Starbound vs. Terraria (Friendly Discussion Only!)

Discussion in 'Games' started by Xylia, Feb 7, 2019.

  1. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    So, in the Discord Store thread, someone started a discussion on Terraria and its merits, or demerits compared to Starbound, and I think rather than spamming that and risking moderation, that we should take that here instead. I will quote someone from that thread to get things started off:

    EDIT: Please please be civil and don't attack players for their likes or dislikes! Terraria and Starbound are both awesome games and I love them both. Both games should be able to coexist in the world, and not feel threatened by the other. So let's all be civil and let's look at both games objectively and discuss where one game is better, or the other is better, but most importantly let's do this in a civil and friendly manner! No need for anybody to get feathers ruffled!

    I remember when I first started playing Terraria, the graphics were VERY basic.

    You wanna see how basic? Take a look at Totalbiscuit's channel. He's got some footage from 1.0.

    But yes, Terraria was always a very gameplay-heavy game, and it totally delivers on that front. Yeah, it lacks a lot of oooo and ahhh that Starbound has, but its combat is way better.

    [quote[It's like... a journey through the history of video games. As you explore and collect items, it's like going through various classic titles! My favorite part was what I call the "Mega Man X setup" (dash + wall climbling... you get it).[/quote]

    I just love getting any kind of jump bottle, and running boots. The gameplay gets 5x better once you do. And it only goes up from there! Once you get Wings, then things are just getting so awesome, you're zipping around the world kicking butt, taking names, and nothing bars your path except powerful enemies.

    Starbound is a sandbox game at its utter core. It's... a box.... full of sand.

    That's what it is. If you're really creative you can make some really nice stuff, but it's just there to look at.

    This is my main beef about Starbound: Terraria runs at a solid 60FPS full time with the occasional skipped frame and split second jerk if I'm going too fast with those wings and speed boots. It's barely noticeable.

    Starbound, however, takes forever to load, some materials you pick up cause the game to pause for a second at a time, windows go off-screen, the UI is very clunky...

    Don't get me wrong, I love both games, but Terraria is waaaaaaaaay better on polish! It runs better, it's UI is far better, and it just.... it's more pleasurable to play.

    Sadly, more mods you add, the worse the game plays when you start getting so loaded down you pick up a crafting material and the entire game pauses for 2 seconds, etc.

    This is only getting better!

    That, and Terraria has Sprite Pack support, and I think 1.3.6 is going to add even more stuff, like trees swaying in the wind, and all kinds of neat stuff! Block swapping too. You can't even do that in Starbound, lol.
     
  2. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    Also, I want to point out, for anybody who has tried Terraria, or is thinking about trying Terraria because of this discussion and got stuck or gets stuck and can't figure out what they should be doing, or how to progress, I wrote a very extensive but somewhat out of date Newbie Guide here:

    https://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/fresh-newbie-to-endgame-guide-1-3-0-8-wip.33510/

    99% of what's said in this guide will easily get you everything you ever needed to know on how to be successful in Terraria.
     
  3. davoker

    davoker Cosmic Narwhal

    The case is that it catches my attention, also is down to 50% right now, for 5€ in my case it seems a good purchase, it is simply that the way they attack the character seems ... strange, as badly done xD and the characters are less beautiful, they are better done in Starbound.

    It seems silly but it is what has made that I still do not buy xD I'm still thinking about it, everyone tells me that it has much more than Starbound, which has more of everything, omg that I do Ò0ó

    This reminds me of Starbound, I have it since 1.2, I had seen it before, but it did not finish convincing me to buy it, I always liked pixel art, but in this type of games I did not like it, it was to try it for a while and then I bought it, totally in love with the game.

    Surely the same thing happens with Terraria, that if I try it I will like it.
     
  4. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    It is true that Terraria characters have a lot less detail and are smaller in general. Starbound characters have separately animated limbs, and facial expressions, and all that extra fluff... but we end up paying for that, with a lot less combat stuff.

    Terraria will seem slow at first, your character moves so slow and it takes forever to dig... but it picks up very fast once you start finding items that make you better at everything. Here's an example of a boss battle fight:



    I did this video 3+ years ago, and my internet was very slow so it's going to be fuzzy... and I don't know how to edit video so, start about 2:15 in if you want to see the actual battle.

    You don't do anything like this in Starbound!
     
    Catherine Franz and davoker like this.
  5. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    Also:



    4:45 is where I take on the Moon Lord. Took me forever to actually get to where I could kill him consistently!
     
    Catherine Franz and davoker like this.
  6. davoker

    davoker Cosmic Narwhal

    My God that madness, in a way, the fights with the bosses remind me of the shooters of old planes, I do not know if I explain, the typical recreational machines (I do not know what you call them).

    I need 1 bald hair to buy hahaha (Spanish expression, I do not know if xD is understood).
     
    Xylia likes this.
  7. Catherine Franz

    Catherine Franz Spaceman Spiff

    C'mon Terraria wins 'coz the game updates and this don't....(well at least not for now I wish)
     
  8. tigerfestival

    tigerfestival Cosmic Narwhal

    As much as I like Starbound, I have to give it to Terraria, it is the better game. Better combat,better progression, a true sandbox,more polished and more challenging. I hope the Sandbox mod will help Starbound a bit more in terms of it's playability.
     
    Ickura likes this.
  9. Catherine Franz

    Catherine Franz Spaceman Spiff

    T:Optimized
    St:When's the patch?
     
  10. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    I'm not really trying to compare the two games in terms of "which is better", I was more looking for objective comparisons... like.... Terraria is better at X, but Starbound is better at Y.

