What happen to starbound?

Before reading this, I want you to keep in mind one thing, one core fact that drives this thread: I LOVED Starbound to pieces, for the longest time.

The first time I picked up this game (on the recommendation of a friend, I might add), I was exploring planets left and right, finding creatures that spit shadow, dragons that could one shot me, fish that looked like submarines, and dogs that vomit rainbows, on the surface of worlds made of purple eyeballs. It was the best thing I had ever seen. Then the updates came. I figured "oh, they'll probably make it easier to find civilization" (at the time I had only found 3 settlements, by my 30th hour of gameplay. I was still happy.) The game started to lag for me. I was used to it, I had a bad computer at the time.

Shortly after, there was a wipe. I lost my character and my favorite server went down. I couldn't play with my friends anymore, the custom ship I was building (thanks to a lovely little mod bundle a friend and I assembled), the planet we were terraforming and the MASSIVE ice-world castle I was building...all gone. I saw what they did with the game and I said "ok, I guess that's a reasonable update." and began my base and ship anew.
Then there was another...and another...Then yet another update came and I couldn't play anymore. I was looking at enough lag that creatures wouldn't move on my screen and I could walk right through hostile dungeons without firing a shot.

For six months or more, I abandoned this game.

A few weeks ago, I got a new computer. I immediately thought back to starbound, one of my favorite games of all time. I boot it up, all excited! Then I remember...oh, the server is gone now. Oh, my base is gone, my ship is gone, my loot is gone, my character is gone. I accept it and move on, perfectly content to start a new character and terraform everything from scratch.
That's how amazing this game was.

My first planet, I'm happy as a clam. I had a new bazooka that fired guided missiles and a nice sword that that spins around and massacres everything. Then I found a house! YAY! A neighbor! Then another one.....YAY! TWO NEIGHBORS!

*next planet* oh hey, a village!
*next planet* oh hey, 4 villages!
*planet after that* Its the garden of Eden, holy crap!
*fifty planets later* Jesus, another village? This whole place is filled with lava though...

At this point, I've noticed that nearly every planet has a village on it. Most have several and most of the ones that have several, are completely covered in tiny little wooden villages. I didn't like that fact much, as it took away from the previous, unique feeling of awe and accomplishment that once accompanied the discovery of a settlement. Quickly becoming bored with that, I did something I had never done before. After just a few hours, I decided to run up a few levels on the main campaign (time was, I never needed to go beyond durasteel, I just explored and built). Even with all my goofing around and time wasting, I got the max tier of armor and weaponry, killed every boss using just my chakram (first weapon I ever found. It scales, but really badly...still the best weapon I have somehow) and I hit a wall..."what do I do now?"...

"OHH! I KNOW! I'll capture a bunch of pets and start an illegal animal fighting ring!"...oh...wait. Nope, cant capture "combat pets" anymore. Only...you know I'm still not sure what you CAN capture...all I know is that its something not worth the effort...I threw those pods at literally everything interesting.

"Ok, well, how about I do what my friend was doing and collect cool trees?" Nope! None of the non-basic ones drop saplings anymore...ok...

I had nowhere to really go, nothing to really do and all of a sudden I realized just how hollow the game had become.
I considered building a base. I mean, every planet does have a massive cliff somewhere that I could just dig into now...
Then again...that's every planet.
I could go on an ice planet...but survival has been removed for a long time and all the upgrades make everything safe. (oh, minor note, I haven't found a single background that struck me as more than mildly interesting. They used to have some really gorgeous ones, like aurora backgrounds, particularly on ice planets. Now, at best, we get a mountain range. At worst, a bunch of mildly weird trees that really muck with your depth perception.)
what about a lava planet? No...It takes eons to reach the floor and I'd probably just find another village.
How about I settle on a planet with lots of those cool creatures the procedural generation always comes up with?...oh...wait. I haven't encountered a single procedural creature since I re-installed.

It used to be hard to find a perfect planet, with a nice background and dangerous weather (seriously, meteors used to be everywhere, it was awesome!) and cool animals and a nice hillside to carve a castle into. And when you finally did, you WANTED to build there. You were COMPELLED, to build there! Now, every planet is...bland and identical. Everywhere, the same dopey rock throwing crab, the same weird, super annoying spider/rock hedgehog thing and the same...is that oddish from pokemon? ((0))_((0))

This game used to be amazing. And I mean, AMAZING. It looked like terraria, granted, but it was in my top ten games of all time. Since the updates, I hesitate to say its even on par with terraria. The balance was lost. The devs left out most of the features that they were supposedly building (custom ships, being a big one. Wouldn't even be hard to do, its one file and a couple of tile types. ENTIRELY feasible and easy to make completely optional!), they increased chests, ore deposits and village areas to ridiculous levels and all but REMOVED procedural generation. Where are my shadow dogs? Where are my eyeball trees and strange giant, lightning spitting, barbarian hylotl? (I want to take a moment to impress upon you, the importance of this last bit here. The procedural generation was about 80% of what made this game amazing. Its gone now.)
And where are those danged ship raiding pirates that we were promised?
Congrats, you added a rail system...something that the community did for mods... in a few days...years ago.

There wasn't a single second that I regretted purchasing this game before I reinstalled last week. Now, I'm not sure I'll ever play it again.

So here I go, onto the next game that promises to be exactly what this game used to be.

