turokman2000

1) Interesting ProcGen Planets This requires randomly assigning "safe" landing zones on each planet. Then, from the landing zone outward, there is an increasingly higher "Hazard Level". Not totally concentric circles, but that combined with random hazard "hot spots". Higher hazard means worse conditions, higher level enemies, but also higher loot. Ideally, this integrates with survival/hazard systems. This makes planet delving possible. 2) Survival/hazard system. Different purpose suits. Suit crafting table. Hazards more punishing. This requires a better health system. This breaks down into short term and long term. Onset and pathological illness. So, short term can be cured at infirmaries/reliant medical. Long term only cured at the Clinic or if renegage, Eleos retreat. Onset cause temporary damage or nerfs, but wear off. Pathological become permanent. "Long term" and "Pathological" illness induces short term pathologies. Make sense? This is the system that interacts with increased hazards. Survival food system means if you periodically, consistently don't eat, you can get the short term pathology of anemia. Long term it's bone or pancreatic disease. 3) Better planets This is not herds of No Man's Sky animals. It's canyons of finding ONE animal, but it's high scan/survey value. You need a better survey system where survey needs are fulfilled by one scan, but outpost/material needs are fulfilled with deeper, repeated scans. It shouldn't be about a walking simulator scanning. It should be a canyon with hazards and enemies, and hunting a rare beast. To get data on an alien. 4) Scarcity spaceship mode. Low fuel. Low workbench materials. This means putting it all together so you have to delve into high hazard zones, hunt big aliens, deal with massive hazards with high level spacesuits, so you can get specific materials to upgrade and build new suits. Improve outposts an scanners so you can find beasts and materials and buff loot. Finally fuel and spaceship upgrades to FINALLY leap to the next planet. These four updates will make starfield a fixed and complete game with a basic gameplay loop. If you can see the vision, you know this isn't rocket science and is achievable.

I admit that after just completing Ryujin as the last thing I did, I have zero motivation to keep playing the game, and if the DLC is just another mission pack, I probably won't play it. I did put in 250 hours, which is impressive, but the problem is that I wasted a lot of time goofing off like surveying planets. I spent the first 20 hours - without understanding the systems at all: stealth, outposts - imagining the order I'd approach the content. I kept that "to-do" list in my head, and I was motivated because at the 20 hour mark I was thinking stealth would be deep, outposts would be deep, I could run a trading and mining empire. I didn't know the systems so I set up that plan in my head. I also played in a very RDR2 sort of way, manually walking through my ship to board and so forth. So there was a lot of time taken up in pursuit of an experience which, it turns out, was not there. A lot of time was spent earning perk upgrades. A good system, I think, but with no reward. The last 70 hours were just grinding, until I hit a point where I didn't care anymore about the role play and just sleepwalked through Ryujin. I realized that the most fun I had was 8/10 fun, and the story was 7/10, and my investment in playing it all through was almost a muscle memory of anticipating fun to emerge like I remember from older BGS games, then grind, then a little more fun as I NG+ and had to struggle a little for a minute to build up my inventory and ship, and then just grinding through the remaining content. The 8/10 fun was about 15% of my play time. The result is the capital BGS has built was spent by this game. You can't just leave the game half-finished, polish it a bit, because you've made me waste my time learning that it's shallow and can't provide a better experience without major overhauls. Hey you got 250 hours out of me. But, probably won't get DLC money and no hype without evidence for TES 6. Don't care about the other crap like "Elder Scrolls: Castles" because I guess 12 year old girls need to be playing BGS games now. Sorry, not bitter or salty, just disappointed. This game cannot be modded into something better than the time waster it ulimately is. Not unless the mods almost completely rework the game. I've offered some suggestions about the core gameplay loop, but I don't think it will happen.

