Dev Blog Starbound on the Discord Store

Discussion in 'Dev Blog' started by Katzeus, Oct 16, 2018.

  1. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    Look, I understand frustrations...

    But don't dump hate on Wargroove just because you want to see a Starbound update. No, Wargroove is not "trash"; I watched some footage of it and it actually looks like a decent game, though I'm not huge on the genre, but I can recognize quality work when I see it.

    But really, frustration over not seeing a Starbound update, and dumping steaming loads of crap on the Starbound developers and/or Chucklefish as a whole isn't constructive whatsoever, and if anything, it probably makes them want to abandon the toxic cesspool that the Starbound Playerbase (at least the loud vocal minority) even more.

    You guys talk about developers not logging into the forums, but yet when they do they get a bunch of people whining at them for everything they perceived was done wrong, well crap....if I were a developer for Starbound, I wouldn't log on either.

    Hey, I get it, them leaving the game just sit for years wouldn't be what I'd think is a good move, but all of this rampant toxicity isn't a reasonable response either. It makes all of us look bad, and it's decreasing the chances we will get any interaction from Chucklefish whatsoever. And you know what? I can't blame them. Some people in this thread are acting entirely spoiled and entitled.

    Not saying all criticism is bad, but there's a difference between criticism about game design decisions, and personal attacks against those who worked on the game.
     
  2. Shaadaris

    Shaadaris Giant Laser Beams

    While I can't speak for everyone, I find that their lack of any official response, even a non-interactive one such as a simple blog post, far more infuriating. That's what's making me more upset. They released Wargroove and immediately put a banner ad for it on the top of the playstarbound website, while not giving us a single lick of news about Starbound, never mind that they've seemingly abandoned this site entirely for the new Chucklefish.org website, multiple devs having coincidentally left Starbound out of the list of projects they've worked on, there having been no communication with us about key members leaving the team...

    I think people, at this point, have a right to be angry at Chucklefish as a whole, since they seem to be intentionally ignoring us. The outcry wouldn't have gotten nearly this bad, the toxicity and annoyance, had they actually given SOME kind of news in the last 4 months. Even just a "Hey, sorry about the lack of posts, we've been very busy finishing up our other outstanding projects. We've not forgotten you, and we promise to be more upfront in the future. We're still working on the XBox port, and once that is ready, we will continue work on 1.4, something you all have waited a long time for. We hope not to dissappoint!"
    Or perhaps a "Hey, sorry about keeping you in the dark. We weren't sure how to say this, but we've hit a limit with what we feel we can do with Starbound. The team has been through some changes lately, and after 1.4's bounty hunting update was scrapped, we took a step back and looked at the game, and realized it hadn't turned out as we had been aiming for. At this stage of the game, a massive overhaul like during the Beta phases wouldn't sit well with us or the community that is still adapting to 1.3, so with heavy hearts, we officially announce the cancellation of 1.4 due to a number of circumstances. We need to focus our energy elsewhere. If things change in the future, we'll be sure to let you know, but at current, this is the final Starbound update."
    Or just... Anything.
    It doesn't need to be good news.
    We just want to know what's going on, rather than being baited with a single tease for months and months, and then nothing... And more nothing... And more nothing... And more nothing... Always expecting a sudden post explaining one way or the other, but never recieving it. Even the XBox port, which seemed to be coming along fast, has had absolutely 0 news. Meanwhile they're churning out new projects like it's a Gamejam, Wargroove, Witchbrooke, all their publishing stuff... While the game that brought them into the limelight in the first place goes neglected, the community that still exists getting angrier and angrier about the lack of ANY conclusion, while others just outright leave, making it a veritable ghost town.
    And honestly, the whining isn't unfounded either. If you look through Starbound's development, they've scrapped everything at least 2x over- the finished product is NOTHING like what people were told to expect from the Beta. Even the few months before 1.0 had a huge number of massive changes to the entire storyline and quest system, progression, tiers, teased content and "important stuff" which was never added, promises of making Novakids a better fit once added way earlier, with still nothing. People have a right to be pissed, because the project has had no focus on what it was supposed to be. Things were added, changed completely, and taken away up until the last minute, they didn't seem to have a solid design document or plan despite what it seemed like, so much as an etch-a-sketch in an earthquake that had a few notes hastily scribbled in bad handwriting.
    The lack of communication which has only gotten worse as time has gone on is only the icing on the Disappointment Flavoured Cake.
     
