Feedback Post game is bitter ash and darkness

Yet you and I both know that there is still no guarantee of that. There's no contract. It's likely that they will push more content out after 1.0, but it's not "guaranteed" like the 1.0 content is.

You can place your psychological bets now, but only one side or the other will be right in time. Some people are more skeptical than others. In this world, I'd say that is the smart stance to take.

 

I think it's better to be a happy hopeful with a strong chance to learn from mistakes than be a lame skeptic and have no want to learn.

I remember when CF announced that they were looking to making a pirate-themed game. maybe one, two posts about it a couple years ago. then nothing. probably because Starbound is a top priority, their forum and website are all based around the game lol. so much money, time, effort, criticism, all of it went into making Starbound a game the developers, as well as the community, will want to play. and mod. sandbox stuff. I highly doubt they'd toss it away when they release it.

 

Sir, I do have a contract here at home, signed by the one and only Tiy during his pre-hangover, and it guarantees me that he'll dedicate his life to Starbound post-1.0

 

Story time!

I once entered into a group project where each participant would get a product at a reduced price from a well known craftsman in his field. Via a forum, the craftsman kept stalling and delaying and I grew more and more suspicious at how slowly the work was being done. I voiced my concerns on the forums and eventually the mods banned me for being too persistent. Guess what? The crafts person "ran into troubles" and only sent about 1/3rd of the product out and ran off with the rest of everyone's money. By the time they realized what I realized months or years before them, it was too late to do anything about it outside of costly court proceedings. The guy made off with thousands of dollars.

If they had allowed the skepticism the problem could have been averted through paypal and a thief wouldn't have prospered.

 

Well their are a lot of different approaches to the game. You can be combat oriented, colonize, farming, heck you don't even need to mine anymore now that we got Ursa Minor.
Ocean, Toxic, and Arctic biomes need a huge makeover though as well as minibiomes hmm...

 

probably, but this isn't that shady craftsman. this is Chucklefish.

it's like saying that one fish caused you trouble so you'll never trust your fishing rod again.

 

No, it's like saying putting your trust in someone you've never met is a fool's choice. You do it once because you're young and ignorant and if you do it again you're just... stupid.

 

well, if that's the case, I'll sit idly by.
have fun with those developer-to-gamer trust issues and whatnot.

 

Why are you posting on a message board, then? We are trusting that development will continue for the most part. Molly's likely going to be very busy in the next few days managing the hype of release and things going foward, and multiple members of Chucklefish have stated there will be continued development in the future. after moving to england, refining their communication, and changing the way they approach development, and other steps meant to establish company visibility and projects going foward, what you are fearing isn't a likely thing.

its been years of decision making, interviews, and development, if Tiy wanted to scrap the whole endeavour and walk away, he would have already done it by now.

 

Wazzup with that dark attitude, bro?

 

Jesus. That's not skepticism, that's nihilism.

 

It's likely they will update the game past 1.0, but I don't take it for granted that they will. If you want to call it nihilism, that's your thing.

 

Not going to bother digging up quotes to respond to specific people, but I'd just like to say that while "It's fine, mods will fix it" is a good and upbeat attitude for players to have, it's an awfully cynical attitude for developers to have. Making a game easily and broadly moddable is still no excuse to skimp out on content.

Because then you turn into Bethesda.

Never go full Bethesda.

 

I hope it comes. high-level versions of all planet types sounds very valuable. Perhaps we could reach that sooner than end game too?

 

WHOA there, hold your horses. The gaming world would be a better place if more developers would make Bethesda-level content for their games. The fact that those games get so much mod support is a testament to people's love for them. They don't need 50 mods to add 200 hours play-time, the vanilla game has that much (last few did at least)

In fact, the only other game that has a net 150+ hours of content (more if you don't power-game it) is Terraria, and that's with years of post-release support.

But, yeah, your point about reliance on mods is valid. You don't get a second chance to make a first impression, and for many people 1.0 will be their first impression; let's hope they stick around long enough.

OT: maybe I'll look into that FrackinUniverse thing; I see no point bothering with mods on an unreleased game, but I'll try it on Live tomorrow.

 

Thats actually a pretty good point. But do you really believe that people are smart enough to understand that? I mean look at the MMORPG scene: Do you know how many Peoply complain, if a new MMORPG hits the release, that it lacks of content compared to World of Warcraft? OBVIOUSLY i mean heck, the Game is out since when, 10 Years?! And you want that they've put Content from 10 Years(even more if you consider it had already a lot of development time before it got released) into an 3 year developed game? I mean of course, theoretically with enough manpower, its possible, however you can't expect than, that the Quality is the same, which put more than 10 Years into the Game... (yet i will not argue here if World of Warcraft still is a good mmorpg).

