Theorycrafting on what makes Exploring ~fun~

For once, i have to agree with Serenity.

On a serious note, it really depends on that explorer "mentality" one have. As far as i understand, for TS and most other posters in this thread "exploring" is close to something like "sightseeing", just visiting cool interesting, places is enough for them. Some other mentioned stuff like dungeons.

But other ppl explore mainly for loot and scavenging, and, yeah it's two different but usually connected activities. Loot in games like SB or Terraria used for making character stronger, trying to squeeze maximum from char progression and loot system. Scavenging one the other hand is used mainly for aesthetics purposes, to get access to different vanity item for building your own unique structures. And if for "scavengers" things are pretty OK, and adding new contents for them is pretty easy, "loot" group right now is in clear disadvantage as you really have nothing much to look for. Terraria have great weapon system (well, until endgame focus for ranged, but honestly i really don't see it as a problem) and even better accessory system. Starbound, atm, have not to so impressive tech system, undeveloped mechas, randomised weapons, craft-only armours, using only "standard" mats, aside from one set (i know it will be changed), poor choice of different stats what could be affected, etc. And random mobs aren't very exciting ether, because they yield no unique loot too. And all this connected with general game progression system which doesn't allow you to seriously affect your entire progress at each stage (aka tier system) makes exploring for "looter" no so interesting, and i really don't know how to improve it.

 

So true.
On a base level the fun you get from exploring is all about what you gain from it. That "it" is subjective and unique to every person.

 

I like the idea of rewardless traps - the basic idea of traps are to warn or kill off intruders (players are never not this) to begin with.

You could have the reward be a cool looking ruin with the only common bricks, etc, much like the current frog ruins.

For me, part of the fun of exploring are the stories devs and modders tell, and it's not always intentional. Again, take a look at the frog ruins:

Long ago, there was a great Frog Empire that spanned the stars. They made their above ground of simple muds, baked clay, and sticks, saving worked stone for their great underground empires. Their cities were marvels, full of statues and pillars and beautiful shops, as they were a race of merchants.

Over the course of a century, the Frog Empire collapsed and their cities fell to ruin. The abandoned structures above melted without constant maintenance and below fell into war. Legend has it a lower caste, the oil miners, grew tired of the affluent merchant caste, and rebelled with bombs made of coal tar and bedrock.

The war warped the very streets of once mighty subterranean cities. The surviving miners joined up and colonized elsewhere, forever swearing off such vile methods.
As for the merchants, they too learned - to this day, however, it is not uncommon to find one carrying on the custom of their ancestors, perhaps intending to make their ruins into a thriving city once more.

^I pulled that whole thing out of some randomly generated ruins that have frog merchants who sell bombs. Making race-specific ruins would yield much, methinks. Especially the Glitch - last I checked they were an anomaly of an anomaly, and their were 'Glitch' who progressed beyond medieval times that inevitably destroyed themselves. Their ruins would be rad to explore.

 

This actually isn't a difficult question.

What makes exploring fun? Finding things.

Specifically, either unique/rare/interesting things or useful things.

Let's take an example from Terraria: the underground building ruins. They are about as rare as the underground Apex labs in Starbound, little more common maybe, but finding them was always more fun.

Why?

Well, firstly, they're more interesting. They tell a story. They're always broken down, look dirty, often have cobwebs. . . But also have signs of habitation long gone. Art and furniture that is never the same between two. It gives a sense of largeness and mystery to the world that someone lived here and is gone now.

The labs, on the other hand, are sterile, clean, and identical. They're still well lit, and powered. There's no story to their existence unless you find an Apex settlement near by.

And speaking of identical: the broken down houses were each different. You don't see everything there is to see just by seeing one. This is important. If they were identical, like the labs, it'd get boring after seeing one. . . Like the labs.

And finally, they reward you. They have rare paintings and statues to be looted, as well as, sometimes, other furniture, and a chest with a slightly better loot table than most.