At this point, modders could just say "Thanks for the inspiration Bethesda" and simply make an entirely new game. As far as I can tell, Bethesda only added rotating planets with sunsets, and then of course the 3D model assets. I think you could take just those two features and build an entirely new game that's a better version of the concept on top of that. What people want is "free flying through space" which I'm opposed to. That's not a real space game since space is big and kind of boring. I just want to amp up the hazard systems, add in a survival type mode that induces scarcity, then have better designed, tighter, less grindy landing fishbowls that work with the scarcity paradigm. Rogue-like in a sense. Each landing zone is a dungeon and it will have some of the loot that you need to build the next thing to get you through an obstacle in the last dungeon, but you never know the order or challenge level in which you will encounter this loot. Just layer on Starfield's construction recipes and materials. Maybe an updated/revamped scanning meta. You're right, collaboration is necessary. I fear creation club will work around peoples' RPG maker style custom dungeons, and that's the most kind of support avaialble.

Starfield had interesting, ambitious and basically good concepts that they failed to pull off and removed at the last minute. They did take the time to make what was left of the game work in a decent fashion. Gunplay and space combat feel good, however good or not, shallow or not they are. They're not bad, from a feeling point of view. So, with decent play, and a lot of content, you can play 50-80 hours through 75% of the content and think, "This isn't bad." That makes it a decent game purchase. However, the "This isn't bad," spends past capital. Because in that 50-80 hours you're thinking, "I haven't got to the stealth/outpost/melee combat yet, but I will eventually" and so while you're playing boring story quests you're content just on the basis of imagining there's so much more to come. Then you realize.... stealth and melee suck, and outpost has no purpose. Then you reflect that the quests you did play, taking your time up, were not very good. So you got 70 hours of good play, but part of the fun was your expectation or imagination that more was coming. When you realize it wasn't going to come, you look back and realize that story content was all there was. It was enjoyable, but you think, "I don't have to do that again." Not just in the replayability sense of Starfield, but literally any new BGS game. Like, I don't have to play these anymore. Starfield was interesting a bit, but it was also what I have done before, but less. So, I don't have to do this anymore. No, I'm not getting older. These games could be better. Hope they fix some stuff. I get the idea of Ambition -> Reality -> Scale Back -> Perfect. Starfield would be dog doo-doo if they didn't nail the gunplay and space combat, even though both are a bit shallow in their own ways. But the story is so tame, so derivative, so lost. I'd say they are doing something wrong. It's hard to pin down. Is it pressure and political correctness? Is it old boomers in an echo chamber in the DC area? Is it boomers in an old team that has fired its creative and manic and insane and brilliant members so only the borings are left? Is it boomers who can't be bothered to work harder? I don't know. BGS needs to sort it out. I am Turokman, the dwarf-orc guy.

This is a gameplay concept, any piece of which could be implemented as a feature. Starfield features the vestiges of an unfinished or abandoned gameplay loop. The general sense of boredom, or lack of exploration fun that people discuss is related to this. However, the fun of a proper exploration vibe exists in the game and the vestiges can be applied to a better gameplay loop. The most fun I had in this game, after the novelty wore off and I knew what the game was and what I was dealing with, was JUST after my second NG+ start. I had powers and skills, but no ammo or even weapons. I didn't want to land in "populated" areas so landed on a barren moon to get guns and maybe a ship. On a random procgen base, I scavenged whatever weapons I could. Weapons outside of my build skillset, and weapons that were weak. Think of the scarcity pressure in a game like classic Resident Evil. Starfield with that kind of pressure IS FUN AS HELL. Especially with a NG+ mechanic where your journey to god-mode is preserved even in a new playthrough. This also means two things: 1) Some of the abandoned design concepts (environmental hazards, fuel scarcity) are invoked and synergize with existing vestigial systems (spacesuit environmental suitability). 