Feedback Dear Starbound, we won't be playing you any longer.

Dear Starbound Developers, my boyfriend, I, and our 3 best gamer friends have all decided to uninstall Starbound and won't be playing it again anytime soon. We all purchased alpha releases of the game and we had an amazing time playing it before it was released. Countless hours (200+ a year easily) easily. We understand you already have our money, so our opinions probably weigh very little to you.

I won't lie, the biggest factor by far has been the unstackable produce. For three of us, the farming and colony development was the biggest lure, and you have effectively removed farming from the game. We are moving off to [other game] because it seems from the forum posts that you (the developers) have decided that 20 runs back and forth from my farm to chests to put product away, then 20 runs from my chests to the cooking stations (with endless item sorting each time) to cook recipes, then 20 more runs to sell things, was something that made the game more fun. Maybe players were asking for new ways to be far less efficient as farmers? In fact, for all of us, it's just "work" that we aren't being paid to do, there's nothing fun about dragging farming labor out. We let the watering system 'enhancements' go, it was a bit annoying but we learned to accept it. But this was a farm-killer move, and our ability to play within the game as a community of friends was killed with it.

Sarcastically, as my good friend Daniel put it "They should make it even more fun by reducing you to 3 inventory slots and make you walk 3 times slower."

As a software engineer myself, I understand that sometimes your ideas just don't come out the way you thought they would; but there didn't seem to be any notion of fixing this problem because, at least from forum reading, you don't believe there's even a problem to fix.

I would like to end this with a suggestion that would fix the game for those that still would like to play in the future. Instead of giving each food item an expiration time, give them an "expiration count". Each X minutes of game time (such as 15 minutes), all expire-able items lose a 'count', until each item is expired. By decreasing the resolution of expiration from a "time" (seconds) to a "count" (15 minutes each or so), stacks of items become possible again. If every freshly picked corn has an expiration count of '6', they would stack with other corn that also has an expiration of count '6' remaining. After X minutes (let's say 15 minutes), that stack would drop to expiration count '5', and new fresh corn pick ups would go into a new stack (at '6').

Expiration system stays intact, farming becomes fun again.

Hunger is another problem - it's not as game-breaking as the non-stacking produce, but it needs re-balancing. Daniel doesn't play with sound, for example, so he often dies because he had no idea he was starving to death, even though he had plenty of food. a) If you're starving to death, make the screen flash. b) before you start losing health, automatically eat something, rather than just exploding deep within the planet while you're full of food c) if you aren't moving or healing, don't decrease the hunger gauge, nobody likes to come back from a trip to the bathroom and getting a snack to find they died (even while standing still safely in their own ship.). Taking a short break from the game while in a safe place used to be fine. Now you must log out. Because that's fun (??). d) being hungry should be more about healing and recovery. If you run out of food, your life slowly starts to fall at 1 life a minute, and you don't heal from sleeping anymore, and recovery items restore at a 1/8 amount due to 'starving debuff'. It should encourage a fast ascent and better planning next time, not a death sentence.

I say these things because I want to see your business grow and do well, even though we will likely not be a part of it going forward. Please consider your player's personal time. Remember we're not being paid to play the game, when it things start becoming more of a chore, it directly becomes less fun. Please consider these before making other similar decisions.

Thank you for the awesome years of game play.
So Long,
Max and friends.

 

I agree the non stacking food is an annoyance and the starvation warning is not nearly enough, although it's not enough to stop me from enjoying the game.

 

wellp,

There's A Mod For That ™

I know you feel like the system is 'broken' and you shouldn't have to install a mod to 'fix' it but, truth be told there are many players who quite enjoy it. Modding is an imperfect solution but, it is an entirely valid and viable one and to simply throw the game aside at the first struggle well, it's like a great man once said..

 

So long, hope you find another game.

First comment.
Even though SB just hit 1.0, It. Is. Not. Done. I'm sure the Devs have the intention of editing some values to improve the player experience, this is their first time putting hunger back in sense they removed it.

