An emotional thread about your disappointments in Starbound

Frankly I'm always super-hyper-turbo-edition-2-EX leery of any invoking of "what a lawyer would say" in regards to geek entertainment debates.

 

I need a translator what language was that?

 

it's what plants crave

 

Ok, i was wrong here. But to be fair, they did not write that the full release would be out in 2013. They only said that the game would be out then, which can translate to "you can play the game by then". I know this is a bit far-fetched but if you want to be hairsplitting, then lets do this together.

And Chucklefish have no way of controlling what some magazines will write about them or their games release dates. Except for if this was an interview you read.

It was clearly mentioned a lot of times on many places that you will suffer progression loss and such. They were really open about this and tried to post this wherever possible.
But what i think is, they did not have to. If you have only the slightest bit of common sense, you would know that early access games/games ind evelopment have bugs and are not finished products. You are to expect data loss in any way. If you do not, you are a bit too naive and should avoid every game that was fully release and patched a few times. Maybe you only should buy games that others recommend as totally payable without bugs, if you want to be save.

Please tell me where you think that chucklefish made any false promises or was building up false hopes that could not be evaded by using your common sense.
They are developers, not your parents or some kind of guide who keeps you from doing stupid stuff. I really think that is a big problem on the internet these days.
People tend not to think about actions they take online very thoroughly beforehand.

Chucklefish gives you the opportunity to buy their game early, they stated it as alpha/early access/development version, what else do you want?
If it takes time, that is because chucklefish is a new company and they just have to get used to the new ways of developing a procedurally generated game,
which i think is pretty tough if you are not used to it and did some work on this kind of genre before.
Also, like they said before, they wanted to make their dream game, and they wanted it to be as good as possible, since it is their first game.
Sure, they could have said that there is no ETA on a release date, as many other developers did and do now, but that would not be enough,
since people always ask for an estimate on when a game will be out. And i think it really does not matter when the game will be "finished"
if i am able to play it and they update it regularly. Minecraft had no final version for years, yet no one complained about this,
because the people minecraft started with were intelligent enough to know that this game is and
will be in development for a long time and stuff will change no matter what.

Sure, chucklefish could have communicated this better, but still they are new on this terrain and every developer makes mistakes.
I am just happy that chucklefish makes no major mistakes and if they still happen to make some,
they apologize and always try to get the best experience out of it for their customers.

Show me another developer that is communicating and listening to its customers that well, with a player base that big, which means a lot more different opinions and demands.

Sure, but if you could be more specific, that would help me to tell you the right thing.

To begin with, you can take a look at how soon they stopped the pre-order stretch goals.
Other developers would have kept inventing new stuff to keep the money flowing.
They just stopped after the pets. The reason behind this, i can only guess.
But if i had to, i would think that they thought this was sure enough money to make the game they hoped for and
with more money and more stretch goals, there would only be more work and thus pushing the release date further into the future.

 

@Moderation, i hope the following is okay as an answer, as it also makes more clear why i am actually sad about the whole direction.

Okay how about that:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120307181059/http://playstarbound.com/about ?

There's no extra indication of it being anything else than a full release. And this either shows how communication wasn't clear (as a simple "Beta/Alpha/TechDemo" release would have been enough to clarify that no full release was meant.

Just to give another example of seemingly changing plans that make me sad from the same site. Though i've to admit that these changes came before i bought the game. But it indicated a different direction imho than what we're seeing now.

 

CF Dev team have a perfect thinking algorithm in there head, they can not be changed, they can not be moved. they think we all agree with their plan by buying early access starbound and after we pay, we are not their concern.
they think if they want. plan can be changed no matter we agree or not. and they also think 'ok at least, we keep developing game anyway, no problem'.

even if they change the plan without discussion. they think it's their right. we have no right to hurry them. we have no right to talk about this.
only one right we have is wait. just wait.

i also check nightly build but without admin command, i can not make even diamond for pass the quest. maybe they block this.
maybe it's very easy to correct this but they dont, they dont want us to enjoy content at nightly. because they have to sell this one more time when starbound 1.0 is released.

come on guys. we know what CF thinking. they have money. they have some royality customer who can defend them.
and they have perfect thinking algorithm in there head. in there algorithm, no problem. perfectly normal situation.

i just give up when some developer say, plan can be changed. and current version is already playable. so dont push us.
this means 'shut up, wait or leave. we dont care.. we promise nothing. plan can be changed.'

in there algorithm, they can not understand. when we buy game, we also buy plan what they show to us, when the moment we buy early access starbound.
they all stay in there small algorithm world. they dont want to get out from there and they can't.


i give up and moved on. i just played divinity : original sin these days. they make their promise. and i also enjoy that promise.



sometimes, i come this home page and think like this.
beside some game, maybe starbound is the last game i trust early access, i will never trust these kind of system.
idea is good and lovely game also,

but please ask yourself, do you really think starbound need few years for developing? worth?

well.. I dont think so.

ps. sorry for my bad english. i dont live in english using country.

