Me, Everytime I read a review for Starbound

I mean what's with all the hate for starbound

Why do steam hate starbound so much?

Is there any actual reason to hate the game?

Like half of negative reviewer has hundreds of playtime

 

You know when someone makes a negative review they usually write their arguments for doing so, right?
You might, or might not agree, but this game is not for the like of everyone, and some people dislike some of the last updates, so they are in their right to leave a negative review if they explain why, and I don't know why you find it funny.
I don't see the "hate" anywhere. 90% of reviews are possitive. It actually has a very good ratio.

 

On the other hand, they're reviewing a game that hasn't officially hit it's 1.0 mark yet.
Ya know, reviewing a game in beta.. And complaining about a lack of features and overall incompleteness.

Yeaaah.

 

Of the ~10% of negative reviews, I find that a great deal of them are really non reviews (possibly 50-80% of them). Such as criticizing missing features in an incomplete game, criticizing optimization in an incomplete game, complaining about development, devs, or moderators instead of actually reviewing the game, and other such laughable nonsense.

When you remove the irrelevant negative "reviews", Starbound is actually quite a loved game on Steam, even if unfinished and slow to change/release.

 

People failed to realise what early access realy meant before they bought it. Combined with the fact that chucklefish underestimated the amount of extra work early access would be when compared to normal development. Add a bit of not knowing how game development works ontop of that.

A lot of people seems to have expected a normal public beta (the kind thats usally released to the public and is allredy 99% complete), what they got was a true alpha then beta (nowhere near that stage of completion). Also since chucklefish kinda dropped the ball on their ETA's (mainly thanks to them underestimating the extra work going into early access) that resulted in a lot of steam users lose'ing faith in them. Also while they do a allright job of informing us about what they are doing atm, there were some periods where they kinda dropped the ball on that part too (especially around the time they moved).

A lot of the people writeing those reviews are those without patience and faith in chucklefish. That said, they are likely just a very vocal minority.

 

There's a bit of a cult on the steamforums perpetuated by a handful of noisy people who make sure to slam on Starbound for every little thing.

 

Most talk I've seen has been of positive (Or at the least, 'cautious but optimistic') light and nature, but I've also seen a few laughable comments in Steam's Discussion forums. I don't really pay much mind to those for the most part though.

 

I see alot of defending.
But no critical looks on the game.
I mean its just an opinion.
Some like starbound, some don't.
Do you expect everyone to like one game?
No.

Me, its fun, has interesting concepts, but feels plain in areas.
And it feels to much like Terraria. 8/10

Please don't hang me by the nuts.

 

Thanks Jonesy!
But flame wars will happen in this thread.
I only tried to prevent it.

 

I agree - while there are some valid points to be made, a good 70+% of negative reviews are people who either don't understand what Early Access actually is, want to bash the game because the devs have made some mistakes or decisions they didn't agree with, don't understand that the game isn't feature-complete and shouldn't be expected to be so, or just like to jump on the Early Access or Starbound hate bandwagons because they can.

Basically, all of these but the few legitimate complaints should be completely ignored, because they are literally worthless nonfeedback.
I don't even bother with Steam reviews, anyway. If I want to get a review of a game, I will look for people who actually analyze the game and make points. I mean, asides from the occasional funny reviews. Those I like.
I mean, heck, I disagree with a few things the devs have done. I get the ETA fiasco was definitely a blow to the devs' PR though I also think the whole situation was blown out of proportion. I get that the game is missing features and a lot of stuff is still placeholder. I get that this is Early Access and things will change dramatically as updates continue to come out. I don't go to Steam and post these things which aren't even proper game issues though. Giving in to mindless rage without actually thinking about a situation is never a good thing, and lots of these reviews have done just that.

If I have a complaint, I'll post a thought-out post about what my issue is and how I think it can be fixed, not "OHHH 3ARLIE AKSESS NOO00 #$%& TheE DEVS thisS IS UNACSEPTIBLE!!1 The GAME ISN"T FINISHED AND it"S NOT DONE AND the DEVS LIEEED TO us AAAAALLLLL about tHE RELESE DAET! THE WORLD IS ENDING IA M SO DRAMATICccccc!!!!??!?!?!111one11! I WILL NEVER TURST THEM AGIAN AND SO I MUSt POST THIS ANGRU THING ANFD LET EEVERYONE KNOW HOW MUCH I HATE EVERY|THINE ADB IDWKLL NO|t LTE ANYEBOCDY TELMEOTH ERWIZEE!11!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"*

*Dramatization.**
**That's a lie, unfortunately.

But hey, the less of those kinds of people that become a part of the actual community, the better. Let them stick to the steam reviews section and hope they don't somehow stumble across here by mashing their face against the keyboard.