    Boshed, Ankali, ElainaLycan and 6 others like this.
  3. davoker

    davoker Cosmic Narwhal

    Chucklefish is "The Ruin"!! :rofl::rofl:

    I would be satisfied with fixing some bugs and improving the performance, which I can at least, even though in this last one I do not have too much complaint, new decorations and bug fixes, just that, it's better than nothing, oh and a sense to the race Novakid, because it does not have any sense their existence, they do feel "added" as they said with the 1.4 that they canceled xD
     
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  4. HI-MAX²

    HI-MAX² Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    It's been almost 2 years since the last Terraria patch was released for desktop, but the staff was always very communicative (even considering the Terraria: Otherworld fiasco).

    I don't want to believe that Chucklefish wants us to slowly forget Starbound, mainly cuz they keep throwing easter eggs here and there, but maybe it was another mistake.
     
  5. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    Eh, to be fair there's been quite a lack of communication from Re-Logic too, unless you consider twitter to be a "means of communication" which I don't.

    They (and Chucklefish) have official forums.

    They should be used, IMO.

    But am I over there at TCF dumping hate on Re-Logic for only communicating via twitter? Of course not, that's silly.
     
    ElainaLycan likes this.
  6. Flannel

    Flannel Subatomic Cosmonaut

    This is exactly what I mean. It's a bunch of false promises, overhyped meaninglessness, and just a bunch of he-said-she-said that fruits absolutely nothing. It's one thing to have a cruddy update that heavily misses the mark - that's happened more than once for Starbound. It's not a big deal, but it's something that can be used as a stepping stone to make it better later.

    Take 1.3 for example. Chucklefish hyped it up so hard, made it seem like it was the coolest thing to do in Starbound... Meanwhile I actually find the space exploration annoying, meaningless, and nothing more than a pain in the neck. Mechas are terrible and not worth using.

    But like I said - an update, even a crappy one, is at least proof there's some level of care left.

    EDIT: Also another thing about Terraria vs Starbound...

    Yes, Terraria is falling back into a deep content rut, but at least you can consider Terraria a complete game. There's loads to do, and technically 3 or 4 different "end games".

    First endgame is Hardmode, then post Solar Eclipse, then post Moon Lord. That's 3 whole endgames. Starbound doesn't even have a real endgame, and there's no real sense of progression because everything you do to get to said endgame is so... Vague. "Go do X", which is easier said than done when X is literally spread very slimly across random planets with no guarantee you'll ever find it.
     
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  7. Daikon Ocelot

    Daikon Ocelot Spaceman Spiff

    I think you need to take a massive chill pill there, buddy. You know, it's just a game, you don't have to be really mad with it.
     
    Xylia likes this.
  8. davoker

    davoker Cosmic Narwhal

    Business, the announcement of the cancellation of the 1.4 is an announcement that Starbound came to an end, want to devote themselves to other games and for this they need more budget, how do they do it? XONE version with the same version as PC, more money for your other projects.

    They are only business, as much as it bothers me, I would do it too, the users' anger is a lesser evil, they will continue to sleep well at night xD

    What really bothers me is that they do not deign at least to communicate it, if the game is not going to keep updating because they say it, any news, it only takes 1 minute to put an ad on the blog.

    This is easy to say, Chucklefish senior officials forbid to give any news about it, what they have to say they will say when they see fit, and I doubt that they care about the opinion of the people, if they cared they would have already said something.
     
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  9. Shaadaris

    Shaadaris Giant Laser Beams

    Whether you agree or not, Twitter is a form of communication, and they've been very active releasing teasers here and there. The Terraria community (which is still rather large and active, surprisingly, despite the slow updates) latches onto those teasers like wildfire regardless of how insignificant some of them are, because it means there is work being done, and the devs show just as much excitement about as a lot of new features as the users do. I also believe they're active on their reddit as well.
    Chucklefish, meanwhile, is active on their various twitters, but have said absolutely nothing about Starbound in ages.
    Yeah, Re-Logic could use the forums better. But at least they talk to their community in SOME way frequently, and are upfront and honest about the game's development. Heck, they've announced it as feature-complete multiple times, ended development with a very happy userbase... And then come back to add EVEN MORE content, even more improvements, out of sheer love of the game and its community. They've also ported to a number of other devices, and post about new updates to each platform, even on their blog on the official forums.
    Chucklefish, meanwhile, has not. I've not heard a single peep about Starbound development since the last blog post... 4 months ago. They celebrate new products while leaving this one in the dust with no explanation whatsoever... After cancelling a major update on flimsy reasoning despite it appearing to have been nearly ready to launch... And while giving no news on the long-awaited console port either.

