Why Starbound was disappointing to me. (Listed reasons of why. Hopefully not TL;DR)

I read the front page every day and I feel the same way. I see the work that's being done, but I can't play it. I know about the nightly build, but I can never get it to run efficiently. Saying "no one feels the same" is not true.

 

I do appreciate the respectfulness of the OP. just saying.

 

And the feeling is mutual to everyone else who has read and contributed!

I know there is concern that things could spiral to an insult flinging mess on touchy forums and subjects as this one (cause you know. Early Access). But we were able to just keep discussing about. No one should feel afraid about sharing an opinion.

it's just really cool to see people able to express their feelings and concerns. And preventing anyone from feeling offended or disregarded if possible, too.

Lots of people probably have plenty of bottled up feelings about the game that need letting out. I know I have. I have been extremely invested in Starbound's development from the start and so I understand we all want our concerns to be voiced. In posting anything, should strive to be as respectful and unoffensive as much as possible, but we have to stay true to our feelings on the matter. I at least think that's how discussions should be in a lot of communities. Again, no one should feel afraid about sharing an opinion as long as they're considering others as-well as their own feelings.

Only good vibes to come man.

 

I think you'll find a large chunk of the community feels disappointed, though most of them have simply up and left already. The truth is, we need a stable build. There isn't really any if or but about that at this point.

Nightlies are great and dandy, but you can't really run a community, a server, on nightlies, and the current stable build is well, not very fun to put it bluntly, and not easily fixed with mods. I look around now and see a large chunk of people missing, mostly those that have been around longer and have given up waiting, some of this can be attributed to how things are being handled in regards to the forums, but that's another topic. And, well, you kinda need a community to keep a game like this alive.

Suffice to say, I have a clan of people, all of whom were once excited about Starbound, none of whom play it anymore, and most of whom dislike it due to how things have been handled. You know you have a problem when a clan that originated on Starbound is looking to get their first dedicated server, which isn't Starbound. Disappointment reigns supreme.

That was all a bit garbled, but, you get the point.

 

I love your points. You'll be surprised to see that a lot of what you have said has been more-or-less covered and testified by a lot of others, including myself, in another thread I started ----> Chucklefish and Player Communication; Also a Community Split

From other thread More-so you will see similar points on the second and third page.

Your point is spot-on, that, an update to stable would really help bring back some joy to the player-base, specifically those who upped and left. Damn right. I've had a similar experience with playing Starbound with friends. Everyone upped and left as well. And they're more or less just plain upset instead of hopeful.

 

I actually really liked this post and I'm wondering why it was warned other than having strong language?

I think we all purchased Starbound knowing that it was not a game, but going to be a game pretty soon. I mean, it's a beta correct? A beta does not mean reworking almost everything. It seems as though the developers have already made a Starbound and realised it was no where near as much as they promised, and now they are doing damage control and trying to put together something that sort-of resembles the finished product but will probably take forever. Because in reality a beta tester usually only goes in expecting few bugs here and there, but the majority of the game existing and will most likely not change so much when it is released. The blog posts about nightly make it seem like they are reinventing the wheel. I think labeling the current game a beta is unfair to the consumer because it really is not much of a beta; at least if it was not for the efforts of the modding community-- where passion for development and expansion exists.

Or maybe Chucklefish should have done a better job at notifying the consumer that the game is in a not-really-beta stage and more of a bare bones sandbox. And I would seriously consider the Starbound team to head over to the Starbound Steam page and look at the recent reviews, I think it is obvious that this sort of Beta has seriously impacted the game's image.

 

I don't think it can work like that to be honest. (Disclaimer: I'm not a programmer in any way, shape or form... still here? Good! Then keep reading.) If they are building the nightlies off of Enraged Koala, they can't make changes to EK that would possibly add in new bugs or render current progress unusable. If you want to create a new stable, you are pulling people off the nightlies to go make EK+ stable, while all current nightly work must wait until the new stable is made. Then you're back to a a brand new set of nightlies on a new version branch disregarding all previous progress. And they obviously can't just say "Okay X version is the new stable", because you've seen the nightlies, if it were stable they'd call it stable.

I don't want them going back to add in a feature and risk delaying a future stable version (yes, I understand a delete button should be expected, but in the grand scheme it's one piece of a larger puzzle) .

Forward not backward! Upward not forward! And forever twirling, twirling, twirling, toward freedom stable.

 

Actually my reply was originally for that thread, but I felt it was too off topic, so I moved it to this one.

Probably because it wasn't mild and tempered with enough ass kissing to make up for valid criticisms and their grievances, see my previous post about issues with how the forums are being handled, but honestly, fuck knows.

