So, I haven't been on in about 5 months or so...

So I stopped playing a while ago for the usual reasons, other games just seemed funner at the time, and now I am curious about Starbound's progression.

Before you get all pissy and give me links to the latest news post (Which I already read, as well as news posts for the last couple months) don't bother. I know that the devs are busy, but there is a reasonable line between being really busy, and spending 4 months "Moving the team", you can't tell me that that doesn't sound the least bit strange, and even if you were moving the team Tiy stated that there were points in the game where you would wait 8 hours to receive something important from another dev. There has been a single "Stable update" the past 4 months by the look of it, and the unstable updates contain hardly anything.

I would like to think myself a fairly reasonable guy, so I'm going to just ignore all of that and assume I'm wrong.

Now assuming that I am wrong in everything I have said up to this point, we can still look at the end results. The game has been released now for 5 months, and we are still in the highly unstable "Progenitor" mode, which was stated to be the fastest moving of the four stages of beta. But maybe I'm missing something, can someone point me to a stable update since february that has more than just a couple bug fixes?

I'm genuinely worried, because Starbound is already showing signs of a dying game, namely the lack of forum posts and attention that it once had. Not only that but the only people left in the community now are people who have just bought the game, or a few people who diligently wait for the next update for months on end defending the devs at the slightest notion of hostility. You can post any type of "Hohohoh be patient! It will come eventually!!!!" comment you want, I've been here for a year and a half I definitely know patience when it comes to this game.

I will now patiently await the spiteful comments from whatever community is left.

 

I don't think you'd be happy with any post other than ones that agreed with you, as you've pointed out at least three times, so I don't see the point.

 

You said you read the most recent post, Yet a lot of your fears and questions are literally answered in that post.

The game is not dying. They are in a time of transition, mainly while moving into a new office (and for some across the ocean to a new country.) And while it may seem like 4 months is a long time to move... you also have to take in account visa's, paying fees, etc etc. Have you ever moved to another country? I've moved to another state before within the US and it took about 2 months of planning before the actual move. So I assume moving to a new country would take longer.

Also in terms of the game itself, a lot of the updates that have gone through unstable itself have contained large rewrites of a few of the games base systems, such as combat. This kind of change takes time as you would think if they change one thing they will have to change anything else that interacts with that function as well.

Also, the whole point of the stable and unstable build separation was three fold from what I understand.
1. Prevent modders from having to update their mods every time there is an unstable update. Leaving the stable version constant for awhile so people can play without worry of save game loss due to mod breaking.
2. Allow people who want to help bug test the chance to find bugs before a patch is pushed to stable to prevent broken STABLE builds... hence the name.
3. To allow the Devs time to work on larger features while still pushing smaller bug fixes and content without having 20 feature empty/tiny stable builds in a row.

Also, How is the current build of Progenitor "highly unstable", as you put it. The game runs perfectly fine on the current stable build that was passed out. Mainly due to the fact they have been doing the bug testing on unstable. Sure it doesn't have all t he games features set forth in the roadmap. but that doesn't make it 'unstable'. Just incomplete. And on that note, they never gave any kind of time-table as to how long each Stage of Beta would run.

 

I'm very dubious with the purpose of this post. So, I shall sing you the song of my people.

 

I think Tiy's lot the key to the new office and is just going hobo style in the International Departure Area of Heathrow.


That would explain the delay, and as far as i can see is also the easiest of explanations.
Plus, the whole team is working on Duke Nukem 4, so...

 

I thought it was Half-life 3?! Man, my dreams are dashed...

 

http://pastebin.com/jAWKJnHy

A bit of story, Shasta, because as we all know historical revisionism is right behind the corner.

 

So you just want replies from those who agree with your biased view? Why bother posting a thread at all

 

No, the types of posts I am not happy with are quick judgements or regurgitation of the same information the devs posted. I'm welcoming an opportunity for someone to prove that I'm wrong, because I would love that.

Take this post for a prime example of what not to post:

These are the kind of responses I'm looking for, but it doesn't quite hit the nail.

I meant the community is dying, rather than the game itself, a mistake in wording on my part. And I was quoting the devs when referring to Progenitor being highly unstable, I'm not claiming that the game itself is unplayable, rather that it's been almost 6 months in since the game's beta release and it is still in the "Skeleton phase" as it's been described.