2) Suddenly, a core gameplay loop emerges that involves exploration. That is, you land on a planet, and you're STUCK there for a while and have to SCAVENGE around not knowing if the base you're entering will be boring with no loot, have great loot, or have nightmare power enemies. So I think you can already see the fix here. Below I'll provide specific details, in an order where each suggestion is meant to build on top of the last. However, any could be its own mod. A) BETTER PLANETS Starfield jams plants and animals like you land in the middle of a zoo or something. Scannable flora and fauna should be spread out. Hear me out. To fully survey a planet you only need to scan ONE of a thing, but you have to search around to find ONE. This also increases the usefulness of things like the Eternal Harvest power. Imagine investing in upgraded ship scanners, or making a weight trade-off for them. Now you can get preliminary info on animals and land directly where you'll find one. Imagine an outpost on that planet where you've built an expensive scanner. Now you have guidance which direction and range to walk after you land. Finally, you see the beast. Do you fight it? Stealth? How close you scan affects the value of the data, how easy it will be to track them in the future, how much materials you can harvest. Do you see how the existing vanilla systems integrate? And instead of a boring grindfest, each successfully scanned life is like its own quest, like a hunt for the mythical white whale. That's a good way to qualify how Starfield is and how it could be better. So, spread out the scannable life. Make it so scanning just one is enough, but you have to work to find the one and it's more of a challenge to approach and invokes more of the toolkit to pull it off with one of variable strategies. B) BETTER PROCGEN Look. Let's just train a ML algorithm on terrain features. Then, have it spit them out as world assets, and briefly manually approve them. I bet you could easily generate 1000 variable geographic assets this way. The key is the gameplay loop. Parameters like, "How much time between when a player leaves one point of interest and hits the next". It would all just be better if you're not boostpacking over kilometers of terrain, but instead carefully turning the corner in a canyon, in case a genuinely dangerous beast is there. I prefer Skyrim's trolls rather than the Cliff Racer. Starfield's dangerous fauna are more cliff racer like than troll like. Terrormorphs are a good example of a troll-type. C) DEEP SPACE EXPLORATION SCARCITY (The Big One) I would prefer Starfield to be totally different, but vanilla is built around a safer, easier galaxy. So this concept really needs to apply to new solar systems, so vanilla suspension of disbelief isn't broken. For lore purity, we would add: 1) He3 refueling depots 2) Nav beacons 3) Cargo link ships To the outer space traffic of the core systems. None of it does anything, but it's there to make the point that in the core systems, the game works using vanilla's parameters, to justify why the hardcore exploration, scarcity and survival parameters occur in the outer systems. A key concept for hardcore exploration is a "special" technology of Constellation, which becomes an entire 1x1 or 2x1 ship module. The "trek planner". The Trek planner lets you first go to the Eye to get preview information on planets in the solar systems off the map. You cannot vanilla jump to these systems. They're like, 100 LY away or something. Beyond the max C Class range. You use the Eye to pick a world or two, maybe pay Vladimir money or survey data for "scope time" to survey these places. This data is now in your "Trek Planner" which tells you how much fuel and resources you need to grav jump to, then land on the planet. When you have it, you can use a Constellation device called a "deep trekker" to dock with, and do a super grav jump. Max, class A ship. So you fulfill the resource requirement and do the jump. You are now in a star cluster of about 6 stars. You're stuck. ALSO, NEW rules apply. Fuel is no longer a parameter that tells you how many jumps you can do before having to fast travel again. Fuel is literally all you got until you're dead in the water. Also, you need fuel to land and take off. Your "Trek Planner" shows you your fuel limits and helps you manage how far you can travel before having to land and get more fuel. This is now the gameplay loop. The "Deep Trekker" places weight limits on your ship. So each time you jump to a new cluster you have: 1) Limited inventory 2) Extended time on a planet surface to search for fuel but also other resources. 3) Building outposts is extremely useful to improve upon fuel and other constraints. 