Better Exploration Core Gameplay Concept

[turokman2000]

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.

[zanity]

I will make one salient point- the stuff you want is all doable BUT cannot be largely achieved using the old modding methods.

 

Starfield needs co-operation between key modders. Not at the level of story or gameplay vision- everyone will have their own ideas there. No, the co-operation needs to be at the level of universal frameworks and data structures, toolsets and documentation.

 

With Starfield being as deity awful as it is, this game can never be improved by simply poking at the existing pathetic excuses for systems in the vanilla game. Every system in the game is dreadfully designed, dreadfully coded garbage. But if a hundreds mods all try to replace and improve the same system, where does that get us?

 

Take space travel. The first question should be "what new space travel framework would best support new space associated mods?" Using the existing putrid Starfield frameworks for anything would be a giant mistake.

 

A new universal set of planet frameworks will assist all those modders who simply want to focus on populating their own planet. Did you know, for instance, that even with the pathetic Creation Engine, it is possible to create a fully mapped planet surface, and thus give the ability to land on a patch that actually matches the land geometry seen from space? Of course the patches will still be squares with hard boundaries, but geography visible from one patch would actually be present in an adjacent patch. You could literally have a REAL Mars.

 

Many of these ideas would need a powerful PC, and a lot of storage. Like flight sim fanatics, space sim fanatics will happily pay for such hardware if the experience is worth it.

 

And here's where things can get really crazy. It is actually possible to mod another engine, like Unreal 5, into Starfield to handle REAL space flight. What Beth renders in the space sequences is so pathetically primitive, any really good modder with Unreal skills could do much better within one month. Mods using another engine would really set the fox in the hen house.

 

What we are talking about is an open-source, crowd-sourced Star Citizen like project, based on Starfield and the Creation Engine. Once this really takes off, MS is going to have the really hard decision whether to wage war on this project, or accept it.

[turokman2000]

...

 

What we are talking about is an open-source, crowd-sourced Star Citizen like project, based on Starfield and the Creation Engine. Once this really takes off, MS is going to have the really hard decision whether to wage war on this project, or accept it.

 

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.