Steam and negative reviews V2

Just to set the record straight here, I'm a volunteer moderator and I'm not employed by Chucklefish.

 

You still represent Chucklefish on these forums, and when your attitude towards valid criticism is one that is completely dismissive it reflects poorly on Chucklefish as a whole. But at least you didn't lock the thread, so you've got that going for you.

Cheers.

 

My honest 2 cents......

People that take this huge amount of time to constantly complain, rage post, write 16 paragraph of pure emotional hate, debate for hours on end a video game that is taking more dev time than initially announced is missing something in their life. You can deny that all you want, but you know the truth.

Rules to reclaim your soul:
1. If you feel that burned, move on - It really is the best thing, take the negative out of your life that is sapping so much time.
2. Grab a kazoo - Play it in public like you just dont care
3. Take a ride to Thailand - just for the phuket
4. Take a nap in the park in broad daylight - the Vit D will go you more good than you could imagine
5. See number 2
6. Go play Diablo 3 - yes, it really is that good
7. Hug a stranger
8. Play hackey-sack with a Grandma
9. Eat a stick of butter
10. Go shopping at a junkyard, then ask the guy at the counter for a lollypop
11. Listen to Ween's Pure Guava and sing out loud on a crowed bus
12. Volunteer your time at a soup kitchen - and then tell me your really put out by a video game <- this one is serious

 

Your comment wasn't exactly constructive, but it wasn't full of hatred and flame-bait. No one is gonna ban you for it xD.

EDIT: This is also a sad effect of those terrible reviews, people think they'll get banned for posting here which is flagrantly untrue.

 

My comments in this thread, and in every thread, represent my own opinions unless otherwise stated.

Cheers.

 

The definition for Alpha, Beta, or any build, official or not, is up to the company making the product. I could write a simple hello world program and call it a release product, much like someone could make a very detailed, in-depth, and functional piece of software and keep it in beta perpetually. Labels like that aren't something for the masses to decide, it's for the Devs to pick and choose.

 

Why hate them, just because you disagree on some semantics? At least to me it doesnt matter if they call the game in this state alpha, beta, omega, whatever.
It would only annoy me somewhat if they called the game "finished" in this state.
The debates what to call it are pointless, honestly, and CF clinging to its definition of beta isnt something i see as being "dismissive attitude".
Besides, you cant cater to everyone, and sometimes you just have to draw a line between "giving in" or not.
Honestly, if someone were to tell me "elephants are pink" i would scratch my head, maybe think " okay, weird person" but not get mad or angry about it in any way.

Valid criticism is "the game runs too slow" or "progression currently doesnt feel substantial at all", not "you call something with a different name than i and others do".
Valid criticism is something that will have some effect on the game itself, that affects the game in some way. Pointless semantics wont affect what the game will look like in X time, or how its being developed, whatever.

 

All I'm going to say is that complaining about those who are complaining about the game isn't going to fix anything.

 

i don't pay heed to these un-needed reviews by people so far and it won't bother me that much because Starbound is a hugely popular game which i do like and will stand by what i can play for fun and don't need to listen to senseless things but have to be patience till the group starts to port over to PS4 which it will be godspend sale record when it is out

 

Well said and my thoughts exactly.

 

Izzabelle, why the threats? You really sounding bad now. I thought Tiy promised us that you mods would be less herassive? I guess that was wrong too!

 

Hello, after a very long break and huge disappoint after seeing that NOTHING changed, i must confess, that i can really understand most fo the negative steam reviews.

It was said: “Starbound is already extremely playable and contains a vast amount of content, however we decided to release the game as a beta through early access to ensure the community gets a chance to help us shape the game. In this first stage of the beta process you may experience some bugs, crashes or compatibility issues. Updates will come thick and fast, though, as we listen to your feedback, push fixes and add new content.”

This year nearly nothing changed.


