Sometimes I wonder if "what hype hypeths hype hypeths away" and if we are all being too nice because we like games and their development too much.
Maybe it's just the belief that the game was going to expand beyond Terraria, beyond the simple monster whack-a-mole and home furnishing simulator. [...]
I agree completely. I probably mentioned this somewhere else, but I have an RL friend who defends Starbound to death (and he's an aspiring artist..and he never plays the game...hm..), and when we played it, I'd randomly get annoyed and say "This is Terraria. Why are we supporting this?", which his reply would always be "They are working on it!"..
This Starbound stuff would get me pissed back then, but now I find it hilarious. And now I understand why. I don't see the project going anywhere, and die hard fans give the devs free pass for the constant Caturday content. Also, this:
It honestly feels like a lot of their problems came from the fact that their entire team was composed of cats, and the people who were supposed to be herding them were also cats.
Thanks Flying Dice for almost killing me when I was eating cereal.
Judging by the stuff already in it, it should really be possible to mod this game into something much cooler than it is. Which is not to say the Devs aren't wrong, but perhaps someone with enough time/effort could take matters into their own hands.
I used to think the same thing, then I tried the most popular mods. The best ones would add some vehicles (like a bulldozer for people who hate spending a week digging) and one that was made by a newbie modder, but had "sort of" a research tree. And would unlock some cool little machines like a Hydroponic thing to grow seeds quicker and some stuff like that.
There also was a huge content mod, and even though the good amount of new planet types, resources, armor and gear was added, it was just expanding on the same eternal and ever-present Terraria formula.
So I'm not sure if mods can really "fix" (like Fallout/Skyrim mods than can completely overhaul almost any aspect of the game) or just add things.
I'm still not sure if everyone who expected more (including me) is at fault, or if they actually promised this Not-Terraria-In-Space and didn't deliver.