Feedback What happened? (Everything, sort of)

I was around in 2013/2014. the Birdocalypse, the content drought, the apparent focus on unimportant things. the community's reaction to these things gave the game the bad rap it has now, and certain changes undertaken by the development team exacerbated that feeling. "they took away this," "now we have to do this," "oh no change!" whether it was good or bad. I remember people fighting about how good a change was lol. that's asinine behavior.

I can blaze through Terraria without as much as a few thoughts to keep me company, whereas in Starbound I want to explore and spelunk. Terraria has more stuff now? I wonder why that would be. of course a game being out longer is a valid argument, it's called nostalgia and it's a big factor in how people remember games. think of Ocarina of Time, Halo, Sonic* and Final Fantasy. is FF13 actually bad? probably not really, I know quite a few people that liked it when it released. but a lot of veteran FF players said that it's not as good and it's shifted perspective. just like with Halo. just like with Starbound. dude, I saw this stuff happen in real time lol.

how was the older game more challenging lol? you're telling me that special attacks made that much of a difference? hell, people "quit" the game because they reintroduced touch damage lol.
survival mode isn't about heat, it's about food. in the great words of Egoraptor, nothing should make you say, "I'll check that room later," in a game about checking rooms.. except change "rooms" to, like, the land or caves or something. and heat stopped you dead in your tracks, to lay down a fire, and wait. of course, the same could be said about food but there's a reason I don't play on survival anymore.
meh, there will always be better options. ever play with a Doomcannon? you'll understand when you finally do (it's fun). meanwhile, in the older versions you had that gravity bubble butterfly crap which made exploration trivial and perhaps even a chore. ooo, another planet. I can jump up and press left until I find a village or something. let's hope I haven't seen this kind yet.

no no no. the changes that the developers made didn't kill the love for this game. people's' dramatic overreaction to those changes killed it. anyone remember the hotbar change? is the two-hand thing really that bad now that you've had a while to play with it?

go figure.


* the newer Sonic games are actually objectively bad because they're all completely broken. but the older Sonic games were actually good for fast-based platforming action.

 

you want to explore and spelunk? where is that in SB? there is not much to explore, the planets are extremely repetitive and there is not much new to find if you went through like 5 of each plant types unless you were very unlucky in the RNG generation. Unerground is the same stuff over and over and some of the undeground stuff ins ALWAYS there repeating like hundred times on large planets. Terraria was better because it never felt that repetitive and playing the game consumed more time in a challanging and entertaining way.
The old koala with better randomisation and more mixtures was where I spend hundrets of hours in jumping and exploring planets, now you are done after like 20 hours because there is not going to be something new to be seen.
The older version was more challanging because mobs had more different attacks, they were spitting various kinds of attack to you. The current only knows that for the "unique" ones, not the prodecural generated ones. And this makes every mob extremely predicable because you know exactly which visual mob does which attack. The prodecural generated ones didn't do that. so yes the special attacks of mobs did made a difference, they added a element of surprise and made also every planet somewhat unique due to being composed of unique behavior mobs. Now every biome has the same uniques making you exactly know whats coming. The previous full random palnets inclduign mob randomisation made palnets felel unqiue, now palnets feel like just extentions fo the same map. The new game has those bosses implemented and i made everyone in the first attemp except the dragon which I didn't knew would be coming. So sorry but "bosses" that easy is not "nostalgia" it was harder bakc than, it is simply a fact that when you can go through a boss in 1 attemp it is made too easy. Sure Buttervly bubble made exploration easy, because fats, yet with the unique way how planets were made and had more random composition, there was even with butterfly boost more unique thinsg to be found and explorable. With the slwoed down tehc we have now all you do is seeing the same map over and over again in slowmow Thats not exciting thats like watchign the same movie for the 10th time in a row. May exite some people, but surely not the majority.
Excitign was digging down the acid planets to see whats beneath those oceas. dissapointing was they had nothing unqique there and were like all the other planets down there. Yes heat stopped you, but it stopped you exploring a unique planet. Now nothing is really unique anymore which makes exploration boring to begin with.

The changes made didn't kill the love for the game? probably not, but they surely killed the motivation to play it unless you are a fan of assemply line worker. The game offers quadrillions of planets, but nothign unqiue anymore. While the old koala had unqiue planets amongst those quadrillions. Huge difference if you have 2000 different movie DVD's composed of 1500 different movies, or 1 million composed of only 100 different movies.

yes the hotbar is just a "get sued to it feature" some things at the new one are better, some are worst. Poeple made a laod of drama about it. But the change about many mechanics wasn't drama it was simply changing what the games core was. And that made many people quite because of how much more boring the new "sandbox" is. because this sandbox is missing a lot things that made a unqiue sandbox experience. I had a letter with hundrets of planet coordinates in the old version where interestign stuff was. (yeha I don'T trust the buggy ingame bookmarks of random disappearance) The current one isn'tlonger than 20, because everything else is so random and repettive it's as good as any planet of that specific biome and not noteworthy. And thats not salty drama thats just how it is by current mechanics.

 

Yes. 100%. They removed fun, entertaining weapons. Why? Because they don't fit? The things that came in their place don't fit in either, but they were added because they were donor weapons.

 

like what exactly? I don't remember any specific weapon that I have missed. how the game picks perks for randomly generated weapons can be a little funky, sure, but most of my favorite weapons are the unique, pre-order backer weapons like Doomcannon. because in the end, Doom is all that counts.