    I think both games are awesome and we should celebrate each of their differences, and recognize that both games are great.

    Though I do understand some of the frustrations with Starbound! But then again, Terraria has some niggles that I personally dislike too, such as how critical a role RNG plays, if you get unlucky enough, you could spend 5+ hours trodding around without a bottle or boots for example, or how you do the 50th or 100th fishing quest turn-in and get nothing but bait and potions and no items. Or you get 10 sextants and 0 weather radios and the weather radio is the 1-and-only item left to complete your Cell Phone, for example. Or how about you need a Metal Detector and you spend hours underground and a nymph just will not spawn. Or one finally does.... and because it only has 50% chance to drop it decides to not drop it. Or worse, you see a nymph come up on the enemy detector and it despawns before you can find it....

    Starbound has its flaws and it's certainly not perfect, but then again, Terraria ain't perfect either.

    Still, I think both games are great!
     
  11. Catherine Franz

    Catherine Franz Spaceman Spiff

    Was meant to be a joke but still true-ish on the post I did and yeah I think both are great (I have no imagination on my book, if ye know what I mean so I stick to Terraria when playing)
     
    Xylia likes this.
  12. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    I tend to stick more towards Terraria, but you know, I also love Frackin'Universe, I just end up lost in the vast ocean of content and side-grades. Not to say that having all of that content is bad (it certainly isn't!) it's just... I tend to get lost on what I should be doing, what's worth pursuing, etc. That, and all the slowdowns and lag, I've been trying to wait on them to do their whole conversion to a research unlock system so that my game ain't pausing for 2 seconds every time I pick up a titanium bar for example.
     
  13. Catherine Franz

    Catherine Franz Spaceman Spiff

    Imagination not found here so I'm not invested in making boxes I call a house so I only took extra dungeons of F.U. and prolly story-dungeon mods like Extended Story or Return to earth etc etc

    Long-story-short I'm a bot that follows,fights and kills? No missions left? DIe in boredom...Multiplayer??? Hehe..never heard of it...
     
  14. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    I'm similar though I DO like the research aspect of FU, where you have all of these materials and you have to unlock stuff, and you need lots of power generators, machines, etc to make this stuff, I rather like that aspect of it.

    But actually building anything that looks like a nice lab? I could only dream.
     
  15. MistyTheNeko

    MistyTheNeko Ketchup Robot

    Each game has their own good points, but I usually prefer Starbound over Terraria just due to sheer aesthetics. It may be a pitiful reason, but both are equally slow at the beginning, so you have a lot of time to take a look at your surroundings. Another good reason I generally prefer Starbound is the soundtrack. While Terraria's soundtrack is more popular and well known, I just believe that SB's OST is just better.
    Both games have an issue when it comes to getting updates, but that seems to be an overall trend with developers nowadays.
     
    theflamingchuthulu likes this.
  16. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    Terraria has music that sounds more Chiptune-y, and I'm a sucker for good Chiptune, so that's why I tend to like most Terraria tracks more than Starbound's. Not to say Starbound's is bad, though.

    And THE. SINGLE. BEST. BGM Starbound had.... Tentacles Exploration .... was REMOVED.

    Gaah.

    That was the single most awesome thing ever.... and they.... removed it and the planets you heard it on.

    Now ya you could add them back in with mods, but meh.
     
  17. Catherine Franz

    Catherine Franz Spaceman Spiff

    With the power of modding any game can still be aliveeee!!!! *cough* skyrim *cough*
     
  18. Daikon Ocelot

    Daikon Ocelot Spaceman Spiff

    Yeah, I guess you're pretty right. Mod is actually the thing I know that prevent Starbound from being abandoned.
     
  19. davoker

    davoker Cosmic Narwhal

    Not everyone likes those mods that somehow extend the game, some only prefer mods of the graphic type, I personally do not like FU or mods that resemble him minimally, also is that I do not see it very stable, and There are too many things that I think do not end up fitting well.

    In personal opinion some graphics added of FU looks rare, as if they did not fit with the game, perhaps they are the tones of color, I do not know, but they seem that they were there thrown xD

    For those of us who do not like this kind of mods, an update like Starbound 1.4 was something we expected a lot.
     
  20. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    Hmm, even if they had put a 1.4 out... one thing I've noticed about Chucklefish and their design philosophy (I don't want anybody taking offense at this, it isn't meant to be offensive or insulting) is that they tend to develop content (at least for Starbound) that is... shall I say....

    .... basic? Just for fluff?

    I mean, they added fishing... but that was just a collection grind. Nothing wrong with that at its core, but... a lot of players shrugged it off, did it for a few minutes and moved on. Then the Mech content... yeah, that was cool and all, but outside of progressing the Mechs as its own minigame, it just didn't seem to offer any long-term rewards for the player. It felt like its own minigame because it had nothing that connected it to the rest of the game.

    I was kinda hoping for the Bounty Hunting thing because that sounded like something that very much could have affected the rest of the game, with tangible rewards to be gotten from it, but sadly they scrapped it. Still wish they would have at least released the APIs to let modders use.

    But yet at the end of the day, there was always the possibility that bounty hunting, like the mechs, would have felt like its own minigame. Nothing wrong with that, but yet when you keep adding more and more things to the game, the people who don't use content mods are just going to end up feeling like the game lacks cohesion, that it's just a collection of ideas that just doesn't mesh with itself.

    That's why you have modders doing things like adding ores, and other player items in with Mechs, for example, or adding Mech Blueprints obtainable outside of Mech content and/or players trying to make ways that you can refuel your mech while on-planet, to make Mechs seem connected to the rest of the game better.
     
    Armorine1983 and davoker like this.

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