And I hope threads like this will make them aware of what the community wants or the different ideas we have to offer.
Yes, I believe that this will help bring it up to them and remind them of how much it would change the gameplay and Tiers and such.
I'm currently working on the threads structure so it appeals more clear. Through your suggestions I've added two new sections that will cover all the information about skilltrees, statpoints, and perks. If you still have any ideas how to get those mechanics working feel free to leave your ideas I also added/deleted some parts. If you just want to read all the new stuff just look for this symbol -> Kind regards, lougaux
Leveling and a skills/tech tree would definitely improve the life of SB imo, especially if there was a choice in skill/tech progression. The more content the better for this fantastic game.
I don't think a skill tree would do much good.. It would be a bit too far with this idea, IMHO. This would allow someone to get good abilities by just farming, thus angering some because they had explored for 64+ hours to find something and get levels. But I understand where you are coming from. I sometimes go a long time looking for techs, and I sometimes want a break.
I don't mind searching for techs Dargona, yeah it can take ages to find them but it's great when you manage to find the one you want. Lougaux briefly mentioned skill trees in his post and i thought that if they were in, having a choice of progression would allow for more than one play through. I had not considered the point in your post but agree with you
I haven't mentioned them just yet. Still working on it. But if you read through the posts you'll notice that we've talked about them. Still collecting ideas that I will put into the thread. Feel free to share your opinion on skill trees in detail. kind regards, lougaux
I like the idea of a skill system, but I can't help but see some problems in the way. For example, you enjoy building, and want to put points into building skills, ex. Have a longer block placement range, or better mining tools, but you know you can only progress through fighting a boss. Those building skills won't be very useful in the fight, so in order to get to the next tier, you're forced to put points into combat skills. You're essentially funneled through a specific path of progression compared to what you might actually want to do. This hurts the player's ability to customize his or her character the way they want, and essentially the way they might want to play. A fix to this could be resettable skills, or different ways to advance tiers, ex. for crafters, you would need to craft a super-item for a quest to advance. I also dislike the incentives you have to advance a tier, as there are only weapons and armors. Of course, this may be an easy fix - introduce better items for your playstyle in the next tier (ex. Better matter manipulators as a builder). This presents the problem of how you would get these things though - Starbound's current progression system only allows you to earn new items by either crafting or looting chests. This doesn't really support the sandbox feel, as you would be forced to mine for and craft your new items, as opposed to the way you might want to actually play - eg. as a builder, you want to build, but would be forced to mine and craft items. A fix to this would be to allow you to get new items from Starbound's current quest system, which act as jobs for your specific playstyle. These jobs/quests would then allow you to get new items according to your playstyle, giving incentive to advance the tiers. Overall, I like the idea of having skills, but there are going to need to be refinements to other parts of the levelling progression system too.
This is a very good point you brought up. When you think of it, there are so many different things we can implement with this idea since, after all, this would be the backbone to the whole game. I think that something along the lines of a couple skill trees to have (Ex. Survival [food drops, farming, pixels from animals], Fighter [attack-type skills], Builder [Longer block-placement range, tools]), with their own lines of skill-aquiring. Survival: -Killing animals -Farming crops you planted -Finding new types of plants/ picking up wild plants Fighter: -Killing animals -Killing other races (Ex. NPC Hylotl, NPC Apex, etc) -Basically killing Builder: -Mining (Harder blocks = more experience [Ex. Dirt = 0.5. Stone = 1, Obsidian = 8 or something]) -Placing (either building houses or making a way up that pesky mountain) -Using tools (Axes, Pickaxes, Drills) Of course, we could make multiple threads all about Skill Trees, but I don't have time to.. Hahahaha Maybe, if I do make a thread, I can have it work with this thread. Eh?
I like the idea of better (and more measurable) progression system for the game. But I don't think a level system would be the best here. Perhaps a skill based system like Ultima Online used to have... The more you do something, the better you get at it. Truthfully I don't expect to see any of this in Starbound, for I doubt the Devs are going to change their system, but there will be mods for that (Yay, hope for the future!).
