What happened to our playerbase?

Nothing is "easy", but when you break your own deadline several times, and change plans as you go, AFTER you start selling the game, it will always be bad publicity, because it is indeed bad form. If Ive known the patches for a stable build would be so slow, I wouldnt have purchased the game yet. The fact that I purchased the game (knowing it was incomplete), and then not recieving a single patch since, gives me a bad impression of CF. I wouldnt support (with a purchase) any other early titles by CF in the future, and early access sales, Im sure give the studio breathing room to continue development.

So, its not the end of the world, but it is behaviour that ultimately hurts the studio.

And I dont think players will return

 

What E.A. games?Im curious,are they in any way,as ambicious,as complex,or have as much potential as Starbound?
I quite doubt it.

Many who left didnt have the patience,and got bored waiting for the update,so I do believe he is talking in a broad way,not saying every single one of you doesent know its hard to develop a game.Dont get yer pants in a twist cause you are the exception in a sea of people he is right about.

He never called you directly a idiot.You arent one,from what we can see.See the line of text above.Quit geting offended.
Please.

Breaking deadlines was needed,or would you rather a extremely incomplete 1.0 Starbound that would not satisfy the Devs or the Players that bough it?
Woudnt it have cripled the game somewhat in its development?And woudnt they need to then revampt the entirety of the game anyhoo,to please the Devs and Players?
The only difrence would be they would hae realeased it worse,earlier,but they would still ned to rework it,add a tonof features hey coudnt add in time,and woudnt they also be unable to form the Office and all,hire more people into the game,and all that great stuff?
Corect or Incorect?

Changing plans?Whats the problem with changing the Plans acordingly with the situation?
Influx of Resources,People and Time means difrent stucture of Development,when compared to Low Resources,1 Man Army,time schedule.
Whilst a tad Hyperbolic,its a valid example for Chuckle,as they gained more resourves,their structure became more loose,and they were able to make whatever content they think is needed and whatever content they wish to include.
How you see this as a bad thing,I cannot imagine.

You are being imptient,realy,if you cant wait for the patch.
All I can say,just play some games,live some life,and come back fesh,you might be suprised.

Players will return,even the most Cynicl cant miss it,just in case its Shite and they wish to fuel teh hate even more.
There is no logical reason not to play the update,you payed for it,you own it,purposefully gnoring it would be rather perplexing...

 

Starbound is plenty ambitious but don't act like its the only ambitious sandbox title out there. Planet Explorers, Space Engineers, and most the other EA sandbox titles are all examples of this.

How do you rate complexity? As it stands currently Starbound is one of the least complex EA games with any kind of following.

And potential.. well that is certainly up for debate. Even an optimistic view of CF's history would tell that that potential will take a long time to realise.

You see, that is a problem when the game is marketed as almost complete when taking pre-orders and even before.

 

DayZ, Arma 3, Rust, Wasteland 2, Kerbal Space Program, Planetary Annihilation, Prison Arcitect, Project Zomboid. Just off the top of my head.

I own the first five of them, and I can say without a doubt that they are just as complex (in many cases more so) than Starbound, and with the exception of Rust all their Early Access Programs have been an absolute delight.

As far as the insults go, he was making snide remarks and being a jerk. Both of which are not allowed on ChuckleFish forums.

 

Probably the same thing that happens to any game's player base when it stops changing.







And the kicker:



Even with its recent updates.

Unless you're playing an MMO, this is pretty much to be expected.

Large thriving mod communities tend to hold this back a bit (See: Skyrim), but with Starbound knowing everything is going to be uprooted and changed rather makes creating many mods a much larger pain in the ass (constant updating) and less compelling (why make a combat mod when combat is being reworked and your mod might not be worth anything in a month or two?), plus the nature of early access and the 'testing the game' philosophy, combined with the fact that the players, too, would have to continuously download updates to their mods, making it a pain for them as well, tends to keep a lot of people from getting mods.

I just don't get why people panic about this. The game might never see the numbers it saw at early access open, and that's okay. People played it already and not all of those people are going to think to come back for the final release, much less different progenitor stages. Not all of them would have even enjoyed it enough to want to. And that's also okay.

What's not okay is going "Oh no, this non-subscription based game with no developer/producer controlled servers has lost players" because it is nonsensical.

