Ideas for the game? (friendly discussion!)

I been reading a lot of the steam reviews on the game and sit seems like the game is missing something everyone wants. no im not saying something completely overhauling but something to make the game seem more replay worth. the game is good of course! but i see my self avoiding the new character button very often just cause i have to run through the norms again. let me sound simple for once >_<... Does anyone have any ideas that would make the game more replay worthy? for me i say bounty or villain system, maybe self growing colonies or an arena!! i played a lot of sandbox games and i felt as tho they had something that would make you want to play again such as skyrim where you can be good or evil.

so just tell me what ideas you have in mind! i love to hear your thoughts!

 

More replay worthy?

For me it'd be a good start to increase variation. Like others I believe that the devs plan to reintroduce things that were removed from the game, like some ores, weapons, armors, etc. That is necessary, we miss them. Also:

- Weather not restricted to certain biomes and differences between them (for example: acid rain on a jungle planet, some moons without meteors, etc...)
- Re-add the color variation for dirt, sand, etc...
- More possible backgrounds in each planet type
- Slightly different biomes: an ocean world with islands made of rock and dirt (like in one of the missions), a desert with sand dunes and no trees, except for the oasis subbiome, a lake or ocean subbiome...
- Events for colonies. Maybe we could add a beacon that would attract merchants and visitors, but also enemies. It could be optional.

Make planets truly unique and give us (even more) incentive to build.

 

i like that idea! i use FU to change up my universe, but one thing i always felt was off is of the difficulty of the planets. its good to have different danger lvl but it kind stops the flow of exploration.
maybe a more fluid combat system can make up for that. a block button or a miss chance! something rpg like!

 

Been thinking about this a bit recently. And I think three things might help out a ton.

1. Make all the current story and its progress tied to the universe, and potentially turn the whole story into a giant tutorial. Why? On the sandbox side of things, people don't want to play through a hard story every time they want to change up their race a little bit. You get your ship fixed once, every character after starts with a fixed ship as well as the full outpost. After all, if you completed the story on a different character, why can you jump right to the end level but not start roaming the stars?

2. If the story we have currently ends up all tutorial like and universe linked, add more missions designed to be challenging action platforming stages. Don't tie these new missions to unlocking anything on the sandbox side, think of them instead as making Metroidvania style levels of increasing difficulty. This gives a place for challenging content that can't just be bypassed by the most powerful tools we have the M.M. and Dirt, and won't have to worry about people building big crazy things just to cheese the boss or have enough room to work around ala Terraria boss style. Also, item rewards can be optional as the sense of achievement from beating something challenging is just as much or more of a reward as getting random weapon number 2327. Hits the challenge itch people want, and if done right doesn't lock people out of content. Now if people start saying they are too hard, that is when you add new equipment, but not as rewards for doing the new missions, instead do it from new planet tiers and crafting.

3. A new star tier or tiers that is harder than firey, but also allows all planet types scaled up appropriately. Get a little more use out of the developed content, and remove a little boredom for the players by no longer having to constantly hunt across 2-3 planet types for better gear.

 

i like that as well! more rewarding challenge and somewhat removing the tut style story. there should be mode or something that jumps straight into the sandbox. have it like mass effect where theirs action mode and theirs story mode. one for the story one for just the fun!
there should be more unqiue rewards cause as soon as we get one gun we find another thats better. i always wanted to keep a nice looking gun but then i figure it was too weak even tho it as unique in its own way, that's when the skill system comes in mind. like in skyrim you can have anything you please and still be strong. i actually played half the game with a steel mace for the first time i got the game about lvl 30 i changed it. i loved that mace tho, looked real nice o.o

 

1. return the deleted items from the early versions. it seems several stuff got gutted before release. so the first logical step would be to put them avaliable again after their respective balancing and sprite update

2. some plants dont have obtainable seeds unless you use console commands. that shouldnt be the case (thorny plants and mushrooms for example)

3. add ladders or placeable rope, this is something personal of mine. but coming from Terraria i was used to the concept of using a long piece of rope to go back and forth between the surface and the core of the world. i cant do this in Starbound since rope is basically a consumable grappling hook. maybe add it as a second feature using right click. i dont think it would make elevators useless. but it would be a real help in the early game, spelunking is hard enough without a map.

