Important BETA RELEASE DISCUSSION - DECEMBER 4TH (*ALL* beta discussion goes here. Other threads deleted)

It's not art if it's being produced as a market. Aspects of a product can be art. The label on the front of your cheese is art. The cheese isn't art.

The game as a whole is just a product. There to be sold. The artists involved are okay with that, because the consumer can appreciate the art in the product.

You underestimate my psychobabble, and I'm sorry it was lost on you. A business thrives on money, not on smiles.

 

Agreed, that was just uncalled for.

 

Well this must be crazy it is about beta.

 

MagusGestalt and I just had this same discussion a few hours ago. Definite Deja Vu', lol.

Also, Khyron42 has made some decent posts and didn't know Misho had dyslexia. We can cut each other breaks now and again.

Unrelated note, has anybody here played King Arthur's Gold yet? It's definitely helping to tide me over till beta time. It's like silly, crazy terraria pvp with an awesome art style (imo). The beta is free iirc and the full version is only 10 bucks. Definitely piquing my curiosity for the early game pvp we can come up with when beta finally does come out.

 

Making a game for us? What?

All this thread seems to be is people saying "Oh haha, look at you unreasonable people being unreasonable! I'll ignore everything you have said. Everything. Stop hating. Chucklefish is being kind.

Oh boy here we go.

Alright, first off, this thread is stupid and pointless? Why? Because it isn't an endless chucklefish circlejerk? That doesn't mean its pointless, it just means certain people are going to be sour towards it because they have some kind of brand loyalty to chucklefish.

No really. The only problem with this thread is that everything that needs to be said has been said. Not that people are mad at chucklefish and making snide comments. Just because people are angry, they are unreasonable? I was angry at them a long time ago, now i'm waiting out the last, what, 40 days they have to push out a beta? I'm waiting for them to say at what time within those forty days. And you know what? I'm going to stop assuming and go by their track record, and hope to the lord all mighty they even manage to get a bug ridden mess of a beta out within the next 40 days before we have another announcement stating that "We have to push back beta developing starbound is weird ect ect ect."

They are making a game for you? If that was true they would have just handed it to you. A gift. That didn't happen. You paid for it. They may be making a game because of you but they are not making a game for you, those are two completely different doodads. If they were making the game for us (brb beating dead horse) they would have included heat as a hazard mechanic instead of telling everyone to mod it in (beating done, return to your workstations). Doesn't mean we can't enjoy it, but FOR us? Going a bit overboard, champ.

And when did Chucklefish "Prove you wrong"? How do you even expect starbound to compete with the 3 years Terraria has had in content? With random generation? You really think thats going to cut it? Multicolored hills? Some backdrops? There needs to be things to justify random generation, and that worries me greatly. You can't just stick "INFINITE EVERYTHING A BAZILLION PLANETS" in front of people and expect it to hold forever because it can vary slightly each time.

Yes. They do interact with the community. No. Not all of it has been flawless. This thread is a perfect example. Don't want to deal with those whiny customers you have? Quarantine them, hopefully they cry themselves to sleep. Do I blame them? Partially maybe, if the judgement of a disappointing long-awaiting fan who shall have his voice go unheard counts as anything. Still, many of the code monkies haven't spoken in a very long time and I can only imagine the pressure they are under.

And I hope to god you weren't serious about "devs gotta eat!". They pulled in 2 million. And before you say "GAMES MAKE SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT ALL THE TIME", that revenue doesn't go directly into the pockets of the developers. As far as I have seen, with no reason to believe otherwise, the money put down there went straight to everyone who is a part of the chucklefish team. EVEN IF all 2,000,000 dollariedoos were split among every single member on the BuckleDish team page, they would each make 105,000 dollars. And I guarantee you it wasn't split evenly, for better or worse.

Also Terraria was made in around 6 months. Even without the content updates to the current day, it was still made in 6 damn months by a few people with 0$. You want to say they don't have enough time to make a game of an even CLOSE to similar caliber I advise you to eat your goddamn heart out to that fact, opinions on how good or bad it is be damned.

 

I know, but apparently some points need to be reiterated.

 

They are making a game for us, perhaps it is for money, but games that focus solely on monetary gain are generally the biggest pile of you-know-what going. Look at many of the big companies that make games, there's very little enjoyable about them because there's no passion behind them.

At the end of the day you paid for an unfinished product, and you knew that at the time of purchasing it that it wouldn't be finished until a certain point in the year. (And we won't be getting the full game now until next year, so what?) By the look of what you've said it makes it seem like you've got little to no faith in the game and the developers.

And even if they made '105,000 dollars' (because every currency in the world is American, right?) then they'd still have to pay for everyday life, that money would still be constantly draining, there are still bills for them all to pay. You can't sit there and act like they're all millionaires who aren't spending a single penny on anything else. It's been said that some of the developers were working second jobs, which reduced the amount of time they had to work on Starbound, so with that money it pretty much equals their wage check all at once. Not everyone still lives at home with mummy and daddy doing everything for them, show a bit of respect.

