Some serious concerns and feedback (long read)

Hi there. First off I just want to say that I've been following Starbound ever since they announced it way back in early 2012 and having been a fan of Terraria, as soon as I found out about this game I was incredibly excited. I love both fantasy and sci-fi stuff alot but lean a little bit more towards the sci-fi aspect of things so it sounded like my dream game. With that being said this game definitely has incredible potential and the foundation is already there, but there are some serious game design flaws which counteract what would make a game like this incredible. If anything I say makes it seem like I'm trying to be offensive or aggressive to the devs trust me I'm not, I just want to throw this feedback out there while the game is still in beta.

1. "Tiers" are an incredibly bad way to go about making players explore a vast galaxy.
We can all agree that the primary selling point of Starbound is to allow players to explore a limitless galaxy with tons of interesting planets and awesome things to find but adopting a "tier" system of progression really does alot to harm the most important aspect of the game. I was pretty quick to realize that the "progression" in the game would be going to all of these planets in the alpha sector only for each of them to have the same exact types of ore and very little in the way of anything actually cool to discover. I would mine ores to make a set of gear in which to kill the first tiers boss, move to the next tier, and then repeat this same process and that's not really fun. And every planet in the alpha sector has coal, iron, silver, gold, etc etc? That's dull.

I understand that a character progression of some sort needs to exist in a game like this but the current system makes Starbound not feel like a sandbox game at all if you're going to be limited to finding the same exact things in their particular sectors. There's no reason for me to explore more than just my starting planet and maybe one other in order to mine up what I need to take on the first boss and then after I've accomplished that there is also no reason to explore ANY planets in the alpha sector since I'm moving to beta. Tiers are really bad.

2. Planets aren't that exciting or interesting to explore.
The primary argument against point #1 would be that a player should want to explore planets for the sake of exploring and not just try to beam through the game as fast as possible and normally I would agree with that 100% but in the games current state there's nothing really that cool on other planets besides the change in environment (and I do like the artwork). Like I said, you know that every single planet that you can initially explore is just going to have the same exact types of resources and maybe a dungeon or town but that seems to be about it. I think that's going to leave alot of players with a bad taste in their mouth because first impressions might be negative if they realize that the space travel is pretty gimmicky. Currently it boils down to "Ok I'm gonna go to this planet to mine some ores. Then go to the next planet, to mine some ores. Oh a dungeon! This should be an easy source of pixels and not much of anything else after I kill these incredibly dumb mobs and do some really easy platforming. Alright that's out of the way so now I'm gonna travel to Alpha Bagoost II because I need to mine some more ores."

3. Caverns are boring.
It's hard for me to go into detail about this one because I can't really pinpoint what's wrong but there is definitely something wrong with them. To each their own but I had a ton of fun exploring the cavern system in any Terraria world but the undergrounds in Starbound are missing some sort of spice. I think part of the fun of exploring in Terraria was that you could actually find really cool loot in some of the chests down there but I've yet to find anything cool in Starbound.

4. Loot suffers from "Diablo 3" syndrome.
Ah loot, another important aspect to any game like this but what's the point of having all of these weapons and whatnot if they're all mostly crap? And whenever you name most of the weapons stuff like poopysword, dookdookhammer, and poopdookums blade then you're going to quickly make players think that they're never going to find anything of worth to warrant exploring. I don't want to get excited for a moment because I found a chest in some secluded area of the world only to open it up and discover a 5 damage sword named Von Crapula and just send it to the trash.

I have however discovered some cool items in the game like a cape that would let you see into the distance farther with Ctrl. Stuff like that is small example of "good" loot and the same thing goes for other accessories like instruments and whatnot.

5. The AI is atrocious.
I won't go into too much detail here because I know it's something everyone is already familiar with but the combat in the game needs to feel fun and exciting and right now the AI is incredibly bad. Even the humanoid creatures in the game do nothing but walk towards you and swing their weapon.

6. The game would benefit alot from an RPG skills system of sorts.
If anyone has played System Shock 2, use it as a reference of skills that would be absolutely awesome in a sci-fi game. Skills like hacking, research, weapon proficiencies, psionics, expand the cooking system, etc etc. Especially a research skill because I think it would be really cool to find unknown minerals, organic samples from creatures, plant life, and so on to bring back to your ship for research and identification and after something has been identified it would give you some starting schematics and an example of what you could craft with those materials. A skills system could also open up alot of opportunities for tons of extra stuff to do in the game on the side. Like some dungeons possibly having security panels in which you needed a certain level of hacking to bypass. The possibility of trainers for particular skills being in towns. A certain weapon proficiency needed to use some awesome weapon you just found. I could go on and on with a list of ideas but you get the picture.

