Coming in a few days (sorry for the delay!)

I'm sorry but when money is taken for a game, character wipes should be an absolute last resort and there seems to be many other ways to handle this issue if you stop trying to rush your patches. And frankly, Starbound should be past the phase of having to do character wipes by this point and if not then it should not have entered into steam's early access program.

I willingly signed up to put up with bugs and unbalanced encounters but I did not sign up to have ALL of my time investment erased. Not all of us have huge amounts of time to sink into this game and some of us may have already developed an attachment to a certain character.

Wiping is the kind of shit you do to free beta testers, not people who have paid to participate in your "beta".

 

Rarely is there a beta that goes without some form of character deletion.

Paid for or not, it's to be expected.

 

Yes this. Of course they'll avoid wiping if possible. It is my suspicion that Starbound doesn't save the items you possess, but rather saves an item seed value and then regenerates your inventory from the seed values when the game is loaded. The changes Tiy describes probably require the item generation system to be rewritten -- so if you were to load a game with legacy data, it could load up with all sorts of nuts items instead of the ones you actually owned.

Since items *are* the progression in Starbound, this is going to wreck your game regardless. The only way around that is to write a save file updater that tries to match legacy data and recreate it under the new system, and the time investment required to pull that off with limited accuracy at best is foreboding. It's the sort of thing where even if they spent a couple weeks trying to pull it off, it could still easily demonstrate a 30%+ failure rate.

 

OK. No wiping.

No further development can be done on the game, then, because ANY change might make saves incompatible. Done. Period.

The entire reason I created an account is because I'm sick of reading this crap.

You need to pick one: The game continues development, or you don't have to deal with save game incompatibilities.

You don't want to lose progress, don't update.

 

Phil i am taking you as an example, why are most of the posts i read people whining about char wipes , who cares? It has been stated before beta launch this was part of it. Quite frankly this kind of unfunded and unknowledged based opinions that are just spewed on the forums without any research into any kind of documentation is just insulting. Get over yourself.

They have mentioned these char wipes aswell, boohoo wipe your tears , if you don't like that , you should have gotten the beta later on or wait for full release.

Can we please just get back on topic and commenting with some substance ?

 

At risk of people not liking me for this, I feel the need to say it... But...

You sir, are an idiot... You paid for a game that made a clear statement that it was in BETA... anyone with an ounce of common sense would know that the game is in development, and that the developers are giving us ALL the privilege of testing this game.

Nobody is forcing you to play this game... Nobody is forcing you to invest your time into it... If you do not want to lose time invested... go play Terraria until the game gets done.

This forum is not for people like you to cry about the developers doing whatever they have to do to make the final product better for us ALL!

This forum is for people like myself and others that play this game to assist developers make this game better by reporting bugs that we encounter and by suggesting things that we the useful players think would make a good addition to the game. So if you do not want to be a useful forum citizen... please, for the sake of all of us... go somewhere else. Thanks for your time...

 

They are completely revamping the health and damage system. It will be a new experience. You should be happy that you got to even see these stages of development. As far as character attachment, if you're so attached to him/her/it just remake them. Honestly I don't see why wipes are that big of a deal. Especially when a majority have reached end-game already. Myself included.

 

A character wipe. Well that's rather disappointing, that dragon was quite hard to kill.

 

Actually, yes... You did.
http://playstarbound.com/how-the-beta-is-going-to-work/

So either quit playing now or deal with the inevitable wipes instead of complaining about something that you were clearly warned about.

 

Pleaaaaaaseee work on thiis

 

Actually you did sign up for just that
http://playstarbound.com/how-the-beta-is-going-to-work/

In short it clearly warns DO NOT take part in this stage if you can't stand losing your save

 

some one said there save in is a string that would mess up with the new weapons, fix

put a Beta Update option to the char
(eg do you wish to update your char) yes/no) this could take some time
Loads char in background scans all chest and player and makes a list of all non-changing items

Char race and name

Logs 8888
Iron ore 78
Iron Bars 99
Sword NA
Armor NA
Chests 7
Dirt 1503
Tech PowerXX 1
Tech PowerBB 1
noble shirt 1

closes char and delete, recreates char cosmetics
then when your char loads for the frist time message pop up "please hold while we import your items to a chest please remove these within the next 12hrs of game time or it will be deleted"
have a limited 12hr chest with 1000 slots for all your junk to be dumped in.

iam sure he has a list of all weapons and armor to make a list for the scanner to ignore and mark as NA.

this would also be good for future updates. that changes things/ avoid full wipes

 

Let me explain this clearly to you. First you were warned multiple times ahead of time so yes you did sign up for this. Two. The reason characters are being wiped is for a multitude of reasons including:
Items with values that are different would crash the game anyway
World generation gets changed and it need to be rebooted so you can actually experience it
New items all around means to actually have those things tested they need you to use them which means starting over
And many other valid reasons.

