So I just "Finished" the game, and im worried about its core mechanics

Well, you've finally completed your thought with this post, something you could have done in the last post to save me some trouble.

1. It's a question of how things are unlocked

In a game of progression, everything follows a natural order. You can't expect to defeat the last boss without going through his minions. In a game that claims to be a sandbox adventure game, you have to figure out how to smoothly integrate two highly opposing methods. Sandbox is defined by unrestricted freedom while Adventure is defined by progression which is defined by a gradual system of unlocks.

2. I want to be able to choose the order of unlocks

Sorry, adventure games don't work that way. Starbound's sandbox is defined by the fact that you can build anything or go anywhere, anytime you want. There's total freedom there. Starbound's adventure aspect is defined by the system of unlocks we currently have. Let's take a random adventure game. In the beginning, you only have access to weak gear. You don't have access to stronger gear because the merchant carrying that gear is located further in the game. You don't get to choose what armor you get until you've proven that you deserve it by progressing further into the game.

Your issue isn't in the "railroading" of unlocks, but rather that the game is telling you what you're allowed to do and what you aren't. In the end, there's only one core question for you. What is your vision of the perfect starbound experience that is able to combine both sandbox and progression mechanics? I think the current system does that well, for now.

 

May I kindly ask what that even means?

I largely agree with your post (Except for the "This is terraria 2" bit) but given that it is phase 1 beta and it's nowhere near feature complete and since no mention of starting stage 2 has been made by the devs I don't think the rant needs to be quite so rude sounding.

 

If you feel like op there is a promising mod, even in an early stage, it changes ALOT esp the cores, nope i wont link to it

 

I love the game but my only complaint is how tough it is to find the planets other people are on in the server. There are so many planets it is tough to figure out where to go if I want to play with others. Then if I am on a planet with people I have no idea where they are so it is tough to meet up with them. Maybe some colored dots in around the edging of the screen which show which direction others are?

 

So you want each and every new character you make to have different experiences? In order for the game to be balanced I don't really see any way to go about that other than...planets. I mean there are calls for more horizontally aligned gear, like the snow gear for being warm on ice planets and more diversified planets, which sure, yeah, but there has to be a sense of progression somewhere or the game stagnates.

 

It still sounds fairly linear. Not to mention that you're not necessarily compelled to find the tools to explore X planet, when Y planet is just as good, and you don't need any new gear. I don't really see how that kind of progression is possible in an infinitely random universe, unless the random part is perverted into something else. If environmental hazards really aren't that significant at this time, I agree, they could be improved. But a tier needs an endpoint, be it the best armor available, or a certain array of equipment that would still be what you end with every time. Unless you're saying that WHAT exactly becomes an obstacle varies with each play through? Like, one person may need to invest in winter armor at tier 3, while another has to make an oxygen tank for a vacuum planet at the same tier.

 

Only because it hasn't been said a million times already, this is the EARLIEST of the stages of beta, and almost everything is missing - it's bare bones. What you are getting out of the tier progression system is what the bosses are, and how to spawn them. You aren't getting all the side content that comes with it. You aren't getting all of the locks that will likely come with the MANY equally-infinite quests that will come later. You are just getting a bare-bones system of it, and are commenting on not liking having to kill a boss to progress to next tier. They've already talked about the sectors not being infinite in each, instead requiring exploration to go further and suddenly being in beta instead of alpha (but still infinite past Sector X), and then bosses will give you the ability to largely jump over planets and fill more fuel etc instead of having to stop every couple of galaxies. Ship upgrades and the likes beyond the simple "gain access to Sector ABC" and dungeons with secrets to drive the exploration to give you certain benefits.

The purpose of phase 1 is not to test the content of the game, but to test the mechanics. Jumping, attacking, fighting bosses and monster (and their attacks and AI), crafting, playing/writing songs, building pathing, buying from npcs, aggroing village guards, the random weapon generation, using fuel, generating planets, multiplayer, accepting/doing/completing quests. This is just for the mechanics, and they're slowly adding in side mechanics stuff (capturing and fighting with pets); but this is not the time to complain that the content to play is too limited and too straight-forward, and that there's not enough to explore, and what you do explore is so cookie cutter as grab flavor-of-the-day ore and avoid one-shot monster to get flavor-of-the-day armor and cheese flavor-of-the-month boss simply to repeat it again after - there absolutely will be more with that, but that's all the content, not the mechanics. I hope you understand that you can't have a game where you shoot stuff without it first letting you shoot a gun and have the aim/hitbox/knockback/damage/ammo etc system in place; you can't have an rpg where you can't first manage hp and xp, and attack a monster, before you can have random encounters and hidden gear and various locations to grind levels and places to change classes or learn new skills outside of levelling up, and hidden party members and all of the fun side-content of an RPG. If you played it before completion, you would have scripted boss battles and a straight run from town A to boss A, town B to boss B, until the game is over - no reason to do anything.

