Hello, guys! I've been browsing the forums, taking a peek at what people seem to be concerned with about the game at the moment and I thought it would be cool to have a summary of do's and dont's for the devs to glance at. My opinion on these subjects will be there as well, and yours is always welcome (as long it is constructive)! Ps: I'm brazilian, so, sorry in advance for any spelling or grammar mistakes. Ps2: I won't be able to quote everyone's ideas that helped me create this, so know that I don't own anything and this is just a summary of things seen throughout the forums! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ TECH SYSTEM Techs are easily distinguishable by their usefulness. I rarely ever swap them, mostly sticking to Multi jump, Spike Ball and Air Dash or Sprint. The Tech System needs more diversity and replanning on what it can provide. Techs should make the player feel more powerful, useful and unique, but at the moment all they do is add a small boost (except for the ones quoted above) to our exploring capabilities. If EPPs can stack their functions, why not Tech as well? Maybe they could work like a skill tree system? - As far as I know, there is no gear/tech for underwater movement, making deep sea exploration bothersome and VERY time consuming. Why isn't there a tech for 100% underwater operation already? It could allow the player to just be faster or even have new swimming abilities. - Sphere techs fade into the distance when compared to Spike Ball. It's overall usefulness makes it very hard to be toppled by any of the other upgrades. Imo, sonic and water spheres should'nt even be a thing unless techs actually stacked like in the EPPs. I'm not really going to delve into what techs we could have, but rather just say that most of them are redundant/useless and there is a LOT of space for impovement. Thumbs up for the tech console! EPP'S While Epp's are easily the most convenient thing to have in the game, they won't allow us to use that awesome Xenon Pack because we have one active slot and a cosmetic one. Obviously, we'll be using the EPP for the whole game, because planetary dangers. And so light packs become useless. "But we have light augments" yeah, but I'd rather stick to regeneration, damage and so on. - Why not come with a slot upgrade system? We could even use those spare M.Ms we have because our matter manipulator is maxed out (or even tech cards!). - Maybe every EPP upgrade could come with increasingly better lighting effects (so cooling upgrade would come with xenon pack effects). And yes, that would implicate in higher costs, but as it is now I feel like the game is too easy. Feel free to disagree. - Craftable augments, perhaps? FARMING AND CROPS I love the sheer diversity of ingredients in the game and the fact that we can grow most of them. What I hate about them, is watering, and no food stacking (except for rice, wheat, cocoa, etc). Since farming is notably one of the most important mechanics for money making and THE most important for food crafting, why is it so damn unoptimized? - Make it so we're able to constantly water and move while holding the watering can instead of the click to use thing. It is tedious, uneficcient and very time consuming. Not fun. - Tungsten watering can is useless, a very slight upgrade from the wooden one. - Using the hoe should till all the blocks in one area, just like using the matter manipulator. Maybe we could actually use with a tilling function upgrade in the m.m! I never understood why so many tools got erased from the game and inserted into the m.m but we still have picks and hoes. - Planet scan could also indicate what crops are available. - Increased crop spawns. For example, I literally visited over 15 desert planets and found no Feathercrown, even though I stumbled upon tons of oases. - Sprinkler cost should be reduced (currently 5 gold bars and 5 durasteel bars). - I understand this was probably made to force us to use sprinklers and watering cans, but why placing tilled dirt next to water doesn't makes it wet? - No food stacking is just non sensical. Why not have stacks from which one ingredient rots after X time? (I.E: 50 eggs stack, one egg rots after some time and is removed from stack) LOOT AND COMBAT There is little to no incentive to crafting low tier gear. Exploration awards so many weapons that I rarely know what to do with the loot and just end up selling most of it. I did notice that this has been toned down a notch already, however it still feels like there is no need to craft stuff if we know we are going to find stuff after 1o minutes of spellunking. Also, monsters need to be improved in both combat skills and loot given. - Reduce frequency of chests, improve loot, even in low tier planets. - Bring back racial weapons and add more weapons. Why are