Meanwhile the labs have nothing but pixels and a few very common pieces of furniture.

As a result, seeing an underground home in Terraria is exciting: you see something new and probably get something new or decorative that you didn't have before.

Seeing a lab, on the other hand, means nothing after the first.

Let's look at another example from Dark Souls, with no comparison to Starbound directly:

I was exploring in blight town, and found a chest in a tree, behind it was written 'try attacking', so I did.

The Wall gave way and behind it was a massive vertical shaft through the tree leading down. It was alien, compelling, and offered unique game play challenges by way of basilisks and mushroom people, but I wanted to know where it lead.

Along the way I collected souls and other loot that rewarded me as I traversed.

At the bottom, however, I came out and saw a truly awe inspiring sight. A massive, beautiful, lake with roots from countless trees hanging from above through the distance.

Here, too, there was a unique challenge by way of hydra, which, when slain, rewarded me with many souls and a scale for upgrading dragon equipment--very rare.

Meanwhile, the beach stretched on, full of enemies that drop rare upgrading supplies, and at the end the dragon covenant, and dragon great sword.

In short I was rewarded at multiple points while exploring by finding things. I found unique challenges, unique loot, and unique vistas.

That's what makes exploring fun. And, while difficult to do in a generated game like Starbound, Terraria proves it is not impossible.

That said: I must disagree with many posters coming at this problem only from the underground. I don't think the underground should be the focus of Starbound.

That's just going to make it into a more shallow Terraria.

Instead, the focus should be above. Abandoned space stations, settlements overrun with strange plants, etc. For underground, a mine near an abandoned settlement that leads to a flesh biome. Focus on places where people already were but were removed. On things that can tell stories that haven't already been told.

In Starbound we are planet hopping explorers, not a lone (and probably terrified) person digging into the ground to escape the horrors of the night as it is the only place we can get materials to survive.

The setting is different, and this should inform where the majority of exploration incentives are (not to say underground doesn't need some love, only that the focus shouldn't be there).

 

Also there should be more super rare biome, like giant stone swords jutting out of the ground that are metal as hell.

Things like that really engage me. Remember how you felt the first time you found a tiny house biome, or the bone one?

 

Finding new villages, dungeons, mini-biomes, and towns.

Aside from that, not much really. I'm not an exploration person.

 

Fun is subjective yes, but you can come to a general consensus on fun and unfun things. That's kinda the whole point of the thread.

This is where things get hard. I think the new way they are structuring the universe might help - you won't be blocked from going to higher threat tiers if you want to, somewhat. It looks like it might be less linear. The best analogy I can think of for the way the game is currently set up would be if in Terraria, you had to have a tin pick to mine copper, a copper pick to mine iron, ect, ect. I'm curious to see how they will implement it.

Terraria traps did have rewards though, somewhat indirectly - you got wire, pressure plates, dart blocks. The only beef I had with that was you got access to wiring so late you couldn't use these for base defense. I think that would be a neat option - traps that if detected and disarmed, could be re-purposed to defend a base or help with a boss fight.

I've been focusing on the underground because I think it needs some love right now, but I don't think it should be the main focus (also making a mod to enhance the underground at the moment! ). I don't want it to be the main focus of the thread either.

That's some good feedback though. You got at the reasons why something was exciting. (Also if you like Dork Souls, take a close look at my avatar ). I really want to make an Ash Lake underground biome now. I do hope that attention is divided somewhat evenly between surface and underground content. Space archaeology has its appeals.


The point of the thread is to dig deeper into certain concepts or content related to exploration and see what should be focused on. I think we could agree, for example, that finding unique decorative items is a fun way to reward exploring, but it's even better if those items are placed in the world in such a way that there is some sort of narrative involved. That's something you and Kermit both pointed to, and something that seems to be possible on a certain level with random generation, rather than requiring hand placement. This is great, because it makes it more feasible to implement. The end goal of having a discussion like this is to provide useful ideas and feedback to the developers, and having a concept that is practical to implement is important.

