My Dissapointments With Starbound

Hmm, as for making planets feel more different, make them generate in different ways? Like ice planets could have a more cristaline surface, with alot of spikey crystals covering it? Having jungle planets have agressive/dangerous plants you have to look out for? Maybe arid planets could have alot of caverns and such criss-crossing the entire inside of the planet? Things like that, that would make your playstyle a little different from planet to planet?

Other than improving AI, and giving the NPCs stuff to do (building, farming, mining and such) I don't know if there's much that can be done to make them feel more "alive", at least without redoing alot of the game's "cores"

 

I always find it weird that when criticism and feedback is given during betas yet you got people going "shut up its a beta" trying to shoot down the feedback.

When a beta is started for that feed back to be made, in addition to the reporting of bugs.


As for the topic of the thread, my biggest disappointment with starbound is how rigid the progression system is (which at times is nonsensical, why do I need to use my money to upgrade my pick when I am the only person on the planet? I can understand if I was paying an NPC to upgrade my pick using materials the NPC has) and how they have not focused enough on making the random world generation as expansive as terraria's is.

I can hop in terraria, generate a world, and I get a bunch of biomes to start playing around and progressing in, Snow, Forest, Ocean, Jungle, Corruption/Flesh, Hell, Dungeon. Even on a small world I got plenty to play with on my own. I hop on a world in starbound and it is either 1 biome, 2 biomes, or a biome and a half. There is just not enough to an individual planet to warrant staying in starbound.

At this point I would like to ask the dev team to focus on the world generation side of the game. I would like to see the worlds be larger with more villages and biome variety. I would like to see that the largest of worlds could have just about every possible thing you could want to make you really want to stay there.

I would however like to see the progression system get its strictness loosened a little. Be more like terraria. Instead of having every resource be locked behind sectors, just have the rarer resources have a chance of spawning in larger amounts on the higher difficulty worlds, but still can spawn in the earlier worlds just need a certain level of equipment to mine it. Also, if I have the materials available do not force me to have the previous tier stuff to upgrade into it. It was rather silly to me to be sitting on a pile of diamonds from working on my first alpha world, but because platinum was so rare it took me the longest time to get my diamond pick. When Minecraft or Terraria would of let me just make the pick.

I would not mind making it so that bosses could be skipped, that bosses are something you do either for the story of because you want to fight them or because you are curious about the items that summon them. Alternative methods are always good.

 

Agreed, 200%

 

Why are people suddenly shooting it down?

Because of this. Why are you already disappointed when the game isn't even finished yet? I know it's just the wording but those words can still seem insulting and people are agitated.

Why not "I want to suggest this because this (elaborate stuff)"?

 

Lets be realistic here, the op was very gentle with his wording and even if he went another mile to try and sound even softer people would still come in here all offended screaming "beta beta beta beta".

Even if the game is not finished, we can't give (proper) feedback based on proposals and claims by the devs, we can only judge what we are able to play now.

 

They need to focus on the individual planets.

Lets say there wasnt a "travel to a million planets" gimmick. One planet in this game would seem pretty awesome with the current biome diversity, as long as they made it big enough.

I know no one will agree with me, but at this point- i would prefer if we traveled to less worlds. Less travel, but make each habitable planet 75% of all content. A planet would have one sentient race, with a rare chance of there being 2. Multiple towns , dungeons. Contain all or most biomes. From freezing cold, to arid desert if you walk far enough. Make distance from star determine how big the biomes are (closer to sun, more desert)

In fact, I'd treat space travel as a mid to end-game only thing. Even then, i'd make a trip outside of the star system cost enough resources that you would need to plan ahead to do so. I'd have interesting planets be something you have to look for, with a majority of planets and star systems being barren. Travel to nearby planets would mostly be for rare resources to bring back to your starter world. IMO that would've made a deeper more engrossing game.

shit- i hope that's something that could be modded.

 

It doesn't make sense to be disappointed (already) in the game mechanics that is in early beta. Unless you are disappointed on the developer's attitude towards the community or there is a clear indication of a bad direction the development of the game is heading towards.

Gentle as it may seem, it's not appropriately titled hence, some unneeded aggression from some people.

 

Not necessarily all the biomes on one planet, but a larger number would be fine. I like the idea of inhabited and barren planets being clearly differentiated. The former could be more densely populated and interesting than what we have now. The latter could also have more natural threats or dangerous lifeforms to make them even less hospitable. I think it would work nicely with a more detailed planet scanner they promised - *civilized settlements detected* / *there seems to be no sign of intelligent life anywhere*

 

He used present tense, as in he is disappointed with the game as it is now, not what it will be a year from now.

