First off let me say that I'm very happy with Starbound beta even though its, beta. Thanks to all the devs for creating this game i have high expectations that i know you guys will exceed. I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet but here i go I wanted to suggest that instead of starting inside a spaceship you start inside/outside a crashed pod or even wreckage of your spaceship on a random planet , you have to not only find fuel but create some kind of spacecraft that can sustain traveling between planets. This opens up a lot of ship modification that could even lead into space battles ('wink').
While I'm not entirely sure how fun this would be to play, I admit it is more in line with how I thought the game would play initially. For being supposedly damaged and in need of repairs, your ship currently seems pretty darned functional to me. Certainly, it shows no difficulty in tooling around the local star system and visiting the neighbouring ones when you're feeling confined by just one set of worlds. I don't know if that's how it will be in the final game or if it's a contrivance for Beta to ease testing, but really it seems odd to go from the game telling you the ship's broken and never even mentioning you can get to other planets to, "Okay, now you can go to the next sector." Then there's the part I really have mixed feelings on. Presently, you can pretty reliably beam to your ship whenever you're in trouble, spend the night there, etc... Now, on the one hand, I like this. It makes good sense that I would rely on my ship as a safety net while I explore the dangerous unknown (but strangely inhabited) planet. On the other, it means that you can get out of any cave by mining the back wall, escape any fight at the push of the button, and don't really need to make any form of shelter. It also raises questions...like, "Why do I need a campfire? Doesn't my ship have a galley?" or, "If I can hop from planet to planet, why don't I just look for the nearest Space Service Station instead of trying to fix this myself?". Here's how I think it could work... Start the game near a crashed shuttle or escape pod. Intro dialogue tells you that you were forced to abandon your ship, still in orbit above the planet on which you are currently standing. Beginning quests are, as now, to set up basic needs and shelter. Quest to advance involves repairing your shuttle/pod so that you can get back to the ship. Boss fight for this gateway quest consists of fighting off aliens/pirates/alien pirates that have overrun your ship. Once this is completed, you have access to the ship from your landing spot (the teleporter becomes a later upgrade to the ship), and can take your shuttle to planets in the same star system. New quest/questline gives introduction to interplanetary travel and different world types, by having you visit worlds with different biomes in order to get parts and fuel to bring your ship back to working order. Capstone on this could be similar to the current, in order to repair/replace your ship's hyperdrive. This unlocks interstellar travel. No tutorial needed for travelling to other stars, just a mention of selecting a destination from the ship's main console. Final tutorial quest should direct the player to use their new-found freedom to prepare as they see fit before taking on the last challenge before moving on to Beta Sector, from which play can continue as normal.
I would like to start off on my characters home planet as a tutorial of varying scenarios of escape or exploration. Each starting world could act as a tutorial for new players before setting off for a new planet. This would only be for new characters with an option to skip. For multi-player, I think it should stay pretty close to how it is now but without the starting quests. Ships been damaged, out of fuel. Go.
I agree that the narratological impetus for survival/exploration is currently rather weak. I suspect this may simply be due to the unfinished status of the beta and a lack of fleshed out lore to come.
I would expand on this a bit I think. The idea that you have to repair your ship would actually be kinda cool. even if it isn't crashed out on a planet but say, the navigation computer is borked and needs fixing. have the tutorial climax at the UFO boss fight and he drops what you need to get your ship working again. (maybe add another boss to bridge the sector 1 to sector 2 gap) because I feel, as it stands, not only from a narrative point of view but also an exploration point of view, Alpha sector is kinda useless. you get everything you need from your first planet to get to beta sector and from then on, you just wave bye bye to the entirety of the Alpha sector you haven't explored as it serves no purpose to you. just seems a waste of content to me. :/
Yeah, that's kind of what I had in mind with my outline, fanglespangle. Even if the game didn't directly force you into travelling the sector, if it at least gave you an introduction to planet-hopping and a little push, it would encourage players to explore a bit before venturing off into "Srs game nao" territory. I think that really would be worth slowing down the game a bit at the beginning for. Maybe players could unlock a "quickstart mode" that starts them off at the point the game starts now once they've done the tutorial at least once?