 

I do love exploring in Starbound, purely because hats. Well, and other cosmetic vanity items.

Though I have to say I do love how every planet has some sort of feature, whether it be a dungeon or a village. A lot of the fun I derive from exploring comes from finding these features and interacting with them. In my eyes, apart from the fact that more content in general needs to be added, CF has got the surface sorted. The underground is, of course, a different story.

Before I say anything, I realise that my suggestions will likely follow what's been done in Minecraft, as it's a game I do love. However, Starbound is different from Minecraft in that the underground feels a LOT larger. I don't know how the sizes actually compare, but I feel this is heavily due to the 3Dness of Minecraft. This thus makes finding underground structures in Starbound far more difficult than it is in Minecraft. The most obvious way to 'solve' this issue is to make the underground in Starbound smaller, but I don't think anyone wants that.

So what comes to mind for me is having something or other that points the way to underground structures. For example, we could have specific biomes that exist purely to point the way to underground structures. This would be done in such a way that once the player found this biome, they would be able to limit their exploration to the biome itself in order to find the underground structure. For example, how amazing would it be that once you've found one of those creepy biomes with white bricks and miniature houses, you'd know for certain that somewhere in that biome there is an abandoned research facility that seeked to miniaturise the inhabitants of the planet to be able to live underground and avoid the harsh conditions on the surface?

 

That's a slick idea. That alleviates the problem of trying to make the underground content rich by giving players an idea where they should be headed to find the cool shit. Some soft of "warmer / colder" type of feedback to guide players to the cool shit.

 

I feel like places need to have a little more to them. Like variety.

Like, I come across a lab, and it's just a lab. Stims, labcoats, maybe a tech, and it's one I'll probably already have.

As many manhours as it would take to do, more EVERYTHING would be a surefire way to make exploring more fun.

The real trick would be to make it more interesting while doing that as little as possible. That can come after they've finished all their mechanics and whatnot. The real trick would be to combine what we have to make things a little more interesting. Like the previously mentioned lab that turns into some sort of meat dungeon halfway down. Or it having some sort of containment device in it, and if it gets damaged or you just open it like the suicidally-curious little space-adventurer you are, the meatmoss starts taking over the facility, all Metal Glen style. The monster spawns become horrific mutants, and you slowly lose health the more you're exposed to it. (And maybe if you die there, a mutated version of whatever race you are shows up there. Maybe)

Or a village with a secret passage underneath to a secret area that leads to you discovering that the entire village is made up of cannibals. Maybe a trap that you can fall into, and then the special secret way that's tricky to find, but doesn't end up with you in a cage.

Also a thing worth remembering, that planets themselves should have things to discover about them, and things you can actually discover, as opposed to just have happen to you such as acid rain. Like a planet existing in two layers, the top layer, and then a layer about halfway down. Imagine it, you digging, and you come across a cave. You lower yourself into it, and eventually find the floor. You put up a torch. You can't see the ceiling. You could run around the planet completely underground! It's mostly hollow!

Yeah, planets like this'd fall under the 'extra content' section, but oh well!

I think the essence of fun when exploring is surprise. You get surprised by the meatmoss, you get surprised by the cannibals, you get surprised by the hollow-planet. You shouldn't be able to see something and immediately know what's gonna be there. You shouldn't see a lab and know you're gonna get stims, labcoats and maybe a tech. And don't stop at just one level! You shouldn't see the containment device and know it'll unleash the meatmoss! Maybe it has a special weapon inside it, or even a giant genetic experiment as a boss! Things scattered in optional areas of the facility could give hints about what's in there, or they might not! There might not be a containment device! It could be a green goo-filled tank like the ones in labs now, but larger, and it houses that genetic experiment those books talked about! And upon seeing you, it is enraged and breaks loose!

