this. Perhaps a magma planet has blocks that are too hard for your pickaxe to dig through. Now I don’t mean taking a long time to dig, but just flat out not working. You would have to work your way up the tech ladder to be able to craft a drill to get through those blocks. Perhaps you go to a planet with little solid ground (even less than asteroid fields) and you need a hoverbike tech or something to travel around. Well, I suppose you could also place thousands of blocks, so it would be more of a soft gate. With that said, separate items for non-passive tools like grappling hooks are fine.

I don’t think certain tech upgrades should be equipment you put on. For example, needing an oxygen tank would ruin any creativity in what else you can wear on your back and I’m not talking about the visual slot either. This would be even worse say, needing a full hazmat suit to survive on a toxic planet. Actually, I suppose those could work out as easier to access options due to what I’m about to bring up. I think these required upgrades should be in the form of implants or nanobots, basically permanent passive buffs for your character so you can still have the freedom to otherwise wear what armor you want. In Metroid games for example, armor upgrades were passive effects and it wasn’t like you could switch between suits. Also the games with stackable beam upgrades count.

Basically in a nutshell, progress could be measured in what tools and tech you have which can be gained in multiple ways especially to suit non-combat playstyles. Tools and tech related to passive only effects could become a part of your character as to be out of the way, although something like an oxygen tank could be used as an easier and earlier means of accessing airless planets by taking up the back slot. Tools like grappling hooks would be useful in dungeons where you can’t place or break blocks.

 

1) Weapons and armor "progression" are some of the most blande I've seen in the genre. And they are forced on you in a very specific, linear way. You MUST make this one before you make the next one. And even so, it all ends up feeling pretty pointless. I don't want new iron armor that offers some vague, uninteresting defense-stat boost and a cosmetic makeover and a new steel 1h sword that does 20 more damage than my previous iron sword. The MOST BEAUTIFUL thing about Starbound is that it takes place in a vast, infinite universe with untold, countless alien flora, fauna, artifacts, etc...... USE THAT! I want an armor that you can chop only out of those metal trees on that one kind of planet that has them! And I want them woven together with living vines carved from the carcasses of an underground living-vine empire's soldiers I just killed! And I want stronger-than-steel plates adorning it, torn from the back of roving dinosaurs that only inhabit Arid worlds in sector 3!!! And I want a ball-and-chain weapon where the chain-links are made from the eyeball sockets from the robotic drones of an advanced AI that inhabits a planet only in sector VII, and the "ball" at the end is the severed head (but still alive) of a zombie-like wildebeest from the grasslands biomes!!! That spits lava when you swing it!!! But you know what I get?!? I get to combine 8 iron bars to make an iron spear. This is not only inexplicable, but frankly not as creative as I'd hope from a game that sets its sights SO HIGH with the perfect foundation for this. Guys. Please get creative with this stuff. The main complaint from the forums is that everything feels dull and lifeless. The crafting system foundations are PERFECT - let's spice it up with INSANE things that could only be found in a raging-mad universe full of unique life and endless possibilities!!!!!!!! It's the ENTIRE UNIVERSE people! The best you can come up with is a titanium axe?!?!?!?!

2) This linear, uninteresting progression is SERIOUSLY hampering the ability to enjoy this game. I can barely take it. It's uninteresting, unexciting and completely kills any sense of "Open World Survival" that Terraria helped define as a genre. It's become more like some kind of pseudo-MetroidVania knock off, and I literally can't tell you how damaging that is to this game's possibilities. If I can compare this to Terraria for a moment - maybe the comparison is unfair, or Terraria isn't a focal point for Starbound's development, but the fact of the matter is - Terraria did something so incredibly right. And that, specifically, is: You can get AHEAD in the world if you put in the work. With just the clothes on your back or some copper armor, you can put in the WORK to drop dynamite on those shadow orbs and spawn that meteorite at the time YOU DECIDE - hence, open world. Then put in the work to find enough gold to make a gold pickaxe and hack at that meteorite while fighting off Meteor Heads (and die 50x) to get enough to whip out your shiny new phase blade and space gun and meteor armor. Boom, those little zombies aren't your problem anymore. In Starbound, that sense of putting-in-the-work to get ahead doesn't exist. You WILL make copper armor. Then you WILL make iron armor. Then you WILL spawn the penguin UFO and you WILL kill them to get to the next sector, then you WILL.... etc. etc. ad infinitum. This can't happen in the final game, guys. I hope every day you're working on taking this system of YOUMUSTDOTHIS-THEN-YOUMUSTDOTHIS out of the game completely. It has to be reworked and rethunk.

