There, I think there should be at least 2 different difficulties in the game. They would affect the item, and maybe, if used, experience points that were dropped, likely with the items that are dropped and even being hardcore. It would look like Softcore / Mediumcore / Hardcore from Terraria, but it would be with the worlds. Maybe with the characters, but it would be difficult in multiplayer games to stabilize the difficulty. Like if a softcore played with a hardcore, it would have problems. So, put a difficulty level in each world, maybe something about the items dropped on each character, to give him a special title because of the difficulty or so. Like "I'm a softcore. I'll start normally. But if I had a Hardcore, I would have a title called: "The Awesome"." Likely to some achievements and titles unlockable in-game. Like "I've been to the moon once." achievement, which gives a title called: The Moonwalker to the first person in the world who enters its moon. And then the achievement Locks. Now speaking again of difficulty, the world difficulty would be a completely different thing. Like, in "Easy" (if the softcore / mediumcore / hardcore scheme wasn't used) world difficulty, the monsters would be green slimes, which have 10 hp, do 1 damage and drop 1 gel. But if it was "Hard", it would be a big green slime, which has 30 hp, does 3 damage and drops 3 gel, then splits into other slimes. The bonus would be in the items and XP won, if the XP system was used. To make something more role-specific. Like, "I want to be a tank". But if the item quantity is the same as in terraria, considering gear, the items weren't kind of specializated. Unless the Hardmode ones. So, if you would use a system like that, that only some good-geared items would give advantage to certain use of item, I highly suggest that you implant some XP and Skills / attributes to it. Like, a tank-spec character should have more vitality, or a special skill which reduces the damage it takes. Or requirements, like "Using Advanced Repeater requires dexterity 20 / skill "Repeaters" to enable the use of Repeaters". So that a character who wasn't made for, let's say, ranged combat, doesn't use repeaters, who are a high level crossbow. But people could make all-around items. Instead of using "Large Swords" and "large shields" he woul use "Medium weapons" and "medium shield" and "bows", so that he should be more spec-specific.
First of all, you may want to try organizing your ideas more clearly, some people will see this big block of text and run away. Paragraphs can be useful. In addition I had trouble seeing exactly what you meant, especially in the first few sentences (it may just have been me but the wording could be more clear). Second, while the community is divided on the subject I don't think the devs are planning on having classes, so far they have only stated that research and gear will define your level. There has been hate directed at references to Terraria but I think that in this they will be similar to a degree. As to the difficulties since we really don't know much about the game we cannot say things. We don't know anything about death for instance. Moons have not been announced. Your achievement thing jumps in randomly and I don't see the connection with the surrounding sentences. We know the worlds will have different difficulty levels, and, based on some of your things, it kinda seems like you don't know that there will be an infinite amount of planets for each server, with the ability for each player to be on his own planet.
I'm going to take into consideration your post, Fray. Many thanks. I will organize better this text, and the next ones I post. In fact, I wanted principally to give the idea of Skills, Achievements and Difficulty levels for both world and character. The moon was only a word I used to say "Do something and get that achievement". The achievements Idea would be more for fun than for improving the game experience itself. Or maybe the Titles, that was the only relation that I gave with Achievements, would make some changes on the NPC's reactions. I would like to say some ideas I thought it would be helpful or at least interesting to add an unique gameplay to the game. These are my ideas, resuming all of them. Titles for the multiplayer, or maybe even different chats options. The Titles could act on NPCs too. "How to obtain?" Maybe achievements or even buying. Questing would be like achievements, so... meh. Achievements. This is a fun thing. Nothing more than aestetic play. Just to loook at another player, if you have more achievements, and say "Mwahaha, I'm awesome". Skills or Attributes. Even Both. They could make a character more specific for one thing. Like, a Tank with high vitality or specific skills that reduce damage or so... About the Planet Thing. I Already knew about it, I just said "World" to mean like the whole Universe. So, I didn't mean a single world, but a whole server "world". Or Save. Call it what you like. The word 'world' seems more amusing to me. And some difficulty levels. Maybe for characters or for servers. They should affect the items and so that drop. Because it wouldn't be cool having a character / server with the highest difficulty and the same items dropped.
Achievements are awesome there is actually a whole thread in other dedicated to acheivement ideas. The thing with the dificulties is, usually the enemies get harder but the items stay the same. That way its not just stats on both sides increasing, its just that the enemies are harder. Something cool for titles could be if you got some based on stuff in your homeworld. For instance once you claim a planet it could give you "land-owner". When you have a house with an npc it could give you "land-lord". Village elder. Mayor. King. President. etc.
*cough* Achievements *cough* I'll just leave this here Achievements have been confirmed to be in the game which will be good. As Fray said, paragraphs are extremely useful and make text a lot easier to read, so good that you took that on board! As for classes, the progression is the game is going to be gear based really. You won't gain experience from killing enemies etc, you'll just progress in the game as you gain better gear to increase your stats. As for different difficulties, this has been discussed in a few other threads. I'd like to see a few different difficulties because I always like a challenge, however I'm not that bothered either way with regards to Starbound. It has been confirmed that planets are going to be rated by their threat level (difficulty) so planets will get more difficult as the game progresses and will always present a challenge even at end game.