To keep exploration fresh, you need to keep the surprises coming from the start of a 'discovery' to the end. Even once you've seen them all and become a hardened explorer, ready for anything... you should still never know what's gonna happen next. Because in the infinite vastness of space... when do you?

Yeah this'd be a lot of work but goddamnit, it'd be great and I know the team can pull it off.

 

That's a very good point about surprises. But that's the thing, we already have our dungeons somewhat randomly generated and stitched together from a bunch of rooms, so they should be surprising already. That raises the question of how to introduce something into this game that will be surprising not only the first time you see it, but also the 12th time. And I personally have no idea how CF would be able to do that.

 

Well, like I said, if you see a lab, it's gonna be made of lab parts. They don't change halfway through, or have something particularly interesting at the 'end' of them...

I think the closest example we have right now is the Matter Block things in labs, and they only occasionally show up and have a tendency to oneshot. :T

If you get a lab room with a tech-chest in it, then that's still a thing you could find somewhere else. The Genetic Experiment 'boss' thing would be mostly unique to labs, on the other hand.

The dungeons are currently pieced together roomwise, and while I do know it's a mite complex making sure they all fit together right, there's no 'Critical Interest' pieces so to speak.

 

Okay, so are you suggesting that each dungeon or structure or whatever should have a bunch of 'critical interests', of which one can spawn for each dungeon? If so, sign me up!

 

Pretty much!

So like, Labs have a pool of 'critical elements' to them that might include stuff like a boss or special treasure, while Avian tombs would have their own pool of critical elements. And also maybe each dungeon having a pool of 'modifiers' to pull from, like the bottom half of a lab being taken over by the meatmoss, or a tomb being wrecked and filled with undead! And the modifiers could change what critical elements are chosen, so in the meatmoss-half'd lab, you could find a boss and what looks like an opened or wrecked containment thing FOR the meatmoss!

 

What exploration so much more fun is Terraria was that when you explored nearly everything you came across could be a great reward, with following caves there can be chests with good to very powerful loot, monsters with actually useful drops (with rarer mobs being more valuable), life crystals, and even traps are useful source for wires, plates, and the trap itself.

There were also new mechanics being added most of the time you found a new chest, like flying, grappling, wall climbing, all of which made exploring faster and getting to new depths more feasible. Mining ores was just there to give you a moments rest until the next challenge arose. Most importantly cheesing monsters was a slower way of fighting.

Meanwhile in starbound, killing monsters give you items to babysit your survival meters, poor amount of extremely valuable money and nothing else. The only thing of value underground is the ores. New mechanics are rarely ever added, especially ones that marginally speed up exploring (they only speed it up very little). Mining ores is the only thing you ever want to do while underground.

The only real value on a planet is the single dungeon with chests and drop which are strict stat increases. Its been a while since I played, but last I checked there was no real incentive to travel to hazardous planets rather than a safe one of the same danger rating. Most importantly though cheesing monsters is the fastest way of killing anything ever.

 

This thread has the highest density of good posts.

Delta, I'm not sure how such a thing could be implemented as I've not dug into dungeon generation yet, but it sounds like it could be an awesome idea to reduce workload while increasing the amount of unique content.

The Apex labs were mentioned. Currently you can just tunnel right to the goodies, and bypass the jumping puzzle the tech dungeons currently have. When the dungeon "control" blocks get implemented, this will not be possible.

Will they be fun? and will they be fun to run a few times rather than just once?

Right now I think there are some elements lacking from them that could enhance the experience. The obstacle courses are AFAIK like every dungeon where they are composed of multiple set pieces. The overall layout of the course will be different each time, but you'll know how to navigate through each set piece after you've run any variation of the course a time or two. It feels like Portal may have provided some inspiration for these obstacle courses in the first place, so maybe a few elements can be pulled from them to make these dungeons more lasting entertainment! Using the above idea of modifiers, a random selection of set pieces to populate the dungeon could be very useful. They could be destroy-able or avoid-able turrets, something similar to the fire wheels or ball and chain traps in Terraria, monster spawns, ect. Making the event timed, where if you do not complete the course in the given time the tech chest at the end is destroyed, could add some urgency that is currently missing. Then someone just needs to mod in a portal gun!

