Taking stock of the Universe

I think right before this new patch, it's important to take stock on the universe as it currently is.

Currently, Starbound is my favorite game of 2013 and my most anticipated game of 2014. The potential is ENORMOUS and frankly, makes me tingle in my giblets at the mere thought of having the Universe to explore at my whim.

But guys and girls of Chucklefish? Y'all have GOT to stop a few things before it gets too far into the development cycle to change. There are a few points I'd like to outline here, and then BEG on my KNEES to be changed. And I'm NOT saying these changes aren't planned or whatever, I'm just stressing that I will truly be thrilled if or when these changes are implemented - I want to encourage Chucklefish that if they ARE making some of these changes, they're doing it for good reasons! And if not, please reconsider!

1) Weapons and armor "progression" are some of the most blande I've seen in the genre. And they are forced on you in a very specific, linear way. You MUST make this one before you make the next one. And even so, it all ends up feeling pretty pointless. I don't want new iron armor that offers some vague, uninteresting defense-stat boost and a cosmetic makeover and a new steel 1h sword that does 20 more damage than my previous iron sword. The MOST BEAUTIFUL thing about Starbound is that it takes place in a vast, infinite universe with untold, countless alien flora, fauna, artifacts, etc...... USE THAT! I want an armor that you can chop only out of those metal trees on that one kind of planet that has them! And I want them woven together with living vines carved from the carcasses of an underground living-vine empire's soldiers I just killed! And I want stronger-than-steel plates adorning it, torn from the back of roving dinosaurs that only inhabit Arid worlds in sector 3!!! And I want a ball-and-chain weapon where the chain-links are made from the eyeball sockets from the robotic drones of an advanced AI that inhabits a planet only in sector VII, and the "ball" at the end is the severed head (but still alive) of a zombie-like wildebeest from the grasslands biomes!!! That spits lava when you swing it!!! But you know what I get?!? I get to combine 8 iron bars to make an iron spear. This is not only inexplicable, but frankly not as creative as I'd hope from a game that sets its sights SO HIGH with the perfect foundation for this. Guys. Please get creative with this stuff. The main complaint from the forums is that everything feels dull and lifeless. The crafting system foundations are PERFECT - let's spice it up with INSANE things that could only be found in a raging-mad universe full of unique life and endless possibilities!!!!!!!! It's the ENTIRE UNIVERSE people! The best you can come up with is a titanium axe?!?!?!?!

2) This linear, uninteresting progression is SERIOUSLY hampering the ability to enjoy this game. I can barely take it. It's uninteresting, unexciting and completely kills any sense of "Open World Survival" that Terraria helped define as a genre. It's become more like some kind of pseudo-MetroidVania knock off, and I literally can't tell you how damaging that is to this game's possibilities. If I can compare this to Terraria for a moment - maybe the comparison is unfair, or Terraria isn't a focal point for Starbound's development, but the fact of the matter is - Terraria did something so incredibly right. And that, specifically, is: You can get AHEAD in the world if you put in the work. With just the clothes on your back or some copper armor, you can put in the WORK to drop dynamite on those shadow orbs and spawn that meteorite at the time YOU DECIDE - hence, open world. Then put in the work to find enough gold to make a gold pickaxe and hack at that meteorite while fighting off Meteor Heads to get enough to whip out your shiny new phase blade and space gun and meteor armor. Boom, those little zombies aren't your problem anymore. In Starbound, that sense of putting-in-the-work to get ahead doesn't exist. You WILL make copper armor. Then you WILL make iron armor. Then you WILL spawn the penguin UFO and you WILL kill them to get to the next sector, then you WILL.... etc. etc. ad infinitum. This can't happen in the final game, guys. I hope every day you're working on taking this system of YOUMUSTDOTHIS-THEN-YOUMUSTDOTHIS out of the game completely. It has to be reworked and rethunk.