Apparently, they said somewhere that the current Tier System is gonna be entirely replaced by the end of everything. I might be wrong, but I heard a couple people talking about it.
Yeah you are right, the current system is going to be replaced (thankfully...). But the new system they are going to put in place is not so different from the current one, since it's still item based (Tiy given exemple: getting hold of a breathing tank to be able to explore airless planets). It's not a bad system, and goes well with this kind of game, but, at least for me, it lacks depth and that gratificanting feeling of achieving some form of progression...
I'm in favor of some kind of leveling system. I think gets a little to easy to advance tech after you beat the jellyfish. It really isn't worth it to make all the armors when you can go ahead and get the next tech upgrade for a lower cost.
Right now there is a lot of boss content missing. Balancing and more stuff after the jellyfish will come.
My opinions are closely related to yours (OPer) I was considering posting something similar to this but you've laid out a lot of stuff already. I don't know if I'd have 10 tiers of levels but I think one tier every two levels of threat at least would be nice. (Considering the metals upgrade in pairs, Iron, Iron+Coal, Titanium, Titanium+Coal, etc...) When I played Terraria I found most of what you mentioned here to be true. Character slots are pointless. You can create a new character and have them as strong as possible in minutes. No buildup whatsoever. Character slots in this game only really represent two pointless things... mule storage, and different race/appearance. What I would like to see in this game is Classes. Instead of one leveling tree for everyone, there are a couple of paths to which you can play to advance your character. Here are some of my ideas: The Captain The Captain is responsible for his crew and for making the right decisions to keep everyone alive. This class is your basic defensive tank spec. Abilities available to the Captain include increased health and health regen (if implemented), increased defense, ability to take damage for fellow party members, and for a limited time, the ability to simultaneously attack with melee while blocking with a shield. The Captain can provide his party with an aura for increasing either health or defense. First Officer The FO is the strength behind the Captain, to help him where he can't. This class is your dps melee class. The First Officer has improved melee abilites, increased attack damage with all melee weapons particularly one handed weapon damage, increased attack speed, and critical strike chance. The First Officer can provide his party with an aura to increase melee damage, or critical strike chance for all weapons. Engineer The engineer uses Science to his advantage when it comes to felling foes. Engineers are the ranged class (ranged in the sense of energy weapons, not something like casters, if something like magic ever ends up in this game, otherwise a separate Magic class should be created for that purpose) Engineers have increased Energy capacity, energy regen, and energy weapon damage and speed. Engineers can provide their party with an Energy regeneration buff or ranged resistance buff. Support Officer The SO is the fourth and complimentary class to the group. The Support Officer is the healer class. Although not specifically meant as a support role, the SO is good round about in all abilities but is the only class that has the ability to regenerate their own health using energy, and can use a little more of their own energy to use that on other members of their party. The auras they can provide to their party gives either a minor boost to all stats or a basic health regeneration. This regeneration is not applied unless they haven't attacked or been attacked in as much as ten seconds. I think these classes would vastly deepen the scope of the game. Naturally everything I mentioned above wouldn't be available from the start, as the character is leveled these abilities would unlock and strengthen as the character levels. Because of the auras it would also encourage more partying.
I modified my post a little. It occurred to me I didnt add a second aura alternative to the Engineer. All of the classes I mentioned I tried to specify 2 aura types for partying. Somewhat for variance in the classes but also so if two identical classes end up in the same party they can activate separate auras and benefit from each other. Another possibility is that if two identical classes end up in the same party and each run the same aura, that the weakest of the two auras is applied at 50% power on top of the other buff. So if say 2 Captains are in the same party and one is running a health regen aura which restores 2hp per tick, and the second Captains aura restores three, the 2hp aura is halved and added to the larger aura combining for a total of 4hp per tick. This is just an example, some tweaking might need to be done depending on the power of the aura so that stacking them isn't exploitable.
