Starbound 1.0

[Marney]

Have to agree with the “haters.” At least movement feels less floaty now, but progression is still all over the place. I’m not surprised.

I remember being astonished, a couple of years ago, when I got frustrated with the glacial pace and tried to find out more about their design process. I found posts by Tiyuri explaining that they were constantly reiterating systems to have a complete playable game at every stage of development. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone try to make anything that way.

Maybe I’ll check back in another 4 years.

[chaosblade02]

I played the game in beta, and thought it was mediocre. Tried it again recently, and I don’t like the design and balancing decisions they’ve done to the game.

Food doesn’t stack anymore and spoils? That’s OK for survival mode, by why is this a thing in casual mode?

Weapon chests and ores are less common as well. After playing for 6 hours, I didn’t find a single SMG, Rocket Launcher, or Sniper Rifle. Which were the 3 weapons I enjoyed using the most. Ores are more spread out in smaller groups than before. Its mostly 3-4 here and there. I had to scour the surface of 3 planets before I found a single weapon upgrade over the starting weapon. And it wasn’t even a weapon I enjoyed using.

I used to grow and sell food for pixels in beta, now that whole angle to the game is pointless if you can’t stack food. Just more work for less pixels per hour.

I’m getting nothing but goodie bags for quest rewards. Almost none of the quest rewards give anything worthwhile. I’d rather have a choice between a few different weapons, etc.

Crew members are useless. The first one I got did only 1 damage to everything, even the weakest trash mobs on starting planets.

The race differences are almost entirely cosmetic. I started as a Glitch. There is zero incentive for me to play any of the other races when the differences are almost entirely cosmetic. There needs to be racial bonuses of some sort while using certain weapons. Some races move faster, jump higher, are better with spears, swords, pistols, etc. That needs to be a thing, or its completely pointless.

All the quest missions have unbreakable objects, and you can’t place anything either. I don’t like this.

Not a huge fan of the art style in this game either.

Performance issues with the game. If I zoom out all the way, the game runs choppy and I get 40fps at spots, and that’s unacceptable for a minimally detailed 2D game like this. Absolutely no excuse for this for as long as they spend on the development process.

Chucklefish is a low quality/scrub development team, and I’m never buying another one of their games ever again. Its developers like them that give indie developers a bad reputation.

Terraria is better in each and every single category. Combat, quests, building, crafting, progression, etc. And no performance issues.

[Martimus]

I played the game in beta, and thought it was mediocre. Tried it again recently, and I don’t like the design and balancing decisions they’ve done to the game.

Food doesn’t stack anymore and spoils? That’s OK for survival mode, by why is this a thing in casual mode?

Weapon chests and ores are less common as well. After playing for 6 hours, I didn’t find a single SMG, Rocket Launcher, or Sniper Rifle. Which were the 3 weapons I enjoyed using the most. Ores are more spread out in smaller groups than before. Its mostly 3-4 here and there. I had to scour the surface of 3 planets before I found a single weapon upgrade over the starting weapon. And it wasn’t even a weapon I enjoyed using.

I used to grow and sell food for pixels in beta, now that whole angle to the game is pointless if you can’t stack food. Just more work for less pixels per hour.

I’m getting nothing but goodie bags for quest rewards. Almost none of the quest rewards give anything worthwhile. I’d rather have a choice between a few different weapons, etc.

Crew members are useless. The first one I got did only 1 damage to everything, even the weakest trash mobs on starting planets.

The race differences are almost entirely cosmetic. I started as a Glitch. There is zero incentive for me to play any of the other races when the differences are almost entirely cosmetic. There needs to be racial bonuses of some sort while using certain weapons. Some races move faster, jump higher, are better with spears, swords, pistols, etc. That needs to be a thing, or its completely pointless.

All the quest missions have unbreakable objects, and you can’t place anything either. I don’t like this.

Not a huge fan of the art style in this game either.

Performance issues with the game. If I zoom out all the way, the game runs choppy and I get 40fps at spots, and that’s unacceptable for a minimally detailed 2D game like this. Absolutely no excuse for this for as long as they spend on the development process.

Chucklefish is a low quality/scrub development team, and I’m never buying another one of their games ever again. Its developers like them that give indie developers a bad reputation.

Terraria is better in each and every single category. Combat, quests, building, crafting, progression, etc. And no performance issues.

I love you right now. You voiced everything I should have said before about Starbound.