I hope that the game doesn't get delayed, I want to play it just as much as anyone else, but this kind of behaviour is ridiculous; and over a game? Really? I think that's the time when someone needs to look at what they're doing with themselves, because if I ever got this angry over a game I think I'd stop playing them all together. Sorry but it had to be said.

 

It's funny yet sad how Tiy made this to control the madness of the "BETA WHEN????" spammers ever though most of them probably don't even know this thread exists and continue to spam on other posts, even the non-official ones.

 

Actually, I've found that "BETA WHEN????" posters seem to be fairly limited. Even on places outside the official forums, there's not much of that particular brand of annoyance going on. Now, there are people still asking about when, but it seems like the brand of generic idiot asking in either all caps or no caps with multiple punctuation about beta is gone.

 

IMO, a few months back it was more annoying than it is now. At least now, several months have gone by and we are in the last few weeks of estimation time. To me, it seems like after 7 months and so little time left; people have more of a reason to be curious about a concrete date.

 

And once again, with that as context or without it makes little difference, as the statement is rubbish in either situation.

Throwing around estimates is callous? How, exactly, when the entire forum membership who aren't just waiting patiently for the game is clamouring for exactly that? Yes, they got the estimates wrong, which depending on your point of view is either pretty normal for development or a heinous sin, but I'm pretty confident that not even the people most critical of CF think they deliberately missed their estimates, which is about the only way that you could associate callousness with the concept of release estimates.

Perhaps you'd be best not to reciprocate even if you have some perception that you have been insulted. That, or report the post, is the most mature action to take.

 

The statements status as rubbish or not is obviously debatable, but since you explicitly stated how you interpreted it in an out-of-context manner I saw the necessity to correct you on that point.

Admittedly "callously" may have been too harsh of a word to describe the situation, unthinkingly or casually would probably be more appropriate. But with the exception of that poor choice of wording my point still stands, CF would do better to only release estimations only when they are actually reasonably sure that they will be able to meet them and only use phrases like "no matter what" when only something completely disastrous could throw the fulfillment of that off. When estimations are frequently missed and even outright promises don't hold water it not only pisses people off but also erodes the confidence in the developer.

But upliftingly enough it does seem like CF have, albeit unapologetically, learned their lesson when it comes to estimations "All this said, whilst I won’t apologise for delaying the game a couple of times, we have made mistakes along the way. The most obvious of which was to give out estimated release dates on a project that’s aiming so high and I think it’s unlikely we’ll ever do that again" - Tiy

 

Wow Tiy is working super hard on things coming soon!

If only we knew how soon is that.

 

Let's do some more!
Eat my heart out? I'll pretend you mispelled...
You, sir, appear to have no idea how a programming project works. So, i will happily prove wrong all your statements, which are all without any logic:

-the thread is stupid because it forced the whole forum to make a thread for other threads for something which is not that big of a deal. On the fact that it helps people to converge their ideas and dispute, i agree, but making a whole section of forum to control *the rage* was not necessary. Everything after, might be smarter....(i have seen some smart reasoning, like i said yesterday).

-people are unreasonable not because they are angry and express their thoughts, but because they believe their anger is an excuse for bursting out at devs (a group of people actually WORKING, this is their job! yet many are unrespectful about this). This is not a quest to defend the devs, i (nor others) gain nothing from that, but i have my own deas, and i believe sharing them with others to be right and that it might help settle things a bit more.
Before you speak of the devs as dudes "not capable of even finishing their own work, which they started" wait and see what will happen, keep in mind it is a disrespectful statement to ANYONE working on something of their own. And you have no reason to assume devs will come and say things will be delayed, they have been completely fair throughout all of the develpment and you cannot state they aren't capable of doing their own jobs! They are a young company, but the difficulties are not SO great they have to be crushed by a little bit of customer rage...

-obviously you read nothing of the other posts, or you wouldn't have incurred in the same mistake of pretending these devs are doing it all for the money.
Should i really explain it, again? Indie...one word. AND not having a heating mechanism for beta doesn't really count as "devs not interested in customer support and requests", does it?

-okay, so chucklefish hasn't "proven" me wrong, as i have not played the game with my bare hands yet and i cannot really be sure if all they published is really true or a complete scam.
BUUUT, *assuming* it is NOT a scam, they most definitely have outgrown all of terraria. The story they plan on implementing? Races? Villages? Different worlds? Different monsters?
If i was into the "more stuff = better" mechanism, then even more than being a fan of 'UNLIMITED GENERATIOOON!' i would be a fan of video games in ultra hd quality. But here i am, wanting to play a game where you can actually see the pixels of sprites. yay.
No really, starbound is way better than terraria, but not because it's "better" by itself, but seeing as it "stands on the shoulders of giants" (aka terraria) and tiy was a terraria dev once himself, so it is an improvement of terraria. The fact terraria is not over does not really affect the improvements starbound made.
Also terraria may have been coded in 6 months, but the music was repetitive, it was not at all complete at first, it was never really fast (MASSIVE ram leaks in that game), it was probably coded BAD (net framework, awful choice), it wasn't cross platform and it didn't take advantage of greatly efficient coding languages such as c++ and sdl(technically a library).
So....yeah, i think my statement about Starbound's superiority still stands, but not because the devs are necessarily better than those of terraria, but maybe they planned their project better.
After all terraria was only ever built for windows, and xbox support came out after ages. And mobile support came a few months ago.

