So what is starbound now?

I'm a returning player and I don't really understand whats going on in the game now...

EDIT: due to the unforeseen consequences of memeing, understand that this is not meant to start a debate. The first paragraph is a string of '{"edit":<replace>}' and has no thought behind it. It was simply meant to illustrate my initial confusion when I started up Starbound. I want to hear what other people think of the game and the stuff in it. I don't need to understand why you think that way and you don't need to understand why I think the way I do, just compare and contrast. If you want to correct any mistakes I've made in my actual points then go for it and I'll fix em! (excludes spelling and grammar errors)

(First paragraph isn't focused bear with me)
Earthchan got together with the second coming of Cthulhu and now we have to do something because we just graduated space police collage? The whole intro to the game was confusing and I only did it because I wanted to see how the game introduced it's controls. I know the game had a massive story overhaul but to me it just feels kind of cheap and unnecessary... I kind of get it, big bosses!!! (and we care about lore now?) I guess the codex stuff is pretty neat but haven't really found anything on Novakids and their role in the galaxy. I get they where a stretch goal but cmon, no place in the story AND a crap ship? Also weapons!!! WHERE DID THE BIG NUMBERS GO!?!? Now we can see decimals and it just makes the weapons all feel similar and crappy... Also why is there a story? The endgame boss makes sense, Minecraft has one too but there's no main plot in Minecraft. You never have to fight the Enderdragon if you don't wan't to, it's a goal, not a requirement. It's a way for the player to prove themselves. A sandbox game like Elite Dangerous or Minecraft doesn't force it's limiting story on the player. Minecraft essentially has no story and if you want to engage in the "story" of Elite Dangerous you can chose the roll you play, what faction you join, what role you play in their political growth, what kind of jobs you take, GOOD GUY or BAD GUY... Now Starbound is making you be a good guy and forcing a role on you... It's not that bad except now you have to stick around low level planets to scan floran crap on gentle stars when I could have the heating EPP in forty minutes otherwise... And I did... And I was punished because I had to go back and do the boring mundane quest anyway... I will LITERALLY never do the scanning part of the story quests again, I'm just gonna skip'em. What, don't i just shovel coal into this thing by the cockpit to start spare travel? Not anymore, now you need a special fuel and a fixed ship. That's fine but its so easy, 100 to jump ANYWHERE. You only need to hop on a moon for thirty seconds in the INSANELY RANDOM OP MECH that you just get now (for reasons) to get 50 crystals (1 to 2 when fueling) so the whole thing seams kind of pointless. One-more-thing, WHERE ARE MY COOL TECHS!?!? You've got dash, samus ball, and jump. Is that it? The ball is just dumb, crawl. There's something missing here... Oh yeah, LITERALLY ALL THE COOL TECHS! Please someone tell me I'm just missing something. I forgot to mention that sail is kinda creepy too... Anyway, on to actual stuff!