 

And how about that: "but we’re willing to take the extra time to get things JUST right." ?
Also, the space station is still in the game, but now it is your ship.

This is just plain wrong. You did not even gather the right information. And about the nightlies, it is clearly stated that they will have bugs and maybe not be playable.
It is people like you that drive developers insane, because seem to be too lazy or (excuse me) stupid to read what they tell you.
You just ignore the warnings because "tl;dr" and buy the game, then you complain about stuff that was clear upfront, if you had read the information.

Grow up and get responsible for your actions. You would not eat some undefined grey goo, just because some guy on the street told you to,
yet you spend money on a game you did not gather information about upfront, despite it was clearly labelled as still in develoment.
Please, leave the forums, you do neither of us (pro and con people) any good by making up stuff.

You probably just came here after blindly buying the game and then realizing it was still in development,
then read about nightlies and jumped on them without reading what those are.

 

I can get behind this line of thinking. Oddly enough, it ties in to how I feel about Starbound's difficulty. Like I've said once before, I don't find it too hard or too easy, I find it to be both in awkward and frustrating ways that need to be balanced a bit more.

I hope that's something that's getting looked at.

 

You still seem to misunderstand why i'm disappointed. It's partly because of the postpones of releases ( http://i.imgur.com/2mvZjij.jpg ). It's mostly because of speaking about definate release in year XYZ while knowing that the released beta of the game seemingly only consists of placeholder systems - which you wouldn't have if the game would have been in any way be close to an release within a short timeframe.
And it's not even about not giving out clear informations about the current state of development (like the seemingly false old roadmap), but now having the balls to tell us that their information policy has been always crystal clear. And that it's us people just having completly wrong expectations - i mean sorry, but i can only form my expectations on the informations the team gives out - that is at long as i trust the team...
Having read estimations for releases in 2012, i'm expecting a release in that year with a leeway of an average of another year. Not 2 years and especially not 3 years. And i am not expecting to hear that you estimate a 2013 release, when the systems still have been placeholders, after you just failed your last estimate. I'm not even expecting there being so many placeholders in 2013 when you'd announced a 2012 release. And i'm not expecting a hugely different FTL-Drive screen, when you showed me a screen with nice informations about the planets in your roadmap.
I'm also expecting thick and fast releases if you tell me you'll go ahead and do that, after you've told me that all basic systems are now in place.

And i'm sorry that i'm sounding somewhat like a broken vinyl player currently.
But again as someone who followed projects that have gone on for years (War for the Overworld being most likely the best known one), i've not once complained about the speed of their progress. As the teams i followed always seemed to keep civil about their progress speed. And i'm not willing to led any Dev here tell me that they have been crystal clear with their informations, when they haven't been so clear, without interjecting that they haven't.

-edit for minor errors-

 

My biggest disappointment is with the "community"(and I use the term loosely) members that just post negative crap all the time. How many threads do we need about "Emotional" this or that about SB? If SB dev time causes this much emotional response in people maybe you need to breakup with the game and go buy a WII and play bowling or something. I haven't played SB it quite a while, I am waiting for 1.0 - and you know what, to get my frustrations out about the semi-long dev (Diablo 3 took like 6 years) time I am not posting negative reviews on steam, I am getting my gaming fix by....playing something else!!!!

I hope all involved learned that game development is not all ice cream and unicorns.....you get all the warts and oozing sores when you fund a developmental project. The great thing that has came from SB, is that the folks who have had a rough life since SB was not created in 4 days is that it will keep you away from other projects like this and a better community will exist going forward..at least this is my theory.

Man, I hate interjecting common sense.....because people get mad because they are too emotional alert mods and I get called a jerk.. I hope the Mods have learned that the SB community is not all ice cream and unicorns and on a RARE occasion common sense has a place in this crazy a$$ forum.

 

you may be experiencing some confirmation bias
i think if you were to do some data collection
you'd find that most of the threads are not negative.

 

Sorry for that. I read through your post thoroughly now and i hope i got everything right, if not, feel free to correct me.

