Well, at first, I don't really know if anyone in the Dev's team will actually read this thread or whatever, they're quite busy making this new update (which is great because it works a way forward to what i'm going to "complain" about in here). Very well, what i simply want to say here is, the quests system, i don't know why but... I find hard to think that I Am I the ONLY ONE, that ... feels like the sidequests are only fun to do after the first dozen of times each, because... you know, after a while you don't even bother to the EXCLAMATION marks in the NPC's heads, because you already know it's just a waste of your time for an unrewarding quest that you won't do if you're not in need of a crew member or whatever. So, what I mean here is... it's been years that the quest (sidequests) system is not being updated, I am totally not saying that it should have been updated before, I loved every single update that came (except when they removed the absurd ammount of dungeons, codexes, and nerfed the damn monsters. Which was all included in 1 update, so it's the only update i don't really like) Basically, what I mean here is, after this update of course, is done, we WILL HAVE a lot of things to do, messing around space and stuff to get to your bounties, it's a variety of quests basically, but... I really think that after that, it's already time to keep working on the quest system, because right now, it... it sucks, It's not a "OH IT SUCKS FROM THE BEGINNING" it's just that, endgame players are already tired of the quest system, and how they do it over and over, even if they don't admit it, they probably don't go in an overgrown floran temple to rescue a floran's friend for the 200 time just for fun, and if they do, it's not for fun, it's from pure boredom. -So I'm being "That guy" who posts a thread suggesting them to add something but without a minimal insight of what to add or how to program such feature. Here it goes, Nop, I'm not that guy, I'll list here somethings that i THINK are possible and not really that hard for the devs to implement in a quest system, I will admit that I don't know programming very well, but i know the limits, and my suggestions won't be something like "ADD PLANET VARIATIONS WITH APOCALYPTIC WORLDS AND SPACE WARFARES AND GUNS TO YOUR SHIP SO YOU CAN GO ON A MODE WHERE YOU CAN DO QUESTS ON YOUR SHIP!" (this would be awesome, as awesome as it sounds but, very very very hard and time-consuming for a dev, so here I go with my dumb suggestions that no soul in the nightosphere will probably read) : === THE QUEST VARIETY IN THE ALREADY EXISTING SYSTEM === *** NPCs that are bounded (no pun intended) to their planets (the npc's that aren't on the outpost etc, the RANDOM GUYS WHO GIVE YOU QUESTS WHILE YOU STEAL THEIR STUFF) could give you some more requests that aren't " COULD YOU SSSSSAVE FLORAN'SSS FRIEND!? HE ISSS IN A PRISSSION 20000 KM FROM HERE! " or " COULD YOU GO ON A DUNGEON TO FIND ME AN IRON ORE, WOULD BE VERY HELPFUL " or " COULD YOU GO 2 BLOCKS FROM THE VILLAGE TO FIND THIS BANDIT WHO'S POWER IS ADJUSTED TO YOURS SO IT'S AN ENTRETAINING BATTLE THAT YOU WILL ACCEPT OUT OF BOREDOM!? " so, this is basically the system of quests, they just change places and what to kill or what to fetch for someone, so basically, i'm not saying to remove those, they are entretaining enough during mid game and stuff, but you feel so empty as soon as you finish them that, you know, you want more variety than just 4 types of quests, so there could be some quests that include: - Scientists on their freezing little bases on cold planets, they're usually isolated from the world, and they are researching something, well, what could this something be? Well, who cares, they won't be asking you for anything related to that, so, you know your scanner, the one you use for seeing your character's fun race traits while examining the surroundings, the one you use only for your main quests, you know, why would a scientist, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by wild monsters, with no apparent supplies or ways of getting out of their science-ish blocks, they wouldn't bother to ask to you, an armed to the teeth fully equiped adventurer of the galaxy to simply scan something if you find it right? You know, those random objects that aren't related to any race or whatever. - VIllagers could be doing something better with their lives than just losing their friends all the time, or being shy as hell to deliever a gift to their neighbour's (who sometimes is literally by your side, listening as the person asks you to deliever them a gift.), well that's ok, it's fun to go plant some avocados and bananas in an ice planet for some hot cowboy chick in a bar, and then wait until they grow, well, now, what i'm suggesting here is, you know the bandits you've been hunting down and their gangs (and their space gangs now with this new awesome update) you wouldn't mind of tracking down their hideout and go on an epic shootout of badassery. you know, there's like 40 of them, why won't ya kill'em all for me hon. Will do ma'm. But hey, bandits are in small groups of 4 only, aw, what a shame, oh, all the buildings already have a lot of uses already? Well, sorry to say but, time to make more dungeon variety aswell then. (Actually i'm pretty sure some players would gladly build the patterns for new dungeons gladly without asking for anything in exchange at all.) - How about your crew ay, you know, these, empty shells of beings that stopped their whole lives just to follow you and die in hot lava baths as soon as they see one.Why did their story simply ended as soon as you arrived and helped them with a couple of problems? Well, you know, they're quite loyal, and they don't get any payment or reward for just being AFK in your ship. So, what am i implying here? Oh yeah, let's drive this thread to another totally different direction, you know, i changed my mind, fetching items, rescuing floranssss friend, it's all much fun but, why... in the world, my crew mates apparently are depressive empty shells with nothing else to do. Why can't an Exclamation mark appear on their heads, i mean even the maps on the alpaca's walls have more personality than them (with their once in a never comments about some furniture they see) (Btw, the most satisfying quests are probably these damn maps in the walls) so why your crew members, once in a while, don't ask you to.... idk, visit a certain planet to get them something? Put something in the spaceship (like you do with your slav~~i mean tenants), or