Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 ... 48 49 [50] 51 52 ... 130

Author Topic: Starbound - Caveat emptor  (Read 434898 times)

Sean Mirrsen

  • Bay Watcher
  • Bearer of the Psionic Flame
    • View Profile
Re: Starbound - Burn, baby, burn
« Reply #735 on: January 27, 2016, 03:38:13 am »

Terraria is fun because its progression is not as deterministically tiered, and the aftermath of the progression is persistent. Nominally, everything you can find in the game can exist within the one world you generate at the start. What tiers exist are generally locked behind progression triggers for good reason, and there are often shortcuts available, in true Metroidvania fashion, that allow you to cut through a more difficult area to better tier equipment, and consequently keep visiting the previously impossibly dangerous areas with impunity as your gear improves.

Starbound is a... well it's a sandbox of course, but I think a desert would be a more fitting simile. You do progress, but the trail of your progression is erased as you go along. As a result any planet you visit as you travel will lack the same buildup of character that a single world of Terraria has. On top of that, the tiers that exist are locked away thematically, running against the game's basic premise as a Metroidvania, and shortcuts do not exist. You will never find a tier 1 lava world, for instance, and the heat-resistant suit upgrade is locked to a quest requiring you to have a particular tier of equipment, so it does not matter at all what tier the lava worlds are.

Starbound's potential is in being a survival game, where every world has things to offer, but any world can be anything, and good worlds may be hard to come by. It needs to be deeper, much deeper than it is now, in order to escape being a glorified 16-bit platformer with a crafting system and a bland galaxy as a backdrop.
Logged
Multiworld Madness Archive:
Game One, Discontinued at World 3.
Game Two, Discontinued at World 1.

"Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe's problems are the world's problems, but the world's problems are not Europe's problems."
- Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs, India

Darkmere

  • Bay Watcher
  • Exploding me won't bring back your honey.
    • View Profile
Re: Starbound - Burn, baby, burn
« Reply #736 on: January 27, 2016, 04:04:55 am »

Half of me thinks they just overshot their ability as programmers, so egged on by the enthusiasm of early access that their judgement became clouded. The other half just considers that they never had a clear idea of what might make Starbound fun and were just making a rather iffy 2-d platformer

Two of the original three primary coders (who were actually making the game engine, as I understand it) quit the company early in development. I believe there's still one left who's actually making the guts of the engine, with all the other "coders" being artists with a little code knowledge tweaking dials here and there.

I could be wrong but they've removed their team rosters from anywhere I can easily find, so that's encouraging.

Honestly I think for a while they were kinda-sorta on the right track before the central office move, but since then lots more things have gone to shit in addition to the original utter lack of professionalism that have stymied the whole thing.

I did check in several days ago and saw the combat update, considered installing again. Saw the touch-damage is back, played something else instead.
Logged
And then, they will be weaponized. Like everything in this game, from kittens to babies, everything is a potential device of murder.
So if baseless speculation is all we have, we might as well treat it like fact.

hops

  • Bay Watcher
  • Secretary of Antifa
    • View Profile
Re: Starbound - Burn, baby, burn
« Reply #737 on: January 27, 2016, 04:11:50 am »

If it has professionalism, it's probably not game development.
Logged
she/her. (Pronouns vary over time.) The artist formerly known as Objective/Cinder.

One True Polycule with flame99 <3

Avatar by makowka

Darkmere

  • Bay Watcher
  • Exploding me won't bring back your honey.
    • View Profile
Re: Starbound - Burn, baby, burn
« Reply #738 on: January 27, 2016, 04:33:40 am »

If it has professionalism, it's probably not game development.

Ehhh, Gaslamp Games and Crate Entertainment do very well by their customers in my experience. There are good examples out there, just not many.
Logged
And then, they will be weaponized. Like everything in this game, from kittens to babies, everything is a potential device of murder.
So if baseless speculation is all we have, we might as well treat it like fact.

Glloyd

  • Bay Watcher
  • Against the Tide
    • View Profile
Re: Starbound - Burn, baby, burn
« Reply #739 on: February 03, 2016, 01:17:18 am »

Dunno if this was mentioned, but apparently there's only two updates left before "1.0". This is from a few months ago:

Quote
There are 3 updates planned before 1.0. The combat update, the story update and a miscellaneous polish update.

So looks like it's not really going to get much deeper. Or better. Ah well, I haven't played the game since we had those servers up at release anyways, can't say I care too much.

Darkmere

  • Bay Watcher
  • Exploding me won't bring back your honey.
    • View Profile
Re: Starbound - Burn, baby, burn
« Reply #740 on: February 03, 2016, 02:25:08 am »

Kinda saw this coming months and months ago, whenever Tiy said "we could release it now and call it 1.0."

But really at the pace it's been going that could also be another year off. *shrug*

Either way, I've paid more for less before and I'll definitely play it again in the future. Won't be buying anything else from the studio, though.
Logged
And then, they will be weaponized. Like everything in this game, from kittens to babies, everything is a potential device of murder.
So if baseless speculation is all we have, we might as well treat it like fact.

