My Dissapointments With Starbound

I haven't been privy to what Tiy has or has not said about the development in the game. Provided that what you say is true, then you do have a point. However, I don't think it's fair to jump straight to doomsaying because things haven't progressed as nicely as he would have liked. When it comes to project management, things rarely do, and things like this happen. As a fellow investor, it doesn't stop me from being a little disconcerted, however. Regardless, you won't catch me being anything but optimistic, because they still have the opportunity to do these things in beta, even if (and it is an if) beta had to be extended. As far as I know, the game doesn't currently have a release date.

 

Ahhh I see now.

 

Some people, like myself, would want to see a game they bought improved. We're not talking about buying a racing game and then demanding on the forums that it be transformed into a shoot-em-up. This is about a game that has huge ambitions, and telling the devs that the direction they're taking it right now is probably not the most fruitful, and then offering constructive criticism / ideas on how to improve key aspects of the game. That is not whining, and it's not demanding instant gratification. To dismiss legitimate concerns in such a way is completely counter-productive.

As for your remark on modding, it would seem silly to me to make a game, throw it out there, and then leave it to the community to pick up your slack, especially since we are, as some folks like to state again and again, still in beta. Now is the time to make suggestions and help the team turn Starbound into more than it is now, and that is the only purpose of this thread. Developers work in an isolated bubble while the game is theirs alone, it's when you release it to the public that some things you thought were amazing simply don't work as well as you'd hoped. That's the whole point of a beta. I'd say the OP is more helpful to the Starbound devs than the "ermagerd its beta lulz" people. But hey, that's just my thoughts on the topic.

 

Thing is, there is an almost instant gratification demand here, with people being disgruntled a game that is planned to change and is just three weeks old does not match the version they expect, while many things are still planned to be improved.

 

The game is three years old. Not three weeks.

 

Creating a game engine from with few developers like they did can take many years, even if they recycle previous game engines. Your point is invalid.

 

I am sorry, usually they start counting game's age from it's release date, not development beginning. Guess we can apply your revolutionary method, but it goes rather complicated and unfair with some games being largely based by their predecessors and inheriting many assets, some starting of with an already existing engine, and some being made from scratch. Starbound belongs to the third group, and is being worked on by a team of merely 9 indie devs, plus some contributors. I find you rather too demanding.

 

Think about it. The game is still in Beta and they are focused on stomping out all the bugs, yet people are whining about the lack of nifty stuff. "But ____ said that beta will be as feature filled as possible" First off see this http://playstarbound.com/the-future-of-starbound/ Now, there are still some things that would be nice for the to add, but do you really think they are going to spend all that time creating a system to reduce the number of wipes JUST so people can keep their characters during Beta? I think not! Chances are future updates will add in more quests and etc. A lot of what OP is concerned about is covered in the link I gave.

As for mods, I'm not saying the dev's should just slap a very basic game out there and let others pick up the slack. What I'm saying is that not everything you want will be added to a game or there's something about the game thats horrible. Take a look at Bethesda's games, they're fun by themselves, but with mod's? They are great! In fact I hated Bethesda games because the gameplay was so bland and the worlds so large, but after a friend showed me some mods I've played through Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim and even the Fallout Series and enjoyed them... well except Skyrim, there are sooo many things that annoy me in Skyrim that annoy me... but a lot of things I loved.

 

They're not whining they're participating in the beta by giving out constructive criticism. The people whining are those defending a bunch of millionaires as if Chucklefish was a team of sickly orphans. They made their money, now let us participate in Beta without having to defend our right to do so.

 

Ahem. Personally I, and many others defending the Chucklefish, are here because we find discussions as of these not constructive in any fashion and just heating up the place, making community more... ballistic. Instead of providing constructive suggestions on suggestions subforums, each suggestion separated to have it's own discussion on it's thread, to minimalize derailment and concentrate more on specific benefits or issues of the suggestion, quite many accent only the negative part, that is, talk about the presence of flaws instead of giving suggestions. Well, not everyone, there are many really sound suggestions, yet still, it's better to sort them out and put up on suggestions section instead of dumping here where they are flooded easily.

 

The problem is people who attack any form of criticism against Chucklefish on sight.

The one problem I have with what you said though is that you said "discussions such as these are not constructive" the OP presented his points in a good and concise manner. Its not his fault that the thread got "heated".

 

Actually, most of the strife has come from a fan boy approach to slamming criticism or feedback as such as destructive.

