Am I valid? I am a hardcore voxel game fan who doesn't hesitate to state that I probably spent at least 2k hours on minecraft, and 0.2k hours on terraria. I have several experiences with running the servers for these games as well, and know a lot of inherent issues that these games just have in nature. We probably all feel the STRONG sense of potential in this game - and I want to try and point them out, along with some solutions I have in this game. Afterall, we all want better games, don't we? Settling down in a planet isn't easy. There are a lot of game mechanical issues around it that strongly discourage people to have an actual home to reside in, rather have nomadic life, with only their ship decorated to exhibit their creativity. 1. To begin with: There's some issues with travelling. Eventually, Planets around home will be stripped of resources which means you wouldn't be able to travel as much. Yes, It will going to take a long time, but in a while it sure would. Ofc, you can always visit other servers to try and scavange from there, but there's an another issue here : Then what does people from THAT OTHER SERVER use to travel with? Or maybe you could just get a temporary server which resets regularly in order to constantly replenish resources... but is this really the way devs want it to be? This would make the game quite tedious nevertheless make the game feel incomplete. In general, we all realize that fuel will run out, which discourages the whole idea of settling down in a place. Solution 1 : "Jump Beacon" A planet with a jump beacon will have significantly reduced amount of fuel requirement, especially long distant jumps. This can be implemented in several different ways. a) Preferably, you should be able to craft this item (in later tiers) to set in a planet that you wish to visit often. To prevent griefing, jump beacons are best if they are player-specific, in for example, form of navigation map that you add onto ship's computer, just like you would add on blueprints to players which are player-specific. b) Or else, setting a planet as "home" immediately makes a have innate jump beacons instead of crafting one. c) Or, you could just make long distance jumps to cost less than short jumps relatively in a curve shape, to encourage people to spread out. This means that each one person isn't restricted to areas around starting planet. This is very important fundamental aspect of voxel games that seems to repeatedly happen, and I recognize them as one of the inherent flaws of voxel games. I will be covering them later in this article. Solution 2 : "Renewable Energy Source" Simple. Fossil fuels will always eventually run out. We all know this. It would be wise to implement some sort of power generator, or a biofuel to allow constant travelling even as the world gets really old - Afterall, travelling different planets IS one of the main contents of the game! This also means that players are encouraged to build bases which will in turn reward them with renewably generated stuff, when they sit around a planet trying to cultivate the land. To sum up: a) Biofuels. Crops which will convert to fuel. Encourages Farming & settling in a planet and stay around. b) Solar panels. Charges in clear daylight. Biome-relative generation, Cold planets will generate slower, arid/deserts faster. Encourages Farming & settling in a planet and stay around. c) Wind mills. Charges in relation to altitude. Higher the better. Best in cold. Good along large water bodies (in real life, temperature difference between water and continent are one of big causes of winds). Encourages Farming & settling in a planet and stay around. Somethings to note to counter the counter-arguments: a) I DO realize that resources are MEANT to run out in this game. My point is, if resources around a single planet which you decide to settle are meant to run out, especially when that includes fuel which is vital in the core gameplay mechanic, it discourages people from staying around. b) I have also read some of the new threads after the patch today, and realized how developers have been maimed with removing wood as fuel. However, I personally think that this is right step towards good game. With over 50 hours of gameplay before patch (yes, my univ christmas hols just began and I have a lot of time), I constantly find myself not willing to go to any planets other than Forests and jungle <- Because there's where I don't have to stay around. Funny thing to say, this was actually discouraging exploration, contrary to popular argument supporting wood as fuel. Also, if people are rewarded for simple and rapid surface explorations only, this will quickly deprive planets out of useful resources - which isn't really desirable; will be covered together later on. My point is, to reward people to sit around and settle in one planet ESPECIALLY AS LATE GAME CONTENT, and PRECISELY NOT to have a cheap way of travelling. 