The new combat system seems to go a long way to prevent cheesing. Monsters can even tunnel through terrain now if you try to cheese them with a dirt cage.

 

In Terraria, the biggest motivation to explore (IMO) was the presence of unique, gameplay impacting items. Unique armor and weapons (like the Cobalt or Jungle sets) provide motivation to dig and explore those biomes. Perhaps having items tied to threat level and sub-biomes, so you wouldn't have a desert set, but you could have a crystal set, or a mushroom set, or a rainbow set. I know it would be a lot of new assets, but in the end it would give people a reason to dig deeper.

 

Well, operating from the (admittedly basic) knowledge I've gleaned from Armagon's posts on dungeon generation, it starts with the 'root' of the dungeon, like the entrance at surface level and then builds from there. So there's the 'start' of a dungeon, and then the 'end' (being the Critical Element) could be chosen as a piece so long as the bit it's trying to fill is a certain number of pieces away from the start so it doesn't spawn right at the top, and there isn't already one. Or maybe have a very slim possibility for two Elements, but very slim. The Critical Element piece could also be where the Dungeon Protector thing is, if it's not the Element itself.

As for the obstacle courses, I think they'll be bettered pretty easily once more wire functions are installed. Right now it's pretty basic since there's nothing in them which reacts to player presence, but once wires have filled out, I don't doubt we'll see more interesting puzzles than just electro-jumping courses. Which you can dig past.

Triggered traps, doors, hazards, timers... That'll be great, especially if you're playing Permadeath. You step into an abandoned facility, and the door slams shut behind you. A computer-generated voice thanks you for volunteering, and tells you that you will be free to leave once testing is complete.

 

Normally I wouldn't post, but this particular subject is a major problem I have with Star bound. Somehow though, I don't have a problem with it in games like Terraria or Mine-craft, and after thinking about it for awhile, I may know why.

BEWARE, THIS IS GOING TO BE A LONG ONE.

1: The digging speed. Whether or not you get better tools later on, the digging takes forever. This may seem strange comparing it to terraria or minecraft, but something to note is that terraria didn't have a lot of incredibly hard, slow to dig materials like Star bound does. Terraria's hard materials consisted of things like dungeon stone, high level ore, and dungeon bricks, and you would already have higher level tools by the time you really needed to dig large portions of it. And I mean LARGE, in terraria you don't need to dig a lot to get to a shadow pearl or through a dungeon wall (which you don't really need to do anyway). Not to mention you get new tools fairly quick, and not just from ores, but also from boss materials, drops, and even from shops. In starbound, there are hard materials lying everywhere. Metals take forever, deep stone types take forever, obsidian takes forever, dungeon brick takes forever, etc. And unlike in terraria, the tool progression isn't as quick, plus the current max level tools don't let you dig very fast, while even in base release terraria you could actually dig faster on the hardest material with a nightmare pickaxe then you can using a diamond drill on deep stone in starbound. This makes exploration underground slow and tedious, as well as making base building material harvesting boring. There is no reason for early materials to be that slow, and there is no reason for dungeon brick to be that hard when later on dungeons will have force fields anyway. Take terraria as an example: first level copper pickaxe is slow, but quick to replace, and it's really not bad, especially since you can get the other ore picks really quick. Starbound stone pickaxe is ungodly slow, and the copper one isn't much better. After that it still takes a lot of time in star bound to get any better mining tools. Another thing to note with digging speed is block height, in minecraft it's a tiny 2, in terraria a not so bad 3, and in starbound a whopping 4. This may not seem like much since you mine 3x3, but since it's a much slower 9x9 then a 1x1 in terraria or minecraft, it ends up being worse. There are possible solutions, one being to increase digging speed and also, but have different digging tools. Examples;
Drill, 3x3, moderate speed, good on everything.
Shovel: 3x3-5x5, fast speed, only works on softer materials (dirt, snow, sand, gels)
Pickaxe: 1x1: fast speed, great on stone and metal, ignores ore mining speed penalty, terrible on soft materials.
Mining laser; 2x2, moderate speed, less mining size, energy cost, but has range.
Other reasonable solutions that came to mine were to make block health lower so they were easier to mine, increase mining speed in general, and move many harder material variations to later levels when you have far better tools. A combination of these may be a good fit.
Another thing to note is that terraria and minecraft have explosives, terraria more by base game. You can easily get your hands on bombs, dynamite, and heck, later on you get rockets which allow you to just plow through the world. Starbound only has bombs, which are limited in how you can obtain them, and you don't have access to things like the powerful dynamite, or the convenient sticky bombs for ore mining. In terraria, you can easily buy them, find them in pots, find them in chests, and some enemies even drop bombs. In starbound, you can only find many of them them from chests rarely, and even more rarely from the frog merchant.
Requiring minutes to just mine your way into a cave you can clearly see nearby is tedious and boring, and doesn't often have a good reward, and the amount of options terraria gives to mine your way through quick removes that tedium. I just hope starbound starts giving more options to do just the same.