I think I speak for all of us dissenters in that we WANTED it to be a Sci-fi Terraria in every aspect and then some, but it’s just “not.”

[Kentvb]

I’m enjoying the game currently.

Thought this thread needed more positive feedback…

[silverhand]

I’m enjoying the game currently.

Thought this thread needed more positive feedback…

I too have been enjoying it - playing casual mode, chilling. Is it the greatest game in the world? Nah - bit it’s fun enough, and my son likes it too.

[Somerled]

I think I’m gonna try my hand at Starbound Valley (need to check that farm shit and breeding). I played a bit when 1.0 got released but I alt+f4 after falling to my death. It was only 30 minutes of play but it immediately felt wasted, I ventured way too deep in a cave.

[Marney]

@Somerled: yeah, fall damage was one of the first things I modded out. What with the stupid twitchy controls and the stupid sliding blocks and the stupid dash tech and the stupid edge detection and the stupid platform drop-through, I was taking 14 damage in the stupid outpost just moving from one quest giver to another.

After a dozen mods it almost verges on tolerable if you can overlook the rampant stupidity and the constant insults to your intelligence.

Great evil sealed away by noble selfless guardian now seal breaking and you the last hero must gather multiple ancient artifacts and reunite them to defeat great evil blah blah blah

Quest giver: “Now I know that’s a lot to take in, I’m sure your mind is like totally blown.”

NO IT’S NOT

THIS IS THE PLOT OF EVERY STUPID FUCKING GAME EVER

I mean I really don’t give a damn about the story in any game, so whatever, but at least have the common decency not to pretend this hackneyed garbage is some kind of stunning opening.

Speaking of openings, that stupid fish-chuckle gives me yet another reason to hate starting the game. Gonna see if there’s a mod to get rid of that too.

edit: yes there is, thank heavens.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=731542801

[Martimus]

@Somerled: yeah, fall damage was one of the first things I modded out. What with the stupid twitchy controls and the stupid sliding blocks and the stupid dash tech and the stupid edge detection and the stupid platform drop-through, I was taking 14 damage in the stupid outpost just moving from one quest giver to another.

After a dozen mods it almost verges on tolerable if you can overlook the rampant stupidity and the constant insults to your intelligence.

Great evil sealed away by noble selfless guardian now seal breaking and you the last hero must gather multiple ancient artifacts and reunite them to defeat great evil blah blah blah

Quest giver: “Now I know that’s a lot to take in, I’m sure your mind is like totally blown.”

NO IT’S NOT

THIS IS THE PLOT OF EVERY STUPID FUCKING GAME EVER

I mean I really don’t give a damn about the story in any game, so whatever, but at least have the common decency not to pretend this hackneyed garbage is some kind of stunning opening.

Speaking of openings, that stupid fish-chuckle gives me yet another reason to hate starting the game. Gonna see if there’s a mod to get rid of that too.

edit: yes there is, thank heavens.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=731542801

tee hee hee!

[powbam]

lol

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

[Somerled]

Speaking of openings, that stupid fish-chuckle gives me yet another reason to hate starting the game. Gonna see if there’s a mod to get rid of that too.

edit: yes there is, thank heavens.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=731542801

Speaking of openings, the game opening was shit too. The presentation was mediocre and seriously short, and nothing was surprising. And then they kept the “stranded on a planet go gather some shit to leave”. At least you don’t have to get coal anymore. People say it’s Terraria in space, and to some degree it looks like it, but doesn’t feel like it. Just feels like a China bootleg tbh. Still, their farming system is dope.

[DraonCC]

So after having played it back in 2013 when the game was one huge disappointment, I have tried my hands on it again now with the 1.0.

1. Techs are lackluster, because it’s all just a recolor of “turn into a ball”, “dash” and “jump”. And you can’t even mix them up.
2. Exploration is lame. There’s no incentive to dig deep, because you can’t get back up anyway. There’s little incentive to explore preexisting structures once you have a decent weapon from a planet with the same difficulty level.
3. There’s many more dungeons, many more items, many more races, and yet it feels shallow because all of these are, in the end, just cosmetic.
4. Everything being procedurally generated, most enemies feel boring and repetitive. It all boils down to “shoots something at you”, “charges at you”, “flies through blocks at you” and that’s it. And they all only do their one thing. Combat is shit. And weapons are sadly very limited in their variety, or perhaps I just don’t find enough.
5. People complain that “progression is all over the place”. I disagree. Progression is very linear. Which makes it tedious and boring to progress.
6. Performance is abhorrent. A total lagfest.
7. Mods can make this game good, and they are easy to produce and easily accessible. That’s also a negative, because the game should be good on its own.