To the rest of your post, I was reading the Steam pages yesterday, it's dismal, as one person kindly pointed out, those making criticisms are made out to be the loud minority when in actuality there is no reason to suggest the silent majority feel any different. They put it much more eloquently, but as you said, Starbound's image has been tarnished beyond pretty much all repair at this point I think. Quite sad, but true.

But they're going to have to at some point. You can't just keep adding features without creating a stable platform at some point, else you end up in the mess Minecraft was before the current dev team fixed things. Full of bugs and half complete features that just never got fixed. As to" forward to a stable version", I think that's what the main criticism is. It's nowhere on the horizon. We're told "Sometime this week" "by the end of this month" "at the start of next month" "in a months time" "by the end of summer", what's next? By next year? The majority of people are not interested in half broken nightly builds, and so to them, the game has essentially been dead for months. People seem to forget that the active people on the Starbound forums are in fact a small portion of the player base. Yet for some reason Chucklefish sees fit to continue down this path. God knows why.

 

I'm not saying their development team was making the right decision by adding so many features in at once. I bet they'd love to give a timeline but I honestly think they don't have any idea (better to give no timeline than break a deadline). They wanted an update that will reignite the player base, because they were criticized for not doing enough (and still are given this thread). Smaller bites in stable updates would be a better way but they wanted to massively overhaul a lot of systems in the game so that's going to create a long delay.

At some point they are going to have to make a new stable build to continue working off of and I'll agree too that they need an update soon or they risk everyone moving on. But Starbound for now is still in the top 100 games played on Steam. Its low on the list, but it's still there. So stay thirsty my friends, and have patience.

 

I agree with the forum base being way too adamant and protective of the devs, fearing any little criticism. This isn't just my bias speaking.

Mary Sue didn't derail the topic nor was she attacking anyone. She shared her opinion and facts validly and just because she had a bad tone WHILE criticizing she was temporarily banned. While anyone else who has a bad attitude but is ATLEAST protecting Chucklefish's name or 'asskissing' they get a free pass. Its clear and I don't like it and I don't feel fine with just letting it go on. Absolutely unfair.

A lot of people agreed. The freaking majority of Starbound players, those disappointed and upped and left for now, would find a rich stable build update to be what Chucklefish needs to please people and not buggy nightlies. But, seemingly no matter what, people will pass this along as fine. Although some people are content with waiting; We as consumers, customers, and players naturally just want to play the game and see if our investment is even headed towards anything good and what was promised.

 

By the way, if you think everyone is against you, then it probably is your bias speaking. No matter what opinion you hold. If you think everyone is attacking the devs? That's your confirmation bias speaking. If you think everyone is whiteknighting the devs? That's your confirmation bias speaking.

There's a big difference between being protective of the devs, and trying to stay constructive. If we sit here and roast the devs for the mistakes they've made in the past, what have we accomplished? We've vented steam, and probably assaulted the self esteem of the devs. Will doing this make the game better, or released faster, or contain more features that we want and fewer features that we don't want?

My personal opinion on that is: No. It will only cause pointless conflict over subjective material, and will not motivate the dev team to work faster/harder/better/stronger.

Just as has been stated in almost every single critical post of CF, the reason more "criticism" threads get closed compared to "whiteknight" threads is because it's a lot more likely that positive compliments are respectful, than it is that negative complains are respectful. And when people are not respectful, they break rules. And breaking rules gets threads closed. Criticism does not close threads. Controversy does not innately close threads. Breaking the rules (being a jerk) closes threads.

If you feel that things are unfair, then you should give examples of behavior you feel was "unfair." Find some examples of criticism that were civil, professional/neutral, or respectful, and yet were closed. Find some examples of whiteknights attacking others that respectfully offered constructive criticism, yet were not closed.

I've got at least a few old but popular examples of criticism threads that were respectful and civil, and reached 50+ pages, and were not closed until significantly after they were made (when the info became obsolete or the concerns were addressed with patches).

It's not fair of you to state that you believe there is bias and it's unfair, but not provide examples. You're making the claim, so you have to back it up.

 

I love that you reiterated an argument similar to what I said near the beginning of this thread. I did not try to suggest everyone in being the forum base. I will give examples of my experience. The reason I made the previous post responding with few examples is that I felt that so many examples are viewable within this thread itself and there are people who would agree, clearly seeing what I meant and experienced. I neglected to address to those who don't see this point of view.

Thanks for approaching me on that. I will respond later with a comprehensive message when I have the time.

I understand your points. Positivity > Negativity. Even within understandkng that though, you just seemed to argue for the best of the devs interests (them feeling respected and happy). I'm not saying to disrespect the devs whenever you can, but I create discussions in mind to keep the interests of the player base and the game firstly, not the developers. Sorry. I worry more about the players and Starbound more than I do about the developers, and I know what you're going to say. Pleasing the developers goes hand in hand with a good Starbound because they're creating it. I will discuss this later. I can't make a cohesive and constructive reply at the time of this post.

