Core Fragment Quest: bad design

I have seen enough of early access games, I don't trust the developers one bit anymore. Now its not implemented and month later unfinished game is called 1.0 and pushed out of early access. Hell even game braking bugs can became intended features in some cases. My trust in developer words is very limited those days.

 

I agree they are pretty plain/ordinary quest types. Bland and slightly boring for the most part. But I also think in this update in particular it is simply testing the framework of this mechanic.

I think not enough people give credit to the fact this is the 1st stable update in some time. And are jaded that another won't come out for another year.

I say be patient, take everything with a grain of salt. Make suggestions and sit back and enjoy the ride. Definitely be critical of it, but understand that nothing is set in stone yet. Not until the almighty V1.0 drops.

 

Why do you think that this is Exactly How The Final Game Will Be? I've noticed a LOT of this on the boards, this idea that Now Is Forever Neverchanging. Which seems odd considering it's an Early Access, early beta, where they're still changing around core play features, and have been INCREDIBLY forward with telling us that things are going to be changing, sometimes radically, this whole process.

This is a game still in progress, and still trying out a lot of stuff. You must crawl before you can walk. This is them trying to make *A* quest system, and see if it works. Now that they have the system, they can make it more complicated going forward.

 

I have every right to think its final result. Why? Cause producing the current update took them 9 months and they are set to finish Starbound this year. So taking that into account and time left till the end of 2015 I don't see the room for drastic changes of current mechanics and systems.

 

I hardly can believe they will meet this timeline. I am going forward believing they will not meet this timeline. Unless I start seeing major content drops Bi-weekly or once a month.

I suggest giving them a few months to see what they say/do

Right now is the time for them to redeem themselves. Let them dig the grave as they wish.

Starbound will either be one of the greatest Sandbox titles when it launches. Or will be a complete dud and a waste of money and time to the players who supported the EAG. This is left up to the Devs and if they balance listening to the community and doing what is right overall.

 

Wwwwwwwhy does it have to be that harsh a binary? Why are those the only possible outcomes? Why couldn't it be somewhere in the middle? A pretty good game?

I seriously don't understand this position.

(Also, "listening to the community" is not exactly a be-all solution. "the community" is often a conflicting morass of contrary, loud opinions. It's good to look at, cherry-pick for ideas, but really, never let it behind the wheel.)

 

Took me a while but I had to start a new character just to see what might be possible in meaning of OP.

When There are technically 2 quests.... The tutorial quest which is that popup one in the beginning and the SAIL one (If you consider that a quest)... This is where the confusion must be. When I went through it once I gathered 20 core fragments it actually says return to ship to fix it with the fragments you obtained. This tutorial quest does not take away the fragments and should not disappear from your inventory at that point.

My guess is SAIL is the final thing with core fragments even mentioned. That one does take them and you see a builder bunny thing...

If the tutorial quest is subtracting from you core fragments that is a bug. It should not do that, but every time I have gone through (only twice as of this update) I have not encountered that bit. The tutorial quest only shows upto when you get those 20. When you get 20 you finished that one, and should still have them in inventory. I don't know what is happening in your game but that is how it is. Now it happenning with every new character, I kind of find that suspicious... I doubt it. After all it is a red looking thing in inventory and if the first tab is full it could have gone to the second tab of inventory.

Should be able to issue command on the second one as soon as you get up there. Now if you play on normal, it is quite possible if you died, that you would obviously loose those ores, as I think it is considered an ore. Unsure if they are or not as I have not played on normal (waiting for certain change for that difficulty before I play that game mode).

I don't know why someone would have trouble with the core fragment quest tutorial or SAIL, you technically only have to gather 20, and then you are done. Now I have seen problems with the tutorial quest, but that is because I was on unstable. That was also long ago, even before the stable version... Those bugs/glitches have been fixed. So I have no idea why you would have to go down twice... unless for another ore entirely, which I would think plenty would have been found at least to get 1 weapon/shield/armor pieces. I managed to get all that, but again rng could be favoring me. However the ores are there; so that is non-issue for most willing to actually look deeper.

overall the tutorial quests are well fleshed out to the point where you would leave the planet.... So confused here. ><


Note: If you can travel to the outpost or any planets within the system by the time you get to the last tutorial quest then you don't need to collect 20 more fragments and therefore could abandon it. Now if you saw the bunny animation before completing the tutorial then go back to get them you will have 20 extra fragments.

Does the ship revert back to being damaged to a prior state? then that is a bug. But be sure that you can travel to other planets before doing this by using the navigation console. that will determine whether a bug or not.

The tutorial one is to let you know when you have collected enough to return, while the SAIL is the actual upgrade. Which I am under the impression that bug has already been fixed. So see if you can travel first before jumping to a conclusion of doing out of order when that part of the tutorial popup comes about. That is the determining factor.

 

My opinion is formulated on what i have seen happen with this dev team, the EAG market and the community.

The outcomes I state are based on if they actually meet what they said they would do with the game -Vs- how long it took to get to this point, coupled with the not so great track record imo.

If the game does anything but that at completion. It will be a bust for me.