there obly 2 weapons for each addon?? Diversity should rule in a game about universe exploration! - Maybe add augment slots for armor, instead of the Epp? - Make enemies stronger. I hardly ever feel threatned by them! The absolute lack of diversity in monster A.I makes it feel that bigger, stronger ones are just as dumb as the ones encountered at the beggining. They mostly try to ram you, and that's dull. They could have different skills, buffs maybe, anything that would make me think twice about challenging them to battle. MERCHANTS AND MONEY I don't really have a lot to talk about here, except that merchants are... close to useless. They solely exist for the purpose of the player being able to sell their stuff wherever, whenever. And I say that because I hardly ever find anything that I can't actually make myself or really need in their inventories. In the end, most of the money seems to be used for the Pixel Printer. And colony deeds. Looots of colony deeds. So: - Create different kinds of merchants with appropriate stalls. Be it weapons, armor, resources, blocks, misc, etc, ones that we could easily identify by appearence, and that would sell specific things. Just like the Ursa Miner sells mining stuff! Of course, wandering merchants wouldn't have stalls. - Make it so merchant inventories update every X cycles. Since we have different sol cycles for planets, why not use the as a base for when the merchants will have new stuff for us to buy? - "Special of the day" kind of thing, with increased chance for blue or purple tier items, and hefty prices. Just as a little side note: in the end, what I feel that happens in the game is: we get tons of "free stuff" (things we can obtain by mining, farming, exploring and so on) and our currency is mostly left to some really ocasional shopping, like buying fridges in the pixel printer. How could we make pixels actually vital to gameplay? QUESTS AND BOSSES In general, quests are way to easy. The thing that really bothers me is how well designed the levels are, just to reach a really easy boss fight at the end, with neglectable rewards. There is little to no strategy or platforming envolved in some of them, making them feel bland and unimportant. I actully forgot about the main storyline until I was mining in fiery star systems and thought "oh wait, we have quests". By that time I had excelent gear, I steamrolled every boss and was utterly disapointed. - As said about monsters before, bosses also need to be more challenging. Something that would check our skills, instead of just waiting until we can attack. The Erchius Horror is a great boss in that sense. Because it has a pattern that requires patience and nimbleness to get the objectives done. At the same time, it is not so difficult because it is the first boss. Also, it spawns minions! It is probably the best "model" of a boss enemy currently in game. - Those Ancient Gateways lying around could teleport us to Boss Fights. I mean, it is quite sad finding so many scattered across the universe knowing that they won't do much good to you. They could function like challenge rooms, but with core fragments cost to enter, and would have random or semi random bosses. Difficulty and rewards could scale with solar system type and the boss fought. - Quests might as well have more enemies and traps. Most of the places just feel empty and we can get past them running without a second thought. GENERAL SUGGESTIONS AND COMPLAINTS Things I couldn't really categorize: - Controls are sort of wonky. Platforming is a core part to Starbound but it feels so... not fluid. I lost count of the number of times I died due to weird controls and just falling straight to oblivion. Ropes are sluggish, the hook is way to expensive and inefficient and some of the techs don't really do much for mobility. - We could have tags for systems and planets we visited. I know, we have bookmarks, but have you tried to keep track of every place you went with them? Sheer madness. It is all too common to travel to previously visited places only to find out you wasted your fuel. One icon in the corner of the screen could change that! - I have tried my best, but haven't been able to solve single player lag. It still haunts me, knowing that any given moment I could fall in molten lava because the screen froze and I suddenly teleported into it. - Pet system is cool, but AI should be revamped for improved pathing. It is too common that they get stuck or kill themselves in environmental hazards while trying to reach us. Also, why do we need diamonds for capture pods? Well, guys, that's all I can think of/remember for now. If there's anything you would like to see here, just give me a holler and I'll edit the post! The more the merrier. Do keep in mind most of these things were suggested by the community! Thanks!
