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The slowly dying sandbox

Discussion in 'Starbound Discussion' started by LilyV3, Jul 28, 2016.

  1. LilyV3

    LilyV3 Master Astronaut

    indeed, back thrn the game was just missing a few visuall different heatsources as he radiators that were in abses did not emit heat, if that would be we could have such a nice game today with true environmental features.
     
  2. Kitler

    Kitler Void-Bound Voyager

    This accurately displays the reason why I stopped playing. I can't believe they've removed stuff for no blatant reason that just happened to be just the things I enjoyed of the game as mentioned in the post. It doesn't feel like the quirky Starbound I've known anymore.

    Well, off to Stardew Valley then.
     
    Pingeh likes this.
  3. Visnomadic

    Visnomadic Space Hobo

    Your profile picture is hello kitty Hitler, you have no opinion
     
    evilnancyreagan likes this.
  4. Sean Mirrsen

    Sean Mirrsen Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    Your profile picture is blank, and your ranking is "Space Hobo". I'd rather trust a guy girl cat who knows how to bring a country together. (And have it torn apart, though I do come from a country famous for the other mustached dictator of that time...)
     
    muxaun likes this.
  5. Darkspinesupersonic8

    Darkspinesupersonic8 Pangalactic Porcupine

    and even now.. I still just think to myself..

    The biome butchering was seriously not a joke, either. They replaced the Heck biome with Flesh Caverns, which doesn't even look as good. The more I remember (and play) it the more I realize "Chucklefish, you dun goofed big time...." .... more than I already knew they did.. e.e
     
  6. Visnomadic

    Visnomadic Space Hobo

    touche
     
  7. Noir Korrane

    Noir Korrane Pangalactic Porcupine

    I've disagreed with you on a few things.

    But this?

    you hit the nail on the head for one of my problems.
     
  8. The MechE

    The MechE Existential Complex

    They probably just threw the portal on every lush planet because they didn't have enough time towards the end of the development to make things right. I agree that it is a very lazy solution.
     
  9. LilyV3

    LilyV3 Master Astronaut

    Steam playercount looks worrying.

    so the game got a "release" label, that brought a huge increase in players. yet over the last week already 1/3rd less are playing. Now many people like to bring lots of reasons, but I find it quite worrying when the interest decreases that fast. And i am honest i haven't played the game much the last 2 days and probably hardly touch it the next time.

    Do something CF.
     
    Pingeh likes this.
  10. Momopovich

    Momopovich Pangalactic Porcupine

    I'm enjoying the game and I don't care about steam stats. If they "do something" and wipe the universe, maybe you will be happy if you have your random trees back and stuff, but i won't start a new universe before a fairly long time.

    And I honestly don't see why the playercount would explode, the game can be different but not so much and there is no particular reason that people who have no interest in it would suddenly become avid starbound players.
     
  11. LilyV3

    LilyV3 Master Astronaut


    look at how many people here already said the game is more boring than back then, that translates into visible playercount. a sandbox game which people leave in such quanitities that early after release is just not a good sandbox because a sandbox usually gives people loads of hours to be busy.
     
    The MechE and Pingeh like this.
  12. Momopovich

    Momopovich Pangalactic Porcupine

    Starbound has never been a super popular and massively played game, did you expect it to change after the release ? It is a good game but i believe it lacks some universality to be a major success. It got some exposure lately but people who did not invest a lot of time in the game during the beta are not likely to do so now.

    Anyway, for me the game is more enjoyable than it was before and it does give me loads of hours of business. I believe i'm not the only one (there are not only whinny feedbacks, also people actually playing and making things in the game). Maybe the difference between you and me is just that i made sure to not invest too much time in temporary versions. So I don't miss at all the removed stuff.

    I would totally be happy if content was added to the game, as long as we don't have an universe wipe too soon.
     
