Starbound Is Not Realistic And Won't Be Anytime Soon

Realism in Starbound would never be fun primarily because realism in reality isn't really all that great of an experience.

Go out in your back yard and get a rock, a stick and a vine. Now try to make something with them. Managed against all odds to actually craft something? Good for you, now try to DO something with it. Make sure you come back and post pics to show us how you successfully failed.

Reality: It always gets mixed reviews because it generally sucks.

 

And yet there are people who think that realism matters in games. There are people who will have their oh so fragile immersion broken if just one thing doesn't make sense to their narrow view of how games should work. It's a shame.

 

Okay, firstly: They're not stupid, they're actually incredibly smart, just not terribly cultured or civilized.

They haven't had time to build culture, interpersonal relations, or normal behaviour in the way other races have.

That said, they learn incredibly quickly, they adapt in all situations, both physically and mentally, giving them both a better physical condition than other species, as well as a much more intuition in both battle and other parts of life.

Look at the character known as greenfinger. Earlier in his life, he was tutored by a glitch for some time, and due to the insane potential for growth and adaptation, he is now just about the most intelligent character in the lore to date.

Also On the note of "Why do they need to eat meat?": By that logic, I imagine you dont think plants need roots, either?

Why do you think there are carnivorous plants with chlorophyl?

There is really no flaw in logic in that regard.

 

>implying the OP is complaining
>lrn2read

 

I was targetting whoever bitches about realism in starbound, OP's not included.

 

Okay, I'm sorry. People should stop bitching about everything OMG.

 

I just dislike that the original post is tinged with hatred for Sci-Fi. This game is BOTH. An excellent example of Sci-Fi and Fantasy working together is Farscape. In that show you have tons of pseudo-science and faith-based-magic-nonsense that work together to make a cohesive and interesting universe (EX: John Crichton and Stark). It is absolutely possible for them to co-exist and do it well.

 

My man, Farscape, I'm not the only one who knows those series T_T

 

it is a good one, and it's on Netflix, I've been watching it recently.

 

I need this on a poster or something.

 

I have all of the farscape series on DVD at home, thanks to my dad. We also have Babylon 5 and Red Dwarf.

 

Mystery Science Theater 3000 contained the absolute best bit of wisdom on this subject, right in its damn theme song.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MST3KMantra

Chill out, don't take it so seriously, don't expect video games to be perfect models of realism, just play it and have fun.

 

I disagree on the point that Gold and Silver can't just receive a name change and become less fantasy-ish materials, like Palladium or Iridium.

 

And you are sir?

Seriously, I dislike posts of this nature which read more like simple declarative statements than arguments for or against something. If someone says why they would prefer realism your are free to argue why a non realistic approach would be better, but who are you to discount the opinions of so many people?

I don't think Starbound is serious and I really don't see the devs ever make it so - there are, as you pointed out, poo monsters in the game. Still I think rejecting all ideas that would push the game toward more realism would mean passing up great ways to make the game deeper and more rewarding.

I like Starbound as a Sci Fi universe. I've explored fantasy in Terraria and now I'm ready for something different. I would accuse anyone who thinks this is too limiting of lacking creativity. Creativity thrives within realism. Creative people can take a realistic foundation and turn it into something amazing. A bit of realism grounds creative elements and gives them purpose.

I like most of the suggestions involving a federation of some sort. Such a thing could be used to provide context to what is happening in the game, why you are fighting space penguins.

There are suggestions for realistic elements I like and those I don't. I weigh each idea on what it will bring to the game and/ or its world. Dont discount the value of realism just because the game already has many unrealistic things.

I don't discount the value of whimsy either - like boobies on plants and fish, nothing at all wrong with that...

 

On the matter of prominent breasts of most of Starbound species:
IMO it is not entirely unrealistic that Florans and Hylotl to have them, as they can be used for supplying additional hard-for-immature-individual-to-obtain nutrients, but AFAIR the breast curve has developed specifically to accomodate the flat facial structure (so that sucking babies don't asphyxiate with their nose blocked by the upper torso), which definitely strikes Avians off the list.
I'm not sure if it has been discussed already somewhere on the forums, but plants can have separate genders, so I guess blue-red flower in the char creation menu could really be just the usual human gender icons.

P.S. Yeah, man has to dump useless knowledge somewhere, sorry for that.

 

It may not be completely realistic but we don't want to push it further into the fantasy side hence why some of us wants the game to avoid making magic as much as possible and more scientific technology. It's like saying since your house is damaged you might as well add more damage to it. Hopefully, the devs will remake some stuff that are magical or unexplained nature in the future for it to fit the game theme better. We should be pushing to refine the game instead of adding more unrelated elements to it.

 

I'd absolutely wear this on a Tshirt, over my own girlie bits.

 

While I agree with you that demanding things to make sense at all times is fruitless and limiting, I strenuously disagree that Starbound is a fantasy game, and not sci-fi.

What you, and a lot of people who've come to this assumption, fail to realize is that sci-fi, itself, does not always make sense. It makes more of an attempt to explain things than sheer fantasy, but there are many, many degrees of hardness or softness in the sci-fi genre. Different pieces of sci-fi will have different degrees of how strongly-justified things are by currently-understood scientific principles. Compare, for instance, something like Buck Rogers to something like Star Trek. There's very different levels of sci-fi hardness, but both are still sci-fi. Starbound lies on the very soft end of that scale.

Soft sci-fi allows for virtually everything that exists in the Starbound universe. Just because Starbound doesn't beat you over the head with technobabble does not mean it's not sci-fi. Furthmore, keep in mind that the bulk of the game's lore is incomplete and unexplained, or just unavailable to the player. There's still a whole 'nother playable race to implement and the Hylotl need most of thier lore finalized and inserted, and the quest system, which I'd imagine would contain the builk of the game's lore and plot, is still unimplemented as well.

There's a lot that still can be explained before you start throwing the "it's fantasy not sci-fi" ball around.

 

"If I say so, so it will be" seems to be the mindset of a lot of forum-goers here.
Unless the developers can back you up on it I wouldn't say how their game is going to turn out.

 

Another thread about how computers don't think. YET.