how a crew member is in love with the other and she/he can't deliever a thing for their senpai (haha you're not their senpai, 2bad4um8), idk, just give me something to do with my crew, make their comments ratio on something, higher as well, space can be very lonely for singleplayer captains, and with silent followers, welp, it's hard to not keep killing yourself over and over in an endless cycle of respawning. (And seriously, crew members are supposed to be NPCs that means more for you than all the others, doing some effort to come up with a great crew system improvements would be just something really nice of chucklefish, seriously, a crew system where your crew actually has some problems here and there, and are not just automatic turrets of destruction to make you company in planet's surfaces while killing everything in their path.) - You know the NPC's that are in random places, those merchants and whatever, why are they (btw the quest system isn't random as you think it is, each typo of NPC gives certain types of quests, which means, an floran shop owner in the middle of nowhere won't be asking you to lead her to her friend in a desert ancient base as if she could deffend herself.) not trying to do anything but sell you stuff? Wouldn't it be cool if you could actually give them a home as a tenant? (this idea here is probably a little harder to program, so, ignore it if you want). * NOW THE ABSURD SUGGESTIONS TAB, WHICH MEANS, SOMETHING HARDER (not impossible) TO PROGRAM * - Npc's like said before, becoming tenants, could be done by adding a feature in the tenant system, where, as soon as you put the Colony Deed in a wall, and the housing is suitable, instead of spawning a random dude/gal in the home as soon as it's suitable, you can click the deed (which would appear in a different setting, a new tab of setting that is, because if you press action on it while the gift deed is activated, you receive a gift, and if you press it while nothing is happening, you call the deed's respective resident back home to see you. So a new deed mode could be enabled,with instead of a house, a little "LIST" type of thing is shown in the pixelated house hologram) and an interface would appear, with a little list of possible tenants variations, so, if you helped a merchant npc before, it would appear on this list, or you could say "Screw that I want a random new villager here lol" so, basically, an interface to choose who you want in your colony ( it also avoids ugly randomly generated freaks from popping up in your village ) - The crew should have an interface in SAIL where it could be administrated, since the SAIL crew interface does nothing but see who is in your crew and gives you the option to tell them to get the hell out of your ship. That's the most interaction you can have with a crew that's supposed to follow you till they die. Well, there could be some interface showing your friendship status with each crew member (by quests you completed for them) and if their level of friendship grows to total bro (100%) they can give you gifts and give you some more friend-related quests instead of crew-related stuff, that would be basically, a weird relationship status (someone would probably mod this and abuse this system to make marriable npc's tho) that makes your crewmembers quests go from this: + "Hey mate can you go on that planet over there to get us some fuel, we are running out of fuel" (an engineer) + "Hey mate can you go on that planet over there to get us some food, we are starving up here" (Any floran) + "Hey mate can you go on that planet over there so we can kill something for the sake of it" (A penguin mercenary) To this: + "Heya ma B U D D Y ! Let's go and hunt something down m8" (A novakid friend) + "Uhm a-anon, i-i have t-this letter to give to s-solarns-k-kun a-and... uhm... p-please help me deliever it!" (a penguin mercenary) + "Mate, can i go visit my mom's tombstone in X planet? I would really appreciate. . ." (A human with feelings cause everyoneelsehasnosoul) - Wars with other villages or whatever, like, You're colonizing a planet with a glitch castle, spreading colony deeds everywhere, your tenants will start saying that the glitch natives are stealing their supplies or threatening them whatever blah blah blah, your tenants ask you to go there talk to X npc or Kill X Npc or Steal X item or Rescue X Npc (this time not a random floran, but your own tenant, so you can actually feel like you're rescuing someone that matters) and quests involving problems to get along with other villages in general, to give you that more politics feels where you're this king of your tenants or whatever. - Bosses like Poptop Mother being threats to your village and someone actually asking you to hunt it down. - Your village needs something done that is far more important than planting a pineapple or stealing a glitch armor stand, such as getting some animal eggs from the outpost to them (to get chickens or cows whatever) so you feel like your village has needs. - Important quests for important NPCs such as the glitch king or floran village leaders, in which they give something harder and heavier to be done, like going to a dungeon to kill a powerful dude (doing a Raid on a dungeon basically, and not just a "Hunt down a bandit dude who you'll kill in 10 seconds" ) or rescuing someone important to the kings/leaders or some item, this is basically just the Fetch system but with changed dialogues for more important things (and there's a change on the values as well, the power of the enemies that is, harder, something that is challenging even for an endgame player.) - Including more quests to the important outpost npcs, i mean, they have 3 or 4 quests after you take them to the outpost and that's it, I want more gladiator fights and stuff, well, it's basically applying the randomly generated quests system to major NPCs basically. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ YOU GOT MY POINT, THERE'S MORE VARIETY TO ADD IN STARBOUND TO MAKE THE GAME FEEL... BETTER, and enjoyable, even for singleplayer (Not that the game is already in my top 3 games, and I simply love it, but you know, I love it so much that I'd love to see it become my number 1 game of the list)
This might be considered bump but I don´t care. Like with that person who posted a similiar thread 10 minutes before my reply, I totally agree. And again, like I mentioned in said other thread, Starbound seems to suffer from major scope creep and could be so much better (even though it is pretty good already).
