Starbound Beta release (4th december)

[M!C]

The difficulty of the game really is pretty high compared to other mainstream games, so I'm not suprised they're adjusting it down to raise sales (noone wants to be known for making a challenging game anymore sadly).

In my opinion having enemies so difficult that you can't meet them in open combat really made trying to get high level spoils way above what you can usually handle fun and a challenge.

The only part I'd have wanted changed a bit is the bosses.
Make them a bit weaker perhaps (we got wiped out while fighting the UFO with 6 people) but prevent "cheating" by just encasing them (or yourself) in blocks and such tricks.

Our attempt happened before the last update though, so I can't comment on how it works now.

[murillokb]

I figured out you can just put everything you need in your ship so you don't need a base... the teleport is so good, so much fun, but it's also so overpowered. At least there are some limits to it.


I can't really play right now. I'm using a low end computer for the weekend and the Beta is not optimized for such bad piece of technology (i'm having less than 20fps for sure)... i can play BTW (30+ fps) with a friend at least xD

[FlowerChild]

Oh boy...this is bad. In one patch I just went from barely scraping out an existence on an ice planet having to place campfires every 50 meters or so as waypoints to stay alive, and wearing iron armor which is significantly weaker than the silver I have for a small heat bonus, to instantly being able to make hoth rebel gear which keeps me warm the whole time without need of a single campfire, and which has BETTER armor protection than my silver (way better).

<pours one on the curb>

Well, that's the quickest I've ever seen a good game go bad.

[M!C]

What I'm hoping for is that they're going to end up making the alpha sector trivial but then ramp up the difficulty as you progress.

Wasn't the plan to have 10 different sectors total?
There's enough room in there to accomodate all difficulties from "do it blind if you like" to "insta-death if you get touched".

Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer to ramp it up from where alpha was all the way to "past insane" but realistically we have to share our beloved games with the masses.

EDIT (from the most recent release notes):
"Fixed (nerfed sorry), Snow infantry armor (done)"
http://playstarbound.com/coming-tonight-6-december/

Not all is lost apparently.

[Taleric]

Dack noooo!!! Come on chucklefish keep it together :/

BTW when you go to craft those projects make sure you are VERY ready before you activate.... I got one shot and when I came back... gone... So I have have to start from scratch :P

Being vague to save others fun.

[Pfilson]

I still have hope, since they have said the death pixel loss is temporary. IT seems that they are still working on balance. They don't even have difficulty modes enabled yet.

It looks like they may be making early game a bit easier so that people can test later game features as well... But hey it's early beta and they are nerfing items for balance so its not entirely Onward to easy mode!

[FlowerChild]

The thing is man, once you go down that route, if you change it to be harder, THEN you'll really get the bitching.

I can almost guarantee they won't turn it back as they'll face twice the shitstorm if they do. Hence why I always try to err on the side of being too difficult rather than too easy when first releasing a feature.

Changing things for "easier testing" just a few days after first release is a transparent bullshit excuse.

[Tsugumi Henduluin]

I don't suppose you're willing to slap some sense into them?

Really sad to read this. I was really looking forward to digging into this game once the wipes calmed down, but this is making me fear for the future. I suppose I'll still have fun with the game, but it's always depressing to play a game knowing it could've been so much more.

[FlowerChild]

I don't suppose you're willing to slap some sense into them?

I was tempted to post something last night on their forums, but in the end decided against it.

I just don't need any more drama like that man, especially if it risks spiraling into something like BTSM when I'm trying to move onto my own game project. For once then, I'm deciding to restrain my impulse to point out stuff like this and just focus on my own work. It's unlikely I could get them to reconsider their course anyways, and all it would likely do is generate a lot of animosity with their fans and distraction with the only satisfaction to be gained from it being an after the fact "told you so" (which isn't very much satisfaction at all).

I think I'll attempt to restrict my grumblings about other games to these forums in the future. The energy involved is much better directed towards my own creative efforts :)

[DaveYanakov]

We should be keeping in mind when suggesting to FC that he offer advice to other developers that it is basically asking him to boost his own competition for an open world game. It would be nice to see Starbound retain a steep difficulty curve but if Flowerchild steps in to try and intervene it costs him more than hours of his finite lifespan or additional stress.