Let’s compare each of these points to Terriaria, since people like comparing these two games:

1. You have 5-6 slots for accessories which can be a mix of ANYTHING and will work together (could in a bottle + sandstorm in a bottle is triple jump not double jump).
2. There’s little exploration at all. It’s not an exploration game, imho, which is just fine. In one direction there’s jungle, in the other dungeon, ocean on either side, corrpution in between sometimes, desert and snow somewhere, and later on hallow. A layer lower is the underground version of all of these, followed by hell. That’s all. BUT each of these regions feel unique, bring unique enemies, unique rewards, and even unique generation and thusly unique ways of traversing them!
3. • 4. While nothing is procedurally generated, there’s a TON of content. And most, especially the advanced weapons, useful or not, have unique traits for them which makes for a whole lot of variety. Many enemies share AIs, but have different sets of moves which they combine to make for interesting encounters, especially for new players.
4. Taking all of the above into consideration, the progression in Terraria really is all over the place: You can skip entire tiers of gear, and in most cases there’s many different ways of advancing. You don’t need to go to the dungeon or the jungle before HM, you can choose between any of the three mechanical bosses before the others, and so on. There’s only a few chokepoints, all of which are WoF and after. And there’s a ton of events to fill out between.
5. Go figure.
6. Mods are there, but I never felt like I wanted them.

I’ll continue playing starbound to see how electronics work and all that, but even then I have low hopes. Especially with the latest update, Terraria’s wiring stuff allows for quite a lot of interesting contraptions.

Edit:
Starbound:
8. There’s a story, and it’s lame. It doesn’t even really tie with the exploration. Most quests are within missions. I can respect that: What it tries to do is very hard to combine with the whole randomly generated universe. But with the combat not feeling all that good, and most of the content being cosmetic and encouraging you to build, I feel like it’s missing a point and trying to be too much.
9. Despite the previous point, there’s no incentive to build. Farms are inefficient with the food not stacking, and everything else can just be put onto your spaceship.
10. The world feels flat, because nothing but the skin of your planet really changes. There’s only a few different planet types as well. All the different weathers feel fun. It’s a-okay, but the player needs more incentive to explore different types of planets, each of which should feel unique. This is not really satisfied yet.

Terraria:
8. There’s a story, but it’s never presented. Your only incentive to progress is for the sake of discovering more, and reach an end. Perhaps collect all content after that, build something neat in between, but no quests to entice you. My only reason to play Terraria is curiosity and experimentation, both of which desires it sates.
9. There’s incentives to build both a home for all your NPCs as well as arenas to have an easier time fighting bosses. For those who actually want to invest time and effort into creating something neat, there still is a lot of entirely cosmetic blocks and furniture to choose from.
10. Aside from the previous praise of all the different biomes and their different challenges and rewards, there’s also events to affect your whole world and bring their own new unique challenges and rewards (HM with Hallow, Lunar Events, invasions, even slime rain). It feels more dynamic, because it’s one and the same world that’s changing, not you travelling to a different one.

[Martimus]

So after having played it back in 2013 when the game was one huge disappointment, I have tried my hands on it again now with the 1.0.

1. Techs are lackluster, because it’s all just a recolor of “turn into a ball”, “dash” and “jump”. And you can’t even mix them up.
2. Exploration is lame. There’s no incentive to dig deep, because you can’t get back up anyway. There’s little incentive to explore preexisting structures once you have a decent weapon from a planet with the same difficulty level.
3. There’s many more dungeons, many more items, many more races, and yet it feels shallow because all of these are, in the end, just cosmetic.
4. Everything being procedurally generated, most enemies feel boring and repetitive. It all boils down to “shoots something at you”, “charges at you”, “flies through blocks at you” and that’s it. And they all only do their one thing. Combat is shit. And weapons are sadly very limited in their variety, or perhaps I just don’t find enough.
5. People complain that “progression is all over the place”. I disagree. Progression is very linear. Which makes it tedious and boring to progress.
6. Performance is abhorrent. A total lagfest.
7. Mods can make this game good, and they are easy to produce and easily accessible. That’s also a negative, because the game should be good on its own.

