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An emotional thread about your disappointments in Starbound

Discussion in 'Starbound Discussion' started by Sirnak, Nov 16, 2014.

  1. Musetrigger

    Musetrigger Hard-To-Destroy Reptile

    Well said. Advancing to the next big stage in a game is far more meaningful if the game is challenging. I love games that get you to work at it. Probably why I enjoy some MMOs.
     
    BloodyFingers likes this.
  2. The | Suit

    The | Suit Agent S. Forum Moderator

    No one is disappointed in the name?
    I mean its called starbound and you can't even go to a star.
    I mean what the heck. There are some relatively cool (2,700–4,200 °C) sun spots on stars to land on.


    Earth's Core is estimated 6,000 °C.
     
    Serenity, Jonesy, Akado and 1 other person like this.
  3. BloodyFingers

    BloodyFingers The End of Time

    Well, I for one fully expect to be able to meet a novakid movie star at one point. A hot one, preferably, like those you mentioned...

    I am disappoint if not.
     
    Khuur likes this.
  4. RamenFrog

    RamenFrog Space Hobo

    Alright, technically I'm "new" to the forums in that I finally got enough motivation to make an account. With that said...

    I've been following Starbound and it's development for about 2 years, and honestly the new features themselves don't bother me but the method to how they are being implemented or updated. So yes we have Nightlies, but obviously they are unstable because they are still being tested, and I have no qualms about it. My qualm is I think we've had nightlies updated for close to 6-8 months, but the Stable hasn't had an update since Springtime, and I don't even remember what it was. I even asked people who've been following it and they couldn't remember aside from one saying they remember the ship locker mishap which I think happened around Feburary. Now I get some important features take a long time to test and get right, but lately I've just been seeing random revamps, "fancier" lighting which took about a week or so given the vast amount of illuminated items and I don't get how that couldn't just be pushed into Stable. In fact I feel like a bunch of tiny updates we've had in the last couple of months might've been able to be pushed into Stable, but again I'm no game developer, so god only knows all the technical things.

    I guess my worry and sadness comes from the fact that I feel like the Stable branch has been forgotten, and I am legit expecting a 10GB download because the Developers keep updating the nightlies into this big smorgasborg instead of say, being able to push the smaller things into Stable. It also makes it a bit like waiting for paint to dry for the people who aren't fond of Nightlies or don't want their computer to break in half due to possible crashes. Yes this game is still in development, but it has been for over 3 years with no goal in sight (well I felt like we had one until all the random revamps, which are kinda nice but making the finish line a bit harder to get too then necessary)
     
  5. The_Red_Veil

    The_Red_Veil Aquatic Astronaut

    We from the Red Veil are completly honest:

    The fire spreads...
     
    BloodyFingers likes this.
  6. RamenFrog

    RamenFrog Space Hobo

    This is probably off topic, but I actually just found this post and don't remember refunds being possible since according to Steam:

    "Q. What terms are there and can I get a refund?

    A. To use the Steam key (and so to play Starbound) you need to have a Steam account and those have their own terms. Once you've redeemed the key you aren’t entitled to a refund. You can see those terms here: Main Page - Preorder - FAQ link " (due to my post restriction I can't directly link the steam link thing :I)

    Upon reading more about it...

    "Please note that certain restrictions apply to sales of products sold digitally that might not otherwise apply to physical goods. Refunds will not be issued due to your dissatisfaction with Starbound or if your computer does not meet the minimum requirements. If you feel you qualify for a refund please contact Steam.

    Specifically for refunds that all charges incurred on Steam, and all purchases made with the Steam wallet, are payable in advance and are not refundable in whole or in part, regardless of the payment method, except as expressly set forth in this agreement. "

    So unless Steam is forgiving, or when you guys established your early access, you might not have been affiliated with Steam hence the contract agreement unless I'm missing something completely relevant here. I'm just genuinely confused, and if this refund really isn't a thing I guess that shoots that argument out of the water. On a sidenote if the Refund thing was announced, where was that even, cause I don't even remember seeing it but I was in the process of moving the last few months and could've missed it...
     
