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

Good.

Combat is still shit.

Sectors are still shit.

Pets are still shit.

There's a lot of room for them to be good, but they AREN'T, and they need some pretty substantial changes to be good--new enemy AI (apparently coming), new combat mechanics (apparently coming), new stat layouts, better healing options (why does a hamburger heal me better than a stimpack or medkit or any healing item? Because shit ain't balanced is why), better sector maps, better ships, new pet AI, new ways of deploying/recapturing pets. . . all this stuff needs to be reworked from pretty close to the ground up to really realize its potential, and that's so much less likely to happen once they're out of progenitor.

I mean, right now, we have worse combat than at the very beginning of beta. We NEED to still be in progenitor phase. Probably for a long time even IF the updates were still coming 'thick and fast'.

That said, there's lots of other games for me to play while I wait for their office stuff to get settled. Once it does I'll probably come back to being a more active participant of the forums and the game. For now, I kind of agree with you that things are moving too slow to care about, but hopefully that will get sorted.

 

Wait are you talking to me? If you are interpreting anything I said as angry or something, I ensure you I am not. I am simply saying that I read his first post, took it in the same way you did, and posted a retort to his statements as best I could, and then after communicating in the posts that followed we sussed out that he was talking more about the community dying out and how the devs worded the stages of the beta.

Your post a min ago was basically saying the same thing I did before... so I rightfully assumed you were just responding to the OP only.

As Shasta just said a bit ago "Unfortunately the internet has a cruel way of giving your words the wrong interpretation"

 

I read that Devs are using their own money to travel, Starbound isn't covering it. Doesn't that say someting?

 

I believe another reason some of them are moving is because paying someone who isn't an "employee under your own countries standards" causes issues with taxation and all that. So they haven't been paid yet perse, as they don't live in the country of the company that wishes to pay them. I could be mistaken on this tho.

Again I turn to the example of being paid by an employer who lived in a different state than I. The difference in tax laws just by state were so crazy to deal with.

 

Sounds economically sound. If the game dies would be because of burnout not because the Devs aren't trying. It's just going to take time.

 

It's almost like you didn't read the thread, not only that but since when does being defensive equal me wanting to attack the devs? More to the point you said
"Also, talking about the game dying while it's still in its beta stage is straight up stupid."

When I posted:
"I meant the community is dying, rather than the game itself, a mistake in wording on my part."

Please read the postings before you comment, it saves everyone a lot of time, I even ask nicely

Apparently responding to people who have responded to you is now considered holding a grudge

 

I'd just like to apologize for some people's reaction Shasta, and i agree with what you say. There ARE many things that they have done that i find highly questionable, most notable the timing of their move when the state of the game is most fragile.
(When i say fragile i mean it's continued appeal and economic survivability based on its small AND dwindling Community)
Personal Opinion Time (when wasn't it that?)
I've been following these guys since 2012 and i think that there seems to have been a change in the attitude of the devs, where they were once hopeful they are now cynical and short tempered. (http://playstarbound.com/starbound-progress/)
these changes seem mirrored by the community, not to sound nostalgic but this forum used to be far more than just the ad hominem posts.
This is however, is my interpretation of the current situation and as an interpretation it's my opinion. Very biased and open to be discussed civilly

 

still think its funny people still crying over yogscast playing the game when they did a hell of a job.

 

Well the post is about what I expected it to be, but I was hoping that I would get more of a conversation and less of what has been floating around the forums for a while now. I just hope that I will be proven wrong and the next SUPER MEGA CONTENT UPDATE will happen in a month or so, as we all have been patiently waiting for such. But for the people that did offer some form of conversation, I found it to be a nice way to spend my saturday morning, so thanks.

I just came to the realisation however that I spent quite a bit of time here, so I'ma skedattle now. I won't be reading anything below this post most likely, as the thread is pretty much dead

 

alright, take care

 

At least after the end of Progenitor phase.

 

I thought they sold about 1M copies, that makes a few milion quids - it seems hardly explainable to me, but who am i to criticize, again...

