Quality and Quantity

With every update, it becomes more clear that there will be an insane number of armor, weapons and general items in the game, sometimes with very unique designs like the cactus club that was shown to us.

Now, I have some concerns with that, because there is a problem that many games have, that tried to squeeze that much variety into themselves.
With such a big pool of weaponry and armory, the danger is very big that they won't differ from each other that much, maybe just in a few numbers regarding their stats. What would be cool to see would be some unique effects, for example the cactus club could pierce enemies with needles that cause bleeding damage over time or this tree trunk hammer could stun enemies for some time...Things that make some items really stand out and not just "better" or "worse" by numbers than others.

But implementing such little detail when there is an insane number of items to begin with is often tossed aside, which worries me. In some games, even some armor pieces of different tiers had the exact same stats and only differed regarding their visual appearance.

Just a concern I wanted to throw out there.

 

Your right in someway, however the random generation part seems okay, i think it will be like the Guns in borderlands you know.. they are near infinite aswell

 

At least they are working on many projectile types that will give us a good variety of weapons.

 

Yeah that's right, hopefully the random generation brings out some interesting results, which I think it will. Regarding the unique items I hope for some creative ideas to make them really stand out.

 

Yeah, it would be a shame if they've made unique melee weapons differing only in stats like Terraria's swords.

 

You've made a good point, weapons will be thrown away at ease, but with different abilitie/powers will add so much detail. If one weapon is just 'better' than the other, there wont be anything special about combat.

 

Interesting.

 

The issue is that more content means more to do in a sandbox game.

If this were linear in any way shape or form, I'd understand - Halfway through Bioshock: Infinite they double the number of guns, and you specialize or die. Since it's linear, this hurts the gameplay a bit, albeit it was meant for flavor. In Starbound, this won't be the issue - More to make means more player uniqueness, more gameplay hours for those wanting to 100% (They'll exist!), and more choice of what to specialize in for those wanting to. This is kind of a silly issue - Since the game is largely about exploring new content, more content means more meat on the game's bones.

Tl;dr this is not an issue in the manner you're making it out to be, tone it down.

 

Has any of you guys played Loadout? I hope SB has same kind of variety.

 

I know what you mean. COD(which I hate) Has a lot more weapons than Unreal Tournament 3. but every Unreal tournament 3 weapon (about 9 I think) is completely unique and has an alternate fire, while cods weapons are basicly rhe aame guns with different stats.

 

I don't think the only-stats-are-different method is too bad.
Terraria made me very interested with every weapon I got, because of vanity and because of strength.

It would be nice to have a lot of different projectiles and status effects, though, and I think there will be. (you've seen how much their working on that)
I'm fairly positive it will be exciting with every new weapon you get, with all the work they're putting into weapons right now.

 

I dunno, I like the style and concept of the "acceleration" bullets (the ones that start slow then burst out).
I like em alright, but I think they are kinda gimmicky/useless. But yeah probably just a show. I have a feeling they are going to change that

 

I don't see the issue. Personally, I think the cactus club looks silly, but I might like the damage it does. If I find a big hammer with similar damage I'll just use that. Happy camper time.

 

I don't think quantity will be an issue. Having so much to do and collect will be so much fun so I won't think it will affect the quality of the game.

 

My issue with the guns in borderlands though is when you have a pool of random weapons, then some set tier pieces one of two things happens:

1. The tier/unique pieces are better in some way that more or less prevents you from wanting to use any of the random stuff. The generated weapons at that point become all vendor trash.

or

2. The generated items are superior to the tier/unique pieces to the point that they are overshadowed and rarely used. They become vanity gear and nothing more. And if they have any unique effects, they become irrelevant since they'd never be used.

Having this type of system in place begs for them to pay VERY close attention to balance, and i hope this is not something they are going to ignore.

 

I'm not worried about this anymore. I was, for a bit, but they're adding enough status elements and projectile types that I think it would be less about me finding weapons too similar, but rather: me looking for the perfect gun or melee weapon. I always liked small cosmetic differences for weapons, but not many games ever did that without being a game built for creating content with an editor.

Not sure if you ever saw one of Tiy's streams, but one gun was something like an orbital bombardment gun, strictly made with a script. I'm sure with how easy it is to make unique weapons in this game, there will be some that aren't useless depending on what level of gear you have.

 

I think they're meant to be "rocket" bullets. They actually existed and were made to be fired in space and underwater, as well as pierce armor... but when fired point-blank at a person it'd just bounce right off their chest because the velocity that they left the gun at was so low, they had to spend some time in the air before they hit a decent speed and could cause some damage. Seeing them in the game made me smile

I'm hoping for some good variety as well, and variety that makes sense. For instance, I'd want to see these "rocket bullets" cause more damage to far away targets and almost none to targets that are nearby. For weapons or mobs firing the "sonic wave" attack I'd like to see them receive more damage the closer they are to the weapon/mouth and less damage the further they get hit by the wave. I'd definitely like to see weapons that cause some stun, knockback, bleed, or whatever other status effects there are... my main concern is that ALL weapon types will be able to cause these random status effects... I'd be awkward to see a sword that caused stun for no reason whatsoever or a hammer that magically caused bleeding.

 

I'm gonna raise hell if they remove those. The bullets that started slow, then splitted, then bounced off the walls and exploded were too awsome.

 

I can see your point when it comes to weapons. I hope there aren't a slew of guns with identical dynamics. PvP would get too predictable if folks had a notion of a single 'best' gun. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to be the case (from we've seen so far in streams) that Chucklefish is going to skimp on weapon stat variety, especially not in the guns department.

But I'll be glad to see some different armor sets at a similar stat tier. Without some range of cosmetic armor alternates, it can feel limiting to have to choose between looks and stats. Especially if you always choose stats, and end up like we did in vanilla WoW: a gaudy hodgepodge of colors that didn't suit your war-hardened orc. Good thing there's transmogrification now. And good thing Starbound's got modding, so I can have as much armor recoloring as I like.