Why the fans are upset about Starbound

That is what we were trying to get to... You mistook us being frustrated with the lack of clarity and the lack of the team being on the same page with everything with not having patience.

Chucklefish is a company. It isn't a charity. They need to work, act, and respond to their stakeholders as a company. They received ~$2 million for their project. If they would've received that money as a loan or investment from another company and they tried to string them around, they would've been dropped instantly. Chucklefish needs to come together, gather all of their dates, timelines, and thoughts about any release, go over them, and either construct something that is clear and consistence, or they need to get rid of any projection altogether.

 

It is a lack of patience. You can try to act like it's not, but it really, really is. And it's painfully obvious to everyone else with functioning brain. Why? Because anyone who's spent some time gaming at any point in the last ten years already knows why the game's beta hasn't been released yet. It's not rocket surgery. Bartwe is basically repeating what others have said before. You should at least be thankful he's willing to waste time humoring you.

What this is, is a bunch of impatient people who want to throw a tantrum trying to make it look like they're doing anything other than flailing their limbs for no reason. It infuriates me to watch it, because there are so, so many other things in the game industry that are far, far more worthy of people's ire than this game seeing a few delays. Wanna freak out over something? Pick one: Nickle and dime Microtransactions, giant greedy publishers buying out good game studios, a distinct blandness in the flavor of modern triple A titles, theoretically awesome genres being ruined by persistent bad design, etc, etc.

 

When they started the daily updates I was quite frankly shocked at the amount of transparency they were giving us, It was an almost direct viewing port into how a game was developed, and I can't think about how it doesn't tell you how the game is going? The beta will be out in 2013. if it isn't, 2014. until then you are being treated to first class tickets of how a game is being produced.

 

Don't put words in other people's mouths. And if they are impatient, it doesn't make what they are saying less true. It is not a tantrum, maybe you just consider anything you don't like like irrational. And you know you can complain about many things at once do you? Or are we allowed only to pick one thing not to like?

 

Best thing to do up until the point that another part of the community complains, raises critcisms (and shitstorms possibly) about how the devs are so unprofessional and disorganized that they can't even give a time frame or estimated release.

Source: It's happened like 4 times before.

Not attacking your opinion, I'm just being a realist here. A sizable part of the community will not accept "We're not giving estimates." and "When it's ready" as acceptable, and will definitely make it known. They will try to pressure devs into giving a time frame / estimate, and they will criticize / insult the devs if they don't give them one.

(Also, I'm not here to argue about anything, or debate anything, cause I have absolutely no strong feelings either way, and I don't have a whole lot of time tonight. I just want to bring attention to the fact that what some people think is the "right thing to do," is "the wrong thing to do" to others.)

 

Exactly. There's no winning in that kind of environment

 

Yay, another ones of these threads with the same old justifications to hide impatience. Gotta love consistency.

 

(Side note: It's not my intention to single out Gaikang with this (or anyone else for that matter), I just felt that her post got to the heart of the matter more than any of the others I'd seen.)

We get answers pretty much every single day, yet I still keep seeing references to "not enough" communication.

When I see people ask that, my first instinct is to ask, "How much is enough?" and more importantly, "Who actually has the authority to say how much is enough?" Is it me? Because I personally feel it's enough. >_>

Of course, they can be held accountable just like anyone else can. They become accountable the moment they open an official agreement with another party (that is, "a sale") and break the terms of that agreement.

(Disclaimer: I'm referring to both sides in this paragraph) Any attempt at actual direct communication ends up like this thread. A bunch of ad-hominem arguments and baseless accusations thrown around, with very few valid points. Many of you are at least being civil most of the time, but you're sadly in the minority. I was very tempted to not even post in this toxic wasteland. I can't say I don't understand the concerns being put out, but why should we take this seriously when it's based on the presumption that almost everyone who wants to give feedback is a better person than they have been in this very thread?

Moreover, time spent on actually developing the game is more important to me than time spent communicating with people whose being kept appraised of every detail really isn't critical to the game's development(no offense). This goes double for when the devs are working on things that they legitimately do not want the fanbase to know about(i.e. spoilers). Seriously, I'm glad for that. I haven't even checked all of the entries in the Soundtrack page because I don't want to be burnt out on the songs I'm going to be stuck listening to before the game even releases!

It's implicit and beside every point that has been made on this forum to-date.

I can't name a single person who thinks that the devs are incapable of mistakes. And even if they did? That's still an ad-hominem making it irrelevant to every argument it's introduced to, since "can" and "did" are two different concepts.

And I see far too many people using that as a shield to ward off criticism. It doesn't work anyway: either you're wrong so they're not going to listen to you, or you're right and (surprise!) they're not going to listen to you

Setting aside that concepts like "wrong" and "problem" are subjective matter, problems can also arise out of ignorance as well as truth.

