Stop back-loading the fun parts of the game.

I'd argue that the variety doesn't even exists very strongly in the current version.
The underground in most planets looks very much the same, be it ocean or volcanic.
...but I suppose that's off-topic and I should make a thread for it! (In fact I think I will.)

One reason the progression system is probably so rigid because the bosses and missions would be trivial in higher tier gear.
An another is that there's currently one progression path.
After the building and farming progression paths are added the whole thing is bound to feel a bit less forced.
In Terraria the NPC building system always felt very natural and tied well together with other aspects of the game.
If Starbound's housing renting system can come even close to it it could make the game feel a lot more open simply by allowing people to do things like collecting trinkets and putting them in houses in order to progress.


It's also be possible to just give a tier tag to all equipment.
This way even if a new character finds a T6 weapon they can't use it until they get far enough in a progression path.
It would allow you to still explore, mine and store items anywhere you please, if you are willing to do so in outdated gear.
It just wouldn't make much logical sense and people would then complain that they can't just insta boost their new alts into killing machines with loot from their main.
Well, it's like you said. You can never please everyone

 

Again it is still early, and we could see another large content drop any day that could address a multitude of issues.

But I agree to a point.

I found myself not even making it to the third boss before my rampant abuse of the /admin cmds for everything.

As I found it almost impossible to immerse myself. Everything felt like a chore to get to the next cool thing, not like some meaningful quest I should be wanting to accomplish because the plot/narration and actions of doing it etc was enveloping.

Also perhaps removing the /admin from singleplayer would be nice. As it seems like it is a integrated part of the game. And definitely should not be for singleplayer. How can you expect to guide the player a certain direction and get reasonable feedback when they can just skip to the end?

 

Finding out how many people want to skip to the end instead of going through the stuff is probably a pretty useful bit of information

 

Indeed.
I'm very surprised to hear so many are skipping what I consider the best part in order to get to the part where I got very bored!
All sorts of players and wide appeal I suppose.

 

What do you mean by the best part? Erchius mining level? If so, I totally agree. That level is the best laid out and most interesting of the locked-level battles. After that it was downhill.

 

I get how this data could be helpful. But the only reason I want to skip to the end is because everything is way to linear for my taste. like do X for X for X = Y (and might I add that is how I see these quests/missions in my head, the narration and plotting seems as if it was done by a 1st year DM and I can't immerse myself accept when mining or building)

Also another reason I use the /admin to get what I want, Is i just don't want to play through the game. I did it once. And even though Progenitor changed it almost completely. IT still feels the same, almost less actually because of the lack of freedom. They have seemingly destroyed the sandbox feel. The integration of the quest system needs drastic refinement to make it feel wholesome and immersive not a chore.

 

Seriously? I've heard that one more times I care to remember and nevertheless it always surprises me. I think everybody should be able to decide for themselves what to do. So it's everybodies own fault for skipping cool things because of the inability to Iet the admin commands alone. I know people who like to read the end of a book first, so they know if they'll like it. I would hate to do that but I don't care enough to stand watch to foil the attempt.

I like the idea of being able to cheat, especially if it's my own damn singleplayer game. Funny enough I haven't used it yet and I'm the one that cannot progress without the hardware getting too hot.

I like to think it should be as easy as just NOT using any admin commands instead of hoping the would be removed from the game altogether. I think I'd be a bit pissed if Chucklefish did that. Because after I played through a game I quite like to abuse the command line for my personal fun.

And it's especially a good thing that Starbound is moddable, so hopefully there'll be always some new things to discover. Modding can keep a game alive for a long time. I for one still play Oblivion because in it's modded glory it nowadays looks better than some brand new games and still makes me want to take my shoes off and jump right in.

 

I mean the missions. ALL the missions!
My favorite is/was the last one!

Once I was done with them I felt empty. Like there's nothing that interesting left to do.
Well, aside from getting my ship to max tier.
The same feeling I get whenever I decide to do a run-through of Terraria and kill all the bosses a few times.
I might build something afterwards but often I just feel little motivation to play until the next update.

(This is why I never understand people rushing through content! To me it's about the journey.)

 

Again this boils down to the fact of my original point of the lack of immersion, decent progression and various other elements that make it feel tedious and not fun.


Every other game I have played that institutes some type of CMD (fallout New vegas comes to mind). Buries it a just a hair deeper. Perhaps I was a bit broad. They need to make it harder to access. Not just "type /admin in the chat window to be invincible and add any item etc etc" that is stupidly easy. Even skilled players have used this to get passed certain points in the update.

Heck I can even see leaving it in place just for this until the game launchs. Then removing it. Because it is good for testing.

In addition to that. I love challenge, but if you put an easier path in front of me. I will obviously take it why waste my time if I can just take the easy way? If no easy was existed. Then I would have no choice but to enjoy the designed way to play?

Also I didn't pay to mod games. However much I love modding. I refuse to use it to supplement content I paid for that hasn't even been delivered yet.

 

You basically just repeated what akado said in regards to variety...
Far as I know, and how I interpreted it...

Anyway I just wanted to say something on the NPC building part you mentioned. I hope it is more than what terraria did, as that game only does a basic setup. The only things needed are all the same with each and every npc, for the most part. At least in building design, with maybe a few only depending on which biome you build in. However there is no difference in how you build their buildings. There system is based on attraction according to what is in the inventory of yours, instead of what is in the house.