Glloyd

  • Bay Watcher
  • Against the Tide
    • View Profile
Re: Starbound - Burn, baby, burn
« Reply #741 on: February 03, 2016, 02:28:17 am »

Either way, I've paid more for less before and I'll definitely play it again in the future. Won't be buying anything else from the studio, though.

Don't let Starbound turn you off of titles Chucklefish has produced though. Stardew Valley is looking pretty good, and Risk of Rain is just an awesome game, especially when playing locally with friends. One time when our internet was out, me and my roommates plugged three controllers into my computer and we just chilled in our living room playing it on our TV for hours. Good times. Plus, the next game by the guys who made it is coming soon, and as a plus it's not even produced by Chucklefish.

But yeah, I'll never buy a game they make themselves though.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2016, 02:34:03 am by Glloyd »
Logged

Darkmere

  • Bay Watcher
  • Exploding me won't bring back your honey.
    • View Profile
Re: Starbound - Burn, baby, burn
« Reply #742 on: February 03, 2016, 03:30:15 am »

I do own risk of rain, but nothing else in the CF-published catalog interested me enough that I'd add it to my growing backlog.
Logged
And then, they will be weaponized. Like everything in this game, from kittens to babies, everything is a potential device of murder.
So if baseless speculation is all we have, we might as well treat it like fact.

Glloyd

  • Bay Watcher
  • Against the Tide
    • View Profile
Re: Starbound - Burn, baby, burn
« Reply #743 on: February 03, 2016, 03:57:26 am »

I do own risk of rain, but nothing else in the CF-published catalog interested me enough that I'd add it to my growing backlog.

Same, with the exception of Stardew Valley, but I'll wait until after the release happens and hype settles down until looking at acquiring that.

Catastrophic lolcats

  • Bay Watcher
  • [FORTRESSDESTROYER:2]
    • View Profile
Re: Starbound - Burn, baby, burn
« Reply #744 on: February 03, 2016, 05:36:06 am »

Starbound was the game that completely shattered my trust in both kickstarter and early access. Sure there were failures before but Starbound was (and still remains) just a nonstop torrent of disappointment and ineptitude. The combat rework which reintroduced proximity damage is the death rattle of anything even remotely decent coming out of this game.
Logged

ChairmanPoo

  • Bay Watcher
  • Send in the clowns
    • View Profile
Re: Starbound - Burn, baby, burn
« Reply #745 on: February 03, 2016, 07:45:34 am »

Last time I played it I'd swear it actually got worse than early versions
Logged
There's two kinds of performance reviews: the one you make they don't read, the one they make whilst they sharpen their daggers
Everyone sucks at everything. Until they don't. Not sucking is a product of time invested.

Greenbane

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Starbound - Burn, baby, burn
« Reply #746 on: February 03, 2016, 09:00:16 am »

Having played the latest stable version, I found it to be pretty decent. Looks like the next update is going to rework the crafting system, and survival mechanics are coming back in an improved, customizable form. Sounds good.

Just never lose sight of the fact this is a 15-dollar game. I think many people are (or were) expecting Starbound to be some sort of miraculous Holy Grail, the Best Game of All Time, but that was a foolish hope from day one.
Logged

BigD145

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Starbound - Burn, baby, burn
« Reply #747 on: February 03, 2016, 09:31:31 am »

They've seesawed on quite a few things over the ... check your calendar... yes, years. We don't expect a holy grail. We expect people to actually learn from themselves and others, not get stuck in an echo chamber with the attention span of a goldfish.
Logged

Darkmere

  • Bay Watcher
  • Exploding me won't bring back your honey.
    • View Profile
Re: Starbound - Burn, baby, burn
« Reply #748 on: February 03, 2016, 10:42:12 am »

I feel that they don't really have any proper leadership or plan and are just making it up as they go along, honestly.

This has been the case since day 1, at least re: leadership. Tiy is the closest they have to a project lead but the whole thing is like, sooooo chillax man, no one's gonna harsh your creative vibe by expecting to you to finish stuff, bro.

We expect people to actually learn from themselves and others, not get stuck in an echo chamber with the attention span of a goldfish.

This is what happens when you mock and ban all of the fanbase who have any fucking sense whatsoever. They've whittled the community down to a few dozen empty-headed yes men, who would gladly eat their shit for breakfast.
Logged
And then, they will be weaponized. Like everything in this game, from kittens to babies, everything is a potential device of murder.
So if baseless speculation is all we have, we might as well treat it like fact.

Greenbane

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Starbound - Burn, baby, burn
« Reply #749 on: February 03, 2016, 10:51:18 am »

...the attention span of a goldfish.

A chucklefish, you mean. :P

Anyway, the game has a fair bit of content and they keep adding more. Yes, sometimes they run around like headless chickens, but they've yet to crash and burn. Ultimately, it doesn't matter if the development process lasted a year, three or five. All that matters is that they deliver a decent game in the end for the price they're asking.

In the meantime, there's plenty of games to entertain ourselves with.
Logged
Pages: 1 ... 48 49 [50] 51 52 ... 130