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

Starbound in it's current form does not encourage exploration until you've reached the end... at all. As long as everything new is locked behind the bosses, people will feel forced to do them before exploring. Also I don't think that it gives any feeling of accomplishment or progression, except maybe from tier 9 to tier 10, all other tiers are just carbon copy repeats and that is were the big problem lies for me... Besides the rock linear "progression" path.
Also, if the focus isn't on sandbox elements... starbound is going to be one short game, considering that it's apperantly possible to go from tier 1 to tier 10 in a few hours... if what some people are saying is to be belived that is.
Lastly, it's advertised as a "Story in a sandbox" not "A story with some sandbox elements", so yeah, according to the advertisment we are correct in expecting a sandbox game.

 

id like to be able to temper some gear maybe raise it's stats to some sorta cap maybe have character levels for certain weapons like lets say you got level 30 for spears you can use a new attack which lowers your energy alot i dunno .. and if they're going to upgrade the manipulator id prefer for it to not be able to break things from afar rather just have like a pulse laser effect thingy in the direction you point it but make the distance go as far as a pick/axe can go or as far as you have the cursor with the pickaxe length being max.. id like to have actual levels as it would for me i guess increase the length of the game maybe just don't make what the levels give you be a major thing i don't know... also add a claw weapon >;-0 i want claws cause claws are kewl or cestus just like fist weapons :-0

 

Progression should not be about bigger numbers and different coloured ores.

The way I see it progression is a way to increase difficulty and gameplay complexicity in a controlled manner in a sandbox environment.

 

So, you've completely missed/ignored the idea of turning the various armors into power-equal sidegrades huh? 'Cause that was a pretty big part of the idea I was arguing for.

 

Tiy said this is only a placeholder system, i hope this will stop this pointless discussion but i understand your concerns but its alredy been adressed so no need for this.

we know too little to say that much yet.

 

THERE'S a freaking good suggestion at your complaint, OP. They said they were aiming for mega-man style. If sectors of space were known to have core minerals + special metals, and you went from the omega sector (in the center roughly) to the outlier sectors just to get the special techs found randomly in those sectors, as well as the metals (used to fight the bosses in the sector) to obtain some special part etc, and pick up various bonuses available from each sector, then you could have a free-roaming adventure game. Every boss defeated increases the game's difficulty tier immediately, and all monsters, new weapons found, and new crafted armors are adjusted to the tier. Copper would always be below-tier armor, due to abundancy. Silver and gold would increase in ability and defense, better matching on-tier. All of the better rocks would be "guarded" by a boss, and until the proper boss has been defeated, that metal simply does not spawn in the dirt/rock/etc it normally would (or rather, it has a blank appearance, the items have no sprite, it cannot be picked up, and instantly despawns - this prevents going back to areas mined out and it suddenly showing up in the air).

Each race could have home sectors, with higher chances to run into those race's settlements in that sector, as well as the bosses being better themed to that sector. There could still be generic bosses, found in the omega sector, and Sector X - a sector available "inside a black hole" or the likes. The X sector would not tier-scale, but have a variety of difficulties, so you always take the risk of finding deadly places there until you get to the point where you've beaten all of the bosses in all of the sectors, and you have the best tier of armors, and you have top-grade metal armors for defense, or you've picked up the best of your racial armors (with each essentially being matched in defense, but higher tiers of the armor providing a better form of the bonus - longer/slower glide for avians, more energy regen in the sun for florans, faster run / higher jump for apex)

This WOULD require a bit of a rework, but they already want to rework the sectors as it is. Bosses, we all can nearly agree need some work.

And OP, while I spent a few days arguing against the complaint, it's mostly because of wording and lack of real suggestion or trying to find a way to fix it. I don't think there's anything wrong with railroading, for one; I also don't think the full version of bosses and how all of it goes are much of an issue anyways, as there will be random before and after each, for two; and I still am adamant about this being too early to judge the game. But after taking a few days from this thread and reading new posts and getting a fresher perspective on this thread, it hit me that this is a closer solution to what you (and people who are agreeing with you) are wanting, while also VERY easily pleasing the people defending the "railroading" concept this is (not).

I think, boys and girls, we should stop arguing over whether this is or isn't railroading or how bad it is, and instead start looking at suggestions to make the boss/sector/locking system better (and possibly start spreading this idea so that it catches the devs' attention)

Edit - Some things I'd like to point out in that concept:
1 - NEW weapons found and NEW armors crafted are higher tier. The ones you have stay at their power levels, so that there is still reason to explore, even if to go out and find more copper to make weak copper armor to be weakly suited for the tier. Yes, you could just hoard up on high-grade materials, but that would take about the same amount of time or require enough work done to even find them, so you're late enough in the game to skip copper, silver, and even gold if you REALLY wanted to... Not to mention every new tier would require 67 more of that metal's bars, so you'd burn through hundred of them pretty quickly. Same with weapons, you'd need to find new chests or buy new from merchants. Prevents hoarding and means every planet has the potential to be useful for you.
2 - The game keeps a constant challenge grade so that "increased tiers" essentially means that the game gets a little harder but can more-or-less be relatively easy. When you land on a planet, the current tier is the tier for the planet, so if you want higher grade stuff or the new things you can find, you must visit new planets. Weak below-tier planets would still exist, in the form of the ones you've been to earlier. The infinite of space would make it impossible to under-level all planets of a sector that is intended to be higher, so you can still find the events that would trigger the quests to push you toward fighting a boss, keeping balance. Also means you can't come back to a planet you came to earlier and find higher-tier metals that wouldn't have been there the first time, falsely giving the notion that you could've landed there earlier and found them with enough diligence; don't want hopes to be needlessly raised.