It felt like the devs where strangling me to do stuff I didn't want to, the story thing really limits the player and locks their role in the galaxy... No more PVP space pirate shenanigans, your an intergalactic cop graduate now and must follow protocol (excluding practically all protectorate protocol like the four crew to a ship). It really limited the flow of the game and forced me to be good guy in my own campaign! The most intriguing part of this game for me was how the pace of a players progression was entirely up to them. Different approaches to the game all had different drawbacks. Want to mine all your upgrades away so the game is a cakewalk? Go for it! Want to get your resources slowly but see a lot of interesting stuff and get a metric ton of gear? You can go run around all the planets for dungeons and settlements! Want to reach the endgame quickly and challenge yourself like you used to? Keep it to yourself! ...What? That's right, keep it to yourself, we hate you. The devs are forcing players to go slow and scan stuff on "Floran culture"? (and here i thought they just ripped off other cultures...) But wait, there's more, you have to do this boring stuff SIX TIMES, WHY? lore. lore is why. The relics or artifacts or whatever are kind of cheap, why cant the bosses just be there? Players will go and gear up for each and every one, it's what we do. And if each one drops an item that's required to unlock the last boss, even better. Now the devs know that players will fight each one. If you found an item on the first planet that gave you instructions on finding the first boss, it would be perfect. If you found a vital clue to the whereabouts of the second boss on the way to the first, wonderful. What if, on the way to the second boss you found a station, and in that station are transcripts detailing the mysterious item you got off the first boss and it's role in summoning the last boss. It could even have a list of the bosses with these items, one of which you would have already defeated and another that you are on the way to. Each boss could be resource heavy to find or summon so the pacing would be easily controllable but still give players options. Grind and get to the boss right away or take your time, gear up, and find what you need as you go. If the stuff you need for one boss is with the stuff you need for another boss then someone going through the game again could save time and get the required amount of both at once. What about the sandboxers who just want to explore an open world and not really fight stuff? Let them. Don't hold some gross story obligation that forces them outside of their comfort zone. This game got a major case of Xcom 2, the turn limiters where fine and worked as intended, the devs wanted players to be more aggressive and take risks. The problem was that Xcom 1 had no turn limit and players didn't like their freedom being taken away. They felt like their slow, boring, cheesy tactics of Xcom 1 where the best (they where) and expected that experience in Xcom 2. That's how coming back to this game feels to me, I'm being punished for wanting to have fun but my idea of fun is the opposite, unlike Xcom 1 players, I like risk, I like challenge, and I like progress. I like to chose how I'll play and the way I play. I like options. The devs have bottlenecked the gameplay and are forcing players to do the stupid quest, you can't dismiss it, from now on I'll skip LITERALLY all of them. They aren't fun and there soooo easy. There just boring.

EDIT: Apparently there's a fake license thing so rip me...
The game forces you to get crewmates to unlock licenses for a bigger ship before you can then expend your resources (which you'll practically always have enough of) to upgrade your ship, finally, after doing boring and repetitive quests or finding elusive diamonds, finally, at last, an upgrade. *exhales* This makes sense in a lawful society of ship captains but are we a captain? I got the feeling that we where supposed to be burdened with this task in the story, that this fell to us as the last surviving Protectorate. We weren't supposed to be a captain (correct me if I'm wrong) but instead we where supposed to be one of four crew under a more experienced mentor. Why are we following the captain rules if we just kinda stole a ship to escape in? It's not ours, I didn't find a registration with my name on it... I'm fine with the concept or how long it takes but it makes a lot of assumptions on the players part. I just don't understand why it works the way it does, If it where a mere resource grind no problem, if you want a maxed ship early them you can work towards it and put off other stuff. Maybe the upgrade parts can only be found in this place with this danger level and these are the requirements for this or that blah blah blah, that's fine. Whats not fine is the boring go to the -random_nearby_structure- and kill -random_cool_name- quests that always glitch out, or the other billion quests that are all identical in execution. This games quests are like a crappy mmo's and don't deserve there own paragraph because all I can say is they suck. Make more unique questlines, get a distress beacon thirty minutes after beating a boss to save an npc who'll help you find the next boss. Long story short ship upgrades suck, the way to get them is boring an heavily rng dependent, crew isn't customizable and aren't used for anything else (why don't we get raided in certain dangerous sectors of space where more dangerous stars are located and more loot is found? Then the crew would be necissary to defend the ship and your stuff might get stolen, or your teleporter gets jacked and your stranded, the pirates could use your teleporter to go sack your base if it's off your ship. Or you could do raids with your crew or strike operations.), and there are no options for different upgrades or upgrade paths. Some races are just better than other with their ships (that's fine btw it just blows that some other races are pushed to the side and don't get any love (Novakids), if there where differences between races other than ships it might make a bit more sense.)

I've got some other gripes about other stuff like the lack of populated places literally everywhere and the way space travel works now but I'm about to go eat. If anyone knows WHY some of these changes where made, WHY the game is going this direction, or just has some insight into these issues or counters/ positive things to say I'd love to hear them.