    You can't diminish it to "they don't use the forums either so your argument is invalid and they both don't communicate." Twitter is communication just as forums are.
    The difference is not in the medium in communication. The difference is in communication period, professionalism, and transparency.
     
  10. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    You also have to consider the actions by the playerbase during the entirety of the early access period, too.

    I remember the fans being quite toxic even back then, constantly attacking the developers for this decision, for that decision and a lot of the criticisms were leveled in a way that were not constructive, nor respectfully.

    Meanwhile, over on TCF (and that other place they were before TCF became a thing), I don't recall Terraria's fans being so vocal with their attacks on Re-Logic. There was some whining and complaining about the cancellation and delays on Terraria: Otherworld, sure... but for the most part, about Terraria itself? Not really.

    To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the reason Chucklefish decided to pull back a lot of their stuff on Starbound is at least in part influenced by how the playerbase has treated them all throughout the Koala and Giraffe days of the Beta. Anybody remember the repeated whining about universe/player wipes? How about when the story was implemented and people complained about having to do the story? Or when monsters were changed from having attacks to just simply giving everything charge and contact damage and calling it a day? Yeah, sure, I didn't like it either.... but some players were just downright rabid and said uncalled for things, calling Chucklefish and/or Starbound "Trash" etc.

    There's a lot of history here of the fans/playerbase not being very respectful and now Chucklefish is barely communicating with us at all about Starbound. At what point are you willing to step back and say "OK, I think we (the playerbase in general, not any single person) are partially at fault here"?

    Maybe if Starbound's playerbase had been as adoring and loving as Terraria's, maybe there'd be a 1.5 by now.

    People praise and cheer at Re-Logic and Redigit every time he does just about anything, and he's more than eager to keep giving the players what they want, even though he said that he had plans of shutting Terraria's development down multiple times now, but he keeps coming back because the players go "We love you! Please come back!" and he can't resist.

    Meanwhile, Starbound's playerbase is going "WTF CF! WHERE'S OUR UPDATE!? THE GAME IS TRASH MAKE IT BETTER!!!!!"

    Which developer do you think is more inclined to continue stuff having to do with the game?
     
  11. Kawa

    Kawa Tiy's Beard

    Well, I think you pretty much nailed it there.
     
    NuclearSlayer52, The Squid and Xylia like this.
  12. Daikon Ocelot

    Daikon Ocelot Spaceman Spiff

    I totally agree with that. We can't just complaint and keep criticizing the dev. We should do something to help them, instead.
     
    Ickura, Tamorr and Xylia like this.
  13. MidgetLover

    MidgetLover Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    so, is people actually having a meltdown over not having Localization Files updated?
     
  14. HI-MAX²

    HI-MAX² Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    I don't know what you're talking about.

    I don't use Twitter, but I check the news about Terraria via RSS. By the way, I can't do the same with Starbound (or any Chucklefish title?) since the RSS is broken since I remember... Wait, it seems I reported it before (but as usual it did nothing).

    [​IMG]

    It seems like good communication to me.
     
    Ickura likes this.
  15. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    Well, let's see.... when you remove the Sales, and OW being cancelled you can remove 5 of those which leaves you with 9 updates in 9 months.

    That's one update per month. That's okay, kinda?

    But still, these are all on twitter or RSS (which doesn't seem to work for me) and a couple of those were really small teasers, like, literally just 1 tiny GIF.

    Not to say that that's bad or anything, but it's not like they're talking with us on a weekly basis or anything.
     
  16. Kawa

    Kawa Tiy's Beard

    Compared to, let's say Dwarf Fortress?
     
  17. Flannel

    Flannel Subatomic Cosmonaut

    Starbound has the potential to be a fantastic game. Whenever Starbound would update, no matter how small, my desire to play skyrocketed. I always enjoyed playing Starbound greatly more than Terraria, even with cruddy new systems like the Mecha system.

    The biggest issue of all is that Chucklefish just doesn't care. They've quite literally abandoned us, and seemingly abandoned their projects without really giving us a reason to it. Even when they canceled the bounty hunter system (which i remind you was very highly anticipated as a whole by the community), they didn't really tell us "why". The shrot of it was that they wanted to finish the XBox port first... Which would have been understandable if they were still working on that. But they aren't.

    Starbound gave up on PC when they canceled 1.4. They've long since given up on console considering they don't even seem to be trying to port it anymore.

    I understand there are limitations - not every engine can do everything, or maybe at the time they didn't know how to do something with their current knowledge without blowing up the game. But at the same time, there's definitely a lot they can do that could make Starbound drastically better. People have already tried to mod it in, and some stuff can be picked up by looking at similar games' more popular mods...