2. Not enough reasons to settle down. This is just a minor pointing out, as I do realize this is beta and content updates will be focused on second stage of beta. But to note, A lot of us want to settle down in a planet. Maybe its in a human nature to look for a place called home. Minecraft encourages this by rewarding players with reliable food source and safer zone (especially at night), let alone granting players chance to burst out their creativity. (Since we are talking about minecraft, I want to point out that in minecraft, torches are renewable, as lighting up is the core gameplay mechanic. Fuels should be to some degree too). Terraria did this by merchants instead of food source, which worked great - In terms of balancing out rewards for making towns and exploring/mining, I think Terraria is a great model to think with, especially when devs involve having experiences in development of Terraria. I recall from the previews that we will be provided with some great planet-scale terraforming ways, so I actually don't quite worry about customization, but please, it would be nice to see some rewards in doing so along the way. Currently, only the renewable resources it seems is pixels and crops and some mob drops : Merchants need so much re-work. This will be covered later as well. One of the most clear reasons for settling down is farming. Or really? abundance of alien meat means you never have to farm anything, nor trade with crop merchants/chefs (why do they even exist). This is especially true when you are never going to stick around in one place to farm decent crops. Due to constant nomadic nature the game is forcing the players to be into due to limited resources, building stuff on places other than ship or farming is only a liablity. Like mongols living in Ghers, you always pack light, and only the stuff you definitely need. This is so much dicouraging for a lot of players, especially those who wished to stick around in a planet and cultivate, or those who likes to take one step further and make something that isn't really practical but is aesthetically amazing. If you are ever going to have players to be engaged in farming, such a rich content already there which no one is interested, you will definitely need to nerf down the alien meat, or have some sort of benefit for eating something other than alien meat. Yes, this isn't Don't Starve. But are you really going to let farming the way it is? This is especially true when you are spawned with a full belly after your death. Maybe a half-full belly and it would definitely cause increase in food consumption, giving the players the need of some sort of reliable food source. 3. No double check on "Set as Home" button? How about a list? If you haven't pre-recorded your co-ordinates somewhere, one single misclick could easily lead you to a disaster. You are now stuck in a practically infinite stretches of space where several tens of hours of work now sleeps somewhere, which you will seriously take a long, long time to figure out where it was, if you ever will. A simple double check button once home is set would suffice to solve this problem. A list of favourite planets which you can manage with would be an overkill, especially with conjugation with jump beacons. This also allows players to jump to their friends' planet quite easily, allowing people to show off their masterpieces. And in terms of game-design perspective, this is always a great idea. Not to mention this also encourage people to stay around a planet and make home! Although yes, inviting and beaming to friends' ship works too, but its never the same to visit and surprise your friends and to be asked to come over. 4. Planet lockdown complete. As an anti-grief mechanism, would be nice if you were able to lock down a planet to prevent uninvited guests to enter. Very lore friendly - Item name could be "Warp Beam Distrupter". Pretty much self-explainatory. This is potentially very disturbing and also might work as a grief mechanism instead. This should be restricted to one planet per player, along with other restrictions to further space them out for travellers. Note that this shouldn't be implemented if long-distance travel won't be implemented, as it will definitely put off any new players. Restriction examples may be: can't be more than one in a single planetary/solar system, can't be if there isn't 2 other planets near by which would supply people with resources (not locked), et cetra. Unless, you are allowed to form some sort of lasting guild/company/clan that may lock down a whole solar system, but obviously thats entirely different thread topic which I am not really interested at the moment. This should never be allowed to happen if target planet resides within 700 units of fuel distance from starting planet. This coincides with spreading out issue that will be explained later. The item will have to be incredibly resource intensive, Should never be allowed to recover - To prevent moving of the item from planet to planet to simply exhibit monopoly over planets' resources. Only allowed to set in a home planet. Although this is extremely prone to abuse, the rewards are also extremely poweful. The simple idea of having a private space for your own and some guests that you whitelist will definitely encourage players to erect great wonders, in both ways that is. Obviously this suggestion isn't a must. Griefing might be an issue, but this is more or less community orientated problem than the game-wise. However, it will definitely increase the number of public servers for people to play in, at least. 5. Renaming the planet YES PLEASE. I want a planet called Aiur. En Taro Tassadar. 