My disappointment with the Beta so far

I'm very sorry you feel that way, OP.

 

I think the reason you may not be getting the responses you wanted in this thread is that you made the situation sound so dire. You're acting like something terrible happened just because your first experiences with an early beta were less than satisfactory. I'm sure a lot of people here actually agree with some of your points. The boss fight in particular is something that I think needs a good deal of work as well. However, you should probably not be framing this thread as a threat against Chucklefish, as many have mentioned.

 

Kind of. I just think his attitude in the post is simply asking for hate. It's highly derogatory, and gives off a rude vibe.

 

Don't sugarcoat it. he's being a jackass. call him one.

 

Why would he have a high horse? Dude already said he hates horses. Did you even read it?

 

It's so nice when the first sentence of a long post tells me I don't need to take anything the poster says seriously.

 

Yeah. I work in a call centre for a a telecoms company and the same thing that applies to customers there applies here. Don't try and threaten people and remember that there are other people aside from yourself that you are communicating with and being rude only makes them laugh at you rather than make them respect your opinion

 

That's pretty much why he capitalized HORSE and ASS.

 

First, from the "How the beta is going to work" dev's thread:

http://playstarbound.com/how-the-beta-is-going-to-work/

"The beta will come in 3 main stages.

Progenitor

Stage 1 will be move at a breakneck speed. This will be the buggiest and busiest stage of the beta. A bunch of unfinished features will be disabled whilst we finish them up. Updates will come thick and fast, sometimes as often as multiple updates a day.

If you choose to take part during stage 1 you should expect bugs, lots of balance changes, you shouldn’t get too attached to your character or universe as we may make changes that require you to start from scratch. You should expect the game to be broken at points as we make sweeping changes but you’ll get to enjoy exciting new content added constantly. The engine won’t optimized during this stage of the beta so performance could be poor on some low end machines.

You’ll get to see a bunch of ‘behind the scenes’ content at this stage and provide feedback during this crucial period."

We are currently in stage 1. Updates are coming at slower a pace than originally announced, but compared to most commercial game where "an update a month is fine", I'd say Starbound's patching pace of "an updated every few days" IS a breakneck pace. I'm still waiting for the next patch to Rimworld after close to a month since the last, by comparison.

You're talking of reviewing a game, while that game is nowhere near complete, and making demand the game "improve" while it is still very much at the phase where it is asking -you- for suggestions on how to improve it.

I hope you realizes the contradiction here, especially when players were so forewarned about these stages of beta.

At the same time, they've already said that the balance of monsters and bosses, as well as those of weapons in relations to such, is something they want to work on and are working on. So you are criticizing a problem which has already been aknowledged by the developpers.

Also, recall that the developpers, before they decided otherwise, had stated multiple times they were hesitant to provide the game with an open beta because of an increasing amount of people expecting a beta to be the complete game when it isn't, especially for indie games that do not have the big studios capacities for QA testing before releasing or even making a game available as a beta.

I'm tired of player growing entitlement that basically revolves around killing what we love because it doesn't meet our expectations when we're allowed in phase of development where developpers -warn- us that what we'll see at this stage probably won't meet our expectations yet... and are basically asking us "help us find the bugs, help us find what does not work... and help us with suggestions to make it work"

So before you "review" a game that is nowhere near complete, I would asks you take a step back, and put things in perspective. You aren't the one working on this... but you are the one who can help the people who have, and still -are-, make it better. This is what a beta is about. Not about "Why is this not the complete utterly polished best game ever yet"

Too often I've seen people and so-called "fans" kill the very things we claim to love because of how entitled we feel about it.

And on that subject, to better put things in perspective, I reccomend you read this article(even if, I must admit, with your aknowledgement of things you did like you still behaved better than most I've seen on these last few days) : http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-awful...age&utm_campaign=new+article&wa_ibsrc=fanpage

 

The upcoming patch will be balancing out a bunch of stuff including pixels. It's only been out for a few days, they'll square everything out once most of the bugs are out.

 

I'm totally confused with all the hate. I've been playing this game non-stop,reached tier 3 and had an over-all blast. Although I've been playing multiplayer if that makes a difference. Also I have never had this pixel problem I hear mentioned all the time have you tried simply exploring the planets' surface

 

It's not even been a week yet, there are going to be a lot of big changes to the game and the devs are listening to constructive criticism.

I am a bit disappointed in some parts of the game, like pixels, combat etc. but I'm confident they will be fixed eventually.

 

- Currency is fine as is, the entire world is made up of pixels so why wouldn't you use them in crafting and as currency? They're incredibly easy to get even at lower levels. Clear a single dungeon and you easily have 3k+. Given that all prices in Alpha Sector crafting were severely reduced or removed, you have no ground to stand on for this argument.

- The first boss took me maybe five minutes with a 6AP 2h sword, full silver armor and a double jump tech. The quest tells you to gear up beforehand, if you weren't adequately equipped that's your fault.

- Unless you absolutely /want/ to build a shelter on every planet, it's unnecessary. Place your Anvil, Furnace and Crafting Table in your ship and you're good to go.

- The Flashlight is only useless if you aren't dual wielding it with a 1-handed sword during nights and in caves. And even then you can choose an alternative to crafting torches instead of using it. Nobody is /making/ you do so.