    For example, a lot of people wanted summoning to be a thing in Starbound. It's not even remotely close to being a thing, and the closest you can get to it is just by taking crew members with you and playing Pokebound. It's a shame, but also a good way to invest time into to see if they could bring the community an entirely brand-new chunk of content.

    Another thing that Starbound would really benefit is a sort of leveling system, because as it is, the game doesn't really offer solid progression or variation. You just flat-out will not be able to do anything if you don't get good enough rng to get appropriately tiered gear, then add in the gear level system for staves and wands, and you have a mess of inadequate content. Then there's the fact that combat itself in Starbound is extremely static and predictable, making combat itself pretty boring. It seems like all I really do in Starbound anymore is just grow food. If I wanted to do that, I may as well play Stardew... (Except I love being a monster boy so Stardew doesn't fill that niche)

    There's just a lot the devs seriously need to work on. We may be in version 1.3, but the game is barely different than it was back in Koala and Giraffe. The only difference is poorly streamlined content that's designed to kick us from point A to point B without giving us anything in between.

    In vanilla starbound, there's no real difference between an endgame Hylotl and a earlygame Novakid. The Hylotl only wins because of the gear, and if you throw the Hylotl's gear to the Novakid, the Novakid will win. If they have the same exact gear, the Novakid and Hylotl will either win or lose based on who has better aim. That's a really, really bland and incomplete combat system. I understand Starbound's major focus in space exploration and building, but combat *is* a major part of the game. You guys even gave us like 6 different bosses to fight as part of the story.

    Melee is basic and unfulfilling, magic is locked behind tiering and then hits a hard cap on generation near the end, and guns are either stupidly powerful or stupidly weak with no real in between. The enemies you find on a Tier 3 planet are just as likely to kill you as a the ones on a Tier 6 planet. There's just no sense of progression, especially when at its core, the character is still the exact same.

    A brand new Hylotl has the same exact base HP and stamina as a fresh-endgame Hylotl. Once again, the only difference is gear, but the gear is just as effective with the brand new Hylotl as it is the endgame one.

    Starbound is like taking a bunch of different animals and sticking them in one, small pen and calling it a day and hoping they don't kill each other. But it doesn't have to be like this. If the devs would extend enough care to seek out what the community wants or how we feel, then we could give them tons of ideas on how to make the game better. Of course, not every idea is plausible or can be done easily, or will be done. It's only natural to pick and choose what can be done or what you have to patience to work on.

    The over-reliance on mods to make Starbound fun is just what makes Starbound so... Unfun. There shouldn't be a need to play Mod Roulette just to see if you'll enjoy the game that day or have to wait til tomorrow. This is also a critical problem with Minecraft - there's such an over-reliance on mods that the game itself is very basic and bland... Except Minecraft is actually realizing that now and is trying to become something unique.
     
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  18. Shaadaris

    Shaadaris Giant Laser Beams

    I don't agree with the toxicity and whining, no. But I am pretty darn certain such things wouldn't have been nearly as pronounced had Chucklefish actually stuck with things.
    A lot of what people complained vocally about were regressions from previously implemented ideas. The removal of racial weapons, the weakening of the story and cutting out of unique racial stories that had been advertised since the beginning, hyping up and discussing the story impact the Agarans would have then leaving half their assets out and making them generic village type number 43, the changing of the hotbar system only a few updates before 1.0, from a semi-intuitive mix-and-match selection that people had gotten used to over the entire development to a set-in-stone pair system with half the usable slots without swapping the bar entirely, which also left items cluttering your inventory, and with no intention to open it up to player modification at the time, until people complained loud enough. The addition of enemy attacks was widely praised, only for them to revert back to contact damage and a few super basic moves. The levelling system for planets, entire progression based on sectors, techs, survival equipment, etc. changed completely at least 5 times. Scrapping ALL of the interesting and exciting background lore they had built up almost entirely mere months before 1.0 launched. Making the Tech system into a weak 3-type system where all versions of each type were nearly identical or all but useless. Remember when Chucklefish said combat and story wouldn't be the only way to progress? That you could be a farmer or a builder and still make your way through the star chart? I remember. And I'm still waiting on that. Just like everything else they said they would do, said they were doing, then didn't deliver, time and time again, and always with an incessently opaque reasoning, or no reasoning at all, just expecting people to forget what they said last time.