Edit: These are kinda fun 'cause you can see really good steam sales and DLC releases as little blips.

 

I genuinely forgot about those.
My bad,apologies.

Complexity as,World Generation that avoids every planet being the same,Moster generation thats suposed to be tied with Biomes,Lighting System, that usualy is a bit ignored but still present and important,Combat and Progression,Optimization of the Game,Loot Generation(still being worked on),Dungeon Design,Outposts,and Races,Racial related Structures,Lore,Building System,huge amount of Assets that curently arent used(spawnable with the Creative Mod),Ship Design (60 designs),Ship A.I.,a ridiculous amount of difrently generated Planets,wich also have Ore and structure Generation,Underground too,Wiring,Music,extensive Mod Suport,get where im going?

I hate to bring this up,but Terraria doesent even have all of this,and its bound to only 1 world.
Starbound has a enormous amount of them and is Trying for all of them to be as unique as Terraria,if not more.

This is complex,atleast,in my own perspective.
Feel free to disagree.

Inded, potential is something that difers from one to another,so I got nothing to say bout that.

Huh,even more of them.
How did I forget about those?Seriously,I feel ashamed!

Alright,I will admit,they are quite complex,yet I dont think they are going for teh complexity thatStarbound is striving for.
Read the above if you care to know why.

Erm,I didnt see him being a jerk,at all.

Or making snide remarks,ill go check once I post this,but I dont quite think I saw him being a ass.

edit:Nope,he wasnt beign a ass,he posted about two times,one about Derrick,our beloved Moster that never spawns,and that coment regarding the majority.

Not being a ass,im afarid.

 

I'm glad that you have personally looked through all of the source code, design documents, and architecture reviews for all of these early access games, which would allow you to know without a doubt that they are just as complex as Starbound.

I don't think the things you say are "obvious" actually are obvious, you know. If you're frustrated or disappointed with how Chucklefish has done with the Starbound early access, then just say so. You don't need "proof" or "evidence" to back up your opinion, and you don't need to convince anyone else. Just say why you don't like it and what you would like to see instead.

 

This really ignores the just how steep the drop in players is and how recent the game was released, don't you think? Starbound only released six months ago, and it has lost 96.25% of its player base. The games you compared it to have been out for years, and a cursory glance at their populations six months after release would tell a very different story. How about comparing StarBound to other Early access titles released around the same time?

 

Terraria's big update was 8 months ago and was followed by more large updates in a finished and fully fleshed out game that didn't suffer from wipes.

It lost 86% of its user base.

And it's worth noting that the steam records don't go back to Terraria's launch. It probably lost far more than 86% because it probably peaked much higher--and the valley before the October 2013 update was lower than the one now.

The other games all have their drop offs within the first few months. Borderlands 1's drop off was probably actually a resurgence in expectation of the sequel, so we won't talk too much about that (the charts don't go back to its release either). Borderlands 2's was almost entirely between October and January. That's a 4 month window. Sleeping Dogs, likewise, had its drop offs all within a 2-3 months of every peak. Terraria's largest drop off was within four months.

This is entirely to be expected.

Edit: If you look up Transistor, the drop off is within 2 months. Bastion enjoyed a few one month long peaks. etc. etc.

 

I have, many times. In this thread actually. However, someone picked a fight with my opinion and I felt the need to back it up with facts, which I did very well in my opinion.

Now as far as complexity goes, I'm not going to do much farther into it because I would be lying if I said I knew the specifics. But yclatious asked for examples of Early Access games of similar complexity as if there weren't any, I gave him examples which from a distance easily seem complex as Starbound. These examples also have the benefit of having a much more well recieved Early Access programs, with the population statistics to back them up.

 

Oh, and Planet Explorers lost 90% of their playerbase in the first four months after release if you look them up. They gained a bunch back just recently (peaking at almost the same point as their release peak). I don't care to research why. I'm guessing a large update and/or a bunch of publicity?

This cycle is 100% normal.

 

And how about those early access games that launched around the same as Starbound, how do they compare? DayZ, Rust, Space Engineers, Kerbal Space Program? Just curious.

