Time to re-evaulate now - Impressions of the yogscast stream

http://community.playstarbound.com/...e-devs-or-and-anyone-else.28693/#post-1126892

 

As it is, if the game doesn't see a 2013 beta, I'm asking for a refund. I'm not waiting years for this if I could use that $15 to buy a friend a game that we could enjoy together instantly.

 

I'm just disappointed mostly by the first boss. The players where horrible but..
I expected a bit more creativity from the team. I mean.. this is metal slug tier stuff. Even before then nes games has ufo bosses that spawn minions.. its all..

I know its the first boss but its just a let down. Not to mention this is how they want to draw attention to themselves?

I'm also worried by how they went from.. prealpha, alpha, an apparent slip of beta. Do they not even know what build they are in?

 

Yeah, I'm also kinda worried about Bartwe's comment about the pre-alpha thing. Hope that doesn't mean we won't be getting our hands on this before the end of the year.

 

Yeah, I'm hoping we get beta. I think the devs are just really stressed out and they made some mistakes at i49

 

The stream was quite boring... But It was nice to see lots of Starbound!

 

I don't think you guys should be strung up about what state of the game they said it is in. The terms themselves have been pretty nebulously used by many game devs. As far as the boss itself is concerned, it's a tutorial boss. I wasn't expect a gigantic galactic fleet or giant monster. The mechanics seemed fun and hectic, which is what I was hoping for. The look of it was nice, and I especially liked the penguin in the tank.

The real failure was the stupidity of the Yogscast. Yes it was their first time seeing the game, but for people who do Lets Plays for a living that was downright pathetic.

 

You're using metal slug tier as being negative?

 

I believe he meant either inspired, reminiscent, or some other related word, not tier.

 

No, the real failure is people thinking their own preferences are law. These members of the Yogscast (because, contrary to popular belief, the Yogscast is actually a diverse group of people with varied playstyles) play for fun and/or to screw around (and entertain) - just like a lot of other players do. "Let's Plays" can be anything you want them to be, this isn't a walkthrough.

 

When it seems near lifted from it? Thats sort of an opposite of creative. So yes.
I expected them to try something that was .. not done as much?

Big ship spawning minions is.. just.. not creative. Not even as first boss material.
Maybe an homage as someone said.

 

I wasn't really bothered by whether it was beta or alpha - mostly wanted to see what the game was capable of doing. That said, I enjoyed the stream, and I don't think the Yogcast did a poor showing of it; they fiddled with the game and its mechanics blindly, and that felt rather authentic for me. I liked how they experimented with an initial early base, and then moved on to an advance camp later on. What I did mostly get out of the stream was the potential Starbound has and also... the immense challenge trying to balance it all out.

The boss wasn't too bad, though I did feel the idea of a UFO feels stale and tepid. I somehow feel that they are not fully done on the boss. I wish I got to see more tundra or magma lands though.

 

I dont blame yog's really, I mean.. they were just dumped in the middle of a game without basic instructions.

If they were just shown how to do basic stuff like dig and place items they wouldnt have been laughing at it so much.. all we kept hearing was 'how do you do that?'

Maybe with some instructions they would have built a decent fort and took off to visit other planets.. after all the game is call 'STAR'bound.. not PLANETbound.. LOL

 

I think people are really getting the wrong impression for what this was supposed to be. Most of us on the forums have seen 99% of what they were doing before, we're watching the Starbound streams the Devs do, reading the daily updates etc.

As for the build slip-ups? I'd imagine that's just being a bit nervous, being broadcast to the web, and infront of a ton of people. It's bound to happen, having been infront of large groups before you'll make slips everyone does, especially when they are new-ish to things like that. From my understanding Bartwe was trying to correct Molly in saying that it wasn't pre-beta but in Alpha. And just slipped by saying pre-alpha. I might be wrong they'd have to comment themselves.

As for the "making a mockery" of the game. I personally enjoyed the demo. It was enough that if I hadn't already bought STarbound I'd be looking into it further. I don't enjoy game reviews or streams ot let's plays were people are serious and to the point, it gets boring fast for me. If there hadn't been humor, or incredibad gameplay I wouldn't have watched it personally. It was amusing, and still showed the game.