 

• There are still random monsters, they are just really rare since unique monsters were created. You're right that they should be more common, though.
• There are still eyeball biomes, but they are only on alien planets. With the next update, biomes will be less restrictive.
• You can't really blame an early access game for wiping your progress. Did you really think you wouldn't need a new character when the game hit 1.0?
• The current 'campaign' is just placeholder. The next update adds an actual story with proper missions and not just "find 300 kelp".
• Combat pets were removed because they weren't properly working. The next update will replace and expand upon this feature; there's a blog post about it somewhere.
• (why would you want to build a castle on a meteor-prone planet that's a terrible idea)
• Custom ships are difficult. Building one out of blocks with that mod that lets you do that isn't too hard, but the devs have to idiot-proof the system so players can't permanently ruin their ship.
• (i don't remember ever seeing a giant barbarian hylotl? was it just a humanoid fish miniboss?)
• Ship raiding pirates were not 'promised'. They may have been theorised, but there are much more important things to make first.

see you when 1.0 releases!

 

The point is that the game has progressively become less and less what they promised, They have slowly but surely started to make multiplayer moddability incompatible and removed almost all original tech which makes no sense because there was nothing wrong with it.

When the game was first announced they promised that you could mod the game to your hearts content, and you could in early koala what people made was spectacular but they effectively killed off almost every mod in giraffe, I'm just tired of them changing shit that doesn't need to be changed if you say your game is easy to mod and is mod friendly doesn't remove code that helps people make multiplayer mods.

I really wish they would realize that the entirety of the games replayability is in multiplayer sure i could play a couple hours of your repetitive singleplayer but if you hadn't noticed almost all of the 1700 players that are currently active today are roleplaying on a server, And no i'm not exaggerating that number 1700 is the current active number want proof?

Now i'm not trying to be an asshole here but the point is that chucklefish has continually done what they wanted to "improve" the game and never really got any input from the community and this is why the game is suffering so bad. Anyway i think i've made my point So hate me if you want but i just want to the game to be what it could be

 

Actually a lot of what they've done has had to do with community input... Of course some things they have decided on their own.
You come across as someone who hates change. But in this case, I feel much of the changes were for the better.
Once 1.0 is released, and the engine is therefore complete, modding can finally begin to take off properly since you won't have to account for frequent major changes to systems anymore.
Their top priority is not mods. It's making the game to mod. If they stop

by your definition, then the game would still be in early beta, in the koala days, with no direction or anything. You seem to have misinterpeted what CF promised. The team promised a game first and foremost.
Then they promised moddability. When 1.0 hits, moddability will also be out of beta in a sense, since people will be able to do far more than they could before, probably much easier, and also have their mods last longer without needing compatability updates for the base game.

The structures being everywhere is annoying, and I hope they tone them down in 1.0. Random monsters will have proper spawnrates in the upcoming 1.0, they have already stated this. All normal monsters (including uniques) will be capturable. And they will in fact be combat pets, with expanded capabilties. Biomes will be varied again. They're adding more and more variation, but also new unique things to find. The story is placeholder, and will be replaced in 1.0...
In fact, the majority of your issues are being addressed in 1.0 in some form or another. Don't forget you're playing a beta. Of course the giraffe updates broke mods, different koala builds used to and giraffe builds were the next HUGE change. 1.0 will be the next HUGE change, at which point development will focus more on adding interesting content than rejigging all the code like you hate so much.

 

The game is in development and has been in the public eye for most of that time. Naturally people got bored of it and moved on.

The game is very easy to mod. The code changes because chucklefish is still developing the game and working out what works best and what doesn't. Just because something works, doesn't mean is is the best way to go about it. Again, the game is in development.

Come back post 1.0 when everything is set in stone and won't change much code wise. Modding will pick up again.

 

The earlier Giraffe updates were a mistake IMO. Koala was supposedly the best of all time, which is the version I assume you're talking about OP.

The games getting good now though. We're past crappy Giraffe. We still don't have all the bosses that went missing, but we've gotten some cool stuff. Can't wait for 1.0

 

I can look past all the other changes but one thing i won't forgive is their decision to remove a 50% of the techs that they added in giraffe, There was no real reason to get rid of skins and replace them with items it's just another annoying thing that they felt the need to add also the removal of the food warmth and other systems i feel was a mistake but whatever.

 

They removed the techs because they wanted to make a more cohesive system rather than a bunch of random techs in which only a handful were actually used. Plus, half of those techs didn't work anyway. Hunger is returning. Temperature may return.

I'm wondering if you bother to read the dev blogs.

 

because heaven forbid an early access game should let its mods become outdated

 

I guess different people have different taste. For me all the changes seem pretty fantastic. The only thing/s that I miss is the cold/heat equipment and the hunger being addded only to Survival. It would be nice to be able to select it for Casual also.

 

Which coincidentally, is something that could be (and probably will be) changed with mods. Well, the latter. The former would take some serious work and might not even be possible without direct engine access.

 

The devs stated they may allow players to choose their own options as they are aware that different players have different ideas of what should and shouldn't be allowed for the different modes.



Here the default but if everything go well you should be able to edit them as you like once 1.0 hits.

 

replay value is very much like beauty - it's in the eye of the beholder.
that being said, just because modding isn't exactly working as intended now doesn't mean it won't once 1.0 launches.

this dude(ette?) nailed it on the head. you can't keep a modding community going if you're still working out the kinks of a system those mods must rely on.
quote me if you want to, boss. once 1.0 drops modding will become a very welcomed feature.

 

Dude/dudette, I really don't care one way or another. It's really hard to care when you may or may not be an amorphous mass of various prehensile limbs, maws, and eyes floating in an endless void awaiting the day you are once again summoned to the mortal realm. Though I guess if you must choose, I suggest male since this particular name is referring to a male character of mine.

But I digress - modding needs a solid base to work off of, that's what seperates it from making something from scratch, after all. And there are many exciting things coming with 1.0 that will be used to make all sorts of cool mods, I'm sure. Heck, I even intend to try out modding once 1.0 hits, although how successful I'll be will depend on how I can wrap my heads around JSON and the file structure... I much prefer doing actual coding, though I don't think you can actually do much with just scripts in SB.