My opinion on the Beta

This is my personal opinion of the Beta. I just felt with sharing it with you guys and see if anyone agrees here.

In one thing I hope we can all agree: It's a Beta so the game will obviously get better. That means you shouldn't see this thread as a review, but rather as a bunch of roads the developers should take to make the game better.

Let's get started from the things the game does right

-Presentation
Lots of races, customization options, random generation options, and all that. And they're done very good.
Interesting planets, monsters, and weapons can be found anywhere you look.

-Graphics
Absolutely stunning. Very well done. This ranges from the main menu, to the ship, to the planets, to the swing animations. The pixel art is top notch.

-Physics
The character just feels right when moving. The hitbox isn't a perfect rectangular like in Terraria (pardon my comparison), but it feels like it has a body shape. Also going up blocks is a big plus.

Now for the bad stuff.

-Melee combat
It's honestly very shallow. You click to make an invisible rectangular that does damage appear in front of you for one second. I honestly expected some kind of physics and an actual weapon swing.

-Menus
Horrible. Absolutely abysmal menu system.
Placing an item in the hotbar hides the number, so you don't really know what number key to press. You can't drag an item away from the hotbar unless you actually open the inventory. The crafting interface is not confusing, but very unorganized and counter-intuitive: it opens in a small square, and then forces the player to use a scrolling bar. It's mindboggling.
Fix these ASAP.

-Monster animations
Kind of awkward. The monsters don't even walk up one-tile-tall blocks and the running animations don't look too well.

One last thing, but this didn't bother me too much: why does the male character still look like a female character? They shouldn't have made his running animation with his chest in front. It looks like he has tits.

That's it. Let's hope they fix and add more stuff in the future.

 

Your wish is my command!

As for the rest, UI changes in most games drastically throughout their Betas. I agree on the confusing organization and stuff . Though I can't fix that in a minute unlike the number thing.
And Melee combat, the melee weapons are long due a revamp to make them more unique and pleasant. It'll come.

 

That's great news.

Now that I remember though there is another thing. I remember it was announced that the enemies would not damage you on contact, but actually go through an "attack" animation and then damage you. This is not true however. What happened?

 

It was changed . Some enemies don't but as a general rule try not to touch them .

 

No intention to hijack the thread, but I'd like to add something to your list.

@GeorgeV as far as monster AI is concerned, I wonder if it would be possible to have them "read" the environment and make an appropriate jump. Different jump heights might allow better movement through the scenario (sometimes they do the "standard jump" and just fall on a hole).

As for enemies getting stuck behind blocks, it's a nice little mechanic brough back from Terraria/Minecraft, but it could have a twist on Starbound. Like enemies attacking the block(s) and breaking it(them) after 5-6 attacls. Not sure how good that would be, but at least would create an interesting gameplay mechanic for combat.

 

This is one of the things that is bugging me about the game right now. I enjoy fighting ranged enemies and humans (who don't have collision damage) a lot more then I enjoy fighting the majorly of enemies that wildly bump into you.

 

Glad the UI will be getting an overhaul, as I agree, it desperately needs it.

 

Also please make the menus bigger. Functionality comes first. Aesthetics second.

 

I concur with the point that enemies should not damage you by contact. This is the most infuriating thing in video games in general ever.

 

The menus shouldn't appear in the middle of the screen. If I want to quickly place a block in my inventory, I shouldn't have to move the menu out of the way first.

 

One thing i would like is to be able to adjust the size of the Starbound launcher and it be able to remember the size i put it at because im only on a laptop and screen size is an issue, at the moment the launcher nearly fills my screen