Planets seem to lack diversity since the Koala builds

I think the concern was sequence breaking, but there might be a way around it if there was still a concern. Instead of nano suits to wall off the player from the tier of planets, have ship shield tech to keep the player from the type of star containing the next set of planets. Make getting to the star the tier.
That way when the player gets to that next type of star, you can expand on the diversity of what planets can be there, instead of limiting it.

I guess its kinda like the sectors idea, but its a thought I'm trying to build on.

 

That is another good way to do it.

Personally I don't see any need to protect "sequence." A ton of great games over the years have allowed sequence breaking either through bugs or just the stubbornness of players. I think the quest system is doing a fine job telling the player what he or she is "supposed" to be doing, and a lot of people delight in "over-leveling" themselves and then crushing bosses with no challenge- or jumping into high-level areas for the challenge of trying to survive and move ahead with underleveled gear. I know I really got a kick out of discovering that I could use tenacious wall-jumping to get super-bombs ahead of schedule in Super Metroid.

If Starbound is going for "play the way you want," this is probably the most basic obstacle to that for the moment.

Setting all that aside, if we are going to have rigid progression, at least don't let it make everything all same-y.

 

Thats what im most worried about, they have put sandbox aside (this is a sandbox game for bloods sake!) in favour of some linear story I have yet to understand. I understand this is early development, but its like throwing a ball in between creativity, playability and linearity in favour of a more "defined" game. In my honest opinion, if chucklefish wants to put a story in their game, it should be part of it, not THE biggest part of it, Story mode should be looked like something else to do, not something yu HAVE to do to unlock more things to play with... sort of like GTAv is, (i hate this comparison but its a clear one) in grand theft auto v you can sand box almost from the beginning (lenghty annoying intro in multiplayer mode) and you unlock a lot of stuff by playing around. In Singleplayer mode you can do the story to unlock more blah blah blah, or you can fool around and have fun with a lot, a LOT of things (yeah you ll be lacking a few features but nothing crucial). I think that should be Starbound`s aim while creating story mode. Something else you can do, it should be rewarding yeah, but not something you HAVE to do to enjoy the game as a whole.

 

personnaly, i don't count on the starbound dev team to add more biome or hazard, i've 100+hours on this game, for the price i thinks they have complete their goal in this category (next colony gestion was a better goal than making planets more attractive).
no i only count on modders for that, this game have a lot of modder but when you visit the mod page you see there's more modders for race/item than for biome/dongeon, i feel a bit sad about that, but, i can't blame them.

 

Maybe once they've released v1.0, they'll come back to this issue. They've already got a lot on their plate as of now, planets is least of their worries.

 

I'm going to be honest here... I do not and probably never will get the "diversity" argument RE: the EK build, as that "variety" was 6 out of 10 times "slightly different dirt than where you landed" and 3 out of 10 "snow instead of dirt".

A lot of those planets contained nothing of note, nothing unique. Magma/Volcanic planets were absolutely useless if they didn't have a Crystal or Rust Biome on them, as you could get ores from far softer, less lava-having planets. Savannah planets were also utterly skippable. I think there was a slight chance to find Rust there? ffft. At least now the Arid Biomes have the thorny fruit, that's SOMETHING, plus the guaranteed sub-Biome. And we've only (and possibly temporarily) lost what, three biomes with anything unique in them? Well, less, since the Tentacle Biomes pretty much had nothing in them of note.

Most of the "variety" issues I have with current were very much present in EK. I feel we need MORE special biomes to spread things out, and a couple more planets... I wouldn't mind seeing some of those Ocean/Toxic planets have much larger, solid landmasses between big swaths of ocean with small islands. There should be more aboveground structures, for sure. The inclusion of Human, Hylotl and Novakid settlements, dungeons and mini-instances will help immensely on that score.

But I really don't feel like EK's planetary models were any great shakes.

 

you have low aims then, its a Universe, it just cant be that simple regardless of the argument at hand, think about the current variety; we have lava plus lava ocean, ice plus ice ocean, desert and ocean, lush (starter), jungle with flower field and a few others I cant name right now.

In past builds we had:
all the aforementioned plus NO locked sub biomes (you heard me right, ice and lava? totally! acid rain in a snow world? you got it!)
now gone tentacle biomes (they hand a rather nonlyrical retro style soundtrack that could get VERY mind numbing after a while... which wasnt a bad thing)
"corrupted" sub biomes (which were like mini tentacle biomes)
barren planets (for the purpose of building, i think they are still present in the game)
plus a lot of things I cant name out of bad memory.

