My Dissapointments With Starbound

Well, I feel like a lot of that could be avoided if there was an abundance of random ore and none of it added much to the thing, and none of it was strictly better than a different ore. It's true that with variety people's innate desire to have the best item will be agitated, but I feel that this game, and it's community (most of this coming from keeping tabs on those threads about inherent character differences) focus too much on things being "better" or "worse" than each other. I feel like there's this idea floating around that things can't be different but equal, and I know from gaming experience that that can be accomplished (Dark souls, Path of Exile, games like that). But more on point, If this was was combined with the suggestion that the random stats be determined largely by the planet's size and position from the sun and so forth, it'd be much easier to find the new random ores.

Yeah that's kind of unfortunate, considering how much planet hopping you do. Of course, as many people in this thread have said, there are mods for that.

 

This sort of removes the incentive to explore the system your in. An example would be this.

"I don't need to explore my system" "Why?" "Because all the good ore is on big planets far from the sun" .

This would also cause a coordinate explosion and unbalance PVP .

Also upgrading your ship is planned.

 

i still think it beats the problems of tedium and routine. Even if they were not to use exactly as suggested- the point is they need to do more work to make it seem we are exploring alien worlds and not just seeds of the same thing over and over.

 

Well if we inject some real life here.....

Metals and minerals on earth can be found in space on asteroids and other planets. So we would not be seeing any random undiscovered ore with new properties.

I am aware this is not a life simulator so I suppose if the devs implement this. They would need to balance it.

 

you are taking things too literally just to shoot down suggestions.

In your example, it would make sense that a small planet close to the star contain something unique too. Doesnt take much foresight to see what the poster is trying to say.

again, there is less incentive the way it is now to explore. So i still dont get the point you were trying to make.

There you go again. Trying to shoot down suggestions with ridiculous reasoning.
1. No one suggested ALL ores must be unique.
2. Its a game, im sure there are A LOT of logic fallacies in SB.
3. You have no idea what youre talking about

 

No I'm using common sense. If you implement things you have to make sure the good outweighs the bad. You cant ignore the bad.

 

the bad being? some random complaints vs a sense of discovery,diversity and unpredictability added to the regular ore grind? yeah...common sense....Its not even a fully fleshed out idea at that.

 

I see your ignoring the bad still. Look no offence but reply to me when you can see both sides instead of being one sided. Just because something is "totally cool and adds exploration" is not a good excuse for ignoring people.

 

Agree with OP, and I'd like to add I'm a little irritated about the lack of guns in what is supposedly a sci fi game. That's not a deal breaker for me, but since Starbound is sci fi, it should be possible to craft your own guns from the start. Guns should be more common, moreso than melee weapons, and this whole 'stone axe' stuff is also a tad misplaced in a sci fi game.

 

I don't know about being more common than melee weapons but I agree with the rest of your points.

 

what bad? it being "unrealistic" doesnt make sense in the context of this game of all things. "being OP" anything can be OP if not balanced right. the only major negtive is players not always finding what they want, the same that could be said about any tech.

 

I understand your concern about imbalance, but I feel like it's something that, without too much effort, could be balanced. This suggestion should be fleshed out on the suggestion forums and then a proposed list of ore statistics should be provided and *then* these points should be brought up.
Also, I don't understand the focus on PVP in this game. This game's pvp seems like it'd be more about how well you can jump around and shoot each other, and I don't feel like it'd be largely affected by small imbalances like a game that relied more on stats would.

 

I don't care for the PVP myself but like to factor in everything.

If this idea gets fleshed out more I could critique it better rather than going in blind though.

 

I agree with #1, #3 and #4, but only to the extent that it's reasonable to expect the devs to be able to accomplish. I won't shoot down suggestions. I'm just saying there is only so much I'll expect them to accomplish in so little time.

Mostly I think #4 is where they could get a little more bang for their buck. Like biomes that take over or "infect" other biomes. This is sort of already in the game with things like trees growing and soil spreading, etc.

I would even be happy if those kind of features were slowly added through mods or post-release.

#1, sure it would be nice to see more variety in the way weapons work and (IMHO even more importantly) the types of AI and how they attack the player. Again, if this were added in pieces I'd be happy.

I don't have any suggestions for #3. The game doesn't seem to have been designed to address that and I don't think dev resources are focused (or have ever claimed to be focused) in that direction. I only agree that it would be more fun if it were the case. But hell, I could sit here and make suggestions all day

#2 I disagree with. I applaud the devs for giving the game some linearity and direction akin to Terraria. Too much sandbox makes me walk away from a game. But obviously that's just one opinion of many.

 

I think there needs to be progression like you say. My only gripe is that it should feel more organic to gameplay. It shouldnt feel linear. When i first played Terraria, i wasnt even aware of the tiers of progression, it all just happened in a logical and natural order. Never felt like i was being locked off arbitrarily from content.

