Starbound is great but...

Lol great job ignoring the game (http://starbounder.org/Hylotl) put on any of those clothes or armor if you want to look like a Hyloti.... Especially River armor and onward..... Again racial selection is simply selecting which recipes you start with - no attachment or desire to even become attached as you are simply creating a list of recipes by selecting race.....

 

My god! I can make humans have a third eye! I do hope sarcasm makes you realize your mistake.

 

This has gotten a bit out of hand.

 

I usually wear a vanity head slot that shows off my face. Bandit hat, crown, etc. And kind of wish there was a vanity weapon or a toggle to just hide helmets.

I'd be surprised if most people didn't do similar.

 

How can you be immersed this way? /sarcasm

 

The conflicting paradigm between cosmetic and mechanic is something that a lot of players struggle with, and I think it's worth considering it as a single issue.

On one hand, you want players to be comfortable with their avatars; you don't want someone forced into playing as a race they don't like aesthetically just because that character has an ability they want. What if a player likes to do a lot of damage, but likes playing as a graceful elf rather than as a brutish orc? Or vice versa, what if this player wants to play a shamanic orc who casts spells, but only the elven races have access to the only decent magic class?

On the other hand, you don't want every race to feel the same. Having races with tactile differences, operate in distinct manners that the player can feel in play, means a greater level of immersion. If my plant skinned character can breathe water just like my shark faced character can, or if my muscular furred fellow can fly just like my feathery fellow, what real difference is left between them? Having these differences mean having a deep, rich world that your players will be able to more clearly perceive more powerfully than they ever would from a few paragraphs of text on your wiki.

There are a lot of different ways to approach the issue, but ultimately you need to be somewhere on the scale of Different and Restricting vs Similar and Superfluous. Or, maybe simpler, a character's race should be either "Significant" or "Insignificant". You don't really want to be on either pole, I think, but everyone ends up somewhere between the two. You want it to be significant so you can add variety and depth to the world, but you want it to be insignificant so that a player's experience isn't hampered just because they want a piece of hot dorsal fin action.

 

Ah, forgot to comment about the pods. I agree that the reward doesn't seem worth the risk. "Behind door number one? You now glow for 20 seconds! Enjoy your bright, sunny morning! Behind doors two and three? Painful cloud death!"

Stat rewards don't seem likely. I don't think permanent stat boosts are featured anywhere else in the game, and they may cause balance issues. Bringing them in invites a whole lot of other questions too. For one thing, when should it cap, if it should at all? How does that affect a player's expected damage output and hp? Is it still predictable? How does that affect the stats of mobs? Is armor still relevant? How would this affect multiplayer?

I rather like the idea of items though. Weapons, potions, pixels, and the like. Risk HP loss, but gain a chance to get something nice.

Incidentally, I noticed lately that they haven't been affecting me. No cloud death, no buff, nothing.

 

EXACTLY! I completely understand what everyone is saying, but having a lot of neat looking people that have no difference between them kind of destroys the ultimate immersion. If only there was a way to make both sides happy.

 

I also feel that having races would have different abilities would create a lot of replay value. Especially with the wipes and updates requiring a new character. Played as a Glitch one play through? Be a Hylotl this time.

 

Starbound is great but...
it is not.

Devs wasted the potential.

 

You can't satisfy everyone, I'm afraid.

Also, again, having vastly different races - erring on the "Significant" side of the spectrum - is no better than erring on the "Insignificant" side. Having abilities that make huge differences in how two races can be played means the game just has to say "well sod off" whenever someone wants a mechanic that's glued to a race they don't like. I know I'd be disappointed if Avians could glide, but humans could not. That's coming from a big fan of flight, and of humans, but not of feathers sticking out my ass (Nothing personal, I hope, Avian fans ).

On the other hand, if I were to play with the mechanics of an Avian, but with the appearance of a human, now the mechanics say nothing about the race. After all, if a human can glide just like an Avian, what exactly is being said of Avians at all?

Furthermore, remember that wipes are a feature of this stage of beta, and shouldn't be treated as a game mechanic.

 

I think "unnecessary advantages" may be an oxymoron.

Aquaman aside, of course.

 

Well I dunno, what if you don't want advantages? Some like to be on even ground

 

Yeah... well and why do you think that, care to elaborate? Blatantly stating "X sucks because of Y" won't get us anywhere, right?
Try not to flood the topic with stuff like that if you have nothing to add please (I'm sorry if that sounds rude, I didn't mean to! ).

You see that way and I see it this way: Imagine Glitch not getting cold or Hylotl breathing underwater, depending which trait would be more useful in the current build people would PROBABLY play the race that is easier to play with, there's no reason to do that. Races should be picked based on their lore and eventually looks in my opinion, not racial abilities.
I think it's better to create your own RP values and rules anyway rather than having to wait for a game to force it on you but again, that's just me, just sharing my point of view.

 

How is it people always manage to say my thoughts better than me? dang

 

I'm not going to continue this discussion because I strongly suspect I cannot convince otherwise someone who firmly believes less depth is a good thing.

I would, however, like to comment on this:

I'm in.

 

If you look at the frequency of stat pods and what they offer, you can gain a bit of perspective when you put it into context.

Stat pods are about as frequent as surface chests. Surface chests have the chance to give you valuable upgrades at no drawback.
Stat pods give you the chance at temporary and mostly useless buffs at a high risk.

With surface chests in the game, stat pods in their current state shouldn't be.

That's just my stance

If you want my opinion on stat pods, I say you make them have a chance to drop a unique material that you could use in any number of recipes ranging from building to vanity to combat. If there was a mat I couldn't get anywhere else, even if it was to make an energy powered toilet, I'd actually hunt down these pods.

 

Basically, this issue illustrates the modern gamer: they don't want to make descisions and even less take responsability of what they choose. So everything has to be neutral and changable at all times.

But this isn't really a new issue. Many years ago, there were debates about, for example, the job/class system in the Final Fantasy series. Some prefered the fixed classes, so that each character had their personality and being able to emotianlly attachable, than have just generic and moldable soldiers.

 

This is a terrible assumption.

 

Yet there's little in evidence to prove otherwise