Suggestions and Ideas

[Emily Mewens]

Edit: Just gonna go on ahead and rename and repurpose this post. I shouldnt be the only one having fun suggesting things here XP

So if anyone else has suggestions for adjustments, fixes, etc, leave em here :D

Feel free to sticky this :P


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Im actually enjoying the way alchemy is set up currently. Not knowing how to make things, having to experiment like a fumbling newbie.. And you have plenty of resources of various materials to really encourage atleast starting to fumble with it.

So id like to suggest keeping it pushed towards this experimental style.

However, i think a few things will definitely be needed to be added in.

First and foremost, a Recipe Book needs to be added in. One that updates upon discovery of a new recipe, but also records all your failed attempts as well. This will not only help encourage players to tinker around with things, but itll show all of your failures as well, so you dont accidentally forget about which mixtures youve already tested XP

Secondly, Ingredients need to have flavortext that hint at what they would be useful for. Like for example.. "this is an eye of [insert monster name], rumored to contain healing elements. It almost feels like its looking back" From that description, i would most likely assume this ingredient would be useful for healing, or something like that.. So naturally id put it in with, hopefully, other healing types to make something that heals~

Lastly, there needs to be like.. scrolls or books or something hidden about the world that gives a new recipe, or a few, or even hints towards new recipes. This could be as in depth as a little lore writing, or as simple as "Ingredient 1 + 2 + ??? = Healing potion" These would give the player a bit of a break, and likely also help discover more advanced mixtures that they may not have ever known :3


On a different note, keep up the good work you guys :V This game was very under my radar, and i definitely had alot of doubts with it. But im glad ive tried it out. I can feel the passion thats put into the game with all the little touches and such thats already in the game. Seriously, those little touches could put you right up there with Terraria. Not only this, but from what ive played so far, the game already feels alot less bare bones than Starbound. Its got unique fun things in it, from the magic to the alchemy to the somehow perfectly chosen soundtrack. On top of all that, youre also not pushing to be something entirely completely new for the sake of it. Pre-established staples in a genre arent a terrible thing in their own right, but you guys seem to grasp what makes these staples work, and even make them better in some cases, like the adjustable minimap (really love that!) This game may be one of many in its genre, but out of many of them, i think this game feels the most like its own thing. Definitely keep doing what youre doing :3

[Cainos]

Thanks for your suggestions. We are greatly encouraged.

Actually we are not quite satisfied with the current alchemy system and is trying to make some changes to that.

Currently alchemy ingredients only have "fire", "water", "wind", "earth" these four tags. And the level and combination of these tags decides what the product is. This leads to a problem that many formula seem unreasonable and hard to remember. Since many alchemy product can not be simply concluded into the combination of these four element.

So in the improved alchemy system we add a lot more tags to ingredients ( there are now about 25 tags). An item's description will give hints about what tags it has and an alchemy product also give hints about what tags in its ingredients are needed. As the formulas become more strict, the rate of a successful try without knowing any particular formula will be a lot more lower. But i think as we add more and more alchemy product items to match different combinations, this will be imrpoved. And alchemy recipes scattered around the world? Good idea, we will add that.

Hopefull the new alchemy system will come out at next update. I am not quite sure about how it will behaviour, is it better or worse. If you would play it later, please tell us what you think about it.

[Emily Mewens]

I actually wasnt very certain how exactly it was working. I knew that the elements played a part in it but i assumed that there were already tags that it was pulling from xD

Regardless, i think that would work :3 I still highly recommend a recipe book be added in to help keep track of learned and failed recipes, especially with this new system coming into play. Thats a lot of tags and a metric ton more combinations to keep up with and remember.

This said, i do like the way its going :D Having to figure out and learn the recipes by experimenting was actually pretty fun, especially when you have tons of mats to throw around

One thing i can think of to help it out a little bit, is to have obvious ingredients in certain mixtures. LIke for example.. youre obviously going to mix a potion into a glass bottle, so when youre wanting to make a potion.. you could put in a glass bottle to help your odds.. Just a small example really xP And this could easily play both ways too if you mark items that can be made in as a product in their description or description tag or.. w/e (the bit where it says Alchemy, material, etc)

Imagine you find a chest or something in the nether that contains some fire potion. You see in the description that its a consumable, naturally, but more importantly it also says its a product.. That tells you that you can make this. So you look through its description a little closer, and try to come up with ideas to try out when you get back to base, just to see if you can reverse engineer this potion, and make one yourself :D

I think little subtle things like this will definitely help keep the player experimenting, without actually giving them TOO much hand holding.