 

Do you think perhaps you notice the linearity more starkly beacuse you're a Terraria vet? So in essence, you already "know the secrets"?

I agree that Terraria had a nice sense of mystery that Starbound lacks. I assume it's primarily because the core gameplay is a repeat of Terraria almost to the T (just a way bigger sandbox).

But I don't quite yet see how this game's progression is actually different from Terraria's in a practical sense. Maybe it's also more noticeable because the game starts you out with more tools for finding recipes, etc?

 

I think the primary gripe is that every tool has a prerequisite of the previous tier tool, where in terraria there were many sets of armor you could skip given the effort. Also, Terraria had several sets that were different on the same tier. Things like Jungle Armor weren't part of the strict progression, and you didn't need to craft it for the other armors. In starbound there is little variance in the type of armor or in the progression paths.

 

To a degree. The difference is in Terraria progression felt more like "at your own risk". Even the main dungeon allowed me to die before i was like, F- that i need better gear. It didnt say "build this before proceeding", it indirectly told me i wasnt strong enough. It felt more like i was deciding how to progress instead of being told.

 

Also. Here is a copy/pasted post I put on reddit. This is on progression in Starbound. In particular, the balance of horizontal and vertical progression.

Some of the things in this copy/paste have already been covered here, I know. But it's a copy/paste.

Also...
Vertical Progression: Progression where a player climbs a tier to get to the next
Horizontal Progression: Progressing "horizontally" through the same tier.

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Well, let's talk incentive for wanting to do horizontal progression, and what Starbound is going to have to do to make you want to do said horizontal progression.

Scroll down for the tl;dr. This is long.

I'm going to take some concepts from Terraria here, so bear with me! It's only to get my point across!

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For the people who want to experience the horizontal progression in a tier, there's just not enough there that's compelling. You got tools like the Paint Gun and Wiring Tool, but even those are near exclusively for builders and both of them are unlocked in the same tier.

What Starbound needs for horizontal progression is unique content for the explorers, the warriors, the collectors.

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What warriors lack in horizontal progression: In Terraria, most weapons had some unique, fun aspect which made them fun to use. Shooting ice projectiles, swinging a sword to rain stars from the sky...

This meant that most of those weapons in Terraria were interesting enough for a person interested in experiencing the game to try everything out. Players who like horizontal progression would want to see just how useful that ice projectile is, and the fun uses of causing stars to rain from the sky. The thing is, simple stat changes just aren't enough to satisfy those kinds of players. "Oh, that weapon does 3 more damage. Whoop-de-do."

In Starbound, all crafted weapons are simply stat changes. You got different types of weapons... Axes, hammers, etc. But that's it.

Some dropped/looted weapons and items have special functions, yes. You got fiery and poison effects, ranged lighting and etc. But none of those are limited by tiers. Every special effect on weapons can be found in the Alpha sector, for example!

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What collectors lack for horizontal progression: Unique items to collect. There are millions of possible generated swords, nearly all identical. It's simply humanly impossible to collect every sword that can possibly generate.

The only things you can feasibly collect are crafted weapons/items, furniture items and tech. Crafted weapons/items are mostly not very unique at all. Every sword in each tier is just a stat change. Each pick is just a speed increase. Furniture and tech is fun to collect, which is great. But even so, there just isn't enough tech and furniture is exclusively for building purposes.

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What explorers lack for horizontal progression: Unique things to find. What explorers want is generally a combinations of what warriors want and what collectors want.

You want unique things to find in chests. Special drops from killing an enemy. We got both, to a small degree. Minibosses can drop legendary weapons and weapons can have special status effects. But that's it. Just like in the warrior section, nearly all you can find on weapons is stat increases and status effects.

Biomes are nearly entirely visual changes, except for the block mining speed and the liquid, and the tree usefulness. Jungles have easy to get plant fibre, and deserts are easy to mine through. Volcanic biomes have lava and snow biomes are cold. But other then that, what is the real difference? Functionally, they're nearly the same. The dungeon table is the same, and the enemy selection is the same.

Tech and dungeons help, a lot. That's what Starbound does wonderfully. But tech options are limited, and dungeons have small loot tables. Tech can be found in every sector, and dungeons in each sector are identical.

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tl;dr and summary: Items are too similar with little special functions, and the loot table in each tier is identical with the exception of stat increases. The dungeon selection is identical through each sector. Biomes are too similar functionality and difficulty wise. All of those combine into giving you little reason to look more into a given tier.

 

Okay, I think I'm on board with that too, then. I didn't agree because I was thinking you meant things like "gold ore is better than copper ore" was a problem.

Maybe they could loosen some of the restrictions. I definitely agree with the horizontal progression concept, but I haven't played enough Starbound yet (because I don't want to spoil too much) to see where all it's lacking there.