Improving the sense of progression and discovery

Currently, after you get past the beta sector the game grows a little stale. This might have to do with missing features, but it could also mean the actual intended design could use some polishing. Here are my suggestions:

- In the very first day, your quest should be about surviving and building a shelter, finding food and building a crafting table and basic tools. So far so good, the tutorial works adequately.

- For the first tier, instead of working your way to the Distress Beacon, you instead work to repair your ship. You must find metals to fix your hull, re-build your ship's fuel refinery and find copper to build wires to be able to use your navigation panel. This teaches you how to keep your ship functional, and from now on it has a chance to become damaged whenever you travel between systems (material and ore sink).

- You may now find space stations from which you can fuel your ship and buy engine upgrades and hull upgrades. These allow your ship to travel longer without taking damage and give you access to hazardous areas of the universe (pixels sink). Some people also find the fuel mechanics a little boring over time, and being able to refuel the ship using pixels as a resource would be a fair alternative.

- You no longer start with (weapon/armor/tool/furniture) schematics superior to iron. You must find them all in dungeon chests, monster loot, vendors and other structures. This gives players an actual purpose to explore planets and should help you determine when you've progressed enough to move to a higher tier. My reasoning is that as it stands, the things you can craft determine how powerful you are. Currently, 80% of this is given to your when you upgrade your crafting table, and you're limited only by resources. The thing is: Finding resources can quickly become tedious and the looting aspect of the game is really diminished by this. More often than not you only find junk or cosmetic schematics. Make it so that you're really finding the -useful- items to build.

- One of the nice early accomplishements for a new player is to build your cold survival gear to endure low temperatures. This mechanic should be extended to other planets. Most other planets should provide the player with an environmental hazard that must be overcome. Low gravity should require special boots. Low oxygen should require a breathing mask. Solar flares should require radiation shielding. As you move on to harder planets, you must be faced with the challenge of not being able to deal with everything at the same time. Make you need to move underground as night falls. Maybe you need to stop and set up a camp. This makes planets a little more different than the limited biome constraints.

- At tier 3, the player will be used to: maintain his ship, build defensive gear to explore planets, find important schematics to his survival. What then? Then it should be time to build outposts. The player's mission becomes to colonize hospitable planets. The player gets a survey tool, must circumnavigate the planet, planting survey beacons. If the planet gets a high enough score, the second goal is to craft a thermal generator, which must be placed near the core (a reason to go underground).
After that he must build a basic outpost and spanwers on the surface. Overtime, the colony will expand to three distinct types: food, research or miltary, each providing special perks in the way of schematics, and colony "points".

- At later tiers, with a certain amount of successful colonies, a space station and a shipyard can be built, using colony points to determine what materials you have available. With that, the player can customize his ship and set up an actual economy between planets. This goes far beyond the scope of the current build, so I'm not sure how valuable of a suggestion this could be at this moment. But it would be nice for a future goal to think about fleeets and large machinery, asteroid mining, etc. Building something of an empire.

- Back to exploration, something that could help make planets a little more diverse is to increase the variety of AI packages. I've suggested this before, but here it goes again: Creatures and NPCs right now are either passive or agressive. This could be extended to make them hunt in packs, have goal specific behavior (seek water, seek food), coward (run from player or other NPCs), curious (follow player or NPC), reproductive (seek other similar entities and spawn babies), scavanger (dig down or take down trees and plants), architect (collect resources and build structures or nests). Creature nests could be gross, including cocooons and sticky tiles, eggs that hatch and swarm the player, etc. This small attempt to simulate an ecology is very important to make the random worlds less predictable and formulaic.

- Still on exploration: The game is already full of eyecandy and small details (kudos). But something that could make it even more immersive is the addition of non-interactive lifeforms. Insects, butterflies, polen particles, small cockroaches, wisps, etc. Some of these could be particle effects, other actual mobs, but the idea is to make the worlds feel a little less barren and have more to show than the alien species you're supposed to fight or kill.