Second comment.
If you had such a problem with the hunger, like so many other people for some reason, you could have just played on casual. If you still wanted to drop items or starve but just more slowly there is a variety of new workshop mods that do just about whatever you want to do to the hunger system. Ex; slower hunger drain, slower food expiration, disable hunger for casual, stacking food, etc.

Third comment.
The main reason that I understand that they made food unstackable was because they didn't want players to be just set for food like they used to by loading 1000 steaks in their inventory. Besides, if you could carry that much food it would all expire in your inventory before you got the chance to eat it.

Fourth comment.
I can agree that the two points you made are definitely one of the few things that make the game not fun, I can still make due, especially with the right mind set and meal plan. Maybe one of you should have been a dedicated chef. I believe that the devs will tweak the hunger system till its balanced, till then, we can make due, if not, we can still make due.

Seriously, should have just played casual instead of blaming the game for being too hard.

 

I don't really mind the lack of stacking and found a few ways to bipass it already in the game.

Firstly, Rice.

Rice is your friend. That somewhat low cost, not quite the most profitable crop in the game is picked up as an ingredient. If your suffering from food issues, all you need is to keep a fireplace in your inventory, plop it down on the ground and start cooking if your on a food shortage. You can stack and stockpile huge amounts of rice and only use the food as needed.

Secondly, Coconuts! Coconut trees drop throwable coconuts which can be cooked into coconut drinks. And thats not all, but if you have a food preparation stand, go ahead and cook them whenever your low on food.

Neither coconuts nore rice in raw form ever rot. Ever. Nore does wheat that isn't used, so consider farming that to.

Suddenly you have a bottomless pit of food on your person within easy access. Just takes a few seconds to plop down either a campfire or preparation stand and start cooking to replenish your real food supply.

Lastly both rice AND coconuts can be used together as a single food item for a bit better yield to the food bar.

As for other food types....

I don't mind it because of how powerful the buffs are and can be, as well as how much more advanced food items replenish your hunger bar. In fact there are quite a few easy food recipes which can both give you very extreme amounts of power increase and completely refill your hunger meter. While it'd be a decent quality of life improvement, I think the idea was to make the player consider selling excess crops rather than hoarding and stockpiling them.

Not to mention once you get the ultimate juice in production....

Another super good item is the large cooler, which I recently rediscovered in hylotl ocean cities. They are easily twice as space-efficient as a fridge and can be crafted at a pixel printer for food storage. So if you have a food hoarding mentality, you can use those to maximize the number crops within your possession.

While I can understand the idea behind the quality of life upgrade to me it's not really a big deal considering the above.

 

Sooooooooooo muuuuuch draaaaamaaaa omg, and here im enjoying the game with a ton of mods

 

These are just people who clearly got bored of playing the game after many hundreds of hours put into it, because of course that will happen... although they don't realize they got bored of it. I think a lot of people in Starbound's community are suffering from this. People are expecting a game to just keep them entertained and excited for the rest of their lives. Then of course, the slightest little thing that happens that ticks you off, you're gone without realizing that a couple years back your tolerance for the game was much higher because you simply were not sick of it just yet.

Anyway, as other people mentioned, there's mods to fix just about anything you can think of, and every day there's like 200+ new mods in the workshop. If you're still enjoying the game but you really feel like you would quit before dealing with something that's changed, just download a mod and get it fixed, and go back to having fun. If you're no longer having fun and don't even wanna try to get things sorted (which you could right now), don't masquerade trying to sound like you give 2 potatoes about the game or the company behind it... I mean you're quitting the game, why would you suggest something change and risk them ruining something for someone who currently has no issues with how things work?

Just be on your way, no need to announce it.

 

So when is Master of Orion coming out?

 

Its already out?... I got it for $50 on steam, but I prefer Stellaris.

 

Logic seems not only not to be on the side of CF, but you too.

The stacking of food makes farming a lot easier but does NOT allow one to never have to care about making new food again ever, because it rotts over time if not cooled!