Bugs are one thing, game-breaking bugs are another thing. Castle Story is a good example of this, their original release to the public was a very early Alpha, the gamebreaking bugs were numerous and made it impossible for some people to play. (Quite literally, some people couldn't even launch the game.) How did that sit with the public? Alot of people walked away instantly, sure the die-hard fans are still with them, but alot of people got really pissed, really fast. To my knowledge they've only released a couple of minor patches since, the game still has some serious issues with any sort of gameplay. Chucklefish is trying to avoid stuff like this soley because as soon as they say "Ok guys here's the beta rem-" that's about as far as people read, before they download it, play it and judge it as if they were a god at designing games and knew the ins and outs of game design, even though most people don't have the first clue. Why? I dunno same reason people troll I guess, it amuses them. The Devs are cutting down on what could be terrible PR if they release a beta that crashes constantly and won't allow players to change planets etc. Especially when they have what? 70+K people who will be in the beta?

I can already forsee the first issue with beta, their servers are going to hard-crash for a day or two. Just like any other game that gets a ton of people in all at once. (I'm looking at GW2 full release, D3 full release, Cube World etc.) Be patient, give them the time they feel they need. You'll be happier for it. I get some people say "Oh I don't mind bugs" they say it, but alot of people don't mean it. If there's a bug that as soon as you beam down you crash. Are you ok with that? No because it wrecks gameplay, you can't do anything except sit on your ship. But hey you go the beta right? [/rant]

 

Let's see:

Just yesterday they still said "2013 beta, no promises on release". Do you think we traveled back in time since then? Granted, if they actually delay it again then yes, you have a reason to be upset. Be upset on the 1st of January, not now.

We've also had Tiy reference the "alpha servers" several times on his twitter. I think you're making a big deal out of a random comment from a jetlagged dev who's been working 12-16 hour shifts every day for who knows how long.

As for the quality of the event, that's another issue. The stream yesterday was far superior to today's even with it's echoing and crashes. Granted, if you went in knowing who Yoggscast are and expecting anything else you made a powerful mistake. I would never have chosen them, I don't choose to watch their content, and none of my friends feel anything but the same way. They're just not that entertaining. Even before this happened, most of the people I talked to about this game were predicting Yogscast would make these forums very, very nasty for a little while. It seems like every time they're at a con, there's drama. Remember Notch and them after minecon? I can't wait until TotalBiscuit weighs in on this (/sarcasm).

Anyway, tier one boss is basically the boss of the tutorial. It's not exactly in the realm of what I consider super serious business. The devs gave us a glimpse of the tutorial. The tutorial. Think about what that is for a moment.

Was it underwhelming? Sort of, I skipped through a lot of it because I knew what I was going to get before it ever started.

TLDR: If you were expecting anything other than Yogscast playing through the tutorial and are now reconsidering the game that's just silly. You got exactly what was on the tin.

 

After they said that the game was still in PRE-ALPHA(!) i decided to ask for a refund of my pre-order. i can do something better with those 15$ until 2014 (at least). there are coming a ton of good games in 2013 (x rebirth anyone?) so i will put starbound aside for quite a while. i was quite hyped about the game, but after i49 am not any more. PRE-ALPHA? really? i mean, come on ... that's ridiculous!

 

I think Bartwe said pre-alpha because of all the rage that would occur by any mention of the word beta. That being said that demo is no where near pre-alpha...pre-alpha would be non functional and the demo was impressive even though it poorly shown.

 

It doesn't matter really, all in all this was a horrible train wreck. They WILL bounce back from it but I really think they would have done better if one of the developers had played with the group.
I hate to say it but I think they also need to take some courses in dealing with the public.. nervousness isn't good when facing crowds like this and they will have to more as time goes on.

 

A Lets Play is supposed to display the game they're playing in a way that new players could understand it. With your logic, a Lets Play can be them staring at a wall for 2 hours, or just running aimlessly around doing nothing in particular. The point is to show off the game, not see these guys act like fools, which they did in a poor manner. Screwing around wasn't the problem. No one minds them messing around with the tents. The problem is when you see them bumbling around like a bunch of idiots and not knowing how to do things even after Duncan explains it to them.

The point of the show should have been Starbound, not the Yogscast.

 

Hosting the beta on enough different web hosts (mediafire, mega.com, and etc) should help distribute the web load enough that playstarbound.com might not crash. The big thing about GW2, D3, and Cube World was that they ONLY hosted the files on their own servers. When everyone tried accessing the same server, shit went down. Unless there are bugs which will destroy my computer, bugs don't bother me. Especially when they have humorous unintended outcomes.