I have seen this come up several times now between Don't Starve, KSP and assorted other survival sandbox games. It is starting to feel a little bit thoughtless to me.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, I agree with you Dave, and it's something that I think about as well. My "job" isn't to teach other designers how to make the kinds of games that are to my particular taste and which are ultimately my own design signature. I've worked my entire life on games to accumulate this level of experience and to define my own particular design style. If I were actually successful in convincing others of the validity of my approach, and teach them everything I know about how to go about it, I would become largely obsolete.

My "job" is to make those games myself. The ideas I have are the valuable commodity I possess with which to make them.

It's a bit of a cut-throat outlook on things, and blurs the line between who I am as a gamer who just wants to play cool shit and who I am as a game dev who wants the opportunity to develop some cool shit himself, which is why I tend not to talk about it too often, but yes, it's something that has come to concern me more and more. I tend to be rather open about such things by nature, and very much enjoy talking about them, but with time I've come to realize that sometimes I need to just keep my mouth shut for my own good.

[Gilberreke]

Heh, I obviously agree with you guys, but I have to say, you're already a teacher man :)

Many people come and return to these forums to hear you say insightful things and I'm sure there's lurkers with no interest in ever making a game that are good designers by now :)

But yeah, for the sake of sanity and preserving your talent for stuff that actually earns you bread on the table, keep it in your pants on this forum ;)

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, that's the way I look at it. I'm pretty straightforward with you guys as to why I do things unless it has to do with my future plans. I enjoy the conversation, and do find it very gratifying when people say that they've learned something from my ramblings.

But going beyond these walls almost inevitably winds up being a mistake in retrospect, so I'm trying to minimize that ;)

[Taleric]

Got far enough to call it done before the next reset.

Wish I had known:

Spoiler

Show

platinum only spawns in the 4th sector...

After being forgetful a few times I kept all items of value on the ship and just went rapid exploring. The guns were a little underwhelming but fair.

I saw a point made on the distinction between this and edge of space. I tried EoS again a bit a enjoyed it much more than before. With the exhausted cryopod fail state and the endless trek downward I think EoS has a game play niche that differs enough to survive.

[Tsugumi Henduluin]

I was tempted to post something last night on their forums, but in the end decided against it.

Fair enough. The question was mostly tongue-in-cheek anyway :p

[erikdk321]

I just installed the game, completely blind, and i have no idea what to do xD Its hiliarious

[WeedFather]

It's hard to resist the temptation of buying and playing this game, but I'm starting to get worried about the balance issues. Related to that, for some reason, it just bugs me that the bow does not require ammunition. I don't know if it's because I've been playing Minecraft so much, or what, but it just seems most illogical! Obviously, you can get the materials to make a frakken bow and some bandages, why not some stone arrows or something?

Also, if you have a cool ship which can act as your base and home and have everything you need, that does seem a bit OP to me. And then there's the character wipes. I am just gonna have to resist the temptation of buying this game and just wait until OB if possible: I need to see where this goes.

[murillokb]

Well arrows consume energy and if you think that's op wait until you have techs and your energy becomes a problem.

The balance seems to be really worked on right now.

And playing around in the ship only shows it is too small to be a real base. It's a more like "workstation" with crafting table/anvil etc but you can't have crops around for example and it's space is limited.

i just don't get the starter (broken) weapon being more powerful than any craftable early game weapon :P

[FlowerChild]

And playing around in the ship only shows it is too small to be a real base. It's a more like "workstation" with crafting table/anvil etc but you can't have crops around for example and it's space is limited.

I dunno man, I do think the ship and what it does to base building will be a tough one to balance. Once I figured out I could put "shelves" in the top portion of the ship for mass storage, I pretty much forgot about building decent bases on planets.