4) Building outposts is hard, you start from scratch 5) Surveying and trek planning is part of the core loop. 6) Wandering around on foot, looking for certain materials or information (maps) leading to certain materials is key. You never know if you're walking into a trap or not. 7) Sufficiently upgraded outposts means you can build a "stargate" for fast travel back to the core worlds. ADD HAZARDS so even if you find the motherlode of fuel, you need to build the right suit to walk around there. That means a workbench at an outpost, and gathering certain materials after scanning nearby worlds to find them, and fighting through enemies to get into an area where they would be. Get it? This is the loop. Alternatively, trade-offs. Include a spacesuit workbench in your "Deep Trekker" ship build. Oops, but that means not having the "good" scanner. See what I mean about tradeoffs? Ideally, the info you get at the Eye and the "Trek Planner" will help you make judgments on what "scarcity build" to use for the deep trek. Now add 3-6 layers of these microsystems, and you have a repeating gameplay loop. As for incentive. If this was DLC and it was an official gameplay change, I would have at the end of these deep treks, at the deepest layer, genuine large dungeons with actual cutscene style, well-written "answers" pertaining to "The Creators". Since I didn't mention it yet, it's fine if other factions are also doing deep trekking. Or like, if there was an era of deep trekking during the colony war. Not as many procgen facilities as vanilla, but if you scan a system you'll find decently sized ones. I'd also add the concept of "deep spacers". Not pirates like spacers, but orphaned branches of humanity that thrived for a time but basically couldn't cut it in deep space after warfare turned the settled systems to look inward. So a lot of sort of ruins or last stands. Also, if you build "fuel depots" or "nav beacons" in space using settlements, then cargo links will function and the star cluster will begin to populate with more space traffic. Maybe a little passive income there too. D) MINOR FACTIONS The theme of exploration gets lip service in vanilla main quest, but is underserved. Like, ooh wow, so great, exploring the mysteries, Matteo is excited. But, who cares? A better structure for this theme, within the gameplay loop as I've built it above, uses minor factions. Exploration is meant to express, not discover, opinions about "big questions". We explore because we have faith or believe that we have answers, or the beginnings of answers, to these questions. So you start with "big questions". Anyone can do this. And again, think from the NASA-punk point of view where it's framed in terms of science or technology. "What is life's purpose?" A big question. No, but not philosophically. NASA-punk: practically speaking. That is, is life a system for humanity to exploit? Or is life a system meant to carry out it's own prerogatives. That is, industry in contrast with natural history. For each such question, there's a tripartite spectrum. For life, it's "we should exploit it." Not evil, but humanity-focused, industry-focused. In contrast, total non-interference in the process of life. "Leave only footprints". In the middle, pure science. Pure science isn't against the industrial use of biological knowledge for human betterment. However, pure science wants ALL the data first, and won't sacrifice research in the name of profitability. So you have two extremes and a middle. In terms of gameplay, you have an asset: the biolab. So a single asset with flavor changes can be associated with one of three factions. Now, in terms of emergent gameplay, you treat the factions with a Harry Potter style "House cup system". The factions my have specific quest types. "Steal data" "Do A Survey" "Sabotage or eradicate". All the same. Easy to procedurally reproduce. But, depending on which factions you favor, with a tiny bit of text or dialogue to color or flavor each faction, you help them in the "House Cup". When one faction is doing well against another, some faction quest is triggered, the reward being an item or permabuff. So ask 5 "big questions". One could be simply about how stars and planets are formed, and be resources and geology related? One could be about the bending of light and and time and space and have to do with navigation. You get the idea. Add this to the scarcity game, and you have genuinely gameplay, motivationally relevant encounters. You might even build an advanced scanner just to locate that one biolab of that one faction so you can raid it and move the needle. E) MEDICAL In line with hazards. Medicine should be in the form of: Injuries, short and long term. Diseases, short and long term. Get a sprain, apply an immobilizer. 