3) The bosses make LITERALLY, zero sense. The first one, maybe. It's kind of a nice surprise that you're trying to make a radio beacon to... do whatever it is you're supposed to do, and some penguin aliens intercept it and try to destroy you (for no reason)... but everything after that? You, yourself have to make a robot companion, turn him on and immediately kill him for the micro-chip that.... you just created and could have taken out before he tries to kill you? Why make the robot in the first place? Because your magican anvil tells you to? And don't get me started on the dragon. There just so happens to be a random dragon on whatever planet you're on at the moment (or maybe he's in a galaxy far away and flies) who somehow smells a metal princess from 10,000 light years away and is dumb enough to be fooled and makes the trip to get killed instantly by a sword? And somehow his bone empowers you unlock a new sector of the starmap? This is not only unbelievable, but also completely ridiculous. And again, the LINEAR progression is madness. Why not let me fight them in ANY ORDER I WANT? And instead of unlocking the NEXT galaxy + 1, why don't they just open up a DIFFERENT part of the galaxy, with not necessarily harder enemies, but DIFFERENT ones with DIFFERENT rewards, and you can experience them in any order you are skilled enough to make happen? I don't want my hand held, except that right NOW in the game, when I unlock a new sector? Here's what happens: I immediately check in my magical workbench for how to "build the next boss item". FFS, how does my workbench even KNOW there's a mystical dragon in this sector and that making a metal princess will bring him straight to you?!? WHY?!?! Yet, there it is - an inexplicable bound-princess for no reason.

4) This may be a minor gripe or go completely unnoticed by some people - but I'm begging you guys at Chucklefish: Please don't make the enemies you kill *POOF* into thin air for no reason. I hate it. There's no sense of accomplishment when you slaughter every crewmember of an airship and instead of their carcasses lying on the ground to step over as you loot and deconstruct their base, everyone's just mysteriously vanished for no reason. Ruins the immersion (which is a common theme here, if you can't tell). I want to see my kills' dead bodies splayed on the ground. Remember Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War?!? The first one? Orcs mount a massive attack on your well-defended base and your Space Marine army slices them to pieces and when the dust settles? 240 carcasses lay mutilated at your doorstep and you lean back in your chair and wallow in your blood-soaked victory. Modern games unfortunately get rid of bodies because the 3d bodies of hundreds of enemies chilling around everywhere could slow your comp to a crawl. But this is 2D, people! Sprites can't be that much of a difficulty to render. The new Nitrous engine just showed a tech demo this week of a battle with 10,000 space ships! I can't imagine 14 dead avians would break the computer. Let them disappear after a while when I go offscreen for awhile, I don't care, but don't make them POOF with a puff of smoke. It's just lazy. I know, I know, there are hundreds of different sprites and you can't animate all their deaths... but at least make them break apart into pieces like Terraria and show their remains on the ground or something!

5) And I know this one's been done-to-death and they vow to correct it, but I want the developers to know that it's so important - the Underground. It's dark, empty and pointless. I get to a new planet and just run straight across the surface, find the easy metal, encounter all the interested events and places on the planet, easily pick up enough metal to make whatever distressed princess this "level" required me to build and then get the hell to the next sector as fast as possible. There is nothing interesting or relevant or exciting or useful enough to make me spend all that time digging... that I can't do 10x easier by just flying to the next planet and running across the surface again. It's okay to model after games that got this right... diamonds in Minecraft only available at lower levels... hellfire ore only available in Hell in Terraria... MAKE me go down there if I want the best stuff.

6) Meaningful interaction - there's a great questing system in place, yet there's zero meaningful interaction between you and the inhabitants of the planet - I literally just kill every single thing I meet and take their stuff. Did I miss a developer answer on this subject? I feel like I might have, since there's a whole questing system that goes completely dark after the penguin boss. But meaningful interaction with the inhabitants of a planet you come across would add LOADS to this game. Maybe you come across an Apex city under attack by rebels and you can choose to help either side? Or maybe Florians are attacking a Hyolotl settlement and you can repel them? Or a Glitch team of archaeologists searching for a long-lost AI underground and you can help them? Or a city that's being overrun by rapidly procreating wild animals that you can find the source of and stop? Everyone should play Star Control II and take note - they did it perfectly. Each race you meet has their own race-specific plight, and it ranges from arachnids who worship their Dark Gods who you can impersonate, an entire race on the brink of suicide because their most sacred artefact was broken, a race that exchanges knowledge and tech for captured biological species, a fungal species that terraforms planets whether there are civilizations already there or not... the list goes on and on. But it really illustrates the idea that the universe is probably filled with varied, insane and creative problems to solve. But Starbound is filled with a bunch of random humanoids whose only problem is that I stab them with my spear until they blink out of existence. Also, a reputation system would be nice with each of the races. Ranging from helping you against attackers and travelling with you randomly and selling to you cheaper, to shooting you on-sight. Right now, I can kill half a village, leave for a bit and come back to their open-arms. It's silly and breaks..... what? Immersion.

