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Feedback Space Station Non-Uniformity, Please

Discussion in 'Starbound Discussion' started by Knight9910, Jun 14, 2017.

  1. Roskii Heiral

    Roskii Heiral Heliosphere

    Or you could see it as a constantly improving/ incredibly fun work of art that is constantly being improved upon. Its a perspective thing.
     
  2. Knight9910

    Knight9910 Existential Complex

    No, it's not all just perspectives. I mean, yeah, I guess you could say Starbound is constantly improving... insofar as they are still continuously making additions to it. Insofar as, technically, a move from .001 to .0011 is an improvement. I'm at a point where it's like... every new thing just makes me ask, "but WHY?!"

    WHY can I not create the space station that I want to create because I'm trapped in these STUPID GRAY-BLUE BOXES? (And yes, I did get around this and made my awesome space station thanks to admin commands, but it's still bizarre and frustrating.)

    WHY am I stuck playing an extended tutorial (read: everything up to and including the Erchius Mine) for an hour or so every time I make a new character when I just want to put them all on the same world and play in my sandbox?

    WHY does the sign maker have to have borders, thereby making it impossible to make multi-part pictures and eliminating like... 90% of the reason I wanted the sign maker in the first place? (And, incidentally, taking a step BACKWARD from the original sign maker mod which did NOT have this issue.)

    WHY did the story become dumbed down so much? The story in Early Access (what parts we got thanks to the in-game codexes) was a VISION. It was actually intelligent and aware of the flaws of the world, cynical and dark but also with hope as it suggested we were going to be fighting back against the ills of society. Instead they ripped out the ENTIRE THING and replaced it with this super childish "everything is perfect and everyone is pure good, there is no evil in the world except for those hate-mongering SPACE RACISTS!" nonsense.

    So many of the new things they add are just... bizarrely poorly considered, and sometimes even a step BACKWARD from a much better thing that we already HAD before they removed it!

    And yes, I know technically none of this is a problem since the game has full mod support allowing me or others to fix anything we don't like, but...

    (Edit: I guess I could be slightly less of a jerk about it.)
     
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2017
  3. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    The "story" in Early Access was purely-tangential, empty, directionless garbage that fit neither the tone nor play of the game. Glad it's gone.

    EDIT: In fact, the original story is EXACTLY an unpolished, cluttered first draft. The cruft was trimmed and each race kept their cores, without all this superfluous OOOH EVUL SUPERCONSPIRACY arglebargle.
     
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2017
    IxFa likes this.
  4. Knight9910

    Knight9910 Existential Complex

    Except - and I know you're going to think this is crazy because it goes against the narrative you've been taught - that's the world we live in. Rich and powerful people act together to make decisions for all of us little folks. They're not super-beings, no, and a lot of what happens in the world really is just random chaos... but trust me when I say: things are very rarely what you've been taught they are. A lot of the things you're told are coincidence were actually carefully planned, almost all of the great heroes of history were actually loser politicians who just knew how to take credit, and a lot of the people you think are hated rivals to one another are actually working under the same people a little higher up the ladder.

    The old story was a first draft, yes, but it was amazing because it was actually aware that society has flaws and that evil exists. The new story is laughably, childishly simplistic. There are no more flaws in society! Everyone is good! Everything is fine! Love wins! The only true evil in the world is those mean old poopy-pants GOOD PEOPLE with their oppressive "discipline" crap and their evil "morality" junk! They just want everyone to be exactly the same and kill everybody with tentacle monsters because they hate the world!

    Being tolerant of others is one thing. Pretending that a race that throws people off of buildings and thinks they're going to magically grow wings... or a race that genocides entire planets in the name of a fun hunting experience... pretending that sort of crap is all totally fine and just differences that we need to learn how to accept is B. U. L. L. S. H. I. T. Hell, the fact that the most evil and greedy race in the game - the penguins - are almost all GOOD GUYS... I feel like the Early Access story was written by actually intelligent and thoughtful individuals, who were somehow killed and replaced by a bunch of super-politically-correct sell-outs at the last minute.