  7. Starbug

    Starbug Guest

    @RamenFrog

    I think that guy / girl is referring to pre-order sales made before Chucklefish announced the game was going onto Steam. If I remember correctly it was at that point (the decision to go on Early Access) that they stopped offering refunds.
     
  8. Tymon

    Tymon Cosmic Narwhal

    You do realize this is like saying riding passenger in a car is the same thing as driving one right? Watching a game vs playing a game are two different animals. It can be fun to watch a fighting game, but not fun to play it, for example. This logic is beyond flawed. And there have been a lot of games I personally have watched someone else play, thought it looked fun, and when I started to play it it was actually pretty boring, or the control scheme sucked and it really made PLAYING the game a lot less fun for me. So I know for a fact gameplay videos are not suitable demos at all. But yeah, this is going off topic so... Back to the actual topic.
    I'm kind of disappointed with a lot of the changes they seem to be making too. Besides the notorious mandatory ore drops, the whole 'ore is a minimum of 100 blocks underground now' thing is a gigantic pain in the ass too. Copper, and Iron at minimum should be allowed to spawn at any depth. It occurs that way in real life, it occurs that way in terraria. Forcing people to dig holes to collect ores seems like a huge step backwards in the whole vein of exploration. Especially considering there's usually far more interesting stuff to see on the surface (And the fact you don't need 9001 torches to explore the surface is also a nice thing) Another thing I particularly dislike is the whole 'ore in falling sand/gravel now is deleted if the sand is disturbed'. I also am really not a particular fan of the walking backwards being super slow thing.
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2014
  9. Silverforte

    Silverforte Spaceman Spiff

    That is a very lame analogy. Riding passenger in a car in real life where you have physical consequences is NOT the same as playing a video game you pirated. By riding passenger you're not really hurting the livelihood of the person agreeing to take you somewhere with them. By stealing a game you are taking money out of the pockets of the developers without their permission. Not even remotely similar. Stealing is bad. You can try to slice it any way you see fit to skate your argument by, but you're stealing when you pirate. The end.

    Anyway, my problem as I will keep stating on these forums is that there is nothing to do between mining and exploring. There is no meta game. There is no micromanagement. Nothing to care about, no way to make a home or manage a village. There is nothing to do to break up the monotony of the game. We need a way to care about our claimed planets. We need a reason to care about all the ore and valuables we find, some way to utilize them toward managing some civilization of our own. We also need some global form of energy and a greater array of machinery.
     
  10. BloodyFingers

    BloodyFingers The End of Time

    But I'm hurting the automobile business by taking a lift instead of buying a car myself. Right?

    By that token, I'm also hurting the game industry by watching LPs instead of buying the game and experiencing it firsthand. So all those copyright claims are entirely justified...

    And don't try claiming that it doesn't because I might be inclined to buy a game after watching it. I might, I might not. Just as I may decide to purchase a game after pirating it, or I may not.
     
  11. Akado

    Akado Oxygen Tank

    If you guys don't mind, take the "piracy" discussion into another thread! Even if there is a lot of emotional posting about that, it's not quite the topic that the OP wanted to discuss.

    I think the OP's expressed pretty valid concerns about Starbound. Starbound started out as something, with X, Y, Z goals. At some point in time, CF said "Hey, we don't have to only deliver X,Y, and Z, we could also deliver A through K!" This is great if you are willing to wait for the extra features to be implemented, but at the same time, it implies scope creep. And scope creep is a slippery slope that could end up being unfinished for a very long time. Coupled with the lack of stable updates, this could be interpreted as "my fears becoming true" by many people who are unfamiliar with the scope of changes involved with implementing A through K, but also with why those changes will be so much more enjoyable than only X, Y, and Z.

