Big Suggestion

I've been playing the game for a while now, and first of all I want to say Starbound is an amazing game. I've never lost hope and I've always been happy I bought it. (Just saying this here since this is my first post here)

Moving on, I've come up with a pretty big idea that can benefit this game greatly. Not sure if anybody has ever posted any similar idea but either way I want to share it with you.

So here's what I thought:

First of all, I've noticed how sometimes the game can end up being repetitive when you find yourself with no further quests to do, or no further advance to seek and achieve. For this, I think a very nice and easy way to make it twice as engaging could be adding a stat system. This doesn't only improve the length of the game itself but it also boosts the idea of a class-specific build.

Examples of stats I've thought about could be:

Strength: This stat makes your melee/bow weapons hit harder, further increases damage per swing.
Agility/Dexterity: Maxing this one out makes your swing speed increase along with your movement speed (I've realized movement speed would get a bit too OP so my idea is basically to make this increase a very slight one, or perhaps just an increase on backward movement speed, since you're getting more agile)
Resistance: Basically less damage taken from all sources. I'll further explain this one out when I get to armor and weapons.
Vitality: A bigger HP pool, possibly even faster regeneration from various sources (this can be OP so I'm not expecting HP regen to be a thing)
Energy: A bigger Energy pool, along with faster Energy regeneration.
Intelligence: Increasing this stat makes your firearms and magic weapons hit harder. (Assuming you max this out you'd be maxing Energy as well so you can increase Energy consumption according to weapon damage) Also, there could be Intelligence requirements to equip certain Techs, or to smelt certain ores/craft certain things. Of course, those requirements would be way lower compared to what you would need for a proper Intelligence build, because every class and build needs smelting and crafting.

There can be bonuses such as extra minerals from an amount of ores depending on your stats, so for example say you have a high Intelligence level so you can waste less resources when crafting/smelting. Of course every stat would have different bonuses, making party cooperation between differently built characters crucial in taking every advantage possible.


For these ideas, there is a way to not actually need a character wipe. Instead, you could implement a different system on weapon/armor scaling.
For example, instead of having a sword that has a damage per swing of 200, you'd have a heavy sword which damage per swing scales off your Strength from a way lower base stat, or a sniper rifle for which you'd require 30 Intelligence just to wield, and every point you allocate to said stat would further increase its base damage per shot by 10. Also, you can make shot speed scale off Dexterity since your sleight of hand would improve. This would mean a massive nerf on guns and armor, but just when player's stats are at their lowest, since they would get better as you level up.

Obviously this would depend on the difficulty to get levels for each stat.

Finally, when it comes to armor, every single set of armor should have its own requirement and usage. The base stats should be almost nonexistant so every character should pick their specific build's set of armor, and the rewards should be bigger when it comes to scaling.
For example, an armor set that slightly sacrifices movement speed but hugely increases HP and Resistance but with a low Energy boost -typical Strength build-, an armor set that doesn't grant much Resistance to direct hits but enhances HP, status effect duration and a huge Energy pool -Intelligence Caster-, or an armor set that very slightly boosts Resistance, Energy and HP but is so light that allows for extremely high movement speed -Agility Rogue-.

There could be way more builds depending on how players max out their stats, so different combinations of armor pieces could have place. Each armor piece would have its own requirement and scale individually according to the user's current stats. This not only allows for way bigger variety in playstyle but also makes fights and scouting/hunting planets more dynamic and oriented towards cooperative play. Also, it would give players a HUGE reason to keep playing and grinding for levels as well as every other objective there already is.

Please feel free to post your thoughts about my ideas, I'd be very glad to start a discussion about how these changes could impact Starbound and its gameplay.
Keep making Starbound great, both devs and players!

 

That is way more RPG than this game is intended to be

 

Yeah, makes sense. I kinda flied way too high because of my love for RPG. Maybe there is a way to simplify or just take bits of those ideas without making it too RPG? No? Okay
Thanks for the comment, I appreciate you took the time to read

 

Alternatively it could be made into a mod. I mean people got RPG elements into Terraria and that is much less Mod Friendly than Starbound so it's possible.

 

That sounds very nice actually!

 

Floran find meatman lack of faith disssturbing.
Greenfinger not asss good at not ssstabbing asss Floran.


......
Floran alssso think charisssma important. Convince fissshy to let Floran in. Not good for fissshy, but good for Floran.

 

I'm totally with you on the RPG elements thing, but it's a pretty contentious idea, and probably won't be implemented.

 

I would be happy with building my own guns

 

We can only hope beyond hope. I think the game would be even more of a masterpiece with those elements. I hope they at least consider it, can you imagine?

That is quite a good idea as well, maybe building them according to your levels would make both our ideas compatible

I hear your advice, wise Floran!

 

I think a way this could be implemented is to make a Skill Book item. Put it on your hotbar. When you use it, a window opens up. This window will be like Maplestory's skill things.

 

I like that. Looks practical and it's easier to implement than to have to use a new key and a new menu. Also, who knows, it can open up the path for new stuff. I love when game devs start experimenting new stuff and great things happen.

 

Thank you very much. I didn't know it worked that way, since I'm new to the forum. I literally just created the account for this post.
Thanks for your help, and thanks for giving me your opinion as well!

 

Please tell that to boring fetch quests....

 

You mean the prototype quests that are placeholder until they get more triggers? >_> seriously try harder.

 

Yeah Tiy said that to me over a year ago and the place holder is still here, only now instead of a numbered tiers its now danger level moderate and lets not forget RISKY! :O Lets face facts this is a big game so we'll compare it to the usual RPG quests.... How many scripted quests do you think these guys could do to fulfil the needs of the community?.... Yeah I'm not too confident in their ability with that one... I sense many fetch quests in the future, possibly they'll even throw in a few "Kill 50 these monsters!" quests. Think about it realistically without help from the community the quests are going to be pretty dire and they will soon run out patience to continue making more content for us gamers to rinse through in less than 5 hours, they just haven't got the staff for them to make interesting quest lines for every single quest.

The forced quest system in an open ended sandbox game that they have is completely flawed and way too streamlined.