Let’s compare each of these points to Terriaria, since people like comparing these two games:

1. You have 5-6 slots for accessories which can be a mix of ANYTHING and will work together (could in a bottle + sandstorm in a bottle is triple jump not double jump).
2. There’s little exploration at all. It’s not an exploration game, imho, which is just fine. In one direction there’s jungle, in the other dungeon, ocean on either side, corrpution in between sometimes, desert and snow somewhere, and later on hallow. A layer lower is the underground version of all of these, followed by hell. That’s all. BUT each of these regions feel unique, bring unique enemies, unique rewards, and even unique generation and thusly unique ways of traversing them!
3. • 4. While nothing is procedurally generated, there’s a TON of content. And most, especially the advanced weapons, useful or not, have unique traits for them which makes for a whole lot of variety. Many enemies share AIs, but have different sets of moves which they combine to make for interesting encounters, especially for new players.
4. Taking all of the above into consideration, the progression in Terraria really is all over the place: You can skip entire tiers of gear, and in most cases there’s many different ways of advancing. You don’t need to go to the dungeon or the jungle before HM, you can choose between any of the three mechanical bosses before the others, and so on. There’s only a few chokepoints, all of which are WoF and after. And there’s a ton of events to fill out between.
5. Go figure.
6. Mods are there, but I never felt like I wanted them.

I’ll continue playing starbound to see how electronics work and all that, but even then I have low hopes. Especially with the latest update, Terraria’s wiring stuff allows for quite a lot of interesting contraptions.

Edit:
Starbound:
8. There’s a story, and it’s lame. It doesn’t even really tie with the exploration. Most quests are within missions. I can respect that: What it tries to do is very hard to combine with the whole randomly generated universe. But with the combat not feeling all that good, and most of the content being cosmetic and encouraging you to build, I feel like it’s missing a point and trying to be too much.
9. Despite the previous point, there’s no incentive to build. Farms are inefficient with the food not stacking, and everything else can just be put onto your spaceship.
10. The world feels flat, because nothing but the skin of your planet really changes. There’s only a few different planet types as well. All the different weathers feel fun. It’s a-okay, but the player needs more incentive to explore different types of planets, each of which should feel unique. This is not really satisfied yet.

Terraria:
8. There’s a story, but it’s never presented. Your only incentive to progress is for the sake of discovering more, and reach an end. Perhaps collect all content after that, build something neat in between, but no quests to entice you. My only reason to play Terraria is curiosity and experimentation, both of which desires it sates.
9. There’s incentives to build both a home for all your NPCs as well as arenas to have an easier time fighting bosses. For those who actually want to invest time and effort into creating something neat, there still is a lot of entirely cosmetic blocks and furniture to choose from.
10. Aside from the previous praise of all the different biomes and their different challenges and rewards, there’s also events to affect your whole world and bring their own new unique challenges and rewards (HM with Hallow, Lunar Events, invasions, even slime rain). It feels more dynamic, because it’s one and the same world that’s changing, not you travelling to a different one.

Damn…

you just gutted Starbound.

I think that is my biggest complaint about it, is the REALLY boring combat. It’s inexcusable.

At least enemies in Terraria do different things. How many times have we gotten stoned by Medusa and fallen to our death? LOL

One thing that bothers me about Terraria is that some crafting item drops are entirely too rare. I’ve played the game over and over again as every class and beaten it on elite hardmode as every class, and in all that time I only ever had ONE black lens drop from Eye demons to craft the Twin Staff. It may as well not even be in the game.

[Marney]

5. People complain that “progression is all over the place”. I disagree. Progression is very linear. Which makes it tedious and boring to progress.

…

5. Taking all of the above into consideration, the progression in Terraria really is all over the place: You can skip entire tiers of gear, and in most cases there’s many different ways of advancing. You don’t need to go to the dungeon or the jungle before HM, you can choose between any of the three mechanical bosses before the others, and so on. There’s only a few chokepoints, all of which are WoF and after. And there’s a ton of events to fill out between.

I was using the idiom to mean “ill-considered,” not “varied.” Apart from that nitpick, great summary and comparison.

The Thorium expansion mod for Terraria is pretty great.

In the same genre, Signs of Life shows promise. Development pace is pretty slow and there’s not a whole heck of a lot of content yet but the fundamentals are good, and the “matter manipulator” is about a thousand times better than Starbound’s version. Very polished even at this stage - the dev just needs to make more stuff.

