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Feedback This game needs a more brutal endgame.

Discussion in 'Starbound Discussion' started by ShibbyGTR, Apr 21, 2016.

  1. ShibbyGTR

    ShibbyGTR Space Hobo

    I love this game, it's my favorite sandboxer by far. The 1.0 update sounds awesome. The only real things I think are missing are some sort of PVP or more intense survival elements toward the end. Here's some of my ideas/constraints.

    1. High level planets could be specifically flagged PVP zones, where anything goes. They could have higher rewards that regenerate or spawn at varying intervals, so mining it out wouldn't deplete it entirely, and having a base of operations there could be crucial to collecting some good rewards.

    2. The same as 1, but instead of PVP, have much more aggressive wildlife/NPC raiders that can destroy player-placed blocks, making a defensible outpost with turrets much more important that just having walls.

    3. For the PVP, in those zones, player-placed blocks cannot be removed by another player's matter manipulator, and must be destroyed with weapons or properly sieged.

    4. Wall blocks could have varying durability, making it so placing sand/dirt blocks everywhere wouldn't be an easy way to cheese. Wall blocks could be tougher to manufacture at high grades, making a solid outpost of a good team formidable.

    5. You could dedicate crew/mercenaries to defend it while you're offline, as any outpost would persist offline obviously. There could be some sort of craftable or purchasable item that allows you to officially designate a space as an "outpost" with certain cost-to-size restrictions, thereby allowing it to be crewed like your ship, and limiting it from spanning half a planet. Or only blocks within the confines of the "Outpost" zone are safe from other player's MM's.

    I think all of these proposed points would be super fun in either a PVP or PVE setting.

    I dunno, maybe I'm crazy. But with their announcement of dedicated multiplayer servers, it seems like this kind of thing would be much more viable and enjoyable. I like sandbox survival, and there should be some form of motivation to make outposts on planets instead of just keeping everything on your ship. I want it to go past decoration and more into function.

    I always loved the idea of having a hidden base at the bottom of a poison ocean, even built one. Once I did though, it was kind of pointless. There weren't any giant sea creatures trying to smash down the walls, or players attempting to get in and loot my treasures. I just sat down there...

    I know it's a long shot, but I think it would give the game a lot more lasting value and replayability, as well as making the multiplayer space more interesting than "Come look at my house".

    I dunno, what do you guys think?
     
  2. Surius

    Surius Void-Bound Voyager

    I hate it. I'm not saying that to be mean, so I'll elaborate. PvP is not everyone's cup of tea. There is also the fact that many of us will be playing largely single player where pve can never truly emulate pvp due to the lack of strategy and critical thinking humans inevitably add to the equasion. It would just end up being a repetitive and boring struggle if implemented (somewhat akin to spore's endgame vs the npc's) What you're suggesting is better suited to a specific server, not forced on the entire player-base. While I won't say this type of setup would not work for some it would quite definitely alienate a large portion of players who just enjoy building, exploring, storytelling, and a myriad of other things possible in a sandbox style game. To be quite honest it seems to be more along the lines of something that could/would have to be built as a mod to give players a choice to play this way, or not to.
     
  3. ShibbyGTR

    ShibbyGTR Space Hobo

    I totally get what you're saying. The reason I don't suggest it as a mod, is largely due to the fact that I haven't seen a lot of activity in the modding community. Maybe it will spike when the Workshop goes live. And yeah, the PVP isn't for everyone, PVE isn't necessarily either. Some people just wanna build and decorate. Which is why I specified designated worlds. Having the whole star chart be out for murder and breaking your stuff would be horrible, that's the truth. It could just be certain top-level worlds that provide special rewards or resources aimed at that type of content, better turret mats or something. The rest of it would still be the nice galaxy you've already known.

    I think I speak for a large portion of the player base (more than just mod level) when I say once you've progressed through the content, you run out of things to do that challenge you. I've built the best armor and guns, so now what? 1-shot normal overworld creatures for giggles? I stopped playing largely because I was bored, and decorating a fortress only left me feeling like it wasn't much of a fortress if the creatures just bounce off the door. The fun of building a fortress is the feeling of safety, and having it challenged makes it engrossing, makes building an efficient one rewarding.
     
  4. Never

    Never Pangalactic Porcupine

    You haven't seen much activity in the modding community...?