I do have one other thing to talk about as well, being magic. I'll make another post for that, since this is long enough XP

[Emily Mewens]

The magic definitely needs to have their recharge costs rebalanced. Some things are much harder than others, while others are much much easier.

For example, The moment i found fireball, i stopped using any other spell, except for maybe Pyroblast. The main reason being it only took 5 teeth and an eye to recharge. Its in fact the only spell i got to level 2 with this character so far.

So the first thing i think needs to happen, is they all need to be restructured into power classes. We need to know what spells are more powerful than others so that we can organize them, and balance them a bit more equally.

So like for example, Fireball is one of the weaker fire spells, so it would be classed as a Class 1 fire spell. Pyroblast is like a much stronger version of the fireball, so i would class it as a Class 2 fire spell.

From there we can adjust how difficult it is to recharge the spells. Class 1 spells in this example should have the least amount required of them. They really should be pretty easy to recharge, atleast in comparison to the rest of the spell classes. Something like how Fireball is set right now. However, Class 2 spells, like Pyroblast, would have a higher, or a more diverse requirement, so instead of 5 teeth and an eye, is 5 ostrich claws and 3 falcon feathers. Then Class 3 would follo wthe same, with say.. 5 falcon feathers and 10 obsidian, plus you also have to kill 10 dragon fish..

Again this is of coarse an example with just random things put in to help get the point across. But it would make starter spells, like Icicle Array, and Shattering Rock be alot easier to recharge and more capable candidates for use along side spells like Fireball, since they would be balanced similarly to the other Class 1 types, where as Ice Arrow would balanced towards being a Class 2 spell. (though if ice arrow is a class 2 spell.. then pyro blast definitely fits in class 3 thanks to the heavy punch it packs)

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Also as i mentioned, i only got my fireball spell up to level 2, so im not exactly certain how they work beyond this point.. But.. I will tell you what i was expecting, and if its not a thing, then, consider it a suggestion as well :P

So what im expecting is, the more powerful my spell becomes, the higher level it gets, the harder itll be to recharge, but im als expecting the spells to maybe get a bit more 'durable' so they dont run out of charge as fast. I know you can recharge a percent of the spells at the rune stones, so even if they become TOO tedious to recharge on the fly, you still have a powerful spell that can be recharged slowly at the stones.

Im also expecting the spells to sort of evolve once it reaches a certain level, possibly at max level maybe?.. Like maybe turn into, or unlock a better version of that spell. A good example here would be Fireball to PyroBlast. I think that its what i most looked forwards too.. having my spell evolve into something better and slightly different, rather than just getting stat boosts

but again, im not really sure how late game magic works xP i havent gotten that far with it yet.

[Cainos]

Yes, we will add a place to record all the learned alchemy recipes. But I think failed recipes may be too many to record, and in the new alchemy system, if a combination doesn't work, the reaction won't happen. So you know that this is a failed try.

Most potions do require a water bottle ( taged as LV1 solvent) and this is exactly what we are trying to achieve:
"Imagine you find a chest or something in the nether that contains some fire potion. You see in the description that its a consumable, naturally, but more importantly it also says its a product.. That tells you that you can make this. So you look through its description a little closer, and try to come up with ideas to try out when you get back to base, just to see if you can reverse engineer this potion, and make one yourself"

Indeed, the magic recharge conditions need to to tweaked. As I observed many players don't even use it but simply rely on rune stones to charge their magic. About the magic upgrade, the idea is: when a magic get upgraded, it should be better in every aspect. So if the recharge condition get harder, or Fireball becomes PyroBlast (which has much longer cooldown and more mana cost), players may try prevent upgrading it. As there are conditions where players only need light and fast small magic. But it may be a good idea to give player a more advanced magic when player upgrade a certain magic to the highest level, not replacing the original one.

[Emily Mewens]

Oh thats great. If nothing happens, then you dont need to worry about failed states. :D perfect :3

and neat :3 you guys got it all figured out xP

ahh i see. If youre trying to ween people off the runestones, then i can see that route. I assumed that the runestones were fine, but if you wanted to upgrade your spells, you needed to jump through the hoops and manually recharge.. just that sometimes those hoops were too hard to jump through. I see.

