Why the fans are upset about Starbound

Honestly I feel like this was a well thought out and decent argument. Better than most of the angry threads about the game not being out yet. Also, I think there are too many dev rump kissing posts out there for my taste, kind of nice to see this. At least it makes me feel better to know that I am not alone in the way I feel. In all honesty the beta probably won't be out until November or December now. Kinda crazy to think about how long it would have been had they not acquired money from beta orders to "get the game out faster"

 

Did you need to quote the entire OP? Just asking.

Also, nothing OP said was negative. This entire post has to do with a business transaction. OP, I'm assuming, since it says he is a Donor and he more than likely bought the beta also, has gave Chucklefish money. This makes OP and the rest of us that bought into the beta stakeholders, until we receive what we were promised. This is how business transactions go. If somebody gives you money in advance for a product, you are obligated to be upfront about anything that might hamper that product getting into the hands of the person that has paid for it.

 

Aaaaand this shit is why devs never want to tell the community anything solid.

You do realize that the preorder money may be going to making the game come out better rather than simply faster, right? Good games take significant development time, there's no two ways around this.

As with many things the unavoidable choice you have is that you can have something better, or faster, but not both.

 

I still don't see how we did that.. speed it up I mean.

if it was going to be 2013 "no matter what" and is coming out at the end of 2013.. anyway.

WHAT is it our money did exactly if the result is the same either way?

 

Eh. I got bigger things to stress out about than a game I chucked money at not being out yesternow.

Bills, student loans, shoes needing replaced, trying to scrape up enough money to take CompTIA certification exams, hours at job being cut for everyone because reasons, health issues, the list goes on and on. That shit makes starbound problems pretty damn tame in comparison. It'll be out when it's out. Between now and then life provides enough problems to even bother worrying about perceived game problems that are pretty insignificant.

 

Imagine a man says to you "hey if you pay me 20 bucks I'll give you a soda" and you give 20 dollars to him and about 30 days or so passes and you still haven't gotten that soda. Soda doesn't compare well to a full fledged video game but you get my point. He then proceeds to tell you nothing about when he's gonna give it to you and when you ask for the money back other people who paid him money yell at you for not being patient or wanting your money back after you feel like you've been scammed. Seems unfair right? I'm not saying starbound is a scam but paranoia is a dangerous thing and can lead to some bad ideas about something. Hyping people up with real information and gameplay like the new terraria update trailer can lead to even more people willing to pay for it and not want their money back, helping with game funding.

 

Except the devs never said that. Read the FAQ again, my friend. The preorder money goes to getting the beta out quicker. We all bought into getting a beta in 2013. We understand that betas aren't going to be complete, and I don't think that any one of us is asking for the beta to come out "better" than it would have without our preorder money. We simply want what they promised us in exchange for our money. I'm okay with a crappy beta that comes out next month, though it would make me wonder what was actually going on behind the scenes this entire time, than one that comes out in 2014 and is slightly better, because I paid for one to come out sometime this year. Betas are around so that large amounts of people can search for bugs that the devs couldn't possibly find on their own, anyways. Leave it until AFTER the beta comes out to make it "better". Get it out first.

 

Pro Tip
Do not pre-order or kickstart software if you can't stand moving deadlines, vague deadlines, or large gaps in communication.

Out of the half dozen titles I've kickstarted Starbound is the top for consistent communication, since the blog started on February 15, 2012. FTL was pretty good, but they also had fairly large gaps. The inXile games have very large gaps in communication. Don't get me started about Cube World.

 

I personally don't want it faster I just want to know how things are going in a way that isn't a vague blog post.

 

I like this, it voices my concerns without me looking like a impatient child.
However, as forum tradition goes that spam and pointless discussions stay while meaningful intelligent threads are speedily locked.

So, lets see how many people can they piss off in one night.

 

None of these arguments are new. Clearly, the dev team has fallen behind schedule, ran into unforeseen delays, or just had life in general happen that has prevented them from releasing the game in the time frame in which they planned. Anyone can set goals, but that doesn't mean obstacles cant or wont develop.

It has be stated many times that if you are unsatisfied with the performance of the team, you can ask for a refund. You can even hang on to that money and buy the game on full release. Or you can just walk away with your cash and buy something that's already out.

I'm assuming that if you're going to take the time to complain on the forums (or even engage in a polite debate), in the hope you'll get straight answers from Chucklefish, you're probably the type that isn't going to seek that refund. You want the game. So be patient. There's little else to do.

 

It is one thing to have moving deadlines, vague deadlines, or large gaps in communication. The fact is that we have been held in the dark about any type of deadline besides "2013" and "with preorder money, it will be out sooner than the end of 2013" which is creeping up on us very quickly. This isn't a "large gap in communication," this is complete silence about the issue.

 

Swap "a soda" with "large scale shipments of soda" and assume that man is making it from scratch and then at that point you have something just barely resembling a comparison.

This is the problem here. This is what people aren't getting. What developers of any software do can sure as hell seem like magic at times, but it doesn't actually work like magic. They don't walk over, wave a wand and ta-da, software happened. These things take a full team of people, if not several, and lots of time as well as resources.

 

There's a difference between being an impatient child and feeling like you've been tricked into paying for something that won't ever happen.

 

In that case, it is still a problem of communication. They literally promised faster. Better may or may not be a side-effect, but the thing they promised was not higher quality, they promised faster turnaround. I'd prefer better! I don't care too much about faster! But I want to be told about that shift, if or when it happens. I want to know at what point the pre-orders stopped making it come out faster, as it says on the preorder pages, but instead better.

 

"There are bigger problems so let's ignore the smaller problems" is a massive logical fallacy. Stop trying to use this as some sort of 'argument' to stifle complaints. You do it in almost every thread like this, or whenever the topic of dissent comes up. Please just stop doing this, because you're never contributing to the conversation at all.

 

Seriously? Have you ever followed a Blizzard title?

 

It's hard when analogies are used though. Because in your analogy it should be more along the lines of. "Give me $20 and I will invent a new type of soda with never ending fizz, a new type of sugar and an edible can." Understandably this may take a while. But this could be argued back and forth relentlessley. And yes...the communication is what is at issue here.

And to be honest I understand where all the angry people are coming from...I just don't feel the same way

 

The quantity of soda, the size of the cans, nor the chemical composition matters, when it comes to at least communicating some sort of degree of "when".

No one here is in denial that it takes a lot of man-power, time, and dedication to make a game the size of Starbound. We simply want some sort of estimate or a complete detraction of their previous one so that we aren't let down when the time passes and nothing has been released.

 

Said it was a bad comparison but that doesn't change the fact I still have no clue when the large scale shipments of soda is getting here and he isn't making it from scratch he has a whole team and funds to back it yet a man making similarly good soda by himself can get more done in a few months then that man and his team have done? There are two kinds of people, people who blindly follow others and those who are a afraid of what who they're following is doing for them.