 

many wepaons like the bone gun, or other old uniques. Any kind of crossbows. There were also much more different kinds of bullets a weapon could randomly have.

if you were around these days, why do yo even have to ask these things you should know?

 

oh yeeeaaaah.. I forgot about different bows and stuff... hell, I remember when there was only one bow. forever. 'cause I don't have to remember every exact little detail lol.
I don't obsess like that.

when you offer a backer reward, such as "this vanity set" or "this weapon", and then people give you money to make that vanity set or weapon, you have an obligation to fulfill that reward.
it's a loss of credibility much more damaging than you think CF has done so far.

I don't understand this undying infatuation with weapons and armor and biomes and pets that are completely unnecessary. like, let's say we did have them. would that actually make the game objectively better? like, that tier 3 crossbow that shoots port butts and taters isn't going to help you in end-game. you'll sell it or delete it, and look out for an Ex Machine or Asuterosaberu DX (or Doomcannon hint hint) and use those instead. they become moot, as do pets with the old system where it was dependent on the tier of the planet you found it. or biomes which served no purpose aside from, like, looking pretty or something. I get the nostalgic reaction, and the idea that a change of pace is good. but I don't think that makes the game a piece of trash lol.

in bigger games, things are cut all the time. think of Guild Wars 2 and how a developer came out to say that a rather anticipated map may never be released ever. that doesn't make Guild Wars 2 a bad game lol.

 

see thats the issue in SB loads of stuff as mechanics exist (like pets and some weapons) but they are kinda useless. Thats becasue CF made a rather bad concept about them to keep them usefull all the time.
Why can't we tier upgrade all weapons?
Why can't we have usefull pets?
Why is fossiles just like 5 different unearthable shapes instead of some random generates shapes?

there is no reason for this to be like this. a load of efford was done for unworking content by CF or content you kinda literally wield only 10minutes before you move on to the next. Thats because the concept and mechanics behind these are not well thought through and ended with what some call feature creep. Add loads of feature for the sake of existing, but not make them have a proper part in the game. And this isn't good. I am also not obsessed, But I am a person that rather much pays attention to mostly the detailed things in games. All the cool various guns the avian NPCs had. Why can't enemies use wands? They exists in the castles as drop, so they should utilize them. Wasn't CF using the term "living and breathing universe"? it feels less like this than before because they removed many things being immersive in the universe and replaced them with more generic/repetitive stuff.

I don't really know what the backer weapons have to do with it. They could still coexist with the old ones. But the game lost so many tiny things that have the special charme and gave the game a living breathing universe. I have also not said the game is trash, but what we have now is a lot worse than what we had, and thats sad because there was still no logical reason to remove it. Like Asteroid bases. Why did they keep picks and drills, they also serve no real purpose anymore especially when they can't be repaired anymore. They removed many features which didn't made sense to remove, yet they changed stuff and made it uselss yet kept it.
So when you speak about the old biomes and their purpose except looking nice. wow we have this nwo too with many biomes too. So that surely cna't be the reason. But those biomes did furfill one important feature: visual variety. I miss the old snow globe falling weather. was a cool feature that went away because of what? dunno its just gone because probably reasons.

 

this is exactly why they took them out in the first place. because they just existed with no basis for their implementation. all the crazy techs when there was one absolutely broken and "OP" tech. so they got removed and streamlined. and I do kinda wish they'd update the system, add in more techs (which they probably will one day) but oh well lol.
who cares whether or not enemies can use wands and staves? they're not exactly useful against your average player, which either charges into melee or shoots from afar with some crazy weapon. what use is multiple "unearthable shapes"? you're not there to see them stuck in a wall, you're there to unearth them.

saying things like, "...but what we have now is a lot worse than what we have," it's entirely and legitimately a matter of personal taste.
I think the game is in a great position. do I miss some stuff? sure. do I want some things changed? oh, sure. but I'm not going to curse the game for lacking or taking away those features. which is fine, y'know, do ya thang. but it's a subjective matter that's being pushed as an objective claim.

I dunno, I remember the old Starbound where mechanics were shoved in to make what amounts to an elongated playable teaser of sorts. mobs were always changing, there was no real reason to progress other than to see what the planets at end-game had. no reason to build, no settlements. no farm animals, no Outpost. there was no reason to it, and I can see where that might be appealing to some people. y'know, now I can build a farm and a super cool base and not feel like that's the only thing I can do. I'm still looking for a Foundry mini-biome, and I still want to map out the underground areas of some worlds to find the Mini Villages for those freakin' hats.

there's an obvious reason why the Koala updates all have negative prefixes to them.

 

no its not a statement of personal taste, diversity cna be measured by the amount of things that can happen in combination and the variety of this is now lower (if you don't like the word "worse")

 

maybe it's lower, but by no means does that make the game worse than Terraria. I like Starbound a lot more than Terraria because the scope of Starbound, the amount of worlds and possibilities. while perhaps not as great as it once was, it is surely more than Terraria's one planet.
plus, if

is anything to go by, the sentiment that Terraria is more varied than Starbound may certainly change quite drastically.

 

Popping in after my mandatory 1000-year slumber just to say: Purely Aesthetic =/= Unnecessary.

A game that doesn't take care of it's own aesthetic appeal is a game begging to die. That's not an opinion, that's an unfortunate fact of life.

 

Beauty is fleeting, that is why it is beautiful.