And yes i felt cheated, too.
For over half a year or nearly a year (since i bought the game) nothing has changed although "thick and fast" updates were promised. then they moved to another office to make many other games and show their progress on the official starbound side - and advertise them. in the meantime starbound is sooo slowly progressing that it reminds me of "Cube World" ... yes - ban me, but i feel cheated. and with every further advertised game and "blog" post on the main page it feels worth.


and when i see the "it's just 14euro" argument i can just shake my head. i doesn't even need to be responded. think for yourself...

I know that a lot of you love this game - but from a completly neutral perspectiv - i can absolutly understand the negative critiques. a user wrote a nice review, sadly in german, but a translator could helped out. And sorry guys, but this review is on the point:


"Since the initial Early Access much time has now passed. Time enough to pull even balance.
Starbound is basically nothing more than a clone of Teraria has its setting in space. It travels with his spaceship from planet to planet and explore these. That's it then, even around the story.
It makes little different in this respect to Teraria, but not what I find particularly tragic.
However, NOTHING has happened since then. The development team has reported that they are expanded so as to deal also with other projects. That even though they have not even managed to make this game finished.
The Balancing and Progress are trash. Man holding NOTHING from the beginning, therefore dies every second.
If you have then tortured a solid equipment together, traveling to new planets,
by there again to die every second until you get the next tier set. Great Cinema.
The monsters are just too annoying, especially too many suddenly.
An infinite spawn of strong monsters makes it unplayable without frustration.
The currency of the game is also to farm incredibly tedious and annoying.
Especially since you lose it after a death (in part anyway).
What makes it difficult to establish decoration, because these must be found and can not be produced without the wherewithal. Otherwise, there is about this game just nothing to say.
The promised announcements have not been kept up to now and I can only advise everyone to Teraria.

The hype around the game seems to be gone anyway. But I wish this developer studio no further success like this, they will in no circumstances the justice in my eyes.
You just feel like they have now sold the game often enough, they would not change anything about it. It just happens nothing! I've seen better! (Minecraft). Other indie studios work harder. It's a real shame about it."

 

Real quick question, have you read any of the blog updates in the News section? There have been quite a few over the past 6 months. This is not the same as game updates, however.

I think that the dev team has NOT said they would not change anything about it. There have been a lot of things that caused delays or slowdown, and then the team changed their decision about how to proceed with updates (fast but small vs large but slow). You might even consider reading GeorgeV's post earlier in this thread (page 6).

I understand that you're frustrated and you don't want to research a ton of stuff before you express your frustration, but I think that there are some good pieces of information out there that can explain why we're at the unfortunate situation of no in-game updates after awhile.

 

Then please tell me what we got in the past 6 month, which could resample the mentioned "thick and fast" update mentallity- i am quite curious.

Simple point is: we are feeling cheated. At first it was said, that the the office was crucial to start bringing out updates more and faster (because of communication etc.). But after that nothing changed. The only thing that changed or is new, are the absolutly useless blog-like post on the main page - with the adverts for other games.

For us it simply seems that they want to make a new load of money and therefor are focussing on as many projects and possible money sources as possible. Yes, we feel cheated.

If you cannot understand or at least acknowledge our point of view (which is pretty obvious), then it's really sad for the dev team. They are offending a lot of players and are constantly loosing a lot of possible buyers.

 

You're looking for tangible results. There was an update in April. This apparently isn't what you're looking for, and that's fine. There were very few "deliverable" results in the past X months, because reasons. Read this post to see some of the reasons.

If you don't care about the reasons why development slowed down or was delayed, then there's nothing to debate. There hasn't been a Stable update since April. You can either accept that the devs are working on a big update, or you can say that it doesn't count until it's delivered, and that's fine, but there isn't much to talk about then.

If you don't believe that gathering the whole team into a single location will help them develop faster, then you are welcome to believe that. The CF team has said it has helped them a lot, and this is simply something that cannot be proven, you either accept their word for it or you can wait until the next update comes out, and the one after that. If you only judge based on results, and ignore the process in the time between results, then I personally think you're missing half the Early Access experience, but that is completely up to you.