    [​IMG]
     
  5. Surius

    Surius Void-Bound Voyager

    I do agree that a large part of the player-base are dissatisfied with the endgame as it is as I've seen quite a few posts that would back up that statement and I can't say I won't get bored myself when 1.0 endgame is reached. That said I don't think gating resources or rewards is a good idea. As the game stands now they've been actively trying to eliminate the need to do things you may not want to be doing. For example the recent post about being able to hire crew instead of trekking through the story if one was to chose that path.

    I STRONGLY disagree that that the modding community is anything but robust. It just happens that many of them are awaiting 1.0 to really dig in to avoid having to undo/redo what they've already accomplished.

    There was a similar post that suggested a boss gauntlet for endgame. If starbound was more instanced friendly (maybe it is, I don't really mod, just enjoy/edit what's already out there, I'm no programmer) then perhaps putting a "warzone" and/or "gauntlet" of sorts in an instance and scoring it according to set perimeters would be a better system where players could compete (or even go to war) but then that would still be more along the lines of a mod in my mind.
     
  6. Surius

    Surius Void-Bound Voyager

    I should mention that I'm currently a heavy Minecraft player and play with 90+ mods in a custom pack I built out of my favorites so I know what kind of longevity mods bring to a game. I don't know that I'd even still be looking at Starbound every few days eagerly awaiting 1.0 if it wasn't for the mods I've seen thus far. This means that I speak with bias in favor of mods covering niche (albeit a big niche) interests like pvp.
     
  7. ShibbyGTR

    ShibbyGTR Space Hobo

    'Big niche' is an oxymoron, and I think Niche is the understandment of the year in regards to the desires of the player base.

    Mods are great, but they isolate player bases. It'd be awesome if mods existed to take care of this for me, but the problem with mods is version/checksum differences. Unless you've fond a community that's all on the same page for what mods they implement, you're out of luck and playing alone. A real end-game experience of this scale needs to be build into the game to be realized, otherwise it will just sputter out and be dearly loved by the few friends that have it working.

    Saying features like this should just be modded is also a cop-out. If a game is missing core features like end-game entirely, it's not up to the player base to fill in the blanks. I trust the developers would be able to balance out a solution like this so the decorator players wouldn't feel dumped on, but end-game boredom is the biggest plague this game suffers from. More pokemon and museums is great, but it won't hold a player base like established sandbox styles in other large successful sandbox titles. I don't think Starbound needs to be them, but it is missing crucial features of a "survival" sandbox.
     
  8. ShibbyGTR

    ShibbyGTR Space Hobo

    Nope, serious. Most interesting mods I've seen are dead or heavily outdated.
     
  9. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    That's what happens when a game is undergoing massive changes that could drop at any time. Modders are going to wait for the big 1.0 so they don't have to re-do all their work when what they did was already covered or negated or broken by the announced "soonish" 1.0.

    Also... yeah, no, "brutal endgame" more or less runs counter to what (unmodded) Starbound is pretty clearly about. It's very a much a go-at-your-own-pace deal, not beholden to vicious combat... on top of that this isn't REALLY a game with an "endgame" to speak of.
     
  10. ShibbyGTR

    ShibbyGTR Space Hobo

    I think my suggestions fits within the existing model, as it doesn't affect the current worlds, just new content to experience at the end. Starbound sells itself as you being alone in a hostile galaxy struggling to make it, and is dangerous and punishing the whole way through up until the end. Then it's just easy and loses the magic of struggling through hard missions and world dungeons. Adding on to that I don't feel hurts the paradigm.
     
  11. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    ...are we playing the same game? Because... it really doesn't, and isn't.
     
    Never and doombotmecha like this.
  12. ShibbyGTR

    ShibbyGTR Space Hobo

    If you do the missions, you're constantly thrown into combat-heavy dungeons and boss fights. Combat has been a big focus of the development team, both in refining and creating new weapon types and attacks. The main quest line is heavily tied to progressing both your armor and weapons, becoming more efficient at death dealing. So yeah, I'd argue it's a big part of the game if you're actually following the main quest structure.

    They reintroduced hunger if you so choose, so you're ever threatened by death by starvation. Bounty hunts are now randomly generated throughout the planets, encouraging you to hunt down and kill specific targets. Clearly there's more going on than playing house.

    Of course if you just want to build a house and decorate it, you'll never see that side, and that's how you want to play which is great. I don't understand why you see such a need to shoot down desires to expand EXISTING content in a meaningful way that wouldn't affect your desired style of play at all.
     