- Environmental hazard and aspects currently missing (from what I've seen so far): Sismic activity, meteorites, fog, lightning strikes, wind, tornados, solar flares, aurora borealis, ash storms, sand storms, insect swarms, acid rain, etc, etc. Some could require you to build a camp with the many tents available, others that you equip goggles, lightning storms could force you to build a grounding rod and so on. What's lacking currently is diversity in the form of challenges or puzzles to overcome, as the combat is not exactly engaging (and it doesn't need to be with other systems in place).

-Ship tools: Scanners, which you could add to your ship in order to detect mineral disposition and set up your ground coordinates with a beacon. A ship medical station that heals you faster than your bed. A mining drill which builds a vertical shaft from your underground beacon position so you can use your grappling hook back to the surface. A cannon to coordinate air strikes if you tag a creature with your matter manipulator.

Just a few ideas to play with, all of which should be complementary to the main quest. But I do hope they don't rely only on the quests to give progression more variety, since this type of sandbox game doesn't seem specifically well suited for rich storytelling.

 

i like some of your suggestions. I feel that this game is going to lean more towards the casual "explore find cool loot and have fun" side though.

Your ideas about ship management, environmental hazards wont fit in. People were upet that they had to dig for coal to travel, could you imagine if they had to repair their ship? Birds gave people fits, players wont like random storms or lightening strikes. This game is attracting playes that dont want obstacles to doing whatever they want to do, whenever they want to do it.

 

Most of these suggestions would fit in nicely I think. I just hope that we would get more information from the Dev's of what they want the final game to be, whether it be more casual/hardcore or both. People will complain either way

 

I understand your concerns, but Minecraft is also a very casual experience that can become rather complex with energy management and advanced machinery. What allowed this to happen is the framework that was already there to be improved upon. If the designers aren't willing to add to much depth to the core game, they may as well set up enough groundwork for the community to work with. There's lots of room for expansion and it's completely okay if we're just given the basics of some of this.

Another good point is that the community will eventually filter itself. A few months after the final release, the novelty will soon wear off and players willing to go for a casual stride will grow bored and move on, and most of the usual negativity from the entitled crowd will be replaced with productive feedback. That's what usually happens to most (good) games. The exception are terrible releases riddled with bugs, but I don't see this happening with Starbound. It's in quite good shape for a beta.

 

Love these ideas, +1 to you sir, hope Devs have some of this planned or see some of these ideas and add them.

Would love to build up the New Hylotl Empire!

 

Was this added via mods? I haven't played minecraft in a long time so I don't know.

I saw this write up for a mod a couple days ago: http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/fight-for-universe-per-aspera-ad-astra.3781/ This looks to be a very complex/hard-core mod, I don't think we have to worry about community choices for game play, I'm just curious as to which direction the Dev's want to take, if they want to listen to everyone complaining about 'how hard the game is.'

 

If you haven't played in awhile I suggest you install Feed the Beast (http://feed-the-beast.com/). It's a completely different game with thousands of items to craft and advanced machinery, actual computers and plenty of new minerals and monsters. You can build an industrial age factory, tree farms, crossbreed bees, it's an overwhelming amount of gameplay.
You can watch a let's play of FTB here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7vFECXWtNMG_RSCLwqrsRF4u4W5fgsBJ

 

Oh wow, ok. This would be something I would reinstall for, thanks for showing me. I'm just annoyed that they haven't supported steam and workshop.

 

Repairing hulls seems tedious, and given people's recent complaints on finding fuel, I feel that that won't fit in yet until we have better ore distribution.

Finding schematics for everything above iron also seems tedious given that everything is based on RNG, and though it would make things more interesting, it would also make it significantly more difficult to progress through the tiers. I also feel that it would add extra work on top of grinding for resources. I can't say I support that.

Hazards/Atmospheres are neat, but combined with your suggestion for schematics, I feel that it would make the game extremely unforgiving for those who happen to have terrible luck. The starmap system would also have to be reworked to scan for hazards like that. Making it an upgrade-only option wouldn't help either.


Aside from those, I like everything else since they provide more depth and introduce more complex mechanics that this game could stand to have.
http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?forums/suggestions/

 

you may wish to check the planets and environments suggestion forums, I have found threads also suggesting environmental conditions on planets that might make them more interesting.

