After today's announcement: what will be special about Starbound?

I put other for the pol. At the moment, it seems like this game has surpassed all of my expectations for it and is turning into something amazing. I expect all three options to happen: obviously it should be bug free at RELEASE and be very stable, also I have yet to see a game in which you can explore ~400,000,000,000,000,000 planets (yes, that many), and obviously, we all know it looks to play very similarly to Terraria, and Starbound seems to be a very big improvement over Terraria in almost every aspect.

To me, to say that this game is buggy, noting new, or the same game-play-wise as Terria would be a pretty big bummer.

 

Starbound certainly won't be bug-free, no matter how hard the devs work. That's not even to say bugs are always a bad thing. Skate 2 and 3 are absolutely fantastic games, and a good reason for that IS the plethora of physics bugs the game has. It may offer some new experiences that other games before it haven't, but it's not an entirely original concept. The gameplay... it's already a terraria alternative. Not a clone, not a ripoff, an alternative. One that seemingly has a much better polish, especially for something that is still pre-beta.

What Starbound needs to truly set itself apart as a great game is innovation within it's genre and freedom. ("B-b-but, Minecraft and Terraria have loads of freedom!" No they don't. You want to be effective in combat? You'd best have this specific set of gear to be the most useful.

Now, it's already set itself apart from the likes of minecraft and terraria in how world generation/universe generation runs, something that occurs before any actual gameplay takes place. Another good innovation (for the genre) that Starbound is introducing is active/reactive NPCs. Terraria and Minecraft's friendly NPCs simply go about their business, ignoring the player, the world around them, and the monsters trying to devour their flesh. We've seen plenty of ways that Starbound's NPCs are able to interact with not only the player, but with each other.

In MC and Terraria, you aren't given much of a choice in how to play, either. You're fairly stuck to Melee, Ranged, Magic (in combat), and crafting outside of combat. Inside each of those, you have set items that you are expected to use, surpass, and throw away. Nothing really sticks with you for the game. Whether that's climbing the pitifully short tiers of equipment (wood, iron, diamond, or wood, copper, iron, silver, etc.) until you get the endgame equipment, which is the same for everyone, or crafting items and buildings one block at a time.

Starbound sets itself apart from these by having very wide tiers of items,set up much like Borderlands' gun system. While there may be some general progression (mini-tiers) inside each tier of weaponry and armor, the procedural generation of these items nearly ensures that you'll find something truly unique in every play through. This contributes to both the choice and freedom categories. Especially if players are able to upgrade weapons and armor (Dark Souls style) so that an item might always remain useful. This would allow the player the choice of any weapon they've ever gathered to be useful for the entire game.


As for Tiy's game assessment, I don't agree at all.

Hellgate: London was a rushed release. Lombasted on release with bad reviews. By the time the servers were actually shut down (due in part to these bad reviews) the game had rid itself of 99% of the bugs and ill-fitting features that those bad reviews hinged upon. Some still see it as terrible, relying solely on that buggy first impression. Once the bugs got flattened out and the community started thriving, Hellgate was a wonderful experience.

The recent debacle with "Day One: Garry's Incident". Game was released without any rush, as well as no delays. Generally viewed as a pretty crappy game.

People always look to DNF when talking about bad delayed games and act as if it's the only example of a bad delayed game. How about Aliens: Colonial Marines? Just as bad, just as delayed. Game was originally slated to be released in 2001. That failed, was picked back up in 2008, delayed, redelayed, triple-delayed, and finally (C-c-c-c-combo breaker) released in 2012.

And then you have games that set a deadline, meet them, and can go either way.

Dark Souls was still a fantastic game, despite being rushed. Were there cut features? Yes, but it was still a good game that got rushed into release.

Delays/rushed releases have very little to do with how good a game actually is. Developers and publishers (Chucklefish fills both roles in Starbound) need to work together to make the game meet expectations (those of the developers first and foremost). One of Starbound's biggest mistakes thus far was letting people know it was in development so early. The resulting hype is going to be the biggest help/hurdle to the game's eventual failure or success.

 

You will never have a perfect, bug-free game.
I doubt they will be able to innovate to such an extent that it pushes the genre.

