What can Terraria learn from Starbound?

S

Sir Feedsalot

Terrarian
This is my first post on this forum, and before anyone gets defensive, I'd like to say that I greatly prefer Terraria over Starbound. I've also spent ten times more playtime on Terraria over starbound. Regardless, what aspects of Starbound do you wish were in Terraria?
 
I haven't played Starbound, so I can't say much about it, but I do want to chip in with this bit of advice: while Terraria and Starbound are both sandbox games, they are still very different mechanically. And the questions "What does Starbound do differently from Terraria?", "What does Starbound do better than Terraria?" and "What (if anything) should Terraria adapt from Starbound?" are three completely different ones. So if you see something that Starbound does and Terraria doesn't (or vice versa), you need to ask yourself if putting the one mechanic in the other game would actually improve that game. Because a good game isn't just good mechanics, it's good mechanics working harmoniously with each other.
 
more furries.

jokes aside, I've played both games, and although starbound I find to be more fun, I think it's sorta unfair to say strictly "what can terraria learn from starbound" at this point Terraria is like a wise old hermit that refuses to learn anything. the game's innards is petrified wood at this point, it ain't going nowhere. all that can really be done with Terraria is

-small doses of new content
-make it look prettier
-minor balances here and there. (the values that can be balanced are more than just stats and gear. for example, enemy spawn rate)

which is pretty much all Terraria can learn from anything summed up.
you can't take a game that has been going in a specific direction as long as Terraria has and just change it.

Also, Starbound isn't necessarily a better game than Terraria. I may enjoy it more, but that doesn't make it better That's just my personal opinion. There are some things in Terraria I like a bit more than Starbound, such as the graphics, soundtrack, character movement, etc. I also find the game to be a little too slow compared to Terraria. I like a faster progression. see? subjective things like that. neither is necessarily better.

so hypothetically speaking, if it were to come to it, what I would take from starbound and put in Terraria would probably be giving ranged weapons infinite ammo.. that's about all I can think of.

 
Scarecrow said:
more furries.

jokes aside, I've played both games, and although starbound I find to be more fun, I think it's sorta unfair to say strictly "what can terraria learn from starbound" at this point Terraria is like a wise old hermit that refuses to learn anything. the game's innards is petrified wood at this point, it ain't going nowhere.
Click to expand...

I agree with this to an extent. The "spirit" of Terraria that the developers talk about isn't going to change, but there are minor quality-of-life elements from starbound that I wish were in Terraria. For example:

1. using the same block for both foreground and background makes building SO much more efficient, and using left and right click to place (and destroy) foreground and background blocks was extremely intuitive for me.

2. Speaking of right clicking, making use of right clicking in general is something that Terraria could easily adapt from Starbound. I wouldn't want Terraria to directly copy Starbound's right click special move system directly, but some way to make combat more dynamic instead of just dodging and left clicking would be nice.

3. Collections. A collections tab was recently implemented in Starbound, and I would love Terraria to have a collections system. Give us some reason to go underground and explore! Once I've collected enough ores/gems/treasure chests I rarely go underground in Terraria. Do I need a tenth pair of Hermes boots from another gold chest? Do I need another cave bat banner? Perhaps my 1,000th gold ore or my 200th diamond? No. I'd like ultra-rare goodies underground in Terraria that only the most dedicated players will find, even if they're only decorative and serve no purpose in combat.

Even better, introduce an NPC (like the angler) where the player can trade in extra-rare treasures for exclusive goodies (although skip the daily quest element, that's a pain in the butt). Certain items are already fishing exclusive, why not introduce treasure-hunter exclusive items? It might actually give me a reason to go spelunking in hardmode again instead of playing a glorified tower-defense boss killing game in hardmode.

This is slightly off topic, but my number one complaint about Terraria is that the spirit of the game changes from pre-hardmode to hardmode. At first, finding a new treasure chest or ore vein in a new world gives me a rush, and this sense of exploration is completely absent from hardmode. There's nothing wrong with the combat emphasis of hardmode, but I wish it wouldn't come at the expense of the exploration element of pre-hardmode.
 
