Monsters are pissing me off

It seems that half the people here don't look like they're thinking before writing.

LOOK.
LOOK THREAD CATEGORY.
"GENERAL DISCUSSION"

It's not "SUGGESTIONS" or "BROKEN THINGS" or "POLITICAL DEBATE".

It's the damn PUB SECTION.And if I want to be angry at something that's pissing me off,I WILL.What's WRONG with that?That is part of the show.That is why I came here,to talk about something,not get involved with some argument with people that complain that I'm complaining.

"You bought into a beta, you knew what you were doing, live with it. Have some god damned patience you ignorant fools and stop having a go at the devs for not just giving up and moving to a tropical island with everyone's money. Ugh, humans."

===>"Eww I'm so perfect but you you're so stupid,eww you're all ignorant fools while I'm an educated internet expert and if you can't do better then shut up because that makes all your complaints invalid eww imma put my cat ears on now."

This makes me want to use even MORE capital letters in RANDOM words in my SENTENCES.How's that supposed to be constructive,if according to you it's an argument?Guys this is a DISCUSSION (and not a politic one).Stop jumping at each other's throat for their opinions and instead talk about the facts.It's litterally that here if no one uses the word "epic" to refer to Starbound he's a pariah or a traitor of some kind.There's no need to call one an idiot when you explain him something.

Now I seriously hope we don't derail into a pub brawl and instead,keep with the pub stories.



Look at the facts guys.Great games need great ideas.An indie game with more contributors than staff members can't really make AAA titles;but the true strenght of an indie game is supposed to be its innovation,art approach,things that money cannot buy...Ideas.The possibility to experiment with what shit companies like EA couldn't dare.Why did you guys played Minecraft?Sandbox concept!You couldn't expect Activision to come up with that.Braid,Natural Selection (yes it's indie),Dustforce (excellent example gameplay-wise),Chivalry Medieval Warfare (minus the glitches),Journey,Hotline Miami,I would go on.Almost all of them have unique concepts that the industry wouldn't even consider seriously (did you know we almost never had Mirror's Edge?),and through almost only sheer willpower they adpated them into a software meeting gaming requisites.

Each game have a different dependency on different gameplay aspects,obviously.And while Minecraft really builds only around crafting and building,Starbound revolves around globally the same and some new concepts but all beeing a bit more equal in terms of importance.It's okay if combat sucks in Minecraft (although...).You mostly want to find some diamonds to do cool stuff with a pickaxe.But in Starbound it's not okay;combat occupies a much more importance place.Like,all this gear to craft,all these weapons,the guns,the factions,the quests,etc.That's obviously not work on nothing,as it's obvious combat will have a more central role just like in Terraria.

And that's my problem;if the combat system isn't great,as in,great as the rest will be (because the sandbox part is obviously on the good track),this will be a terrible waste,and if it's as boringly bad as Terraria (yeah let's face it),it WILL impede on the rest,ie,the whole gaming experience.Yeah that sounds like I'm dramatizing,but you don't make great things by tolerating its weaknesses.There are probably many examples of one game feature that ruins the rest,whether because it was too weak or misplaced.Not gonna go and search right now,but if Starbound truly wants to be a great,innovative game then it must have a great,innovative combat system.

At least,that's how I see it.

Duh.

 

Exactly. You're a show. And now you get angry because your show of anger attract angry comments. You are hilarious, with your distorted way of thinking. Please write more and amaze us.

 

Soooo basically you're only here to offend and troll,and you don't give a fuck about the thread we're discussing.How about you go play somewhere else,like in Youtube comment sections,and leave the big persons to talk on big person matters?

 

Dude. DUDE. Just a word :

BETA.

It's an unfinished game. It's the first stage of beta. The buggiest and the less balanced stage. If bad balance or bugs piss you off, then wait until stage 3.

 

Okay, not gonna quote here since this response applies to several different people.

Saying it's a beta and nothing else is, yes, not very helpful to anyone, however.. there are many here who have a real lack of patience and can't seem to differentiate between a placeholder and a finished, polished feature. The devs are, whether you like this game or them or otherwise, not idiots. They wanted monsters in the game before the public beta so they put them in. The devs know that their AI is really basic and requires improvement because they're the ones who wrote it. That nullifies the idea that telling them to improve the AI is any kind of a suggestion or valid feedback because everybody already knows.