    Monobi and Alec5h like this.
  13. RagnorakZero

    RagnorakZero Space Hobo

    I'm in favor of this as far as endgame content goes. Exploring random dungeons, building useless buildings (cmon ppl, we all know you put your craft tables on your ship), and crafting random office furniture loses it's flavor pretty quickly. People need to realize that a Sandbox game is meant to have a bit of everything, but that doesn't mean you have to DO it all. If they want to make a separate server for content like this, fine with me, but I dont think it's fair to say that the majority of the player base would be upset at this implementation. Heck, the announced story is that you are a intergalactic policeman! Guess you only have to do your job for those 8 missions and then you're free to make a totally tricked out treehouse..... And as to the whole survival thing, it totally was about surviving! Back when it first came out, hunger and heat were very much a thing that killed me several times (just try warping to a snow planet without adequate gear and see how fast you die). The story at that point was your ship was damaged and you were stranded in some random part of space, you're only chance of making it back is to travel to some wild planet to gather the needed resources to fix said ship. How is that not survival or struggling in the galaxy?
     
  14. doombotmecha

    doombotmecha Void-Bound Voyager

    I think the game the OP is looking for is Dark Souls.

    I honestly would hate this change. I'm honestly not very good at fast-paced games like CoD, LoL, etc. (my main PvP games are all ccgs). I play starbound for a casual singleplayer romp through the galaxy, then settling down to build my dream badass space fortress on a planet of endless night. If I had to do PvP to get the best gear I wouldn't do it. I would just fly out as far as I could until I found a planet without any other players on it and cheese the dungeon while there was nobody there to stop me.

    and let's be honest, you aren't ever really "struggling". Your first planet has weak monsters, nice weather, and prebuilt homes/mineshafts. the ore you need isn't even all that rare, esp. on ocean/frozen ocean planets. And, after you find your 20 core frags via extended tutorial, you find an outpost full of castaways just like you, who are all happy to provide you with rare materials for any small jobs you and your spaceship care to take on. While the game gets more difficult later on (mostly on the Volcanic/Magma ocean worlds, and even then not due to any enemy difficulty spike), as long as you focus, the hardest segments are the platforming challenge portals.
     
    Never likes this.
  15. ShibbyGTR

    ShibbyGTR Space Hobo

    Dark Souls is far from what I'm suggesting. PVP is nice, but even a harsh PVE environment with defensible bases would be amazing. I'm just up for a more combat heavy progressive experience, whatever form it may take.

    And as for the game, I don't know how many times I need to state it, but the main quest of the existing game is nothing but dungeons, boss fights, and gear leveling. What I'm suggesting doesn't depart from the game at all, in fact it's very in line with the theme thus far. If you want to be an outcast making a home for yourself on an alien world, awesome. But a large amount of the player base wants something more challenging, and I don't know why anyone would be opposed to it. I'm not saying every planet should be filled to the brim with murderous monsters, but there should be planets that offer additional challenge in new creative ways.
     
    Shadow Wolf TJC and Alec5h like this.
  16. doombotmecha

    doombotmecha Void-Bound Voyager

    I guess I'm starting to see what you mean. To be totally honest, the colony system is a bit of a "click for nice things" system, and kinda lacks challenge, so if there was an update that made a colony-defense more intuitive I'd be open to that. For instance, I'd like to be able to effectively keep monsters out, as opposed to "welp, you were offscreen so monsters spawned". If that happened as, like, a wave-defense mission, that'd be really great--rn a colony on a midnight planet has no variation in spawns or spawn rate.

    What I'd really like to avoid is a Terrarria situation, where the whole damn game is locked behind (rare) combat drops from big boss/miniboss/event fights.

    In the end, I guess you're mostly right, SB could use some more diverse challenges. Maybe if there were challenge doors for monster wave/miniboss/anything that isn't another laser platforming puzzle.
     
    Shadow Wolf TJC likes this.
  17. Never

    Never Pangalactic Porcupine

    This is mostly what I'm concerned about. If they make rare armor sets/weapons/item drops from bosses, everyone will use that as baseline, rather than the stuff that everyone can get that isn't RNG gated.
     
  18. Zuvaii

    Zuvaii Heliosphere

    Then you don't have the interests of others, as Frackin' Universe is still perfectly up to date and sayter has even said he's holding off on adding more to it because of how close 1.0 is.
     

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