 

So basically...you don't want tiers, but everything to be numerically equal.
I don't entirely agree with that notion, since it walks all over a good number of incentives to explore and improve.
If that's the game you want to play, you would be better served playing something like Garry's Mod rather than trying to convince the developers to conform to your specific tastes.

 

As for the "story in a sandbox" statement, not completely true. For a person who found out about this game through this site, there is mention of a sandbox world. For all new players who learned about the game through steam, there is not a single mention of a sandbox experience on the store page. In the end, you play the game the way the developer intended it to be played, but you're free to believe what you want about the game. For me, it's nothing more than a story/adventure with sandbox elements, as evident in my playing experience.

It's rude and impolite to accuse a person of being ignorant of an argument you never presented in the course of a specific debate. Let's say that T10 gear is reduced into a T1 variation. T3-T10 planets just became off-limits because now there's no gear strong enough to adequately protect you from those powerful beasts.

Let's be honest. Starbound us advertised as a game of discovery, exploration, and survival. If it was just a discovery and exploration game, it becomes another generic minecraft clone, which is essentially just a building game in all honesty. There's even a creative mode where you get a huge amount of every resource. However, the game also advertises itself as being a survival game. When you throw in the fact that there are 10 planet tiers spread across 5 sector tiers, you get the feeling that each higher numbered planet represents increasing danger. So, based off that key selling point, I would be displeased if T1-T10 gear was reduced to a T1 variation. The one thing I could agree on, is if the powercreep curve was reduced to a linear, rather than an exponential curve, like how the system is currently.

The only way your suggestion could work in a satisfying manner for both sandbox and survival players is if higher level planets had monsters with more exaggerated attacks. However, the current attack patterns and current gear is insufficient to handle such an exaggerated combat system.

What I mean by that is, level 1 planets could have simple laser beam attacks that have advanced warning, with level 10 planets having SHMUP style attacks. For example, a barrage of projectiles that covers a good portion of the screen is coming at you, but it can still be dodged if you go in-between the gaps between two projectiles. The weapon attack system can be appropriate adjusted by allowing it to swing at the angle at which we point our mouse, and not just left or right.

 

I feel as if adventuring is a bit pointless, towns/dungeons offer nothing. The only point is to quickly run around the surface to find the chest and then leave.

There should be a much larger quest system implemented. The way they could implement this would to have sectors where each race has it's own home sector. In each home sector there would be sub-areas with the current different level system. Also, there would be a pre-generated planet that is the home planet of that race. At this home planet there would main quest giver(king?) that would want you to help his species, dominant the other species. There would also be other side-quest givers on the home planet that either want to help the leader or they could give you fetch quests. Also, within these sectors there could be 'rebel' camps that want to usurp the throne. The main plot of this quest could be the same throughout the different species.

Expending upon this idea of each species having it's own sector. The worlds could be themed for the species. I.E. the floran having jungle planets where the monsters are poisonous and are tree/plant themed.

I will expend upon this idea later when I have time.

 

Combing RizingAzure's final suggestion with my previous idea, I've come up with this:

Tiers have an array of abilities available for monsters to use, from body slam and charge to spitting an orb at you or shooting weak waves. As you increase tiers, the tier of monster abilities (and AI tactics) improves to better abilities, so the game does still get harder too. Fire breathing spray, the exploding slime orbs, more types of physical attack movements (like a body slam that sends out block-piercing shockwaves to either side, or a grab and throw, making you have to deal with falling), etc would all become standard over the attacks we see now at all levels.

Weapon types can also be tier-locked, on top of damage/ability improvement; lower tiers involve shanks and the bow, of course, and a simple sweeping sword; higher tiers would add hammers and axes, and high-energy-low-damage pistols, and better on, to daggers and spears that can be aimed, on top of the swords/hammers/axes arcing sweeps. Crouching with any sweeping weapon would, of course, allow the arc to go lower, instead of stop roughly at your feet. Again, from previous post, weapons would only scale up in damage to their tier counterpart when crafted anew, so just because you killed your fifth boss doesn't mean the starting shank you have would be useful, but crafting or finding a new one would be. Crafting weapons of any tier unlock would also require a specific grade of metal or alloy, too, meaning exploration to find new metals to craft your new weapons.

