Promoting Exploration and Planet Variety

I want to start things off by saying that I like the game, and the direction it is going in. That being said, I think that some things should be done to promote exploration.

Right now, planets are very similar to each other. While there are some graphical differences between them, and some hazard differences between them, by and large you find the same sorts of things on each. Enemies tend to behave similarly, the ore compositions are the same, most dealers tend to be similar (notable exception being gun salesmen), etc etc.

I think that the easiest way to promote exploration would be to differentiate the planets a bit more, and give strong reasons for visiting different places. Considering this is (primarily) a building/crafting/exploration game, I would suggest making certain things more common on some planets, and some things more common on others.

For example,

Some rare minerals might be more common on moons, whereas others might be more common in forest biomes. Some monsters might be capable of dropping hard plates, whereas other planets might not have any monsters that drop them. Some planets might be rich in minerals, while others might have colonies on them from other races, monsters that drop better stuff, etc etc.

In this way, traveling from one planet to another is encouraged. If you want 'x,' you can search around for a planet that has 'x.' Right now, you can mostly find whatever you want on whatever planet you go to. While there are a few exceptions to this (techs, guns,) that should be the norm, rather than the exception.

 

Totally.
The game should be about variety, not so much going up levels.

 

I think this will get better as times goes on. Currently there isn't that much content created, but by the time the game comes out I would imagine there will be immense amount of things to find on each planet.

 

With that said, I also believe we should just get rid off coordionates. People just use them to go to the easiest planets with loot. It ruins the entire point of the game, AKA exploration.

 

I have to agree. Hopefully the devs have been thinking about this.

Coal could be the universal ore in the ground while every other planet can have a varying ore composition some might even lack one rare other entirely while another may be loaded with the stuff.

I also think some planets really need to be so inhospitable that they require a space suit as well.

On what other players do, you can't really control that, and I kind of like the sharing of coordinates. Right now I'm hopping planet to planet randomly but it would be cool to have these places as well as get predesigned planets in the game with special secrets.

 

So the explorers who discovered new lands just kept the discoveries to themselves?

 

i think certain planet types have different ore % some may be rich in iron while some may have none also i think when u go to a new sector the ore % goes up and so dose the size/amount of towns and facility's/difficulty

also i think they mentioned in the "whats to expect in future updates" was something about eventually trying to encourage cave exploration and discourage just simply digging down or strip mining. think that should be soon

 

That's what screenshots are for. And yes, the entire point of the game is exploring randomly generated planets and the excitement of finding randomly generated loot.

The majority of the people who post coords just post ones that give easy loot.

 

If you don't like coordinates don't use them. It is very simple.

I like the idea of variety. I did feel as if I was visiting the same planets over and over again. More variety would be great.

 

But part of the fun of exploration is finding cool things and being able to share them with folks.

Folks being able to get all the easy stuff is a minor side effect of coordinates, and navigation shouldn't be changed to prevent that temptation. Especially since coordinates are the only way to keep a record of where you've been in this game, what with the lack of navigational logs or bookmarks.

 

If you don't like coordinates don't use them. It is very simple. +1
Anyway, there's been quite a lot of discussion about optional universe seeds and I hope the devs use them to fix this problem with competitive gaming and people that want unique experiences. But coordinate sharing was an intended feature by the devs.

 

I like the coordinates but I think chests should always be random, that way the "Great & Awesome Boom Stick!" can't be found every time on a particular planet.