10 minute cooldown and it will wear off. You NEED a ship or outpost infirmary, or encounter a ship in space with one (they will sometimes try to pirate you if you board for medical care). This makes medical and hazard systems work better in the scarcity loop. A random civilian outpost or pirate base might have medical treatment for long term cures. Serendipity! A reward for exploring around. Diseases can have their own causes, or just be caused by untreated injuries. Disease cannot be treated by medicine, although many diseases will work by causing injuries. So even with doctor care, you might cure the injury, but get it again just from the disease. Other diseases are like perma-nerfs. Disease can be temporarily treated by doctor care. Long term cures ONLY come from visiting "The Clinic" and for bounty situations, the "Eleos Retreat" will build second Clinic for "outlaws" as a humanitarian mission. Only these two locations can cure disease. So that's that system. I also want to see every ship hab type contribute something. Like a computer core helps with scanning. If jumping from one system to the next uses up all your fuel, and a star cluster has 6 systems, and your scanner can scan 1-2 systems over, a scan boost could be very useful. F) OUTPOST KITS This refers to a couple different ideas. One is a "Trek Module" in a ship which is like a mini outpost. That is your ship can support the construction of mineral extractors and power planets as if it was an outpost pole, but taking off destroys the outpost. Two is a tent or mobile outpost. Something you can set up and take down. Maybe it needs Vasco to carry it. This way you can build up your outpost over time as you explore distant worlds, but take it with you as you go around planets on food. Three is auto-build. This is where there are preset outpost templates. You can also "save" an outpost and rebuild one exactly off your save, so long as you supply the basic materials. Think like stakes are laid down for the outline of the blueprint, and you deliver enough materials and the buildings rise up until the whole thing is done. This will remove tedium and let outposts function in the scarcity game as part of the fun of the gameplay loop. Other feature: the ability to send crew members to collect materials which exist on the planet, but maybe not in that biome. The rate will be much slower than an extractor, but if there's some rare mineral on that planet not in your outpost biome, you can still accumulate it over time and cargo link it. G) CITIES, SETTLEMENTS, TURF-WARS This is a more ambitious endgame to these systems. Where you have outposts that are settlements, it's more like Elder Scrolls Blades. You supply materials, but the settlement auto-builds. Settlements control territory, and pay passive income, provide a few followers to help with raids. They auto-build auxillary facilities like mining or farming outposts, which can be defending in a quiet Preston style defense system. Settlements can grow into colonies, with certain radiant style quests end up controlling whole planets. Control of planets boosts settlement output, but it also reduces the number of attacks. You can get something like 1-2 city sized settlements, meaning you can completely control 1-2 systems. This makes you a minor power almost equal to, but smaller than the main factions. From settlement to city, you can promote whichever of the minor factions you choose, although in general supporting one means you cannot support certain others. From the colony and city sizes, you can accept materials to build facilities. These will auto-populate out in the map, but be similar to the procgen vanilla assets like mines or listening posts. These buff your settlement's and minor factional stats. If you control at least one system, which always locks in with a big space battle quest, like your war for independence or whatever, you can engage in diplomacy with other factions. This is everything from having a security escort as a visiting dignitary on Akila City and New Atlantis, to being able to hold a diplomatic negotiations mini-game over war status, trade and so forth. Include minor faction support (diplomatic state gift of money to get UC to support the "leave life alone" faction of the biological questions, for example). You can also declare war and attempt to fight to conquer planets. If you conquer another faction you won't control the system, just place it under tribute. If you conquer all of another faction's systems, their space forces will become "renegade" and be far less active, but very high level when you encounter them. H) GROUND TRANSPORT I think item "B" will make foot travel more interesting, but some ground transport might be merited. A good idea is a skiff, which functions like a boostpack but uses RCS to travel around. This avoids the need for wheel physics. Plus, the absolute velocity is easier to manage without wheel physics, so graphic scaling and optimization can scale to absolute skiff velocity and if you're dumb and crash it you'll just die. Another idea is a high-altitude layer. Where you fly your ship around to scan, and can have cumbersome atmospheric fights with other ships. But you still have to cutscene-land or cut-scene get to orbit. Okay that's all, happy hunting.