 

Well Rust and Day Z are multiplayer only and so they're going to look a lot different. Day Z is also complicated by being a mod before it was a game and has a big long stretch of like 1-10 players for months, which I don't even know? Developers?

Space Engineers I covered above.

Kerbal is all over the place. Up and down constantly. But it peaks at 10,000 players, and was released for free on the kerbal website before it was released onto Steam (I played it when it was free and haven't felt the need to touch it since), so it's hard to really get an idea of what's going on there. Is it an anomaly or is the game play structure more likely to hold onto the people it attracts, inherently, or is it something else? I'm not a member of the community there so I can't speak for that.

Edit: Actually mount and blade was also released for free before being put onto Steam, and has a similar (but more stable) peak and valley distribution. So it's probably just that we can't actually see the 'true' public release numbers.

 

No you haven't, not the stuff you want to see. No suggestions.

 

Eh, if someone attacks your opinion, then they look silly. Just ignore it, because it's pointless. No one else can tell you how you feel about something, or that you don't feel the way you do about something. You don't need to defend your opinion because opinions don't need defending (unless your opinion is about something scientific, which means it's not really an opinion anymore). Stick to stuff like your other paragraph:

This is good info. We don't know specifics, but you picked out a pretty decent list of Early Access games as comparison and you've explained well, why you picked them. It doesn't need to be "obvious" or "without doubt", just your best guess.

Anyway, to stay on topic, I think that every game ever "loses" a lot of its following unless it receives updates reasonably quickly (every 2 weeks imo) and also has a decent amount of changed or new content in those updates. A lot of the people that play games now do not have the hardcore dedication that they did back in the UO/EQ days, when only the hardcore could actually thrive. Now that video games are becoming mainstream, a more casual (and larger) audience has started forming, and casual audiences are by nature more fickle. Unless there is constant attention to the game, they will simply move on to the next thing.

For me, even if I am the only one playing Starbound, I will enjoy it so long as I enjoy it. I don't care how many other people enjoy it (although it would be more enjoyable if I had more people to play with, admittedly). I play games until I stop enjoying them, and something better comes along. It's interesting seeing how the gaming community at large has received the Early Access games, and there are definite trends that can be interpreted. I think Starbound has had a large drop in recent months simply because it hasn't had a Stable update since April. I suspect that a large portion of people who own Starbound do not play nightlies, and are simply playing other games until the next update comes out.

 

I'm pretty sure UO and EQ had more to do with being multiplayer online only, than how hardcore people are/aren't.

Multiplayer only games tend to buck the massive drop offs. They still get them (as UO and EQ probably did) as lots of people get them and then lots of people are like no not for me, but they tend to not drop as hard as people go into it expecting to be playing for months if not years, and tend to stabilize and get better 'call back' on large updates--partially because they need active players where non-subscription, non-microtransition, models do not--and therefore do a lot more advertising toward ex-players when large updates are released.

 

Terraria was the game #10 in steam, nowadays is the #16. Starbound is the #70.
and watchdogs is the last in the ranking lol

 

I didn't really mention you or your opinion. Yes they may have conflicted but I didn't say something like "Your opinion is wrong, mine is right." So, yeah. Anyway, the drop is certainly because of the lack of updates and not releasing, though in my opinion I'd rather wait for a big update then slowly have small updates, because then by the time the big release actually comes you would have experienced most of it.

 

The lighting is currently one of the few things that I would say Starbound does better than Terraria. If and when Starbound has all the features that were marketed then yes, it will be one of the more complex games on the market. Its a long way from that yet though sadly.

 

Terraria's peak was 97,000
Starbounds was 88,000.

That means taking Terraria and Starbound, at their best (that is available on the charts), Terraria had 9,000 more players.

Now Starbound has 2.8~ and Terraria has 1000. They still have about 7,000 more players (edit: read the 2.8 as 1.8 for some reason?).

Also, everyone past the top ten is within 10,000 of each other. If you're not in the 20-30,000+ range your lead on the next 80 or so is just. . . not that big.

It's like if you were watching a foot race and someone wins about 2 minutes ahead of everyone else, and then two more people come in somewhere behind, within two feet of each other, and you point at the guy two feet behind and go "SEE HE'S AWFUL." And those two people were ALWAYS two feet away from each other the entire race.