The slowly dying sandbox

I've been playing the game since early early development. I've got 2300 (plus) hours logged. Like I said, I have never hand a gentle planet with violent weather. To quantify that, I should say recently (so early on yes, it happened). The only occurrence I even remember that happening was when you explored the universe by means of sectors and THAT was years ago...years. This current weather system has been a thing for a long while now and isn't anything new since 1.0...and it makes sense the way they've set it up. "Random" weather my be exciting but it's nice to know before you start building if you run the risk of the build catching fire because of a random weather system. That's why they changed it to something more logical and less random...years ago. If your argument is it doesn't make sense than all swamp biomes should be dreary and rainy...I honestly don't get it because it sets the atmosphere for the swamp just like snow in a frozen biome.

Now, we do have barren planets with no weather that are meant for building. What would be nice is a means of setting the weather on those barren planets but I'm sure that's more involved than just talking how 'nice' it would be would imply.

 

yes and random weather was even if years ago when people wanted a weather radar and as that came the random weather went off which made no sense ever sicne form then the biome itself is the indicator already. And this is what is lacking since then and people wanted it back, now we have a release, years later, and it's still gone the game has undergone more and more cuts in the last 2 years and thats why so many interest for many people was killed.

 

How many poeple? I don't miss random weather :/ I actually don't miss early generator, I prefer to have worlds that make more 'sense' than random silly ones. If stuff is too random it's boring (at least for me). (and to be honest current generator is still not perfect in that - unprotected villages on vulcanic planets are good example)

 

I don't remember random weather ever being a thing, even when we had no idea what weather was on a planet, it was always a limited set of weather patterns per planet.

I may have liked the heavy randomization of the koala builds, but imo, it was changed for a starting point and way to ease other players into it. Nothing truly stops a determined builder. If the surface is no good, go underground or build under a shielded structure, if there is no glass, get some from scouring another planet, if there are mobs, make background walls and man em with men of violence!

The barren planet has no mobs or rough weather. Anyone can build there. That does not mean it is the only place worth building. there are plenty of places and ways to keep the mobs out, or at least the people secure. It's all how one looks at it.

 

Random weather was a thing back in koala and while it is being used as an example it is not the point of this. The point remains that out of all the features and systems that have been built and worked on over the dev cycle of this game most did not seem to make it into the 1.0 update making it feel less complete then some of the older builds.

It's hard for me to be excited about 1.0 when parts of this game were just better in earlier parts of the game. And while we might not need things like brain trees there was still no real reason to remove them and this carries over the other thing like a huge amount of character customization options being removed. The game is great, but so many great things have been removed that it could have easily been better

 

The game for the most part is fine, but I feel like they took too many times to rework their idea of what direction they wanted to take the game. What results is a game that feels like is having an identity crisis. It wants to be open and random, but has linear questing and template settlements. It has diverse races that feel fleshed out, but none of the exclusive weaponry is to be found. Instead, they all use the same sword, or hammer. I don't like the fact that race diversity in this game is just aesthetic.

I enjoy the game, but I feel like the original concept of this game (which was to discover random content in a universe of diverse species), isn't fully fleshed out. While I haven't played the game in 2 years since 1.0, I feel like that game I played 2 years ago was a much different game than the one we have now. I feel like something important is missing in this version of the game.

 

I'm taking my time through it between work and my other hobbies/games and I know development is still going, so I'm not going to sweat the brain trees just yet. (just started making titanium armor last night)

 

Oh, also a point is forgot is they removed allot of(just about all) crafted weapons from the game =\

 

A lot of that randomness was just plain silly or didnt make sense. I wouldent mind if they added more stuff or readded some of the stuff, but i wouldent want to go straight back to the way it was before without a lot of improvements.

 

OP. I just want to want to say that you were looking the other way years ago, back when starbound had more randomness and you were playing it. While I'm sure player minds and dev capabilities can change, please keep in mind you were speaking out for LESS randomness and looking for a more organized sandbox with rules and situations you can prepare for.

 

yes and random weather was even if years ago when people wanted a weather radar and as that came the random weather went off which made no sense ever sicne form then the biome itself is the indicator already. And this is what is lacking since then and people wanted it back, now we have a release, years later, and it's still gone the game has undergone more and more cuts in the last 2 years and thats why so many inetrest for many people was killed.

yes because stuff was fully random to a basolute idiotic degree we wanted randomness with sense, now we have nearly no rndomness anymore. thats the typical all or nothing nonsense devs do. instead of changing a BIT instead of ALL.

look at my post and the issues posted, the meteors were an issues, because on top of the screen prventing all countermeasures of shielding + we had no weather radar). in terraria meteors spawn at the top of the world, meaning you cna make a skybridge out of sight and shield efficiently. SB does not allow this due to spawning stuff at the top of the screen.

The old SB was 100% nonsense randomness we wanted usefull randomness.

a symbolising thing were MAGMA planets which had snow next to the magma



what CF did was removing nearly all randomess no one ever asked for.

ontop there was no intention for specific worlds. As all worlds of all tiers could have all things. no one mined ever on a moon because ripping through a desert planets was like 100x faster. That is now not an issue anymore since moons server special purposes. Nothing was ever wrong with all plents having all threats and threat related ore tiers. Wrong was desert planets having the same amounts of ore as they were just easy to mine due to being made of mostly collapsing sand.

But nowhere said my post to kill variety, The post said that a ton of generates stuff was useless because the game had weird setups in regards to ressources and unsuited weather. Ressources changed now to a better thing. Weather was adressed with the weather radar on the planet info. It would be great now having the "nearly full" randomness again because because the weather radar will prevent us from generating 100's of worlds as we would just skip them already when seeing a weather condition we do not like.

nowhere does the post of me from the past demand a destruction of the variety just a few adjustments.
I did not claimed remove meteors from specific biomes, we wanted mechanics to protect us and KNOW where they happen.