There's more that maybe I'll add with time. But what does everyone else think? Does this resonate with anyone? If I get a few meaningful comments, I'll have done what I came to do.

 

Wow, yeah I hadn't considered a lot of what was on the list but I completely agree with it all. Your ideas are solid and your reasoning makes sense. All of this is stuff that should be implemented. Hey Chucklefish! You listening!?

 

I pretty much agree with everything you said, except it being my favorite game of 2013 tho

 

Thanks Naara and Zekk - it's good to hear I'm not alone! You think Chucklefish will listen to any of it? X Hahah... you guys have any thoughts to add?

7) I'd like to tackle the massive subject of base-building while I'm at it, too. The current problem people are expressing across the forums seems to be that there's not enough incentive to build any sort of base on any of the actual worlds. And my God, I couldn't agree with that statement any more if I tried. I mean, there are those who retort "I like building! I always build a base on the planet I'm on!" And to that, I say: Great! But wouldn't you like a compelling reason to do it, other than "I like to build"? Like many other people have stated - if you can build all your main functional stuff, as well as storage, on your ship, why drop down roots anywhere planetside? I mean, that's what I do - I planet hop over and over, find a nice, intriguing one, build a little hut or take over another one I find, gather enough metal to fight the boss, and then hop to the next one. But ALL my crafting is done on my ship, and all my fun decorations I steal from planetary installations are also stored on my ship so I can take them with me. I've never once found a compelling reason to plant my roots on any one planet... ESPECIALLY because once you can jump to a new sector, the PREVIOUS sector is 100% useless. Why go back to a planet that only has copper and iron, when your new planet has the components to make durasteel? Right? And why store ANYTHING on a planet, when you could store it in your mobile ship, never lose it, never forget where it is or which planet you left it on, and can warp right back to your ship WHENEVER you want!!!

This is a very difficult problem to find a solution to, ESPECIALLY since Chucklefish made the design decision to encourage you to NOT stay on any one planet for very long, and not providing you any motivation to do so. So what to do? The only thing that comes to mind is something like from the movie Pitch Black. Like, with the onset of NIGHTTIME, the monsters/aliens normally docile during the day, come out in full-attack mode at night. The best video-game example of this is Don't Starve, where if you were caught with the lights out at night even for 10 seconds, you were dead meat. Shades of it even happened in Terraria, with the whole zombies attacking during the night. And so maybe in Starbound, if you don't get BEAMED UP to your ship before they arrive, you better have an awesome base built or you WILL.BE.OVERRUN. Sure the meany-monsters come out at night already in this game, but they don't launch an attack on you or your base. Building up a base for that first night, or needing to get beamed up to your ship before dusk COULD add a huge level of suspense to the game. Other options include finding out SOME sort of way to motivate players to keep ONE base and add on to it could really help (like by getting followers in Terraria to come and stay with you... love that nurse ;o)

Well, I wanna hear if anyone has come to similar conclusions!

 

The "reason to build" shouldn't revolve around monster defense, since that's EXTREMELY temporary. Once you get a good weapon, even the night enemies are a cake-walk.

Instead, there should be fellow refugees that settle whenever there's an established city. This adds a bit of "sim-city" to the mix, allowing you to provide food, materials, and defenses for townspeople, who provide services back to you. And you can world-hop to your heart's content with this particular motivation, because each world you populate just adds to your empire. Your "goal" would be to have a huge galactic empire with a population numbering in the millions. How?

Craft and plant a flag, then establish at least one enclosed structure. (This is similar to Terraria's housing criteria for NPC's.) The "flag" claims the planet for your empire. NPC's can then randomly walk/beam in to town and build their own house. They'll need food, though, so have some on-hand and ready for them. A good sized farm is also a smart thing to have. More NPC's = more food needed. But don't worry, if you have a farm planted, some of the NPC's will work it for you, and stash food away for you and for them.

Each time you beam down to a planet you've started a city on, your empire's population updates. Any planet with your city on it is highlighted in your "empire color" on your starmap. Each time you take over an entire star (have more populated planets in the star system than any other empire), that star is highlighted in your "empire color" on your starmap. As your cities grow, they are able to produce better and better gear for you to use, and can better defend themselves.

