Why is this game so SLOW PACED?

So I've put about... 25 hours into this game. And every time I start a new character I have to use the quick-start mod, because the game is aggravatingly slow paced.

Follow along with me here. Most people like me who are playing this game, or at least a good majority of people have played Terraria and Minecraft. We have those games as a frame of reference in our minds, fanboy/fangirl or otherwise. We remember putting dozens/hundreds/even thousands of hours into those games. WE've all played tons of Terraria, so ideally we all want Starbound to be as good as and better than Terraria in every possible aspect.

Yet it is not better than Terraria in the department of speed. I'm not referring to game speed or programming logic, I mean the time it takes for me to make a basic set of armor as a beginning player in Terraria VS the amount of time it takes in Starbound.

You start out equipped with a basic weapon, and a matter manipulator. The matter manipulator is your piece of shit do-everything-terribly item. It mines, cuts down trees, and picks up furniture from the ground. You don't start with a basic pickaxe/axe, you have to craft those first to get any kind of speed.

I made an LP video on the day SB was released, and my initial impressions of the game's speed were readily apparent even then.


(Jump to 10:18)

This link should start you where I cut down my first tree. It took me roughly 20 seconds to chop down a single tree. Why does it take so long? Is that level of tedium really required? You have to chop down I think two trees and then mine a bunch of stone, all with your shitty matter manipulator, and mining with that is a goddamn nightmare, especially on cobblestone. Once you FINALLY have the needed amount of wood and cobblestone you can assemble your actual starting tools.

Great, now you have a pick and an axe! Things should go way faster now, and indeed a tree takes about 3 seconds to cut down now instead of a face melting 20 seconds. But mining is still ridiculously slow, with the starting pick. Mining a piece of ore in terraria takes like... 0.75 seconds, and you can see it pop into your inventory quickly so you feel that sense of accomplishment. Mining 9 tiles in Starbound doesn't give you that sense of accomplishment, not at all. Yeah, I'm mining 9 tiles at once instead of 1 tile at once like in Terraria, but that doesn't mean it should take 9 times longer!

Now you can say that this is a beta, and I get that, but the trend of "do things extremely slowly and then get slightly faster in the next tier" continues throughout the entire game after that. Why? Just make the game go faster. Just because I played 50 hours of starbound doesn't mean I accomplished half as much as I would in 25 hours of Terraria.

Thanks for listening.

 

Why should the game be so fast? I think having thing things "handed to you" is boring. Yes, you do mine slowly, but later you can build better pickaxes and drills. Then you feel that what you've built was worth the materials and effort, because it makes things noticeably faster.

Why is that a bad thing?

 

Every time you start a new character you have to deal with this snail pacing unless you get a quick start mod. I suppose a home planet would be a place where you can store supplies like tools and etc but really, what about the new users? I noticed an increase in speed for every pickaxe and etc in Terraria (To the point of insane speeds, yeah) and it didn't take me 20 seconds to cut down my first tree. Maybe more like... 10? It could go faster is my point. I'd rather spend time building than drilling for 8 million resources at a painstakingly slow pace.

To this end I'm glad someone on the Nexus made a creative mode mod.

 

Though I understand that it's a cliche saying, this is a beta. During the final release, I presume people won't be making as many characters as they are now. When they do make a new character, it will be refreshing to have a slow start, rather than being thrust right at the endgame level their old character was at.

And you will be able to, once you progress in the game.

 

Slow paced? My friend and I went from having nothing to full tier 10 in about 15-20 hours played time after the last wipe, then we found ourselves with nothing at all to do but build stuff.

It takes a grand total of maybe 5 minutes to toss a stone pick and a stone axe together, and then it just picks up the pace from there.

Especially tier 5-10 are stupidly quick, I didnt keep a single armor set for more than maybe 20 minutes.

So yeah, it's beta, and it is in no way slow paced, quite the opposite.

 

Made it to full impervium in about two-three hours this wipe. I'm not entirely sure how that is too fast, since in Terraria I'd be getting my demonic pickaxe by now.

