An emotional thread about your disappointments in Starbound

You would have to blame the players for that one.

When they (the devs) wanted to make the races realy different there was a strong negative response, it seems most players just want to play the race that has good lore/style/etc without having to worry about bonuses and whatnot (they for example dont want to feel forced to pick a race they dont like becuse it has a bonus thats better or at least more suited for them).

I think the current plan is race specific armor bonuses (but i havent heard anything about it in a long time), that way any race can get said bonuses if you just gather the crafting schematics or have another char make you the armor.

 

Really? Because now all I see is people begging for race abilities and such, with no noticeable pushback such as the one hunger/cold faces.

 

The feedback about wanting race differences seems kinda minor considering how strong the negative feedback was back then. At least in my humble opinion.

But tbh it may be becuse it was just a bigger community then, it was way back.

 

Huh. I had no idea...

But what I meant by variety was not only in how they handle or what bonuses each race could offer, but also in how the world reacts to my choice of race. As in quests and events regarding my race specifically. The same thing happens with every race, with only minor textual differences.

With that being the way it is the only thing left would be to experience it all again as a ranged character, but I managed to do that with a Glitch of all races...

Also, @Garatgh Deloi, ugh could you quote me there again? That text was borked when I first posted it and seeing it in your quote kind of gets in my nerves...
Sorry for this...

 

For quests:

I belive they are still planning to make different main quests for every race (Perhaps not all the quests, i dont know. But they did talk about differences).

So i would see the current quests more like placeholders then final product. But who knows if it will end up more to your likeing or not in the end.

 

An don't forget, the wasted dev dollars on the paper airplane. That little piece of code was like $756,345.13 due to licensing issues from the Paper Airplane Alliance of the Middle Eastern City States of Northern Prussia. Not sure if it was worth it.....

 

It was. Because you're worth it.

 

Dag nasty, your right..I am good enough, I am handsome enough, I deserve this!!!!

 

Like Minecraft, not done. But makes fun.
Best are these players with 100+ hours playtime who saying its a bad game.
People. Say what you think,but wait for its done to do so. (At least 1.0). You see improvement, unlike games like castle story.
And dont forget, its a sandbox. It never will liked form everyone, but its mod-able so it will much fan-side implemented.

 

Thing I am currently dissappointed with is the lag of immersive quests. Bringing coffee for some spoiled brat feels a bit out of place, would send a dragon after them to torch them down when they are hiding in a forest... killing someone for a living is better... or taking them as prisoners and sell them to the highest bidder. Or getting Erichus to help someone else. Or medicine for some sort of disease and what not. But getting coffee? Meh...

 

Disappointed is a good word for how I feel about Starbound as a whole, but maybe some of that is my fault. I assumed that the game would, mostly, continue to develop and get more complex from the way that it was for most of last year; a wide variety of environments to explore, more (and more interesting) settlements of the different species, ruins, all of that. Since the update to Unstable, it's become apparent that it's not what they had in mind at all.

My way of playing the game, essentially, was to make a character, grab a flashlight and the matter manipulator, beam down to the planet below and try to survive; I ran from monsters who were way too powerful, sometimes got destroyed by a miniboss within minutes of landing. I scrounged for food and resources, carved out primitive shelters that'd sometimes get leveled almost as soon as I'd started by meteor showers or flooded by a rainstorm. When night time came, I'd end up hiding in a hole surrounded by torches to avoid freezing while monsters who could all but one-shot stomped around overhead. Every now and then a bird would come by and start vomiting fiery blood at me and I'd panic and fall off of my own roof. My goal, most of the time, was to see if I could make that character last long enough for them to return to a relatively friendly civilization, find a place to live. Sometimes that involved something as simple as a walk to the other side of the planet, and sometimes you had to fight your way through planet after planet of research labs and run-down prisons.

So, as simple and sort of busted as the game's difficulty scaling was, I had enjoyed myself. I figured, when they really buckled down, fixed the combat system, and put some more work into the core mechanics, it'd be a really great time exploring the universe. I was excited for the prospect of armor doing more than just 'balancing out' the damage monsters did, so that on any given world you'd survive four or five hits in the day and two or three at night. I liked the idea of the scaling not being so flat out ridiculous that the damage numbers quickly reached the thousands.

And now... now whenever you create a new character you're on the same world. In the same corner of space. In order to get back to that sense of not knowing what to expect, I've got to throw in a mod or some console commands that let me fix the ship enough that I can warp to some other distant world... except now the variety's been split up along with the difficulty, so that you can't really go explore a desert or a frozen snowball the way you used to, because the temperature system is gone. No more danger of freezing at night, no more huddling up to a flaming barrel because the prison suddenly became freezing cold... and no more fighting to find food, or any of that. It's a massive bummer. I was finally excited for the unstable update to fix the combat, but for me, they ruined just about everything else I actually liked in the game.