 

I think you're being a bit drastic saying the community is on the verge of dying out. Activity has died down due to the notable lack of substantial updates, losing a good amount of players, but it's pretty undeniable that what remains has formulated into a core foundation of people who just like being in this community and genuinely enjoy the game, which is the basis of an active community. Just take a look at the current activity in the forums itself; around 800 people are peering through this place (excluding bots), and 300 of them are actual members as of this moment. Meanwhile, there's a little less than 400 people in the IRC. Compared to the communities of major game companies, these stats are chump change, but to an indie community like this, it's not only the sign of a solid, active community, it's also a sign that there is a concrete community that won't leave that easily for a variety of reasons, whether positive or negative.

There has been a notable decrease of people playing the game, which is completely unsurprising; Things eventually die down in terms of activity when no new things are added. People like something, they play it, and then they eventually stop until there is a select few left that continuously play the game, either out of addiction or dedication. This trend excludes major games like MMOs and the like, which through multiplayer activity not only multiply the experience (because playing with friends is fun), but also because they usually come with a large amount of stuff with it to discover (i.e. WoW and the like). Things regain popularity again when new things come out, which will probably be the case for Starbound. Will it be just like it was years ago? Nobody really knows, but I wouldn't put money on it unless it was something particularly big. This doesn't stem from cynicism, but from perspective: The last time Starbound exploded in popularity; it was when the game itself was released. You'd need something bigger than that to top it, which wouldn't be too hard since the game is mostly incomplete, and the plans in place seem to allude to these kinds of changes, but not for a bit.

I'm not going to state my position on Chucklefish's methods of dealing with the pacing of content release of their games, because not only have I already done so eons ago, but also because it's been a topic that's been beaten to death with no solution at the end.

 

You do realize this isn't an MMO, or a F2P app game, and therefore doesn't rely on subscriptions or microtransactions to make money right?

It's already sold a few million copies. It has already achieved economic success. I'm sure the devs wouldn't mind selling more copies but the doom and gloom tone of things like this is pretty ridiculous outside of actual MMO betas.

 

Contrary to what the devs think, the game is early alpha and bug hunting has only started. If CF had been honest from the start, having admitted their game wasn't near beta stage at all, I am sure customers would have been more inclined to give them some slack. I think that in the future, if devs want to make use of the early access privilege, they need to be more transparent otherwise it will come back to hit them in the ass (reputation of company goes down).

 

Hahahaha FAT CHANCE of that. The months leading to december were filled with "RELEASE THE GAME NOW!!!! IT LOOKS PLAYABLE WHY WON'T YOU LET US HAVE IT!!!!" And now those same people are part of the crowd chewing Chucklefish out for releasing the game as incomplete as it is. Yet those people won't admit their previous stance. I love hypocrisy~

 

Seems like beta to me. I only occasionally run into bugs.

 

I've played lots of games and lived to be middle aged. A community, especially a gaming community doesn't die. It just gets quiet for a while. We live in the ages where we identify with temporary tribes. To go away for 5 months, and then describe how the community has changed doesn't really show much perspective. It comes and goes, works in stages, and doesn't conform to particular people. That's the nature of a tribe. Things just seem new when you return.

If I looked back into my steam folder and found my old Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines and reinstalled it - you can bet I can find out all sorts of information and stuff from older communities and tons of player interaction and patches and other such things. I also bought FF7 a month ago for 3 bucks on Steam. Wow, for an almost 20 year old game, that community never ever ever died. Just gets quiet. A game that old, everyone has pretty much done everything that game had to offer, but people sometimes still talk about it. Maybe i'm just not in touch with my inner hipster enough, but it seems a waste to complain heavily this early into the game. And for the record, just because its been open access for a year and a half now - doesn't make it extraordinarily old. Maybe to people with Goldfish Brain Syndrome, but they are a crowd that hardly worth the effort to please consistantly.

 

good point, i agree they HAVE sold a lot of copies! I'm happy it has sold, however a strong community is needed in any game. if people don't give a damn then the updates are straight up ignored.
No point in updating a game that people have stopped playing ya know?
gah i'm terrible at conveying a point, sorry

 

I suggest taking a look at Vampire the Masquerade bloodlines. A few days ago the community released yet another patch. For a game that has no developer support for ages. Numbers aren't everything and getting a clear statistic on a game like starbound is nigh impossible. So to say that the comunity doesn't give a damn about the game is quite ignorant