It is the rotting of food which takes care of this and not food being unstackable!
This unstackable nonsense is an "original Chucklefish".

Makaifren nearly nailed it how this is done properly. (His method would cause trouble the moment the food-tab is already full and some food is changing its state and would create a new stack)

Someone elsewhere already nailed it: The latest harvested corn would be given the rott-state of the actual corn-stack in the inventory to prevent cheating. This would make a farmer's live a lot easier and would prevent abuse by adding a new corn "last minute" to "refresh" the stack. It also avoids the above mentioned problem with an already full food-tab

 

what is neglected here is the development time required to implement a more intricate system conversely to CF's desire to kick 1.0 out the door.

 

You shouldn't have to mod the game to fix problems caused by a lack of common sense.

 

- Anyone Playing A Game On A Personal Computer Circa 1992

What is your next proclamation, "No one will ever need more than 640k"?

The divergent and divisive nature of western society and it's perpetuation of 'norms' actually have made the notion of 'common sense' rather uncommon in their ubiquitous projections of the unobtainable and absurd.

 

Makaifren, you make some good suggestions and make some good points. The crops should be stackable. People could argue that you would then never have to worry about hunger. To them I would point to the game called Don't Starve.
In it, you can stack food, and it does spoil, and you can still starve. A stack of food combines and forms one shared expiration bar. Add a nearly rotten piece of food to it and the bar drops, and vice versa. I would also want to limit the stacks of food to 10-100, not 1000. Raw food freshly plucked from the ground barely fills the hunger meter in Don't Starve, but cooked food using a recipe and using higher tiered ingredients fills it up more, sometimes completely. As you progress in the game hunger becomes less of an issue (because you have farms and can eventually, slowly reproduce seeds.) Hunger and food in general could use some balancing, as you have said. Don't Starve can do it, why can't this game?
Using this method, food would eventually become a non-issue in Starbound. But why shouldn't it? You have a giant farm. Food should logically be no longer an issue.
I also agree that hunger shouldn't decrease while you are standing still, and should decrease faster with more strenuous actions. (Just like Minecraft.)

As a side note, if you got 200 hours out of the game already, I think Starbound has already proven to you its worth. Even players who thoroughly enjoyed the game have quit before hitting that many hours.
Most of this would probably have been better off in the suggestions forum, but with one post to your account and your last seen time as the second you posted this, I doubt you'll read this anyway.

I would like to hear everyone else's opinion on my ideas though. Leaving mods out of the picture for the time being. I might start up a thread about it if no one hasn't already and if it holds some merit with you guys.
It would be ripping off of Don't Starve, but video games rip off each other all the time, and to a much greater extent. See Playstation All-Stars and Super Smash Brothers...
I just don't play on Survival so maybe these ideas aren't good enough or wouldn't work for some unforeseen reason?

 

I've been soaked with a huge dosis of drama after reading this post.
If you have the problems in hands, know how to fix them and you're a Software Engineer, why don't make some Mods for all to enjoy those features instead of crying a river? It seems that you have too much time in your hands, and now that the Steam Workshop is available you could make the difference by making some cool Mods.

I saw that the poor "Daniel" died starving. Well, I play with my sis, she goes AFK a lot, and to fix that she just keeps a sleeping bag with her to sleep when she's going AFK.

 

I.E: god damn, I killed it

 

" Hunger is another problem - it's not as game-breaking as the non-stacking produce, but it needs re-balancing. Daniel doesn't play with sound "

LUL !!! Maybe he could use his eyes and check the bar... like everyone does... even with sounds on. Or just play casual instead of blaming the game randomly for those " issues " that are not broken cuz u play Survival mode.

In a very very past release, you had to press " Alt " to show the hunger bar and check out the status. It was good too in that way.

And yup, there are mods for Item / Food stacking and stuff of any genre.

 

Dude, what? There is a remake of Master Of Orion?! Thank you so much for mentioning this! I have to check it out!!