4. more moon related stuff. i like the idea of building a moonbase. but the Erchius Ghosts and the Meteor Showers make it practically impossible. let alone try to explore in search of the fuel motherlodes. its easier to just get pixels and buy it from the Outpost than going to die there. adding unique ores for crafting and lowering the issues with staying there should make them more interesting. maybe add unique generated structures that can only be found on them.

5. asteroid belts need something else apart of ores and a single type of mob, they sound cool from a building perspective but there's very few stuff avaliable to do on them. having an massive asteroid base sounds feasible but there's not much to explore or see there. and the endless falling mechanic is annoying when looking for good chunks of metal.

6. add flight equipment. it could be either a middle to lategame upgrade for the player. i know we have double jump with many upgrades but being able to fly would make navigation on asteroid belts much more entertaining than jump and fall until you reach another one. it would also make it easier to reach the upper atmosphere of planets.

7. more interaction with liquids. again, this coming from a terrarian experience. specially swamp water, slime and erchius. (althought FrakingUniverse seem to have expanded on this)

8. more planet variations, i dont know the extend of the FrakingUniverse mod, but i dont usually install mods in my games, so an official update on that would be better.

10. return of the mechs, maybe with customization

11. make boats craftable with maybe some variation. the current boat is expensive and it doesnt make sense to use it on magma or poison. just saying

12. rework the pet system. i heard it was changed from what existed pre-release

13. a minimap or planetary navigation system, please, i beg for it

14. mounts? something apart from the hoverbike?

15. lore related stuff, it seems there were several codex that got gutted with the unified story. maybe they could make a comeback on a patch along with new quests or epic missions, maybe something related to archaelogy

i dont know what else is there to say about possible ideas....

 

Roll back to Giraffe build and you got ALL the replay value you could ever want. Of course... that is not possible.

But in all seriousness, this game would be so much more replayable if the lackluster joke of a story we are forced to experience (the first parts only thank god) were not forced upon us. Want to explore the universe and build stuff on more than one biome? yeah sorry you have to listen to "Says-dear-to-much" nanny Esther and her marvelous erchius horror pet everytime you create a new character. Oh and forget about skipping it by spawning 20 crystals on your inventory, that is not gonna work either.

 

A villain path. Not one that involves helping the ruin destroy the universe but one that, your destroying the Ruin for ulterior motives so you have people to be a jerk to . I mean we have an achievement called Villain, make it official! And let us be recognized a little for our..ahem...style of life, fame and profit!

 

theses are all amazing ideas! this game needs a more rpg sandbox feel to it. gives you freedom yet you have a story to go when you feel like. im not saying starbound should be like every other game (i get annoyed when people call it a terraria copy..) but to adopt styles from other games. its not wrong to have some traits from other games as long as you dont straight copy the game. i would love to have a 2D skyrim in space it would feel great cause you have a sandbox and a story you can do at anytime!

 

I already posted this in a different discussion, but I feel like it would add an element to Starbound that is much needed.

Entirely a shame that there was no secondary or post-Ruin quest-line about rebuilding the Procetorate. Didn't even have to be too complex, could have been a fresh new angle on colony building where the number of Protectorate recruits you actually manage to attract would you give you bonuses besides what's normally provided by tenants and crew members. Ester could even have been reinstated as the old Grandmaster. I would have loved to see a bit of technical work go into the game expanding colonies by itself, from pre-rendered structures. Would have given you a feel of actual expansion or rebuilding by finding the few survivors left on various Protectorate Outposts and inviting them back to a new HQ being built. This is why I never really liked the outpost, especially in Post 1.0. It's too compact with not enough content. The NPCs offer nothing except for being there and overall it doesn't expand. I was excited when they said that the outpost would expand when you completed quests, I was very disappointed to find out it just meant that stores which should have always been open were now closed off till later. If they made the Outpost bigger they could have a section where as you complete Protectorate missions you'll visibly see a new HQ being constructed with living facilities, a command center, and training areas for any new recruits.

Eventually they could even provide you with other advanced Protectorate weapons and armors (seriously, the Protectors are explicitly stated that they are combat oriented, are we sending them to fight in a fancy uniform with no durability to it?) and support.

 

i was wondering what happen to the protectors, its like they was never mention again after the first part. the game needs to give us more of a story than a tutorial with a story coat. i seriously want to make new characters and trying new paths but there isnt much but the main story that ditches the protectors and goes on doing chores for Nanny Ester.