An infinite universe isn't helping Starbound

I'm not entirely sure what i'm looking at here, nor am I sure what you're trying to state

BUT DAMN THAT'S A COOL SPACESHIP

 

I just feel like pointing out that the universe in Starbound is finite. It's just so large that exploring all of it would take... centuries, maybe?

 

So a single place from which a player can reach to all the important locations ever is much more fun than having to go on a adventure through space to find them? I have to disagree, it would be a better gameplay experience if the player needed to go to a actual planet to start the mission. It would also make the missions not feel like they were just tacked onto the game.

How exactly would making the universe smaller hamper multiplayer. I mean a few hundred systems is still way bigger than it would ever need to be. Anyway I think that pushing players together would actually be beneficial to multiplayer. If people are bumping into one another every now and then it creates opportunities for players to interact with one another rather than leaving it entirely up to the players to create opportunities.

 

I can see a benefit of having limited universes, especially in story senario's. People saying that "limits are bad" are only half right, theres plenty of situations where limits/restrictions may benefit the game experience (people having too much freedom do not allways play in a way that they themselves would find the most fun, people arent at all like that), but theres also plenty of situations where more freedom is preferable, the key is finding a good balance.

But since the devs themselves do not plan to make use of such a thing in the non modded game, adding functionality for it should (at least in my humble opinion) be very low (if its there at all) on the priority list. Its great to support mods, but they could spend years upon years adding stuff like this because there's pretty much a infinitive amount of stuff (like this) that could be added.

Unless there's a realy good argument to why this functionality should be added, like there a rather large portion of the modding community wanting to do a mod using it (for example).

 

i agree... (if i understand right)

i think it would be better if you get coordinates, and you have to fly to a special place where the (great) missions are instead of "beampoints". Apart from the luna-base mission could this be 2-5k fuel units far away from your location.

I´m a fan of space operas like Battle Star Galactica or Space Battleship Yamato (very nice anime btw) and like the idea to travel through the stars just to arrive after a long trip at a specific location, including sideseeing and adventure, or (if it is possible) some problems related to the ship or travel.

I think the spaceship is very underused in this concern.

But it woudnt be nessercery to make the universe finite. If you get the quest and coordinates the game could "create" the specific mission-planet in a specific distance and you get only a bookmark for your ship navigator system. I think that is not a real problem. I never played starbound in mulitplayer yet... and dont know how Player one can play with Player two on the same planet, but i think their woud be a solution too if you think about it.

 

The game has leaned more toward quantity and away from quality. I don't think that would even be the case if major features and changes didn't take 6 months to a year to get finished and implemented.

 

I feel with the OP, the only thing that relates the randomly generated planets with the story are the fetch quests, which is frankly boring because the planets barely have an identity like this (one ocean planet doesn't really differ that much from another ocean planet for instance, aside from the monsters which all seem to act the same anyway).

It would be more fun if the story missions were physical locations with coordinates, not some kind of destination that S.A.I.L. can magically teleport you to. Perhaps fuel management could come into play with this; plotting your course across systems in a smart way (which is non-existent right now).

But I don't think limiting the universe is the solution to this problem, they just need to incorporate the universe into the story in a more intricate way, would be awesome if I sometimes got a quest that required me to go to very specific (random within a radius around player) coordinates for instance to fetch something, instead of "go to any planet that has this stuff and fetch for me".

I also think planets of the same type need more discernible (this has only been improved compared to the early days) features and perhaps these features could also somehow be tied in with the quests, but at least there's good variety between the biome types now thanks to the terrain overhauls, this used to be way worse in the past.

 

Just as i said ^^ (or i tried to say)

Thats a little harsh and i think its not the case. "Good things take time"

 

It was harsh, it's been almost two years if I'm remembering correctly. A lot was promised, some of that has been implemented. In two years if the online component has not been fleshed out enough so that running a server with more than 5 people on it isn't a pain in the ass and several bullet-point features aren't here in that time, then it isn't harsh.

 

From someone who doesn't understand what it takes to develop a game.

They've put a lot of time and effort in redoing the engine, which takes a long time, and often has little to really show for it because its all internal work. The fact of the matter is, the game runs much smoother now than it did in the past, and they are working on fleshing out every aspect of the game that has been promised. People are just impatient.

Did you know Fallout 4 has taken almost 7 years to make? Why is no one upset about that? Because most of game development is stuff we don't see. Its only been relatively recently that we, as consumers, have been involved in game development throughout the whole process, and most people are impatient and self entitled.

So yes, Starbound has been in development for over 2 years. So flipping what? They are still working on the game. Heaven forbid they take their time instead of pushing out the crap that most recent games have been. If you want a finished game as soon as possible, go follow the COD series, cus they got a new one every year.

 

You are getting overly defensive, making outlandish comparisons and assuming a lot when I am merely echoing a well established fact.

 

Fact? What fact?

 

If a lot of features was promised, isn´t it a wonder why it takes so long? Two years, a small team... Just because Starbound is a 16 bit graphic-sandbox-game doesnt mean it is just easy to implement all that was promised.