  13. The MechE

    The MechE Existential Complex

    What do you mean? This game was so popular that they got way more than enough funding. Koala was the best man. Granted, the current build is pretty awesome too, but it's missing some of the good stuff Koala had.
     
  14. Darkspinesupersonic8

    Darkspinesupersonic8 Pangalactic Porcupine

    Amen to that! Koala was in my opinion.. the best. It was when the SANDBOX SIDE of the game was at it's strongest.. you were dropped into the universe, it was yours to mold.. Your ship's out of fuel, go get some! No broken ship or ancient gates leading to some hastily slapped together story... You were your own story.

    Who are you? You decide.

    What's your goal? You decide.

    What bosses will you encounter? You decide...

    it was juts.. .... yeah... every single sandbox element, in my eyes, was removed. Other than how you create the EPPs, progression to higher 'level' planets (which are all locked via what kind of planet it is, which is stupid) is gate locked by said EPPs, rather than how well equipped you are with your inventory to handle these planets..

    You no longer summon the bosses yourself, you don't get to choose your own pace... You're thrown into the fray of the storyline and told to go tediously scan tons of stuff in a randomly generated universe. It could take you hours, it could take you days, and then you finally do a single mission and then rinse repeat four more times.

    Was it tedious sometimes when you were the one doing everything BY yourself with no hand holding? Yes... but did it feel good when you finally got things done? Heck yes it did. I remember well the feeling of success and delight I had crafting my starmap upgrades... the game we knew in Koala and the game we know now are two separate games.

    They are two separate games. One has more sandbox features, you choose where you go, what you do, and how you do it. and in it's own right can be an individual game... the other is a linear storyline based game with simplified elements and at least 50% of it's content cut... Which would you rather play?
     
  15. korda

    korda Pangalactic Porcupine

    Koala had VERY linear progression, you even describe it. I admit less planet types were locked from you but there were was less content anyway. You were forced to grind for resources to build boss related item in order to get to another crafting tier.

    In 1.0 you can ignore all of missions after first (at least that's what I was doing until I recently decided it's story mission time) and still progress through crafting upgrades, visit different types of planets (though you need that crafting upgrades, I admit) or get crew and expand your ship (I know that if you don't want to do quests for colonists or villagers you must do more quests in outpost - but this time you've got the choice, it's not linear at least).

    The only problem I see in 1.0 is that your background is not of lone-survivor/adventurer type anymore and whether you like it or not, you start as part of Protectorate. But other than that, I feel way more free than I felt in Koala.
     
  16. LilyV3

    LilyV3 Master Astronaut

    I doubt thats true, there is massive interrest with every bigger update. Yet that harshly drops just a few days after such an update. So it is clearly the game doing something wrong even amongst those having interest in it. And this is again the lack of being a proper sandbox. it has also not to do with my time investment in earlier versions. It has to do with the enjoyment of the time in the earlier versions there was much more to see in the earlier vesions. When I go throgh 3 planets in a row and ALL of them in a row have a GIANT slime biome under their surface thats juts weird and not much diversity. In fact I saw way too many slime and cell biomes, these things should be rare and therefore precious. Additionally every planet has the same 2 undeground structures over and over and over again in the stone layer.
    And here I am totally with Darkspinesupersonic8 they felel like 2 different games. One was a game where I could hop planets for like 2 weeks in a row without that getting boring, the other is just "have seen it all after 10x the same biome". And one of these gams was worth the time investment, hte other just felt "done" and "nothing new to see here".