"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." -Taken from the beta description

 

Because getting citizen Visas for a whole staff to move from wherever they are to the UK (most of them are moving from the US) is done in a couple weeks. Yeah.

You haven't faced bureocracy in your life it seems.

 

It's actually been about three or four updates in the last five months. They just haven't come up with a new koala version. Some updates were small, like the heck biome and treasure biome, but we also got directional melee weapons. (You need to craft new ones.)

 

Took me at least a year to get a chance at immigration to Australia back in 1991. That's just how it goes.

 

One might then say that this wasn't the most appropriate time to plan moving the offices, but who am i to criticize...

 

I see your point there.

The community has faded a bit. That is true. Most notable is the drop in "players playing Starbound" on steam. Was in an area better or comparable to Terraria for a long while, but it dipped after updates started to slow.
But the same could be said of all games. When a game first arrives on the scene people clamor to get it and play it as much as possible. Then as time passes it dwindles a bit. But I can say, every time there is an update the number shoots up again for a few days. And these are for small updates, imagine when a new feature is fleshed out, like PVP, or quests.

I havent played Cube world since it came out. But I can tell you now, when the new update hits (its been like 6 months or more... don't remember the exact time frame.) but I will be booting that back up again for sure. It's not dead either, but the dev himself doesn't really interact with the community openly. I don't think we should decide a game is dead until it is literally stated as no longer being worked on. And even then. Starcraft 1. Stopped being worked on more than a decade ago, and you can still buy it new in some stores.

 

Moving takes time, to another state that's allot. Currently moving myself and that's not to far away and even that's taking awhile. If they didn't update with honest posts then I'd be worried. They have Sony backing them which is recent, so long as they finish the game. Of course there is a downside to early access and could potentially burn out a game, it's all a wait and see.

So for now belate your fears but keep an eye on it. Last post read they are shipping the main progress server on a barge.



Progress takes time and even though you can get instant answers on a forum. Life isn't so rush rush.

 

See, this is the type of post that really bugs me. There is no point at all in my post where I stated I didn't want to see criticism, I said I did not want people to just hop on and say shit like "Hahah ur too impatient!!!!!" because what does that accomplish?

If you are reading this thread, and what I am saying is wrong, then you should have no trouble at all providing a decent counter argument for this.

Funny, usually I don't plan to do the most time consuming tasks right when I am at my busiest.

I sincerely hope this is the case with starbound as well, I would hate to see as much potential as this game has to just wither away. Unfortunately the internet has a cruel way of giving your words the wrong interpretation, I'm probably being seen as that angry guy sitting in the corner lashing out at each dev post with the burning fury of 23 hot pockets, but I'm just trying to spark a meaningful conversation, rather than the usual

"You're wrong!"
"No you're wrong, here's a clever image or song to prove it!"

 

When would you suggest they do it? <- honest question.
They didn't have an office before, and they need an office that meets a certain criteria to be able to sponsor an immigrant to the country as their employee.
If they had no office, they wouldn't be able to move the team. And without the office, the aforementioned time zone differences would always cause issues.

Heck when I was working with Red on Terraria, we were in a one hour time zone difference, and that in itself cause us grief as we were always forgetting to alter our times when we said "talk to you at X time".
And Valve is 3 hours difference from where I am so that was also a weird thing to remember when it came to announcing updates, etc.

 

You're way too defensive. This indicates you intended to attack the devs but can't stand to hear any reasonable argument as to why you shouldn't. You made that clear in every one of your posts. What exactly do you expect? It's an INDIE company. They only have so many people to work on the game and you can't possibly think just because you read some posts on the main page that you have insight to what they're doing 100% of the time. They are obviously working on the game, it's a source of income for them. They didn't spend all that time making it and getting it out to an ungrateful playerbase just to shoehorn some items in, revamp a couple of systems and then call it in.

I guarantee you, before the middle of summer, the game will be in a totally different state. Try to be more patient and less defensive, or rude. Not sure what other response you could have expected to get by being so crude. You can't come here, be rude and then demand nobody argue with you or present you with facts. That's like putting your hands over your ears and screaming so you can't hear anyone trying to talk to you.

Also, talking about the game dying while it's still in its beta stage is straight up stupid.

 

So many people are responding to the OP without reading the thread, in which the OPoster has said many more things along the lines of what he meant.

It's almost like micro-necroing.

 

I read his post, and the ones following it. You have quite a chip on your shoulder.