Feedback My thoughts on the first hour of the game.

Just a number of my musings and frustrations after an hour of gameplay.

So I created a character, a glitch, because I like robots and type in a name. Turns out that's my character name so "Hyrule" was a bad choice. Might be useful to signify "character name" there.

I wouldn't mind a bigger character model so I can see my character as I design it. As such I just hit randomize til I got a male looking character (Even though I chose the plug rather than the socket) and went with it.

So I did the normal stuff on the ship warped down to the planet, and started to do the crafting table mission. There wasn't a lot of trees around but I found some, cut them down, and ... well I can't make the log planks for some reason. I look around, I can't do it. I go online can't find any help, all I have is refined wood. WTF!

Finally see someone saying there's different types of wood, my wood looks like normal wood, so I say "ok let's give this game a second shot" I go create a new character, 15 minutes has passed since I started and I'm throwing it away, and that's annoying.. But what ever.

Go into the second game. Ok more trees, that's a good sign, I can create wood planks, that's a good sign. Table, made! Bandages, done!. New Quest for getting food, I need a Hunting Bow, Hunting Spears? Ok Let's do this. I also have my swords from the ship, only wasted 5 minutes to get to this point.

The next 30 minutes is me trying to figure out how to get a damned Steak. From my understanding, you can only get it from SOME monsters, and that's absolute crap, I kill 3 or four types. I kill the jellies in a trench coat, some other jelly looking things, I try to kill a snail (fail) I kill something in the dark, I kill what looked like a lizard I think, no meat. Finally I kill this thing that looks like a little girl with a spear and get a steak.. finally.

30 minutes to complete that quest? I mean honestly I still don't know what I did wrong unless the girl is the only one who has meat. But that's just.. obtuse.

Also it's a nitpick by Darkness comes I get into my tent... and then am I just supposed to wait? Seems like it doesn't speed things up and that would be a nice Quality of Life improvement.

I like the game, I'm glad it's getting released, I've been a fan of terraria, but I feel this game has taken some huge steps back from the flow into terraria. I LOVE the ship, I LOVE the worlds and finding stuff is cool. However I HATE how unintuitive everything feels. The thing is I can say "Minecraft has no tutorial" and it doesn't, but that's 4 year old technology, this even has a quest system, and yet it's less intuitive than MInecraft or Terraria. If I kill something in terraria I get items, the game doesn't tell me "You'll get steak".

In Starbound, you specifically are telling me "Go get steak by killing monsters with these items" but when the steak doesn't appear I'm more in the weeds than if there wasn't a quest for it.

Think about it this way. You come upon a door, with one of those stupid handles on both sides, do you pull or push it. You try one and then the other. Eventually you get in. Bad door but what ever.

You come to another door that says "push" but doesn't have a handle. You can't figure it out, pushing on it doesn't move the door, a guy walks by and sees you having trouble and presses a spot about in the middle of the door and the door moves out of the way and smiles. Starbound is that door, and it really could be better.

 

1) theres a slot for a name, what else would you put there?
2)not sure what happened with the wood thing, never actually happend to me so if it did happen thats some bad luck and needs to be looked at yes
3)not sure what you were complaining about in character creation about it not looking male when its a clear change between the two models
4)read the quest in full, not just the summary, it'd explain to create some sort of hunting weapon, which greatly increases the food drop rate.

 

Just saying that this game's not trying to be a second Terraria.

 

Yes I read that Zeroofshadow, it says use a hunting bow or hunting spear, but then I killed 10+ enemies with only those weapons and I'm not seeing food drop, which makes me think I'm doing something wrong. I've uploaded the current quest as it appears in my game (it's completed but same verbage).

The point isn't that "it's not clear" it's that you have to kill either too many monsters or a specific monster to get the desired result, and when that's not working, the player thinks something is broken before it drops, and that's not a good feeling.

I'm not trying to make this game a second Terraria, but it's a perfect example of a similar game, and it and mine craft or both in the same mental space (procedurally generated games) but yet they have vastly improved first experiences without a quest (or really any text), and that's a problem.