    But aside from that... even if you're going to tell me that you prefer a lighter story without the conspiracy stuff, I'm still going to call you an idiot if you think this story is "a work of art" - not because it's light, but because it's seriously half-assed garbage.

    Okay, let's be serious here. I want you to tell me everything that we know about the characters and see if you can get beyond maybe two or three sentences for each.

    Well, let's see... Esther is... um... well, she used to be the head of the Protectorate but left to study the Ruin, that's something! What else? She's old and in a hovering wheelchair. She... seems kind of nice? Um... she wears a hat?

    Okay, Lana... um... she's a resistance fighter for the Apex... and... um...

    Alright, alright, I got this. The villain, Asra Nox, is... um... she used to be Esteher's student like no one's ever used THAT plot device before... she hates non-humans because they killed her family... and has a katana... and her eyes are funky looking... and... there's, ah... hmm... She... wears purple a lot?

    Yeah, exactly.

    The story in Early Access was unfinished but it was GOING PLACES. Then they just said "@#%$ IT!" and cut it down to bare bones just so they could say the game was ready for release, and in the process they made it so light as to be laughable.
     
    Last edited: Jul 30, 2017
  5. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    • User has been warned for this post. Reason: Breaking the Golden Rule
    oh my god you take alex jones seriously dont you
     
  6. Knight9910

    Knight9910 Existential Complex

    • User has been warned for this post. Reason: Breaking the Golden Rule
    Oh my god you're a braindead imbecile who responds to entire multi-paragraph arguments with irrelevant one-liners and thinks you're actually making points, aren't you?

    Do you even know what conspiracies I'm talking about when I say that conspiracies exist? Do you just assume it's "all of them?" Do you even know yourself which conspiracies have been proven to exist throughout history? Do you just assume it's "none of them?"

    Do you even care to know the truth, or are you happy just drifting down the stream of life like human flotsam, entirely subject to the tides of others' whims?

    You can't even be bothered to form a real opinion on anything. You just vomit up the first snarky one-liner that pops into your head and declare victory, without even bothering to look at the facts or find out if you're actually right or not. You think I'm crazy just because what I say goes against what you think you already know.

    And the saddest part is that the truth isn't even well hidden. You don't need super intelligence to piece it together, or to be privy to hidden secrets... you just have to be willing to pay attention for more than 3 seconds at a time and to ask basic questions.

    You're clearly not, and then you wonder why people tell you you're stupid.
     
    Last edited: Jul 30, 2017
  7. Jonesy

    Jonesy Sarif's Attack Kangaroo Forum Moderator

    Keep it civil, please.
     
  8. Roskii Heiral

    Roskii Heiral Heliosphere

    I find it odd that the subject of the games story comes up so often. Both the early and current stories are very simplistic and relied on over-used plot devices. However, the story was never really a main feature of this game (by a long shot). If you focused on the story pre-release, you would have very little to do. If you focus on the story post-release, you have the missions that then.... what?

    I, personally, find much more satisfaction building my own story. I enjoy giving my crew a story. I enjoy exploring the universe. I really enjoy piloting a mech, I feel like it has added a ton more skill based combat experience to the game. If you use FU and have run into the Lethia fleet, you probably understand how fun and engaging space combat can be. My pulse has actually elevated for the first time in a long time while playing the game. I enjoy building fun new colonies. I haven't tried a space station yet, but I enjoy how the star systems work now soooooooo much more than pre-release. Therefore, I perceive that I will enjoy setting up an entirely new space station in orbit of a star in a system I like (which has never been possible before).

    So, to continue discussing the original topic, I really like where they are going with the space-focused mechanics. It enhances aspects that make starbound unique from other games. While I can see your frustration with the new system, I don't understand how you've become so hostile about it. As others have said, we already have mods that do exactly what you're personally looking for, which means your ideas are already floating around in the aether surrounding the game. If its successful enough, it also wouldn't be the first mod that has become part of the vanilla experience.
     