I know they refer to this as a beta, but many people have been desensitized by what a beta is, as companies simply use it nowadays to refer to a game that is largely finished but lacking in the stuff players want but isn't relevant to the game (marketplace, fancy extra character classes, endgame content), as a greedy grab for players money and equally lowering their expectations so they don't complain so much about it missing said auction-house or there's only one mage class. But this game, at least at this stage, is a lot closer to an alpha - there are bugs everywhere, at times the game doesn't even work, there's no optimization, the game mechanics are still being worked on, and the developers are relying heavily on the testers to give feedback on where all the bugs are and what stuff isn't working as intended so they can move past it and start building on the foundation. The content is as good as ready to implement, but if you build a skyscraper on wet foundation, it's going to collapse very easily and you'll never know what the true fault was, or at least it will take a long time to figure out that the foundation wasn't sturdy enough yet. This early-beta is too close to alpha, and alpha means it's just the core mechanics - no fluff. Except we have fluff: the pokemon system - but only because we need to test capturing and releasing monsters, and having them as allies to fight in combat and their whole AI...

The fact you claimed to be finished just shows you haven't looked around to see what other planets there are, or what you can build, or trying out the various foods, or built your own village (or villages on a variety of planets), or took to the whole terraforming idea. If you really don't like the direction a concept is going when it has almost no direction to it at all at this point, when it's just a platform and a genre, then you obviously dislike either said platform or genre - so you don't like games that have a progression system where you fight bosses to proceed (um... all of them?)? Or perhaps you don't like games that give you the option to do a bunch of stuff but requiring you to do none unless you want the rewards for doing so, but still giving you a nearly limitless amount of content to play with already?

 

It makes no sense to make steel titanium and durasteel equal >_>

 

And you don't have to go to tier 2. There is almost nothing you can do in tier 2 that you can't do in Tier 1. A few bosses later, you can get a grapple hook and better bandages, and as you said, the game still plays out the same. The only reason for progression and a ceiling at all is to mark some form of progression at all. You gain access to some better stuff, fancier stuff. But the armor holds the same purpose on-tier. You gain new looks of armor that you can wear, and the stats go up to feel like something has changed. What has really changed is the amount of content at your immediate fingertips, that you can just jump to. You have the option of obtaining flying techs, and mechs, and stronger blocks, and new metals to decorate your villages. Some people think about building a base, but you do realize you can build and maintain entire villages and cities across galaxies, and get NPCs to live there, and each player has different ideas of how they're progressing and when they want to push past that boss to find new stuff without having to roam the universe for days until finally finding that one in a million alpha planet with something you wanted, when you have a better chance of finding it in beta or gamma.

As far as combat goes, yes, all the armors go up and up from tier to tier, but only because there's more than that. And again, it IS bare-bones. There's currently one warm armor, with defense too low to be considered useful at later tiers. However, asteroids floating about a planet are INCREDIBLY cold, and there are means to try to keep warm up there. Your collection of armors go up, and their defenses rise to to meet new challenges, and there are options for which armor you pick - for example, i prefer my floran racial armor for tier over the metal variant, simply because of the racial benefit to energy. I love finding clothes vendors and getting new outfits to go with it. In a sense, I'm wearing a wizard hat with a purple merchant shirt and avian pants that give me a semi-flowered space hobo starwizard captain appearance, in armor that gives me good energy to easily use my morphball and rocket launcher. Is everyone else on my tier wearing and using the exact same thing? Am I at some perceived disadvantage because I've formed my own ranged armorset that allows me to prevent monsters from getting close while maximizing my rocket launcher "ammo"? I could take the high-defense metal armor, but that's intended for melee. I'm not making the game unnecessarily hard either by refusing to take the metal armor. It has a different purpose than what I need, and yet somehow I'm still on-tier with my armor, to be able to explore high-level Sector X planets. You've put a limit on yourself, and closed your eyes and mind to what's around you, and complain that you have a lack of content and stimuli, but look around at what is there. Before we get all of the fancy stuff, you DO still have options.

You can't really think quests are infinitely done as soon as you get the one for the distress beacon, do you? Did you even check the quest log? "Failed quests" - it's possible to gain so many quest with conditions to succeed AND fail, and there will be plenty more to do. I can see defending villages from attackers or timed runs through those Apex facilities. I can imagine quests relating to the terraforming functions, both in teaching you how to do it, and to prevent the destruction of a planet (I've come across volcanic and tentacle, I can imagine how those would be perceived as destroying what life was there). And then there's Bosses and Minibosses - just because they're so straightforward now doesn't mean they plan on keeping them that simple. Do you even know how the robot, dragon, or slime even fit in story-wise? That dragon makes almost no sense, and why would you build a robot just to destroy it and take a processor you clearly already possessed to build it, just to make an upgrade to access gamma tier? The UFO's distress beacon makes sense by you being stranded with no fuel to get off, that was introduced to you. In doing so, you learn that there's more out there than your little ship and your tiny planet you were stranded on. It helps fuel finding what more is out there, but we don't have all of the quests that come with it just yet. That's just ONE feature that hasn't been fully implemented but is already in the beta in order to test how it works and making sure it works - the mechanic of it. When there is a variety of quests to both lead you and give you guidance in stuff you can do to explore, then come back and complain about its direction - when you're actually being POINTED in one. With your eyes closed, of course you can't see where it's going; you haven't looked around at what there is around you.

