Starbound is great but...

It's replay value recognized by virtually every developer that's ever made an RPG, ever.

It's like you people fail to realize that different classes/races is tried, true, and proven, and that Starbound is in the extreme minority amongst games that have classes with only cosmetic distinctions.

 

that, sir, is what is known as a "hand wave", and is terrible writing. So, over the millions of years that they had this technology to breath undrewater, the evolved to have fins...how? Cross-breeding, genetic engineering, or spontaneous evolution? Cross breeding with something that has fins would usually imply that said thing had gills, genetic engineering to make some aquatic traits but not others wouldn't make sense, and spontaneous generation wouldn' spread throughout the entire race for millions of years, and the thought that over millions of years they never made a better method of breathing underwater than wearing a full suit of metal armor is ridiculous

 

so how would "minor" traits change the way you play the game?

People keep saying "make the traits small" yet they cry "i need a racial traits so i have a reason to replay"

How can you have minor inconsequential traits, yet have it impact the game enough to add replay value?

 

Personally I don't want them to have inconsequential traits. I'd like to see them all have separate unlockable skill trees. But if we'd get racial traits then they'd be minor at best, due to the resistance against it and the, in my opinion, lack of vision from the devs. Now I know we're still in deep beta, so there's no telling how much creativity the dev team have in store, but so far I am getting the chills.
Minor traits would indeed not add replayability, but it would at least give me the idea that these 6 races are different, instead of just being humans and humans dressed up like an ape/plant/bird/robot/redthreeeyething.

 

I am not "people", and nor are "people" a hive mind. What other people say is not what I say.

 

Unless they put a limit to how much you can have

 

If they wanted a permanent stat boost feature they would have had levels to begin with (or at least as a planned feature, which it isn't)

 

@Jbeetle: Levels are unnecessary. Terraria is a good example.

 

You say that, yet give no reason why it's a terrible assumption. I'm not going to lie but if the whole armor thing is what people want why not just play as a white block? I mean there really is no point picking a race out side of RP, and it kinda breaks that when you RP as a bird man who has the same physical abilities as a robot. It's kinda boring honestly. It really does feel like people want to play a cool race with no consequences.

 

From what I've seen, the focus of RPing isn't the gameplay.

 

Replayability seems like a bit of a misfit term for a game like this as there is no official end of the game, similar to Minecraft. RPGs have replayability because they have have a concrete end, and often have multiple points where you are forced to make decisions that you are forced to stick with for the duration f your play-through. In Starbound, you play more or less continuously, and the end is when you get bored with whatever you're doing. Most people at that point either just stop playing for a period of time, and other people start over because they find that the struggle at the start is what made the game fun for them. This can be called a kind of replay, but to say that racial abilities is what would make it worth replaying seems like a bit much, at least for the moment since it seems that any abilities we'll be getting will be relatively minor (such as glitch mining slightly faster, floran getting energy back slightly faster, humans having slightly more inventory, apex jumping slightly higher), and as such don't really seem like they'll really change the experience from character to character.... UNLESS they add ocean biomes and underwater villages\dungeons, because then getting your hands on hylotl armor would be downight necessary to exploring that content.

 

That is 100% what it is, people want to have everything and as a result, meaningfulness is diluted. The "fans" of Starbound insist that if you add minor racial perks, they will be compelled against their will, "to find the most l33t combination which then everyone will only play that combination," and then cry, "Is that equality?! Is that freedom!?!?!?!" That doomsday scenario is the justification for having no racial perks, that, and promoting "equality" in-game.

It's absurd, and it's pretending that equality is achieved when everyone is the same. Achieving equality would be accepting everyone despite their differences. There is no acceptance if everyone is exactly the same, it's just adopting a herd-like mentality. It's co-existing within the context of diversity that matters. Making all the races "equal" seems like a cop out and the game's immersion suffers for it. This aspect of the game play dilutes the diversity between the races and achieves absolutely no positive result what so ever except for it's easier on the developers to leave the races as they are. But doing things because they are easy to do (or not do in this case), and simultaneously appeasing an erroneous sentiment, are not the foundations of an epic game that fulfilled its potential.

The last bastion of this argument are mods, for those that are too compliant and will do anything to maintain the status quo, mods are there to take away all responsibility from the developers despite the millions they're already making on this unfinished product. The fact of the matter is, to achieve the best balance, the onus should be on Chucklefish to create it by developing minor perks/traits between the races that completely represent their lore. If you want your sheep's facade of "equality" then you can just mod out the racial perks, a process which will be much easier than adding them through a mod.

 

Pardon me from going completely offtopic, Xacris, every time I see your avatar I need to laugh.

 

Use the reply button, it's not twitter

 

If your going to end up putting in racial abilities then what you do is yes each race will have its set of perks but you should equal it out with some type of draw back. Avians can fly or glide, but then they will also move slower when walking or running etc. One possible way of doing it.

 

@Pigeon: I don't use twitter and I never have, and I don't see any problem with what I am doing. If you have a problem with it, go find your nearest moderator and bother him about it.
Go learn some manners too, because a message like that doesn't sound all that friendly to me.