 

if it took you 10 mobs to get any meat that is such a big outlier im surprised you had those odds. normally you'll get it within the first 3 mobs, or even the very first. and keep in mind terraria has been out for far longer, and upon its orginal release, it was a big mess too for some things, specifically digging or building, it was a royal pain to do those in terraria. like all games they have their issues, this game is still in beta, some things will get better over time, as they do in other games.

 

on the 22nd the 1.0 update will be released on Stable and won't have all of those quests. You don't have to even get meat if you don't want to. For the fun of it though I'll look at your points for the current build of Stable.

I seen people do pretty much nothing for hours on Minecraft and enjoy it just fine. Starbound is meant to be more of a sandbox game not a live action RPG like Terraria.

Why should it? You didn't need to create an account or anything like that and I assume you started off in single player. Beside a god awful EA game there is not a single player game that comes to mind that require you to create an account just because.

You can zoom in with the options once ingame but by default your character is the real size you will be seeing ingame. It is showing you exactly what you will be getting. As for going with a male/female Glitch or Floran those classes don't really have genders though the two options allow you to see different styles. For the most part gender don't play that much of a role in the game and in fact for the most part you can't really tell the difference. You can make a female human completely bald for example and beside the 3 or so pixels to form the boobs you wouldn't be able to tell it wasn't a dude. Some races differences are extremely hard to spot unless you know what to look for.

Never heard of that happening before. Sorry you have to deal with that.

You are playing a video game and it was only 15 mins. I had spent hours on a character creator for Dragon Dogma just to end up disliking the character and starting over. It was kinda your choice to delete the character so I don't see how this is even a complaint.

Sound like you were learning. Isn't that the fun part of playing a good game?

The truth is unless the monster is a fish or a flying monster and they aren't a special pre-made monster (this game have poop monsters by the way) then pretty much ALL land monsters can drop meat. Pretty sure I got meat from a robotic monster once even. Hunting bow is the way to go as you get unlimited uses. With that said you could had ignored that quest and do the others as you will get the meat sooner or later even without the bow or spears.

There should been other quests for you to do, else you should been exploring.

Tents and beds are for healing, exploring in the night is as easy as exploring during the day once you have decent armor and weapon. There is no reason to skip ahead to day as the night time feature was made for a reason.

I HATED Starbound when I first got it expecting it to be Terraria in space. It isn't Terraria, it wasn't made to be Terraria. Beside using pixel art which is much different and have more attention to details they have nothing in common. You may as well compare Runescape to Terraria as they also both have mining. I learn to accept Starbound as a different game trying to do it own thing, once I did that I actually start having fun with it. Starbound is all about building and exploring. While the items you will be finding aren't always useful it would be nice to have as an item collector. On Terraria you might rush to the end but on Starbound there is really no end to rush to. You play until you get bored or at least until there is an update for new things to explore.

You could always just ignore the quest yo. In fact I would recommend it as even without the spears/bow you will get the meat sooner or later by pure luck regardless of what you do. You are trying too hard to make progress when there is no progress to be made just for cooking meat. You could just eat a potato if you want to eat something.

It more like there is a sign on the door telling you that it is stuck and you should use the other one yet you keep trying to push it anyway. Once again Starbound is about having fun not making progress. If you want to make player progress then play Terraria. Starbound will still be here when you want to goof around.

 

Dear god,

You basically spent your time telling a fellow player why he's wrong? "You can skip quest" "you dont' have to do that" "I've seen people spend hours in minecraft".

It's feedback. I'm giving my experiences to the team, I'm not asking you to tell me I'm wrong. Why you felt that you needed to give me a line by line response where you basically show that somehow my feedback isn't "typical" or how my problems are "Acceptable" or my time isn't worth it, is... well honestly it's a bit of a dick move.

It seems like you like the game, good for you. But you don't have to defend it, you don't have to tell other people that their experiences are wrong. This post literally makes me feeling like I don't want to be a part of the community where this is the response when someone is saying there's an issue.

