Why the fans are upset about Starbound

As are the rest of us in this thread. This thread isn't about how long development is taking, but the lack of communication on whether they stood by some of their previous statements or not.

 

A lot of strife seems to stem from The Roadmap seemingly being abandoned and questions about it being avoided

Its existence by now seems to have hurt the community, namely because a lot of individuals view it as some fatally important progress bar they need to see fill up, much like in their video games, to have any idea as to when the game is coming

It seems more a flight of fancy by this point, but plenty of misguided meaning has been applied to it.

 

I'd agree with that. More consistent updates about where they were regarding the Roadmap would've helped on that front. "We're kind of past where the roadmap is", or "We haven't updated the roadmap because we're trying to figure out where we are regarding progress", or "We're not really updating the roadmap anymore due to the daily updates", just little bits and bytes of communication. As it is, there's at least a few people who think it's still a perfectly up-to-date source of info, and it's hard to tell how true that is or is not at any given time.

 

I actually think that the reason its not updated is because its an entire flash based page, and its a pain in the ass to do.
Unless its less complicated than I described it, and it hasn't been updated because of lethargy alone.

 

There are questions we don't want to answer for various reasons.

 

And that is why people are so pissed.

If you guys just sucked it up, and answered honestly.
Maybe people would stop getting refunds, and maybe offer more to assist.

Hiding the truth, or lying has far worse consequences than telling the truth.

 

It is pretty at best, misleading in reality, and depressingly irrelevant and destitute at worst.

I have to admit, seeing it and having some notion that they'd be updating it monthly (and the one update was actually satisfying, for one so desperate as myself) curbed a lot of the pangs. It gave something actually definite to look forward to. Daily updates are admittedly good, if not over the top, and people would protest if they were to cease; but the idea of approaching some kind of finality was pleasing.

The Roadmap essentially being kaput, "Ask Us Anything" being lost in time, and still knowing about as much as we did in April as to release are the condensed forms of why seemingly half of the community is acting angry and entitled.

The Devs communicate plenty, divulge quite a bit. I believe it's just a lack of consistency is areas we believed there would be consistency that's hurting things

 

Perhaps in the future, the team could try to be as specific as they can about why they can't answer a question?

Just in this thread, you told me you couldn't answer a question because you just didn't know. That's an actual answer. If the team hasn't really formed a consensus on something, or if they're still discussing it, telling us that is a real, honest answer. It might not be the definitive and decisive answer, but you can always tell people that later. The important thing is just to keep people updated on where things stand. The alternative-- just saying "I can't answer that", or "spoilers", is incredibly unsatisfying by comparison.

 

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Melee weapon generation
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80%
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It doesn't look complicated. taskPercentage will just change the text on the right, taskMeterFill determines how wide the blue bar is, a width of 241.6px fills up 8 bars, 271.8px fills up 9 bars, etc. If you have the width values in front of you it shouldn't take more than 15 minutes to update all the values. What would take longer is determining the progress of each subcategory though, I guess..

 

It's all rather arbitrary as well, but I believe there's an exclaimer stating The Roadmap shouldn't be considered gospel as to when the game is being released

 

I agree with the OP, Chucklefish needs to give out more useful information (and keep promises). Things like the daily updates and roadmap are great, I love that the devs are doing that, but when Tiy continues saying that all the main features are being wrapped up or Armagon asking "Please bear with us a bit longer!" Only adds fuel to the "When's Beta?" bonfire.

The only way I see Starbound getting into the public's hands (Edit: SOON) is if it were to be leaked. It happened to Terraria and look how well it did.
You might say "But Mr. Carcrasher, Starbound isn't Terraria!" Right you are! However, <Insert overly complicated analogy>. Terraria had the complete opposite childhood to Minecraft. Let me explain that...

Minecraft was just a skeleton of a game when it released and people still played it! But with proper nurturing, content additions, and the constant updating to this day (Don't forget the mod support!), Minecraft will continue to be played into the future. Terraria was a game that could stand on its own (even the leaked version could), it had a decent amount of features and content to keep you busy for hours right from the start (leak). Occasionally the game would update (every 3 centuries months or so) and bring sparks of life back to the game with big content additions. In just a few updates Terraria changed A LOT from its initial release, revamped health and combat, item tiers+biomes, and potion system, all bringing a twist to every play style and generating loads replay-ability. With the soon to be released 1.2 update, whether its good or bad, will bring me and others back to the game once again.

In short, Starbound will be awesome, it will have weekly updates and is releasing with a plethora of features which is great. Just please give the community a more specific estimated release, I don't care if you (the devs) say
"The Starbound Estimated Release Date is....." February 23rd 2014, or December 25th 2013, or October 23rd 2077 <Insert Release Date Here>
I think I can say on behalf of the Starbound communities sanity, Thank you.

If this post confuses you simply scroll down, and have a nice day. I'm horrible at getting my thoughts into understandable text... EDIT: It normally ends up badly

 

Yeah, for two main reasons. 1. It hasn't been updated since June or July I think (r.i.p. monthly roadmap updates) and 2. Each 10% percentile can take longer than others since it's hard to measure in time things you haven't coded

 

From personal experiences regards some private projects of mine, it's difficult to give an exact estimate as to where you're at. Sometimes I've found that what I thought would be done in a week would often take me a month, and when in the middle of adding something to it I've realized that more could be done, setting back "development" a couple of days. I mean ultimately what it comes down to is a matter of perspective, In all likelihood their probably to busy working to give us a clear window of release. We all have three months before beta releases and if it doesn't release then, start complaining.

 

Sadly the roadmap isn't as simple as it looks. Making a game isn't about completing todo lists. Items aren't all 1 day in size. Stuff simply doesn't translate into simple progress bars going upwards at a stable rate. Plans change, features get changed, priorities reordered.

 

This is the most we've heard about it in months, so thanks

 

I believe the Roadmap HAS been recently updated. >.>
Just saying..

 

The point of the pre-orders was to speed up development and help the ones who are struggling, but if we are getting it in December.
Well, nothing was really sped up, if something was sped up they certainly haven't told us.

The only thing I can think of is that, will we have a better quality product?
Opposed to it not having sped up.

 

Unfortunately its true.

 

I understand that you want to keep certain things and information within the team, but telling the backers and pre-orderers that changes are being made, priorities have been changed, without disclosing more information than necessary of course, and therefore delays have to be expected would be a start and would keep additional fires from starting.