All we can hope for is a better experience compared to games like Terraria, and that's what I expect to happen in full.

 

I'm sure Starbound won't be anything new. Just a sandbox that took long time to develop, with references, cameos and random generation. Maybe even worse.

 

I just want Starbound to be a better Terraria but in space

I don't want something to blow my mind and make me cry

 

What delay? Did I miss something? The post made by Tiy didn't say anything about the game being delayed.

 

Yeah... The beta has a high priority right now I believe, getting that beta ready, even though it's probably draining the devs to their limits, I think that's a important step to make right now... And I think it can make it for 2013, it's just that they want to have a really good first impression for the beta, and that's not a easy task at hand. It worries me a little, because if the beta doesn't make it for this year I think that many people will be pissed off and want a refund, that's really not a good thing. If that happened it could delay the development even further.

The full release of Starbound, from what I've heard and seen so far, I believe will take a good while longer than 2014. I mean if they want the game to reach it's full potential, we're looking at year 2015+ here, but that's just my opinion of course.

 

Initially they'd estimated that the *public release* would be released this year. They revised it a while ago to be *beta* this year. That's the delay.

 

To add to OP - Lets not forget that we're going to be getting a beta - which means we're getting a full game; not a demo...."which is nice"

(bonus points to guess the 'which is nice' reference - the clue is a British comedy series '94 - '97)

 

IIRC something happened and they were forced to announce the game, not sure what it was though

 

It was a name copyright dispute, I believe.

 

Ah.

 

Quote from Tiy: "I won’t apologise for delaying the game a couple of times". The word itself was mentioned 9 times in his blog entry. All I wanted to say is that I don't care about possible delays that much - I was more worried about the general statements he made.

There is. It's the "other (write a post)" one - and it appears you found it.



That aside, thanks everyone for the replies. There were really good ones and I agree with many. Eventually Tiy just made that posting to show that there are reasons for the delays which would affect the quality. I also believe they made some grave mistakes during development and need to rewrite and adapt constantly, which most likely cost a lot of time.

I guess the general consensus is that most of us don't expect a bug free, completely innovative game. The content and randomness in Starbound is looking very nice - if they improve upon that and eventually support with more (hopefully not savegame-breaking) content later I am sure that we will have hours of fun ahead.

 

Actually, the very first estimate was for the full game to be released in Summer 2012. Beta 2013 is something like their 5th estimate.

 

once the beta is out they will be able to unbug things a lot better more people playing means more bugs found they can take as long as they want on the final game just so long as they do beta this year so not only can we play it but also to help out in finding problems

 

well i made a brain storming post here the titles a bit off but its gonna be about discussing how other companies had handled beta's and how were going to look at the best games out there over the last 25 years and find that cure for cancer the only way this games gonna have something really new is if we or they invent that stuff. and iam working on informing people of some of the most inavative experiments games companies have tried and where even they as some of the most bad ass inovations of their time were only powered by old crap now that were in the future its time to look at the past and learn from our success and failures. so many games with potentials that could appear like something new but was really just made like shit and never saw day. what ever it is we can find the answer with information and reviewing/ brain storming.

example : terraria added these gems for a capture the gem. well maybe theres gonna be some buttons that you wire up to a machine that starts a game mode. there are 3 buttons in each room and when all six buttons are pressed a counter starts and a game mode is started. almost like a boss battle the code just kinda pops up and changes the game play and maybe even set on a timer. this could be triggered on a barren untouched planet or people could make arenas to set this up. there could be a block that shoots a lazer to the top of the sky and acts as a force field for the game mode field.

i play starmade and you can set up blocks to be placed in lines or squares or cubes so each click is a line of ten strait up for faster building . you could have a paint program sorta right in it where you fill in some pixels on a small grid and then chose the material and place the whole thing at one time. so you make a set of stairs then just stamp it in.

just give er shit man go insane and just be completely unreal with your ideas so they are big clumby and retarded and well carve something magical out of it.

illd be adding vids and games to consider for brain storming in this thread for a while hoping to collaberate and show some real value for these guys

http://community.playstarbound.com/...e-of-left-field-thinking-brainstorming.31701/