Star-map tiers are...lame

Thank fuck. Lol yeh in at work on my phone atm.

 

It's a video game, it's not supposed to be realistic. Since when does every single planet have life on it? I don't know. Why not alter how the universe's star distribution works?

Interesting map though.

 

Not talking about EVERY planet. I meant distance between T1 zones.
Becauze evrything higher than T1 is hazardous for one reason or another.(dangerous creatures, hostile residents, climat, other stuff.)
In my vision T1 planet need to be hostile to player only at night time and/or underground.
So everyone can enjoy the game. Newbies aquairing skills, and keeping up with pace of game. Creators build and design stuff in peace. Explorers hang in middle section of game colecting and (surprize) exploring univerce.
Adventurers free to get some fuel and flee instantly from what they might consider boredom and go stratght to danger zones to fight unknown.
And task of game mechanics is to make those people, or rather extrapolated shards of one personality, back into one person. First time he is a newbie after some time he becomes explorer then he decides to build something, after that he gots bored and rushes itno T10 sectors to test himself.
Commence digressing!
T10 should not be a goal, goal is to explore, to build, to test, to find new. T10 is just part of process.
Adventurer do sometimes gets tired of adventuring and he can build a farm, or just go and kill every living thing on a T1 planet. Not because he have to do it to get some shiny thing but rather because he simply can.
Stop this instant! Everybody get the point!
Anyway planets in T1 zone might contain interesting quests, or their starting points. Which gently push players to explore, and eventually step out of comfort zone by themself(well almost), rather than brutally been dragged from there by closest bodypart.

Also quest planets might be ecumenopolises. (like Coruscant from star wars) and extremly rare (or just one)(or 1 per race).
Imagine constant "urban nightmare of future" right down to planet's core.
Usualy be around center of T1 safezones (What in case of 1 quest planet means that entire star map is just one target with quest planet located in bullseye i.e. predictably boring).
That way relationship with differend factions may be included in game mechanics to some extend.
Optionally will be possible to generate wars and local conflicts betwen races or factions.

With that said i would like also point that it is, in fact, possible at any given time add to universe generator some basic controls. Giving the player opportunity to choose difficulty he wants and considers rightful.
Though that can be not difficulty, he deserves.

 

The best way of 'locking off' the planets you shouldn't go to you seems to be an organic one. Not a 'you can't go here because all these planets are toxic' or a 'you can't go here because you need THIS upgrade', but something like detailed in my earlier post, wherein pirates are more likely to attack your ship if you're out of your depth. If you can get past the pirates with your lower combat strength, AND deal with what you get planetside, then you've pretty much earned the right to do whatever.

As for the matter of finding the right difficulty, I don't think they'd be randomly scattered. Low level ones would be near each other, then scale into higher ones. Have a look at the Space Pirates and Zombies map posted a little back, or that thing that looks like a topological temperature map. That's how I imagine it to be.

One could make an argument for a group of planets that are toxic, but not an entire difficulty level. The toxic system would be like, a randomly generated thing with some special stuff there. Maybe a part you can use to upgrade your air filter so it works better or somesuch, letting you deal with other toxic planets better.

 

I think this is a great idea. Having players explore out from their starting planet instead of randomly jumping around would make the game much more compelling.

Fuel costs should be much smaller for nearby stars, and much higher for distant stars. Allow players to jump their ship to party members ships, and back to their original starting world for free in multiplayer.

They could implement this with only minor tweaks to the current tier system in place right now. You have to craft an item, summon and kill a boss, and the item you get allows you to craft higher tiered items that allow you to survive on higher threat level planets. Some of the threat levels could be soft tiers, in that the enemies get much harder, so you will want to have crafted the best gear from the previous threat level to survive for long. And some of them every so often (say, threat level 3, 6, 9) would be hard tiers, such as you not even being able to land on a planet without the right tech.

 

I came in wanting to disagree with the OP due to the topic title, but I have to say I agree with most of what he said.

 

I agree with you Lemenhead and thus liked the other threat aswell as this one ;-)

 

We should add random diablo-like monsters with various affixes/auras that affect other monsters and drop rare loot.

 

Do you even meet mini-bosses?

 

It has the same aura every time. It doesn't affect the lesser mobs. It always drops garbage more often than not. It's uninteresting and predictable.

 

Shockingly, this isn't the first priority right now.

 

Yet there you have working piece of game mechanics. Monsters exist, they drop stuff, they are recognizable and, most importantly, they don't crash you game.
Rest is details

 

Bumping this for the game's sake!, not sure if any of the devs has seen it yet

 

I'm very much positve that the dev's have seen this. It's just common that you don't hear anything related to such topics until they get valid and are being implemented.

 

After beating the last available boss and going a few Tiers further I just came to the same realization than the original poster.

Since the time you spend in a Tier is basically defined by the time you have to spend to gather enough materials to craft a new set of armor+weapons and the boss related item, there is absolutely NO point in having huge sectors dedicated to a certain tier.
It's nice to have some kind of freedom, but here what we have it is an over exaggerated illusion of freedom. There is simply no reason to stay in a lower tier the moment you unlocked the next.

You don't necessarily have to start on a planet and evolve from there, but you could have something like the Navigation system filtering planets by threat level depending on the level of technology you possess so that at first you can't land on planets with too high of a threat level, would make the same thing and your map would also expand the more you advance in the game.

 

i agree with the OP. the current system makes it feel too structured, like we're just on an assembly line instead of actually exporing the universe. i don't find myself having any connection to any of the planets i go to. just simply hopping on them scanning the surface for stuff and moving on never to see it again.

would also be nice to have gatherable stuff change based on the planet biome type. give the biomes more of a purpose other than being just aesthetic feels

 

100%

Yep, someone just mentioned this:

 

You want to balance progression in a totally open to explore single universe..? You add permanent character death. Alongside atmosphere/weather/environmental hazards, why not toss the nasty D-word in there too, which actually SOLIDIFIES the risk of heading to such dangerous worlds? You cannot regenerate HP passively as it is, or escape while indoors/under the planet's surface...So why not introduce a mechanic that strongly discourages suicide runs of tier 10 planets for the random 1800+ damage hammer that might be lying around? There's nothing stopping you from doing that under normal circumstances, considering if you screw it up you'll just get a slap on the wrist in the form of losing some pixels..

This also gives you reason to pause and take a really close look at your level of skill, what equipment you possess and provisions. It becomes more survival centric at that point, spurring natural growth from what SHOULD be a sense of self preservation. Darwinism will take care of you otherwise, as it should.

 

http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/feel-like-game-is-too-easy-come-on-in.55190

 

If they stick with crafting star charts, they could just make it so you have 1 star map, but higher tiers don't show up until you craft the star chart.

This would require a planet wipe, but in the end, it would help low level players having to spend forever looking for planets of the correct level, and fix the current Tier chart issue.