Also, you wind up moving around from planet to planet so much, that there just isn't much motivation to develop bases on them. It's even difficult to just find the same planet once you've left it unless you write down the coordinates or specifically set it as your home, and once you move to a new sector, the fuel cost to go back is heavy enough that you're unlikely to want to do so. It winds up making the worlds you visit feel almost disposable, and not at all like the persistent ones of games like MC, which is part of what I think encourages people to build.

I played until the third sector in the last build before finally deciding to pack it in for now due to platinum not being available which brings your progress to a grinding halt. By the end of it, my bases on planets were basically a stone shack with a ladder going down to lava level under them. I also never ate anything but meat, so unless they're willing to stress the food supply a bit (or a lot) harder, I don't think farming is going to impact this much either. Considering the last release they made meat easier to acquire, I don't get the impression that's the direction they're going.

Not saying it can't work, but I do think it'll take some creative design to not have it diminish base building to nigh nonexistence.

[Taleric]

Even to setup a camp to mine out a planet is not really necessary. There would have to be a reason to build like a factory to process materials or a grinder.

I might skip this update if there will be another wipe. This information on recent and upcoming changes was interesting and makes it hard to tell how it will play down the road:

http://community.playstarbound.com/inde ... tes.46048/

[murillokb]

Spoiler

Show

And playing around in the ship only shows it is too small to be a real base. It's a more like "workstation" with crafting table/anvil etc but you can't have crops around for example and it's space is limited.

I dunno man, I do think the ship and what it does to base building will be a tough one to balance. Once I figured out I could put "shelves" in the top portion of the ship for mass storage, I pretty much forgot about building decent bases on planets.

Also, you wind up moving around from planet to planet so much, that there just isn't much motivation to develop bases on them. It's even difficult to just find the same planet once you've left it unless you write down the coordinates or specifically set it as your home, and once you move to a new sector, the fuel cost to go back is heavy enough that you're unlikely to want to do so. It winds up making the worlds you visit feel almost disposable, and not at all like the persistent ones of games like MC, which is part of what I think encourages people to build.

I played until the third sector in the last build before finally deciding to pack it in for now due to platinum not being available which brings your progress to a grinding halt. By the end of it, my bases on planets were basically a stone shack with a ladder going down to lava level under them. I also never ate anything but meat, so unless they're willing to stress the food supply a bit (or a lot) harder, I don't think farming is going to impact this much either. Considering the last release they made meat easier to acquire, I don't get the impression that's the direction they're going.

Not saying it can't work, but I do think it'll take some creative design to not have it diminish base building to nigh nonexistence.

So you don't build bases, just set up a camp and go mine. You strip the land of meat and wood. You have a hard time finding your home or it is too far. You lack the resourses. Sir you are describing the BTW early game :D

I think that bases are a late game thing in Starbound. You will need lots of resourses to travel back and fort to your main/home and you will do that because of the lack of room in your ship. i've never stayed in a base as small as this ship for too long in any game (terraria, MC, BTW). You will need more room for storage, npcs AND crops (have you seen the buffs of better food?) at some point.

Edit: Also i think you can find platinum now.

[FlowerChild]

So you don't build bases, just set up a camp and go mine. You strip the land of meat and wood. You have a hard time finding your home or it is too far. You lack the resourses. Sir you are describing the BTW early game :D

Well, BTW doesn't have a separate dimension you can always just warp to with a click of a button to store all your goodies in, and it also has a central location that you have good reason to always return to and build infrastructure around, so no, I'm really not :)

[Sarudak]

One thing that seems to be missing from games like this is industry. If you had to build machine type creations for producing/processing goods that would go a long way toward making a game like this fun to play. Also can you imagine how cool it would be if you built a machine that ran on steam and could watch it work in the 2D cross section?

[Taleric]

That was just my thought :)
Little conveyer belt sections and maybe mech arms ala factorio. Processing modules of all types and hoppers. It could take up a bit of area, throw in processing scrap and multiple elements required, it could be huge :D

Then like the everlasting gobstopper just a small item rolls out lol

[FlowerChild]

Automation seems to be the last thing on the minds of many designers in this genre. It's one of the lessons MC teaches that not many seem to have picked up on, maybe because it's been largely restricted to mods.