 

Repairing the hull just for the sake of repairing the hull, I agree, would be tedious. However, that could come along with extended ship functionality. If you were to have ground base, maintaining it would be a fair timesink. With a mobile one, it's no different. It's probably beyond the scope of the game to add FTL like ship combat and boarding pirates, but it's not far-fetched to imagine they have planned more ship interactions (they have engine upgrades in the files, for instance). A game like this with simple combat must be built around resource management, and right now, you could argue the same people complaining about fuels are the same complaining about how tedious mining is. I don't see them playing this game for very long.

Sadly (or fortunately, depending on your tastes), mining and resource gathering is a huge part of the game and probably will ever be, given the engine it's built on. You can add more unique structures to encourage exploration, but ultimately, there's a limit to what that accomplishes, if the only thing they provide is decoration and once in a while, a weapon upgrade. If you don't give players enough depth and mechanics to spend their accumulated resources on, in a meaningful way, the game becomes a rather pointless hoarding exercise in the long term.

Adding some difficulty to progress through the tiers is one of the few things they can do to add longevity to the game. Randomly generated worlds are great for size and scope but terrible for creating varied experiences. In a theme park world, you control exactly what type of reaction you can expect from a player navigating that world. In this game, if they allow you to rush your way up the tiers within a couple of hours, there's only so much they can expect to do later on with procedurally generated maps, especially when people have already learned the patterns that make up the "randomness" of your entire universe. I think it's a better design to make people work a little harder for their accomplishments earlier, than sit on top of them within a few days and later complain there's nothing else to do, or that the game has grown repetitive, which they would have complained about either way.

 

I agree with this whole heartedly. Some of the recent changes have dumbed down the planet variety for me, and this would give a refreshing change of pace and sense of progress for each sector.

 

At the same time, too much depth and mechanics detracts from the amount of enjoyment an average player could have. A middle ground should be provided, though obviously this is going to be difficult and as well as a matter of compromise.

While I definitely don't dislike making tier progression harder and more meaningful, I still feel that there are better ways to do so. Honestly, I would have no idea on how to make progression more difficult at the moment. I'm hoping that as more and more content flows into this game, the progression will become significantly harder in ways that don't rely purely on luck. Of course, as I said before, while I do not support your suggestion, I am not entirely against it either.


I REALLY need to start eating breakfast again. Critical thinking is difficult when your brain is still half-asleep.

 

I agree with most of what you said, particularly the second half about exploration. I'm all for ship upgrades, but having to repair your ship with minerals just feels like a useless ore sink. Also, I don't think basic you should find all crafting reciepies. It's already tedious enough to have so much crafting reciepies locked out, if they lock all of them out it'll get even worse no matter how they balance it

 

I don't disagree with this, however, that's where many game developers have been failing to strike the right balance. We've seen this over and over and again. I don't think it's simply a matter of choosing to make either a casual or a hardcore niche game. But what's generally detrimental to the overall design of a game is trying to please as most people as they can, which usually ends up pleasing nobody at all.

The ideal game welcomes new players with some hand holding, then proceeds to let the player experiment. It has a gradual learning curve, introducing risk versus reward and periodically giving the player new mechanics to interact with all the way up to the "end", which is a little more open to interpretation in sandbox games. If the player advances too fast and too easily, he will be taught that burning through the content is something rewarding, and will come to expect new gimmicks for every tiny fraction of effort. Meaning developers will never be able to produce new content to keep players entertained and will eventually run out of steam and ideas to keep an increasingly more demanding playerbase.

Contrary to popular beleif, frustration, trial and error and punishment are very important to build a lasting sense of achievement. If you give out too much, too early, achievement becomes commonplace, and therefore, when people have exhausted your carefully placed trophies with little effort or time, they'll move on and look for achievements elsewhere. In the attempt to please this particular public, with a notably short attention span, a developer will soon come to realize their efforts will be short lived. What does it all mean? They should think of progression as something that requires challenge, time, cleverness and effort. They will find resistance from a fraction of their audience that expects to progress without committing to any of those, but thinking long term, the community that will stick around will be made of those players that are patient enough to experience the game in a slower pace and exercise creativity, because it's, afterall, a game that relies on imagination and making up your own story.