Sir Feedsalot said:
I agree with this to an extent. The "spirit" of Terraria that the developers talk about isn't going to change, but there are minor quality-of-life elements from starbound that I wish were in Terraria. For example:

1. using the same block for both foreground and background makes building SO much more efficient, and using left and right click to place (and destroy) foreground and background blocks was extremely intuitive for me.

2. Speaking of right clicking, making use of right clicking in general is something that Terraria could easily adapt from Starbound. I wouldn't want Terraria to directly copy Starbound's right click special move system directly, but some way to make combat more dynamic instead of just dodging and left clicking would be nice.

3. Collections. A collections tab was recently implemented in Starbound, and I would love Terraria to have a collections system. Give us some reason to go underground and explore! Once I've collected enough ores/gems/treasure chests I rarely go underground in Terraria. Do I need a tenth pair of Hermes boots from another gold chest? Do I need another cave bat banner? Perhaps my 1,000th gold ore or my 200th diamond? No. I'd like ultra-rare goodies underground in Terraria that only the most dedicated players will find, even if they're only decorative and serve no purpose in combat.

Even better, introduce an NPC (like the angler) where the player can trade in extra-rare treasures for exclusive goodies (although skip the daily quest element, that's a pain in the butt). Certain items are already fishing exclusive, why not introduce treasure-hunter exclusive items? It might actually give me a reason to go spelunking in hardmode again instead of playing a glorified tower-defense boss killing game in hardmode.

This is slightly off topic, but my number one complaint about Terraria is that the spirit of the game changes from pre-hardmode to hardmode. At first, finding a new treasure chest or ore vein in a new world gives me a rush, and this sense of exploration is completely absent from hardmode. There's nothing wrong with the combat emphasis of hardmode, but I wish it wouldn't come at the expense of the exploration element of pre-hardmode.
Click to expand...

I heavily agree with that. The excitement of opening chests to find new loot was something i loved in pre-hardmode, and having a collection would make finding ore and loot that are worse than what you already have much more worthwhile.
 
Disregarding the limitations of Terraria's engine and mods for both games;

What Terraria could pick up from Starbound:
- x-wrapped worlds
- smoother way to load/go to another map (Starbound uses a starship, Terraria could use portals)
- creating more interesting buildings/houses/landmarks for the player to visit, have a few of these generate randomly for every new map

What Starbound needs to pick up from Terraria:
- make combat fun, right now it's boring and slow-paced
- have more stuff to combat; if you build a base on some planet, why not have enemies try to invade it? Nothing exciting ever happens in that game, apart from some of the missions.
- improved control of your character, it's all very sluggish
- ease up on the ridiculous amount of items in the game, which are next to impossible to collect them all legitimately
- allow for greater storage; for a game that simply has too many items containers that only hold a handful of items are not helpful
- make exploration more interesting; it's amazing how Starbound has almost unlimited planets to visit and they all look the same. Sure, technically Terraria's maps look similar to one another as well, but at least a Terraria world is a thousand times more varied than a single Starbound world.
 
What Terraria could learn from Starbound:
  • Ores embedded in dirt, stone, etc. that drop both ore and block when mined
  • Ores and other objects embedded in background walls that can be mined
  • Loose blocks that can fall diagonally downward (instead of only vertically downward)
  • Interesting pre-generated structures: Tree houses, sewers, castles, temples, buildings (that's only what I've seen so far)
  • More mini-biomes
  • Villages and citizens (the Terraria NPCs just aren't quite the same as stumbling upon a village in SB)
What Starbound could learn from Terraria:
  • Position finding: Maps, items that tell you the coordinates and depth
  • Better controls. For a platformer, SB's controls are rather 'loose'
 
One thing . If it becomes like starbound it will be unplayable on netbooks and I would hate that :p
 
Personally, just the endless expansive universe. I've tried really hard to get into Starbound... It just isn't my thing, unfortunately. Which is depressing because I've heard how great it is. I had the same experience with The Witcher 3, despite loving Skyrim & Oblivion, I just couldn't get into it and didn't like it.
 
I'd say it's Starbound that should've learned from Terraria. Cacklefish totally had no idea what they wanted, scrapped a lot of good stuff and screwed up in general.

Though there's one thing that Starbound has that could be good for Terraria - better mod support. Would be good if it was made simpler and didn't require additional tweaks like Modloader etc.
 
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