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[Chiefwaffles]

I think there's some more room in the Chucklefish hate dogpile if anyone wants to join at this point.

[Gabeux]

It used to be "Hype train has no brakes" written beneath the Starbound logo. Is it now a Hate train? 

[Seriyu]

The hype train is on fire and some people are really upset about it while others are merely just jumping out of it.

[Chiefwaffles]

What's funny is that I thought the hype train was stupid and that Starbound was just going to be a reskinned Terraria.
And now it's one of my (lower) favorite games!

[Darkmere]

I honestly believe it could have been as great as the promises...

Yep. Their dev process over the past few updates has been less game developer and more crowd of ADD primary schoolers.

But this is all they have ever been. It's been exponentially worse since most of the competent staff left, though. I strongly suspect it's a whole bunch of artists who add trinkets and fiddle with numbers while one or two people actually work on the engine, so the whole thing is mostly on hold while ...

Okay. They no longer post a team members page on the site, and the link to the old one is down but hasn't been fixed. So whatever. I assume there's only one poor soul working on the game engine while the other however many "workers" they have do very little to progress the game itself.

[Seriyu]

My main issue is the fact that despite the issues they've been having this most recent update wouldn't launch for me before this hotfix and continues to not launch for me, with it installing "M", an issue I have had in no steam game before at all.

I heard that the first issue was even in one of the unstable updates and they apparently just didn't fix it, despite it being in that branch of the game that is explicitly meant to find things to fix?

Like the game can be as great as it wants to be but if they can't be bothered to make sure the game launches right, after the very lacklustre start, I just sort've question why bother for something that MIGHT be more then mediocre.

[Gabeux]

What's funny is that I thought the hype train was stupid and that Starbound was just going to be a reskinned Terraria.
And now it's one of my (lower) favorite games!

What makes it one of your favorite games? Not sure if you wrote about this before.

Even though I posted above that I don't get it, I still played for many hours along with RL friends. They actually have much more love and hope for it than I ever did. One of them gets mad when I say that I don't understand why he loves it so much, given the reworks and all that. The other one have hundreds of hours (maybe more than a thousand) on Terraria and hundreds on Starbound, but I don't get his playstyle and he won't tell me whats up with him either.

The hype train is on fire and some people are really upset about it while others are merely just jumping out of it.

I pictured that rather vividly and giggled.
Watching too many Mega64 podcasts is making me a bit weird.

[Sean Mirrsen]

My main issue is the fact that despite the issues they've been having this most recent update wouldn't launch for me before this hotfix and continues to not launch for me, with it installing "M", an issue I have had in no steam game before at all.

I heard that the first issue was even in one of the unstable updates and they apparently just didn't fix it, despite it being in that branch of the game that is explicitly meant to find things to fix?

Like the game can be as great as it wants to be but if they can't be bothered to make sure the game launches right, after the very lacklustre start, I just sort've question why bother for something that MIGHT be more then mediocre.

Just kill the startup process (Process Explorer is very helpful for that) and manually install the two packages in the prereq folder. It's a Windows/Steam issue, it's trying to install an update package as part of the vcredist updates, and perhaps you have windows update disabled like I do, or there's some other configuration issue, but it can't, and the update isn't actually required.

[NullForceOmega]

Actually, the only thing I had to do to get it working was install the unstable branch then start it up.  After the unstable runs once the 'M', whatever the hell it is, is in place and the stable branch works fine.

[Chiefwaffles]

What's funny is that I thought the hype train was stupid and that Starbound was just going to be a reskinned Terraria.
And now it's one of my (lower) favorite games!

What makes it one of your favorite games? Not sure if you wrote about this before.

I don't really need to have a reason to enjoy a game. While it's definitely not my favorite games, I have lots of fun playing it. It's one of the 7 games in my Steam "Favorites" category for a reason.

[Gabeux]

I don't really need to have a reason to enjoy a game. While it's definitely not my favorite games, I have lots of fun playing it. It's one of the 7 games in my Steam "Favorites" category for a reason.

You said you have a reason! Tell me! Stop lying to me!

I'm not trying to bait you into an argument. I legitimately want to know what you find fun in the game, because maybe I grew out of it.
I grew out of a lot of genres (fortunately, or unfortunately..), and after I'm done playing Fallout 4 and No Man's Sky, I'm not sure if I'll have the same interest in videogames (as in, it might stop being one of the "main interests" in my life). SOMETHING IS HAPPENING TO ME AND I DON'T LIKE IT!!

I already mostly look out for indies and games that are in perpetual Early Access (mostly sandbox games). Even then, a lot of stuff I have on watchlist is just hopeless.
If you actually have no reason, no problemo. I enjoyed Interstellaria even though I thought everything in it was just crap - despite art and music - and it's on my favorite list too.