-I dunno about the "code monkeys" as you say, but i think people only speak if they feel comfortable. If they don't, imagine speaking to a flaming mob of childishly excited fans such as many of the ones on this forum. Starbound devs NEVER took our voice away from us! in my post i debated that instead they even asked us about how much money we wanted to spend ON THEIR OWN PRODUCT. Seems like they listened more than they needed to, from my point of view...
And this thread isn't quarantine, it just prevented people from cluttering up the forums with stupid comments such as "Chucklefish will never release this game and you are all fools!". This still happens a bit on reddit, makes me wish they made a "beta" topic thread on there as well....

-2 mils aren't little, and they are not much. These guys expect to live from this, their coding and drawing and music composing and stuff. 2 mils are the tip of the iceberg for a company!
I'm amazed you would even make such a statement during times of such financial crysis all over the world, you must be rich...2 mils won't last for a year, do you think they only feed themselves with money? They need to do tons of stuff! Pay for servers, pay for all kinds of sh*** that we don't even notice, and maybe after that they won't even have money left to get themselves a tv.
So, the money is never enough! ESPECIALLY, for an indie group!

-Don't complain about development if you don't know programming. And if you were the best programmer in the whole world, you wouldn't have a sand's grain of right to even dare comment about other people's work! You don't like CF? You think the game is a rip off? Don't buy it, or get a refund....like Iterum said, there is no reason to be THIS upset about a game.
Just don't play it when it comes out

Again, i cannot agree more with Iterum, with his whole post and especially this final part. It is the whole thing summed up in a few words, good job!

*EDIT: corrected the grammar of some words...

 

I love you guys. I love this thread.

I hate spinnickers.

 

I love lamp.

 

Based off of this statement I have a feeling you're not familiar with what quarantine means. The actual title of the thread, posted below, is virtually a dictionary definition of the word concerning beta discussion.

THREADS ABOUT THE RELEASE DATE OF THE BETA (*ALL* BETA DISCUSSION GOES HERE. OTHER THREADS DELETED)

Looking at your response and that of another person up above, it appears that you both took Ricky's statements as though they were bashing. I personally didn't see them as such. So far as the money discussion I'll stick out of it, as there's so much overhead involved in development of a product that amount pulled in and amount earned per team member would be impossible for us to determine. Other than that, however, I largely found his post to indicate less frustration with the development process and team, and more annoyance with the community members which bash on people who are expressing frustration.

I can entirely understand the frustration of some community members. As an example, I became frustrated as I realized the move to a weekly update schedule was actually happening concerning the new posts on the front page. I know that I could use RSS or something similar to automatically alert me to an update, or that I could limit myself to going once a week. Those aren't things which I'm interested in doing, and I found myself effectively selling Starbound to friends who were unaware of it in the previous months. While I still support the project entirely, with the change in schedule I find myself less inclined to do so because I won't be reminded to daily by an update.

The reason isn't that I've lost hope for the project or that I'm angry at the dev team, It's more about a basic technical support concept. If you own a technical support ticket and it will take several days to close it out, you touch base with the client at least daily, even if it's simply a brief email concerning what avenues you've pursued that failed to provide resolution paths. You do this in order to assure the client that you're focus is on them and their concern. For a project like this one, daily contact via the front page, not replies in the forum, ensures that the customer base knows that you're thinking about and working on the project. It also helps to keep the customers thinking about the project, which means that they're more inclined to discuss it with other potential customers. With the switch to a weekly schedule, there will be a whole branch of customers who simply forget to touch the page for a few weeks because a small daily pattern is easier to maintain than a weekly one.

Just my thoughts concerning the post you replied to, as well as the move from daily to weekly updates. I'm very much looking forward to the beta when it comes out, and wish the dev and support teams well while they continue to push onward toward release.

(Edited for small corrections of formatting issues)

 

The reason they went to weekly updates, as I recall, was that people were frustrated with the low-content daily updates that consisted of, "so today we fixed bugs and implemented a feature we can't show you because spoilers. Here's a tiny screenshot." With weekly updates, they're trying to deliver something more fulfilling.

 

^ Did you know, that while I do not read text walls around here lately, and must be about as enlightened about this wonderul debacle going on as a brick is aware of fish, did you know?

Its totally worth not having an argument with people over the release of a simple game ^w^ Short and sweet my friends, either Starbound comes out or it doesnt. Since it is, no worries, I can wait till the stars burn out and Carrot Top finally becomes funny ^w^ Well maybe not THAT long.

 

Bilbo: "Alas, eleventy-one years is far too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits." [cheers abound.] "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

hehehe

i like kittens and ginger haird girls with frecolls