Upbeat Giraffe Feedback

So, after a very long period of inactivity, I've come back to Starbound to try out the unstable/nightly changes.
I simply want to leave my thoughts in the open for others to see.
I understand that things are a work in progress. Try to imagine my tone of voice as curious or thoughtful; I do not mean to come across as abrasive, I am simply trying to be direct.

I'll try to keep things concise.

General Feedback

• Fire the person responsible for screwing up most of the item descriptions. I'm not sure if they're procedurally generated or if the person typing them out isn't literate, but many of the item descriptions in the game are riddled with errors and that is not okay.
• Changing the color of names on crafting stations to gold was a good idea.
• Pixel requirements are no longer as much of a speed bump in the progression chain. This pleases me.
• Why is it still massively inconvenient to change my haircut after the game has been out this long? I should not have to manually edit my .player files because I have become tired of octopus hair. Character makeover tube when?

Game bug feedback:

• Fix your broken party system. It is not okay that I am more often in parties where I cannot see all of the party members than in parties where I can. It is not okay that beaming to someone else's ship is often prevented by their name being replaced with mine. It is not okay that this bug has existed this long when parties are essential to cooperative multiplayer in starbound. If there is one thing that should be prioritized above all else, it's this. (If you don't want to fix it, send me the source and I'll do it.)
  
• Why do I drown when I sleep in a reed bed?
• Weather is still spawning indoors. I am using healing water for lighting in my base, and had to change planets because rain was spawning in my lights, overriding the liquid and causing ugly patches of rainwater in my lighting designs. Fortunately, this isn't a problem on magma ocean planets, where the only weather (on most instances) is pretty meteor showers.
• I found a full set of copper armor inside chests in the Wilderness biome. Bug?

On the new progression system / quests:

• New quest system is much more straightforward. Quest requirements for appropriate armor to go to harder missions were a very good idea.
• New method of acquiring fuel is much better than the old one. The change in pace and relative safety of moons makes for a relaxing way to step away from the often claustrophobic combat scenarios of other planets to focus on logistics.
• "Go find me a sign from one of those U.S.C.M. prison colonies." < These quests are not fun at all. I would rather do a mission from SAIL and bring you back whatever fetch item.
• Most of the new quests were either clever or humorous. I enjoyed reading through them and hope to see more in the same flavor in the future.
• I think the weapons currently rewarded by quests are not good. Standardized weapons as rewards that are good enough to complete the upcoming mission seem like a better approach.
• Digging core fragments out of blaststone is not fun. More uses for core fragments would be neat; I'm starting to acquire large piles of them. Integrate with Fossil system maybe?
• Durasteel stage of progression is brutal. Suggest: Common/Uncommon drop/crate/chest on appropriately leveled worlds. I assume that when we get asteroid fields back this will be less of a problem.

On block and item changes:

• Fine sand and gravel no longer contain ores. This means the thrill of jumping through falling cascades of loot has been replaced with negative sentiments regarding large amounts of falling objects causing the server to slow down. This is a step backwards, I think.
• Bone blocks and eyeball blocks behave like gravel or fine sand. Suggest: create alternate placement method through matter manipulator to apply with or without physics.
• Harvesting liquids is very useful. Looking forward to plumbing. My new base of operations lands players inside a healing water hot tub.
• Appreciate shorter tree growth times. Thank you.
• Drills and pickaxes are now something that I only use to chop down trees faster. I do not think this was your intent.

On wiring changes:

• These would be much cooler if I could craft wire.
• Defense turrets, when loaded with decent crafted weaponry (example: Ferozium Rifle) often waste all of their ammunition before actually aligning with their target, making their initial burst of shots worthless. Suggest tighter angular requirement for firing than for activation.