Keep in mind, we only have four tiers in the game, the last six are all squashed into one without any pixel costs. So it would probably take a good ten or so hours to reach full impervium come feature complete release.
But you're not arguing the case of how fast it will be come release, but how fast it is now. I'm not going to argue my case, that it's beta, or that you're just slow and unaccustomed to the best locations to find ore / craft armor/weapons.
You've done good by installing a mod to make the game play how you want it to, because that's what the devs are aiming for. Play how you want, but don't ask that it be changed for the rest of us who enjoy a better pace.

 

I do feel bronze and coal should at least a little more common, damn is it annoying, swimming in bloody gold and stuff, but bronze and coal? Noooope.

 

It's not slow at all....

 

First impressions count?

 

I feel that this isn't a problem with the game so much as your play style has you taking more time to do things. on my first character I lived like a nomad because at the time it was expensive to fly back to my home planet to do menial tasks, or store extra items, or whatever it is you do at home. I had made it to sector X and crafted the best Items I could get at the time in 6-7 hours. My play style had me rarely digging to find ore mainly I would fly to a dessert planet and mine exclusively in sand only making exceptions for surface level ores, then I would fly to the next planet and repeat. Having a base tends to make things take longer as you need to repeatedly return to it to get things done whereas my nomadic style lets me simply keep my work bench, furnace, etc. on my ship letting me have easy access to both materials on the planet and the ores being smelted on deck. Also living like a nomad had me seeing much more content in a shorter time because I never spent much time on any one planet.

 

There's nothing wrong with the pace. Find a desert planet and collect ores like a madman as you surf on sand. Craft what you need, fight boss, move to the next tier.

If you really focus on it you can get through tiers in a hour, and sometimes less if you have materials already.... if anything I hope the game slows down once quests are out. I hope there is incentive to stay in lower tiers for a bit before moving on.

 

Saw a friend post on facebook that he beat the new call of duty in a single night. $60 for that or $15 for weeks, months of playtime from this and mods too boot. hmmm.

Your error is that you think starbound should be similar to terraria at all.

 

You seem to be judging the pace of the game by how long the starter tool takes to chop down a tree.

Maybe it could be a bit faster at chopping trees, but I don't think 40 seconds once at the start of the game is really that much of an issue. There are games where it takes much, much longer than 20 seconds per tree. Just because it takes twice as long as in terraria doesn't mean the whole game is garbage.

 

Too slow? are you kidding me?. The only thing that "should" be faster is mining dungeon bricks with a diamond drill for those maniacks like me who want to build something deathstarsized.
But apart from that I normally rush through the tiers in the current beta stage, normally going from tier 5 directly to tier 10 except for the recipies which need to be crafted to unlock the next one.

 

You're criticising the pace of a game thats not yet complete.
How can you expect to pace yourself if you don't know how long the journey is?

 

This, sort of.

Anyway I don't think the game is slow paced, quite the opposite to be honest. I've started my new character after the last wipe and I'm already on sector X after like literally just a few hours of play, two sessions. I think that entirely depends on your playstyle, I for example tend to take things slowly, I like to read the descriptions, look at things, compare stats... that sort of thing and I've never felt like the game was too slow.

Each to his own I guess, right?

 

terraria tried hard to get away from being "that minecraft clone"

starbound is trying hard to get away from being "that terraria clone"

just wait and see =/

 

I would think the fast pace it is now is intentional so restarts won't take that long and we can get back up to speed to see whatever is new. I expect the pace to get even slower once the game becomes more fleshed out with quests and what not, especially once wipes stop entirely/slow down.

 

Same here.

I'd much rather that the game took forever to complete so we can explore hundreds of planets before we've done what we want. With the random generation that starbound has it has the potential to easily do this. At the moment it seems a bit too rushed. You're constantly being pushed to get the next tier up which is 5* better than your previous gear, rather than having the time to explore and build.

I'm almost certain it will be better balanced and paced after beta is done though.