Obviously many other people agree based on the reception this thread is getting.

 

Not saying I disagree with the points though. It's just, it can't be a disappointment yet. Yet.

 

The only reason I disagree with this is because I like the idea of finding planets that nobody else ever has. I do, however agree with the setup you suggest, with planet proximity to the star determining the biomes, habitability, etc. At least then finding the type of planet you want is more formulaic and follows some real-world logic.

This is a really good idea as well - there is no reason we should be in a hurry to explore other worlds, and it could be something as simple as fuel acquisition. Rather than allow ships to run on coal, make some relatively complex requirement to producing something the ship can use. Maybe some rare chemical that has to be produced through smelting a variety of materials and then getting the dragon to breathe on it. I don't know, it's just an idea.

But this gets me thinking about the tech tree as a whole. Why do we mess with pickaxes? Isn't there a way to improve on the matter manipulator? I can't help but think replacing its (copper?) parts with more pure materials might make it perform better and be more useful. I don't see any reason to climb a tech tree pretty much at all. We left our home planet, yes, but why does that mean we are suddenly in the stone age?

I don't think they would need to...with the new implementations on the table, surely there is room for trimming down the existing system.

 

Maybe they have something you want, as opposed to something you need. Like the dragon has a powerful sword lodged in one of its ribs, or defeating the robot allows you to re-engineer it as a mount?

 

i like finding planets too. Only, i would like it if we had to do a bit of groundwork before finding another planet teeming with life. A few scans here and there, upgrading equipment to scan further, and feeling lucky when you actually find a planet with possible life. It would be something that you could find early if lucky, or find much later with more advanced equipment, or find endgame with a stargate. Again- this is just my preference. i know most players of SB prefer the current planet hopping gameplay.

 

What if the whole cosmos wasn't automatically visible, and you had to actually chart the thing?

 

theres so many ways they could add depth to this game- but i think it would go against the "casual" label of this game. I wish this wasnt made to be a casual game, but thats what happens when something is high profile.

 

I'm currently editing the post to reflect the ideas expressed in this thread. It should help the thread conversation to be more productive, as it will be in a format that will be easier to edit and contribute to (rather than my midnight ramblings). I'm currently paging through the thread finding everything topical. It will take a bit of time but I should be done before too long.

Also title recommendations that will better suit the content are welcome.

EDIT: oh, and this thread would, as people were arguing, have to be split into multiple threads to be moved to suggestions. I'd like to keep this thread intact as it addresses something larger than it's parts, but perhaps, if you lot don't think It'd be the worst of both worlds, I could keep this thread going, and in the main post link to several suggestions as to fix it that have their own thread, and any individual suggestion (there would have to be several for each point I made), could be improved upon there and any additional suggestions or such could be suggested here. This wouldn't be the best place for this thread still, but unfortunately in it's it's the only acceptable place to put it.

 

I played SB for a week now, and I noticed my gameplay was awry as well.

A big thing with me is that I planet hop. My initial planet, I explored it a bit. I dug mines, built a base to house my things and traveled in and out of the planets surface, finding chests and goodies and all sorts of things.

All that said and done, when it was time to re-fuel the ship and go travel to other planets. I had the mind set of finding a good planet to build on, and build and explore it like my first one. But I then started to just skim the planets surface for chests and dungeons, after I felt I explored the surface enough I would leave to the next planet.

So now, I am in Tier 10, with Tier 10 weapons. I dash around the surface of each planet, looking for more tech chests to find rare items, and mine any resources I find on the surface. But that is it, I do not explore any further. I think there should be more inclination to explore each planet in depth. Give a reason to build bases and dig mines.

And like the OP already said, most of the weapons in game are not special or variable. Every now and then you find a legendary weapon that does odd things, like the Aqua sword or the Bone Mace. But for a game about space travel and finding amazing and weird things in the universe. You would get tired when you lay waste to a Prison complex filled with hostiles only to find 25 "Amazing Broswords"

But I feel SB is just starting out, and It already made me spend so many hours on it already. I'm going to replay as a different race now, (started as Human). And see if I find anything different in my second gameplay.

 

I'm going through the thread again and I feel like this suggestion didn't get enough attention. It's a fantastic suggestion.

 

So sort of like enchantments? To be honest here this would cause a whole new host of problems.

"I cant find any good random ore". "I found ridiculously OP random ore". "Its not fair that our armor strength is determined randomly now".

 

I hate it that the ships are so small.