I don't think there has been any feedback that wasn't pretty well attenuated and thought out. Honest discussion of what's lacking or desired often along with what might address those concerns.

This forum seems to have a small but vocal population of people who seem to feel personally affronted by and seemingly threatened by any comments about the way the general architecture of the game might be pushed in a way that might make the game playing experience hold the interest of some of us longer. The emotion and vehemence seems remarkably one-sided, and it's not coming from those making the suggestions.

If you feel threatened by it, you might want to breathe and count to 10 and ask yourself why? I don't have any speculation for the reason, honestly. I do find it strange.

 

Ah, yes, but that's the nature of almost every second discussion here on General Discussion - it would have been significantly better if OP would post the ideas on Suggestions forum, where heated derailing discussions happen significantly less often, not to mention that if it would receive many upvotes there it would easily be more noticeable than in this kettle of chaos /gd/... erm, sorry, General Discussion is.

 

I don' t really know if this counts as a suggestion but I half agree they should be posted into suggestions.

It seems like the reason for everyone dumping their threads into general is that they want it to be seen and sometimes its purely for controversy. But yeah I agree.

 

No, complaining about a game because you fail to realize that a bunch of features are planned, but not yet implemented would be whining. A bunch of what OP stated in his opinion are actually planned for in the future. Such as;

• Macro Terrain Changes: Affect an entire planet’s terrain and weather
• Story Missions: Eventually each tier will end with a story mission that ends with the bosses you see now.
  
• NPC Spawners & Building Logic: NPCs will scan the structures you build around them and the contents of chests; they will have improved inventories/behaviors depending on how valuable their surroundings are.
  
• Monster Generation: Right now, monster parts just have stat boosts, but eventually rolled monster parts will affect their behavior and abilities. For example, monsters with spider legs can climb walls; fiery monsters inflict burning. You might get a burning spider dropping on you from the ceiling. Projectiles may be tied to specifically generated heads. Biome may influence monster part generation.
• Villager AI: Villagers will aggro when you steal from them and follow you more aggressively.
• Hylotl villages/dungeons
• Ocean Biomes
• etc etc

Yes, this doesn't fully cover OP's concerns, however these are things that we know of, there are features that chucklefish don't want to mention yet.

Beta is for crushing bugs and figuring out what is broken, sooo if you want to help Chucklefish it's best to do so by going "Hey Tesla Spikes only affect the player" not going "Please add Tribbles cause this game is lacking in the cute pet department"

 

Suggestions are all well and good, but you can't really address 'big picture' issues just with suggestions. If there are concerns about the overall direction being taken, or how game subsystems work together, then a general forum discussion about it is entirely appropriate as long as it remains constructive.

 

Well, yeah, that's the thing. One negative part is that it may receive less attention due to General Discussion being the kind of all subforums and gaining most views, but most often people who go to Suggestions are either those willing to suggest something, or evaluate present ideas and suggest feedback to them or just commend them if they have nothing to add themselves and fully support the idea as perfectly formulated, not participate in easy (or not really) banter. The suggestions posted by OP have a very great chance of earning a lot of support and getting fleshed out to a fuller picture by the commenteers with sound prepositions, and most likely even getting noticed by the developers.

Well, that's the problem, really, general discussions are always extremely volatile places on active communities, especially right after release like now, massive updates or controversial events. Any major suggestion with even minor defects or undiscussed areas is bound to be picked on, with this escalating into For and Against discussion, that's why I suggest moving any actually sound suggestion or a group of them somewhere people are more willing to directly discuss it than fight over it, until the idea is fleshed out and the possibility of major discussion regarding whether it's good overall or worthless is minimal.

 

I hope Chuclefish will really go through that list. After selling a million copies, the game is already a success, the money is in the bank, it might make them loose some of the "drive" to go the extra mile.

 

Give one quote from anyone actually bringing up a critique in this thread that is even half as outlandish as your suggestion and I'll decry your miracle. You're completely off base by taking the opposition's point-of-view to the absolute extreme. Sycophantically worshiping the developers and then lambasting people with walls of text for voicing their opinion is not the answer. Starbound's an unfinished product open to the public, specifically so the public's opinion, criticisms, and reviews can be heard. So, since this is the premise of a beta, can we please stop making the millionaires victims and focus on how we can all make this game better?

The people asking for "Tribbles" are the large minority compared to those trying to grind all reasonable discussion into dust.

 

Oh, don't give them any ideas now, far too many devolopers have been doing that as of late