 

(Only reason I didn't edit this in is in case you're already replying and would end up missing this addition as an edit)
I've spent my time as a space hobo in alpha sector on my original planet from Day 1 of beta, and I've grown a facility of my own to rival dungeons, with tons of NPCs to call it home; I've written songs and translated songs to ABC; I've made mods and found what more I can do with the game (the game is easily moddable on purpose!) and what space hobo Kio can find in the black stillness of space. I've played with home designs using techs to move around. I've made games of challenges using the grapple hook to launch yourself through the air while avoiding a pit of lava below. I've decorated and redecorated and redecorated my ship some more. I've gone out and collected the side armors and costumes, and set up a bit of a gallery in my base, up near my "research facility" where I have Avian an Apex doctors around desks and ship lights and cloning tanks and a variety of other science lab materials and decorations. I've got metals in all shapes of decorations and wall panels and colored rooms and NPCs who "live together" as a couple, like a dollhouse. I've got a "zoo" for the miniboss and NPCs with benches and fences to make it look like a place to take the family. I've got so much drive to keep playing past sector X because of the sandbox elements to it.

 

That would never work, stop being ridiculous, it is impossible to do something like that and would completely imbalance the game.

 

I wasn't aware everyone gets the same degree or diploma, or that everyone gets the same education between schools, or that you always find double jump first (7 techs now, no double jump... maybe I'm playing the game wrong by finding morphball and gravity bubble and energy dash and human mech in that order). I never knew which tech I was going to find, just that there is a tier to techs to find a variety of stuff each tier. I know that everyone needs to take math, science, social studies, and english around here, but there are choices on physics or chemistry or earth sciences; calculus or statistics; american history, government, women's studies, civil studies; shakespearian literature, monsters & fantasy, english lit, journalism & writing; home ec or phys ed or AP classes or taking extra curriculars like Band, which made high school more about that than the actual classes. I wasn't aware every teacher taught the same and you had to know the exact same stuff to pass, just that there's a guidelines for how much of the overall stuff you should know in order to proceed, and even if you didn't, you could make it up in summer school if you really needed to; I was pretty sure that the numbers were just a tier progression for what overall level of education was available to you after you proved you knew what you knew. I was also not aware that I had to take 3rd, 4th grade, 5th, or 6th grades and had the option to skip it. Of course I didn't because I wanted to socialize and seem relatively normal. Guess everyone gets that option though because everyone has the exact same school education and progression in the same way. You really do have your eyes closed to what's around you... This is almost funny at this point that you have limited yourself to such a narrow perspective of what things are available to do and what the definition of progress is... I feel bad for saying that, but this truly is funny now; I feel sorry for you. I don't mean to come off like a b**** or a troll, so I'll let you rave that you don't like its direction, but it really is your own fault. There is almost no direction at all right now, and we've only seen the tip of the iceberg. I hope you start seeing what's around you, truly I do. Cheers... I guess? =)

 

Mandatory? I had to take a total of 26 credits for graduation, and had a total of 38 on getting my advanced honors diploma. My course book had a total of 8 different secondary languages, about 50 elective courses, and only required "4 years of english, 3 years of science, 3 years of math, and 3 years of social studies", but had about 300 different courses among those core classes to take. Everyone had the same mandatory classes? You're doing it again, that limited view. We had three different "labs" for free study. We'd talk to our counselor and present a course of study we wanted that wasn't offered by the school. The counselor would get a team of teachers and moderators to pool ways to measure progress and were given the free time to study in the library or on the computers with weekly tests and essays and the likes to be turned in to show we're learning. (let's compare that to modding)

I may have been given more "free will" than you and I most certainly took advantage of it, but nothing was mandatory about it besides the simple need for having to meet goals. Maybe you're just not taking advantage of what IS there... Compare to the game, and you've got "defeat the boss" ("pass your finals"), "go up a tier" ("gain more responsibility and classes get harder"), and "do what you want with the planets until it's time to move up again" ("pick your classes you want, what you want to study, until it's time for the next finals"). My argument is that the option of doing what you want is there. If you want to boil it down to 1st Grade, 2nd Grade, 3rd Grade, that's on you. If you want to realize that there already is an enormous amount of stuff to do between fighting the bosses, and that players do not have the exact same experience as one another (but potentially could with themselves if they choose to do everything the same without trying out new things)... well.