 

...and they did that with the radar system that's now visible before you even beam to the planets surface. It protects you and let you KNOW where they happen.

They addressed the random weather issue and made improvements. It's a shame you and some others do not agree but much like lava being on snow makes little to no sense, weather being 'typical' in specific biomes is only logical. There's a lesson in life most of us learn early, you can't always get what you want. The current weather system is fine and is exactly what the bulk of the community was looking for.

 

How's painting that dirt working out for you?

I think the point the OP is trying to make is that the radar system is somewhat pointless now, since you already know virtually everything about a planet based on its type not the radar. I've never even had to look at the radar, I just followed typical video game progression logic. Kinda boring in my opinion, but that's me.
Also, never assume your point is that of the bulk community. It's presumptuous unless you have some data to back that up.

 

yes but it is now irrelevant as the weather radar appeared after they tied weathers to the biomes already, so there is hardly any reasons anymore to know where what weather happens as they are always the same, except meteors being an on/off thing on volcanic planets. but all the other weather has 0 variety. it's the same at every biome. random weather was not an issue, not knowing twhat the generator has chosen for a specific planet was the problem togetehr with the fact that planets with chosen meteor strikes could happen DAYS (as in RL DAYS) after living on the planet. Some people got laod sof work ruined by this as they thought their planet didn't had meteor strikes.

yes weather being somewhat biome specific is ok, but no snow biomes anymore and snow on grassland? why no logic behind that one. regular fire rain on a forrest worls is also not a proper one, but the way thy MASSIVELY reuced anythign was just what makes the current game broing and most planets feel extremely the same. Why no vulcans on forrest anymore? why no snow on them anymore? thats not an impossible thing thats for some areas of a planet fine.

teh current weather and biome system is just boring, look at all the others sayign this, look at the player numbers. in 2 month everyone checking the release will mostlikely have droppd the game again. Hoping that CF adds stuff again to recheck it again. Loo at the steam palyercount the bulk comes when a major release happens and quickly goes again, which inicates they hardly enjoy the changes done. Look at the feedback, many ask why the stuff is gone.

 

I could give the same advice to the contrary sir Painting the dirt hasn't been an more of an issue than transplanting and gathering colored dirt would have been before. It's a fine hair to slice.

I can give you the radar may be pointless after you 'learn by progression' what types of weather are usually on specific planets. However, when you're first exploring different planet types, that radar was handy. So, it is still viable.

 

Yes, I also miss a lot of randomness in the worlds. I played years back in the beginning and those worlds where amazing. Now I waited for a 1.0 release because of the wipes etc and it kinda feels 'all the same' now. Snow and Magma are weird of course but the crystals etc would still be cool to encounter.

 

Doesn't the paint tool lack the required colors though? Honestly I haven't tested this myself, but the tool did seem to be lacking the necessary colors to get all those varying dirt shades.

And I concede, the radar tool can be handy and at the very least is an aesthetically pleasing addition to the navigation system. I just feel that the lack of randomness, in at least some contained star system like the previously planned nebulae, somewhat undermines its potential and original purpose.

 

I honestly never used the paint tool before 1.0 After reading the change log today it seems like they're still working on things in the hue/shade department but there are at least 7 different colors in the paint tool (I think). It does give me some options so I'm not completely locked into the default 'brown' all the dirt becomes after picking it up.

I get the underlining point of the 'random but logical' weather argument but I'm trying to see it from the coding end and making it so conditionally random, can't be as easy as it sounds. That's more than likely why they've come up with the system that's in play now.

The Crystal biome is still there it's just had a face lift Keep exploring! You'll run into it.

 

The devs stated that they were working on setting up biomes and mini biomes that made sense with each other. What your problem is is that what was "bad randomness" to you was "good randomness" to others. The problem with easier planets having all ore type was the same reason as have diggable ore in desert planets: players follow the path of least resistance. They end up staying on the "safer" planets until they get the highest tier. You yourself seem to have an aversion for going to dangerous planets, given the choice to do so. When you are asking for specific biome and planet combinations to be removed, you are asking for planet variety to be removed or at least adjusted to "make sense". When you were staying on the easier planets skimming ores and chests on the surface, adjustments were made to add incentive to go deeper. The devs sought to have planets set up to provide a progression, rather than deal with players going underground and getting every ore and top tier weapons from one planet. Knowing the combination of weathers on a planet still provides you with information, making the weathers expected, randomized or not. Do you go to the dangerous planets?

 

Bad as randomness described here is a very small amount of options, matched together in a very limited way, and bound to a constraining progression system. While previously each planet felt unique due to the wide variety of randomness that felt unique each time, flower covrered planets of super high danger filled with powerfull beasts that gradually tapers into a lava filled desert is visually interesting and a good backdrop to all those fan-things. Why is this planet lava desert with patches of giant flowers? Is it because of small pockets of nitrogenous soil and large water sources kept cool? Is it because of the way the planet turns? Is it the atmosphere?

Currently, every planet looks and feels the same. Almost all planets have a village somewhere, every ocean planet has an almost idenitcle hylotl thing under the ocean, each one looks the same, each one is 100% ocean/beach with nothing else. Each one is filled with the same 5 biome specific monsters and two or three randomly generated creatures that look vastly out of place in this very homogenous world/engine (How...? Who seeded all these creatures across all the same looking worlds, and why are there only like 3 native species which all have the same behaviours? Why is every planet inhabited by grounded avians, human refugees or outcast glitch? How are they not the majority when there's what... one star system at most of the rest of their society?)