Why was so much content removed?

Bah, no point in explaining. Just wanted to share some thoughts.

 

"X was removed."
"What was X?"
"There's no point in explaining."

If you are going to share thoughts, you need to explain them, because at this point, I am honestly confused. I mean, you made the claim that many cosmetics were removed, which is false, so you need to back it up here.

If you are just not able to find the right way to express your thoughts, I can understand that, and would still encourage you to try anyway, however, your statement was about removed items, so if you can't even list them, then you really set yourself up for failure here.

 

Righto. CF were looking to make 1.0 a "finished" product in that it would be a cohesive-ish story... that they could later tack on (even more) tangential stuff, thus the loss of two placeholder bosses which they can then later add into some update that's not part of the main story. The Fatal Circuit could become a hazard of an abandoned space station, the jelly could... be.. somewhere. Okay look the jelly boss was really lame and I'd not shed one tear if it vanished forever.

And while I'm saddened by the loss of more race/dungeon-specific weapons (or some of the Techs), I can understand losing them (for now) because that added dozens of additional weapons to cram into the rebalancing mechanic that was in progress, which means more time delaying the final release to make sure they all worked, so I can see wanting to lighten the load to get the game to 1.0.

And in general... the first draft should NEVER be your final draft, and a good creative should be willing to "kill their darlings"; abandon things that even they find cool if it doesn't fit into the whole pleasingly. And let's be real... a lot of this stuff we'd never miss if we weren't tracking the sausage-making process from the beginning and had a long time to get used to an unfinished, unpolished proto-game.

 

It's kinda like that. Also, I am not accustomed to forums, therefore I don't know how many things work. I thank you for letting me know that I should explain things in future posts.

 

THE FUCKING DIES, man. That's what hurts me still. I got over racial weapons, all the GOOD techs, you know. But holy shit, bruh. Dyes. There was this mod, Dye Bucket or whatever, it allowed you to make SO MUCH DYES. All the shades, 3 different grays, tons of blues etc. That I miss.

 

...Dyes are still in the game.

I mean yes I'd love more color options for... well, EVERYTHING (I spent an hour mulling over back-block/platform combos and colors last night to make library "shelves" and still not got something I'm totes happy with), but we have a rainbow of armor dyes to play with in vanilla. The loss of a mod ain't really something CF gots control over.

 

I can't find them then. All I see, are few basic collors, no mixing at all. Mod offered EVERYTHING, and it was multiplayer compatible, that being said, assets were part of the BASE game. I'm willing to bet, that these collors are still there, and you STILL have no way outside of mods to access them.

Also fun fact, since we're here. I was digging through assets one day. Wanted to make Frog merchant pickable, you know, the one that just stayed in one place, offered you crap. Not lived in the container or swamp village. Acted as a furniture, unpickable. Same with moleman. Trader. Probably removed too. Back to the topic.

You know there were climbing animations in the game? (No idea, maybe they still are.) The shit we saw, and know is gone, and then this. The shit we DIDN'T even knew existed.

 

http://starbounder.org/Dye
http://starbounder.org/Sewing_Machine/Recipes

No mods whatsoever are in the base game. If they were, they wouldn't be mods.

 

Placeholder, like I said, I doubt it actually was. What's more, that is not reason enough on its own to remove so much content that people clearly liked.
The vast majority of the stuff removed is still in line with the current state of the game. Like apple pie, Hiraki Corale, and racial weapons. Why keep racial armor but not weapons?

I know CF isn't a bunch of heartless capitalists, they make good games even if they're not going to be the most popular and have shown they're sometimes willing to listen to their community. If the reasoning used wasn't obscure and convoluted, this thread wouldn't be here.

 

You don't get the point. Mod offered way more colors. Not dyes itself. Just the option to use them. Colored clothes are IN THE ASSETS. (Were. Not sure now.)

Btw found some proof of climbing anims.


Based of avian female body template.

@Edit: For some reason, baron has em too.
http://i.imgur.com/oj5lx4k.png
Maybe something we have yet to see?

 

And here we hit the crux of the problem with threads like this every time they pop up. Almost invariably the OP commits to not accepting any explanation out of the gate, apparently only interested in commiserations over Something We've Been Denied. When you claim that "this thing was an early placeholder/in-progress thing" for a game in the early stages of development is somehow invalid and untrue because... it's not a convoluted enough explanation?... there's really not much actual discussion to be had.

And I once again wonder if they've ever actually attempted their own creative endeavor and seen it through.

(Also, Hiraki Corale codexs are still in the game. I have several.)

What is posting early dropped WIP climbing animations supposed to prove? CF decided they didn't like how climbing worked in the game so they dropped it. That's what game development does. Creates things that end up dropped in favor of other things.

 

You're right, you're right, I'm being unreasonable. While I personally find it unlikely that everything removed down to the last codex was placeholder, I can't just brush the idea aside. So, let's say it was placeholder. You have however many players playing your game in open-beta with placeholder racial weapons, well-written codexes, fun legendary weapons, and side quests that give the outpost character. People really, really like this stuff. However, it is placeholder and therefore must eventually be removed as is the natural order of the universe.

Except it's obviously not some immutable law of the universe and if you take away things that people like, they're going to ask why. And they'll keep asking, even after people like me who were around during the beta forget about Starbound (if the game sticks around long enough for that to happen). Players will dig through assets and forum posts and find these discussions and unused assets and ask again, why?

