Starbound Thread

As someone who used to be a large forum go-er on SB forums, I have this to say.
  1. It was one of the better early access I bought into.
  2. The soundtrack is beautiful.
  3. The lore is great.
  4. The development could be like 75% better.
  5. The relationship they have with the immediate community is great.
  6. The relationship they have with the modders is not-so-much.
  7. Imo I enjoy the building more in SB.
  8. The combat is fun in SB, but it still needs more fleshing out to compete with Terraria.
  9. It has potential that is if the devs actually KEEP GOING!
  10. Imo lets give it or a year or two, and see how it goes.
 
Starbound sounds like a cool idea on paper, and theoretically there's a lot of potential there. Someday it might actually become a fun game.

I bought it on Early Access and that proved to be a mistake. I played it for a couple weeks, but it was very empty - every planet is basically the same as every other planet, the combat is really static, the crafting lackluster. There's very little to do once you've spent a few hours progressing.

It's now over two years beyond the projected release date and I've stopped bothering to pay attention to their dev plans, because CF has an unfortunate and regrettable problem managing its own development processes and communicating clearly and professionally with its customers.

Simply put, Tiy needs a project manager or producer with a proven track record and some dedicated, professional PR staff. Every time Tiy speaks on behalf of his company or his product in public, he makes matters worse for everyone involved - his employees, his fans, his customers, and himself. I followed SB for quite a while, back when I was hopeful that it might see the light of day in a worthwhile state, and the guy has a permanent foot-in-mouth problem that just won't go away. He gets defensive far too easily, he insults his own customers, he deliberately obfuscates easily verifiable information, and he fails to hold himself or his company accountable for their problems. In short, he appears to lack integrity.

(Once he started trying to say that "1.0 is just an arbitrary definition" and tried to point to player hours logged as evidence that the game was basically finished, I stopped paying attention to him for good. That's just amateur-hour talk, right there. A professional software developer cannot seriously think that "alpha," "beta" and "full release" or "v1.0" are just random terms that don't have commonly-accepted definitions.)

That said, some of the vitriol that CF has received (even in this thread) is completely ridiculous. People demanding to know salaries of employees, business costs, and daily or weekly updates regarding the work of CF staff is utterly absurd. Unfortunately, those people make the situation worse for all involved, but the takeaway for CF should be a recognition of some very real and significant frustration in their userbase. Instead, they respond by getting defensive, lashing out at customers, scapegoating, and responding with antagonism instead of staying above the fray and only responding in a professional manner.

TLDR: Chucklefish appears to be a fairly young group of bright devs and artists who have some neat ideas but very little real-world business experience, no ability to communicate professionally with customers, and no sense for prioritizing business plans or creating production specs. I wish them well, but I regret what little money I've paid for their very first product, so I don't see myself becoming a repeat customer.
 
Klokinator said:
That's some A+ grade trolling right there. Are you a professional?
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Was that directed at me? or someone else who doesn't share your opinions.
MrCal said:
I can't be 100% sure if they swore, but the idea was "Your ideas can go :red: themselves, rage rage rage"

Jonesy- but it could've been the actual admin I complained to?


Nope, didn't think criticism was a bannable offence.
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If you do not mind could I see the actual post that got you "in trouble", I am friends with Jonesy and I highly doubt if your post was sincerely constructive criticism you would have been in hot water with the moderators.
 
Farathil said:
If you do not mind could I see the actual post that got you "in trouble", I am friends with Jonesy and I highly doubt if your post was sincerely constructive criticism you would have been in hot water with the moderators.
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Being banned tends to make it a *little* hard to retrieve any PM's you've sent- Maybe paraphrasing a little but it was more about "There's a few features and bugs/problems with the nightly builds- it pisses me off a little that there doesn't seem to be a stable *recent* build, the forums are full of :red:ing" Throw in some moaning about promised features and that was it.

His response (or it could've been one of the other few mods I've interacted with) "I'd suggest you take it up with the developers or send an email to them and they'll get back to you, I suggest you don't start a topic about this because it tends to be inflammatory."

Again, paraphrasing- I don't actively keep a back-up of everything I say, that was the most *reasonable* response I had (Or close enough), and since a few people have said Jonesy is ok, leads me to believe it must've been a different moderator that got a little antsy.

Still- I'm glad to justify myself to someone I don't know, I mean, insinuations of my own integrity being less than solid are welcome.
 
For those curious, the unstable update is live.
Unstable being the update that is still unbalanced, full of bugs and missing key features, but not to the point where it is literally unplayable without modifications.
Again, think of it what you will. Or play it, if you want to. It shouldn't take long to download.

kyran said:
Hey there!

We’re pushing the changes mentioned in our recent trailer to the unstable branch tonight– rejoice! Anyone who’s been playing the nightly builds won’t see a huge difference, but anyone who makes the switch from stable to unstable will see some pretty massive changes.

So here’s what you need to know about the unstable update, starting with…

How to Switch to the Unstable Branch

There’s a handy tutorial right here about how to switch to the unstable or nightly branch of the beta. Be sure to follow the instructions to switch to unstable. :)

World/Character File Compatibility

If you choose to switch to the unstable branch, please know that your characters and worlds will not yet be compatible with the latest version of the game. Your old characters and worlds will still be there, but the unstable branch will use a different storage location than the stable branch for the time being, while we work out how to upgrade old characters.

