First impression - disappointingly not enough sci-fi

I've been following the game for quite some time but I bought it just last week because I knew if it would be a massive time-sink and I didn't have too much time to play before the holidays. I played a fair bit over the weekend and got to the second sector after shooting down the UFO. Although the game-play is fairly enjoyable, I'm a little disappointed with the direction it has taken.

The basic premise for the game was brilliant - Terraria in space; but I think the developers took that idea way too literally because the part that I played was pretty much Terraria with a space ship thrown in.

Why am I chopping trees with stone axes?
Why is the main digging implement a pickaxe?
Why am I prancing around in a copper breastplate?
Why am I forging iron spears?
Why am I feeding my FTL drive with coal?

Where are the nanite saws?
Where are the plasma augers?
Where are the personal forcefields?
Where are the energy blades?

I understand that there needs to be some kind of gear progression, but putting a pickaxe in this game is a little ridiculous. It's even more bizzare given that the stone pickaxe actually supersedes the matter manipulator which is infinitely more appropriate.

To get to the second sector, I put together a high tech distress beacon but shot down the UFO that arrived with a bow and arrow? I know it was tongue-in-cheek with evil penguins at the helm, but a bow and arrow to take on a UFO?

If there really needs to be a Robinson Crusoe beginning to the game, why not make it a little more plausible. Maybe have the ship crash on the planet at the start of the game. Have this part of the game be about collecting materials and making repairs to the player's ship and its systems. It could take a fair bit longer than the time it currently takes to get to the second sector. There could even be room for pickaxes, iron spears, and campfires in this part of the game (it could be a nostalgic tribute to Terraria). The first boss fight could be fought from inside your crashed ship after you construct a laser turret or something equally fitting. But once the ship is fixed and in orbit I want to dump all my stone age implements and get with the times. Nanosuits, EMP cannons, and plasma grenades for the win!

I guess this early in beta it's hard to account for all the stuff that's still in the pipeline and modders will likely fix quite a few of any remaining anachronisms but it's a shame they're in this game to begin with. I'm sure you get more high tech gear as you progress but for me the beginning seems disturbingly like deja vu from Terraria and that's one game I've played too much to really enjoy anymore.

 

Quite a lot of the races have a reason.

Florans are just people who stole technology they would be inclined to draconian methods.
Humans are human. Maybe just dealing with familiarity for the person playings sake?
Apex no idea... maybe to force a labor force and control the society? It would be rather effective so that morale is kept low without proving a danger.
Avians are rather religious, so it may be linked to wanting to stay one with nature when applicable. They have airships but very little in way of winged designs outside of that and religion reasons.
Glitch are stuck in medieval ways. Preprogrammed robots you know.
Hylotls really do not have an excuse. I'm with you on that one. Even with losing a war to the Florans.

The rest... well gameplay/story segregation right? I'd rather it be more sci-fi oriented as well.

 

I'm fairly disappointed in the game. I've been freaking out about it sense it was originally discovered to be in production, but I find myself forgetting to play. I forget that there's even such a thing as Starbound. It really hurts and I can't figure out why this is happening. The game is beautiful, but it's not as incredible as I thought it would be.

 

Okay, so tell me how you plan to use the nothing you start with to construct any of the things you suggested.

 

I love the game to death, but I agree. It needs more scifi.

 

Perhaps instead of getting pick axes we can get upgraded versions of matter manipulators? And have some races such as humans and apex be able to craft more future/ sci-fi weapons.

 

I think a good way to make the game more scifi is make plasma pistols craftable. Since when is there a spaceship where the crewmembers do not defend themselves with plasma pistols of some kind?

 

As others have pointed out(in this thread and others like it) you have nothing really. The Matter manipulator is basically an advanced swiss army knife that can move matter around slowly(I do believe that there has been stated upgrades for it down the line). Also we still have a lot of stuff to be implemented in terms of not just tiers of gear but story progression and mechanics.

Also who is to say your character has the know how to build all those high tech gizmos? Again in another thread like this someone asked if you can build a car from scratch or some RAM. We use these all the time but not everyone can actually make them, but simple implements are well simple.

 

1. you landed on a planet with barely any resources after you ran out of fuel.

2. you start at barely any tech level.

3 MABYE IN THE FUTURE WITH ENERGY STUFF

4. ITS THE FRIGGIN BETA...NOT THE FULL FRIGGI N GAME, JUST STOP COMPLAINING

 

I am all for the upgradeable matter manipulator. That would be marvelous.
To be honest, since I've played Terraria to death, I didn't really mind the pickaxes/axes/ other basic tools, probably because I'm so used to them. Now that I hear these points, I would indeed like to see more sci-fy things being added. The Angry Koala update is among us and it sounds like it has a bunch of new stuff. Updates are getting shot out at us all the time so it wont be long before we'll be complaining about too much sci-fy related things. It is only the early beta, so don't fret quite yet.

 

BETA!