Starbound is the sum of all content, not only the multiplayer part, or combat or what ever.

There are a lot of groups of players out there. Some want simple a "Terraria" in space. Some other cares about the creative part only. Again other ones only the adventure part. There are the sci-fi Fans, which would like to see that they could do, what you can do in sci fi setting.... Then we have the immersion fans... and so on.

How to make one group happy without dissapoint the other ones? And what if CF runs in to a dead end (hunger and temperature, maybe combat too). If i have read right, The nightly version is ever changing and there is stuff where you could only dream in stable (sometimes). You can see that they work on the game. And that is just fine for me.

Like Iazarus78 said: There are other games out there, where you never see or read something about until it is E3 ready. And if that games come out, you can bet on it, that it takes a few month until the first patches come out to make the game "stable". Just as i said yesterday (or the day before), there are really idiotic publisher out there that release a unfinished game and put the testing phase (seemingly) after release. Ubisoft and Assasains Creed for example.

In times like this, where you get junk over junk every year (COD, Assasains Creed, FIFA... and so on) i think it is a very good thing, that a developer takes the time it needed and make a functional good game.

Thats why i like indie-games btw. No great publisher... that only cares for money and cracking the whip.
The only great Publisher that understand this too, is Nintendo.

 

Your "fact" is an opinion.

It's almost as if everyone complaining here forgot that a huge chunk of CF's time was done getting an office together so they can develop in a much more organized and efficient fashion. That alone should of been enough to know that they are probably going to take a while to finish this project, and not be as fast as other triple A companies. Two years is nothing.

 

I'm quite happy to wait for them to take the time they need to make a quality product but the game doesn't really seem to be heading in any direction in particular. When I first saw this game during the kickstarter it shouted epic space adventure, but now looking at what is in the game and what is planned it just doesn't give the impression that it will be an epic space adventure. In koala the game seemed to have a direction, but since giraffe it has really lost that. I understand that they have done a lot of work with the engine, but many things have just back tracked like the progression becoming linear. There is quite a number of things that, to me at least, seemed like the natural next step; The biggest example is Outpost and the missions it looked like they were going to start populating the universe with space stations and other signs that someone besides you is actually in space and having them be the centers for getting missions.

To sum up my fears the game had an sandbox adventure theme to the gameplay and the path of development was supporting it, but it has almost entirely lost that. The progression of difficultly on the planets is entirely linear forcing the players to go to certain planets if they want to move forwards in the game. The game has lost most of the two themes it had and there is no indication that they are really going to come back in full. I know how to solve the problem, but when I posted them the thread got zero replies and they were some pretty good ideas too.

 

This seems to be the norm of what everyone thinks the game ia heading towards, but for what it's worth, devs had said the current missions will change dramatically in some of the news updates. IMO, you can't really base the entire game's idea of non-linearity based on what the game has now. There's still so much more to implement.

 

The "Blessing and Curse" of an Early Access? ^^"

 

Y

Yes, unfortunately.

The way I see it, (or hoping) I think we only have the "end" part of the missions and really they're supposed to be longer and hopefully more enjoyable in a non-linear fashion. What we have now is probably more of an epic finale of those said missions, because they really don't make any sense story wise right now. It's kinda just "there."

 

Except, you know, right from the beginning you had various barriers that kept you from doing some things because of (Horror of horrors) progression. The universe was divided into tiers, you still had to defeat bosses before getting components to allow yourself to go to the other tiers, armor was WAY more important since it led to 'one-shot or be one-shotted' issues up the wazoo, and many other things that plagued the initial gameplay. By the definition that so many people seem so keen to parade behind, the game has never been a full 'sandbox', because people have always needed to put forth (Horrors again!) effort into earning the stuff they want to play with.

Since then, things have actually been changed to where there is now just ONE universe, and you can actually go to radioactive planets or the like. You won't survive unless you obtain the necessary things to help you survive, but you can still GO THERE. I mean, sure, you have to put forth at least some effort to play a game to get the functional ability to travel to other systems, but hey.

The game will probably NEVER be one where you can just be plopped down and then do EVERYTHING YOU WANT without putting forth some effort to play a game. The developers have mentioned plans to make it so you can progress various ways besides just combat, yeah (Like farming or adventuring), but this still means you have to put forth EFFORT to play a game. That's something you'll have to get used to.

 

I must say... the lunar base and floran party mission are very cool... but well as you said it, there is no redline to a main story. Every race (with exeption of the Novakids ^^") intend to be to a have a very large "quest" (not the game thing, the "higher goal" thing).

I hope we will see more content in this way.

I think that is a little easy to say. You need crafting tools and equipment in nearly every game (okay maybe not in 100% creative mode Games), and that means you need something to do. Be it mining or fighting against monsters or (mostly) both. Even in Minecraft you need to craft "higher" tier picaxe to mine "higher" tier ore.... So there are no real "sandbox" games if you minimize it to "Do what you want, and when you it want"

But AFTER you get everything you need, then Starbound IS a 100% sandbox game. Because there is nothing that can stop you to do what you want, and when you want (of course only if it is possible ^^")