6. Mr Lonely - Why let this happen? Current npcs are pretty much pointless. Yes, this is beta. Docs sell bandage for 100 pixels. No one's going to buy them. You find yourself packing around 200 bandages in any given moment. Currently, they are the most reliable way to heal from, and are very cheap to make once you land onto jungles or Forest with plant fibre trees. 25~50 pixels and I will think about it. Yes, Red stimpacks are OP, but 400 pixels? Nah, I will just use bandages. I want to save up for in case I see an avian flying ship, the currently only source of guns, which make the quartermaster there priceless. Maybe, docs should be allowed to perform surgeries. You have to provide them with a surgical table. Instant heal after few seconds for a price? How about blacksmiths? Give them some anvils and they will fix your pickaxe for some pixels. Have chefs actually cook for you from the stuff you put into the kitchen cabinet that you provided them with. Not only they will do the dirty work for you, they will also provide additional bonuses, and they will occasionally cook the stuff you don't have the blueprint for. You can't possibly provide enough space for all these npcs on ship, so it is logical to build a base in some place. That is, after issue of travelling is solved, or else no one is going to build any base, it is simply too expensive to manage. The same reason Romans were eventually led to their fall. Finally, I want to go back to spacing players out and importance of starting planets in these kinds of games. Few hours ago, just minutes from the new patch when my friend just opened a public server for a gaming community with strangers, The beginning planet quickly became a mess. I was just two hours late, but there were no wood left for basic tools, let alone metal ores. No coal, neither. I had to go to single player world to gather quick resources, which felt rather bad, for not exactly fully being able to immerse into the vast universe that the game is providing. Yes, this isn't minecraft. You aren't really stuck to world specific resources that you can't bring from other worlds. I believe it still matters. Don't you love the idea of being stranded in a middle of nowhere with no tools but your matter manipulator, trying to live off the lands with your friends to watch your back? Different groups of friends are there, you see, each playing around in different parties. Since fuel is limited, no-one want to go to any place further than they have to. Eventually, Good resource veins in planets becomes scarse. This bars off new comers, who aren't willing to or unable to set up servers on their own but still wants to play with their friends / or be part of the communities. The long-running minecraft servers that well-known players play, such as minecrack, all do realize this problem, and they decided for themselves to keep the starting place as intact as possible. Coincidance? I don't think so. From the design perspective, Starbound doesn't have to be this way. You have a game with a vast universe, and that universe is being wasted right now. To some degree, uncontrolled settling will further enhance the problem. However, well-designed settling game mechanics that rewards players with renewable resources in a spaced out fashion will offer players with even gaming experience for different times they are joining in, even in long-running servers. Not to mention, it is very important to design the game that is long-run server friendly, that is probably one of the reasons minecraft has such a passionate community and people loves to build in the game. If server has to restart every so often just because starting area is ruined and new comers aren't really fully joining in, it discourages players to build something big and amazing as they don't like the idea of losing what they put so much effort in. Allowing Long range jumps will make players to spread out evenly with people who they want to be with, so that they don't have to be competing in such a harsh environment, instead, coorperate! After all, the universe is infinite, and resources are everywhere, why make the gamers fight over it by making them crowded in tight space by fuel? I am willing to perform scientific observation on myself regarding prolonged exposure to Starbound. Please, let us all benefit.
Oops, if any of the OPs are watching this can you please move this to game mechanic subforum or where ever it belongs? if it matters ;S
I agree with most of this. You mention having a means of traveling to your home planet be lower cost. I agree though to be honest I think this should be implemented with some kind of instant teleport / travel system. For example you could have a teleporter pad item. Each teleporter would have a unique serial number and be able to be linked to two other serial numbers, allowing you to create a network of teleporters across space. I think they should be found as rare loot or via quests, or some other limiting factor so you don't just use them for everything. I say this because without insta travel to home, I think it winds up being a bit of a disincentive to really have a base for anything past creative purposes. While I would build a base anyway, I think its far more fulfilling and fun to have it also be a practical or even necessary part of gameplay.
