Starbound Progress

I think the Yahtzee quote goes....

 

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay finally some news, kept us waiting, huh?

 

Maybe a happy medium would be weekly updates? Seems to work well for Mojang.

 

Thank you Tiy for taking the time to explain why updates have been slower and what's going on behind the scenes, I'm sure we all appreciate it. Knowing what's going on really helps us to be more patient, and I'm sure updates like this reminding some of the fans that you guys really are people behind the computer is helpful too.

Thank you for all your hard work, and please keep doing your best! *salutes*

 

An active and vocal community: a mixed blessing

I'm being an echo a bit here, but never forget we gave you money to make us the great game you envisioned. We didn't give you money to make you dance to our whims.

 

Thanks for the feedback! Cant wait for next stables incoming.

 

We're all gamers. Gamers are impatient. Some of us tend to forget that games we buy are still in development. In my opinion its that simple. i have done it myself. The people who have bought this in early access need reminding of that very fact.
We buy the game we want it finished. Chucklefish please remind us this isn't finished yet.

To those of us who don't whine, I guess we'll just have to suffer the torment until the game is finished. I hope the devs aren't pressurised into finishing the game in a rush to silence the critics.

 

Some progress is better than none.

People should stop being rude though.

 

We always think of ourselves when dealing with early access beta and alphas, but the devs have to deal with the shit-storm when the fans sober up and realize programming a game is a long drawn out process in which the time-line for releases is only a wild guess. Don't take it too personal, devs. Every alpha/beta I've been involved in seems to go the same way.

 

I think that it's a respectable decision Tiy made, and the amount of content in the next update will
guaranteed keep me busy for a while!

I'm excited to see the Psi-staffs and the re-designed floran ship, my Wizard-like Characters would appreciate both.

 

Keep in mind the game won't automatically be good just because it takes longer.
For all we know they've been tripping over the same problem for months, or have forgotten a large content patch for months.

A part of the issue is the lack of transparency though, we never know when something isn't going as planned. We only know what is planned, and only hear the positive and the silence in between.
You could gain a lot of sympathy and understanding if you were to talk about said low points.

And frankly i don't care much about the current promises, not when you've failed to meet majority of your past promises.
The best way is to simply show such updates in the first place, the ones that your team made. (ps, don't forget that thing again)

And regarding to critics/whiners/whiny/w/e.
You do realize most post because they want this game to live up to it's potential? they often perceive problems that might not allow that to happen, and would rather be honest then risk it turning to shit.
Aren't you blindly supporting them for the same reason? just a different approach to the same goal.

 

AGREED, updates need to be on a regular basis. Once a week updates on the feed would be quite adequart. The last starbound chronicle had NOTHING about game development, not a single thing. This is the NEWSLETTER!
No update for ages, and this one sounds like its telling your customers off!

I must admit, that annoyed me a bit.

It isnt easy, I am a developer and I know it can be hard explaining to a customer that since they last saw an application visually there's nothing different since last week, with no easy way to explain how much back-end work has been done.
Almost all my projects are me solo and I would NOT get away with telling my customers off for asking about progress if I hadn't spoken to them for weeks and they had paid in advance.

But surely in a month there must have been SOME progress to report.
Frankly, this is just me, but I dont care about beta releases. I enjoyed some play, but now Im worried to progress further would ruin the end-product. All I do really want is just info for now until compltion.

Reward those that dont moan with info so they dont dispair and turn into those who do.

/rant

other than that, the game looks great I am looking forward to it.

PS The order of the news letters makes no sense on this page: http://playstarbound.com/newsletter/
either put them in reverse order or put 2014 at the bottom. The way it is now means the latest copy is in the middle of the others somewhere.

 

This is why the popularity of a game is a two-edged sword, really... Get more people, but those people will always complain when updates are too fast/too slow/too big/too small.

More community managers doesn't mean there is more content to tell us about.
I'm pretty sure the devs are getting frustated by the community attitudes as well. I for one would be, if someone found some way to kick and scream about everything I did.

 

Thanks for the update! I mainly go to this site for Starbound news so I tend to be behind if things are announced on other mediums.

Good luck with getting everything and everyone settled in! Having your team co-located will hopefully greatly improve efficiency. I've tried working on a software project with a team in a time zone that was about 6 hours from mine. It was quite difficult coordinating and getting information to everyone in a timely fashion.

Now to go look for that floran ship! (My floran character is excited).

 

I don't post much but I can say I prefer the ... let's say middle ground. I like to know what's going on weekly or so, just to know you're not dead. Daily's a bit much.

There comes a point when honestly you have to ignore some parts of the community to make the game what you want it, you know? The mods thing for example - who cares if they say you're lazy? If the mod developer doesn't mind, then that's one thing you guys don't have to do that we can have in the game *right now*.

And someone's always going to complain about time frames and what's coming of them. I'd suggest that once everyone is moved, set an update schedule and stick to it. Don't listen for people that whine for more, don't listen to people that whine for less.

Like I said, I think weekly would be decent; I'm interested in the behind the scenes things and the people that thing adding or fixing things isn't interesting really don't understand what they got into with their early access purchase. I'm much more disappointed when it goes a month and I haven't heard anything - at that point it does seem like you've abandoned or you're "not working," even though I've never seriously thought either of those things. A cohesive, set schedule would stop the arguments about when it happened, too; for example, people would know - hey, it's Monday, Starbound's gonna post today. Cool, let's check in on it.

Just my two cents.

Edit:

Also, I would update the Starbound *site* weekly. Don't spread your media out; if you're going to stream, plan it ahead of time, give times in the weekly update, and do it then. I've never made a stream because I don't WATCH all the outlets. Spreading your info around so much can really confuse some users. EVERYTHING needs to be planned and available ON THE SITE, ahead of time. Maybe not little quips and asides, but stream events and major happenings along with technical updates. You really need a central "main" communication and planning channel.

 

Honestly, you guys are doing a great job. Hope the move goes well!

 

Thanks for the update and I agree with the choices you have made so far. It seems sensible to me.

 

Moving people between countries is more than enough of an explanation for headaches and delays. Don't worry... it's just that a bunch of people are idiots who simply cannot seem to understand how much red tape and work is involved with changing countries and settling into a new home (Jet lag alone is enough to throw a person off for a while! >_<). Also, given that SOMEONE is going to complain whether you guys update daily, weekly, or monthly, you guys should just do what you think best.

Apparently, people also don't get that development takes time - the more complicated a feature is, the longer it takes to make it functional, AND it can't be released half implemented and broken! ... and that's setting aside the fact that unexpected bugs are unexpected (duh!) and usually quite annoying / time consuming to squash.

And yeah... I noticed that 'weeks' comment there by *name obscured by polite cough*, when it was basically a week since the last news (sorry... HOURS, given this particular blog post! ). It's one thing to comment on legitimate things, but to complain about things that are actually not true is kind of rude / nonsensical.

Edit: Also, there really isn't anything quite like having a bunch of people in the same room working things out vs. over the phone / skype / video conference. The dynamic is different and often wildly more productive.