Finally, armors would be boss-locked, with the bosses unlocking metals to appear on planets. Different metals would have different effects (but not quite like terraria's set bonuses). All damage types could have a type modifier included perhaps, with armors either having percent negation to a damage type (say resist fire?), or bonuses similar to racial bonuses, but more craftable by everyone. Metal grades of armor would also have varying amounts of defense and movement speed for the tier, with rarer metals having the secondary bonuses to them, so that all of the late-game metals would remain vastly superior to the early-game metals.

 

Exactly why I think this topic should never have been made in the first place. It's an early beta IF that as some would argue so whining and crying about how things are now is kinda' like Christopher Columbus whining and crying about how he can't just fly first-class around the world.

 

I started a thread in a similar vein but in regards to the plethora of planetary systems. It's not quite overused yet, but 'procedurally generated' is getting there. What's the point of having the potential to create a quadrillion planets if the only differences are so slight as to not be worth the 100 coal to get there?

I agree with the OP in that the best strategy at this point is to build a base on your ship and take it with you. There is no reason whatsoever to establish a presence on a planet.

If this is intended gameplay - then so be it: don't devote any more attention to the construction blocks within the game.

Another thing regarding the quadrillion potential planets: if I can see all the really cool variety in sector X, I will never go back to the other sectors. Why should I? Therefore, why have them?

Furthermore - this whole argument of "it's early beta" has got to stop. Have you looked at the dev roadmap? The base mechanics are already in place: frills will be added, but that's it.

 

Giving feedback about what we like and don't like, and what we'd like to see and what kind of problems we want to avoid sure is "whining and crying".

Full release doesn't automagically make everything great and perfect, and it's important that the devs hear us out. You arguing that threads like these should not be made is by extension of logic no different from telling people to shut up who are discussing what they'll want to see in the game prior to any kind of release.

 

+1 to everything that others have said. At the moment, the linear progression is a bore. I think each sector should have things that are unique to it, but not necessarily better than the other sectors. Right now it's more of a grind for top gear.

 

Also, regarding this topic, just a thought for everyone who commenting on this threads... specifically on the sectors:

The devs have already stated they are thinking of getting rid of separate sectors altogether, and replace them by a single starmap, with worlds of ALL difficulty levels on it, clouded by fog-of-war that clears up more and more as you explore the stars.

 

Meaning that it's important to let them know if we think it's a good idea, wich I personally do. I just hope that the current way of progressing thrue the tiers is a placeholder as well, as I'd much rather find schematics for the different armors on planets of fitting difficulty, and having the bosses drop specific materials or items instead of just unlocking the next "tech level".

 

The game is more of an alpha than a beta. What we have now is pretty bare bones. Anyone who thinks otherwise is mis informed. This is more of a general statement than a response to anyone specific. Posts about current content should be limited to how things could be changed to work better. Posts about mechanics being beyond fixing should not exist since we've barely played the game at all. I don't know what people were expecting right off the bat but no real judgement of the game can be made until an actual release. Until then everything is subject to change.

 

I agree with the first paragraph, and partially with the second. Right now, all enemies do have different attacks, but it's basically just the sprite and collision speed being changed. There is no actual skill or power gap between a T1 monster and a T10 monster. That's really boring and needs more variety to keep you on your toes. I don't agree that certain weapon types should be locked. I'd rather all weapons are unlocked from the start with weapon abilities being locked until you learn the technique behind it or something like that.

For example, with a hammer:

1) You can swing it around you in a frenzied whirlwind to hit multiple enemies at once. To unlock this swift ability however, you would need to kill a specific amount of monsters within a certain amount of time.
2) You can slam it ferociously for tremendous damage. To unlock this skull crushing ability however, you will have to kill a titan on the same tier as the sword with only the same tier gear and nothing better or worse. (No official term for them yet, but they're infinitely faster than you, bigger than a normal monster, and hurt for much much more)

These bonuses would add more challenge to veterans.

Paragraph three sounds interesting, but I have no further comment on it at the moment.

I could be rude and say "get out of this thread if you don't have a useful thought to contribute," but I'm a generally nice person. This is still phase 1 of the beta and changes come in quick. Based on the previous patch, one is able to deduce the fact that TIY actively listens to the community, as he implemented two things influenced by currently available community made mods. Based off of that, anything that is said in this thread, and everything else on this forum is general is most likely being actively looked at TIY. If he likes an idea he hears, he'll change the final system to accommodate it. The purpose of threads like these is to try and convince TIY with your own ideas and suggestions and voice what you would like or dislike. Every post in here has an equal chance of making its way into the final build.

I would be content with that, just as long as all planets and gear are not reduced to a monotone level. FOG would certainly make it much more interesting. The only thing I'm worried about, is that if TIY merges all sectors into one, it effectively cuts down the amount of planets available by 80%. I assume there are a quadrillion planets per sector (hypothetically)? If you remove 4 sectors, that's removing 4 quadrillion planets. I hope TIY has a plan to compensate for that fact.

 

What does that even mean?

 

For lack of better words I kinda made up my own. Basicly means they are both unfeminine and unappealing from the stance that they look unfeminine. Basicly they are all ugly chunky battlesuits with no curves or shapes to them. Might as well put on a carboard box made of impervium and call it the same, specially glitch armor.