On the new biomes and biome changes:

• Bioluminescent biome: Very neat. Hate snow planets, would like to import elsewhere. Trees when?
• Zen: Yet to encounter, preview images look cool.
• Hive: Yet to encounter, trying not to get overexcited in case it's not what I think it is.
• Gnome Village: Very gratifying to defend or destroy. Cute loot. Would like to see small houses and other Gnome structures as craftable items (possible that I simply didn't get lucky blueprint drop?).
• Oasis / Reeds: Very neat. Would like to be able to plant reeds in the future.
• Spring: Enjoy aesthetic immensely. Ability to plant colorful flowers requested.
• Ocean / Ice Ocean: Looks neat. Super boring. Looking forward to content updates and bigger sea monsters. Hylotl tiki hut when?
• Magma Ocean: I don't understand why this biome exists. It's not fun. Digging through obsidian sucks.
• Wilderness: New vine chests are neat. It would be cool to see more ceiling- and wall-based enemies in wilderness biomes, much like the glitch spiders in sewers. (Maybe already exists in hive biome? Don't know.)
• WHERE DID YOU PUT THE RAINBOW BUNNIES
• Limestone caves are a neat touch. Looking forward to additional content for this mini-biome as it has a lot of potential to become amazing with proper TLC.

On bug catching:

• This idea is incredibly cool. I have already caught all of the currently accessible species of insects (and built a four-story display area for them).
• I cannot release captured bugs back into the wild. This makes me feel bad.

On ships:

• Novakid train ship is a cool idea, but very inconvenient to actually use. Maybe make train bigger instead of longer.
• Avian ship looks really good, but I don't want to play an avian. Hoping for ship hijacking opportunities in the future.
• Attempting to fill my ship with liquid brought me a lot of confusion until I realized that there were not actually background blocks in the transition areas between rooms on my ship. Suggest placing hazard blocks as background or something.
• Tech upgrades based on ship size were a good idea.

On new tech system:

• New system has lots of potential.
• Suit should automatically adjust upon entering hazardous planet. Having to switch is very inconvenient.
• SAIL's appearance is based on your species rather than on the ship. This makes no sense, and after changing my race from Hylotl to human, I miss sensei.

On specific techs:

• Double jump, energy dash, boat, and target blink are useful.
• Please scrap everything else and give us back butterfly boost.

On creature changes:

• Limiting creature attacks to specific creature components sounds like a good idea, but in practice drastically reduces combat opportunities. I do not understand why this change was made.
• Limiting creature features to specific biomes also confuses me. This feels like a step backwards. Making certain families more prevalent (as opposed to being the only ones) in any given environment makes much more sense.
  
• Small creatures no longer using projectile attacks means all of the creatures I capture will be guaranteed to be significantly less helpful in combat. I cannot cage the creatures for display. Both of my primary uses for small creatures have been removed. I do not want to capture creatures anymore.
• Monsters seem to be able to aggro through walls now. Not sure if bug. Annoying and inconsistent.
• Acquiring leather is significantly more frustrating than it was previously.

On Status Pods:

• I destroy these now. Their applied effects are rarely more than an inconvenience, especially bounce and float.

This isn't everything, and this update is huge. I do appreciate the work that's been done so far and eagerly await future updates. For now, I'm going to get back to playing Starbound, as I've spent way more time typing this out than I thought I would.
Cheers,
-V

 

Another update impressions thread? Sure, why not?.. Not gonna wall of text it, but my impression is :-

UNDERWHELMED.

 

I definitely agree with getting butterfly boost back. That's how I found this thread

 

Has anyone noticed the examine function is hardly working since the update or is it just me? most of the things I look at return a "nothing there" message, and these are objects I know previously did have descriptions.

Like for example the Avian tomb decorations and blocks now cannot be examined. I dont mean the newly added decorations either, but the years old ones which previously did have descriptions.

Is the function being phased out because it was too much work?

 

I noticed that too, examining a picture of the Glitch Shakespeare gave me a "Nothing here." quote, same for several Floran weapon racks in one of those micro dungeons in caves.