Variety is the spice of the universe, wouldnt you say? at its current state i can dedicate a weekend to starbound and finish looking thru the content (avoiding procedurally generated whatever gizmo is about)

 

Well, it was discussed like a thousand times before, with flamewars, trolling, banning and everything else included. It all boils down to: "We wanted a story in a sandbox, not the Story with sandbox elements". Why we have "A story with sandbox elements" now instead of "a story in a sandbox" (and yeah, we are supposes to have it this way - just google old articles and sketches of Starbound)? Well in my opinion (and i don't want to explain it further because i don't want another flamewar with some Members here) i think Devs just don't have experience and ability to build a proper sandbox with features they originally wanted(or any decent sandbox features at all). After years of development they released of that was knows as Starbound Beta - it had a lot of sandbox potential, but all of it was in pretty rudimentary state. And they don't have ability\time\experience to work it into decent state. So after releasing original Beta they took lengthy pause "to move to London", brainstorming their odd about Starbound and shifting team members in process. After moving was done, Starbound started to turn from sandbox to Story rails. With such a number of artists they had, it was much easier to draw all needed elements for static story than to program a decent sandbox. But again. that's just my speculations.

 

Hmm that clears things quite nicely, at least I can build clearer expectations now.

 

Mostly I would like it if each playthrough didn't seem almost exactly the same. I would like it a lot if each planet didn't have just 1 biome and 1 sub-biome.

In the koala times, I loved to dig down toward the core of a planet to see what kind of special biome I might run across. As far as I know, there have been quite a few of these that have been scrapped, but more importantly I now always know what to expect before I begin. I guess I hear what you're saying as far as lava planets being pointlessly more dangerous, but I feel there are ways to address that that would be better than locking in all biomes and sub-biomes across all tiers.

And yeah, variety was limited even in koala builds, but that was something that could have been built upon. With the current system of having almost everything knowable from orbit, it's a bit harder to move forward in that regard.

Now, 100% of all planets contain nothing unique. Every planet has hundreds of "clones," and not like "the universe is vast, somewhere out there is another planet just like this one." It's more "Right here in this system, there are probably half a dozen planets just like this one."

 

I would like to have more local environment hazards, like what the cold was in koala.

For radiation, there could be ores that slowly hurt the character if they got close or had them in inventory.
For jungle,random status effects given by the mobs.(nasty place, the jungle)

Magma/ocean/p.ocean: digging out the background could hit a reservoir of liquid that leaks into the foreground.

Course all this is easier said than done, but I think it'll be worth providing unique planetary challenges based on planetary type.

 

If only, sounds more like an unfortunate dream, given chuckefish`s limited experience on the matter.

Also I lived in a jungle for 6 months during my travels... people exaggerate how "nasty and dangerous" those places are... they re just damn too hot.

 

I wholehartedly agree with the idea of making every biome available on every level (except harmless and starting planet). Current system should be expanded.

But on the other hand to keep it all in perspective, I've had a short session of Enraged Koala recently to get a fresh memory of how it was, when I first started playing this game and by comparison you can clearly see that Giraffe versions bring a HUGE enhancement in biome creation: block colours & variety, grass, plants, terrain formation, it's all so much better now than it used to be in EK times and makes exploring much less tedious. Playing without it is so dull, that I can't enjoy EK version anymore!

So I really appreciate the work put by the devs to make the quality of every biome much higher, even if I'd like the variety at every level to be bigger.

 

I think there should be more biomes overall that compliment the stars they orbit. For instance, I would absolutely LOVE a taiga biome on frozen stars.

 

While I agree with your assessment of EK vs UG's formation, I can't agree with this bit in specific.

I would say the current tiering for planet-types should be kept to keep the sense of progression to exploration, but higher-tier systems can have higher-level versions of planets from lower tiers. They should only make up half of the planets in the system at most, though, leaving the majority to new types. So a Radioactive Star can have Desert and Forest type planets among its number (with the Radiation hazard, of course) with monsters that pack more punch, higher-level ores, etc, but can't have Volcanic planets.

It'd help if there were more inherent hazards to the biomes proper, some more themed enemies and obstacles. But that's also "as we go" deal.

 

Now THAT would be absolutely beautiful! this brings a new something to mind. Is there enought variation in sub biomes? Taiga would be perfect for tundra, without having to add a bloody jungle in the middle of your snow travels! even if its just a simple recolour of the lush biome, it would be a great starting point...![DOUBLEPOST=1431479879][/DOUBLEPOST]

Actually i mpretty curious if you can lock "types of monster parts" to each biome, since monsters are procedurally generated based on a batch of parts and mashed together, it would be awesome to see that kind of variety when exploring a volcanic planet, if they cant be locked... it would be hilarious to fight a lava mini boss (a big mob) in a tundra planet.

 

I think they're working towards making it so that the appropriate body parts are used in the appropriate types of planets. So that you won't fight a lava mini boss in a tundra planet. That would be amazing though.

 

Well, the latest blogpost noted how they're making the available color palettes for monsters more biome-specific, so icy planets would mostly contain white enemies, so I'm sure they can limit the available parts.

 

Now that sound sweet! hopefuly it ll be a reality soon enough.

 

Actually I take back the bit I said about the ores being in higher-level versions of lower-tier planets. You should goddamn have to dig through volcanic crust to get the good stuff. Ores on planets originating from below the current tier should not contain the top ores for said tier. At max, top-tier for the one below.