Secondly, yes this is the general discussion forum and, as such, is open to general discussion and disagreement and whatever else, but if you post something you can't then expect people not to disagree with you or have a problem with them if they do. Everyone is entitled to disagree with everyone else, whether it's you disagreeing with the devs or others disagreeing with you. Either one rule for all or no rules at all.

Thirdly, I never claimed to be perfect, nor am I. I have, however, programmed (or attempted to) games from the ground up before so I know very well indeed the sheer amount of PITA involved in merely keeping track of all the items and their various variables, let alone writing procedural generation code or debugging the weird little issues that arise with rendering or attempting to fine tune player input or building an interface that makes sense to non-programmers. There's a hell of a lot more besides all that too and that's just to get to a bare alpha of a single small part of a game approaching the scope of this one. You don't ever really move from idea to final implementation in a single step. You put in placeholders, you put in basic code so that you can test that things actually work before you refine it, and that refining process (including debugging and optimisation) is what takes the most time. It's unpredictable, you can't ever put a timeframe on getting it perfect because it's open to a near infinite number of variables depending on what the player's doing, where and when in the game it triggers, whether it's affected by other features, and so on. The AI is just a placeholder, it's not feature complete, it's not optimised, it's not refined, and getting it to a point where it is may take a considerable amount of time and most certainly will cause the devs solid days of hair-pulling. Once again, it isn't like they wrote this code and decided that's that done. That isn't how a testing phase works. As someone else said, at this stage saying the AI is poor tells nobody anything they don't already know and such feedback is better left until it is more complete so you at least can have some grasp of the end result rather than just a white box with a red cross in it before you decide whether you like it or not.

Lastly, I apologise for getting into rant territory and calling people fools and idiots, but this thread was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back for me. It's not that people disagree that I have a problem with, nor is it that people have complaints and/or suggestions about the game, it's the sheer lack of patience and understanding of how game (and software) development works. This is the problem with running an open beta, in that people without knowledge of the process start misunderstanding or misinterpreting things that, from any devs point of view, are perfectly sensible and okay for this stage of development. That's not to say games shouldn't have open betas, or that people who haven't got experience in writing software shouldn't be allowed their say (quite the opposite; coders tend to see the world differently from users), it's just that a little bit of patience and perhaps some research into the various stages of development would probably go a long way toward cutting down on the number of repeated threads and knee-jerk reactions.

 

Incorrect.

Beta is not for complaints, it is for healthy constructive criticism. There is a huge difference in those two- one is bitching which makes the person sound whiny, angry, insolent, adolescent and makes the meaning behind the words less effective), the other is noting and possibly suggesting ways or opinions on how to make something better/smoother, which is far more likely to be taken seriously and actually read by others.

If we all learn to play better in the sandbox, more kids will share their toys with you.

 

Man, I laughed my ass off reading Aldo's posts. Well written, good sir. Shame about your girlfriend though.

And regarding the fact that this is Beta: yeah, so? Aldo does have both a good point and some good ideas. Just remember that one man's gripe is another man's constructive criticism. And he both identifies a problem with the current game and makes suggestions. That's constructive.

Saying "it's a Beta" is not.

 

Dude....Calm down. It's just a game. A game in beta.

 

100% agree with you.
I almost feel like the only person that is certainly happy with the beta. Yeah, there happens to be some unfinished things in the game at this time and moment, but it doesn't really bother me that much. I've been enjoying the base game as it is, and with every update the game gets better.
Also, on the lines of coding. I'm just a beginner at it, but I can certainly say that implementing things does take time. Especially when there's one error that's messing with entire code and figuring out how to fix the bug could just make ruin your day. It sucks.
If coding was actually, "I want you to act like this and do this and that" then everyone would do it. Unfortunately, it requires more than just typing in random letters and numbers.
Though I do understand what OP is saying. But what was mentioned before is true, the real discussions of the game mechanics should appear at phase 2 of the beta.
So with that being said, I can't wait to see what the next update has to offer.
Sorry if this was choppy. I'm not the best at writing on the spot without a proper outline... and writing outlines take too much time.