[Ultimuh]

Perhaps you need a hobby of some kind, something to do while you are having a break from playing video games?

[Sean Mirrsen]

I have to say that, as a game, I like Terraria more than I like Starbound. Terraria is a game that makes you want to improve your gear and seek new challenges. Be it from random bosses or random events, but you are always in danger in that game if you aren't constantly pushing forward. Getting comfortable with the starting materials? Say hello to a slime rain or a random Eye of Cthulhu. Starting to explore further out or down? Say hello to tougher enemies. Need NPCs to make your town safe from random mobs? Need to explore further. Feel safe in your town? Say hello to a blood moon. Et cetera et cetera, and it's all one continuous experience.

Starbound... doesn't have that. It's serene. Sure, you'll maybe find some new monsters if you go to the bottom of your starting planet, but there isn't anything to do there. Once you've forged the equipment allowed by the particular rating of planet you're on, BAM - you're safe. Wildlife will not pester you if you don't pester it, and you're never in serious danger from the environment. And if you want to find a challenge, it doesn't make it easy, either. It makes you work to get a challenge, rather than allowing you to take the challenge whenever, and that's just preposterous in my opinion. In Terraria I can tackle Skeletron or the Wall of Flesh anytime I damn well please, my success chances be damned. I can dive into the Underground Jungle with starting equipment and get horribly mauled if I so desire. Starbound has none of that. It plays itself like a Metroidvania, but doesn't have an overarching story to drive you, and despite that it still doesn't allow sequence-breaking.

It's a nice game to d!ck around in, or build some fancy stuff with minimal fuss and a great selection of backgrounds and lore, but it's not nearly as interesting a game to play, because its sole driving force is "let's see if it gets more interesting on the next tier of equipment", and it never does.

[Gabeux]

Perhaps you need a hobby of some kind, something to do while you are having a break from playing video games?

Most definitely. It just feels awkward since I've been playing games for ever (there's a VHS tape of me "playing" on a Commodore Amiga as a 2 year old).
Maybe it's actually a good thing, given that I can now enjoy it as an entertainment thing and not as a 'main interest', because it can become rather compulsive.
I should stop derailing now, I guess. 

...

Agree with you completely.
You see, before bosses were instanced, and I could predict some snips of the lore/plot, I was thinking what they would do would be like Mass Effect's Reapers.
I'm not sure if this is a spoiler to anyone, but the Tentacle Aliens or whatever on Starbound, I always thought that this would become the random Eye of Cthulhu (and everything else).
Those pirate airships? I thought one day they could actually land (or travel around planets) and attack you - there's your Blood Moon, and random events.
You'd also be running against a clock because the aliens want to consume the universe, after all. That's when you put in a Sandbox mode (no clock) and a Story Mode.
Of course, the game's still being developed, so that stuff might actually be implemented. Otherwise that new temple thing showing how the universe will end in tentacles would make no sense.
But why do I feel like it will all be scripted and instanced?

As they changed to instanced bosses and as POIs keep static and meaningless, I just don't get a good vibe.
Why make a huge procedural universe, if it will actually be static? Even if random events are added, that's still meaningless stuff. It just doesn't make sense in my mind, for a sandbox game.
Maybe I've been completely spoiled by DF, but I actually expected that stuff in Starbound would be meaningful - like the Pirate Airship attacks I mentioned, having them be actual tracked ships which fly around sectors raiding towns and etctera.
Was this sort of thing ever intended? Because I might have had a completely wrong idea about what Chucklefish was trying to accomplish with SB, and maybe that's why I find it all so weird.

In the end, maybe I should've read a lot more about the game and its design and milestones before I bought it, because I actually thought it was going to be a whole different thing than Terraria. I played the hell out of Terraria with friends, and we started over every major patch..so I was not looking forward to a Terraria replacement so soon.
Therefore, it's not my intent to add wood to the dying fire (dying here, at least), as there's a good chance I might have had the wrong idea of what SB was going to be.

[Sappho]

Perhaps you need a hobby of some kind, something to do while you are having a break from playing video games?

Most definitely. It just feels awkward since I've been playing games for ever (there's a VHS tape of me "playing" on a Commodore Amiga as a 2 year old).
Maybe it's actually a good thing, given that I can now enjoy it as an entertainment thing and not as a 'main interest', because it can become rather compulsive.
I should stop derailing now, I guess. 

This topic probably deserves its own thread (here or in general). But I can't resist posting just one link: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-to-tell-youre-getting-too-old-video-games/ (with special honor to item #4, which dictates most of my game-buying decisions these days)...