    Based on the blog updates in the dev blog thread, CF is definitely implementing features A through K, but for better or worse, the precedent has been set that they were very close to reaching their goals before, and then extended their goals. Whether or not it's a fair perception, I think there will be people that look at their recent progress and ask if the same thing will happen again.

    Personally, I hope not, and I think that the new features CF is implementing are awesome and worth waiting for, but part of me thinks that there's always something awesome and better. At some point, you have to accept "Great" and not shoot for "Perfect", because one is a goal that will never be met.

    I hope that CF can reach a point in their development where they have modular additions to the game, so that they can declare a release and then add onto it without significant overhauls and reworks and changes to the gameplay. I also hope that they have a clear idea of where they want the game to be, and where they can evaluate release candidates.
     
    Izzabelle and BloodyFingers like this.
  12. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    ...uh...

    (Looks at the "show off your home" threads)

    (Looks at the "show off your home" threads again)

    Now, as for managing an actual semifunctioning village/civilization and all that... yeah, that's not in... YET. But it's in their stated goals, and it's a system that hinges on their primary advancement route being solid. Not complete, just not gonna have any major revisions. So, I imagine not too long from now we'll be seeing more of that.
     
    Khuur likes this.
  13. B-b-banjo

    B-b-banjo Master Chief

    Fact: 90% of forum posts are complaints about things being posted in the wrong place. On this forum, the other 10% are "emotional" complaints about the game not. being. done. yet. And it isn't. That's sad, very very sad. Except that the nightlies are fun and the stable release is also quite fun and 1.0 will eventually be released and it, too, will probably be quite fun, even with the changes being made to the game that people can't seem to stop complaining about around here, which (from what I've seen) are well thought out and will make the game even better. The devs know & care about this game a lot more than just spending $15 on it. They have spent years of their lives working on it...

    If you're disappointed that release dates have been missed, if you're disappointed that the hunger mechanic has changed, if you stick around to play 1.0 and you're still disappointed, that's life. You know what disappoints me? This forum is incredibly whiny and lame. I'm going to go play some more starbound now. I hope y'all have fun complaining & debating video game demo ethics.

    PS: I'm playing a song for you all on my tiny, pixellated violin.
    [​IMG]
     
    Nicolas and Serenity like this.
  14. Jonesy

    Jonesy Sarif's Attack Kangaroo Forum Moderator

    Don't forget complaints about threads being necro'd. They're a good bulk of it as well.
     
  15. Oilura

    Oilura Seal Broken

    I would say too much emphasis is put on what the player can do rather than what they can find. There are too many craftable items in this game.
     
  16. msweid

    msweid Aquatic Astronaut

    It has been on my mind for a long time and I have to say this -

    I love this game, I want it to be all the developers want it to be. I share the vision..

    However I think they are taking a HUGE risk by leaving it this long without an update..

    I don't know if they have thought it through enough from a strategic point of view in terms of player-base. Once you lose a player-base it is difficult to get them back. Maybe they will come back for a short time after an update, but I don't think it works in the way of "lets leave this game in development for a looooong loooong time to make it so awesome so it can be a smashing success, even if we takes so long everybody loses interest"

    The accumulated success by releasing regular content and updates (Terraria) to keep players active and in the game is a far more successful strategy. Keep it fresh, new; keep people involved in the game constantly. Don't let it die and then try to come to rebirth in some spectacular fashion..

    I know the game wasn't polished enough previously for a "full release",, but I think they hit that mark a long time ago and a lot of the content could have been updates. Maybe if they devised a system so they updated would affect newly explored worlds, so one could keep their home base and character and keep exploring the universe.

    Terraria, which has successfully managed to keep an active community, started off with very little content in comparison to what it has now. That new content is what kept the original players keep playing.

    I know Starbound will keep getting updates, but they had achieved a critical mass in terms of players that I don't know if they will be able to do again, no matter how much new stuff is in the release...