 

That's astonishing how the whole lot of you don't seem to even try to get it.It feels more and more like a church here,the church of Beta,and everyone is saying "BETA BETA BETA" as an awnser to every single mystery of the universe and whenever someone stands up and actually asks "why" everyone tries to slaughter him and make comments about how much they don't like his face.




Now I have to set something straight.Something damn-fucking-straight.

You guys.The ones that keep saying "hurr durr do constructive criticism or gtfo".Have you ever read my posts?I've taken litterally hours of my time to search for ideas and then write them down.But not ONE single comment on that,on my arguments,on my ideas and facts to maybe try to show me why I may be wrong;it's like you just forgot it the second you've read them (if you ever did that),and instead,all you do is quote me on the rest to say I'm a douchebag.You look like a 13th century mob.

I'm gonna open your eyes.You see the suggestion part of the forum?NOBODY GOES THERE!I've made a thread that took me 4 whole hours of my time just to try to improve that game,and only 4 or 5 people did actually commented on this.But then when I come here,and I say "monsters annoy me",you're all here like a pack of hyenas to try to tackle me while saying I'm not constructive,implying YOU are.If you'd really be,shouldn't you be giving feedback on any interesting suggestion thread there?Instead of beeing here,saying "it's a Beta"?"Ow,this guy complains about something!Let's pick on him and be hypocrites all along!Since we need a reason,I don't know,let's say it's because he looks angry and let's dramatize!".Well you know what?If beeing angry actually gets me some exposition,I think I'm gonna make my suggestion threads angry,provoking and offending,so maybe you'd stop the big talk and go be actual productive members of the community.


There,that's said.

 

I feel like since the majority of people in this thread seem hell-bent on ripping OP a new one, that I'll offer my undiluted personal opinion on OP's suggested improvements to the AI (and offer possible alternatives/improvements if necessary):

This seems like it'd be a pretty simple thing to implement in terms of AI ability; just make the player top priority when attacked by them. I don't doubt we'll see this tweak at some point in the beta. We already know Chucklefish is working on the AI, as they've already announced their plans of making the parts that make up mobs determine their abilities (e.g. spider legs giving it wall climbing ability). On top of that, a previous update did introduce the ability for certain neutral mobs to flee when they or nearby instances of the same species are attacked, so we know they can and are improving the AI, it's likely just not as high a priority as some of their other plans.

I can see something like this being implemented around the time they start implementing the storyline. More than likely NPCs with invincibility a la The Elder Scrolls' Essential Flag would probably only be implemented on important quest givers involved in the main story. The reasoning is because some people like to play evil characters, and not being able to wipe out an entire town can be a real downer. (Again, anyone that's played the later Elder Scrolls' games knows what I'm talking about. Those annoying immortal children! )

This could tie in with the previously mentioned Essential system, as a 'half essential' sort of thing. Drain a friendly NPC's health and they're 'incapacitated'. If left alone or healed they would recover after a short time, but continued attacks would cause true death of the NPC. Also, when incapacitated, mobs loose focus of the NPC and ignore them until they recover. Again, I could really only see this being good for merchants and side quest givers. Nondescript civilians should still be fair game. Those random encounters in the wild always remind me of Red Dead Redemption's encounters, where a civilian would be getting attacked by outlaws and you could help, but they'd die if you didn't, So I feel giving the friendly NPC a form of invincibility, (even just towards the player) could dilute the idea of choice as it would be favoring the 'Good Samaritan' route.

Maybe instead the random encounter could be revamped so that whomever you help affects the reward: saving the civilian would result in them thanking you and giving you a reward (maybe becoming a companion or offering a service on your ship?) Whereas helping the bandits could result in either the bandits rewarding you, or also attacking you for trying to steal the goodies they were after, in which case you just kill them too and take their stuff. Again, CF might already have stuff like this planned for when they start getting quest systems in. If not, well here's a suggestion for you Chucklefish!

phew, I think that's the longest post I've made on this forum.

 

The OP has mentioned several times that they had already put a large amount of work into a topic in the Suggestion forum. They got very little discussion, as is usually the case in the Suggestions forum. Large amounts of Suggestion, very little Discussion. So, they tried this, and all they get is flaming. This is a very volatile forum. Akin to the Minecraft forums at this point, I only visit this website to see if Starbound has been updated yet, and occasionally post in the Discussion forums when I'm particularly bored.