3) The bosses make LITERALLY, zero sense (and the background stories that drop don't help). The first one, maybe. It's kind of a nice surprise that you're trying to make a radio beacon to... do whatever it is you're supposed to do, and some penguin aliens intercept it and try to destroy you (for no reason)... but everything after that? You, yourself have to make a robot companion, turn him on and immediately kill him for the micro-chip that.... you just created and could have taken out before he tries to kill you? Why make the robot in the first place? Because your magical anvil tells you to? And don't get me started on the dragon. You clairvoyantly know there just so happens to be a random dragon on whatever planet you're on at the moment (or maybe he's in a galaxy far away and flies) who somehow smells a metal princess from 10,000 light years away and is dumb enough to be fooled and makes the trip to get killed instantly by a steel sword? And somehow his bone empowers you unlock a new sector of the starmap? This is not only unbelievable, but also completely ridiculous. Hey let me drop this endomorphic jelly on a microchip and I can somehow unlock a whole galaxy! Wow! And again, the LINEAR progression is madness. Why not let me fight them in ANY ORDER I WANT? And instead of unlocking the NEXT galaxy + 1, why don't they just open up a DIFFERENT part of the galaxy, with not necessarily harder enemies, but DIFFERENT ones with DIFFERENT rewards, and you can experience them in any order you are skilled enough to make happen? I don't want my hand held, except that right NOW in the game, when I unlock a new sector? Here's what happens: I immediately check in my magical workbench which somehow psychically knows how to "build the next boss item". FFS, how does my workbench even KNOW there's a mystical dragon in this sector and that making a metal princess will bring him straight to you?!? WHY?!?! Yet, there it is - an inexplicable bound-princess for no reason.

4) This may be a minor gripe or go completely unnoticed by some people - but I'm begging you guys at Chucklefish: Please don't make the enemies you kill POOF into thin air for no reason. I hate it. There's no sense of accomplishment when you slaughter every crewmember of an airship and instead of their carcasses lying on the ground to step over as you loot and deconstruct their base, everyone's just mysteriously vanished for no reason. Clean and silent. Ruins the immersion (which is a common theme here, if you can't tell). I want to see my kills' dead bodies splayed on the ground. Remember Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War?!? The first one? Orcs mount a massive attack on your well-defended base and your Space Marine army slices them to pieces and when the dust settles? 240 carcasses lay mutilated at your doorstep and you lean back in your chair and wallow in your blood-soaked victory. Modern games unfortunately get rid of bodies because the 3d bodies of hundreds of enemies chilling around everywhere could slow your comp to a crawl. But this is 2D, people! Sprites can't be that much of a difficulty to render. The new Nitrous engine just showed a tech demo this week of a battle with 10,000 space ships! I can't imagine 14 dead Avian sprites would break the computer. Let them disappear after a while when I go offscreen for awhile, I don't care, but don't make them POOF with a puff of smoke. It's just lazy. I know, I know, there are hundreds of different sprites and you can't animate all their deaths... but at least make them break apart into pieces like Terraria and show their remains on the ground or something!

5) And I know this one's been done-to-death and they vow to correct it, but I want the developers to know that it's so important - the Underground. It's dark, empty and pointless. It's not even harder the further down I go!!! 100% not worth it. I get to a new planet and just run straight across the surface, find the easy metal, encounter all the interesting events and places on the planet, easily pick up enough metal to make whatever distressed princess this "level" required me to build and then get the hell to the next sector as fast as possible. Rinse. Repeat. There is nothing interesting or relevant or exciting or useful enough to make me spend all that time digging... that I can't do 10x easier by just flying to the next planet and running across the surface again. It's okay to model after games that got this right... diamonds in Minecraft only available at lower levels... hellfire ore only available in Hell in Terraria... MAKE me go down there if I want the best stuff.