    Almost all Starbound fans have now left and stopped playing. I think its going to be very hard to build up a sustainable player-base again. I'm sure once it is released there will be a huge surge of people coming in for the new content, but I'm worried for most it will be more of a stopover to check out an old game for a bit then go back to the newer ones...

    I guess time will tell.
     
  17. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    Those are words that form a sentence that by all rights is coherent, yet utterly alien.
     
    bluecollarart and Froggod like this.
  18. Fleder

    Fleder Pangalactic Porcupine

    To all of you complaining about the lack of updates.

    They started with big updates, then the users wanted more frequent updates, then they did this and the users complained again, so they changed it again, after a poll, that they would concentrate on more bigger updates. And yet you are still not satisfied.

    I've never seen any developer listen to their users like chucklefish does, so stop complaining. They did what most of the users at that time wanted.
    If you did not sign up on the forum around that time, that is not the fault of chuckefish.
    They just can't ask every month what the people want and then change their way of working completely again...

    YOU are not the only person on the internet, you are not the majority, there are thousands of other people that have other opinions and wishes and chucklefish tries the best they can to make everyone happy, but that can't work. And that does not have to work.

    Next time you buy an unfinished game, read about it beforehand, if you are unhappy with the way it is developed, do not buy it. Do not expect the developers to change the way you think it would best to develop this game, because then they would have to change it for every new user on the forum, that has another opinion than you.

    If they start pushing every unstable change to the stable branch, they would have less time to work on new stuff/improvements and that would push the games release even further into the future.

    they already mentioned that the new stable version will come out soon, but as with many things in life, you can not certainly say when you will finish something that is done with a group of people. EA only can give you release dates, because they have a lot of people, a lot of money and they sacrifice the quality and size of the game to meet the release date. They just release everything they left out afterwards as a payed DLC and you are buying this without a complaint. Think about this for a second, before you go and complain again.

    You are spoiled. If you have the money to buy this game, you are old and responsible enough to look at what you get in return for yourself. You spend hours of watching "hands on" videos before you buy your next smartphone, you will listen to music over and over before you buy an album, you would not buy a car without getting more information about it, but you just blindly buy a game and then you are upset because it is not developed as you want it to be. I can only shake my head in disbelief about this.

    This is why we can't have nice things.
    Chucklefish is the one developer that made me think that not everyone is just a bunch of greedy bad guys who ignore the community and only want my money, they are great people with great talent and i want them to be still around making games in a few years, so stop being unfair and grow up, you are old enough to behave like an adult and be responsible for your own actions instead of blaming others for not delivering what you did not check upfront.

    Sorry for the long post, but i get carried away easily if some people are trying to talk a good developer down.
     
    gameboytj and B-b-banjo like this.
  19. Kreq

    Kreq Phantasmal Quasar

    I'm only here to point out that the terms "updates" and "stability" should go toghether. Extremely frequent small updates are worthless if there is no stability in them, making the game unplayable.
    I actually think that all this "you wanted smaller updates, here they are" thing is only a way to hide the fact that development isn't turning out to be what it supposed to be: it's slower, it can't keep up with promises made in the past etc.
    Because, if anyone wants to admit it, there's quite a gap between "stable updates every 2-3 months" and "very unstable nightly updates".
     
    gameboytj and Madzai like this.
  20. Fleder

    Fleder Pangalactic Porcupine

    You have no idea what development is, right?
    It used to be developers working on something until it is finished, then release it so people can play it.
    But that is not enough for the gamers today, they want to play right now, so chucklefish has to offer something for them to see that they are working on the game, which they do.
    They absolutely can keep up with promises, they just can't hire another 20 developers just to make every single development step stable, so the people who are not having any idea of development will be satisfied.

    Development is development, it is not miraculously making stable game updates every hour and having every single new feature be perfectly playable right after they created it.

    Try to ask a car manufacturer if you can test drive the vehicle after every little thing they did in its development and then complain about it not driving as smooth as your other finished car.

    Sometimes i can't stop shaking my head when reading stuff here.
     
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