The slowly dying sandbox

You're basically describing the general behavior of the "enemy faction" in the Space Rangers games. A threat that spreads out organically through the galaxy, in Space Rangers' case also simultaneously being combated by the NPC population of the galaxy. You'd have ongoing threats and battles pop up on the starmap, and if the enemy succeeds in taking over (in Space Ranger' case, by actually physically destroying or routing every NPC ship in fully simulated turn-based combat), then bam, the whole system is now converted. Only way to take it back is to destroy all occupying enemy ships - in Starbound's case, it could be either impossible, or a matter of fulfilling several quests if the system in question was storyline-important.

Of course, in Space Rangers it works as a mechanic because the galaxy is not infinite, it's comprised of what, just over a hundred star systems? In Starbound, with a technically infinite universe, some other form of threat spread would be necessary, since you could pretty much just go any-the-eff-where away from where the corruption is, and everything you need would still be there. Some kind of actual, frakoff huge but finite galaxy map, with some established pregenerated stars signifying homeworlds of various species, and other important locations. Then the spread of the Ruinous corruption out from the central infection point, the Sol system, would actually be a meaningful threat. It would impose a certain manner of a time-limit on play, but I imagine it would be one of the things you would be able to optionally turn off (if the game were made by, say, competent people) as part of a "sandbox" mode, if storyline and galactic survival were not things you would necessarily want to experience for that particular playthrough.

 

"[...]We had randomness.... but mechanically it barely meant anything.
[...]
Sure it is currently categorized in strict biome/planets separations. For now.
But there's no indications it'll always remain such, and plenty of indications they'd want to reintroduce more randomness in the future.[...]"

Could someone point me to some evidence for these indications?

 

It's written in white letters on the white ground made of hope.

 

I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that they just toned down the randomized elements a bit so they'd have a more stable environment to test new features and receive feedback in, and that after all of the still-kinda-wonky new systems are under control, they'll reimplement more of the procedural generation and maybe a few more survival aspects like t.emperature control.

At the very least, I think every game of this sort should have a legacy build launcher. It's not exactly a standard feature in sandbox games, but Minecraft allows you to download and play pretty much any previous version of the game at any time you want, without interfering with your up-to-date "main game." That wouldn't really fix the problem in Starbound's case, and I'd much rather have all of the new colony, vehicle, augment, crew, pet and combat systems and the old planet generation system, but at least it would sorta make some people happy. When you have a game that changes over time as much as Starbound, you really ought to give people a way to go back.

 

There are things I miss from the very first early access starbound, when it dropped and I immediately bought it. Those are feelings. So maybe I know the mechanics a bit too much now, maybe my knowledge is the actual problem, but still. At first I was a bit lost, but it's all natural in this kind of game. Then you chop some wood, and you dig a bit, find some ore. A cave : "oh, this game's beautiful!". You don't know where to go or what to do, and then you can build your beacon - surprise attack from a friggin' UFO. Those are things that you can still find (in a way) in the game now.

What followed the premices/turorial is what I miss.
- The vastness of space and randomness. What shall I find here? what materials, in what density? How dangerous is it? things are sooo streamlined now.
- The feeling of travelling and having to go on a journey that maybe you wouldn't be able to come back, instead of having unlimited fuel farming - and progression consisting of flagging the whole galaxy to safely teleport from anywhere, be it 400 LY away. Clearly, and I hate to bring NMS here, but starbound makes even less of a case than NMS on the huge number of systems. there's no need for reaching a far galactic point from where you first spawn, no need and no incentive at all.
- the survival. This one's not for everyone, but I liked it. The first time night dropped, you could get cold. The first night you landed on a snow planet, you could progress on it without required material and warm clothes... At this point, maybe you didn't even know you need proper equipment, there's no friggin red flag on the nav console. You go there thinking "can't be that bad!" or that's the impression you had until the first snowstorm, when you built a shelter in haste and lit a fire on it, wondering how long it would last... digging because you had no other choice.

By polishing and balancing the game, they made a smoother progression, but less surprising, less entertaining in some ways. Less rewarding also. You don't take risks, the path is made clear by your epp status, and the planet/material tiers. You just do as you're told and never face anything by yourself.

 

One of the only features I miss from the old versions is the more complex temperature system, where you didn't just get set on fire the moment you step onto a world that's a bit too hot, but where you had to cool down and warm up regularly. The other feature I kinda miss is the ability to spawn the bosses anywhere, though I'll agree that it didn't make much sense in terms of plot. Otherwise, I'm surprised how much I actually like what Starbound turned out to be. I thought it had died after the giraffe update, with all the changes and cut features.