Besides, isn't it telling if more people come to the conclusion that there isn't a problem by their own volition?

 

The game seems ready for beta any day now, if they fix the bad bugs li the Save Deleting On Crash one, hen it could be ready! Now don't reply with crap like "but what about BLA BLA BLA" cuz it's probably been told to be false, or just won't make sence to what I'm saying, I'm saying a beta, I'll use minecraft as a example, is SUPPOST to be a bad-ish early version of the game, not the complete product, from what we've seen, starbound looks 30000x better then Minecrafts beta did! But it's not even OUT FOR BETA YET? You can still add stuff afte the beta release, we can help you find/test things, saving the Devs some time,

And if any of you say it can ruin the excitement....

No one is forcing you to play the beta! Or watch videos! Or go around finding every little thing there is to know about starbound!

All I'm saying is Minecrafts beta was amazing, it was in beta for a long time, and it gave us the unbivable game we have today! So if Starbounds beta came out soon, it will help it become a great game on release,

We can't complain of a Buggy Beta! Cuz it's a frickin BETA!
Fans will calm down.
The Devs get more time to do other things while we help test and find bugs.

It works for everyone, there no real bad reason to release it's Beta, since its a Beta! It comes early and is going to be buggy! Done complain people!

 

Even after a dev and admin responded to this thread people will continue to say chucklefish does not communicate and has failed them, some people will always look for an excuse to irrationally complain.

 

Problem is the number of people who think that accommodatingly towards a potential Beta is far smaller than you seem to think it is.

 

No need to be alarmed. I wasn't including you

 

And this is the part that is really sad to me. You think you are giving constructive criticism. The problem is that the questions you are asking have been answered. Over and over and over. And over. And every time the devs give you a bit more information you were asking for, you complain that it was not what you were actually asking, and that they're obviously hiding something and not communicating. I'm not blindly defending Chucklefish's actions here; I have worked in the gaming industry for quite some time, and I see this exact same cycle with new games all the time. People get excited for a game or a new patch to come out, and when it doesn't come out as fast as they'd like, they begin complaining on forums about it. They find a few other people who also like to complain, create a nice echo chamber, and work themselves up into believing that the developer is irresponsible, out to screw them over, and that the product will never come out (or will be horribly flawed when it does, because the developer is not listening to them personally). This happens a lot, and with little deviation. The only difference is that with larger companies they tend to have PR folks to shield the devs from it. Indie companies aren't so lucky.

I'd also like to point out the irony in your scenario where I'm the one demanding to play games... What?

 

Zing!

More on-topic:

They aren't trying to string us around, and they have no stakeholders. Where are you getting this from?

They don't need to do anything. They have a date (2013), and they plan to stick to it. They'll reveal a more accurate date when they can actually stay true to it, but that's as a courtesy to us, and not out of some 'need', in my opinion.

Edit: whoops, Fyreflyte's posts above weren't double-posted. I just deleted my post that was between it. My bad.

 

That would be the way to do it. Unfortunately, I don't think they'd allow it on these forums, and I fear it would be counterproductive in any event. People complaining about the game does not help motivate the devs to work harder. It makes me sad that so many people are taking this approach, as it can sometimes have negative consequences on the game, and ruin things for everyone else as well.

 

Want me to throw a dart at my December calendar? It'd probably be more accurate information than anything they could give you now.

 

Hofstadter's Law strikes again.

In other words, the game would probably have been delayed until 2014 if not for preorders.

 

I can't like this enough.
People are saying the game isn't coming out 'faster' as if they have precognition and know exactly how long it was going to take before the preorder. They don't.
People also have weird expectations on game studios giving set dates for release. As the daily updates (which are fantastic btw) are frequently illustrating, features that they predict might take a day or two to develop might take weeks, and the reverse. It's impossible to predict how long it takes to code a game. Vague 'when it's done, it's done' timelines are the healthiest option for both the game and the developers and the waiting players too, because they'll get a better end result than a crunch-time game rushed out.
I understand that people get upset while waiting and not having an exact date to end that wait, but really, the daily updates are far more communication that I've ever seen from a game studio.
Also, games take a long time and a huge commitment to make. The commitment you made with your preorder money is completely insignificant compared to what everyone in Chucklefish is betting on this game - they are probably betting all their savings and years of their time. Have a little confidence that they will want to make that investment worthwhile.

 

You know, they DO have problems with a deadline, and so what? Are YOU a game developer? Do you know how hard it is? In any case, this is exactly why they do not want to say a release date: because a game like this takes time to finish. And compared to Cube World, which began development a few months earlier, they are far more "finished" with the game. CW is still in Alpha. But quite a long while ago (earlier this year I think) Chuckelfish said "70% of the game is complete". We can now say that with all the new stuff added since then that is no longer true. However, these guys stays up to late on the night to get this finished sooner and your complaining is not helping.

 

You should put a TL;DR summary at the bottom.