I'd love Starbound to start from scratch.

Imagine if you'd have to start Starbound like Terraria or Minecraft... With nothing.

Story-wise you could be dumped on a (seamless) uninhabited planet by your fellow space pirates. To escape the planet you need to climb the technological ladder. You need to gather iron, copper and gold to create alloys and electronics. Gather some sort of fuel, etc... All the while you need to protect yourself from monsters, and make sure you have enough food to survive.

Once in space a whole new game opens up. You'd have to upgrade your space ship, perhaps even risk crashing those first few times and might have to start over (but not entirely from scratch).
Once upgraded you can tackle more and more problems. To create your space station or mothership you'd have to build a space elevator or invest heavily in transport shuttles.

The next step is exploring planets, gathering rare ores/animals. Do research and advance your technology.

Eventually you'll be powerful enough to create or destroy entire civilizations and/or planets.


The early game would allow me to do research and some exploration. Mid-game would be about setting up logistics and automating medial tasks. Late game would be about upgrading and exploring. The end game would be about enjoying the things you've worked for and tackling lvl 100 planets.
By no means would I want a fast progression. Eg making a space elevator could take a few days, depending on how efficient the mining operation is.

What do you guys think?

 

Well I'm fairly certain you'll start with fairly little and work your way up. Just how little, who knows. You'll probably have the ability to change planets fairly early, if not from the start.

 

Dude,you're gonna stumble upon an old,derelict space station,while running away from the destroyers of your home world.It's not like your gonna do that on board of a luxury liner.

 

Starbound actually already has a story. It's also talked about quite a bit in the about page.

 

Then go ahead and do it.

 

I've never played a pure space game... I think Spore was about as close as I ever got. Ironically, that's taking your request to an extreme - not only do you not get any tools, you don't even get an evolved creature to play. Start out as a single celled organism and work your way up to the space era! Then you can actually start playing!

I hope it's not that extreme. If I had to evolve a new character from a single cell all the way to the space age just to play Starbound, I think that may be a bit much, even for me.

 

Yeah, but you'd get a better Spore, which is great!

 

I'd play the hell out of that game, but yes I think most people would cringe at the idea. That said, I don't think they plan on going anywhere near that far. xD

 

Wasn't that the case since day 1 of development?

 

Haha! Well, I had spore in mind when making this topic, tbh... The thing I liked about Spore was that you'd have different play styles throughout the game. I found it disappointing though, I would have liked that the space stuff was more fleshed out, and there was a way to go back/redo some evolution stages.

I just love planning out factories and logistics. I suppose It's one of the reasons why I love games like X 3 and minecraft (with ic2 and stuff).

 

I'm sure there will be mods for people like us. The biggest problem I can imagine with procedurally generated planets is that your random 1st planet might not have all the stuff you need.

On the other hand, if devs allow for multiple ways to reach a goal, who knows what's possible.

 

Well, as a simplistic (albeit cogent IMO) example;
Two procedurally generated planets, different sets of resources, characters on both have the same goal; we'll say.... laser weaponry for example's sake.
Neither planet has the base resources necessary for this technology, but;

Planet A does have sufficient sources of efficient fuel and a moon rich in the resources necessary for such technology, so they develop the means to mine the moon and efficiently transport resources to the planet's surface.

Planet B distinctly lacks an abundance of the resources necessary to do the same, or otherwise lacks a moon or nearby planet with said resource, but the character on planet B starts intensively researching advanced chemistry and learns how to use what resources ARE there to synthesize analogous substances for their needs.

That sort of dynamic, open-ended gameplay structure would be really fun for me. Having to ACTUALLY adapt to different planetary conditions, evolutionarily or scientifically, is something i enjoy alot in games. Spore had alot more potential than it took advantage of IMO; in the end almost all 'space-worthy' creatures fell into some pretty narrow archetypes. I secretly hope that some really motivated company buys the IP rights to Spore and makes it what it should've been.
Back on topic though, I'm not particularly well versed on what the released story is for the game so far, but I do really hope that we aren't left with too horribly much with regards to resources at the beginning. Tbh, I would hope that even inter-planetary travel is something that would have to worked toward.

EDIT: And I am a huge proponent of getting a mod API out there, it solves so many potential issues, so if need be I'll learn to code better just so I can play this game the way I'd like it.

EDIT AGAIN: Thinking about Starbound and Spore together made me think of the old SNES game Evo. I could totally see a game like that turning into a game like Starbound in the 'space stage'.

 

i saw your title and thought you were talking about development.
i was sooooo angry.

i liked how minecraft just chucked you in the middle of nowhere however.

 

LOL... No, I generally don't comment on an unreleased/unfinished product. ;-)

 

The time when you just start playing on new world with clean character was my favorite time in Terraria. It was fun to be able to adopt, build and survive while looking for resources. Once you got to end game it just became boring ass platformer, where nothing could really hurt you except the bosses, it became very different game as you progress through it.

I actually worry about Starbound focusing too much on the story, and not focusing enough on the main appeal of this kind of games, which is exploration and building. I sure hope we will HAVE to explore the hell out of different planets to either survive or progress the story, and I sure hope we will have to use bricks that available on the planet to builds different structures that will actually have a meaning, and not just be there because we wanted to build them and they look pretty.

Terraria kinda had right idea with making player build houses and rooms for NPCs, but it was very basic, Starbound can take that to a whole new level, make players look for special resources so they can construct different buildings around the planet for quests or other purposes.

 

I agree! Give meaning and use to content, and a lot of content in the game. Also more interaction between content is a must for me.
And yes, starting over, being afraid of mobs again... But not only that, discovering the tech tree is a kind of exploration too. This is where I find minecraft too limiting. There's only one real tech tree, and only one way of playing the game. What you build and how is your choice, but the materials and ways of building are fixed.
The same thing for Terraria. You can start a new game with a new character... But if you know what to do and where, half the game looses it's interest (though finding more efficient ways to play can be rewarding too). This is where I hope Starbound will be different. Random worlds, random weapons, probably random bosses on the random worlds... Add that to a multi-tech tree and you've got a game that begs to be replayed over and over again.

 

Whatever you start out with in Starbound I hope that the game has a long life on my hard drive.
I am about sick of first person shooters since playing MW2 all last year and MW3 all this year.
Go ahead and play against me, I am cold caliber and I will frag you.

 

I know what you're saying... I got sick of shooters after playing Quake 3 Arena for a year and Unreal Tournament for another... Never really played FPS since then.

 

I like to start out from scratch. No no no... I LOVE TO START THE GAME FROM SCRATCH!!!!
Only if the devs could include this as a mod, or as another starting option.
They wouldn't have to modify the story, just the destination of the escaping shuttle, so it could be like ,,Starbound begins with you fleeing your homeworld in a space shuttle, just as it’s destroyed by an unknown enemy. With nothing to guide it, the escape pod shoots into space without direction, becoming hopelessly lost in a sea of stars. As luck would have it, the space shuttle crashes on a strange planet and an adventure begins so you have to survive, gather up resorces, explore and gain technology that will allow you to build a spacestation that will take you hurtling across the universe. Starbound contains both quests and story driven missions, buried inside its vast sandbox universe." - yellow shows the original text - white shows the modified text

 

I would totally like to see them make players to spend sometime on a random planet and build up strength before finding the space station.