If this is a sign of the community, this game is going to be toxic as hell. The good news is I'm still in the refund window. Dev team. hope my feedback is useful, but I think I'm out.

 

Well if you want to give feedback without others discussing it, don't make a thread and instead message the devs directly. The forum's about discussion after all.

 

what is this, 2014?

look, it's fine if you don't like your game experience and want to let the developers know, but if you don't even care to see your own faults in such a delivery then there's not much to learn from, hmm?

 

I'm just saying I hated Starbound at first until I gave it a chance. You gotta play it as it own game. Sorry if you aren't willing to give it a chance as it is pretty darn fun. I dare say more so than Terraria in some areas. Building large colonies, customizing your crew and playing music from animes and video games in the Outpost on multiplayer. Terraria simply can't give you the same experiences. Likewise Starbound is the worst game if you are looking for progressive gameplay, Terraria does that so much better that it isn't even funny.

Let me put it this way, you are able to refund a game I assume you have on Steam, a sandbox game. That enough say how little of a chance you gave it. I don't want to say your opinion doesn't matter, first impressions are indeed importation but what if I load up Pokemon then close it complaining it only had three Pokemon to choose from? You would tell me I didn't even touch the game. Well, that what I'm saying to you now. The games have many flaws, oh so many flaws just like any other game but most would agree the flaws show up later unless you are replaying for like the 100th time. Beside as my very first line stated all of what I wrote (and sadly most of what you wrote as well) are moot points. The start of the game will be completely different with 1.0 release on the 22nd. I only discuss because I love to discuss. I find the act of it fun but you don't seem to think likewise.

 

If you don't like the game, then no problem, I do agree Starbound has some issues that would put people off; but don't post something on a discussion form, and get upset when people discuss it and turn out to -gasp- not have the same opinion as you.

If people disagreeing with you is enough to make you think that the community is toxic, then I wonder what sort of community you'd think is 'not toxic'.

 

I've had huge major epic sandbox deleted and or refunded to me by steam because I didn't like the look or feel of the games. Its fine that Starbound does not click with you right out of the gate but before you consider a refund you should be aware the game is leaving early access this Friday, July 22nd, and will begin VERY different. It will have the same look and feel of the stable version but its seriously going to be dramatically diff from he stable version. I'd say hold off and play it after launch for a half hour. If you finding it still not right for ya then do a refund.

I personally hated Terraria 5 mins in. Seriously I could not stand it. Starbound is easy to me and I never had much trouble with most things.... for the bit I did need help with I used google or made a thread about my question here.

 

M8 THATS ABUSE RIGHT THERE

 

I think you'll have a better experience on the 22nd, when Starbound 1.0 is released. It seems you're playing the current Stable build, which, to be honest, is really outdated compared to what we have now in the Unstable branch. Speaking of the Unstable branch, you could install that and try that and see if you like your first hour more.

 

I think i get what Zerukoba is saying:
Starbound is a time killer game and, in my opinion, you should not start it and trying to progress and finish the game. It's a endless game, so i think you're just supposed to explore and build and see what will happen to you instead of trying to progress as fast as you can, that's the way i appreciate it and if it's not what you expected maybe this is not your type of game or maybe you can mod it.
And keep in mind the game is not yet finished, the stable version is outdated and the unstable is ... unstable ^^

 

From what i've just read I'm pretty sure you've been trying stable starbound. Which is a beta version from half a year ago. If you are unwilling to mess with unstable updates, this friday 1.0 will come out, and the entire quest system has been tossed around. I'm not going to argue your points, it's your opinion after all, not facts written in stone. You're entitled to yours, as I am to mine.

But that being said, if you like the concept of starbound at least somewhat, give it a try again after 1.0 is released. Do the introductory quest, and talk with all the NPC's to get info on how to play the game. Pay attention to s.a.i.l's. messages and you should get a pretty clear idea of what to do and how to accomplish it.

 

were you playing unstable or had admin on?