2: Cave layouts and cave lighting. Terraria has caves everywhere, and you can see them through the blink roots, jellyfish, torches, the variety of special potions you can find, and more! Plus, if they don't link up well,, they are often so close by to eachother it doesn't matter. Minecraft has caves everywhere, and if they aren't linked (which they usually are), then you can often hear them through the sounds the darkness makes, as well as through enemy noise (not to mention they are well lit when lava is around). Starbound... doesn't have many nearby caves. They are usually quite the distance away, take awhile to get to, and they often don't have any lighting sources. You can hear enemies in them, but that's only if they are actually that close, which they often aren't. Another problem the other games don't have is that the caves in starbound are not well linked, so they often end abruptly, requiring you to get to digging about only hoping to find what you want.
This makes exploring frustrating, as it ends up being more so "where the heck do I go to now?" as opposed to "which cave will I go into first". They could add some more lighting to caves; lava in deeper areas as opposed to just purely in some biomes and the core, glowing crystals, endlessly burning coal fires, glowing plants, etc. They will certainly need to mess with cave gen though, as no matter what, having the caves so far away and so disjointed really breaks the mood.

3: Cave/world/dungeon content;

Ok, there are chests, biomes, dungeons, ore, and yet none of it compelling... why? Well, look as the other games again.

Terraria's chests always have something interesting, often containing a trinket/weapon/tool, some consumable long lasting buff items or tools like bombs or throwing knives, money, and more! Minecrafts chests contain ores and items useful all game due to how its item progression works. Starbound's chests contain useless short fuse buff items, small amounts of tool consumables (only a few flares, bombs, or thrown weapons, while terraria gives you loads?), a small amount of money maybe, and often useless non-unique weapons you'll throw out in a moment. Also, with the random weapon system, it would be better if the chests had many weapons in each so that you could have more options, a problem games like borderlands, diablo, torchlight and more avoid with ease through this method.

