New 'Level' System Disincentives Space Exploration

Personally, I found the opposite. One of the most rewarding and fun thing in this game currently is finding and clearing dungeons. You can't do that on the same planet. Plus, some biomes are much better than others for finding certain resources.

 

Unless it's necessary. If craftable weapons aren't sufficient, this will ensure an incentive to locate shops.

EDIT: Given how scarce ranged weapons are, let alone GOOD ranged weapons, as random drops, I think this will provide enough incentive to scour the coordinates for places that sell them.

 

Just need a nice "potion" system, which benefits combat (combat success should haflway RELY on use of buff potions), and exploration (good/rare potion ingredients should be found at the bottoms of planets, or on tough enemies/minibosses).. Doesn't have to be "potions", can be injectors, or pills, or datafiles, or anything, really.. Honestly balance isn't important at all until the grand majority of all enemy and equipment improvements are fully added.. Can't balance invisible future changes and current physically implemented ones all together, really..

 

There is something call stimpacks for that purpose btw

 

Also, exploring is less incentivized because easy wood fuel was removed, so you have to DIG to travel.

 

I always find chests close by or flee and hope I lose them. Most of the time a pent 12 or 13 weapon would spawn inside and I would start steamrolling everything.

With the new system though it makes doing this worthless aside from the first time to get a weapon that's not as bad as your starter.

 

Fun fact: people don't have to explore in starbound some like to do other stuff. It's called sandbox for a reason. If the devs force people into a certain play style no one is going 2 be happy

 

My only annoyance is the 2d. besides that it's interesting to see how things differ on each planet. Also I'm still learning how to use a rope effectively.

 

Couldn't this argument be reversed to say that there was previously no incentive to go to a level one planet because there was nothing useful there or no reason to go to a level 10 planet because you can get what you need on a lower level planet?

 

This whole exploration incentive thing is bogus. There are plenty of reasons to explore every planet; dungeons, npcs, merchants, funky looking mobs or mini bosses. The game is also about space exploration, and gathering resources to be successful in that very exploration. Chances are, you have been playing the game way to much and are getting burnt out. The game is in its first week of beta its very playable and your reaction is understandable. This game is something to get excited over about. You need a break.

You just stated yes you have to play the game to get further in it. If anything congratz you now have a reason to actually mine a planets resources.

To anyone that complains about planets all being the same I want you to ask your self these questions. I bet the answer is no.

Did you build anything on the planet?
Did you all of mine resources?
Did you find any cool formations?
Did you find any dungeons?
Did you mine its core(and harvest the planet like a true space miner)
Did notice anything other then no new tech or good weapons?

Chances are your answer is no to many of the above.Your missing something. The game is a sandbox and like any other sandbox game it is entirely what you make of it. This "broken" leveling system of lack there of incentives is the same argument as people complaining about "cheesing" mobs with wall blocks because people find it easier, its up to the person to limit them selves not the devs(unless they say otherwise).

*edit misquoted a line

 

1: Why build something on every planet? There's not really any point to planetary housing when you can take everything in your ship. But, yes, I have built things on planets.
2: Yes, but you're kind of missing the point.
3: Yup. Lots of them. Still missing the point, though.
4: Not on every planet. That's ridiculous. But on about 1/3rd of them, yes.
5: Yes.

But, like I said, you're missing the point. It's not every planet is the same, it's every planet is MECHANICALLY and FUNCTIONALLY the same.

Yes that one has a USMC prison, and that one has an Apex research facility. But the mobs in both are of equivalent strength, use the same attack patterns, and drop the same loot. It's nothing but a reskin.

 

The problem is that you're right that exploration is not really incentivized as much as it should be, but unfortunately, you're wrong about everything else.

Pretty much the only reason to explore is to find towns and bases and similar things. Has that changed? No. So you're wrong that the patch affected this negatively - it is, in fact, utterly irrelevant, as it is identical pre and post patch in this regard.

When I played pre-patch, I never left my home planet until I had killed the UFO. Honestly, the best way to play the game mostly is just to mine for ore, then build the best stuff you can, then beat your way through a base for good weapons, then kill the boss, rinse, repeat. I never even did anything between the robot boss and the dragon boss pre-reset - they were killed immediately in succession, with the only time spent mining being time spent mining for the decoy. There just was no reason to spend time exploring there.

The problem has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the threat system[/i]. There's no less incentive now than there was before.

The only difference was you'd get higher level loot, but in practice, here was how you actually played correctly:

Go to a maximum threat level world and cheese your way to the base so you can get a good weapon, or find a shopkeeper.

Now go back to whatever world and mine for ore.

If you want to go crazy, try to find another merchant or whatever once you're geared up.

You can reverse mining and going for the weapon, but in reality, there wasn't really any incentive for exploration beyond that. There still isn't, really.

If they want to actually encourage exploration, what they'd really need to do is NOT what you're thinking at all. What they need to do is make it so you actually have a reason to go to multiple different special locations. That's the only way TO encourage exploration - and frankly, I think that's what the quest system they're going to add in is for.

The problem is that the quest system isn't in the game at all right now, so you don't see that. Mechanically speaking, that's the best fix, along with, you know, the areas actually encouraging you to go to other planets. Finding guns and suchlike is a pretty big incentive for me.

