Concerned Citizen about Future Content

I don't know about that. I am one of the new player of Starbound. I found this game around early 2018. But if you think the old Starbound is better, I don't know... maybe you are right. Starbound today seems troubled. Many people make their own mod because they are dissapointed with the Starbound right now (well, not everyone, some are just for fun). Starbound progress as slow as snail or even worse than that. They also ignore every single suggestion in the suggestion thread until it rot and end up as a mod. Huh... Starbound's future seems depressing.

 

Features lost in the transition to 1.0:
*Techs that allowed you to survive in different environments. They worked like the different EPPs but didn't require an item slot, so you were free to equip a back slot item like a halogen pack.
*More detailed early quests that gave you much more direction early on. This was a big selling point to me personally over Terraria.
*Dash techs allowed you to maintain momentum when jumping, giving you longer jumps.
*Each race had unique weapons in addition to armor which they could craft.
*Food didn't rot and stacked with itself, so you could carry 100 corn if you wanted.
*Crafting was instant.

That's just off the top of my head, and many other features/resources were cut from older betas. In my opinion the game is better now than it was as a whole but there are still many changes I wish they'd roll back.

 

I'm glad this thread exists. Imma give my 2 cents.
Chucklefish. Starbound takes the concept of the sandbox/pixel/survival/crafting genres literally out of this world. You have taken the concept and produced something truly incredible.

However. At this point, you are doing yourselves and your loyal and extremely supportive playerbase a very great disservice. At this point, there are no excuses. To say "oh we've been working on a heap of stuff for you guys but we've scrapped it because meh idk, gonna have to wait another few months LOL sorry". This doesn't cut it anymore. Starbound has been neglected by the team for ages. Own up to it. quit being in denial and just step up. I'd much rather you say the game is now void of future patches and dev team support than leading us all on with promises for an extravagant future. For months, even years we have all been patiently waiting for SOMETHING. Now, just be real with us. Tell us exactly what your plans are, what we can expect and what we can hold you all to.

I hate being like this but frankly, chucklefish starbound devs, you have singlehandedly extinguished my once great passion for this game. Frankly I think my passion was, and probably still is greater than yours (after the extinguishing that is). Am I making sense? For someone who merely plays the game to claim this in the face of the devs... The people who birthed the game... that's an issue.

Be real. What is going on. Please. I, and so many other forumers/players need to know.

 

The last patch was July 17th, 2017.
14 months ago.
And it was a minor patch.

It'd be nice to see more current-framework updates. Not every new update needs to be "new mechanics and features" to make players happy, those are very nice. But it's much easier to push out minor content updates like new monster parts, new weapon parts, special planet types (even remixing current blocks into new biomes/planet types we could get things like slime worlds, meat worlds, the occasional tentacle world from beta, etc.).
Not to mention simple things like new recipes, new liquids (where did my coffee liquid go, guys? Where is it!?).

Re-working the racial weapons back into the game would be so nice..
The option to start in the retro style where you aren't tethered to the mission framework at all? That'd be snazzy.

Why are the missing randomly generated gun types STILL not integrated? Shatterguns and Orb Launchers are cool! Where are they?

Why are there so few ammo types for existing guns? We used to have bouncing bullets, ricochet bullets, piercing bullets, split bullets, triple-shot bullets, the various types of plasma bullets (bouncy, sticky, beam, ricochet), etc. (And that's just rifles!)
Now all bullets are just "damaging line that moves fast". Fired in single rounds, three bullet bursts, or continuous fire. Oh, and they're different colors because elemental damage.
Ammo variety was completely sacrificed for elemental damage.

Sure, the few alternate attack types we have are nice, but there's just a few types.

Crafting bosses was a dumb terraria-clone thing, never bring that back. But the bosses were still fun to fight, put things like that onto planets on the odd occasion!

Edit: You know what I honestly miss that nobody but me seems to ever mention? The galactic tiers thing. Where we had 10 levels of "galaxy" to fly between. That allowed harder/rarer biome types to appear at higher levels without anything weird breaking. And it meant you could get say... "a forest biome unique weapon" at tier 10 instead of only tier 2 like we'd get now (btw, we only go up to tier 6 or 7 (counting the new end-game dungeons, we're missing an entire three tiers of progression, not to mention the game always supported 11 tiers).

 

Hmm... so sad that they just throw away the thing that could have been the key of this game popularity and greatness.