"Tier" events can happen due to reaching certain population levels, either on a planet-to-planet basis, or empire-wide. "The evil penguin king has noticed your prosperous 5-planet empire and wants to reduce it to rubble." Kill a penguin in a UFO. "The miners on Alpha Blergh IV have gone prospecting in some ancient ruins and awakened a zombie dragon." Kill a zombie dragon and examine its bone (wut?). "The scientists of Beta Flurp III c have created a new FarmBot(tm), but it went haywire and started attacking things! Save them!" Kill an out-of-control robot and pilfer its CPU.

In multiplayer servers, this can turn into more of a game of CTF, simply by having a flag-defense and flag-replacement mechanic. Battles can be fought over the NPC cities, with the NPC's participating. Take over the city, take over the planet. Take over enough planets and your empire gets the whole star system.

I've mentioned before that there could be a "faction" system to solve the "racial traits" thing that keeps cropping up on the forums. But I think this whole "empire/faction" idea turned into a game of galactic CTF/sim-city is even better, whether any bonus traits get included or not.

 

Very nice list! The only points you might reconsider is "bosses make no sense" and lacking quest system, because the bosses are not in order and the quest system isn't implemented after the tutorial quests.

Other than that, you're very right. Use the universe - if you make a vast amount of procedurally generated content, put it to good use. Also, play to the strengths of what you created - in this case, building, mining, crafting, fighting, exploring. Every one of those aspects should be rewarding and fun. Combat is almost there, mining could use a little more helpful items (directional explosives to make shafts, a lighter bot that follows you, a lift, worker bots that dig 200 blocks in a direction for 1 coal and then return from where they started). Crafting would benefit from your ideas of unique recipes (which I would prefer to have in the form of quests, so as not to clutter the crafting interface). This would also serve exploring.
Building could use some more reward, and is indeed hard to do. I would like to see room requirements of certain crafting items, which I outlined in another thread (http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/57779/ ).

 

Wow, awesome story-driven reasons for the bosses. I would hope these kinds of ideas move Starbound in an exciting direction.
The OP is also exactly correct in the limits set by the current game. No significant reasons to build cuts out a huge aspect of this game.

 

All these ideas coupled together would give players an awesome choice for unique character development and play style...
do I play as a mining foreman, gathering the wealth of the universe for my profit?
Can I encourage setllements on several planets to become a "Sector Mayor" or even bigger political aspirations.
Can I assist with local dilemmas and increase my renown to become the most famous Star Traveller?

Players like and NEED choice, not just follow the predetermined tier track that got boring on the first day!

Thanks for voicing your opinions and better yet, voicing your solutions!

 

I.....agree with all of this. Like, every single point you made. Well said.

The game feels way too linear and needs to offer players options for how they progress through the game.

 

Mattintosh, that is glorious. I like the ideas in the OP as well. Definitely things that need considering while we're in beta.

 

Hahah - I REALLY like these solutions!

@Mattintosh - Your ideas here MIGHT be getting into the realm of a completely different game, but uh... Mattintosh? Do you wanna make this game with me? It sounds killer! Hah! I really like the whole territory idea, planting your flag and maybe even having to defend it sometimes. Maybe the monsters or opposing armies will someday threaten to overrun even your best defenses? And if you don't come to their rescue or build a good enough base, you can come back and they're all dead?

@teilnehmer - First off, I love your idea of how they're hopefully going to incorporate reasons for the existence of the bosses! And the idea of a lighter bot seems appropriate - I don't know why you're stuck in the stoneage in this game, having to use a Lantern-on-a-stick... you're not stranded on this planet, you've got a friggin' light-speed capable ship hovering over your head (that runs on coal). Why is a lighter-bot out of our capabilities and you have to just stick some flame on a pole and hook it on your back? And on a side note, I read your other thread, and the system you came up with there would go perfectly in Starbound, and not only that, it's the SOLE reason that Prison Architect is such a popular sim! I don't know if you've played it, but they implemented exactly what you said in your other thread. For example, to build an office for your accountant, you have to build a room of a certain size, and include a door, a desk, a file cabinet and a chair. A shower needs shower heads and a drain. To a lesser extent, this was in Terraria - but only the very basic: Have a room and a bullet in your inventory, or whatever and you get the gunsmith. This could easily be implemented into Starbound AND encourage base-building and questing to tie them together. What if the only way to get an intergalactic bounty-hunter to come to your base (and sell you his special weapons) was if you mounted the head of a giant pseudo-lion on display in your base! Wow, the possibilities are ENDLESS for this... the inclusion of CRUCIAL NPC's only coming around if you've built it up with the right stuff. And maybe certain things need certain components you can ONLY find in certain worlds, like that giant lion-beast is ONLY on a safari world, right? Which brings me to point number 8.......