Thank you for the concerns presented but I still think some of my thoughts hold true regardless of a suspected bias. Mary Sue was being constructive in her posts and I believe that, even with her attitude, she contributed to the player base and Starbound despite possibly hurting the devs feelings. I will give cohesivd examples and try to validate myself. I completely want to back up and justify my reasons but I can't answer cohesively ATM (on my phone and just taking a break in between my classes).

 

That is probably the worst logic I've read on the internet since the "why this song is about MLP" on a Carry On My Wayward Son lyric video.

You really don't have to look at more then 3 threads to see really bad moderation here. I even posted in one a few days ago where someone was being slammed for giving their opinion on the current stable build, and there was no warnings whatsoever given. Yet here, Mary Sue is immediately banned for "being a jerk". The fact the forum poster Darklight is even on these forums not banned or warned is a giant red flag for the moderation bias.

Now, I'm not saying the mods are bad ppl. Not at all. But if the forums don't look constructive and positive, they get in trouble. One thing Isabelle said though, that is completely true, is that you need to report someone you see breaking forums rules. We, who are simply guests voicing our concerns, usually don't report rude ppl while the white-knighters on the forums(who are the ones who practically live here) are probably spam-reporting any complainers they see. I don't know about you guys, but I don't think I've ever reported anyone in a forum unless it was extremely explicit or sexual harassment. So we are in a way responsible for the current bias. But if anything, that just shows we're more mature for not spam-reporting.

 

edit: derailing. oops.

 

See, when you say things like this, this is an example of being non-constructive. You're implying that those who do not agree with you are lesser, that they're immature, AND that they're doing something that is incorrect.

Yet, immediately before that, you point out that reporting people who are rude, nonconstructive, or complaining should be reported. A bit of a conundrum, is reporting those who you believe are rude or offensive bad (spam-reporting) or is it good?

Also, as Izzabelle has said many times in the past, reports do not mean closed threads, reports do not mean bans or warnings. Bad behavior causes closed threads and mod action. Not reporting. Reporting is simply asking a mod to evaluate a thread/post/person.

While I'm still reading your post, please stop with the hyperbole and exaggeration. Valid points do not need emphasis. The next three threads in GD do not show "really bad moderation." If you have an example from your thread of a few days ago, then link that and explain why you feel the way you do.

 

I believe his point was that the white-knights who will defend anything CF does, as evident by how often some of them are so willing to fight against any form of criticism, will spam-report those who do not follow a similar white-knight line of thought, and the moderators then simply ban the people who get spam-reported just so they can stop seeing that crap clutter their alerts/inboxes. A not-so-shining example of a vocal minority being appeased just so those in charge will get a bit of relief from all the shrieking/report-spamming.

Not to say that's how it actually works, but that may very well be a prevailing theory in why so many people will get banned/warned despite being reasonable (not to say that's how it always happens, but humans perceive things in a weird way in general) and yet the white-knights who bring little of value to each thread will be shrugged off by others, but because they don't get reported en masse, they can continue their semi-destructive ways. CF does not need defending from constructive criticism at this point. I get that the white-knights want to defend CF because they love the game and don't want to see it die, but neither does anyone else who gives constructive criticism or feedback. It's just that white-knighting is a toxic thing and is one of the main reasons I avoid posting as much these days, because I'm afraid my civil posts (I'm never angry at anyone, I treat all of these posts as civil debates and such, I stopped getting mad at stuff on the internet long ago) will get reported by white-knights who disagree with me and I'll end up being banned simply for getting under their skin. I shouldn't have to be afraid to post constructive criticism/feedback for fear of being banned because some white-knights didn't like that I wasn't gushing praise for CF or whatever, no one should have to have that feeling looming over them, that can kill a community quicker than anything else.

 

Unfortunately, that belief (that the number of reports matters) is not something that can be dispelled or disproved. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. There have been a ton of moderators (Sokina, Ghostar, Izzabelle, Jonesy, Eonwe, Braww, etc) that stated in no unclear terms that this is not how they operate, but you cannot prove that something will not exist in the future, and it turns into a conspiracy theory / negative speculation. Unfortunate.

In this manner, even using the term "white-knight" as a concept of someone who opposes what you do, this is a polarizing and fairly loaded word that carries a very negative connotation. You're already labeling those who disagree with you as something that is objectively bad. And yes, someone that attacks others is bad, whether the person is attacking the devs, or attacking those who attack devs. If someone attacks those who provide constructive criticism, then the attacks are breaking the rules and should be reported.