But yeah, like you said. Terraria had back than a solid ground-base which you could build on, the same apply now to starbound. Change Core-Mechanics does take more time than simply add new content, but thats a thing which people won't understand, because due their ignorance they don't care.

 

WoW is also developed by a HUGE Triple-A developer. Blizzard's income rivals the GDP of some small countries. I doubt you're going to get a development team larger than theirs, lol. So yeah, there's no way you're gonna take 10 years of WoW and pack in that much content into a 3 year old game. That's just out of this world ridiculous to even think that's possible. And, btw, it's more like 11 years. Pretty sure WoW came out in Late 04 - Early 05. Actually come to think of it, the WoWversary usually happens in November so I'm gonna say 11.5 years roughly.

But anyways.

Changing Core Mechanics is... difficult. That's why games try not to do that too often after the 1.0 release, they want to take care to make sure the core game is where they want it and when new Core Mechanics come in, it takes FOREVER to release the update. Look at Terraria 1.2.4 -> 1.3.0. 1.3.1 added Controller Support while 1.3.0 added a huge load of new content.

1.2.4.1 was May 15th, 2014.
1.3.0 was June 30th, 2015. (This update added two bosses, 1 event, and a load of new weapons and other content)
1.3.1 was May 22nd, 2016. (This update added a LOT of code changes, wiring, controller support, etc)
1.3.2 launched Today (July 20, 2017). (This update added some new aesthetics and a few bugfixes, plus chest sorting)

It took about a year for both 1.3.0 and 1.3.1... Controller Support + Wiring took about the same amount of time as 2 bosses + 2 events and lots of weapons.

 

Yeah but try to explain the People who critize that. They call Devs lazy for not to keep up with the Content of an freshly released MMORPG, and the Devs should have learned from Blizzard due the big package WoW offers.

And yeah that is what i meant. Also, as we've seen already with Starbound in the beginning, changing to much in the core-mechanics is also very hard to keep the savegames compatible.

Also correct me if i'm wrong if someone knows. But Terraria is build with XNA and Starbound use its whole own Engine from the Ground? As far my knowledge goes(so i'm not that deep in that matter) with XNA its a bit easier and faster to create an game due the framework/tools unlike to build completly from ground on (C++?) an Engine etc...

I see your point, and its the truth. If the best part of modding is to fix the Game, than this a bad example for lazy developers, because it shouldn't up the Community/Fanbase to fix their Games.

However the issue here is, how can you determine which Game/Developers have good modding, and which not. The best example you offered is already Bethesda. I never, and yeah i mean it, i never needed Mods for Elder Scrolls. Even though i buy each Beth. Game on PC because of the Modding Community(also to support PC Gaming a bit, because halfway i'm also a PC Gamer myself) but there was never a time where i had to say: Good Grief, i need these damn Mod to enjoy the game, or so the Fan fix my game. And if i something disliked, like how the gunplay felt in Fallout 3/NV(Please Beth, if you have to force the great series into the an Ego-Shooter, please do atleast he ego-shooter part good because 3/NV felt terrible and clunky at that point, however if i look at Fallout 4, atleast they did a proper job with the ego shooter part), this is nothing a Mod really could fix and is more up to my personal taste. I mean, if you ask me. The only mod, which i really appreciate, hype and show what modding is good for, is the recently released Enderal(yeah sorry i never played nehrim). But this doesn't offer me a fixed or how Skyrim is supposed to be, moreover it offers me a whole different Game based on Skyrim. So its neither for me better or worse, but different...

So yeah, like i said, i agree to your point at a dagree, however its hard to claim which Games are in this cases.

 

I don't get why people harp on Bethesda so much.

Their games are very modable and that's great!

They talk like the core game is just trash and you MUST mod it to make it any good and that's what I think is a shame, because I've played Oblivion, Fallout3, Fallout: NV (yes yes I know, Obsidian blah blah, still a Bethesda Engine game tho), and Skyrim and I thought all of these games were fine as they were.

I tinkered a little with mods for Skyrim, but only a couple (mainly "make your own arrows" until they included that with Dragonborn) minor ones.

I thought the games were just fine on their own; each of them gave me 150-500 hours which is far more than I really expected, as most Triple As struggle to reach the 100 mark for me.

I bet if I dug into content mods, I could probably rack up more hours, but eh, while I like Bethesda type games, I also enjoy RPGs and games like Starbound/Terraria too. A guy only has so much time, ya know?

 

yes, they spent the better half of... 2014 building a new engine if I'm not mistaken. could've went into 2015, but I think my time table is correct.