You know Kirby, the pink puffy Nintendo character? Did you know that his current appearance was originally placeholder? But they made the placeholder appearance his official appearance because it suited him. True story.

Maybe my post is just pointless like so many others you have evidently seen, but it's better than just letting the question ball up inside me.

And that jab was hardly necessary (or relevant, ad hominem). I have feelings too.

(Also, I know there are still Hiraki Corale codexes, but a bunch of others were removed according to the wiki, at least some of which did not make references to characters removed from the lore. If you've found more than 9 different codexes for Corale, I'm willing to own up to my misconceptions.)

Edit: I'm honestly sorry if it comes off that way, but I'm not trying to brush aside all explanations that people give me. I stated a few explanations I've seen, and stated why I disagree. If you have something new to add, I'm capable of reconsidering.

 

It's not the asking that's an issue. Yeah, people are gonna ask. Which is fine, it's a chance to share information. I'm fascinated by the processes that lead to the things I like (and fields I've worked in) coming to life, from how games get made, to learning the ins-and-outs of Trademark cases, the thought processes of showrunners and movie producers, the limitations of steel injection molding, etc, and sharing that information is great.

But it seems like virtually every time this general question is asked, it comes with a baked-in, reflexive, and adamant rejection of the explanations people provide. THAT is where things get tiresome and repetitive. I get there's some upsetness. I don't like the loss of some of the Koala-build things myself (I adored running around with a folding chair weapon bashing things over the head), but I can understand and appreciate the reasons why such things would be dropped in favor of getting 1.0 out the door... especially since actually reaching that goal makes the return/reworking of some early concepts more plausible in future updates.

No, everything dropped was not specifically a placeholder; many things would be removed simply because they felt it didn't work with the new direction, or newer items took work-time priority (I'd way rather have the staves/wands, whips, gauntlets, chakrams etc than have them spend time rebalancing a ton of functionally-same cosmetic racial weapons)... but functionally there's not gonna be much difference in the end. It's just the nature of game (or fiction or toy or any number of other fields) development that lots of ideas, even implemented ideas, will end up on the cutting room floor for any number of valid reasons before the final product sees release. The big difference is that the consumer base in general isn't privy to the process, or at least not so close to it. Early Access has given people who are historically used to seeing a game as a completed, finished thing the ability to play games that... well, aren't. At all. It butts up against long-built-up expectations. And it seems few things make people want something more than simply being told/shown they wouldn't get it or taking them away, regardless of the quality of the thing.

At least this game was ground-up built to accept major updates, modifications and expansions, and CF has shown they're dedicated to providing those. I expect the major Space update to come with a swath of small stuff like Codexes. I can easily see smaller weapon updates following that bring back some of the cosmetics of the older builds, once the BIG stuff is out of the way.

 

Like it or not, those are the reasons.

Placeholder content, test content, and content that didn't align with Chucklefish's vision at that time. It really doesn't matter if you think some of the cut content would still fit within the game, it simply wasn't something they wanted to keep around.

Occams Razor.


Personally I never likes racial weapons. They were all slanted and most all of them looked bad (IMO). And they replaced it with a more robust and expansive random generation.

 

the one thing I never understood was the change from the first incarnation of the grappling hook to the second (we are currently on the third)
the first one had smooth changes to rope length, and was slow enough that you couldnt cause fall damage to yourself. the second version caused a lot of fall damage
the first version let you build up huge amounts of momentum. with the second you could barely get more momentum than running
I remember spending a large amount of time just throwing myself around an asteroid field using nothing but grappling hooks. with the second version I remember crafting them once and the massive disappointment.

the third version is ok enough, but I never understood why the change happened in the first place

 

Testing. They were trying out something different. Obviously they didn't like it. Nothing mystical there.

 

Welp, I might be being petty but unless someone has something more solid to contribute I'm giving up here.

Some of the major stuff like bosses, old crafting stations, and rails didn't fit what the devs' vision of the game or they had something better, which is perfectly fine. Some (not all) of the codexes didn't fit the lore, which is also understandable. Some of the other stuff was placeholder I guess, I still fail to see how that warrants removal by itself when it worked fine and people liked it (don't fix what isn't broken?), but I digress.

As for the rest? The apple pie, the other codexes, the legendary weapons, etc.? It doesn't look like I'll get a better answer than the devs just didn't want it. For reasons.

I don't know what I expected to gain from this, maybe I just had a vain hope that someone here would have some magical insight into the issue, or there was some obscure bit of info that I somehow missed, or one of the developers themselves might even answer the thread. Evidently not, everyone here is approximately as clueless as I am. I figured it was kind of implied that the devs didn't want stuff in if they bothered to remove it. The real question is why didn't they want it.

 

Why did you pick the wheat bread over the white? Likely because that is what you wanted. Nothing more.

Why did you move your dresser to the other wall? Because that is what you wanted. Nothing more.


There is nothing wrong with "because that is what they wanted" as an answer. Things didn't fall in line with their vision. Simple as that. Not all answers are glamorous nor what you want to hear. Sorry.

 

I picked the wheat bread because I wanted to. I wanted to because it's healthier.

I moved the dresser because I wanted to. I wanted to because it looked better.

They removed good content because they wanted to. They wanted to because something about not having it was evidently better to them. Something more.


Not all answers are glamorous or what I want to hear. But not all answers are vague and unsatisfactory either.

 

Just because we're not CF staff, we're not clueless. There's a lot to learn about the processes to where you can make educated, informed guesses that are far more likely to be right even if you don't have the exact reasons.