This worries me....

First, to be clear, I am looking for information or discussion, I am a "fan" of Starbound, and I'm not trying to bash the game, or the devs...

Now, on to what has worries me. On the November 10th Blog post, near the end is "The rest of the team has been working on finishing up Tier 1" ... We are nearly 1 year past the last projected release date that the team could "hardly believe" they couldn't meet (I am not going to look for the year old post, but it was along those lines), and I see "Finishing up Tier 1" ... Now I do understand that there is a lot of work that effects ALL tiers, so I don't for a second think that Tiers 2-10 (if there are even still 10) are completely untouched, but I was expecting things to be far past Tier 1 by now... When the release date was missed and the game was delayed I didn't lose any hope at all. I expected a long wait, and I was O.K. with that. After all, the team could Hardly Believe they didn't meet the release date. Reading "The rest of the team has been working on finishing up Tier 1" has made me feel like, for lack of a better way of saying it, that I was lied to, completely. That when they said they could hardly believe it, they knew the game was nowhere near done, that they knew they wouldn't meet the date and were just telling everyone what they thought they wanted to hear. Be that true or false, that is how I feel about it now.

To be fair, other than visiting the blog daily, I have been out of touch from Starbound. I have had extremely limited play on the Nightly build, although it was recently. I have been absent from the forums for a long time, Although I was trying to come back to the community, things here seem to have slowed down a lot. So I have a severe lack of information outside of blog posts. The outdated information all over the site and stickied posts don't really help. The constant reworking and revisiting of things that are already in the game have added to my worries.

What I am looking for is what kind of progress has been made ... How far along is the game? "Finishing up Tier 1" has blown my mind. I have been holding on to my hope for Starbound for a long time. I had even talked a few of my friends into coming back for the next Stable build that, according to a tweet, would be coming maybe soon. I had hoped that seeing whatever progress had been to Starbound (I assumed much, seeing how much time has passed) would rekindle all of our excitement for the game, as I seem to be the only one that is holding on to my hope for the game. Seeing "The rest of the team has been working on finishing up Tier 1" put a stop to those plans, as we didn't just want to play another mostly unfinished version of the game.

I'm not looking for another release date, I'm not looking for "soon". What I am looking for is reassurance that the game as made leaps and bounds of progress towards completion, Up-to-date Information buried under all the out-dated, and no longer relevant information all over the place.

This is all built on the fact that I was told they could hardly believe (Again, for the exact words you'd have to find the year old post) they didn't meet the release date before, giving me the impression the game should have been at least somewhat close to completion already. Now I am under the impression that the game has only just been 10% complete (Complete meaning in a state that it can be officially released). I feel like a lot of work isn't focus on finishing the game, and could wait until after the game is released. I feel like more work should be going into the core of the game, and all the extra things that are being added could wait for the continued support after release ... does "finishing up Tier 1" mean I am going to have to wait until 2016 now?

 

I wouldn't be overly worried about it. Yes, they are finishing up Tier 1. But they've also had to rebuild, introduce, and optimize mechanics.

Things like; upgrading ships, instanced dungeons, reworked combat, optimized building code, quests & rewards -- are just some of the major things that had to be worked on, fixed, and/or introduced. But these aren't things they'll have to work on for Tier 2, 3, 4, etc etc. So the duration of development on Tier 2 (and above) should be quite miniscule when compared to the work that needed to go into Tier 1.

 

That sort of surprised me too. Thought the forthcoming progression update was further along than Tier 1. The skeleton joke blog sort of reinforces my opinion that a lot of superfluous and, frankly, silly stuff is being given time and attention instead of the core game progression.

To be quite honest, while interesting (sometimes) the daily blogs aren't that illuminating when it comes to the upcoming Starbound experience and the development process. Funny and irreverent, but not really all that meaty.

Just my 2 Euros.

 

Don't bother writing criticism of any kind here, the community will have a heart attack and jump on you. The fact that you had to add the disclaimer at the top of your post only proves how low the community has gotten in the last two years.

That being said, I wouldn't hold my breath for any actual content updates seeing as chucklefish has had a lot of problems in the past with leading the community on. They won't give you an actual release date because that's not how they do things. When beta was first introduced they claimed that it wouldn't take more than 6 months or around that to finish it up, and that it would be the quickest updated portion. Oddly enough, we didn't hear a word from the devs the first 3 months of open beta (which they deemed more like an alpha, despite having a year and a half worth of development time). They claimed it was to move everyone to a single location.

I would be willing to bet $20 that more than 80% of the community isn't active in starbound anymore because they are sick to death of waiting. I'm going to be very blunt right now and say that if Starbound does not do well within the next year, Chucklefish as a company will have lost it's only fanbase. Something very dangerous for a new and developing company

 

I thought the 10 tier system had been replaced with something different. It is still 10 tiers then?

