State of the game, and why it's broken.

On behalf of all my fellow gamers who have waited years and *Dramatic pause* /countless agonizing days/ for this
game, one so full of potential, the very potential that brings us all here in the first place.
Don't Do This.


You're throwing away the very point of having our glorious procedural generated planets and creatures by forcing
us to abandon them for higher levels within minutes.
You're turning the combat system into a mess by having an indecisive, and ever changing powerlevel through the
Armor-Penetration system that's going on, and it's the same problem with the planets, all these wonderful
weapons have to be discarded for higher levels within minutes after heading to the next planet.

-

Suddenly, the planets and weapons are less valuable than the very pixels we're gathering, and we lose those like
pennies thrown down a drain.
PROCEDURAL PLANETS AND WEAPONS WERE THE VERY POINT OF THE GAME!
And you're making us discard them as we progress through this horrid leveling system.

So far the only thing in the game worth searching for, sadly enough, are the instruments.

The reason why Terraria was such a success was because it HAD NO LEVELING SYSTEM, the only "Leveling"
you did were through tiers, upgrading weapons, crafting armor, and searching for health and mana upgrades.

And yes, I do see that every 10 levels were ment to be it's own tier, but the levels are so spaced and far apart that
nothing has value and must be discarded, thankfully Starbound is still in beta and can be fixed.
The leveling system in it's self has no flavor, you can do better by having players progress through ages.

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Setup a new tier system, make it much like stages a civilization goes through.

Players start off in the same way, you escape from some kind of danger and head far from your home into deep
space.
BUT the twist is, your ship was damaged through some kind of accident and was forced to land on some random
planet. You and your friends can still use the onboard teleporter however.
This is where a tutorial begins explaining how to advance through the ages.

In the beginning you start off in the Medieval/Primal age, full of themed weapons like swords shields and spears,
bows and low tech armor Leather/Plate.

Soon after obtaining steel you advance into the Modern/Industrial age, this is where players get access to kevlar
armor, guns and modern vehicles. This is ALSO when you fight the first boss, the UFO.

After destroying the UFO, players are able to repair their ship with it's core to take off and enter the spaceage,
getting access to spacesuits, energy weapons, and slow and bulky powersuits.
And gaining the ability to make space stations, starting off beamed down to an asteroid and building the station
from that point.

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So with all that being said, if you take a moment to think about the "Ages" system, it sounds so much more
interesting than a 100 year old RPG system that's poorly designed for this sort of game.

Add some tactical flavor on top of that, Plate armor is great for anti melee, but suffers horribly against bullets,
Kevlar doesn't protect one's self from melee very well, but it's cheap and is great for modern situations with lots of
gun wielders, whom also have a limited clip and must reload, And spacesuits? Well... They won't save you from
weapons but at least you won't have to worry about space... right?~
Powersuits, they're slow, protect you from space, but have a massive energy pool, some even have energy
shields, jumpjets, and personal teleporters. Of course, with modding stations anything's possible.

Laser weapons and energy swords will make short work of Kevlar and Plate, but after discovering the space age,
players are able to craft "Reflective" Plate and Kevlar armor, which losses 25% of it's defense toward the low tech
weapons for 50% against the space age versions, however on the downside energy weapons cost energy to
shoot, but energy armor and powerarmor increases your max energy output.

With this system in place, planets and weapons won't be discarded to "upgrade one's tier" your home planet
BECOMES your tier, weapons becoming moddable and valuable, letting those who want to write their name or
flavor text onto them.

Best part is, all those weapons from the lessor ages are still viable weapons later on, Avian doesn't want to give up
his ancestral spear? Don't fret! You can make a Hybrid, just slap some energy rails to the point and batteries to
the rear and suddenly you have a weapon worthy of the space age.

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Again I say, please don't ruin Starbound with this leveling system, it could be sooo much better.
We've waited so long, please don't let us down with a game that's discarded like the planets and weapons.

 

ehh not sure to understant you post, look like you want a other game that starbound...

 

I was actually sitting here debating rather or not I should have posted this so early in the morning
as I was afraid people would be too tired to post lol....

But hey, at least we can edit our replies later when we're fully awake LOL.

 

Valid points, but methinks thoust has not read the latest blog update.
They're already doing away with the armour pentration system and simplifying the leveling, the update will be out in a few days. Happy?