    M_Sipher likes this.
  9. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    As noted before/elsewhere, the space station mechanic is pretty clearly built around making sure this large-build mechanic is accessible to people who aren't hardcore builders who are gonna agonize over placing every block juuuuuuuuuuuuust so, especially with the added issue of no-g maneuvering. (I look forward to trying to recreate my Satellite of Love build high above my homeworld... does the space layer of planets similarly lack gravity? I gotta account for that.) Frankly I wouldn't mind seeing a similar system for terrestrial builds, for people who might wanna lay down a pre-designed bunker or whatever. I wouldn't be surprised if later updates enable more block-by-block customization of the grid-built stations, or add gravity generator items for your non-template builds in asteroid fields.

    And like most every other big mechanic in this game, the process has been to get a functional base mechanic going, then spruce it up and refine it. Which is more or less gonna be par for the course on a big expansive open-ended and perhaps slightly overambitious game like this. That is one of the benefits of the current age of gaming: post-release polish and fixing, which can also result in a game that's ever evolving and growing (and also lead to quick-rush-out-the-door-fix-later-maybe deals like big AAA developers like to do, sadly... but "rushed it out the door" seems quite the opposite accusation flung at CF on this game). It's what's kept a lotta games going for a long time, your Minecrafts and World of Warcrafts and Craftcrafts and Kraftmacaorniandcheesecrafts.

    I think the game's got all the "big" stuff it needs as its base, more or less, so hopefully we should see more refinements and pure-content additions going forward.
     
  10. Knight9910

    Knight9910 Existential Complex

    I get that there are people who aren't really creative types, or even some people who are creative types who might still find the idea of constructing an entire space station from scratch to be daunting. I mean, I'd kind of wonder what those people are doing playing a sandbox building game if they don't want to build... but whatever. he point is, sure, giving us some ready-made blocks to get people started isn't necessarily a bad thing.

    But there are also people, like myself, who ARE creatively inclined and who DO want to build our own stations and stuff from scratch. Don't we also have the right to enjoy the game that we paid good money for?

    So why not split the difference? Have the ready-made blocks be optional. You can use them, or you can ignore them. And then everyone is happy.

    Why is that so hard?
     
  11. Darkspinesupersonic8

    Darkspinesupersonic8 Pangalactic Porcupine

    I would say 'it shouldnt be' but that'd be trivializing the work that goes into creating and developing a game. ... but hell I'll say it anyway. It shouldn't be. The tools and mechanics are already there in the game to do just that. Why they chose not to do it is beyond me but based how I saw Tiy himself respond to a matter similar to this on another topic, (it was a rather dismissive response) it seems such choices/'features' can be based entirely on 'this is what we did because we made the game and decided it was gonna be that way so there' , AKA on a whim.

    Also, If I may say, I agree with you on almost every single point you've made in this topic.
     
    Knight9910 likes this.
  12. BatPetersAKAEnderzilla747

    BatPetersAKAEnderzilla747 Pangalactic Porcupine

    Step by step process on building the space station of your childhood dreams.
    1. Find asteroid field
    2.Beam down in mech
    3.Find suitable asteroids
    4.Use mech to move around and build between asteroids
    5.Rant on forums about 0g while in space station
    6.Profit
     
  13. Knight9910

    Knight9910 Existential Complex

    Uh huh. And that's why I didn't do that, and why your whole "putting me in my place" comment here is an epic fail.
     
    Darkspinesupersonic8 likes this.
  14. Darkspinesupersonic8

    Darkspinesupersonic8 Pangalactic Porcupine

    You know I had read that post and wasn't sure how to take it.
    Now that you say that and I read it again, it totally looks like that type of comment.

    Huh.
     
  15. BatPetersAKAEnderzilla747

    BatPetersAKAEnderzilla747 Pangalactic Porcupine

    Do you want to build the space station of your dreams? No? Alright.
     
  16. Darkspinesupersonic8

    Darkspinesupersonic8 Pangalactic Porcupine

    Correction: He wants space-station construction to not be so unnecessarily confined.
     
  17. Lintton

    Lintton Guest

    I just want to be able to make some gravity in asteroid fields, or some other method of building, so I can make asteroid bases again. The space stations suffer from the same problem, imo. If I could build outside that would be rad.
     

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