 

Earth is attacked by bad guy on the day you are graduating. you become the chosen hero to save the universe. Not that complex to understand. It is a generic story trope.

Lots of people care about lore... There isn't much on the novakid because they basically were not initially intended since they were a reward from the early kickstarter days. They have been loosly included in the lore as it is implied they are the remains of the old progenitors, or whatever they were called.

Big numbers didn't make the weapons "good". They were rebalanced. Damage values were dropped, yes, but so were enemy health. It works out basically the same in the end.

Comparing Minecraft to Starbound in this way is moot and largely irrelevant. Chucklefish wanted a story. Simple as that. You can mostly ignore it too, you know? After you fix your FTL drive, you are free to ignore the story completely.

Neither does starbound.

No, it isn't. After fixing your FTL, you can say "fuck all y'all" and ignore the story completely.

Incorrect. https://starbounder.org/Fake_Sparrow_License


Most of your complaints are null and moot. The story is ignorable. You don't need a crew to upgrade your ship. I skipped most all of the middle [paragraph because it was mostly more of the same.

 

What is Starbound now?
From Wikipedia:
"Starbound is an action-adventurevideo game developed and published by Chucklefish. Starbound takes place in a two-dimensional, procedurally generated universe which the player is able to explore in order to obtain new weapons, armor, and items, and to visit towns and villages inhabited by various intelligent lifeforms."

 

*Sarcasm* Thanks for your obviously kind and well meaning response, but M8, u missed the point... Lets break it down 1 by 1 as this is not the response I was looking for. (first paragraph was just my opinion and satirical, not really meant to start a discussion on those points (obviously? (apparently not...)))

EDIT!!!: The second and third paragraphs where the focus (and all the ones I may add (Quests, mechs, practically anything you could think of...)), the first paragraph was a long, satirical introduction from the point of view of a confused returning player. I'm not sure what the second paragraph was the same as, I didn't copy/paste anything or repeat points so I'm assuming you cherry-picked my post (seeing as paragraph #3 only gets one glarringly obvious response to my noobness) and didn't care to actually look at my main argument. I just want to talk about these things with other players as I'm out of the loop, not be "corrected" on the jokes I made by someone who probably hasn't played vanilla Starbound for 90% of his playtime. (I see that badge m8) Anyway, I'm sure you'll probably have something to say in this post too (and "not read most of it" where it conveniences your argument) as you commented on the original one without anything constructive aswell. (at least the other guy made a funny) If you wanna actually talk about the game I'm open to it assuming you remember I'm not a child and dial back the superiority complex

PS, moot is (adj) to subject to debate (without taking a firm stance). The verb means to bring something to light and talk about it. I did that but your use was a little wrong there pal as I reached a conclusion and held a firm point of view (you'd know this if you read before replying), don't use a word you don't know the meaning of (twice) the next time you "correct" someone



First point, it's apparent at this point that you got hit by the WOOOOSH and not the joke (I literally said "Earthchan" dude). I understand and follow the OBVIOUSLY VERY SIMPLE plot, when I called it confusing I meant the fact that there was a story to begin with. It hit really fast for me as I was expecting to be dropped in a box and given simple instructions on the controls.

Second point, It was a joke (parenthesis da) and I also care about lore. I liked the old (no longer canon) lore better however. It was more than a little jarring to see all new lore and it's incorporation in a main story. You grouped it in with the Novakid thing as well, I was disappointed to see they have a nonexistent (I haven't seen em) roll in the story AND in generic game play. Also kinda feels superficial that the only difference between races is the ship. (Let them glow, LET THEM GLOW) And if ALL Novakids are sooo disconnected from, well, EVERYTHING, then why when I started up the game for the first time in a few years (as a Novakid) was I suddenly involved in Earth's affairs and protecting the planet n' stuff??

