Infinity x Infinity = Dude where's my car?

I've been playing a while, and there's something quite unsettling with the way planets work.

There's apparently (like other game alike) two axes of progression, the first being the more straightforward, mining, crafting armors & weapons, this can be done anywhere.

The second is actually finding the stuff useful to advance, like as far as i know guns & techs (i'm leaving purely cosmetic stuff out of the equation), maybe there are also some nice recipes out there.

I like the fact that when you fall on a planet, you're in a new world which will be either helpful on that point or not so helpful.

Still, somehow, you could end up searching a lot for a specific tech or even any tech at all. Techs seem pretty basic and important to be able to not be so useless at a certain point in a game (i only found the double jump tech but it seems pretty mandatory at some point, or at least very very very useful).

I know being screwed by the RNG is the bread and butter of the game, but here, isn't it just "too much"? I know there aren't statistics on this point now, but if there's the possibility to not have let's say any tech on a given planet, multiplicated by the number of planets possible, you could be doing thousands of them without finding anything. Plus there's also the fact that you could be searching a whiiile before having anything substantial.

Am I the only one finding this to be somehow problematic? Although i could understand the fact that you're unable on a normal run to find all the crafting recipes for furnitures and house stuff, although some should be easily atteinable.
I wouldn't like to have to come here to find coordinates to find the stuff i'm searching for.
Oddly as it seems, it feels like in this condition that a limited world like Terraria is more indicated (don't throw rocks at me)

Your thoughts?

 

I can almost bet money that every single planet has a tech. It might not be very easy to find, but given the size of planets, there is almost assuredly one on each. Heck, I found three of the horizontal dash techs on my starting planet this time around.

Yeah, I'd love to find the double-jump tech or something that lets me fly, but they're not required for progression; they just make it a bit easier.

 

Well unless you wanna cheese it by building an arena, the flight tech is pretty close to mandatory to deal with the tier 3 boss.

 

And again, it seems pretty normal to think that endgame of even smooth game require some stuff to be found...

 

I beg to differ: - I use the dash tech in this, but it could be done without it.

 

Again, this is not exactly an argument of what can be done with or without, i'm pretty sure than a common player will not be finishing the game with no tech just for the heck of it.

 

You find tech fairly commonly, before the first wipe I had about 10 techs, 5 different ones and 5 random spares, or so. You will come across tech fairly easily unless you choose to not explore.

 

I imagine once they add the questing system, and hopefully useful coordinates gained from computers and notes in dungeons and other special areas finding things you're actually looking for should be a tad bit easier.

 

Regarding Finding stuff. We need two things. A Minimap, and an orbital planet scanner.

The minimap should have fog of war, and only show areas that you've mapped by physically walking around. it should show all ores and stuff that you can see, and keep track of terrain layout even in the dark.

The planet scanner would be more complex. It would give you information about the planet you're currently orbiting, and also save that information so you can check it again later. For planets that are far away, there would be ??? displayed to let you know that you don't have records about that planet yet.
At a basic level, it should tell you -some- of the ores you'll find on a planet. (not all, to keep some mystery.

It should be upgradeable with (expensive ) crafteable enhancements at each tech level, and eventually include more advanced information, including:
-Telling you how many tech upgrades there are on a planet, and marking their approximate location on your minimap (to within 200 blocks or so in each direction)
-Telling you if there are dungeons, villages, buildings, avian pirates, and other assorted structures, and pointing them out
-An exact listing of what ores can be found on the planet, and an approximate readout of their density (Dense, adequate, or sparse)
-A full surface scanner that would fill in your minimap of everything above ground, before you even land on the planet.
-numbers/locations of minibosses
-numbers/locations of chests.

in addition, there should be upgrades to increase the range of the scanner, allowing you to scan other moons, other planets in the same system, and eventually to remotely scan any planet in the universe. But to begin with you'd need to use lots of fuel flying around to these planets.

the point of this is not to take away exploration, but to refine it. make it gradually a bit easier to find interesting things, so as to gradually increase the signal to noise ratio of the universe. The more gamebreaking stuff like the surface scanner and chest locations would be mostly reserved for late/endgame.

 

This is very constructive and exactly the kind of stuff i'd like to see in the game, but i'm pretty sure hardcore gamers would be against it...

 

A lot on that list is really over the top though, it'd be nice to see what you found on planets that you explored sure, but having a scanner that tells you what you can find on new planets is extreme, and way over the top - maybe except the part about which kind of ores can be found on the planet.

 

Considering how short of a time the game has been out and that a lot of people have found this stuff I don't see it as much of an issue. The game shouldn't be over and done with in just a day or two. If everything was so easy to find then it wouldn't be as exciting to progress through it all. If anything I'd like the stuff to be rarer but with a clearer path to obtaining it all. I'd like the game to stretch out into one long adventure once the official release comes. For now they can play around with what works until the final character wipe occurs though.