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[Darkmere]

But Darkmere! If you give players choices, some of them might choose wrong. I cannot rest while a single person is playing a game in a way I disapprove of!

Of course, the Terraria devs seemed to have adopted this sort of attitude by the end (wasn't this the entire purpose of keys? That people were playing the game wrong, and they needed to be forced to play it right?) and I'm really looking forward to Starbound but I'm just hoping it really is free of that attitude like it appears to be.

It's been a while, but I believe the gist of it was, players who knew about floating islands and the shadow chests would go in new worlds and take everything from the islands and underworld immediately, then likely make full suits of lava armor (whatever it was called, I forget) and complain that the game wasn't long enough because they skipped everything in between and didn't want to build anything. Then the keys were added, so now people complain that the game is pointlessly long and they don't bother building anything.  I guess the builders keep building. *shrug*

Between the two, I'd prefer the sandboxy feel of getting whatever, whenever, despite being the kind of player that wants to see every step in progression and grail all the gear, just to say I've seen it. I also never played on any public servers... so there is that. I assume the problem will be either alleviated or exacerbated with Starbound. On one hand... massive number of random planets with random stuff. On the other... players can be on any different number of planets on the same server, so they'd better be really damn on the ball for making the server software administrate that many environments for X players at once.

[Flying Dice]

Got my preorder in, finally.

[Neonivek]

I kind of wanted a blend between gameplay and sandbox

Similar to the Terraria trailer where the person was in a magma river underground with pillars that he hops onto while fighting a skeletal dragon.

THAT was the Terraria I wanted.

While I don't think I am going to get that with Starbound, I can dream can't I?

[Moogie]

Huh, I remember doing something almost exactly like that back when I played Terraria. Only, it wasn't pillars, but buildings sunk into the molten earth. And it wasn't a skeletal dragon, but a massive wall of fleshy fiery evil death.

And when it wasn't the massive wall of fleshy fiery evil death, it was those fucking annoying teleporting imp things, with their projectiles that knocked you into the burning sea.

[The Darkling Wolf]

Was on a server once where we ended up horrifically overprepared for the WoF. We spent ages building a massive hellway, then killed it within three seconds of it spawning, none of us even had to move. Was absolutely hilarious.

[Devling]

Huh, I remember doing something almost exactly like that back when I played Terraria. Only, it wasn't pillars, but buildings sunk into the molten earth. And it wasn't a skeletal dragon, but a massive wall of fleshy fiery evil death.

And when it wasn't the massive wall of fleshy fiery evil death, it was those fucking annoying teleporting imp things, with their projectiles that knocked you into the burning sea.

So, basically only similar in that it was underground, and also lava.

[Sirus]

You sure they were pillars? Hell in Terraria has these buildings made of various kinds of brick. They're basically multi-floor towers half-buried in lava and ash. From some blurry pre-release footage, they might look like solid pillars.

[Max White]

And there were skeletal worms to fight that could be mistaken for a dragon.

[Neonivek]

You sure they were pillars? Hell in Terraria has these buildings made of various kinds of brick. They're basically multi-floor towers half-buried in lava and ash. From some blurry pre-release footage, they might look like solid pillars.

Nope it was solid pillars as well you are thinking of hell, the person was in the lava section not hell.

As well it had nothing to do with whether or not Pillars and Skeletal dragons were in Terraria, it was that the generation system would generate these set pieces.

So whenever I explored a Cave I always compared it to that Trailer. "Does this cave enhance the gameplay?" and the answer was always no, it was just a random cave with no consideration for the gameplay, the characters abilities, or what have you.

Neither Starbound nor Terraria will have the Pillar Lava Cave Generation system.

[Darkmere]

Never seen that trailer, but it sounds interesting. Link?

[Neonivek]

Never seen that trailer, but it sounds interesting. Link?

Link isn't available anymore and it is nearly impossible to find.

All the ones I look at are far too new or are of when Terraria was released. This one didn't even have the armors in it.

Mind you it was back before they knew what the game was as well. It is funny how many weapons are in the game that are useless or weakened because of how the game was designed.

[alexwazer]

The first video released was this one, which has something that looks like that pillars/lava/dragon stuff you're talking about (starting 1:53), but otherwise doesn't really fit with anything else you've said. It is in hell (that's where bone serpent show up after all), there's plenty of armor already and the game was already almost finished, but not yet released. If that's not the video you had in mind, then I can't help but think that said video might only exist in your mind... 2 years can really affect memories.

Not quite sure which weapons you have in mind. There are tons of weapon I never use, but I can only think of a handful that I would consider useless, none of those because of game design, but rather on simple balancing issues (i.e. mostly subpar magic items).

[Niveras]

So whenever I explored a Cave I always compared it to that Trailer. "Does this cave enhance the gameplay?" and the answer was always no, it was just a random cave with no consideration for the gameplay, the characters abilities, or what have you.

I'm a little confused. Are you expecting that everything in the "below dirt above hell" to be meaningful gameplay beyond as a filler for exploration and travel? (I'm not sure if that capitalization is a typo or intentional because there's nothing I remember in the caves being 'noteworthy' to the degree that I'd capitalize it - as opposed to, for example, golden vault/jungle chests, or the underground wood structures, which I wouldn't describe as a cave.)

I could understand a desire to see a "Cave", a meaningful location of noteworthy consequence, which could contain items or chests or special enemies or resources or a rogue-like vault (a pre-built locked area containing "out of depth" enemies but also out of depth rewards), or perhaps even non-resource based gameplay, like the ability to create a viable house in that location that could be used for housing a few useful NPCs or as a secondary outpost. Ostensibly this sort of thing is somewhat covered by the "underground houses". But even if these were implemented, there would only be a few in any given world and the bulk of the layer would just be generic "caves", which would still fall short of your expectation that they should enhance gameplay somehow.

It may not "enhance gameplay," but sometimes a cave is just a cave. You need some kind of baseline area for the player to explore without it being all noteworthy.

[Flying Dice]

Agreed. Trying to make every single place (especially on generated, rather than designed, worlds) significant in terms of atmosphere and progression is idiotic-either you fail and it's a pile of shit, or you succeed and it's a pile of shit. Everything about the world feels much more real when most of it isn't a significant location. You don't need to have a miniboss, an abandoned, ruin, etc. every ten feet for the world to be interesting. The random bits of remarkable terrain you can find usually far outweigh that sort of planned stuff, at least in my book.

[Darkmere]

Agreed with the above. If everything is awesome, awesome becomes mundane and the wonder is lost. That said, I do like the conceptual balance of Starbound, with the generated dungeon segments connecting together on random worlds intermixed with natural landscapes and local creatures. Sometimes a strange world is just that, while others may house hidden ruins to plunder for all they're worth. I hope some of them ruins are made in deteriorating states, or can have above-normal threat ranges for the host planets. Time will tell, I suppose.