 

Stop misconstruing things. They DID move to another location for everyone to work at a single location, and it was posters on the forums that claimed it was "more an alpha than a beta".

I never heard the devs make that claim.

 

Nah. It's still ten teirs, judging on what they have all the items named when it comes to spawning them.

I believe we're also neglecting the inclusion of the Novakids and their items as well for balancing. That's a bit more work than simply editing numbers. Even though the items have been added in, I believe there's still resizing to ensure they fit the character's hands, and that can take up a good amount of time as well.

 

They were probably talking about stage one of their outlined three-stage development process.

 

Since most of us are speaking from a place outside of the Chucklefish offices in London (perhaps even a tree outside their offices), no one here can answer the question "When will Starbound be finished and released?" And even most of the people inside said office would have difficulty providing a factual answer to that question. That's why there is no ETA.

They are working on T1, because that is the most important tier for their game. Every single person that plays Starbound will experience T1, whereas some may not continue on to experience T2 or even T6/T10/Sector X. If T1 is not balanced and enjoyable, then all of the rest of their work will be ignored by players that did not enjoy the game enough to keep playing it.

So, it's a pretty important piece of the game, even if it does not seem like it is.

 

As for stuff like Jeff...

In my past experience in games-making-for-actual-company-that-makes-games, the artists are typically working a lil ahead of/at a faster pace than the programmers. It takes time for the programmers to balance and place elements and blarblarblar. And a lot of the art assets have been done already.

It was not uncommon for the artists to have largely moved onto another project well before the game was "done". So yeah, if they're still working out the coding of the first Major Mission, then the art for that is pretty much majorly done... and we just haven't been shown a lot of it since they're trying not to spoil too much.

So there's extra time in there for the pixel-art crew to "play", but the kind of play that adds bonus content. Especially stuff that's nothing more than a one-frame cosmetic item like Jeff. (Extra-especially since it looks like Jeff recycles Bone Block spritework. Probably. I haven't done a side-by-side.)

This also doesn't account for "off hours" art work. I mean, we've seen that they're willing to work on the game when not on the clock already. If someone gets inspired after dinner and just HAS to make that hat they thought up NOW...

So yeah, the extra frippery isn't a sign of misplaced priorities.

 

My understanding was that the current mention of "Tier 1" refers to the first full mission in particular. They had a lot of background systems to develop for it, and those are still getting ironed out. In the more recent builds though, the first mission has really come along in layout. You have to actually play through it, like a giant super-dungeon. Doesn't seem to have loot tables yet though, and the final section is still missing.

They have been changing up the early tech/craftables quite a bit too.

A lot of easy name confusion though, 'cause they use the word 'tier' for like everything. Could mean tech, story progression, planets, etc. You'll have to leave the old stable-build notions of sectors and tech progression tiers behind at least, they don't apply anymore.

 

These "silly" side contents... they are what make the tiers somewhat interesting. Rather than just an ore grind up to tier 8, you actually have some interesting content to discover along the way.

Without these kinds of discoverables the game would become very boring fast.

 

Each time I come across some odd thing I've never seen before, I get excited. The first time I found a Sandstone Statue of one of the player races, I heavily prioritized exploring desert planets for more Sandstone Biomes to find all the statues.

Hell, just finding a new recipe I'd never seen before was an "ooo, neat!" moment.

 

I have to say from playing the nightlies (especially recently) I am excited for the revamped systems and overall feel and progress of the game. You can really see everything starting to come together. While I hate waiting, I have faith in this game and the devs and that they will see this through development and beyond.

Before they started these changes the game (while fun) had rather dull mechanics, they have really changed it for the better.

That is just my two cents but I honestly feel the community needs to be more supportive of the devs. Also, we must remember (regardless of projected release dates and such) we bought the game before it was finished to be part of this process, and most games take yeeeeeeears to complete. We all need to remember just how long game development takes, and just what early access programs entail.

Keep up the great work chucklefish! And to my fellow community members, thank you for the great conversation, I just hope we can strive to be act less entitled and more in line with what we in fact did purchase and support.

 

You probably got your answers. But here is a little advice of mine. You should completely forget about this game, for now. I tell that to a lot of people.

Progress is definitely being made. However, from the looks of things, even if the somewhat finished product came out next year, I would probably not play it still. The base game will most likely be still too far from what I expected to be acceptable.

I will even give it extra two years to...fill up. I believe modders will also see to that though.

Just wish the devs luck and hope that when this game pops up again in the future it will be the splendor we hoped for.

 

Tier one and early game set up a lot of precedents for how the rest of the game will work. The rest of the tiers will come faster than the first I'm sure

 

Thank you very much for the reply, I didn't expect a dev to comment. :O
I know a ton of work is going to effect all tiers, Although from most of the thread I am definitely not as worried about it as I was before, I would be lying if I said I wasn't still a little worried about how far along the game is. Thanks again for the reassurance, an actual dev response has relieved much more worry than I was expecting.