It's like if I go into a police station say "I'm being completely reasonable, but all of these pigs keep arresting me, what the heck!?" I'm not exactly going to win them over, even if I clarify that by "pigs" i mean "Cops that are truly abusive and harassing me for no valid reason, when I am not breaking the law in any way." Do you see how that works? If you go into a group of people and talk about how you're tired of being attacked, you're already setting yourself up as a victim and discouraging others from responding to you with anything except unconditional support, because they would be seen as attackers.

 

Hmm, it might be best if we both back away from this kind of argument a tad and use more appropriate terms, as you stated it can lead to circular logic and risk this thread getting locked. It's just such a sensitive topic as a whole no matter what community it takes place in.

 

OMG, thread. What are you doing.

It was fine until the snide mocking of Tiy. I gave it the lowest warning I could for that because I didn't feel the user warranted a harsher reprimand.

You don't have to ass kiss. We just ask that you're not a jerk about sharing your opinions -- regardless of stance. I realize it's getting more and more difficult as people's patience runs thinner and thinner. But to anyone with a level head -- this is just common sense.

Not to call you out. But yes. This is your bias speaking. Normally -- when a criticism thread appears (for Starbound, Chucklefish, or whatever) -- so long as the thread is properly formatted, well spoken with valid criticism and concern, and attempts to understand or improve the situation from many angles; The thread is met by the forums with very healthy discussion and appreciation. These are the kinds of threads Devs pour over. Because they can read valid criticism of the thread without vulgarity and grief convoluting every line. And the community welcomes this too, because it's a much safer environment in which to discuss major concerns.

We are rarely blessed with such threads.

As I said before -- Mary Sue decorated her opinion with snide remarks toward Tiy, which falls under "Losing Your Cool". That's why she was given a warning (and a non-automated PM), so that she wouldn't be a victim of her own frustration. She did not take either to heart unfortunately.

This

If you see rule breaking. Report it. Moderation and community are a pair. We can't do our "jobs" effectively if the community doesn't help. As I stated in a previous thread; mods aren't omnipresent.

Mary Sue wasn't immediately banned. If you want -- you can go through her post history. She took her frustrations from here to deliver spam and derails to other threads. Even though she was warned repeatedly to curve her behavior out of "breaking the rules" territory, she ignored moderator requests. Her ban was her own doing.

Darklight was already previously banned (he's back). And he HAS been warned already after his return. Sorry you don't like Darklight, but I can't just ban him unless he starts breaking rules. That's actually how it works despite what some people say. (sorry to drag in your business, @Darklight )

Don't use "White Knight". It's seen as a derogatory title used to insult people here. You can still be ok with Starbound and Chucklefish and whatever -- and not be blindly following the Devs or Staff. And when your own established opinion of these subjects is branded as just blindly following; it upsets people.

As said earlier; don't use "White Knight". It insults people.

But the reporter doesn't influence the reported. We investigate the reported post, and if we find it to be rule-breaking, we act. If it toes the line, we investigate previous posts to gauge context. In those situations, we make a judgment call to allow a pass or to give the lowest warning possible. We usually settle for a compromise and simply send a private PM to let the poster know they were reported, and how they stand given the context of the thread.

If at anytime you see a ban come out of "nowhere", it's usually for something you can't possibly see (and that's unfortunate for our credibility). For example; we'll shoot someone a courtesy PM giving the user the heads up that they've been reported and to refrain from attacking others when trying to voice their opinion. The reply PM opens with "Fuck off" and rants from there. Their behavior elicits a ban, but the community never sees the infraction. So then it's "GG, Chucklenazi's ban everyone on their forums for nothing".

This. We did have a stint like a month (?) ago where like -- I don't know what happened -- but we had a bunch of spammed reports. And a lot for people who, not only broke no rules, but didn't even have posts in their threads that even had report-worthy context. It was pretty odd.

We almost never get a post/thread that is reported more than 2 or 3 times. Usually by then, moderation has acted. If by chance we get a post/thread that is reported say... 20 times, it's almost always because 1: the content was so awful that there's no way it couldn't be reported by everyone, 2: the content was awful and a moderator happened not to be online. Those are usually instant-ban scenarios. Content is not normally so awful that it draws that many people to the report function.

The number of individual reports for a specific thread/post do draw more attention, but it doesn't affect how we go about the moderation process.
The number of individual reports for a specific thread, though, do help us evaluate the condition of the thread.

Good call. Really good call. Your peers should have made the same call quite a number of posts before.

This thread I had high hopes for.
I'm going to lock for derailed and antagonism (if you can't be nice, at least be neutral!). The community/chucklefish thread by the same op will remain open though, I suggest taking some of the more relevant issues there.