New 'Level' System Disincentives Space Exploration

Starbound planets have different tiers and sub-biomes and everything, if people took the time (and maybe rolled well with the RNG perhaps) to explore planets.

 

That's not a good game design incentive.

As a beta tester it's my job to point out when I feel design is conflicting with purpose. As I feel the direction of Starbound is about being, well, Starbound, and I feel that incentive to be in space has been lessened, I feel I need to point it out.

Literally addressed that in the first post:

Well, I didn't enjoy suicide runs on planet level ten, so yes. I'd stick on 1 until I had good enough gear to hit, well usually 4-6 after that, then 7, 8, 9, 10, and then summon the boss. Repeat for Steel.

It was certainly possible to suicide run the 10th level and steam roll, but I ALSO already addressed that in my second post in this thread. Also, I'm not asking for the HUGE gap in power between 10 and 1 to come back. They should be smaller.

But there should be one there, and I should feel I have a reason to go to other planets, UNLESS I'm wrong about the direction of the game, and they don't ACTUALLY want you to explore the billions of planets out there.

 

Except they're not the same difficulty.

Not to sound to much like an asshole, but if you had had actually payed attention to what they're saying, then you'd have realized that planets vary in difficulty planet to planet. ex a Level 1 hard planet is a lot harder than a level 1 easy planet. They just changed they way of displaying them. They have 10 levels, and 3 difficulties per level, then even the difficulties very a little bit. because you can't determine the exact level of the planet, it actually encourages exploration not discourage.

 

I was hoping that even though everything in the first sector would be Tier 1 that planets would have an unknown difficulty gradient and you basically had to find what it was like by actually going down there and exploring.

 

There's three levels of enemies within a sector.

They get harder going DOWN.

The planets don't seem to have a difficulty difference between them. If they do it's negligible to the point of being unnoticeable. Other than ones with 'hardcore terrain' being a bit more annoying 'cause of fall damage.

Not to mention 3 levels of enemy difficulty, per sector, and enemies getting harder as you dig deeper, actually doesn't really leave a lot of room--in the stated text--for variations of difficulty between planets.

 

On the X sector all the threat level 5+ planets are.I saw there threats level 10,8...So it's not so boring once you arrive there.

 

We need to add evil APEX space ships in the game to further 'disincentive' players from traveling through space! Faction relation in various 'zones' of the sector making it risky but rewarding to explore there!

I mean, there's a lot of military presence in this area, so why shouldn't I go there if all these military don't want me there?

 

Yeah when I first started up to get on, And got to the point where I could travel... well its all the same and at that point I just decided to stay on the one I have.
Maybe might go look for tech, but other than that no real point to travel to other places

 

The X sector is just a pseudo sector for now, its purpose is to save the places for future sectors to be added

 

Make the enemy militaries drop better loot (guns more often, things like that) and I think we basically have the beginnings of a fix.


GET YE TO THE SUGGESTIONS FORUM YOUNG WO/MAN.

 

I haven't touched either Terraria or Starbound suggestion threads for months and they turned out okay. I don't need to unlock my secret 'suggestion thread' box yet.

 

I made a suggestion towards adding variety to planets.
This idea is that tech also acts as keys to unlock special challenges.
http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/tech-based-pods-bosses-and-challenges.45204/

 

tbh sectors alpha to delta felt like tutorial. X-Sector has 5-10 threat planets including 5 new biomes.

 

Well if you aren't going to, do you mind if I do, because militarized systems is actually a really good idea, that I would like to see implemented.

Edit@Korva:

^

Or, in other words, that won't be the case forever. More sectors will be added, and X will eventually only be threat level 10.

 

I don't care about the loot, but I think that this game NEEDS the option to go to places that are way over your head. It gives you something to shoot for. In fact, I'm really hoping that the devs implement some sort of "Difficulty: X" sort of thing, that is practically impossible to survive on with even the best gear - again, just for the feeling of accomplishment if you actually manage to settle and survive there.

 

I'm only addressing this, because I really have no argument to make, as I find ample reason to explore new planets because I play with a build-oriented play style.

