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An Honest Review - Suggestions and Commentary from a relatively new player.

Discussion in 'Starbound Discussion' started by Phaetum, Apr 10, 2016.

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Do you think food should be a bit more diverse?

  1. Yeah lets mix it up!

    75.0%
  2. I like it as it is.

    12.5%
  3. I don't really care about cooking...

    12.5%
  1. Phaetum

    Phaetum Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    Greetings to all Starbound players and developers! I have been playing this game for a relatively short time but I intend to upload several more reviews over my play-through so I thought I'd start this early!

    Wondering how I even qualify to review this game? Well I've played every kind of game from shooters to indie text based adventures. I played the original call of duties, WoW from Burning Crusade to the start of MoP, Castlevanias, the Elder Scroll Series and all sorts of RPG's in-between. I recently fell in love with Terraria and was recommend Starbound through this. I adore sci-fi environments so that was an instant sell. I've read a lot of science fiction in my time, most notably the entire Ender series by Orson Scott Card, and many others. I've ran several roleplaying guilds in various forums and mmorpg's over the years and so I have a grasp of how story and environments should flow and interact with engaging players. So I hope that when you read my review you won't think I'm biased in any way, because all I care about is a good gaming experience open to players of every level, and since this game is in development, I hope my insight is welcome.

    A few ideas for minor improvements.

    Being able to lock UI: The ability to save the position of windows such as Inventory, Loot and Crafting would allow us to have a more organized and clear screen that would make building and organization much more streamline.

    L/R Tutorial Improvements: While I'm totally on board with the idea that discovering things on your own is satisfying, at a certain level complexity defeats this idea. Starbound has an incredibly unique approach to hotkeys and tool functionality that makes it slightly less intuitive due to it being such a new concept. I think it would benefit from having a brief hint at the beginning which would allow players to reach conclusions before too late. eg... Items function with each mouse button or according to label/hotbar placement, and items with L/R have two separate functions mapped to each mouse button.

    The reason that's important can be illustrate by my own experience. For some reason I thought that L/R was a label for the hotkey position, just like L and R (above our matter manipulator) are two separate hand slots. This made me not realize that the actual item itself had two separate functions. So since it was not clarified I assumed at some point I'd get a tool for harvesting walls, and went about trying to figure out how the whole game worked, only using blocks. I didn't have enough time to wonder about L/R. I was over halfway through the first world when I figured that out. So this suggestion is just for those who are silly like myself and miss the whole hint.

    Using Items in an Open Box: So you can use items in your bag, right? Which we assume your wearing. So if you can access something stored in a bag on your person, would it not make sense to be able to use items in an open box in front of you? They are right there, your staring at them. And yet you can not craft with things in an open box. I think this would be logical and not too difficult to script, it would also go well with my earlier suggestion of lockable UI.

    More about Maps:
    I've already seen that mini-maps are intended, so instead of ask for them, I will say what I think the most important aspects of a map in this game are, and hopefully these will spark ideas. Find places you died or left for later, how far you are from home, help you see where you died earlier to avoid pitfalls. Makes you want to dig around so you can always find your way back to your main objective.

    Clay Color: Clay is way too grey, it needs a slight hint of any sort of color at all, except maybe blue. I ran past a ton of clay before I realized what it was. It looks like another kind of cobblestone.

    Naming Things:
    Being able to edit the text on things like boxes and signs (which I'm not sure if they exist yet) would be helpful, especially to help you know which way to go when you don't have a map.

    Sci-Fi Food: This is just an observation from someone who knows a lot of cultures and appreciates all foods. The food crafting takes from a heavily Americanized menu. European influence is also very prevalent. But you would think you could easily make anything at all, and more then that, I don't see why we need to shy from alien dishes on alien planets. Here I am, a Novakin on a planet with nothing that has ever looked like a cow in it's entire evolution, and yet I'm making steak and shepherds pie. I mean seriously, it's like the food developers are in a tiny box, or taking an easy way out... I think that we could have all sorts of interesting dishes and it wouldn't be to crazy. Like an alien Stir Fry, or some sort of Chunky Monkey Taco in the beginning, something that takes from the worlds around us, not entirely from a world that is obviously light years behind us, and just white people. Why can't we have some cultural staples from all of our races? Even throw some copper in there for robot food! I mean really, why would a robot eat steak? Anyway, just 'food' for thought.

    And that concludes my little review, hope something here can manage to spark some thought in these directions ^^ feel free to comment with any sort of feedback whatsoever, corrections and constructive criticism is always more then welcome!
     
    Last edited: Apr 10, 2016
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  2. Kezeal

    Kezeal Ketchup Robot

    This seems so logical that I have considered this as a "feature to be released soon", without even considering that they may not make it a thing. I support this.
    I can see how some may miss that.
    Got my support here.
    I disagree on the death markers, never liked those. I like the kind of punishment you get for dying. You shouldn't die. Distance from home? What do you mean home? The surface? Your homeplanet shown on minimap?
    This is clay:
    [​IMG]

    You can already make your own custom signs. But I do agree on naming things - I can't wait until I can make a shotgun named Kurt Cobain's Microphone.
    I'm putting my hope in the "flow of content" that was promised to come after 1.0
     
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