6) Meaningful interaction - there's a great questing system in place, yet there's zero meaningful interaction between you and the inhabitants of the planet - I literally just kill every single thing I meet and take their stuff. Did I miss a developer answer on this subject? I feel like I might have, since there's a whole questing system that goes completely dark after the penguin boss. But meaningful interaction with the inhabitants of a planet you come across would add LOADS to this game. Maybe you come across an Apex city under attack by rebels and you can choose to help either side? Or maybe Florians are attacking a Hyolotl settlement and you can repel them? Or a Glitch team of archaeologists searching for a long-lost AI underground and you can help them? Or a city that's being overrun by rapidly procreating wild animals that you can find the source of and stop? Everyone should play Star Control II and take note - they did it perfectly. Each race you meet has their own race-specific plight, and it ranges from arachnids who worship their Dark Gods who you can impersonate, an entire race on the brink of suicide because their most sacred artifact was broken, a race that exchanges knowledge and tech for captured biological species, a fungal species that terraforms planets into lavaworlds whether there are civilizations already there or not... the list goes on and on. But it really illustrates the idea that the universe is probably filled with varied, insane and creative problems to solve. But Starbound is filled with a bunch of random humanoids whose only problem is that I stab them with my spear until they blink out of existence. Also, a reputation system would be nice with each of the races. Ranging from helping you against attackers and travelling with you randomly and selling to you cheaper, to shooting you on-sight. Right now, I can kill half a village, leave for a bit and come back to their open-arms. It's silly and breaks..... what? Immersion.

7) 7) I'd like to tackle the massive subject of base-building while I'm at it, too. The current problem people are expressing across the forums seems to be that there's not enough incentive to build any sort of base on any of the actual worlds. And my God, I couldn't agree with that statement any more if I tried. I mean, there are those who retort "I like building! I always build a base on the planet I'm on!" And to that, I say: Great! But wouldn't you like a compelling reason to do it, other than "I like to build"? Like many other people have stated - if you can build all your main functional stuff, as well as storage, on your ship, why drop down roots anywhere planetside? I mean, that's what I do - I planet hop over and over, find a nice, intriguing one, build a little hut or take over another one I find, gather enough metal to fight the boss, and then hop to the next one. But ALL my crafting is done on my ship, and all my fun decorations I steal from planetary installations are also stored on my ship so I can take them with me. I've never once found a compelling reason to plant my roots on any one planet... ESPECIALLY because once you can jump to a new sector, the PREVIOUS sector is 100% useless. Why go back to a planet that only has copper and iron, when your new planet has the components to make durasteel? Right? And why store ANYTHING on a planet, when you could store it in your mobile ship, never lose it, never forget where it is or which planet you left it on, and can warp right back to your ship WHENEVER you want!!!

This is a very difficult problem to find a solution to, ESPECIALLY since Chucklefish made the design decision to encourage you to NOT stay on any one planet for very long, and not providing you any motivation to do so. So what to do? The only thing that comes to mind is something like from the movie Pitch Black. Like, with the onset of NIGHTTIME, the monsters/aliens normally docile during the day, come out in full-attack mode at night. The best video-game example of this is Don't Starve, where if you were caught with the lights out at night even for 10 seconds, you were dead meat. Shades of it even happened in Terraria, with the whole zombies attacking during the night. And so maybe in Starbound, if you don't get BEAMED UP to your ship before they arrive, you better have an awesome base built or you WILL.BE.OVERRUN. Sure the meany-monsters come out at night already in this game, but they don't launch an attack on you or your base. Building up a base for that first night, or needing to get beamed up to your ship before dusk COULD add a huge level of suspense to the game. Other options include finding out SOME sort of way to motivate players to keep ONE base and add on to it could really help (like by getting followers in Terraria to come and stay with you... love that nurse ;o)