Hopefully someone can mod some of that stuff back in, eventually; I hope enough people still care about the game to put in the work, but I don't have my hopes up.

 

Man, OP that whole rant was literally about nothing. Games take time to develop....2 to 3 years is normal, anything less and I'd be worried that it's being shoved out the door. Additionally games are ALWAYS a learning process 100% of the time without fail....you learn to do things better by doing them, the fact that the devs are willing to go over and redo previous work so that we can have a better game is something to be grateful for, not to bash. And now here we are....in the final stretch before the great 1.0 that will surely land this year and the game could not be going better, the game is amazing and some of the major features coming before release are literally mind blowing(like player built space stations for example). Every single thing you complain about is just you failing to comprehend the enormous benefits gained because of that action by the developers.

 

Please expand, sir.

 

Very simple, a better modding system is the best and most long-term benefit that will ensure that no matter what this game will have lots of content coming for many years to come. Additionally them redoing certain systems of the game is allowing them to expand content beyond what was thought possible and allowing both themselves and modders to bring more high profile features like the upcoming editor mode and support for player built space stations. Not to mention a straight up better game with more content right out the door upon release.

 

OK I get it. Don't worry about what the devs do or don't do, because the unpaid modders will put it right later?

 

I never said any such thing, in fact I have more than complete confidence the 1.0 without any mods or even future official post-release content(which CF will keep coming for a long while) will be more than worth the wait. But how can mods be bad? Right now for the new Upbeat Giraffe there's a mod that adds some 100 missions and lets you recruit a crew.....and a lot more very special mods that greatly add to the game are on the way. Why are people like you so hell bent on whining about even the best of things?

 

Nobody is like me (and nobody likes me). I can live with it.

 

Starbug didn't say the mods are bad....Quite the opposite. Starbug is simply an realistic person. Just like me. 2-3 years of developing you said? Yup that's about right. And we don't have have that game that we should be proud of.
At the end of the day....realistically speaking the developing speed is incredibly slow. And if you look at all the indie companies, they all associate developing speed with money (funds). And looking at Chucklefish....something is not working very well there.

 

I will say this after abandoning this game for the last year and just recently learning about and subscribing to the nightly builds with a subsequent playthrough:

I am somewhat surprised at the lack of progress this game has made in the time since I've left it alone. In my opinion, it seems the game is essentially is where it was nearly a year ago just reorganized in a slightly different way.

There are certainly some improvements. I do like the missions a lot more than the original as they seem a bit more definitive and the building of materials makes a lot more sense. I'm much happier with the upgrade progression than I was previously. However, the atmosphere of the game itself continues to lack that something that makes it, well, enjoyable to play long term.

I've logged nearly 600 hours into a game like Terraria (and yes, I know before the replies come that this is not a Terraria clone or replacement but it CERTAINLY has distinct elements about it that scream similarities). It was fun because its primary focus was identified (item progression and basic habitation surrounding a combat-oriented experience) very easily and the early iterations rotated around that experience.

Starbound, in its current state, would get perhaps 10-12 hours of consistent playtime before I essentially dropped it again. There's nothing that's enduring or defining about the experience. There's no difficult bosses to defeat or a fun way of assembling a building or some other structure. There's all these strange additions like paper airplanes and coffee but no theme that seems to bring them all together. Terraria succeeded because it focused on a very controlled number of elements to deliver a sustaining and enjoyable experience. The planetary exploration and combat are both promising but currently monotonous. Even vendors after two years do not have a purchasing system. I went through essentially the same exercise of maxing out my character within even less time than the original 'system' upgrade path. Starbound seems to be trying to achieve all things for all people with arbitrary bits thrown in based off of some 'cool' idea someone had at 3 in the morning. It has failed to discover the element in which it should excel and emphasize it.

For instance, if it was supposed to be an exploration game, then the exploration element of it should have been focused on and refined. Instead, cursory elements like combat has been balanced and re-balanced again resulting in essentially continuous iterations of an incomplete system. If combat was the focus, then why are there so many odd little underground dungeons that yield essentially nothing and simultaneously don't really enhance exploration?

I must say as someone coming in on this with cold eyes: It's fairly impressive the lack of focus this enterprise seems to have. I hope that there is a lot of content or some sort of element waiting in the development phase of this project that will yield something truly enjoyable. And as for the development portion of this whole thing, I agree with the OP; it has been far too long with too little progress.

I would recommend to Chucklefish that if they want Starbound to be successful, find an element of the game in which you wish to emphasize and spend your time polishing it. If it's truly a 'work in progress' additions can be added later to enhance it, much as games like Terraria have done (Hardmode did not exist with the original version of the game, after all). If you don't do so, I'm afraid what you'll be left with is a messy plethora of features - none of which demonstrate any real direction or draw - that will leave the player wanting. Do not allow your attention other projects ruin the one that was supposed to be the shining gem in your repertoire of titles.