How many hours can we expect out of the Beta of the game?

3 tiers. I feel safe in assuming tier one ends after you shoot down the penguin ufo. Since that is the tutorial, it is also probably the fastest and it looked to take 1-2 hours. I am guessing that finishing the story lines in beta will take around 7-9 hours if you are focused on it. Any other bets?

 

A long long time!
There's so much to explore! I'm not stopping until I find a planet with cookie trees and chocolate rivers! And even if I do, I probably wouldn't stop anyway!

 

I think it will depend on what feedback they get from the beta testers.
If they get beta out and we find no bugs and the game is perfect then a day maybe 2 but the chances of that are 3720 to 1.
More likely will be issues found patches brought out for testing etc in which case i think 2 weeks personally.

 

Probably not much. I don't expect more than 20 hours, we're getting 3 tiers, and probably limited features. Maybe they can update the beta as they go along with tiers, that would be nice.

 

Actually in a more recent QnA Tiy said they where going to try and put in as many as possible.
So it maybe more then three.. they really don't seem to have a firm.. set idea for what beta will contain yet. (Unfortunately)

So I wouldn't judge it on that.

 

It likely depends on what you're trying to do in Starbound. If you want to explore, or use it as a sandbox, you'll probably get a lot of time out of it the same way you would from minecraft. There will already be more blocks and biomes in the first few tiers than you would get in that game.

If you're trying to get the best possible gear, you'll probably get SOME time out of the randomization, but you'll hit the wall pretty fast. Realistically we'll all be geared out or to the point of relatively negligible min-maxing within a few days. Do not get your heart set on more than three tiers lest you want disappointment. If they get more in right away it will be a pleasant surprise but it isn't something we can really demand unless we want beta in 2014. More will be added as beta progresses, but so far they have only spoken of two having been fleshed out completely.

 

I have no clue I am not psychic.

 

Wouldn't it depend on how many tiers there are overall? I don't recall reading about how many tiers there were going to be in total. Even if we cap out at the third tier in beta, Starbound's replayability via random content generation would still be a factor, so even if you're not "progressing" per se, you could no doubt find things to do.

Mulder would be disappointed.

 

I know I feel like a failure

 

You do realise you have tons more to do than just kill the bosses right? It's a sandbox game, you can build your base, get some gear etc. hours before fighting the first boss.

 

Look how simple Terraria was and there are people talking about playing that for hundreds of hours. 3 tiers would be 30 levels of planet difficulty. That's if beta is only 3 tiers. You could get countless hours out of beta. The game could be released before you even experienced all that the beta had to offer.

 

Totally agree...you can play sandbox games to 'beat' them, but that kind of misses the point of what makes them special. You can 'beat' Minecraft in just a few hours, but that's not why people have spent so much time playing it.

For me, the tiers and story in Starbound are probably just going to be a diversion...an obstacle to overcome so I have access to all the building materials and unlimited exploration : )

 

Hopefully quite a bit.

Though we get only 3 tiers, it will come down to how much you are willing to put in

 

While Minecraft could technically be called infinite, there is a point where you seen it all and all the landscapes seem familiar. I can't play Minecraft anymore and have fun, I built all the things I wanna build and have done everything that can be done in survival a few times over. Doing the same thing in slight different terrain gets old eventually.

Starbound just has more mechanisms in place to delay you getting to that point, like travel to random planets. But every game, even infinite ones, will get to that point of you being overly familiar.

 

Starbound getting too old and familliar one day? NONSENSE! ARREST HIM! WITCHCRAFT! BURN IT ALIVE!

 

Unfortunately everything can get old after a while, unless you don't overplay it. I've ruined the joy of playing so many games by playing for too long.

 

with the amount of tiers(i say around 5) then we can get a week of pure gameplay through progression. fallowed with buddy play and animal capturing another week of straight gameplay.

now exploring doesn't come into my formula.

 

If you think only 2 weeks then building must not be added in either. Please don't take this as me bashing you or anything, but I'm pretty sure some of you are underestimating the scope of this game. Unfortunately we really only have Minecraft and Terraria to compare it to. I hope I'm not overestimating it so I end up looking like an ass, but the way the devs are talking about it I think this game is going to be a bit bigger and more in depth than we currently realize.

 

no, i totally get you.

i'm not an average player at all. i can spend an entire three days in a single biome in minecraft before leaving. heck, i can stick in tier one for fallout for the majority of early gameplay.(bb guns too stronk)

we don't know the details so yea, this all pretty much the magic of guesstimates at play. i counted building in sooo...a week and a half?