    In my eyes, the main reason people grew to be so toxic was that Chucklefish seemed to have no actual plan for the game, and constantly scrapped ideas they had publicly shared and hyped, reworked things that didn't need reworking numerous times, and in many cases, outright removing content people enjoyed and making the game's underlying systems objectively more boring. Blindly adoring devs is a stupid idea. Chucklefish made more and more decisions that did not sit well with the community as time went on, and drifted further and further from the vision they initially proposed that made people want the game. OF COURSE people were going to get more and more upset.

    Terraria, on the other hand, has had smaller updates over time, yes, but has, for the most part, they've consistently improved or added to the game, not taken away, unneccessarily revamped, or anything like that. And trust me, people do not blindly love Re-Logic. Did you see the major backlash to the Moon Lord changes? They removed a lot of ways people had come up with to combat the boss. They gave its attacks entirely seperate immunity frames from everything else in the game, they made it pretty much perma-remove all lifesteal from any items you were using, they made it always teleport right on top of you if you got just a bit too far away from it. And this being a boss that you need to go through the most long and annoying event in the game to access, or spend 90% of the resources you get from said event to even re-attempt. People were VERY pissed. And many still consider it to be one of the worst changes Re-Logic made, introducing fake-difficulty in that boss, in a game which was previously all about openly finding new and unique ways to combat enemies, building your own special arenas, using wacky mechanics to figure out cool new tactics, etc.

    People were also very annoyed with the removal of Ocram from the console versions to make the game more cohesive across versions. But Re-Logic was very direct and open about their reasoning, which quelled a lot of the anger, as it helped people to see why it was overall a better thing for the game going forward. But were people still upset? Yeah. Of course. This is the internet.

    But unlike Starbound's development, that was the rare exception, not the norm.
    Terraria was officially discontinued multiple times, and each time, the playerbase didn't freak out all that much, because each time, the game felt satisfying and complete.
    Starbound, meanwhile, has so many people upset with the lack of any news because it still does not feel like the game the devs sold them on, not like a finished, cohesive product.


    And again, you're cherry-picking. One update per month on the blog... And very frequent teasers, communication, and even discussion on Twitter between devs and community members. Tiny teasers? It's still TEASERS. Still assurances they're working on it, adding new stuff, that they themselves care about the game and community!

    Compare that to 4 months of absolutely goddamn nothing from Chucklefish while they actively advertise and hype up new, entirely unrelated projects, right after cancelling an update people were actually looking forward to!


    At this point it really seems like you're just pulling reasons out of a hat to bash the community for being upset. Were they often too upset? Yeah. Were they rightfully upset? Also yeah, since they had their hopes smashed time and time again, from a dev that seemed to be getting increasingly out-of-touch as time went on, the same dev that would talk about new systems or progression in one blog post, only for the update a couple months later to be completely different than what they had said, the same dev that hyped and teased new stuff that never actually got put in the game, the same dev that released things people enjoyed, then haphazardly took away, sometimes with an inferior replacement, sometimes with no replacement, without a single word on why.

    Yeah. People are upset. Of course they are. How could they not be, after all this?
     
  19. MidgetLover

    MidgetLover Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    if makes y'all feel better, that new game Wargroove it's a tactics game. Looks decent and may even be good, but it ain't gonna be nowhere as loved as Starbound.
    Sure as hell i don't buy games just to "support" development, least development of games I don't care for in the first place when the one i've got it's being unattended, so it's a good place to start if you want to send a message to developers, do it with your wallet, if history is anything to go by, they are likely to ignore Wargroove in the future too in favor of the next thing on their list
     
  20. Vrow

    Vrow Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    Funny you mention that, because I also happen to recall Chucklefish censoring a lot of the valid criticisms (be them put in harsh or gentle ways) in these very forums or closing them like you'd close a door on someone's face, especially when there's a mention of the good ol' shady practices (which admittedly I know near to nothing about since I had stopped looking into it a few months back and most of the public discussion about them went poof). And it's telling that this type of arguing about development and/or Troubled Development has been around since 2014.

    While there is a certain minimum percentage of toxic fans in anything (the 1% rule thing), I do remember quite a number of Starbound Fans snapping and losing it after months of pleading for answers or even a nod about certain issues to get absolutely nothing. It's an intriguing pattern. Fan backs the game since the Kickstarter, fan rides along the troubled development and drama, fan starts to get worried and starts asking questions, fan gets door to the face, fan overloads with frustration into a ball of ire, fan gets banned and their subsequent rants and criticisms get deleted. Rinse and repeat throughout the forum and the subreddit alike.

    Funniest Fact: Apparently "Soon" was a dreadful word even back then. Hah!
     
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