This idea is not forced on the player and never has to be done. Also periods of time for the NPC's to do there thing is dependent on the product! I know that a lot of people love to have their Hand-Held when it comes to playing games but I just feel that a lots of exploring sandbox game's just tells you the whole story before you have even discovered it. Take Minecraft for example when I first joined its community it was back in alpha when 'Secret Friday updates' would happen weekly after Notch chose to release them. The only help the community had back then was that there game could be updates the rest was for the community to discover which was fun and gave time before to learn its uses. I can understand that the crafting on Minecraft does get complicated with more than few different combinations for items/blocks, this I do understand forced the user to visit their wiki to learn what they were supposed to do but that just ruins the idea of survival and exploration when your reading a guide. Terraria for example didn't tell the user everything and really only explained the bugs and what type of item/tile was added, this in my Opinion was the way to do it letting the user discover the new environments. The came a update for the 'Guide' this update let you place any item that had a crafting purpose and told the user every possibly combination of crafting uses it had, This made the game easier as I had to stop guessing what was needed to create a specific item and just use my knowledge to remember one item of the creation. For 'Starbound' I hope the best for it and I feel if this is a type of game that wants to become a survival/exploration game I just feel less hand-holding should be done. To solve these problems I understand that possibly the basic items are already explained by a NPC but from what I have read more NPC's are discovered and can be taken to your station or home planet. With these NPC's could come their knowledge of there home planet allowing them to explain the common rocks that scatter the planet and give the basic idea of what they can do (Still not explaining it's full lifeline). A option with this idea is that some NPC's that you discover could be a Geography-Expert these are them able to explain in more detail the idea of a planet and its story. With a Geography-Expert he could be taken to a planet and then over time learn the land and resources of thisplanet to begin his expedition he could just say 'I'am glad to finely get to explore something new' then over time starts having options for what he's discovered like minerals to then a later extent telling you the depth of the planet and its tribal people/ wild life. Another type of NPC to help the player learn the planet's is a Scientist this NPC could ask if you wish to learnknowledge of a Tile or Item. If the scientist already has knowledge of this 'thing' then he will quickly explain its uses in basic form to then be given the option of more depth. If the scientist has never seen this block before he will start a process to discover its uses (Possibly needing specific equipment before it can be identified).
Just so I get this straight, you would like to have a sort of "learn" mechanism so the player has to learn recipes to be able to make stuff?
What I'm getting is that you want people to discover rather than an NPC saying ''well, thats there, and that does this, and a secret your not supposed to know is this! ......'' Good ideas! I think I agree, the player should be allowed to experiment and learn by themselves.
That's a bunch of words but to put it simply for others, he wants there to be items that you have absolutely no idea what they do so it's up to the player to try it with anything and everything to see if it will do something. The best analogy I can come up with is like TF2 when they would add so many weapons that you really didn't understand how they all worked until you got a laser rocket launcher to the FACE! I do hope they add this to the game, although my idea would be that they'd add so many items so fast that even the wiki wouldn't be able to keep up with the items so you'd just have to experiment on the items yourself. I was expecting that in Terraria but never got it.
There are some things that this may not work for, like giant robots, where you would need to know what you need BEFORE investing the time and energy it will probably take to make them. However, this could easily be done without much deviation from your idea, which is great.
With all the NPCs and a whole research lab in you space ship, I don't know if Starbound will let you discover everything on your own :/
So maybe something like guide ? Which can give You "hints" how to do something or just mention that You can use "something" to do stuff. Or just when you find new block or material there should be information that "new craft options are "available" then you try to craft something and if it success You will get recipe to your recipe book !; o
I think something like the guide in Terraria would be perfect... Except for this game it could be some kind of PDA, that lets you scan anything you find and tells you what it can be used for.
LIKE POKEDEX! yes, thats also cool, pda seems okay - we dont have to meet npc to find what we can do, just open pda after scanning and it can shows us inital recipes, rest we need to discover or find blueprints.
I don't know if ou guys remember in all the teaser pictures there an item that looks like a gameboy, Tiy's character always has it around on him so I think that gameboy is a scanner! Mark my words!!!
I think letting the player discovery everything will lead to the player ALT+TABing for the wiki. Maybe a option? Item combination guide: NONE, SMALL, LARGE. That way players that have played "few times" can turn the guide off in order to challange themselfs a little
If he hinted at what you could do but withheld information from you he would come off as a total douche though
The guide from Terraria was kinda a douche >.> On Topic: This reminds me of Skyrims crafting system where the player needs to "experiment" to learn what its uses are then if u choose to make that same item the ingredients are shown to you. This is not really a big deal for common items but for rare or hard to make items it could be a pain IF the items disappear after attempting to make an item. Basically I support this idea but it would be nice if it wasn't such a nuisance to Alt-tab constantly to look at the wiki to figure out what the ingredients are.
I think discovery is an important part of the game, or at least it should be. The thing I find annoying about the Guide is that he'll tell you everything that can ever be made from the item, but not how to get the other ingredients. It'd be better if he only told you about things you've already discovered the ingredients for. And even then, some research should be possible to say "You have a, b, and c. If you had x you could make y". But rather than it just be as though the Guide is giving you clues, it should be as though he's also discovering it. Whatever guide system is in place should gently nudge you toward the next step, not lay it all out whenever you ask. I really like flump's idea of different knowledge and skills depending on race, research and experience. On the other hand, another annoyance is that newly available craftable items just turn up in the Craft Menu without any kind of notification, so you have to keep hunting through it all just in case something new is available. Blejt's notification idea would be a good improvement.
Oh man, look what thread didn't need to be revived after over a year. I'm pretty sure that the developers know exactly how they're going to handle this already. No need to bring this back, at all.