I have to agree with you here. Based on your posts/pictures i really think they did a bad job with the information on release dates.
I myself can't remember the whole release date matters, and which dates was given when. I ignored them most of the time,
because i knew they were a new company on new grounds,
and that this could mean they misjudged the effort and work that would be required to bring their dreams to life.
If you followed the development process and updates, you surely knew that they came across some difficulties and
had to rethink and recode a lot of things for the game to work as intended.
But of course, there was a bad information policy from chucklefish here, wether or not they were too bue-eyed with their first "baby".

So lets just accept that they told us the wrong release date. Maybe a several times. Now we have some common ground to start from.
What else is bothering you? Are they a bad company, just because they made a mistake or is this the only thing you think they did wrong?
Since i can not see why they would be that bad because of a bad communication/delayed release for other developers are worse.

 

Not going to quote the entire post just to save some room.

It was said many times the game would be released in 2013, maybe early 2014. There is no "hairsplitting" about it.

I agree, when the beta came out and people were just complaining left and right about how they didn't want to start over again with every character wipe I would face-palm every time.

I doubt the post is even still around, but when the 2013 release date was missed there was a post on the forums/blog about how the team could hardly believe they didn't meet the date. That gives the impression that, if they could hardly believe it, then the game should be at least somewhat close to release, right? Thats common sense, isn't it? Everyone I've talked to seems to think so. So theres some false hope for you. Now we hear things like the systems were always placeholders, meaning they knew they were no where near release in the first place. They made it sound like they missed the release date by a hair when they are a few planets off.

What else do I want? Better communication and to not feel like I have been, and am being, lied to.

.... Really ... You are going to do that? -Respect. To be clear thats because you are just trying to insult people now, with the whole "They were smart enough to know, why aren't YOU!? HUH!?"

First of all a lot of the hate for Starbound isn't about the game not being out. In my case its because I feel like I am lied to about EVERYTHING, ALL THE TIME. Now I do know there are people that are just mad because the game isn't out yet, and no other reason, but at this point I think that is also justified. Not because of how long its been, but because of all the lies and misinformation that lead them to believe it should be. The old Road-map, for example, gave the impression that pretty much everything was almost done. Lie, its all placeholders apparently. And a ton of the systems that were 80%+ complete according to that road-map have been completely reworked. So either way that was just a compilation of misinformation. Is that the communities fault? No.

They could have communicated a lot. A LOT of things better. Thats the problem. AT least thats my problem.

I think the reason they stopped was for the exact reason you said. "Thus pushing release date further" A new race was going to add a ton of work alone. New sounds for the race, new armor/weapons, new NPCs for towns, new NPCs for random encounters, new racial blocks and objects, a TON of lore that needs to be thought about and integrated with current lore. So on and so forth. Second, they weren't expecting to get SO MUCH support for the game.

 

As i stated in my post a second before yours, i was wrong about this whole release date thing. My bad.
Maybe they encountered problems that made the progress they made useless, i have no idea, that is something they have to explain.
I have no problem with delayed release dates, as long as there is a good reason for it, which they still have to give to use, indeed.

And i also see why some people are mad at CF and think they are a bad company, because they delayed the release date without any reason,
maybe there is a good one, that would make most of you go "ah, that is something i can relate to and understand their choices".

As for the stretch goal part:
They could have accepted more and more stretch goals and just tell us that further stretch goals would be release after the games release.
No one could have complained about this and we still would have payed them more and more to get promises for new goals and new features.

 

I think he meant some of the individuals in this community. Those people whose negativity makes up most of their overall posts.

 

that's like saying you're disappointed in university because there are some potheads that always make that one particular corner smell like skunkweed.
[edit]
there are always assholes.

 

...And? I'm forbidden to be negative(even overly negative) just because someone else don't like it? Call me a doomsayer or whatever you want but as long as i don't lie or bend facts in favor of my opinion (and don't break general forum rules, ofc) i really don't care if ppl don't like it, but it's my right to express my opinion.
All my negativity is based on facts and previous experience in similar matter. Some of those facts can be seen by different people in different light - positive or negative, we can debate if one thing is good or bad, but we can't ignore documented facts, as if those never happens.

 

there literally wasn't a value statement
it was just "some people are negative"
not "negative people harsh my montage"
or "negative people are devilspawn"
or anything else even implicitly similar to a value statement.

Chill yo' beans.

 

Sorry, if i was somehow offensive or my post looks like as if a was angry, i'm just stating my position on the matter. It was directed at

I think he must chill a bit not me, and somehow accept the fact that one can have different opinion and it's not a "negative crap" by default.