I am extremely particular about my games. I own hundreds but only play a dozen or so.

Take what you will from my opinion. It is what it is. Agree with it or not.

As far as listening to the community. It is the sole purpose of an EAg is to listen to the community. Obviously im not writing the code aka driving the wheel.

But they had better head our words to a degree as they took our money to build the game.

 

The mining to the core of the first planet is very time consuming and since nothing else happen on that planet its also quite boring task.
Some blocks are in need of HP nerf, like obsidian, and other hard blocks that are on the planets core, its hard to mine trough them even with fully upgraded matter manipulator and we have to do it with not upgraded matter manipulator at first.

 

I think you're frustrated and that's making you exaggerate. I go there in less then 40 minutes by exploring caves and not using a Hellivator, while getting TONS of rare ore and tiles.

Also made almost 2500 pixels

.....

Then I fell in the lava after getting my 20 crystals. /o/

 

Not really, I just don't like the fact that the very first quest requires digging to the planet core, also planets are random on one you can have nice caves on the other you won't find them.

 

I will say. Oddly i have Core Fragments spawn near the surface my first roll.

Only about 10fragments. The rest i had to dig deep.

But it didn't take long. And like it has been said.

Once you start on a planet all characters start on the same planet.

So if you build one Hellivator on the starter plabet you won't need to again ever unless you want to or run out of resources.

 

Hellivators only ever made sense in Terraria because you could only mine one block at a time. If you mess around on the surface of your starter planet long enough to put together a few copper pickaxes, you can make a lazy staircase mineshaft just as easily. Once your MM does a 3x3 area, you can do it with that too. Just center it underneath you, hold it down and run left or right into a wall.

minus the place where I mined an ore vein, or course... I just went back to my starter planet for the screenshot.

 

It's pretty funny that as things stand right now, the game actually punishes you for exploring instead of playing linear. There needs to be something in the game to account for this, so that if you repair your ship early, you can either skip that quest, or complete it automatically, or something along those lines. Same for the other quests. They may have to do some serious work on the quest-system to allow this, but I feel it's necessary.

 

Uhm... Unless you're playing a different version from mine: Getting the core fragments isn't the first quest (that'd be rebooting S.A.I.L or - if you prefer something with a little more substance than "push a button that's located five feet from your spawn point" - build a workbench).

But it IS the only fetch quest of that magnitude, the other ones ask for stuff like 1 leather - which you most likely already have in spades or can acquire within 5 minutes, 4 of which are spent hauling ass back to your ship and to the nearest planet - or the sign of a minidungeon (that one might take a little longer if you haven't found/forgot where that particular dungeon is located).

I furthermore am still searching for a planet lacking a cornucopia of caves which you can connect with each other for comparatively swift underground travel.

 

Don't pretty much every starter world also have a mine "dungeon" that lets you slip down deep underground pretty simply?

 

I don't know if it's on EVERY starter planet (now that I think about it,though... Mine had one, too, so possibly), but the fact that 9 out of 10 times there's at least a medium-sized cavern or a chain of small ones in close proximity to the wall you just ran into renders that point largely moot, since you can build your own mine network within minutes.

 

Technically it's not the first actual "quest", but one of the first quests does have text that specifically instructs you that your goal is to get the ship's thrusters running again. And when you check SAIL to see how to do that, you can see that you need 20 core fragments. And I believe there's an entry in your quest log that stays there to remind you that getting your ship's thrusters fixed is your overall goal. So yeah, there's not an actual quest, but the quest dialog does tell you to do it.

 

Poor preplanning...? What poor pre-planning like scouring a wikia at the start of the game or develop precognition that would've told me to do the quests before booting the thrusters?
And yes what @bluecollarart said is correct.

Also I used the mineshaft & while it took a chunk away mine in particular still didn't give me quick access to the core. My main issue is this part here in my original post

I made an error and called them crystals rather than core fragments.

According to @Tamorr my situation might have been a bug? Where S.A.I.L. consumes the fragments to boot up the thrusters? Cause my character did not have them after I booted up the Thrusters and to clarify I booted the thrusters BEFORE I was given the quest. And no I did not repeat the core disappearing issue cause I assumed they were suppose to. I only set out to show there is two quests that required them cause many were saying I only would need 20 but you were the first to point out that my original cores should not have disappeared thus allowing me to clear the quest without issues.

If this is not a bug then I think it is a bit of a nasty oversight.

 

@Dendail
The one from SAIL should be taking the core fragments. As that is what they are for.

the one that pops up on screen as tutorial is the one that should not take fragments. That one is just a counter tutorial quest, in which if done in order would tell you when you got the amount needed for the SAIL Quest, but should not destroy items. None of the tutorial quests destroy any items mentioned in them.

but that is only for the tutorial quests, as anything beyond those it is actual quests from the giver or SAIL.

But yeah possible bug if you can't just abandon the tutorial one. Since you already had acquired them before finishing the tutorial, and used them for what was intended. The tutorial quest was mainly meant to help new people on the first planet. Regardless you got it mostly right in what you mention above. well in what I was meaning. Not so well in explaining things. >< at least I tried.