If that is how it seems to you, then I'm not sure anything I say or anything CF says would convince you otherwise. Ok.

How can they address your point of view in a meaningful way that would make you satisfied? Honest question, no hidden meaning or implication. What would you like to see?

Currently, they are making lots of statements that development is continuing, that they are focused on the next big patch, and that they are doing the best they can. These are the daily blog posts. If those don't address your point of view, what would?

 

This is just an FYI and I could be wrong so someone tell me if I am, but I clearly remember CF stating that they were going to change the fast and furious update approach, so updates feel more meaningful and more full of content. Instead they put all the cool new stuff in the nightly update.

Now I understand the frustration you feel, but I would recommend at least trying the nightly to see what they have been working on, for me my excitement was rekindled when I started playing and say the new monster ai, rebuilding the ship, re balancing crafting and monsters, and much more.

I think CF could have better explained that they changed their plan, but I don't think it is because they are not working hard enough, I personally believe that they realized the hype was much bigger than the game they envisioned, so they needed more time to complete it to match the hype. Whether they were right or wrong about doing this is not the point, the point is that they did not communicate this, causing people are complaining.

I am personally fine with them taking longer to make a better than originally planed game, but I understand people who don't.

The most important thing about this thread is that no matter what side you are on (love/hate) you are passionate about your replies, so that shows me that you are passionate about the game, some feel it is in the right direction some feel it is not, but lets all agree that we want this to be an awesome game, and lets tell the devs and each other in a nice way how we feel they can do it!

BTW the nightly is raw so it is not really smooth, but It makes me excited on what is to come.

 

CF Forums: Changing no one's opinion, no mind at a time.

 

What are you doing? Asking THE question.....you know what comes from asking THIS quesiton. it is never good. It is never useful. It is nev......Going back to phuket and playing my Kazoo.

 

The thing is, people cling to "thick and fast updates" like its their holy book.
Yes, Initially it was said to have thick and fast updates, and this has changed due to several reasons. I think one of them was plenty of people complaining about patches that often breaking mod compatibility, others having issues because their internet contract only is volume/traffic-based, etc.
I can also imagine, and this is my wild speculation here, that Chucklefish simply decided to go for one big push to get many things done at once, because after every single bigger change etc, people complained, and they had to fix tons of bugs, etc etc. This also takes some time off of finishing the game, with many many people complaining that the game still isnt done.
Consider, that whatever CF does, there will be people that complain with more or less valid reasons.
At some point i think you just have to deal with certain decisions, even if they are largely different from what was said months ago.

I too would have wished for these "thick and fast updates" but honestly, my world isnt going to end just because i dont get them, and i have been presented reasons why this is the case. So, for me atleast, as long as i see CF working on the game, i absolutely dont mind.

As for the office: To me it seems that CF actually is working faster and more efficient. They just dont churn out updates into stable or unstable (though there is nightly, if you are that desperate for updates^^).

TL;DR: Even if something annoys you, because it was initially said otherwise, at some point you simply have to accept the fact that certain things can and will change, holding a grudge, constantly hating, raging etc about it wont do anyone good and most likely also wont change a single bit.



As for "other projects" or "want to make a new load of money":
First of all, publishing others games apparently doesnt take much time off working on starbound. Dont know the exact numbers, but i think its just some paperwork here and there. A popular company like CF publishing other potentially awesome indie titles for easier steam access (i have heard something about not needing to greenlight with a publisher) is imho a great thing. More games, more fun for me and others.
Also, i dont know what amount of money they get from publishing these games, nor do i really care. Thats something between CF and the devs of the games to worry about.
It was also said that the pirate game, for example, doesnt use up any SB resources at all, they have all new people for this project.
You basically complain about something many companies do: Try to make money.
I dont see anything wrong there, and frankly, its not my right to complain about these things, anyways. I bought a copy of Starbound, i didnt buy CF. What other projects they pursue, what means they have to make money etc, is absolutely none of my business.