 

You used to be able to farm T10 loot from moons if you built a colony there and ran quests for your tenants, which was fun. Tier 10 weapons were overpowered but not gamebreakingly so on Tier 6/7 dungeons. Plus it was an excuse to build a moon base!

The devs disagreed and patched moons down to Tier 0. Now moon bases are a novelty at best.

Edit: Then they added the ability to construct a space station, which is awesome, provided you grind for hours to collect enough Durasteel for a single cell. That's before you put anything in it, mind.

 

If the devs would just externalize a few more things, modders could and would restore the missing features of beta. Already, there are mods for almost all of those old features - but the community has become disillusioned with the development team. Right now we modders don't really have all that much motivation to start a heart & soul mod that will take a long time because the playerbase has shrunk so much. Modders can't fix that. Only Chucklefish can.

Content updates are nice and all, but the best content update there could possibly be at this point is simply restoring old content. Most players agree that the main storyline should just be scrapped or made optional. And that's just among those who didn't uninstall already.

Starbound 2 will flop if the concerns of the playerbase are not addressed in 1. I've got a few updates to make for my mods and then I'm pretty well done modding this game - because I can't think of anything small and easy to do and I won't spend hundreds of hours making studio quality modifications so that 25 people can play them.

It would be so simple to write a dynamic storyline tied into progression without invoking the whole 'ancient sealed godslaying level evil emerges! Go kill it with small arms by yourself because Chosen One' trope. What if you actually did rebuild the Protectorate, and the Ruin planet was crawling with your troops fighting the monsters and cultists everywhere? Little details like that would make it a lot more believable. And it would be more rewarding to be building up the Protectorate instead of 'okay dearie, go look at furniture owned by a random Hylotl for a while'.

 

Scanning things for clues is absolutely awful and at the very least needs to have the required number of scans greatly reduced. Actually if the quest were changed from "scan X items" to "complete X quests for Y race" it would be a lot more interesting while still encouraging exploration and progression.

Being able to complete them in any order, with appropriately scaling difficulties, would also be great.

Edit: If, you know, making the main story optional isn't an option for whatever reason.

 

Maybe I have one more mod up my sleeve once I finish Stasis Pods.

Maybe I'll rework the story progression to remove scanning.

 

Yeah, I think they should add some mystery that need to be solve to complete the quest, and it will require us to explore and search several different random places, investigate an event or tragedy, and ask some random NPCs for clue, just like a detective. Make it more mind challenging and interesting too, and probably Starbound will gain another genre, and that is mystery. So, not just searching for their villages and scanning the object for clue. That is indeed very boring.

 

One thing that would help a lot is making the Ruin attack a universal event. There is then some motivation for everyone to help you: they or someone they know is being affected too. It's also a great excuse to add tentacle planets back in to the mix, and if they are the result of the Ruin propagating it makes more sense than just the most well developed planet in the galaxy gets wiped out by the sleeping and supposedly contained force.

So the containment has weakened. That's fine. Where did the attack come from if it's dormant? Why only the one attack? If it was seeding throughout the known universe then that's a different (and I daresay better) story. The ability it has to seed (spore?) rapidly would have been a great reason to contain it to begin with.

As much of an undertaking as this is starting to sound like, I'm warming up to the idea but I'll probably need help. Especially since I want it to be compatible with big mods like TrueSpace, Frackin', and Extended.

 

Maybe instead of progress by tiers it should be more like Corruption Levels, where the ruin grows stronger and as a result enemies grow deadlier. This would tie in nicely with the idea of being able to find normally low-tier planets in high-tier systems. Perhaps some ores, such as Durasteel, won't spawn until corruption reaches a certain level. At that point though you're basically remaking the game progression from the ground up.

I'd love to help with modding but, uh, I don't know how and haven't had time to learn.

 

Yeah, you are right - that's even more of an overhaul than what's already been kicked around so far. Corruption level is a thing that could be implemented with some lesser reaching consequences though. I'm not sure if things like planet tier can be altered post-generation, but given the existence of terraformers I do know that a planet could be seeded and become gradually more... 'Ruinous'. This could also trigger an event to spawn a minibiome somewhere inside of the planet to generate a miniboss dungeon for example, and the effects would persist until you dealt with it either directly by fighting it or indirectly by completing some other goal leading to the terraforming effect being reversed.

That could get annoying though. I imagine the first few times the event happened and a planet started to "Ruinate" it would be cool, but then it would start screwing with colonies and such. Well. One might take that as motivation to go defeat the Ruin though.

