Closed Character erased as art of magic

It seems there was an update with a character sweep :C

 

Im tired of hearing everyone say "Oh its a beta so you should know that you're character will be wiped" because thats not how all betas go, Betas have bugs, they lack polish, and they dont have full content, EVERYONE knows that, thats not whats being debated. The problem is that there is no warning of character wipes when you buy the game off steam unless you decided to look it up yourself. But why would you look it up when the steam page states that

"Starbound is already extremely playable and contains a vast amount of content, however we decided to release the game as a beta through early access to ensure the community gets a chance to help us shape the game. In this first stage of the beta process you may experience some bugs but updates will come thick and fast as we listen to your feedback and add new content."

 

If you're so burned about it then maybe tweet your suggestion to Tiy? The guy and his team are hella busy but if you politely suggest he add that link to the Steam page one of them might find the time to do that real quick to prevent this from happening the future.

I've only just started beta'ing games in my spare time, so I don't have a big pool of experience to draw from, but even the Guild Wars 2 beta required character wipes.

 

I've done a LOT of betas, and alphas. most (almost all) of them have periodic wipes. there aren't very many exceptions.

 

I am getting so sick of people loosing their shit over bugs, or having to start over, with games in Early Access. Early access games are ALL alphas and betas, there are no exceptions to that, it's the nature of the thing. Alpha games have unfinished game engines and are unreliable as fuck, Beta games might have finished engines, but it's probably not balanced yet, their content isn't all there, and is riddled with bugs. The process of correcting those bugs may not always include wipes, or drastic changes, but often does, and even if that's not the case there's still the risk of save file corruption due to an update or a bug, or numerous other problems forcing you to start over anyway.

Yes not every developer does beta the same way, yes problems sometimes pop up without warning, but complaining about it typically accomplishes nothing but a flame war, because the people like you who were caught off guard are going to overreact, and those who weren't are going to lash out right back not understanding how you didn't see that coming. In the end it changes nothing. If you want to make real progress, suggest practical ways to avoid the problem in future (like the comment about updating the steam page), or file a bug report (which has already been done by so many people on this issue it's redundant at this point) and move on.

 

Wow. This just happened to me and I've gotta say that's unacceptable. Period. I could understand if I didn't just pay these guys my hard-earned cash, but the fact that there was literally no mention of this when I purchased the game. I was not notified that "beta" meant "BROKEN"

 

If you don't know what beta/early access is...Maybe you should have done some more research before spending that "hard-earned cash."

 

maybe you don't have to be a cunt

 

Quack quack quack penguin noises etc. quack.

You'll get the completed game when it officially launches. If you don't want to participate in the beta.

Don't.

Easy!

 

I won't participate after my refund. Lesson learned.

 

Sayonara and good luck!

 

It's sad how ignorant some people are about betas. I'm wondering if they're children.....

 

You didn't do your research. There is nobody to blame here but yourself. You can say otherwise all you want, but you're still wrong, and it's still your mistake. Own it.

 

This is off topic but I don't know if this is a bug or not, Unrefined wood is not work for fuel for my spaceship and I spent forever looking for it in patch notes but it says nothing about it? Is it a bug?

 

Yeah, well news flash, it effectively DOES and it has since the eighties, you can either accept that, or wait for the full release.

 

What's with all the rabid sycophants on this forum? Most of the threads that I've seen about the loss of save data have been reasonably polite, and were generally just people looking to see if there was a way to restore their character. Is it really that hard to just ignore the threads if you find them annoying. Flaming people who are already upset over losing a character that they've put a lot of time into is pretty low; you should be ashamed.

Legally speaking, you're right, the disclaimers make it clear that character data is not guaranteed. So, go ahead and politely tell people that; they're going to be upset (and rightly so,) but why rub it in?

Further: it's not at all obvious - without digging through patch notes and forum posts - that character data will certainly be lost. There's absolutely no reason why patches couldn't merely alter the existing data to account for fixes, without deleting anything. Beta wipes occur in MMOs because they are necessary to preserve the game's economy: This is not a concern for Starbound. If a few players get some extra items due to a bug, it doesn't affect anyone but them and the small number of people who play with them. Regarding broken or unbalanced items: they could just be removed from a character's inventory without deleting them. It wouldn't be difficult at all to clean all character files after a new patch: just check that item parameters fall within expected ranges and delete them if they don't. It wouldn't affect development time much at all to add this (I've hammered out similar fixes for other projects myself in just a number of hours.) Even a more drastic solution, like wiping all weapons from all characters, would be preferable to deleting the characters themselves. Considering that the game is already being charged for, it's really not very professional to neglect such a simple solution.
Of course, character wipes are easier, and I can see the appeal in just wiping everything for the sake of convenience, but at the very least it should be made more clear that character wipes are not just possible, but inevitable. That would avoid a lot of negative PR, refund requests, and lost-data threads.

 

Maybe you should learn to read things on Steam.

"When you buy an Early Access game, you should consider what the game is like to play right now. Look at the screenshots and videos to see what the game looks like in its current state. There are a lot of ways a game can go as it develops over time, so if you aren't excited to play the game in its current state, then hold off and wait until the next update--it shouldn't be far off."

Yes, that is written on Steam.

 

none of that means that there will be character wipes, the game looks great and plays great, thats why its so saddening when i loose all my data

 

Well, one reason is...

Oh, you answered it for me. I'd rather they spend time making the game as good as possible, not spend extra hours coding and testing character data conversions for each update.

They were extremely clear: Character wipes could happen. Anyone buying an early release on Steam should have been aware of what they're getting into, and if they totally missed the point of prepaying to gain early beta access they should have the maturity to facepalm themselves, say "Doh! I'm an idiot.", learn from their mistake, then join in the spirit of testing and constructive criticism. This isn't rabid sycophantry, it's calling people on their entitled immaturity.

 

The bottom line is, the devs made it painfully clear character wipes would happen. Most of us aren't angry that somebody is complaining about character loss; however, playing 40 hours and then asking for a refund because they didn't do their research is despicable.