'But it may be a good idea to give player a more advanced magic when player upgrade a certain magic to the highest level, not replacing the original one'
and this is exactly what i was thinking of. I definitely dont want to replace fireball with pyroblast, too much would end up being lost in that. But if it unlocked pyroblast... or an even better fireball.. something like that~

[STEALTHxKILLZ]

Gamepad support! I use a STEAM controller on all 430+ games i own ,but others can not use one and like the xbox 360 for windows one. I play plenty of games like this one and it can be done and would bring more players to your game.Some people like myself like to sit back and play on a large TV and others like myself also may have hurt their hand or be disabled and a mouse and keyboard may ruin their fun or stop them from playing a game<no one really thinks of disabled people much lol unless colorblind> Game looks fun if you need help with a layout i could help made one for every game i own here lol.

good luck!

[Cainos]

OK, but it will be a very late feature

[acoustic & retired]

Hopefully this thread is still active, so here's a few suggestions that might be added.

1. When it's too hot, you lose HP, why not make the same for when it's too cold? So unless you have the snow mountain suit you lose HP very slowly.
2. In a way copy one "feature" of starbound - this game is beatiful, having some cosmetics that can be placed over armor would be absolutely lovely - just don't over do it. - so far there's only glasses and scroll items? You could do something like mask, tie, bowtie and similiar. :)
3. Add some monsters that are immune to magic and very hard to kill overall with swords and stuff like that (say unless you attack with Kapok Staff, because the monster is weak to Kapok for example).
4. Give items double use, but don't let us know what is the second. E.g. a food that is also material or part of a recipe, or a rope that can be used for climbing as well. - didn't realize this is already a case!
5. I think wooden elements should be able too burn.
6. Could you make it so that when a friend connects to my server that his mini map gets saved? I understand that game has to download all the content again, but could you in a way save the mini map he had discovered before, and if something changes it just overwrites the old data?

I might add some more stuff soon!

[Cainos]

Got it

[acoustic & retired]

Originally posted by Cainos:

Got it

Cainos, may I add you on steam? I ask because if I'm to proofread all items so I can send it directly instead of posting somewhere.

[BIG BRRRRT]

i dont know if the devs are still active or this thread but i seem to enjoy the game, and i would like an exp system added so when u kill a mob it will level your character and this will feed into another idea i have a skill tree :3 who doesn love a good skill tree, this way instead of looking for runes across the map for spells you can unlock them with the skill tree.

one branch could go down the fire path and each spell you unlock the stronger and more costly it is, another branch the ice,water,wind,earth path but i also recommend extra paths such as dark,light,electric, maybe even flight like a spell that lets you jump far or glide.

i was messing with the creative mode and i found the summon undead spell looked like really good lightning animation, however the spell itself was no good :/

going deeper into the more elements idea i had i have a few ideas for spells.

electric
-chain lightning (electric hits multiple targets for damage)
-discharge (like water and fire stream but lightningy :)
-thunder strike (literally a strike of thunder that comes down from above)
-singularity (simillar to flame spell dragon breath (i dont remember the name im sorry) a ball of lightning the player can control).
-passive ( more damage when raining)

light
-divine healing (heals player, lights up surrounding area and removes buffs
-divine shield ( a magic shield the payer can use to block attacks)(and has light)
-expel undead (create light the undead run away from)
holy light (small ball of light to light up caves follows player)
passive (buffs when used during day time like more damage)

darkness
-feast (heal by damaging monsters basically stealing hp from nearby monsters)
-mist (like fire/water and maybe electric :) stream but with dark cloud)
-shadow ball (ball of darkness like a black hole player can control)
-dark lord (summon monsters like wraith)
-passive (buffs when darkness used at night like more damage)

flight
-flight(can fly)
x)

[Cainos]

oh thanks Lord Ares

[irishmc01]

Hi i saw this suggestion post. I would love it if there was some way to move the hotbar and make it slightly larger and also be able to zoom in a bit closer to the screen as i play on my tv and its hard to see the words sometimes and items on the hotbar. Thank you

[Harmony]

Needs to be updated! Please, add some NPC's it would be nice :) Cheers