Point 3!!! Are you telling me that dividing by the 50 (random #) on both sides of the equal sign doesn't actually change anything? WOW REALLY??? I've kinda already got that pal, weapons and enemies haven't really changed and big numbers blah blah blah. I said it made them FEEL better, seeing 30 next to 240 fells like a bigger improvement than going from 3 to 24. This was also less of an issue when DPS was still visible, you could just swing a weapon around and check its dps to know if it was good. (swing to feel rof (sm ppl h8 slow wpns)) With my game being a buggy piece of junk half the time (using a craptop) my damage numbers don't even appear. I also have no idea if rof is different on different weapons (is it time between swings, does it include time it takes to preform the animation, does it affect attack animation speed? I've got no clue.), I don't have the experience to claim that does or does not affect all weapons in the same way.

POINT FOOOOUR!!! (moot? lol) I know I can ignore the story, I did. I said later it felt like I was being punished by having to go back to scrub planets where the entire native population posed no threat (but gravity on the other hand...), the problem was it was THERE. For me, just being there was like it was over my head, dangling, I had to do it eventually. It was just boooring (and I randomly picked planets to check so irl rng), so, so boring... I realize that Chucklefish (spelling?) wanted a <main> story (u missed that, generic lore is part of the story too), if they didn't it wouldn't be there... Comparing two games always has relevance, I could compare this to COD and describe the state I'm in while playing each to describe why I play one over the other at any one time. It helps that Starbound and Minecraft have a similar feel to play (or did when I played em four years+ ago)

Point five (is it a point or a random comment with no backing? eh, a response then)
The fifth thing you commented on!! Limiting for role playing, I wanna kill big stuff, buuut, I wanna be an outlaw... Can't have both, random piracy of npc ships is impossible and your always the one true hero that the legacy foretold fighting for the sake of humanity when you go after the "big baddies". (derp)

#6. Again I know, you can also never leave to room at the start of Farcry 4... But are you really playing the game? Is that really experiencing what the devs wanted? I'd say no, it's not. (also language dude cmon, pretty sure kids get on this and giggletrout probs don't want cursing.)

At last (insert reference to crewmember joke), number seven. *exhales* Actually didn't know about that, thx m8. (did you have to say "incorrect like a creepy robot tho?)



Anyway my goal in the post was not to bash on the devs (largely y i havnt added more points to original post cause idk how to not seem like im jus criticizing their hard work), I think a good morale for the projects you're working on is important. I did want to express the way I feel and go in-depth on a coupe of things. I wanted to see other people respond to the things I was actually talking about (not the meme that was paragraph #1) and tell me what they thought about them. I came with an open mind and expect others to do the same so we can have a meaningful discussion about the game. I honestly have no idea why some of these things are even in the game now (SUPER OP RANDOM MECH FOR FREEEEEEEEEEEEEE) and I want to know if other people have any ideas or positive feelings where I see only flaws. This game is still quite good but is not the game I thought I would come back to find when I put it down many years ago. I was disappointed to see, in my mind, how little the game had progressed. I know things take time, but when if feels like the game is going in the wrong direction, it feels like time wasted. I just want to know how my experiences stack up to everyone else's and why the game is how it is now.

Won't be responding like this to everyone, just want to talk not argue. (assuming ya don't get the woooosh on paragraph 1)

 

Thanks pal, I would've never known as I don't have access to the internet. Also isn't the universe shared now? Thought they dropped the whole "procedurally generated" thing but I havn't looked into it myself...

 

your main complaint is that you want to be able to do whatever you want... and you can... Ignore the story, be a pirate, do whatever you want within the game. We can argue what the game does and doesn't let you do all day, but the simple fact remains that no game is going to give you everything you desire in one. The game you want Starbound to be was never going to be that game. Fun fact: Long before the story was implemented, there was already a framework of the story in the lore. A story was planned from the start. So your "confusion" about why there is a story is really unfounded.