 

Don't you think you find them tedious because too little happens while you're looking for them? If more things were to happen during your exploration, if you were faced with puzzles or challenges in order to achieve those things, would they still be pointless timesinks? I think a mechanic is just a mechanic, what makes them tedious or fun is what you have to do in order to accomplish it.

 

You'r right ! I was just stating that in the current game's state, mining is kinda tedious and there is already a fair share of it to be done to progress within each tier. Also, locking most crafting reciepies away from the player is probably the worst idea a dev could have for a game like this. If a player is really unlucky (and with thousands of people playing there will be) it could prevent them from reaching the goals they are working for and it would become very frustrating, even if the gameplay is very fun and varied.

Progression should not be taken likely, it's the core of sandbox games like these ones and the main progression tree should be acessible in a straight foward linear fashion. Don't get me wrong, a huge part of the crafting reciepies can be locked away for you to find it, but the core elements should not.

 

The ship damage from RNG idea sounds like it would just be annoying

Damage to your ship being part of some risk/reward system where travelling to dangerous but profitable places would be cool; a totally random "insert X ore to continue playing" mechanic is the game gypping you out of stuff you spent time to collect

When you suffer a setback in a game and it wasn't because of some risk you took or a mistake you made, but happens just because, it feels like being cheated

The idea that you should have to find every item schematic you will need to progress is garbage, because that would make it all subject to RNG

Upgrading your character shouldn't be something that's completely out of your control

Having certain items (the best items you can craft in a tier, perhaps) require looting treasure chests to get could work, but you should be able to just make some of the basic items from each tier from the get-go

We already have to deal with the fact that finding all of the ores necessary to make the next set of armor and tools could take any amount of time hunting around depending on luck, and will only take longer in the finished game when they reduce the ore distributions again

Your other ideas are good, and I especially like the one about adding insects and other small creatures, and the suggestions for AI

I don't understand why you would need "special boots" for low gravity planets though

There comes a certain point where overcoming another puzzle or challenge only to make absolutely no progress towards a goal feels like you're being suckered

 

i think the crafting lock is a good idea for this game, just because someone finds gold on the first planet shouldn't mean they can craft the gold stuff, either leave it as is , or make crafting skill based so that things get unlocked the more skilled you get (talking from the point of view of Story mode sandbox ... not full on sandbox)

 

I was thinking magnetic boots for space stations and EVA, along with jetpacks and pressurized suits. I got a little ahead of myself spewing out ideas. For planets, more vehicles would be an alternative, but I'm sure they have them covered or at least planned.

As for challenges locking out of further advancement, that's what games are all about. If there are no obstacles to overcome, the very definition of game is lost, and then it becomes a different type of interactive experience (which are all valid nonetheless, many indie games have been playing with that notion). The trick is balancing the amount of frustration you allow players to suffer through their trial and error. While I agree there you can't go overboard, the most common design trend these days is to offer players very little challenge at all and frustration has become synonym with design failure.

Not to say games must not be a chore, or that you should have to play hundreds of hours in order to get from point A to point B, but unless your game is very linear and very story based, open world games require a certain amount of time investment, which invariably goes through repetition at some point. Trying to regard this as a bad thing for Starbound (or any other sandbox game) will make it very short lived, in my humble opinion. What I'm trying to say here is that we do need time sinks, we do need resource sinks, we do need gold (pixels) sinks, otherwise we're just hoarding things that have no gameplay purpose, other than the things you're automatically given when you "level up". And those sinks in turn, require a considerable amount of time spent collecting those resources in first place.

If all the enjoyment of the game were to be based on immediate rewards (such as looting, for instance, in hack-and-slash Diablo games) or seeing new places, I'm afraid the game won't remain attractive for very long, even if they update it in a very regular basis. Combat and loot are not the strength of a platformer sandbox. Other than exploration, the simulation and resource collecting and management aspects are the main attractions, if given enough attention. If mining isn't fun (and I agree it isn't), it's in their best interest to make it fun, other than designing features that exclude the need to mine, because it's repetitive or dull. So much is built on the idea that everything you need to do requires collecting material, that it's become the elephant in the room.

The best solution I can think of is turning the table on later tiers so that you can build machines that mine for you, and then the game can adopt a more sci-fi/engineering/economy based approach, which would perhaps make it stand out more from Terraria and vanilla Minecraft.