 

Good to see chucklefish in this thread taking the discussion further. My first attempt at calling them out obviously wasn't loud enough. Here I go again.
I pretty much agree with everything posted so far in this thread. At this point, any update introducing anything new would be a blessing. It shouldn't be, but it would certainly feel like it. New textures, tiles, recipes etc. Small shit that (like was suggested by someone above forgive me I cbs referencing) will allow modders to do something. I would personally appreciate something slightly larger, adding more in-depth gameplay to the vanilla version. New planetary systems, biomes, bosses etc. Maybe even an endgame quest would be nice. I know that's asking for a lot but ya know. T'would be nice. Anyway.

Chucklefish. I'm getting very tired of doing this. Just say something. Just step up to the plate. I'm calling you guys out to address this problem. I just want answers at this point. That's all. Come on Chuckle. What happened to your once endless passion for this game? what happened to mine? what happened to everyone's?

 

A thought past my mind. Usually bugs and game issues are fixed by the developers, I mean they are responsible for all of that. But, not for this game. Instead, the modders are the one who fix all of that. That's very unusual, don't you think? I mean normally the developers are the one who take a big part in a game developing and fixing, and not the modders.

 

Credit where it's due, the devs have in the past fixed many bugs. Modders have fixed issues like food not stacking and crafting taking too long, but those can't really be called issues because they were intentionally introduced by the devs. That was how they wanted the game to work.

We can disagree with that decision and I do - oh boy do I ever! - but it's not negligance on the part of the devs.

And I think that's the core issue here. A lot of us disagree with how the game has developed, but we have the modding tools to fix (most of) that, and it's not a huge problem so much as a point of discussion. But lately the sense I get from the devs is that they no longer care. That's not something a mod can fix. If the devs aren't interested in or able to support this game, then they should hand off the keys to the community as they have promised, while there's still a community left.

The fact that they seem unwilling to engage the community on the discussion boards is just icing on the crap cake.

 

Have they said something about making it more open source as part of the final update? I wasn't around at the time if so. I'd love to see something in the API that can interact with virtually anything in a script - referencing the player, world, universe, input, objects, script panes, and inventory.

That alone would throw wide the door for massive game altering mods. You could then do things like have the player's ship become a dockable object like NPC ships, or spawn physically the ship into a worldspace. The player's vanilla mech could be permaspawned and altered with corresponding visual changes on the fly.

Couple that with the reintroduction of beta content that was removed and you could feasibly call it the final update without making anybody too unhappy.

But yes, simply becoming more active within the community, answering posts and suggestions even if the answer is always 'no', would go a very, very long way toward restoring the community.

 

Definitely something worth investigating. I'd love to see more game-altering mods. Frackin Universe being the best example blew me away, though it felt like the mod wasn't an extension of the game itself but rather an add-on that wasn't entirely fitting? If I'm making any sense.

But yeah. At this stage, all I care about is activity. All I want is for the devs to show they care even the slightest bit. Starbound has taken the concept of sandbox/exploration/survival/crafting games literally out of this world. It's such a shame seeing unresponsive and unenthusiastic devs. The game deserves so much more and heck, so do we. The community has been holding on to Starbound since it's release. Frankly, we've been a damn good community. I've seen many worse communities and this one is by far one of the most supportive. I fear it's all for nothing.

 

I am not hoping they release a final update. Not at all. Not releasing anymore update means that the Starbound has stop (or dead). Even though there are still the community and the modders that still working and doing community stuff. But, if the Starbound itself stops, it is only a matter of time that the community for Starbound will dissappear too. It is just like a human body without the heart pumping, the other parts of it can't survive for long without the heart pumping.

 

Nah, if they open up the API some more then it will be fine. We have here a pretty much finished game - some areas still need a little polish, but my hope is that those would be the areas given attention in the final update.

There's also a short list of mods that I would suggest get added to the base game so that vanilla servers are viable for people who can't play without their QoL mods.

After that, modders can handle the rest. This game premiered several years before its official 1.0 launch and we cannot and should not expect free updates forever - paid DLC would just split the community further, so the logical thing would be to wrap up soon, but make sure that the community can add replayability in the form of mods.

The devs could, with such a restored community, probably start up a Starbound 2 in a year or two once their other games are sufficiently developed. Or dive into the world of 3D voxels since so few games have successfully done what Minecraft has.