 

When you use the 'reply' button, it quotes the post you're replying to. This means people can easier see what post you're replying to. Twitter introduced the idea of "at" signs (@) and then the username to cite a person. On a forum, it's much, much more proper to just use the quote button than force future readers to search through the posts further.

On Topic: I'm fine with /very/ small benefits, because then it's just more immersion and such. I hate the idea of downsides, because then I'll be inclined to metagame more than just benefits. I'd rather not be slightly slower than to be slightly faster.

Just a psychology thing, I suppose.

 

Actually, @ was used in many forums for years before twitter to refer to someone without quoting them (to cut down on "quote towers"), or to refer to multiple people in a single post
EDIT: And also to save on space in general. See how much larger my post is than if it didn't have that box above it?

 

Just gonna reply to a few things without using names and quotes because they're things covered by a couple different people.

Firstly: People keep on bringing up the 'vanity/cosmetic items will let you still look however you want', but this isn't true if anyone wants to wear something that shows off their character's face. Which is not uncommon at all. Go play any MMO and count the number of people with hide head slot activated compared to those who don't. Except SWtOR. 'Cause that's a pay feature in SWtOR so you'll get a poor average. But the point is that when people go through character creation and design a face/hair/whatever else they USUALLY want to be able to see it when they're playing, so putting on a venetian mask to make your hylotl look human or whatever simply isn't going to work for this.

If you are going to argue in favor of racial perks, then accept that it is tying cosmetic and gameplay cost together at creation. Argue why this is an acceptable thing rather than that it is not a thing. The latter makes you sound silly.

Secondly: Stop being jerks, please? This is the beta forums of a game which is specifically asking for input. It is not selfish or lazy or anything else to state which mechanic you like better. It is no more 'wanting everything' or being 'selfish' to not want racial traits as it is to want racial traits. I only see one side of this argument accusing the other of this, and it's a bit ridiculous.

You're both, on both sides, arguing for what YOU prefer at the cost of what OTHERS prefer. No one is particularly interested in compromise, which is fine. You don't need to be. But don't pretend like your position as to whether or not to add a feature to a video game is morally superior, or makes you a better person.

It actually makes you come off as a worse person for attacking people personally.

Thirdly: If you're going to add in traits, don't make them minor. That's awful. It does everything the people who don't want traits don't want, no matter how minor they are. "Oh glitch get 1% more melee damage? Guess I'm going to be glitch for my melee character" It's still going to happen. Same thing for any other 'minor' trait you can come up with. It's still going to make people want to meta.

What it's not going to do is add any meaningful depth. It's the absolute worst of both worlds.

If you're going to add racial traits make them meaningful. Make them actually add depth. I honestly wouldn't mind if hylotl can breath underwater. It's not that big of a deal. Means I'll need to craft something for it for my other characters, probably around tier 3, while hylotl have access to ocean (and probably moon/asteroid as there's currently no distinction between drowning and asphyxiating due to lack of atmosphere, as far as I can tell) worlds in tier 1 and 2. It also frees up the hylotl back slot to not bother with a survival system. It creates a meaningful choice and actual advantage to playing them.

Letting Hylotl breath for a few seconds longer though? That doesn't give me access to new biomes. At best it lets me spend an extra second or two mining things in a pool of water. It's not going to affect my gameplay in any noticeable way. It's a useless change.

Fourthly: In practice the racial armor system is going to provide the same benefits, more or less, as racial perks. We're almost certainly going to be able to craft things that let us breathe underwater OTHER THAN hylotl gear. We already have techs that make gliding kind of. . . pointless. There's a back item that increases energy regen. I'm sure that eventually things like hiker's backpack will increase inventory storage. Might even eventually be an item to give a boost to mining speed.

Of course if you're a human you'll have increased inventory at tier 1 before finding anything but some copper and iron.

It just allows you to have the abilities sooner.

It's also going to provide more depth across a single gameplay at the cost of, potentially, some replayability. Being able to mix your trait mimicking items and racial armors allows for more combinations of things across a single playthrough. The negative to this is that you can try every possible combination on a single playthrough. I'm not sure tying the traits to races would ACTUALLY increase replayability by any real margin in a game like this, though, because if I can make an item that lets me breath underwater at tier 3 do I really care to go back and remake as a hylotl just so I can have that ability a couple tiers earlier? It's not changing late game very much. Only very early game.

The idea of a racial tree of perks and skills might evade this and actually be pretty fun and useful, however. Particularly if racial armor was still in. I like that idea. I doubt it will make it in, though, as the devs don't want any kind of character based leveling system (or indeed abilities at all) as far as I can tell so I doubt you'll get them to go that far, but it's the only way of implementing racial characteristics that I feel actually does the things the people arguing in favor of them say racial characteristics will do.

 

@kilozombie: What Xacris said. I mainly do this to avoid quoting people all the time, since quote boxes don't really make the forum more readable for me.
Although I do quote people from time to time when it's about an older post or for some other reason, I don't see why it's a problem to do it 'my way' if I'm addressing someone a couple of posts back.

Anyway, if people have complains about someone's posting behaviour, they should notify a moderator or share their opinion in a friendly manner. That's my opinion at least. (Not saying you were unfriendly, because you were not. )

Now let's get back on topic please. There are much more important things to post about.