 

well for many gamers the game wasn't very entertaining past a month and for a sandbox game thats pretty much not good, at leats not any sandbox game offering "infinity"

http://steamcharts.com/app/211820#3m. this game by the way and scale it has should outclass terraria in playernumbers, but simply doesn't. But at leats, NMS pulled a far worse result and thats a 60$ game lol. But NMS has a similar issue, infinite universe lacks features to fill it. Randomness is one of the fatures that ehlps filling, but that died with the koala.

 

You know, at this point I don't even think that anyone would care if procedural generation was removed entirely and CF just used the premade monsters instead of procedurally generated ones.

Honestly, the most fun I ever had in this game was back in the Koala days when I first got SB and was totally destroyed by Dreadwing. There really is no more fun in exploration and most of the game is just resource gathering and colony building.

 

Yup I quit playing SB when 1.0 came out.. The game died for me when it "released" Honestly I think this was the worst design choice they ever could of made.. The generation of everything was what made the game magical for so many of us.. Sadly I doubt we'll ever see it again.

 

Try the FU mod... it adds much of the variety back. It's the only way to play this skeleton of a game anymore.

 

Perhaps the loss of 74000-75000 players may shock them into doing something.

 

It gets boring at times, sure.
In a way, I don't really care that much between two stances : procedural or premade. Yeah, premade gets old quickly but so does the endless procedural looping associations of tails and heads... Once again, the problem is that premade's too predictible...

Nope, the real pb in starbound development was the constant change of scope and the stripping of things that were already working as intended. They recognized it themselves one day : they lost too much time building different versions only to have to scrap the placeholders later, again and again.
If they had kept things straight on a gameplay basis, maybe we could have had 3 or 4 times more locations to visit. more interesting biome integration...

Overall to me though, they managed to salvage some things, do damage control. the original feel is a bit gone though... It must feel far better for those who discover it in this state.

 

This isn't a subscription game. People get what they put into it. Even if I haven't had a fight like the ones in koala, I've been working on other activities.

 

I put efforts into other games too, I've been playing other games lately, but still, losing all those players and having around 3000-7000 players left has got to mean something.

 

The statistic keeps getting used, but I really don't see them panicking over it, especially given that it gets trotted out several times already to the point of doomsaying. You say you give it a week, then what? because I'm guessing there will be a dev blog on their work for 1.2, but not a complete overhaul of the game.

 

I guess. No refunds. 1.2... as far as I can tell, they're going to add a new dungeon type, we'll just wait and see then.

 

Losing players doesn't mean anything when those players already bought the game. It's a one-time purchase, not a subscription. What will affect them is people ceasing to buy the game in the future. In a sense, the current players have done their part by buying the game in the first place. That's the main problem with making a game for the money. If you're not passionate about the idea, it'll turn to crap by the time the money rolls in.

Not that I know for a fact that Chucklefish built Starbound from a business prospective, but...

 

When i saw that with the 1.0 they will release the full game for one part i feel sad because i thought that the updates will stop or go slower and by the other had i was happy since finally we would gonna get the a full and stable game.

Sometimes premade things are better and more memorable than random and shallow generated things that slowly get repetitive when you see them, just take NMS for example.

I didn't play that much starbound 1.0 since i'm dedicating to create a mod, from the file i saw some changes from 1.0 to 1.1, for example old status effects are back like levitation or the bubble status effect that i didn't saw in the unpacked assets of 1.0.

The only complain that i have is that it was a joy to fight mini-bosses and find crates before 1.0 since they gives you sweet loot, now every weapon that you find in every chest is like "meh, another weapon with abilities".

Another thing that i miss is the liberty that you had to create your own history and explore a lot of planets freely, now you must follow the main history at some point to explore beyond or to progress on some things.

 

If you want to make it feel more like beta, go to steam workshop and type in legacy and download whatever shows up.

 

Starbound is not a perfect game in its current state, sure.
Starbound was clearly oriented on randomness before, sure.

But please, don't be like most early pokemon players with the usual "It was better before" thing. The ultimate sandbox is just a dream, just go to a actual sandbox, it will feel the same as this game and as any other sandbox game, you'll always find something lacking. Of course, I want more content like we used to have too, I won't argue about that, but It clearly doesn't mean the game is bad right now. Making the Starbound Universe more alive through npc behavior, lore and consistency is way healthier for this game in my opinion than just complete randomness.