8) There is a BEAUTIFUL plethora of unique worlds to find... Arid, Grasslands, Volcanic, Moon, you-name-it, it's included in the game. But guess what? Every single world in Sector 1 has just iron and copper and random silver with a hint of gold. Man, I can just see this expanded SO easily with unique crafting materials!!!!!! Maybe someone can come up with more examples, but maybe those worlds with metal trees are the ONLY places to get "metal-bark" which could be important for something. Or moons have extra craters (like they always do) from meteor impacts and you can find special ore ONLY ON MOONS. Maybe jungle worlds are the ONLY worlds where you can find a certain kind of very tough vine that makes a perfect whip (I'm just blatantly stealing from the jungle levels in Terraria now, but you catch my drift). As of right now, there's VERY little that would MAKE you WANT to go to any specific kind of planet - you can just kind of close your eyes and click and you'll find iron ore. Ugh. Give me world-specific crafting materials to make me WANT to brave a volcanic land since that's the only place I can mine the materials to make a frickin' lava-gun or something! Give me special mats, and recipes that MAKE me explore different worlds. But if I just need steel bars all the time in sector 2, I'll stick to the relatively mild grasslands, please.

@Atomicknyte - You're so right about CHOICES. This is CRUCIAL for Chucklefish to understand. I mean, sure they already made $15,000,000 off pre-orders, they could call it a day. But I don't think ANYONE who's bought the game would be happy without any choices at all. Which weapon do you want to go for? Which armor (with real bonuses, not just stat-boosts) are you aiming for FIRST? Which NPC's do you want to attract? HOW DO YOU PERSONALLY WANT TO PLAY THE GAME? Because, I'll tell you - right now? As fun and loaded-with-possibilities it is? There's only one way to play. And that's go-through-the-tiers.

@LordQ - this is what I'm saying - we have to get these changes noticed BEFORE it gets too late in the development to change! Before they say, "Well, we already did the LAST character wipe and we can't go back on that to make these changes..............."

 

In the world generation code add new lines like percentage chance for x ore to be generated and then if the world is a lava world it gets a 99% a grasslands world gets a 0.01%.

Make a reason for me to need to go to that type of world and it opens up so much possibility.

Keep this thread active and at the top so more people understand the ramifications of getting stuck with a game that did not reach its full potential.
That would be a shame.

 

The trouble with threads introducing awesome ideas like this is that there's nothing to discuss since discussion usually starts off with people disagreeing with the OP. And there's not going to be any disagreement here.

 

Have you thought about cross-posting this to the Reddit subforum?

It seems the Devs hang out there more than here.

http://www.reddit.com/r/starbound

 

No one has suggested to change the tone or flavor; everyone likes to poke fun at themselves once in a while and staying light hearted and comedic is fine.
But playing down the same beaten track, using the same required equipment, in the same mandated order is not fun.

I would love to go up against the Clown King of Raziel Major 6 and his court jester body guards throwing pies at me but let me meet them on my own terms, with the equipment I THINK is best suited for the task, when I want to go there.

 

I'm going to have to agree with all the suggestions made here so far. More particularly, with the linear tier progression, the subpar crafting system, and the lack of incentive to build.

I tend to be a collector, explorer, crafter, and a builder when playing this sort of game. I want to have reason to explore - not just to see different differently colored dirt and reskinned trees, but to collect unique items and crafting materials to build unique items. I love steel swords just as much as the next guy, and have no problem using them when necessary, but what about some Plasma swords, Vibroknives, Dark Matter Sycthes and Martian Ray Guns? Or go low tech with poisonous vine whips, bone swords, dart guns, gunpowder spears, etc. Not as random Mob drops mind you (that's boring, and random, and grinding for drops gives no sense of accomplishment), but as crafted works that require scavenging the universe for parts and materials, certain lenses and energy cores from ancient robotic mobs, poisonous thorny vines from rare jungle plants, sharp bone that can be traded from Floran Hunters on a Great Hunt or procured yourself, resonating crystals found only in the deep core of volcanic worlds, etc.