So here is the thing you want the full game you paid for which means they have to add content to the game which means they will break things in the game so if you want what you paid for kindly stop complaining and wait it out.

 

So they should spend a day coding a pre check so people can save their characters? Dude... That is a complete waste of the devs time.

 

On Character wipes.

While I understand that having our characters erased is not a happy experience, it is sometimes necessary during the beta phase of a game.
As others have explained before me, some changes make it so the save files become incompatible with the patched game.

Now, I do gripe about the wipe to close friends, but I don't feel so entitled that I have the need to do so publicly. I understand the need for the wipe and I look forward to playing the game once more, differently.

As many have already noted, we were warned.

Besides, we did not pay to participate in the beta, we pre-ordered a game that has yet to be released and we were invited to participate in the beta. Nothing more, no one was promised a stable game before release.

*edited syntax*

 

I'd guess that most of the complaints are coming from people who bought the game as an Early access game on Steam. They have a decent excuse for not being aware that wipes might be the status quo. I'd hope that most of the people who bought the game from the website prior to the Steam release cared enough about the game to read the various posts, and know that Phase one would possibly have wipes. I know when I read that, I took it that they could happen at any time, and very possibly often. If they can reduce the number of wipes without adding ANY time to development, that would be great. I doubt that is possible though. If not, let the wipes continue as often as required is my vote. If I get tired of them, I'll just take a break and come back when I need my fix, or when phase 2 starts, whichever comes first.

 

sure its easy to say everything is a shit idea, but maybe you should try and help. least i am trying to think of ways to avoid future wipes/full wipes and people crying about it.

Your either part of the solution or part of the problem.

say on avg ppl have play 15hrs (steam says 62,000 atm) thats 930,000hrs that have all payed money of ppl time with nothing to show for it now. so if the the dev put 24hrs in to stopping all future full wipes i am all for it.

ok fine wipe it for now but add this for later to help avoid full wipes.

 

Disagree. Get #wiped.

 

Wow, dude, you're right.

Hey guys, chill out with the gunfire okay? Some of these people have a legit excuse for behaving "entitled." They didn't know about character wipes because the steam page for Starbound does not have as much information, especially concerning the beta, as the actual website does. So don't be so ready to cut them down, unless if they're seriously behaving bratty.

Also, I honestly think this game could benefit from some more "sideways" expansion. Like more detail to the individual tiers, more attention to little details like villages and npcs. (How on earth am I able to kill a bunch of Apex gunmen with my wooden hunting bow? That's just too unrealistic.) Villages, for instance, should "scale" in technology and complexity and size the more tiers you advance. Those high tech laboratories should be for the second or third tiers, where you can get a hold of guns.

That's actually not a bad idea. Sure it would take a day to program, but that's hours and hours off of the players who will be able to test more.

 

My point is that nowhere on the Steam store page for Starbound was there any mention of possible wiping. Secondly, I can't even tell by looking at that link what stage the game is even currently in. Looking back at the steam store page the dev does say they're in stage 1 but they give no indication of what that means or even a link to the article you posted.

I'm guessing most of you have been fans of starbound for awhile because nobody warned me about wipes. Or maybe you've been burned by early access games before and you did your research on this one.

When a developer takes player's money the term "beta" needs to be redefined. It comes down to good customer service AND developing a good game at that point. It is no longer just a group of die hard fans that signed up to devote their time to test a game whatever may come. Those fans have now paid the developer money and now the developer also OWES the player. The developer is no longer solely giving me the privilege of playing their game. I'm also giving them the privilege of continuing to develop their game at their own pace and not rush it out the door to get paid. In addition to the money I paid, I send crash reports and report on balancing and the developer does their best to improve the game and they do everything within their power to ensure my experience is not worsened over the course of the beta.

I'm 100% certain there are ways to patch in those combat changes while not wiping characters. My point is that since so many people have given the developer money at this point, the developer should take the time to try and do it the way that has the least impact on their PAYING customers.

If most of you bought this game from the Starbound website and knew these wipes were likely and you still paid money then hats off to you. Those of us who purchased from steam were not made aware and I can tell you that it would have affected my decision to purchase.