Terraria's biomes each have something unique, whether it be the desert's cacti, the corruptions abyss caves filled with pearls and altars, or the mushroom caves which light up the nearby areas. Something to note is that the biomes in terraria are also often small. The glowing mushroom caves are often only a single screen size or two, but are filled to the brim with glowing mushrooms, which reveal other caves, and since the mushroom caves are open, they also often have chests or statues. The corruption is unique from other biomes early game, and contains a unique set of enemies, items, objectives, and none of them you will know without some time to figure it all out. Minecraft doesn't do as well with this, but its biomes still have unique materials for furniture, and change up the landscapes a lot (especially the jungles). In starbound, the biomes are missing unique variables. There isn't a reason to go to one or the other except for the chance of furniture blueprints or tree density. No unique enemy parts, no unique items, no major difference in generation, plus they are generally barren. Again compared to terraria, where the surface is filled with noteworthy unique content, enemies, items, and so forth, as well as unique ways for each to generate. The forests have many caves, the corruption an abyss, the crimson a central tunnel hub, the desert a set of hills, the floating islands filled with ore and a house guaranteed to have something useful, ETC. Starbound not only needs more variety in these things, but it needs to add more flavor to each biome in the look; to the desert a bunch of flowering cacti, oasis, sandpits, rocky sections, etc. The forests, roots in the ground, bunched together trees, differing tree sizes and types (multiple tree looks in a single biome, with similar but different looks based on the first chosen tree type).

In short, for the surface biomes, you need to add a lot of unique, compelling content to each, so that when you play through and go to different planet types, your experiences changes durastically, as opposed to being the same for every biomes type. It wouldn't be fun if the corruption was just the forest with a few re-skinned items now would it?

The cave content is a mess as well. Terraria's caves constantly threw chests, ore, plants, enemies, traps, heart crystals, gems, and more at you wherever you went. Minecraft has less to offer in chests and plants, but when you found a new cave you were sure it was going to contain something useful. In starbound, you have ore, and more ore, and more ore. Chests are rare, special rooms are uncommon, plants are not well varied, water is everywhere impeding your digging (somehow more so then terraria), traps are mainly just spikes and more irritating liquid, and throw in the above mentioned problems of linking issues and digging times, and you have a mess. Even worse, the ore is boring. In terraria, it comes in large easy to access pockets, and there are often many ore types at a time, as well as gems. Starbound only has a few ores in the later tiers, and you can't do anything with earlier ores except repairs, making it far less exiting to mine them. The cave biomes are, problematic to say the least. Terraria's mushroom biome while simple, is small and packed to the brim. Terraria's wooden rooms are always random in shape and furniture, and you know there will always be a useful golden chest inside, giving something interesting to look at and something exciting to find. Terraria's jungle area is full of linking caves, easy to dig mud, ores, shrines, and death everywhere in sight!
Starbound on the other hand is no where near as packed. I can barely call the underground biomes mini-biomes, as they are more so subterranean layers. Unlike terraria's mushroom biome, the starbound version is stretched out, with boring brown mushrooms everywhere rarely a tree, generic mushroom blocks replacing stones, and rare chests only containing furniture blueprints or non-unique reskin weapons (mushroom sword/shield come to mind). Terraria gets away with it since its biome is tiny and filled with mushrooms everywhere, plus they have quite a lot of uses (and even have unique enemies later on)! Starbound's is too big, with its already little content stretched too far with too little going on, the mushrooms have little to no use, and it overall results in something disinteresting. There could be so much that could be done to make the large biome more exceptable! Expanding spiky puffball traps that block your way if you are too quick, background mushroom shelf platforms, toxic gas spewing mushrooms, unique enemy parts so that the enemies have at least one mushroom part on them to spice up combat in the area, deadly mushroom trees that try to crush you, poison gas, gas that is harmless but blocks light, bouncy platform mushrooms, exploding mushrooms that chase you around! glowing ones to light it up a little, special ores and items for crafting new armors and weapons with unique abilities and effects (of which you could just have a few appearances for each armor or weapon type you make even in higher tier version, so to reduce armor/weapon spiriting requirements). Those are just a few ideas I threw out in a matter of a few minutes. Terraria doesn't have that kind of variety in the mushroom biome, but it again gets away by having a tiny room, and an example of a large biome in terraria would be the jungle, which does have enough unique about it to keep it interesting. Starbound will have to increase content in each biome if it wants to get away with such large underground biomes. Overall, the caves need more content both in variety and rate of discovery, so that they don't get so boring so fast. (A side note, terraria also has far less biomes, but they are more interesting. Starbound can add all the biomes it wants, but if they are all equally shallow, what is the point?).