 

It's just the fact that most people feel cheated after this long. Everyone realized what they were buying into (or they should have if they read anything about the game before they clicked "Accept Payment) but this game has been in early access for a very long time - longer than most. I understand that certain things happen in real life that nobody can anticipate which can delay development, but I can't recall any acknowledgement from the developers that this is taking so long to finish other than the tired old "we are hard at work!" we used to see at the bottom of every blog post in 2013, 2014, and 2015. I stopped checking the blog posts because I know I'm going to see more posts about updated leg animation or the new sparkle effect they added on a sword and it honestly makes me lose faith in Chucklefish. For the entire last two years it just seemed like they were pushing out as many small minor updates as fast as they could so it would seem like they were making real progress when in reality, the same 15% of the game was still there, but just a bit more polished. I had made the mention to one of the devs a few years ago that they should cut out the small animation/furniture addition updates and just clump those into something more substantial then make a blog post about that, but they felt it looked better having constant stream of updates instead of larger ones.

I'll be happy when the game is finished and I'll probably put at least 100 hours into the game (on top of the 35 hours I put into testing), but when people on my friend's list ask me if Starbound is a good game and if they should get it, I no longer tell them yes. I know I'm the minority here but after this experience, I won't support Chucklefish again nor will I recommend their games to people.

As for the reviews, most of the ones I read were pretty positive and out of the ten or so negative reviews I read, maybe three or four of them were actual critical reviews. The rest were just your stereotypical "thumbs up/thumbs down" reviews with no real substance.

 

You know, thanks to that post, I actually had to think about the entire process of that, which is prohibitively long and complicated.

I tend to not pay much attention to the long reviews asking for an overhaul anymore. I can make my own suggestions. Even incomplete I like the game right now, and am interested in experiencing the rest of their plans for release.

 

I find it interesting that you feel "cheated". You said you've played for 35 hours... that's much more time than most FINISHED games at this price range give for value. Myself, I have 394 hours so far, and am excited to play again when the next update comes out.

Each major update has given players a LOT to play, think about, and discuss. That's part of the reason for having Early Access -- to gauge what players want, etc.

To me, it's just sad that you no longer recommend the game... TBH, it sounds like you no longer know what it's about -- you stopped playing the game, even though there have been quite a few updates.

Even at its unfinished state... even if there were NO more updates, I would not hesitate to recommend Starbound to a friend. It is eminently playable, and definitely good value for the price.

 

Starbound is a good game... its hit a few walls here and there, and hey, thats what "work in progress" usually means right? devvies are experimenting, adding things, breaking others when they add more things, its bound to happen, and whenever they update something, its actually a fun read, an interesting thing to see, and an enjoyable experience when you play it, yeah some things feel unfinished and bland, but they are that, experiments...

love what you have, for what it is and CAN be, instead of hating it for what it is not yet.

 

True, but if your game is polished enough to make a buck on it, then it's now open for criticism, now isn't it? Personally, I believe everything is up for criticism no-matter the situation. This doesn't mean I go around raining on people's parades.

Anyhow, it's always seemed judgmental to me to think complaints are childish or idiotic. Complaints are really just criticisms in a rougher, less logical form. However, not every complaint is a valid one, but similarly, not every defense is correct either. At the end of the day, does any of this really matter? Close-minded people will continue to act that way. Or maybe they won't. They will always blindly defend or insult whenever they feel like it. Or maybe they'll just move on and not say anything at all. This is all just subjective. If some random guy thinks Starbound is as bad as swallowing a bag of fire-ants because the devs took out his favorite penguin pet, then I think it's wrong of us to think his opinion is misguided.

 

Criticism is fine, bad reviews are fine. What's not acceptable in my eyes are the bad reviews which mostly consist of points such as these:

• They removed the roadmap so the game is never going to release.
• The devs just want to steal your money and leave you with an unfinished product.
• The game is an incomplete piece of garbage, don't buy it unless you hate yourself.

Etc.

These are basically negative reviews that purely exist because the game doesn't say 1.0 on the Steam store page.

Starbound is far from a perfect game (I have so many issues with so many parts of it as of glad giraffe..).
I didn't invest in it thinking the game would be perfect immediately. I have seen Minecraft and Terraria both grow from their early stages into what they are today. I gave CF my money because I believe in the potential of Starbound, and I trust the devs to continue development until the game is as good as it can be, atleast.

 

To backup Oberic, here is a negative review which touches on all three points:

From last month, no less. Apparently, this guy didn't pay attention to the update rate over the last year, and the planned updates left for Starbound before release which will, most assuredly, be released well before "two or three" years have passed.