8) Every new sector is an exact repeat of the previous sector, with new skins and a slightly new boss. But there's no REWARD for beating a sector and moving on, crafting-wise... because GUESS WHAT!! All the new recipes for weapons and armor do the SAME EXACT PERCENTAGE OF DAMAGE and PROTECTION as the previous sector! I'll explain it like this - use the tier 1-5 2h-axe in all situations: a) Starting weapons basically 3-or-4-shot all enemies in Alpha Sector - build the new weapons offered and you can 2-shot most mobs. Yeay! You've done it! AND you took down the penguin boss! Time to open up all the awesome new tech for Beta Sector and move on! b) You're in Beta Sector, gather 5 pieces of ore and you've got you're sweet-ass new weapon that..... oh, just 2-shots most enemies. Use that the whole time in Beta Sector till you gather enough and beat the robot boss... Excellent! New upgrade tech for Gamma Sector! c) Gamma sector, here I come with my new 2h-axe I just built to slaughter all the enemies here................... IN TWO HITS?!? I'm beginning to see a pattern here, but I just made this princess decoy and killed the bone dragon, so...... Delta! d) Durasteel, sweet! I've still got some titanium and coal leftover, gonna jump right in with my freshly upgraded tech to take on Sector 4's enemies........... and kill every.single.one.of.them.in.2.HITS. God!! What's the point of it all? You never get more powerful. You never feel improved. You never get AHEAD. It's constant. It's static. And quite frankly, is incredibly boring. The whole POINT of upgrades is to get STRONGER and MORE POWERFUL - and yes, Terraria nailed this, but so does just about every single other RPG in existence. This wouldn't be such a huge disappointment for me if there was ANY REASON EVER to visit older sectors where the new weapons can one-shot everyone! Hey you could wield your flashy Durasteel clobberer back in Alpha Sector and annihilate! But there is no reason to. None. No reason whatsoever. Nothing special to find. No drops that could be useful in later sectors. Nothing. If only there was some ingredient I needed to hunt for back in Beta Sector to make a killer weapon in Sector X.........

 

Well we've got some great stuff here, so I compiled a list in the other thread: http://community.playstarbound.com/...ing-in-the-sandbox.69404/page-11#post-1772595

I compiled a QUICK list of ideas. It might help to brainstorm ideas to look at them all at once. Also you guys are so detailed I think it's like Chucklefish could build a design team out of the people on the forum. It's pretty inspiring.

• Pixel Gates: You pay pixels to unlock more stuff.
• Create Gates: You unlock teirs by creating specific pieces of equipment. This may require anything from mining to farming.
• Search Gate: Each gate is unlocked with a specific mission.
• Treasure Hunt: Various pieces come together to make equipment/summon bosses and you have to find them (A bit familiar, but)
• Tech Tree: Manufacturing certain items/finding certain items unlocks new things that in turn unlocks new content. Of course you have to do certain things/go certain places.
• Boss Beater: Go old school, have to kill a boss to unlock a teir.
• MultiGate: Each teir has 2 or more ways to unlock it - pay pixels or find an artifact, make a gizmo or fight a boss, etc. Fits with most of the above gates.
• Warning Signs: The universe is all teirs at once, but missions and worlds have clear warnings of limits and what you need (and what they have) so you can navigate. Works well with Tech Tree and Treasure Hunt - and most anything else.
• Cluster Buster: Worlds are spawned in clusters of difficulty, and thus you can be assured that A) the worlds you're in are safe when you start, you can get a pretty good idea of how the rest of the universe will kill you. Fits with "Warning Signs"

What I find interesting is looking over these summaries as there's really TWO elements here:
1) How you unlock teirs of difficulty.
2) How they're distributed and portrayed.

My tendancy is to think that using the "Cluster Buster" approach of clusters of world difficulty, combined with clear warnings is a good setting idea, and programmatically I don't think it's that difficult - though it would probably blow away some of the storage methods of planets, depending. If this was combined with a multigate approach it'd probably be quite satisfactory - just making sure that ONE gate is Pure Pixel. Because now and then I'd like to just be a space farmer before I go kill bosses.

Now having multiple gates would also allow for some extra storytelling arcs. In one game I pay a ton of pixels to craft a new blueprint, but later I figure what the hell, I'll go hunt up that unique item in the alien temple. Each can have a bit of a story to it.