Your complaints are silly. Why no high damage numbers anymore? Why is there a story at all? Why this, why that?... because that is the game they made.

Why is it confusing that there is a story? Sandbox =/= no story. If you want to be dropped into a box, then click the button that says to skip the intro... Yeah, you still have to do the mining facility, but that is literally no different than a tutorial level in any other game.

That's a personal problem. Irrelevant to the topic at hand.

What do you think you are doing when you use your mech to board random ships and loot them? Piracy!... seriously, have you even bothered to play the game?

Your whole post was aggressive and more of a rant than anything. You really left no points for discussion, you were just complaining about things. That is not how you get a discussion going.

Then why not say that in the beginning rather than just posting one long complaint?

Try re-reading your post from the viewpoint of me, or anyone else. It doesn't read as a desire for discussion. It is not inviting. It is nothing more than a complaint.

 

@lazarus78 aka 3D63L0RD
Dude I've already said I don't want a debate and I say at the bottom that I want to hear other peoples views on these things, please refrain from posting on this thread if your just going to debate me. If I wanted to explain myself I would, I just wanted to put my thoughts out there and hear other peoples.

PS From my viewpoint a complaint has a different purpose than a gripe. People complain because they want change. I don't want the game to revert, that would be a step backwards. The points I brought up where gripes (as stated) and me disagreeing with or not understanding the changes to Starbound. How would I know that a story was planned from the start? Or that it would be implemented when I bought the game again? I didn't. If you where gonna tell me to "do my homework" then congratulations, here's your originality medal. At least you didn't start all your words with w, I know you probably originally thought you where talking to a child but hey, most men think their computer screen adds three inches...

PPS You even cherry picked my response and got hit by the woooosh again... 1: I meant the tutorial sequence being the literal story introduction and not just telling me the controlls, how would I know that it wouldn't just give me a normal tutorial? 2: The mining facility doesn't even introduce the games controls so how is it a tutorial and not just another easy mission? 3: I realize sandbox games can have stories as I'm not as dull as some users. 4: Never said my craptop was anything other than a personal problem, I just prefer to see big numbers because B33FY. 5: I meant the kill everyone kind of piracy. 6: Who was my post aggressive to? (no order on those other than the order I wrote em in)

If you're gonna be a <(remember the children Wolf)> on other peoples post at least be good at it. You have two options, call me a degenerate or actually give me a response. Either way it's unwanted, but you could've addressed the actual meat of my argument instead of replying to my response of your response on the first paragraph that was never meant to do anything but set my joking tone. (Or, ya kno, at least back the xXx*M00T*xXx points you made in <repeat response train> so I could actually have something to pick apart (or grow up? nah, more fun when ur like this))

Thank you and please get off my thread forever

 

preferably change the words there with something else in the op pls

also all quote pieces are probably only 1/20 of the original post... which is opinion based from not knowing that you could do certain things.... and also since the responses complaining about you were 1/20 or whatever thats probably considered by most people as taking out of context....

this page is 8 posts (op to this) and i dont really feel like reading it but that means i should assume its all opinions but most people think youre stating it as fact but same backwards.... when i type stuff i dont think its been longer then the 2nd initial paragraph.... and people skip it cause the first line states something opposite to their belief and EVERYONE has or will do this... whether right or wrong

stating that an opinion is wrong can be worse then the opinion not being right.... especially when the opinion is neither right or wrong....

but im agreeing with the forced good thing since i dont think theres any punishment for mass genocide... this might change for 1.4 but this is only based by the fact you can bounty hunt....

btw i think the game is technically procedurally generated but i think its sortof like a set seed so everyone has the same universe due to be useful so people can help give coordinates and probably also the unlikeliness of 2 players spawning on the same planet but idk

 

I don't have anything to say about this debate, but this point bugs me: as an adjective, moot can also mean "of little or no practical value, meaning, or relevance; purely academic," which is how they used it.

 

I'm unfamiliar with this definition, could you please source it?

 

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/moot