Honestly, most of your complaints seem like personal problems more than legitimate gameplay issues. While there are bugs and balancing problems, yours don't fall into that category.
Though I do agree with one point, shift should toggle between block placement modes.

 

It's a flying boss that breaks blocks, and there's no ranged weapons other than the hunting and iron bows until much later in the game.

So if you make platforms to reach the boss, it'll break them.

And using the available bows takes ages. NPCs do not seem to drop ranged weapons, and I've killed plenty.

I tried visiting level 6-10 planets, looking for NPCs to kill and see if they dropped weapons I could use to fight this boss, but they hardly dropped any, and the ones they dropped were worse than my iron weapons. And trying to fight level 10 enemies with level 5 weapons takes ages.
So you'll have to go to planets one by one hoping there's NPCs there to kill for weapon drops, as monsters never drop them and finding them in chests would take simply an unreasonable amount of time as there's no way to scan planets for potential spots with something interesting.

With no way to 'upgrade' a weapon with +1 "reforges" or something like that to increase its power, and the only other way to get weapons good enough to beat the guy being behind beating the guy itself, you should understand how anyone who hasn't used any tricks and tried to fight the ufo as intented would be really disconcerted about this mismatch between available equipment and the enemies you have to face with it, and why they are going to rebalance damage in an upcoming patch.

And they should definitely add more ranged weapons other than the hunting bows at earlier stagse. Shortbows that fire faster but have shorter range and less damage, longbows that reach longer but must be fired in an arc, crossbows that deal more damage and have faster projectiles but take longer to prepare (right click to load bolts while immobile, click to fire bolt)...

 

Well that's good because I'm not particularly interested in what you think about the game either then so I'll just stop reading here.

 

I havent been able to play the game yet due to crashes, but my brother said the boss was impossible, so he went around to other worlds and explored, then came back and it was fairly easy to fight

 

The fight becomes significantly more manageable once you get silver armor and Pulse Jump.

 

It's quite a shame you feel this way. Each person has their own play styles and preferences though I would try to differentiate between things that don't gel with you personally and things that are beta issues that need to be looked into.

The Pixel system works very well if you utilize the scanner to personalize your space. It offers an alternative from jumping from planet to planet just to find one more soda machine for the mess hall you and your friends might be building somewhere. Instead you can farm Pixels on the planet you wish and after having found the decor at least once, duplicate it an infinite amount of times. While in crafting it can be annoying, this really is the purpose of Pixels overall, and is more build-things friendly than forcing a manual search.

The first boss yes, is very difficult and quest dialogue doesn't convey the true scope of it well enough yet. That said, creative players found methods to beat it and hopefully with the combat overhaul in the next patch, the boss will be scaled more appropriately and it will be easier to know when a person is ready to fight it.

Starbound's key feature is the nigh-limitless scope of the universe it has to offer. This design focuses less on colonizing every single planet you encounter and more on exploring outwards and travelling constantly. Your ship is probably the best base of operations you'll have and the home planet feature makes it easy to travel to well, whichever planet you consider home. With the teleport, it is in fact easier to return to your ship and use it as a universal base of operations for all planets than to establish one on every planet and constantly have to run back to it.

As for the flashlight, that is very very playstyle dependant. I use the majority of my coal for fuel to keep jumping planets and exploring. Torches are reserved for very expansive cave systems and I never use them on the surface (apart from emergency warmth). Using a dagger such as The Pecker with the flashlight in offhand can ensure visibility in any dark place without the frantic need to plant torches or swap slots. Also, the lighting effect from flashlights looks wonderful~

Just because you don't like horses doesn't make a game bad. That's a pretty personal preference and most people don't seem to mind monster sounds, even if they may sound like horses at times. That's just you not liking an animal.

Reviewing an incomplete game is akin to tasting an uncooked dish. The ingredients are there and may be mixed but are still unprocessed for the most part. Starbound's Progenitor phase had warnings that the game would be a very rough build with many changes and instability throughout this phase. If you want to give a fair review, wait until the beta is over and the delicious meal that is Starbound is fully cooked. Until then, understand that the game still has much growth in it yet to come before it is properly reviewable.

 

He won't be the tier 1 boss by the end of the beta. It is only a placeholder for now that is why it seems off.

 

Actually the amount of people in this thread that think the first boss is difficult is staggering. This will all change with the next patch but I'll explain it anyway.

Right now armor pen is the most important stat on a weapon, it can cause you to one shot an enemy or be one shotted regardless of actual damage. So you're going to want a weapon in the 9-12 armor pen range when you fight the UFO. You'll also want silver armor before you fight the UFO.

Now by the time you have these two things you're going to have gone to probably a level 9 or 10 planet. So by the time you can beat the UFO boss without much trouble you'd have neared the end of the first game tier- which is the point of the boss.

So we have our gear, now lets go and gather up some plant fiber and make some bandages, the amount you need will vary depending on how skilled you are but 10 should be more than enough.

Now all you've gotta do is head off to a nice spot, setting up an area with overhangs and platforms helps to deal with orbital fire and minion spawns, and just attack the UFO whenever it comes crashing down to try and crush you.