Feedback A short review after completing the story

After finally getting around to finishing the story, I think its time to give review coupled with some feedback of the game from the perspective of someone who has been following the game for a good while. Note, there will be a couple linked youtube videos along with this.

To get straight to point, in the games current state, I am not really able to recommend it to many people. Maybe some of my gaming buddies or those that are just starting to dabble with sandbox-action games and would likely struggle with Terraria. This is not to say that Starbound is a bad game, if I had not been following the game for a while and the release was my initial experience with the game I would likely be able to recommend it to more people. The main reason I can't recommend it currently, is I know Chucklefish can do much better with Starbound than where it currently is, and this was shown in a lot of things that have been cut out over the years, this will be the last thing I touch on as it goes a bit more into speculation on the dev cycle of the game. As most of the current good things fall into what I would call the fluff category, such as graphics and music, they enhance a game but they don't make it.

First off, the Tutorial needs some major work. The biggest reason the tutorial needs a lot of work, is a good majority of it is based around assumptions of older gamers and some associated tropes, and explains very little or takes too long if one doesn't follow them. Just using before the graduation as an example, it takes a decent amount of time for the game to even suggest how to get out of the bed, let alone even mentioning the same keys are used for movement plus it takes almost 10 seconds for this to even pop up in the first place. And unless one follows the trope of Talk to Everyone, the one NPC that explains a little more about controls and how to access them can be totally missed and there is very little to even grab ones attention to speak to that particular NPC for the length of time to get all of the messages, as in the middle of the cycle there is a fluff line that might cause a player to wander off, as after all the Tutorial setting is encouraging one to go ahead without dallying too much as it keeps stressing you are running late .

To top it off, it is very hit or miss on some of the important functions if one does not go into the options or mess around with buttons on the screen. Some examples of major functions missed outside of the option screen, no mention of how to access the 2nd half of ones hotbar, no explanation of how to access the crafting menu, no descriptions for the important UI elements such as Health, Energy, and Hunger, as well as how some of the basic weapon types work. You just can't assume your players are going to muck about in the control options to figure out the controls, and since instruction books are a relic of the past anymore, the Tutorial section has to do some heavy listing. I do like how parts of the tutorial pop up as you get to needing them, but unless one is used to sandbox games it could take a while to even do an action that will suggest something of use. Take picking up wood for example, once do so the game will mention you can do stuff with it by opening the crafting menu, but never states how to open it. I almost prefer the old intro/tutorial part illustrated in this video over the current one, because while just as bad it at least guides one through the essentials of the sandbox/survival aspects until one gets up and going.


The best way I can think of to solve this, is by combining the two methods together, and expanding the tutorial a bit by touching on what happens before the graduation day. Maybe there is some test the would be graduates have to go through or another protectorate offers a way to earth to the stranded player after a few tasks. AKA a setting more conducive to a tutorial for a sandbox game, can walk a new player through the basics a bit more in a more practical setting than what both versions had. As it stands now, the Tutorial is expecting one to be an experienced gamer and familiar with the sandbox style of games, which is not a good thing.

Second, the planets don't quite feel alive. While the villages do have a little bit of lively feeling due to the random quests popping up, most planets really don't feel alive. This has a lot to do with how monsters and biomes spawn, more with the monsters. Thanks to them spawning only near the edges of the players presence it is often possible to go a good ways without seeing a single monster, only to turn around and go the other way to usually run into a swarm. Couple this with the potential of running into mini-barren biomes which spawn nothing and some planets end up feeling very dead outside any settlements they might have. Compare this to when one beams to the final dungeon which is just teeming with life and feels very alive. Now not every planet needs to be crawling with wildlife, but more often than not there is not enough happening on the planet to make it seem alive. The reason I mentioned Biomes as well, is because around biome transitions is often where it feels the most barren.

Third, the difficulty. Starbound is by no means a difficult game, however it really lacks in aspects that challenge a player. Before I go farther into this, Challenge and Difficulty are not quite the same. A challenging game is more based around mechanics and depth. While a difficult game is often a more demanding, and often punishing game. Two videos from Extra Credits on youtube explain these aspects better than I can, and as a plus, they have a lot of good videos about game design as a whole.

For Challenge vs Punishing
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For one on Depth leading to challenging gameplay, and also touches on why a good Tutorial is so important as well.