Now for the dungeons. The dungeons in terraria are generated into a mish mash of interconnected rooms with randomly laid out spikes, chests, traps, and furniture, making each time going in a different experience to a degree (not to mention the unique rewards). The dungeons also have related bosses, a large variety of unique furnature, useful and often found unique items, etc. Starbounds dungeons aren't so random, using a few premade rooms as opposed to putting a room in and letting the game gen place the furnature, chests and traps. They have little to offer for unique enemies, mostly being racial enemies with the occasional drone in some. The traps aren't strewn about randomly to cause trouble, but are in the same exact position every time, which makes it boring and easy, and also shows how quickly the rooms repeat. As for rewards, there aren't many unique items to be found, and the rare drops (like the uzi, chair weapon, pulse rifle, etc) lack anything to make them very useful or interesting. This is a particularly worrying problem, since most other games with procedural dungeons I've played didn't have this problem. Roguelikes are a good example, with games such as dungeons of Dredmor, doom the roguelike, or the rogueish binding issac. Dredmor and doom both have randomly placed furniture for most (though not all) rooms. Issac may have specific rooms, but there are a large variety, as well the items in each room vary durastically each visit. Starbounds rooms use the same furniture every time, boring items, no random chest or trap placement, very little to no random enemy placement, ETC. This gets boring fast. Imagine having to play through the same dungeon in terraria every time with no variety in the shape, item placement, or enemy generation, as well as no unique items or bosses. It would get boring fast, and in starbound, it does get boring fast. (note, I do realize the techno pyramids have dark matter, but that is it, and it's not used for anything of particular interest or unique purpose).

I could go into the problem of rewards, enemies randomization, etc, but I think I covered them already above. As for things like towns, I they are being worked on, so I won't worry about it too much now. And as for random non-dungeon building, the problems of the samey non random starbound dungeon and underground rooms relate (which again, the terraria wooden rooms and dungeons do better). I seriously, seriously hope that starbound improves its exploration above and underground in a variety of ways. I want it to better then terraria's in every way imaginable, because if it doesn't end up being better, there won't be a point to even play the game. A game with a huge focus on exploration such as starbound can't just leave its world so vacant. Things like terraria 2, no man's sky, and ever quest next are all games with random worlds to explore that will be released in the next coming years (terraria 2's development will start after the next terraria update comes out), and If starbound doesn't pick up in this particular area, I'm certain it will be pushed away in the flood of procedural games not only known now, but that will come to be in later years.

 

1. I'm not sure if digging actually works out to be faster because of the dig area - a copper pick would have to be nine times faster to dig at the same rate. 2x4 character vesus 2x3 character does somewhat change things. I really don't think the devs have much to lose by increasing dig speed a little. There's a mining laser in the game files - I imagine mining upgrades will continue to ramp up as we go on.

I'm not sure tool diversity actually ends up being fun. You end up with some benefits for certain terrain types, but you also get a lot of equip switching and inventory management with it. I'm not sure the trade off is worth it. I play a game with a shovel and pickaxe and I didn't feel it really added anything to the game.

2. Holy crap, I need to put an underground coal fire and underground tire fire biome in. Agreed on cave generation, it's something I touched on in the op and I guess I'm not alone in my experiences. There's a file in the assets folder that can be edited to change cave generation. I've been meaning to play with it. The light sources alone, not even touching cave generation, would go a long way imo.

3. There are a lot of good points here and a lot of things we could talk about. I didn't really think about ore too much, although the thought did get in my head. Think we could break this down into smaller segments and get a dialogue going?