Anyway, the about page on this very website states the following:

"Starbound lets you live out your own story of space exploration, discovery and adventure. Settle down and farm the land, hop from planet to planet claiming resources..." as well as "Follow the story or create your own, experience the game how YOU want to."

I just want to say that while nomadic exploration is a large part of the game, they pretty much state you don't have to be a space nomad if you don't want to. So the direction of the game seems less "be a space nomad, it's fun!" and more "you live in a world where space exploration is rather normal, you can use this to your advantage and explore the many action-packed world to make new discoveries and friends, to give life to barren planets, and so much more... Or, you could simply live out your life with minimal travel and chase away those pesky savage plants that keep trying to eat your pets."

Your suggestions for further incentive may well be valid, but I don't particularly think the game took a huge step backwards because being a space nomad wasn't the entire point of the game, otherwise we'd never be encouraged to play it our way, and put down roots if we so wanted. Further incentive may not be fully implemented for those who prefer space travel and the like, but it seems quite a few have already found reason based on their own play styles, so I'd say at most that it's a minor setback. That being said, feel free to continue making suggestions, they may just find one to be interesting, and implement it if they haven't already planned on doing so. Everything helps, right?

 

Heres the thing, the way I understood it, there is still basically 10 planet levels in each sector. You just cant tell which ones are harder than the others because they didnt implement the new easy, med, hard settings. So you may pick a planet that is level 1, land on it, and its actually the same as the old lvl 10 planet and you get 1 shot.

The only reason they made the changes was to make weapons/armor progression smoother. I dont know why they couldnt just label the planets with sub labels. So you have a mid level alpha planet and it would labled as threat 1-5. Simple system. 10 sub levels per threat level. The armor/weapon changes can stay, and you dont have people thinking there is only 1 level per sector, or people getting 1 shot not knowing what planet they are on.

 

I prefer to not know exactly what I'm getting into when I go to another planet in my sector.

It actually makes exploration better since I can't just tick around the galaxy looking for a level 10 planet to cheese a top tier weapon out of.

 

Let's be honest here, there is little space exploration in this game. I mean in that you're not exploring space. Beyond the arrangement of planets you can beam down to, and their previously outlined creature strength level, and dirt colour, every single star is basically the same. Different arrangements, previously different damage levels, but it's all the same otherwise.

You're exploring different planet surfaces, not space, and while I understand you don't like to dig (nobody making this same gripe does), hopping from surface to surface, doing a quick lap, grabbing some wood for fuel and beaming off to the next planet is such a shallow element to this game. There's a wealth to be found far below surfaces, with increasingly difficult monsters and increasingly better loot.

But that's not how you play. You surface hop. And that's fine. You find a planet that's a threat level you can manage, you beam down, do a quick lap looking for chests, towns, camps, then beam up when you've seen all there is. It's fine if that's your thing, but it's a small part of what the game is.

This patch was intended to avoid people just skimming the surface (literally, and figuratively) of the game's exploratory depth, and give more incentive to stop bopping from surface to surface until you're bored of holding D, and maxed out the threat level of a sector, and to dig in and see all the underground biomes and tombs and towns and loot.

So while the game's shifted interest away from the way you like exploring, you can still do it, and it's not at all what there is to explore.

All this really boils down to is you can no longer pinpoint which surfaces will have the best loot right on top. Now you have as much incentive to dig down deep into your starting planet as you did previously with beaming off to a level 10 planet, and that seems to bother you. The only reason now to leave a planet for another is a change of scenery, which is half (I'd even say all) the reason for 'space exploration' in this game, but you don't seem to use that as an argument point for the previous difficulty system.

 

What if the starting planet had very little ores and the other planets had only specific types of ores instead of all of them in different rarities. All of these being found deep in the ground and not near the surface.

How about if planets had a Hostility rating, the higher the rating the more hard enemies spawn and the more aggressive the enemies become, perhaps to the point of smashing blocks. With increased hostility rating planets giving better rewards(better ores, drops, or other goodies).
The best ores in the sector being restricted to the highest hostility.


The increasing hostility as the ore becomes better would be attributed to previous mining attempts on the world for those rare ores toughening the aliens in case of future threats.