 

thats becuase its in friggin beta....

 

Those tits are fake, they'd explode due to the pressure of space. Can we get some realistic bosoms in this joint? g'damn.

 

You don't start with nothing.

You start with a space ship capable of FTL travel. Given the game's sci-fi setting (I don't think it's a game of neanderthals who have an alien ship crash on their planet), the fact you have said ship gives the developers a world-building carte blanche. There are literally countless ways you can explain away being able to make high tech gizmos if you possess a technological marvel like an FTL capable ship. For example, the ship could have some kind of basic nano-assembler that could make early gizmos if provided some source materials.

It just strikes me as ridiculous that the first thing a person capable of interstellar travel would do is dump his matter manipulator and make a stone axe; followed by a stone pick axe; followed by an iron sword; followed by upgrading each one of the those archaic tools instead of focusing on things that are more in line with the setting.

I get that a lot of Starbound's playerbase are Terraria addicts who want more of what that game had to offer. I also played Terraria to death but what really piqued my interest in this game was the sci-fi angle which I'm disappointed to see severely lacking.

Are you saying that the pickaxes and swords in the game are placeholders for the really cool sci-fi stuff that will be implemented for the launch of the full game? Or are you implying that if I keep quiet the developers will magically read my mind and fix all the things I have a problem with? I think you misunderstand the idea of Beta. I paid money to support the continuing development of the game and I'm trying to share my opinion about which direction I'd like the game's development to go.

Using the argument that a normal person can't make a car from scratch or a stick of RAM to justify pick axes and other "simple" implements is fallacious. The same person who can't make a car or a stick of RAM also doesn't have a clue about metallurgy and smithing. I think it's more likely that the interstellar traveler would have no damn idea what a pick axe was.

 

How are you gonna justify that in this day and age. Depicting a woman like that. Shame on you.

 

The way i see it is: You just escaped from your race, which for whatever reason was not so high tech (except maybe humans and hylotl, dont know about hylotls tho lore-wise).
So, i guess it goes like this: You want to go away from your race, steal / buy / acquire a spaceship, and just run away. You run like the devil himself is on your back, so you didnt have much time to get all these shiny high tech things. After a while your ship has no fuel and you orbit some random planet. It all starts from there.
So, as a handsome space escapee you want to survive, but sadly all this handy hightech gear isnt available to you.
So.. What do you do? Sit on that planet, and die a slow death mourning the loss of your technology? Or go around, craft stuff like our far away ancestors did?
Yes, the beginning of this game is surprisingly "low-tech" in equipment, but as you play the game and progress further, these things get replaced by better stuff, like Drills, instead of the Pickaxe. (Havent found a replacement for the axe currently, but thats not that bad imho).
Of course, later on you will still use swords or daggers, if you choose so, but theres plenty of sci-fi out there, where this isnt much of a problem.

Also, as others pointed out, its still the beta, so things might and will change, also from what you wrote, i suppose you havent played the game much at all.

(I do agree on the craftable plasma pistol though, maybe integrate it as default recipe into the 3d printer, make it cost some pixels, but also make it not super powerful.)

 

Right now I am in a threat level six planet. I am flying around in an antigravity bubble, mining uranium to fuel my spaceship with a diamond drill, wearing hightech armor, and toasting aliens with a flaming shotgun.

There is scifi in this game. Unfortunatley it isnt really prevalent until planets 5 and up on the progression. Not to mention mechs.

I see in the future alot more scifi when the game is more developed, but I agree that there needs to be more candy for the sci fi lovers.

 

Yowza look @ those bazongas! O.O

 

It will take longer. If you have been following the game development, you also know that Tiy stated many, many times that the whole current tiered progression is a placeholder to test the game mechanics, along with the UFO boss as being the first. There are plasma grenades in the game, you probably haven't found them yet. There was also a beamaxe during the dev streams, but it was probably removed, because last time Tiy used it, it crashed the server. And as stated in the post above me, the higher the tech tier gets, the more toys we get. Half the melee weapons are energy blades, if somebody actually bothers to check the graphics, for crying out loud.

This bit I love. I think you didn't really read what Chucklefish had to say when the pre-order first came around. We preordered to support the continuing development, yes. But for the game Chucklefish would like to make, not the game YOU want it to be. If in the end, when we reach Stage 3 and have a release, and the game is still not to your liking, then I see a valid point for complaining. But afaik it has been said many times that they won't compromise the idea they had no matter how loud people complain.

Also I guess this is the second post that get reposted every week. Guess using the search function is too much to ask from people. So I just drop my usual thing when the "not scifi enough" thread rolls. Google Star Ocean and Rogue Galaxy. That's also scifi, not just hard scifi, space opera, and whatever us westerners are normally used to.

 

Also just because you snagged a spaceship does not mean you know how to work everything in it. Hell for all you know the characters were fleeing something jacked the first ship and hit Go and that is about the extent of their knowledge. Or it could just simply be oh I dunno not working.