With these various unique materials, I want more "parts" needing to be crafted to make certain items, with more realistic material costs. To build a space suit for example, I should need to craft "Space Material" out of several pieces of Fabric and Gold Wire, "Rubber Tubing" out of refined Tar, a "Glass Helmet" from glass, "Air tanks" from durasteel, and a handful of Copper Rivets. This of course should require highly advanced and specific crafting stations, some of which being fairly large structures, A Loom for the Space Material, A Refinery for Producing Petroleum products like Rubber, a Jewelwork Tabel for Cutting Lenses and Crystals out of glass and Gems, A Computer Workstation for Databasing Discovered Blueprints (rather than eating them), A Welding Table for Crafting Sheet Metal for large constructions or into building blocks, etc. Likewise I want to be able to craft tools, weapons, and equipment from rock bottom (Stone Age), to modern age (motor bikes, tanks, and boats), to present age in Starbound, including FTL Engine Drives, Speeders, Mecha, Plasma Weapons, Laser Guns and Turrets, Penguin Saucer Ships, Molten Cores, Nav-computers, Ship Scanners, and etc.

And to accompany these massive industrial feats, I want to build Complex Bases and Power stations, Temples and Castles, Great Intergalactic Civilizations and Empires, and Isolated research, Industrial, and Military Stations, out of NPCs whom I rule, conquer, or assist. Which bases I then use to further dominate the galaxy, or defend against an evil expanding empire, in a dangerous battle of attrition, invasions, and dogfighting, where anything I build could at any point be conquered or destroyed, and it's up to my ability as a builder to build effectively defensive fortifications, my ability as a strategist to use my NPCs and traps to assist in repelling the attack, and/or my own combat ability to join the front lines.


Finally, I want to be able to choose When and How, I take on certain challenges. I do not want to be pigeon-holed into a tier system. I want to discover super-hard challenges without even knowing it. I want to die taking those challenges on when I'm not prepared for them. And I want to be able to progress in other directions as I prepare myself for taking those harsh challenges on. I do NOT want to be forced to do one thing in order to do another, I want to be able to choose which thing I want first and try it, and fail or succeed based upon my own merits, not by whether I did the prerequisites or not. I also want to be able to craft anything so long as I have the appropriate materials and tools to do so, which tools and materials I acquired in my own order according to my own desires, not because I unlocked the next tier through a boss drop, but because my efforts were spent to acquire the prerequisite crafting materials in an organic sense of progression.

 

The group here should team up to be creative consultants to Chucklefish. Such awesome ideas needing to be used!!!

 

1) Honestly I'm actually okay with armor and weapon progression as it is right now. I don't really want really don't want the indepth recipes you are implying for the most part. I like exploring the universe, but if I had to pick from travelling many planets to get multitudes of items to even attempt to make a cool-beans set of armor and weapons, I'll pass. I'd rather dig for ores to craft the armors and make a decent place holder weapon. I'd rather just have whole rare armors/weapons drop from minibosses/unique mobs so I'd rather have more of those then anything else.

2) I don't mind linear progression. The player characters themselves have a backstory, so I don't mind playing those out in a manner of quests in a linear fashion. Sure having a static story path wouldn't be fun, if it can branch out due to my own decisions that would be pretty cool. But again I actually don't mind linear progression in a game like this I like this.

3) Yeah the bosses make no sense, but I think that ties with that the story for all the characters and the quests themselves are incomplete. Although even if the quests were complete a flying undead dragon makes little sense no matter what you do with it. (Honestly I wished that dragon was a metallic dragon made for the glitch as part of the experiment but its programming has gone haywire like the glitch) Also I know everyone checks the "magic anvil" so to say to see what they need to craft to challenge the next boss and while that is pretty silly again the quests themselves are incomplete. Although this is assuming a linear progression which again I have no problem with.

4) I honestly don't care about a feature like this. As soon as I kill something I have little to no interest in the dead body itself. All I care about is the drops. I don't really think about the bodies of the airship crew I just slaughtered, that's not how I immerse myself in the game.

5) They said they will flesh out underground to make it more rewarding which I hope they do. The only reason I go underground is to find a shitton of softbrick or to build the elevator to hell.

6) Questing system is indeed incomplete and it is my hope there will be many quests and interactions to come. Like I mentioned earlier I wouldn't mind a linear story based on each race's background, but again it would be cool if each story can branch out based on your decisions. Reputation system is cool-beans but its something I can live without.

 

Bumping for serious consideration