Thing is, if you aren't steamrolling, nothing has changed. You still do the same thing.

Surface skimming is still an effective strategy. You can do it just fine.

I got to the endgame pre-reset. I had level 40 guns, max level armor, level 42-43 weapons... there wasn't anything else. And I spent LESS time playing the game than you did to get there. In fact, I spent less time playing the game than you claimed you spent in Alpha sector.

So, in somewhere around 30-35 hours, I "beat" the game as it was. And when I made a second character, I beat the first sector in about two hours.

So maybe you're just really, really slow? I certainly wasn't pushing through the game as fast as possible, either. Frankly, it was feeling a bit tedious as it was.

Post-reset, it took me a bit longer than you to beat the first sector because I mined the heck out of my planet and acquired vast quantities of mineral wealth which allowed me to quickly build up in the second sector as well (I instantly built silver armor, pretty much). Actually getting through the second sector took a while because of a bug that deleted my ship, but even then I beat it within a relatively short period of time.

I've since beaten the third area boss. So in 12 hours, I'm already in sector delta, and I'm looking at just summoning the next boss and beating that one because it seems that's how you get the next equipment upgrade so there's no point in lingering.

The UFO was actually quite easy pre-patch anyway, it was just tedious. You could just easily cheese it by boxing it in with dirt, but even if you didn't, you could slaughter it fairly pretty easily. I killed it with an iron bow, a level 5 sword, and silver amror without ever leaving my homeworld, mostly just fighting it from the roof of my house. It wasn't even especially difficult; I didn't die once on it.

Post-patch, I killed it while the weapons were still glitched, but judging from the damage it was doing to me in iron armor, it wasn't going to be any rougher to beat.

But now you actually understand what the heck you're doing, so of course it was easier to kill it. Playing the game through a second time is vastly easier than doing so the first.

Honestly, the solution is the quest line, and the problem is that it isn't implemented at all. If I had a reason to go to those planets, I would. As-is, I STILL explore because I want to see everything the game has, and like wandering around and looking at NPC reactions and various types of dungeons, ect. But I suspect once I've seen all the stuff that I'm going to stop playing until the quest line comes out.

 

Your right. I did miss your point and I agree with you when it put it like that. All the planets do function in the same way. There is variety but they all do/have the same basic things. I may have missed this in a previous post but what we should be asking is how can the devs spice things up? planets that are entirely hostile/inhabitable without specif gear or faction relations? other factions that move from planet to planet( maybe even your race hunting you down if you were an exile).

 

A lot of fun in these types of games for me is to create cool buildings and what not. I like to explore for the materials we can get from different dungeons. So exploring worlds is equally as appealing now as it used to be.

What would make exploration better would be to specialize planets for particular resources as many have said. Going with that more items need to be craftable using each resource. This doesn't have to be ores but all resources. As it stands many resources simply become irrelevant very quickly while others have too much importance. If every resource was relevant and each planrt was specialized there would be a reason to explore.

Edit: im in class so that kinda doesn't make sense but basically more craftable and relevant items is a good thing.

 

I am also falling into the 1 planet per tier trap, and it is making me feel that the basic system design is lacking. (Yup I know it is a beta!) I fall into the persona matrix as someone that wishes to have a goal to achieve rather than exploring.

There was an early screen shot of the FTL screen that had information about what cities were on a planet. I feel that someone like me would actually "explore" if all the surface and biome information was listed along with the planet difficulty. Because it will be less about "Wow I hope there is something good here" to "I can't wait to find that flesh biome!"

 

it's the future, you should be able to convert almost anything into fuel. they should just adjust the conversion to balance out the play experience.

farming for fuel, turning organic plants into fuel would be an interesting game play mechanic

 

"Yes." 1000 times "yes" to the original poster. The recent level patch really crippled the impact of what made Starbound more than just a Terraria clone. Here's hoping the developers are reading. Kudos, OP!

 

Just gonna reply to all this with this:

Just because progression can be skipped, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and just because it can be skipped that doesn't mean removing it doesn't also remove incentive for players who aren't interested in skipping it.

Progression moved down from 10 sub-tiers per sector, multiplied by an (eventual) 10 sectors, to. . . ten tiers. That's a loss of 90% of effective content. Yes, that content is still there, technically, but there's no longer any reason to visit it. While before you could visit a 5 or 6 threat planet (or 7 or 8) in your crafted armor and see how well you could do for a challenge. Or you could ramp up through each threat planet's tiers collecting better and better weaponry.

. . . or you could skip the whole thing.

Now you basically JUST skip the whole thing. There's nothing else to be done or said.

This was actually why I made the thread, yes. Though I only gave that one sentence of weight in my initial post, so it's understandable if it was missed.

And those are both great ideas.

As is this:

I'm thinking of making a thread in suggestions with a compilation of ideas suggested here.

 

Perhaps the better design wouldn't be a "sector" system, rather a "ring" system. By upgrading your ship systems you gain the capacity to fly further, hold more fuel, etc.
I'd be interested in being able to upgrade that 3d printer to perform smelting functions. Better to consider the box from inside as well as outside.

 

Thiiissss. Thaank you. I was getting so aggravated reading this and then I see your post and I just went "Ah! At last! Mah family!"