Planet Centauri is less polished but might also be decent one day.

[chaosblade02]

So after having played it back in 2013 when the game was one huge disappointment, I have tried my hands on it again now with the 1.0.

I agree with most every point you made. The game sucks, I’ve since uninstalled it from my PC. I might play the game again after more/better quality mods for the game are out that allows me to customize the game how I want.

[system]

I play this game in 2013, but in 2014 this game change… and now i don’t like so much it was before…

[chaosblade02]

More mods got added to the game that made this game more tolerable to play for me. These are steam workshop mods, I’ll post the ones I’m using.

Fresh Fruit - Food never spoils, and can be stacked. This is how the game used to be.

Spelunking EPP - Lets you combine the Xenon Pack with the Cooling EPP pack so you get a light with your EPP pack without having to waste an augment slot. The EPP packs used to be buff, and not itemized. Now that its itemized, it competes with other things players want, like a lighting pack, and just makes exploration more tedious than ever. Again, another completely stupid idea by chucklefish.

Energy Dash Restoration - Brings back the old school energy dash with no CD that allows you to explore planets pretty fast. Everyone loved this, nobody asked for it to be removed, yet they did it anyway. I remember a lot of people quit the game after they nerfed energy dash. Anyway, its back. With a mod.

More seeds, no fibre farming - You got way better odds to get extra seeds from harvesting crops. The odds without this mod are next to 0% of getting extra seeds by harvesting crops. You were required to find new plants on new planets before. Which was completely stupid and unrealistic for someone who wanted to make a massive farm or something.

x5 basic drop rates - This works for crafting items like scorched cores, hardened carapaces, etc.

Instant crafting - No more wait to craft items. The game used to be like this originally, until they made you wait to craft items. Again, another completely stupid change that nobody asked for.

Chucklefish is one of the worst developers I’ve seen in years that took a game that used to be fun to play, and just made EVERYTHING more tedious and less fun to play. Yes, the vanilla game was better in beta. First game I ever seen where that was the case. Me being able to mod the game doesn’t take away from their completely stupid design decisions. I’m never buying another one of their games again.

[Marney]

Me being able to mod the game doesn’t take away from their completely stupid design decisions. I’m never buying another one of their games again.

Agreed. It’s not just the release state but the actual development path of this game that’s flatly offensive.

Anyway, guess I’ll put up my modlist too. I suspect I’ll have to take a look at some of the ones you mentioned later on, but for now these make things slightly less annoying:

Improved Food Descriptions + no rot addon
No Chuckle Intro
No Fall Damage
Glitch Armor Edits
Food Stack
Efficient Watering
Purchasable Pets
Novaskin
Themed Colony Deeds
MadTulips Spaceship Mod
Modules in a box (Dependency)
Skippable Cinematics
Killable Erchius Ghost
Frackin’ Music
Container UI Tweak
Instant Crafting
Item Frame
Universal Uncrafter
Frackin’ Races
Improved Containers
Inventory Interface Redone
Frackin’ Universe

---

From a Steam review that’s apparently supposed to be positive:

But guess what? This game is still. Not. Finished.

The 1.0 release isn’t “The End” of Starbound, these devs have been with us since day one, the game has always been fun and has always been changing. Sometimes things get nerfed into oblivion, sometimes things are game-breakingly strong. It’s a delicate task to balance something with so much content! AND THEY AREN’T DONE!

Given that Starbound actually got worse over time, “these devs have been with us since day one… AND THEY AREN’T DONE” feels like a threat. :undecided:

[Marney]

So I have (nearly) top-of-the-line armor, I’m taking mostly 4-5 damage per hit from enemies, occasionally 8-12. No problem, my augment heals that in seconds. Then out of the blue I get hit with 230 twice within less than a second. Bam, dead. Um, what just happened?

After some research:

r/starbound - Why the Erchius Horror kills higher-tiers easier: My study of...

RELEASED - FrackinUniverse | Page 228 | Chucklefish Forums

Oh. Typical Tiyuri incompetence.

The combat in this game is such complete garbage.

[chaosblade02]

Someone needs to make a mod to completely skip the “scan so many items to progress, etc”. The entire story is go to X, scan X items in X settlements. Get coordinates to new mission, repeat. I’m trying to think of a worse way they could have done this, and I’m stumped.

[Marney]

Here you go.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=751412690