I digress, for those saying these things are just a placeholder, and shouldn't be critiqued. Then what is the point of this beta? If we are not give feedback on these systems, as they are just placeholders, what are we to do? Was this beta just to satiate fans? Just to get the forums to shut up about "Where is the beta?" and "When will the beta be out?" I seriously doubt that, as several changes have already been made to game based on player feedback (Temperature gauge, Planet levels, Armor system). So, obviously the devs are using the critique to their advantage. Trying to silence criticism will only hurt the game at this stage.\

I agree that points should be discussed calmly by everyone involved, but screaming "THIS IS A BETA!!!!" does nothing to cool anyone down. Instead, calmly state problems you have with Thread OPs, and calmly, calmly being the key word here, state the things you agree with. perhaps even add ideas you believe could help to alleviate the problems being addressed in that particular thread.

This post has been extremely off topic, and I apologize to AldoKaido for even making it here. I essentially agree with you, OP, I do believe the combat could use a revamp. However, I don't have any particularly good ideas to that end. I was never very good with combat systems.

 

No, the beta is for testing purposes and feedback. Not everything in it is a placeholder. Some things are clearly not complete yet, and the combat and AI are included in this group, and everyone knows they aren't complete and thus it makes no sense to criticise them for being incomplete.

Other things are complete or near complete, such as the methods of crafting certain things, fuel required for the ship and method of travel between planets, the sector/tier concept, large parts of the current graphics, building, the basic GUI, character creation, name generation, monster and NPC generation (graphically speaking), terrain generation, prefab placement, and this list goes on for quite some time. These are the things that can do with feedback and constructive critique as well as bug reports because there's actually something to properly discuss there.

If the AI wasn't in at all then the beta would be lacking in a large part of the gameplay and, because of that, things such as monster generation, monster spawning, damage scaling, projectiles, weapon generation, jumping/dealing with slopes, hitboxes, blocking and armour functionality, NPC reactions to being hit, drops and droprates, and many other things beneath the surface would not be properly (or in any way) testable. That's when you put in a placeholder and that's what the AI is. Just because it's in the game that doesn't mean it's done. Just because you can test it that doesn't mean it's at a stage that's ready for constructive feedback yet.

 

The point is you're a fan, just like the rest of us, and you have no right or jurisdiction to tell others what they should or shouldn't discuss. If you don't like the discussion, simply enough, don't partake. It doesn't matter if it's a place holder or not, not letting people discuss these things during beta is the definition of ignorance. If the developers wanted certain discussions off the table they would have said so!

The fact of the matter is, that they didn't keep anything off the table and you should never again speak for the developers of this game. You don't know what they are doing, you don't know what they read, and you don't know what they take seriously on these forums. Please, for the love of everything holy and all that is good, stop acting like you have the inside scoop because , frankly, you're completely off base.

For instance, "Just because you can test it that doesn't mean it's at a stage that's ready for constructive feedback yet," has got to be one of the most ignorant things I have ever read. How the hell are you supposed to adequately test something without giving constructive criticism?

 

The Tier 5 to 10 is entirely in a state of placeholder, and you can't refute this. There is NO point in giving criticisms for these tiers, because they -- the devs -- haven't got to it yet.

The AI is NOT in a "placeholder" state however, and criticism is fairly accepted. However, it's a good thing to :

a) Not post your criticism while being terribly angry;
b) Not write a wall of text -- shorten your post. "Long posts" does not equals "more credible" and is easier to poke holes into it and then BLAM we get a flame war about a dozen different things, and the thread goes nowhere, and it gets locked.
c) Not call the first person that disagree with you, a "troll". Seriously.

 

You can definitely discuss it and what you would like to see implemented. Doesn't matter if it's a placeholder or not, why act like this game is a part of you physically, and get so hurt whenever someone makes a critique (not you per say but those who constantly derail these types of threads and scream "Beta!!!")?

 

See one thing I dont want, is to not be able to attack civillians.

The day I cant go about and murder every civillian I see normally, is the day I start stockpiling bombs in the hundreds and do to every civiallian what I do to apex cities.