BTW - I really do like you idea about being able to upgrade weapons and armor, it kinda fits in well with the way you already upgrade your pickaxe, and it would make the good gear go a lot further. We should push to get this included

 

Honestly, I kinda like this idea. Well, the whole modding shit up. It sounds pretty badass and with a game like starbound might be pretty awesome. Kinda like how we upgrade pickaxes into the next tier, we could do that with weapons as well.
Like you said, with modding or augmentation, A shit tier weapon can become viable. It'd be like mac guyvering everything. And really, we're already going through the motions, and they're making the game randomly generated.
If they could combine this idea with the randomization/ if they did it right, it'd become invaluable.

And in response to Crusender, I don;t think he wants a game different from Starbound. I think that he gave a fairly decent suggestion that would fix a few problems/ make the game even more so amazing.

Thanks for posting this man,
At the very least it'll become a decent mod in the future.

-Atomsk

Edit:

Its still a decent idea for the game, modding/augmenting sounds fairly awesome in theory.

 

Thanks, but just to be clear, im not saying do away with the random drops, I actually believe those temple/dungeon guards should drop weapons
more frequently allowing us to make a collection of weapons we like, or in the hopes they drop something good we might enjoy more.
But the leveling thing seriously needs to be fixed before any of this is useful.

 

The damaged ship idea is one I had before, but it has a major flaw. And that flaw is the primary selling point, how the game satrts.

By not letting players travel until the first boss, you force players to stay on the first planet. By forcing them to stay on the first planet, the first planet cannot be purely random. It needs trees, ideally cant be a snow planet or else people will just quit and try again etc etc. What it does is limit the whole starting experience and make it quite boring.

Upgrading weapons though is a nice idea.

 

That's exactly why the first planet is a tutorial one, the main game doesn't start until after they are able to reach space, which is exactly what Starbound is about.
Think of it as "training" to help players understand the game, then once they are familiar with everything give them access to space and all it's glory, they'd also be prepared ^.=.^
Also being stuck on a planet for a short time helps encourage people to build and develop the planet, explore it, and get into the flow of things.
Perhaps make a town or city for friends and family to hang out, spawn store and guard NPCs in and what-not.

 

I like the idea of different ages. Seems pretty neat.
When I first started I had no idea you even COULD travel somewhere before facing the boss.
Maybe limit traveling to the first system you start out at? Only travel between the planets (1fuel trips) and needing more tech to even switch to a different solar system within alpha sector.

So maybe build you have to start out by building your first little hut with crafting stuff before making your ship as a base in the future? IF we can even still use our ships as a base...maybe make it into that Spacestation base we originally were gonna have?

OR if we CAN place stuff in our ship, they have to be advanced/high tech, that runs on power instead of fossil fuels? Like Electric Furnace(smelt), cryogen pod(Sleep), Kitchen(prepare food and keep food items from spoiling), and so on?


What IS a bit silly that the 1 fuel trips/200+ fuel trips LAST the same amount of time tho. Whut?

 

I never said to do away with the random drops, Hell, I'd rather them be more like Borderlands 1/2 where it might be crap, but its a better weapon than what you just had. If they implemented something like this,but wiht armor as well. Then I think they could keep the current system. It just needs to be more rapid paced like how BL1/2 was/is.

 

No one said the ship had to be badly damaged, just damaged to the point where it can only move in a few star systems
and to progress to further afield one you need to repair the drive
nice and simple

 

At the end of the day the game is only in early beta and personally i am quite excited for the future updates along as they keep to listening to what the community is saying barbecue at the end of the day if they don't do something.... I'm sure the modding community will xD

 

Technically its already like that. Each new tier unlocks a new sector of difficulty.

This then begs the question, if its acting as a tutorial, itll have to be optional or its a bad tutorial. In which case 99% of players will skip it, and essentially you are asking for a lot of development time being put into essentially a different starting experience that nobody will use more than once.

And also, nobody right now wants to make a base on a single planet, because right now, in order to find higher tiers of materials, you need to go to new higher tier planets to get them. Meaning most people make bases on their ships(which I will admit is a problem that needs to be fixed)

Not ideal.

 

Yes, yes , yes. A thousand times yes.

 

I said this in assumption that the "Ages" system was already in place, making building on planets worth doing instead of how it is now,
leaving planets and everything behind for level grinding and wasting time with a leveling system that shouldn't exist because it hurts the very purpose of the game.

 

About the weapon upgrading system:
I would love to see somethin' similar to Monster Hunter weapon trees where you don't simply upgrade your weapon to better version, but you can take different paths and end with some unique and powerfull shit.

Here's for example weapon tree ONLY for Great Sword made of iron.