Now the reason I can say Starbound is lacking in challenge and depth is right now the most challenge and depth is in the initial Tech tutorials, and never really shows up anywhere else out side of one or two challenge rooms. Are there any missions that require one to use a dash, double jump or morph ball anywhere? Nope, no place needs a dash, the morphball areas are totally optional, and the double jump areas can be bypassed with other means such as a rope. Outside of the missions, one has access to the Matter Manipulator and dirt to take care of any crazy situations so the techs are more of a convenience than a necessity for the whole game, yet in the Tech Tutorials there are hints of needing people to use them to bypass timed doors, or access hard to reach locations. Everywhere else what difficulty there is more along the lines of a gear check or punishing, and nothing to do with mechanics or depth. The old Apex labs were not difficult, they were punishing requiring pixel perfect jumps or just brute force with shields, parrying, dirt, and bandages, which is why people didn't like them. The Birdpocolypse was a bit of both, while a little punishing, it also was genuinely challenging as well, as paying attention to your surroundings and the enemies was needed, and it only really got punishing when you had to deal with larger numbers of them. I would welcome back the Birdpocolypse well before the old Apex labs, as it could be fun dealing with the birds but not the labs. Starbound does not need punishing elements, but it does need some challenging elements. And if one wants to go on about the sandbox side not needing challenge outside of how one builds, can take the colony system as an example, there is no real reason to do anything interesting to attract colonist X as there really is no difference to the system for a big lavish room vs one that is a bare minimum box that barely fits the needed furniture, so there is no incentive for many to even try and take a build beyond a tiny box, which takes a lot of depth out of the system.

Now this last bit, is more on the dev cycle the game has gone through, and some musings on why the game has ended up in the state that it is in currently. I have kind of come to the conclusion that a lot of things in the game have been developed backwards, which has resulted in its rather shallow gameplay currently. Instead of focusing on the simple first and working towards the complex, a lot of the awesome complex features that drew people in at first are currently gone, and left with the simple stuff developed later. It is more like they went we want cool features X,Y and Z, and put them in right away instead of focusing on A, B and C to lay the foundations for those awesome features. Early on, biomes and planet types were not tied to type of star, but what was found on them was tied to a threat rating, meaning you could have Forest planets with critters as dangerous as a Volcanic planet and have appropriate rewards, now a Forest planet is always going to be rather dull and unchallenging once progress past it. Monsters used to be fairly random and due to that ended up being more unique and unexpected in what they could do, now we know exactly what any monster will do as they are fairly set in stone, with the lone exception of the large birds in Glitch castles. The hot bar, one of the most essential elements of the game, was redone pretty much last minute before the release. For most, locking down a key feature such as the hot bar, would be one of the first things to do, as it effects almost every other aspect of a game. For the monsters, they effect combat as a whole, and it is difficult to get combat feeling good initially against wildly changing monsters, so would be beneficial to start with the more generic and set monsters. For managing progression, starting with planets being a set difficulty so can keep new players from being overwhelmed is a good thing, but after a while it also makes those planets boring as well. Looking at this trend, Chucklefish seems to like doing things backwards and starting with the complex, and eventually ending up having to redo things from the simpler side. In a sense, they bit off a little more than they could chew, and in dealing with it they walked back a lot of good features over time, features that attracted a good number of people early on.

And due to that last bit of them starting with the more complicated stuff first, I know they can do better. As right now, there is a decent framework to work around, and for those of us that have been around for the years Starbound has been in EA know that there is so much more that should be re-added to the game, and they should not be passed off as brand new things and instead be noted as a re-introduction of features that needed to be reworked.

 

Nice review, also the progression system got simplified too much. We got like four tiers of armor now when we had 10.

 

@Hawklaser
I agree with your judgement in most parts, but one:
The colony system. The colony system is there for players to fill their universe as they see fit and it is important to not force the colony system on anyone! Especially the colony system is what seperates Starbound from Terraria by miles. Yes, it still needs quite some work (too much to name for this topic*), but in general this is what makes Starbound an interesting sandbox game.

* Just to name two very important aspects for the colony system to be implemented
1. Currently there are just two "job types" for settlers: Guard and Idiot
__ The moment CF implements more jobs, like FARMER (can be done, see the MOD Gardenbot) Starbound will be so much more interesting "to play around with".

2. The moment CF implements HIDING the complete wiring-logic together with the wires, DUH, adding more complex logic than a door switch to ones creations will become way more interesting. (Can be done, too. See the MOD Hiding Sensors and Logic Gates)

 

Not wanting to force the colony system on anyone, but more along the lines finding ways to incentivize people to build more than coffin apartments for their colonists. Basically, encourage people to try things other than stacking tiny box upon tiny box. Which is something see quite often in Terraria and other sandbox games with NPCs that move in. Players often opt for the least intensive builds, as nothing really encourages them to do otherwise. The simplest way Starbound could do this is better rent from larger and more elaborate apartments.

 

With this I agree 100%.

Additionally they could make it so that some jobs require the player to pay for instead of receiving rent. Guards, anyone? Farmers could be paid for, Merchants would have to pay "Marketplace-rent", "normal" tenants would actually pay PIXELS, instead of throwing random crap at people.

 

Things like this would add a nice bit of depth to the game, without adding a lot of complexity. And depth is what keeps more people playing for longer, therefore more likely to talk about and recruit for a game.