Seriously though, I do do a lot of murdering of random civillians because: a) Medical kits, b) Food, c) I play as a goddamn floran, who lives on a space pirate ship, who dresses like a pirate, and who has murdered just about every town that he has met so far.

So unless you're gunna start trying to tell me that mass murder in starbound isn't something that should happen, I think we're gunna need a new solution.

 

I never said anyone shouldn't discuss anything, in fact earlier on I said that this is the general discussion forum and that it should be open to general discussion. That doesn't mean I'm prepared to only post if I agree with something someone else has said, however. I said this earlier too, the OP disagrees with the state of the AI and I disagree with his disagreement of it (because, in this case, it's clearly nowhere near complete). That's fine, we both disagree with something, and we discuss it. The problem is then when someone (in this case, you) disagrees that disagreement is allowed unless it's disagreement with the state of the game or some part of it. How can you say it's okay to critique the game but not posts made about it (all whilst critiquing a post made about it yourself)?

With regard to speaking for the devs, that ain't what I'm doing. The suggestion (merely suggestion) I make is that people limit their beta-based feedback to stuff the devs may not already know, rather than assuming that they are morons who would, after having written a very basic monster AI, look at it and consider it complex enough to be considered complete.
That's not to say that any type of discussion shouldn't be allowed, but that's discussion rather than feedback. When it comes to feedback directed at the devs (which is what the first post here is) it really should be as concise as possible so that they have less obvious drivel to trawl through and more helpful suggestions to read. That's the sort of thing that will make their jobs easier and ensure that more time is spent actually coding and less time is spent reading the same damn thing over and over again.

I'll finish with a question with regard to your final paragraph: How the hell are you supposed to constructively criticise something that isn't even near being complete yet? That would be like saying any great work of art is rubbish because you looked at the initial sketch and thought it lacked detail. It does not make sense.
Oh, and if you genuinely look at the current AI and consider it complete (or consider that the devs would consider it complete) then you have to really rethink things, because it is currently a step back from the AI present in Terraria and I know of no dev who would willingly take a step back in gameplay as they take a step forward in pieces of software written. It just does not make sense.

 

So much text to reply to and I only have 15 minutes.

So I'll try to do a maximum.



- NPC unkillable by player no wasn't my intention,rather a security like in Fable,once switched on your shots,swings and magics would pass through or not damage.See,problem fixed and still leaves the choice.

-Oh please,instead of blindly believe they'll magically sort out a perfect gameplay that I can't even imagine from behind a bush,I'm gonna be more realist.What's the very best we actually heard of that should be implemented on the combat?Shield blocks.They said,"you block and then the more you block the more damage your counterattack does",and they showed two animated characters blocking each others.That looked terribly static,and static it's gonna be,because a block/counter system like that,it doesn't sound like it's meant for a "soon to be implemented but you can't even imagine it yet so much it's dynamic and fun" gameplay.What we're gonna see is two dudes that are gonna block at each other and just...Press the button when the lights are green.

-"b) Not write a wall of text -- shorten your post. "Long posts" does not equals "more credible" and is easier to poke holes into it and then BLAM we get a flame war about a dozen different things, and the thread goes nowhere, and it gets locked." ===> So that means that the purpose of a forum,it's to be a place where people must write the shorter posts possible so others don't trashtalk it (because they're paid for it or something),so you win the trophy?I thought it was a place where you could discuss ideas,but again,I might be wrong,maybe we should say what people want to hear,and they aren't here for listening,rather try to discredit me.I tell you what:I'm gonna say what I'm gonna say.If someone wants to troll,and "poke holes" in my posts,they'll be sorry to hear that I don't really care.I have a much,much thicker skin than that.I'm here to sort shit out about something,not win some wicked talk game.

-You know what could help?The devs to say something about what they think,sometimes.

-Out of time,see you.

 

Now there's something I doubt anyone could argue with.. at least not from a community standpoint. From the devs point of view they'd probably only get slated for replying to certain stuff and not other stuff and be spending longer on community feedback than making the game, etc etc. Without a dedicated and paid up publicist person it's a bit of a catch-22 situation. Have faith that the devs pay attention to what you write, or stop caring if they don't, otherwise you might go insane. Devs are not all that unlike some sort of mysterious floating vapour that might occasionally bless you with a sneeze of content.. or something..