I don't want to make this TOO long of a read so I'll cut it short there with my primary 6 concerns and as I play the game more, I'll eventually make a follow up of some suggestions I think alot of players would agree with would make the game more fun and rewarding to play. Again, this wasn't meant to be a rude rant of any sort but since this is a beta I wanted to do my part and provide feedback because honestly I still think the game has insanely great potential if taken in the right direction and I really do want to see that happen.

Thanks to Chucklefish and anyone who takes the time to read/reply.

 

Agreed on 1-5.

6, I didn't like at first, but... then I thought about if it were not character-tied, but tech stuff. When I saw the Tech option on the ship I was like "Cool, so I can reverse-engineer or develop stuff"...

And then I got Pulse Jump nine times.

 

agreed on all points.

I loathe Tiers, not just for the reasons you give but also the nonsensical way they are used to restrict access to items to craft so interrupting the emergent formation of goals by the player which is vital for a sandbox game.

In Terria, though it pains me to keep making the comparison, the only things stopping me from making a given item are my materials and the tools I have built, or, rarely, having the coin to attain something that is traded only. as such I am able to form strategies. To think 'If I make [thing] I can cope with [area] which will hopefully get [resource] so I can finally make [tool] and get [thing]'

In Starbound I just think '[stuff] is the next tier of armour I'll need for the next boss, so I better gather [stuff] because the gear I made to beat this boss who I just killed is no good now' because if you don't gear treadmill, you can't kill bosses, and if you don't kill bosses you get no gear, no new capabilities.

 

Alright, I agree man. Your idea is awesome. You need to get with this guy.

http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/the-game-we-want.48657/

 

All your concerns are valid, and are ones I've had, yet I continue to log some pretty long hours into the game. I am not a huge fan of the tier progression, it makes the game feel more like a giant fetch quest/grind. If you had one sector with all the available planet 'tiers', exploration would be far more interesting.

On planets, I think having random events occur from time to time would help make them more interesting, but making terrain gen more varied would be a great addition. I would love it if when you arrived at a planet, you could get details on what is there, like a brief rundown on terain type, temperature, ores, amount of forestation, enemy threat level, and so on. Enemy AI that was not dumb and also varied would go a long way in alleviating some of these issues, as well.

Caverns are a bit drab, but not as bad as I had first thought. Exploring the underworld is still my first activity when I find myself getting bored with the rest of the game's content. I think part of the problem is that it's not overly challenging to get around down there. Maybe having some different obstacles to overcome could make it more interesting. I'm finding good loot down there, but it is still not quite at the level of Terraria.

Loot is a mixed bag. Definitely lots of trash out there. I think that until the combat and progression is balanced that it won't change much, but I would like to see some items that can only be found in chests in the underworld. We have chests for all the different minibiomes, why not ones tied to the underworld?

The AI is definitely wonky. I feel it's gotten a bit better, but they still like to get stuck under a 1 tile overhang, as well as other things. My main problem with the AI is that all mobs do the same thing, not counting special attacks. Add speedy mobs, kiting mobs, legendary beasts that destroy terrain, stealthy mobs. Adding more variety to the AI as well as more 'brains' would make individual creature types more interesting and combat and exploration more fun and hopefully challenging.

As far as skills go, I have mixed feelings. I like what you've mentioned, but I'd like race specific traits even more. Glitch can ignore the cold but take damage in the rain. Florans do extra damage during the day (and maybe get some health regen) but are weak at night. Apex jump higher by default and do more damage with melee and less with guns. I could go on, but you get the idea. A system akin to this would make choosing your race FAR more interesting.

Anyway, I kind of rambled, early here for a Saturday. Thanks for posting this, there have been similar threads, but yours hit the nail on the head as far as my concerns with the game go.

 

I started checking out some other threads on these forums and it looks like alot of people feel the same way about the tier system. I'm hoping Chucklefish makes a serious revision to it. I want visiting a new world to be as exciting as possible and it's definitely do-able

 

All points are legit and should be improved, tho im not sure about the last one.