Why the character wipes?

If you create items 1, 2, 3 and 4 before a major balance update they would get stored in memory with their current values. Now just say you were to tweak the algorithm that items 1 and 2 were built off so they are more in line with X and 3 and 4 so they were now in line with Y you would then have a completely new function (on the save load, I assume) that would find the items and recalculate them based on the changes you made. That is no easy task and probably 30ish hours worth of one dev's time depending on how they have their structures set up. All just so you can avoid a character wipe. That developer could instead work on the root of the problem.. have it fixed in 2-5 hours and have a patch ready for the community with the consequence being a character wipe.

I guess what I'm trying to say is yeah. Character wipes can be avoided... but expect the game to be imbalance for much longer stretches of time.

 

I don't get why everyone is acting like OP just said he's committing an act of terrorism. Everyone just needs to calm down.

 

Well, that's your opinion, not mine obviously, but if you choose to be an ignorant fanboy then by all means, keep it up. Yeah, research - what kind of research am I supposed to do for a game? Hang out on forums all day? Follow twitter religiously? Well, I don't do that because there is this little thing known as real life that happens to get in the way of it. Furthermore, character wipes were NOT mentioned on the Steam store page - maybe in some footnote but that's about it. I signed up to this forum when the game was nowhere near release, and just came back after purchase and that's it. Yeah, perhaps my fault for not checking it out more in-depth but then again, it also wasn't made clear on Steam.

 

Not trying to be hostile or anything but isnt there a disclaimer highlighted on the steam page that says that it is in early access and that there will be bugs? I know an intentional wipe is not technically a bug, but you can at least assume that because of bugs your data might not be safe

 

You're exaggerating again. A good place to start is the game's website...

 

Of course, it does so on all early access titles. But enforced character wipes through updates aren't the same as a bug - and those wipes were NOT mentioned on the store page unfortunately.

 

How about just checking out their official site for a minute or two?
Or would that cut too deeply into your social life and free time?

Do people that use Steam assume that Valve has this responsibility to tell them absolutely everything?
You open the store page, watch the trailer/screenshots, take a look at the feature list and official site and if it checks out and you're pleased, you buy.

Why people don't take the minute amounts of time needed to check outside the store itself is a mystery.

 

Then perhaps we should just ask the Devs to include that Character/Save wipes WILL happen in the description on the Steam Page underneath the Early Access Warning?

 

Unfortunate indeed.
Lots of people like to hang around forums trolling up the place. I'm pretty sure this is as far as this thread could possibly go. Might be best to check in sometime. Maybe check twitter once or twice a week, and let the trolls consume themselves.

 

You realize I said I signed up to this forum a long time before release? Right - this means you will probably realize there have been one or two other games, that were RELEASED in the meantime, that I had been interested in? Okay - then, up comes Starbound on Steam, and I hadn't been on here in ages and sorry to say so, the thought that updates might screw up savegames never hit me BECAUSE IT WAS NOT MENTIONED ON THE STORE PAGE. There you go...

 

Guys, we're beta testers. Stop fucking complaining.

 

You probably should have read the terms of the beta before snapping the game on your credit card. If you did the very little research required to know that this stage of beta is going to have MULTIPLE WIPES then you'd know not to be complaining about this. You are 100% at fault, the developers owe you nothing in the beta.

 

A question for the devs: How come something like https://code.google.com/p/protobuf/ is not used? Would save you from the character wipes...

 

Because you're playing a beta and they need to wipe everything once in a while to fix things. Simple as that. Yes your card was charged, and guess what, even after the wipes you still own the game that you paid for.

 

For all those asking why a wipe had to occur, I think it's fairly simple:
The game is in beta format and the coding of the game is incomplete. In this case, they did a overhaul of a MAJOR system, which affected a good portion of the game's code & data.. It also affected the character details, because armor now adds hps, etc. In order to compile the newest build and change this system, the previous coding had to be re-written. When the programmers did so, it made the previous character code uncompatible w/ the previous code. Because it is a beta, the developers are not concerned about this because they have told everyone up front what to expect. You can not honestly expect them to waste valuable development time try to program in such a way that it keeps pre-existing characters, because there is no reason to do so. Also, as part of the testing, it's important that the new system is completely tested. Why waste time with bugs that may be tied to previous incompatiable data, when they can just do a fresh reset and have a complete new set of testing data.

That being said, I completely understand everyone's frustation at losing character data. But that's just the way it is. If you do not like this, I would suggest that you opt out of playing the beta until it's at a stage where you will be able to enjoy and play the game in a more complete format. Because the programmers are not going to change the way the game is tested and programmed. It's up to you, as the best tester, to accept these facts and adapt to them.

Or not, but complaining about the facts of a game's development will change nothing. I'm sorry.

 

If an over-the-internet face-stabbing device was an actual thing, I'd wager we wouldn't even HAVE the internet, because there wouldn't be enough people left to run it.

 

That literally just means that you didn't bother. You went into a car dealership expecting everything to be the same as it was before, because you had visited it once a while ago. You simply looked at a car, read the little label it has and decided that you're buying it.

Then you figured out that the transmission isn't the way you'd like it to be, the parts weren't as polished as you'd like them to be.
So you go to the store's page and complain that it wasn't there on the little label. You expected a novel instead of a piece of paper.

That's your problem. Should have checked properly.

 

Welcome to forums, where people are so uptight they could shove coal up their rear and form it into a diamond within a matter of seconds.

 

False. Firstly, the comparison you make is incredibly off and not applicable and secondly, if push came to shove I could return the car. Can't quite do that on Steam, right? Also, when character wipes aren't mentioned on the store page, do you suggest I check the games' forums, twitter etc etc just in case there might be wipes that aren't mentioned on Steam? Seriously?

 

Like i said, you took the store page as glorious gospel and didn't spend even a minute to check anything else. That's all your fault for not being a savvy consumer.

Steam being shy with their refunds is their own problem.