We will try to maintain save file compatibility within unstable as much as possible, but it will depend on what sort of changes we have to make during unstable, so we cant make any promises.

If you are currently running nightly, then you probably already know how everything works already. FYI The unstable branch will use a ‘storage_unstable’ directory while we work on compatibility with stable.

Known Issues:

Many progression quests aren’t final, some are placeholders for future missions
Combat balance is still WIP
Performance issues, particularly in dense areas like dungeons and the outpost
Background parallaxes have problematic transitions between world layers, e.g. oceans
Pixel costs and rewards not yet balanced
Interface windows (containers, AI, etc) can remain open after switching worlds or moving away from the triggering object
Cooking recipes for tier 5 and 6 crops need to be implemented
Crops sometimes get out of sync when grown on ship
Enemy hit/death sounds sometimes fail to play
Some errors in enemy movement and pathfinding
Rare crash when removing items from containers, appears as “(InventoryException) Not allowed to discard stack when locked.”
The launcher, on some people’s machines, will spew dll errors about missing ordinals. This is not fatal however, and the launcher will still work after you close them.
And a whole lot more (probably)
We’ll keep everyone posted as we make more updates and plans evolve, but thank you all for being so patient! Have fun!
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Devalaous said:
Farathil, was there any reaction to Ghostar's resignation?
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A lot of moderators left. Ghostar being one of the better known moderators, as is Jonesy, TVK, and Ordorna.
Ghostar is still listed as a moderator, but she is unofficially resigned it seems.
There was an outcry when TVK left, especially from the Chat sub forum community.
Personally TVK Jonesy and Ghostar are very friendly, and I would hate not seeing them either as much or at all. They give valid opinions and moderate when/where it counts.
 
No, she resigned officially...I guess they just..didn't bother removing her. Kind of silly really, mods there have access to the admin CP for some reason
 
Farathil said:
A lot of moderators left. Ghostar being one of the better known moderators, as is Jonesy, TVK, and Ordorna.
Ghostar is still listed as a moderator, but she is unofficially resigned it seems.
There was an outcry when TVK left, especially from the Chat sub forum community.
Personally TVK Jonesy and Ghostar are very friendly, and I would hate not seeing them either as much or at all. They give valid opinions and moderate when/where it counts.
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I actually did resign, I guess Molly forgot to remove me from the listing, she did however take way my moderator privileges and stuff, so I shouldn't be listed.
 
Let me tell you about my feelings about Starbound: Tiy is indeed a money-driven developer. He follows the money for no good reason. The coding in SB is really, really lazy. SB needs not only better coding, but better biomes too. The enemies are just recolors, not even with different stats. Also, to start on the map. The map is shared among ALL the characters. It's not even good. They use the SAME file for everything. The character customization? Terrible. You can only choose a few races and that is. I'm FINE with four bosses, but the missions currently suck. Oil? Too hard to get. The quests/missions have a terrible follow-up behind each other, not even my brother knew what to do. This game needs a lot of work, a new director, a new coder, a NEW NEW NEW developer (main developer). I bought SB, soon to realize that game was a mistake. Also, the trailers were VERY misleading. Last year, my friend and I had a debate on which one was better: Starbound or Terraria? He said that there was infinite worlds, and that you could go to space, lots of weapons, different races, and forts, dungeons, your own spaceship! It seemed amazing, and I didn't know how to react. I just said that in Terraria, there was Diverse Weapons and Armors. On the Topic of Diverse Weapons and Armors, Starbound weapons are all recolors of each other with the same function as their predecessor. Also, the Armors are not unique at all. I'm fine with each race having their own armor, but the abilities weren't even added yet, which pissed me off. This is gonna happen, that is gonna happen! WELL TELL ME WHEN, TIY! WHEN? And the worst part about this, is the fact that he wanted bonus content (which STILL has yet to be added, even in the versions most ahead) which is only going to happen if he gets enough "Supporters". HE MUST MEAN MONEY, because that's all he cares about! Me and my BEST Friend both bought the game, played it for about ~3 Hours, then we decided that the game sucks. It's a terrible game, which has potential. So much potential. If only something like that didn't happen again. And Tiy, if you see this (which you won't, because you're busy trying to get money), please WORK ON THE GAME. Not for money, but for you. The fans (although I doubt there are much left). Me. The other developers. Work on the game for the game, not the money.

That, is why Terraria>Starbound.
 
Starbound has a lot of potential that is not used yet , the concept of "infinite worlds" can be used so much , you can add whatever you want and it'll make sense , but Chucklefish doesn't use it all , they're like in a lego factory , but use only a little box of legos.
 
GeneralHelp said:
Starbound has a lot of potential that is not used yet , the concept of "infinite worlds" can be used so much , you can add whatever you want and it'll make sense , but Chucklefish doesn't use it all , they're like in a lego factory , but use only a little box of legos.
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I was going to like your post but realised Everybody likes it. So I guess I already do.

You could throw in humanoid turd men that throw mouldy bananas and it'd make sense. because the lore is.. eh. The lore in anything will suck once you delve into TES lore.
 
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