I enjoy how large the Starbound universe is but it feels a little uniform. I was running through a series of, I guess, Apex science stations on some planet but they were mostly identical. I was thinking it would be cool if I could tear them down and use the materials to build structures similar in size and style but different enough in appearance to add variety to the scenery. It would be extremely cool if I could submit the structures to the devs and, if found to be worthy, maybe have them added to the mix for general release. The universe is so big I think a crowd sourced method of adding content to the game would vastly increase the variety of structures encountered and maybe even free up a little dev time to work on other things. A system that could be automated, possibly based on community input, might be used to make sure the amount of material that made it up the ladder for judgement manageable.
I think if it worked out and quality structures were being submitted it could be expanded to dungeons, city style buildings, etc. It would also be cool if you could package your buildings into a file that could be shared with other players.
This idea has a LOT of potential. One of the things that was most interesting about the game SPORE was the player generated content that would help populate the galaxy. I can see a role for a similar mechanic in Starbound, but it would need to be handled differently. First off, Starbound would benefit from a stand-alone (but possibly accessible from in-game) editor. The editor would allow creation of creatures, creature parts, weapons, items, new biomes, modular dungeon features, etc. As a part of the creation process, these new things would be tagged to help categorize them (i.e., #weapon, #creature_head, etc.). Now somehow (ikr? somehow) these creations are submitted to a centralized database. They are now accessible to other players in their local versions of Starbound. But they do not show up uninvited! Each player can "subscribe" to certain types of new content, subject to filters selected by that player. Moreover, when these new things are encountered, the player has a chance to rate them -- and qualify them with additional tags. So for example, suppose that I created a new weapon. Let's call it the Whompinator 2000. It is a short range, high-damage projectile weapon that uses raw alien meat as ammunition. I submit it to the "Starbase" centralized repository. I have tagged it with #weapon so that people can decide whether or not to have it potentially pulled in to instances of worlds in their local copy of Starbound. Next, a number of other players around the world allow the Whompinator 2000 to enter their games. Upon encountering it -- or any other player generated thing -- I have a single chance to provide feedback. The first thing is to decide if this new thing is a "keeper" or not. A single radio button type choice lets a player decide if the new thing can ever show up again, or if it should be excluded from the local game henceforth. Additionally, players can give the new thing a simplified 1-5 star rating (because it is possible that a player might think that a new thing is cool and well made, but just not want it in their game). After that, the player can tag the item with additional characteristics that explain the ratings, like #useful, #unbalanced, #OP, etc. Finally, all of these ratings are aggregated and displayed along with the new thing in the repository -- much like aggregate ratings on a forum thread. After the system has been up and running for a while, it would be possible for players to apply very robust filters to what can now appear in their game. For example, I might only want content that is either weapons or planetary stuff, rated 4.5 or higher on average with at least 500 instances of feedback, and that does not have above a certain amount of the players tagging it as #unbalanced or #R_rated. This would help mitigate one of the worst problems with the SPORE system, namely an endless supply of really, really crappy content. tl;dr: Allow for new content, but with tags to categorize it. The player base rates the new content, and adds additional tags as feedback. Players can then use filters to allow inclusion of content that they actually want, excluding the stuff they do not want. Have the player base do the work of rating and tagging content, and let the free market of ideas prosper!
That would be great. The votation system could be via web: I don't like to have to vote every content within the game. In case of weapons the quality could be based in the time players put on them: if I find a gun and I like it, I'll use it a lot; so, it would have a good rating from me automatically.