    This sandbox is just lacking a lot of thins making it a sandbox. For example again trees, not every tee or treelike thing you find is plantable. But why? in a proper sandbox you should be able to decide where you want to have which tree. In fact aside from the ores eahc planet is totally qual below the surface. They are still somehwat irrelvant areas. Ther eis not even a proper sense of distribution amongts fossils. theres probably what 4 or 5 different fossile shapes to extract. that amkes the fossile minigame way too easy and broing. Further the visual ingam fossile,s as the helix underground is giving a total random fossile to expose, and then a total random part is what you get. And thtas not even biome related. So fossiles have a fully rnaodmisation which unfortunately makes no sense because all that does is making "collecting" fossiles a grind praying to RNGesus. not an exciting exploration. Sesne would be a fossile lookin like a skul at leats including a skull. And maybe also soem biome bound stuff like the Ixodoom being mostly to find on jungleplanets. Because lets be honets, no matte what weird uninhabitable state a planet is, they all seem to have housed dinosaurs, trilobites, ammonites and ixodooms and that phithingy? hardly beliefable, and makes no sense.

    Further the definition of fossile is something older than 10.000 years yet on every planet you can find fossiles of any race. That makes the amount of sense a slapped together somewhat done game does but not much sense in delivering a bleiveale Universe. (even including magic and scifi)
    So while the fossile feature is a nice idea it was again half done an just slapped into the game. needs not much exploration, take any plamnet, dig down to fossile including layer with tons of brushes and then just grind them.

    so that was the idea, yte what we have is far away from it. they add 0 character to the worlds, as they are not related to worlds except thy exist in them. from that greta initial idea not much is left except a pretty but repetitive minigame and them being visible in museum like fashion. No crafting involvement no T-rex pet, no bosses. So none of these great ides "sticked" nd they wen't with the most boring feature one could imagine.
     
  17. korda

    korda Pangalactic Porcupine

    Half done? Last time checked it was working perfectly. It's just you wishing for features that weren't even promised, but only speculated upon by game lead artist.

    I like fossils as a nice addition for those of us who like collecting things. This is not a game about fossils and spending tons of time on this feature wouldn't be wise. They probably decided (after few design iterations) that current system gives something nice and it's not so time consuming to code (and create graphics, animations and sounds for). Normal process in any kind of software development.

    But noooooooooooo it's EVIL Chucklefish deciding to 'go with the most boring feature one could imagine'.
     
  18. LilyV3

    LilyV3 Master Astronaut

    from allt he huge possibilities and initial ideas they just go with the most unoriginal (but easiest and quickest solution). This kind of behavior is obvious and it is what makes the game not great while it could be great. Not sure what this has to do weith "evil" but you are just exaggerating stuff here which no one of us said. If you find it nice then thats good for you but those only 5 different fgures to expose is just a no brainer after you have done 2 of each, because then you know at the count of the to exposed fossiles which fugure it is and it is not any kind of "fun" anymore.
     
  19. korda

    korda Pangalactic Porcupine

    Wiki: 10 small fossils, 10 medium, 3 big.

    For me Starbound is great because it has lots of features and possibilities, even when those features are not very big. For example, musical instruments: those are nice addition, even though you can't write your own song, even though there is no separate storyline with you becoming popstar. Or hoverbikes, even though you can't customize them with guns and take part in races. Or expanding your ship, even though you can't decide what rooms you add where.

    It's better to build solid base of stable, feature rich game that can be expanded further than to make an attempt in greatness in every feature and fail to deliver.

    Why evil? Because you are using expressions suggesting that CF did it because it wanted it to be bad, or at least expression that can be understood this way.
     
  20. Noir Korrane

    Noir Korrane Pangalactic Porcupine

    I see this happen with literally any game.

    Hearthstone releases a new set? The servers on that day collapse under the strain of SO MANY people wanting to get in at once. Then after the excitement of release dies down, it levels out.
    Any game gets released? The servers cant handle the load of everyone out there wanting to play at once. Sim City had this Happen.

    I could probably list off examples all day.

    When something new is released, theres ALWAYS going to be a massive spike in players, because its release day. Then it will level out and stabilize after the excited rush has died down. Thats the number that matters.

    If we could, i'd look at historical numbers between updates. After the last update, what number did it stabilize at after the spike? was it more, or less, than the update before? was it more, or less, than the update after? Are those leveled out numbers going up, or going down?
     

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