I would hope it is similar to what Dinora did, in which the requirements for attracting or getting certain npcs would be different based upon the building itself, and its' selective content, even if spruced up a little. Well one can dream of that. Housing can probably be simple renting, but colony is a whole other matter. Which would need something more that what terraria does, in order to be more effective or believable. something like that. colonies mod kind of thing...

Anyway that is my thoughts on that portions.

I do basically agree the universe is lacking variety, even though there is some right now, just not as much as before... As far as biomes, weather, and planets are concerned. I find it must be a balance between variety and uniqueness, or close thereof. Each biome should be somewhat unique and genrally will have their parts, but also have several variations that add the variety to it would be nice as well. Weather and secondary biome would be 2 I would think should be touched upon. Regardless this I will have to see how they go about all this.

Can't say much on the other one, since that is something I don't totally focus on in this game, due to my playstyle or how I go about playing...

 

I hope you won't be offended because I can't help but think that's bloody cute. Like honest to god just can't help yourself and cheat?

Yeah well, that of course is true. I would be very disappointed too if a game was so lame, I'd have to mod it first to make it playable at all.

 

Yeah I am a bad boy in that regard. I'll work hard if that's the only way. But if I can get to end game sooner, the better. The only games I have spent over a hundred hours on are Sandbox types or roguelikes. For obvious reasons.

And the second part is spot on.!

 

Floran not particularly enjoy playing game without incentive to progresss. Having incentive to do thingsss make doing more interesssting, which improve thingsss overall.

Though Floran feel that current method of progresssion not adequate yet.
Isss in beta though and Floran confident it get better.

 

I feel (like many others) that the progression is to linear, get this to get that, then use it to get the next one
whereas terraria had an optional linear progression path, copper, iron, silver, and so on. but you could skip all of it and get to the second part of the game (hard mode), which was really the only required* part of the game
starbound was advertised as a game where you could explore the universe, but that selling point is locked behind being able to platform (and a few other things)

they said that progression would be based on pixels mostly, and there would be many different ways to get pixels. this currently has not been put in really as the only way to progress is by combat
I say have it so you pay someone to fix your ship, and you earn money by renting out a custom house (building), or selling food (farming), or killing monsters (combat), or exploring a dungeon to find a treasure someone wants to buy (exploring, and all starting worlds would have a dungeon on them with said valuable item)
this way you can progress in the game by exploring, even though the whole universe may be locked out at the start, but its better then currently

the first world should be somewhat of a tutorial world, teaching the player the basics (like suggesting that there are different ways to progress)


*by required I mean required to get to end game, you could easily play endlessly in easy mode

 

While i support OP fully with his/her post, i realized, that it would create a different problem when talking about unique armor/weapons with neat flashy effects - you may start to like 'em, if you find any, but at one point during progression, they start to get useless.

For example, the sword "Starfury" from Terraria.
It's by far my favourite weapon in that game. Pink, sparkly and each swing causes a little shooting star to fall from the sky, but it's only useful for early/mid-normalmode, roughly the first 25% of Terraria's progression.

I was really dissapointed, because when i got hold of it, it already was barely useful.

On the other hand, you really get motivated to seach for something equally awesome and go explore, so...
As long as they have enough neat flashy things to discover, i'd roll with it.

 

See also: the Enchanted Sword from Terraria. The rarest weapon in the game, and one of the crappiest.

 

Chill out

 

Personally, I prefer the course of progression they're going with, with the caveat that I don't for one minute expect its current iteration to stay 100% like this Forever and Ever Up To 1.0 Release. It's a work-in-progress, a skeleton with some meat, but not all of it. I expect most of these progression quests to change now that they have a functioning quest system, enabling them to do more complex stuff, and relegate fetches to wholly optional quests.

Plus, this does stretch out the new content, which was an issue before. In EK it was kind of easy to exhaust a lot of the new stuff fairly soon into the game, leaving progression to be little more than an extended stretch of Just Getting Bigger Numbers. As they refine the system and add more content, I'm confident it'll smooth out nicely.

And let's be fair. it's not like the EK build wasn't arbitrarily gated either. At least this version gives some direction, rather than having you just kinda stumble onto the Boss Summon Item eventually.

 

Agreed. Progression is easier than it used to be, in all honesty, and much more interesting. Running a dungeon and beating a boss for reasons that are pretty clear is better than putting down a distress beacon, expecting help to come, and then getting stomped by a penguin UFO.

 

Perssonally my record sstill in getting to the bosss is lesss than 2 hours. Sso far in the sstable, my record for beating dungeon 1 after getting to it is 30 minutess. I dual-wielded shields, used cooked meat and red stims while bandaging health to full everytime it was not at full. 30 minutess becausse ssome chunkss would not load fasst enough. I'm 100% positive that if you were to optimize your sstrategy, you could likely finish the firsst dungeon within 2 hours of sstarting the game on a new, fresh character.

There will be more progression paths later on, there's already 3 obvious ones they're likely to include, I'm very sure there will likely be a path that includes exploration and finding core fragmentss without digging far down (even if it takes like... maximum of 30 minutess to get down to the core if you're quick enough and dig straight down).

Jusst be patient, the game'ss sstill in beta and sstill being worked on. All great games were built over a long period, thiss one ssimply jusst took a year break becausse of development problems and dev team problems.[DOUBLEPOST=1423622713][/DOUBLEPOST]

That or you refer to the wikis for progression clues, or jusst google everything like alot of people do when playing minecraft.