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Vib Rib posted:Agent Kool-Aid had it right, they need to figure out their own game because right now Starbound is a bunch of different things slapped together and a lot of them don't gel at all. They just sort of said "let's do stuff in space and we'll wing it it'll be fine" and here we are. They need a plan, an understanding of their own game, because even though recent updates have polished a lot of stuff like combat, huge overarching concepts just don't work properly together and even if they do that doesn't mean they're fun or engaging. 90% of what's wrong with this game is the design decisions, not the coding or the bugs or the flaws, just the way they've chosen to go with things. I mean yeah, if you wanna actually talk about how to make the game good, that's what they need to do. So many of the updates seem to be at total odds with each other. It doesn't even seem like they have a clear vision basic things like "do we want it to be pretty free form sandbox, like terraria, or lead the players down a largely linear path of premade content more like super metroid with some light random generated options on the side". They apparently have enough money that they could easily just take six months or a year off or whatever and sorta reboot their process. It worked for FFXIV. But honestly I'm just not even sure it's worth trying. It feels like they need better management, and they just don't have it, and that won't change even if they take a few months off to figure things out. Maybe a better option would be to throw Starbound on the backburner, make another game or two to get some experience at being a Head Designer, and then go back to it? gently caress man I don't know.
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Apr 25, 2015 20:00
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King Starbound Is a Dick of My rear end and Mouth
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Apr 25, 2015 20:10
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the gameis a penis
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Apr 25, 2015 20:16
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Starbound has promise as a base-building Metroidvania. The trick is to say "If I want to X, I'll have to Y", then signpost how to Y and make Y fun, then scatter X's all over the galaxy. Oxygen apparatus for vacuums, heat shielding for volcanoes, thermals for ice planets, etc etc. Don't have them all gated in a line (a->b->c), have them all individually gated so that the player can go for whichever ones they want to go for first, and if they have trouble with one they can gear up doing a different one. The overarching story is handled the same way, more or less. Have a "lavos bucket" where you can warp right to the big bad, signpost it that This Is A Bad Idea until you gear up, but new players can see the endgame and prepare for it while Hardcore 360NOSC0PES can try for speedruns or NewGame+ wins. If you want  combat, you could make the fight winnable if the player is absurdly skilled.If the player tries the bucket and fails, have the monster attack the newly-space-capable ship (since you repaired it as part of the tutorial) and force the player to withdraw to the Quest Hub, which has all the "Go here, do this, get cool abilities/gate keys" quests/signs. The game is then free-roam. Remove manual mining, or make it very fast and rewarding, since we should be focusing on metroidvainia-ing the game. Automines, satisfying destructive mining lasers, and/or purchasable/repairable mining outposts should provide raw material if you really really REALLY need to have ore collection being a thing. The first and last encourage people to recruit and manage NPCs, first just civilians mining cheap ores, then adding soldiers, doctors etc on dangerous planets, etc. The eventual goal that you attract merchants and have your own The Outpost that out-Outposts the game's quest hub. Gate quests (just off the top of my head): Progression -Hot worlds -Cold worlds -Vacuum worlds -Acid air worlds (include a reference to Signs, why are you invading a world that melts your skin off?) -Radiated worlds (next to stars/supernovae) -Ocean worlds edit: -High-gravity worlds -Low-gravity worlds -Mind controlling alien worlds (get a  helmet)-Worlds with 'touch fuzzy get dizzy' fungal trees, need an antidote or air filter or something These can be done in any order. Then you can mix-and-match in the Beta and Gamma systems with your cool new biomes- boiling oceans, radiated moons, frozen acid oceans, and just cool poo poo all around. You will explore dangerous poo poo and say "Yea come at me, I'm ready for this poo poo  " rather than "gently caress THIS ACID AGAIN, SHIIIIT"Crafting -As part of a different quest, you come across an abandoned automine/mining colony. You fix up, say, a furnace as part of the quest, and you have the option to either leave immediately or fix the place up a little. You see a core drill, an arcwelding robot, the furnace, and you've seen crafting recipes that use these things, why not fix them up? Give the player the freedom to take the place over completely, scrap out the garbage, install some new things, move in some workers, you got a cool base there now! -But this place just mines Tier 1 Things (and maybe one Tier 2 Thing kinda slow and annoyingly). Why not buy a deed to a Tier 2 World? -Or instead go find plans for Tier 2 Mining Things? -Or instead go find some workers/orbital surveyors who can mine Tier 2 Things well? -You get an efficiency bonus for mining/homeworlds/outposts being close together. Better warp technologies or freighter fleets improve effectiveness and output. Go find tech and contracts! Do all that and put them on a Tier 2 world to get a ton of material, both to armor up your ship (it was attacked in act 1!), armor up yourself, and re-invest into your homeworld/outposts and mining colonies. If you can't be assed to bother, you can get these things on progression worlds, just barely, plus an hour or two of manual digging/spelunking, though you won't have some craft-specific things that will make later progression easier. Main Progression also gives things like blueprints and hiring contacts/contracts that make your crafting setups easier/cheaper/faster/more effective. Exploring reveals dungeons (for main/side progression and leveling) as well as mineral nodes (so you can say "aw snap I need to build a miner on this world"). If you can't find anything, you can ask around the Outpost to buy treasure maps (to dungeons) and mineral surveys. Evilreaver fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Apr 25, 2015 |
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Apr 25, 2015 20:34
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Apparently Evilreaver is, in fact, a chef. Metaphorically speaking. Chucklefish, hire this guy.
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Apr 25, 2015 20:45
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Network Pesci posted:Apparently Evilreaver is, in fact, a chef. That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me
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Apr 25, 2015 20:48
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The biggest problem I have is there's no "casual" play mode. Everything is gated behind tedious mining, walking back and forth to NPCs in the hub, and really difficult bosses even in the earliest parts of the game. If they rolled back to Enraged Koala and finished the things that should have been implemented (ocean biomes, Hylotl/Human villages, Novakids, pets) and added in actual reasons to do dungeons, I would have considered it a decent $15 game. My wishlist would have the ability to generate a new seed for your own, personal universe, reasons to do the dungeons, actual loot in the dungeons (I think another goon and I struck gold with the idea of finding unique S.A.I.L.S. in treasure chests), and more diverse biomes. Maybe let me join an NPC village and do quests for them instead of the stupid hub. I also feel like the artists on this game are wasting their talents on this game. The game environments are beautiful and the spirtework is very cute, but it's all gated behind unfun bullshit. I'm so proud of Chucklefish for finally adding Novakids even though we had a mod that did that in 2014. 
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Apr 25, 2015 20:55
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I've tried to be optimistic about the game in general but modding it has stopped being fun. I'm getting the same feeling back when I played Spore to death, that the game is just kinda not gonna go anywhere. I should probably go mod some other game or go back to coding SS13 or something, it just doesn't feel rewarding or worth the time to mod Starbound right now. Maybe later but as much as i've tried to keep a positive outlook on things i'm not going to hold my breath.
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Apr 25, 2015 21:14
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Jackard posted:Does this game even have a design document? 1. Make game unfun 2. Make game tedious Signed Ceo of Chucklefish
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Apr 25, 2015 21:14
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You know what's kind of ironic to me about this game's development? I remember when insane people were frothing at the mouth at how Chucklefish were wasting money and time moving to London, and everyone sane called it a sensible move that would streamline development. Fast forward to now, and suddenly it looks like the gibbering lunatics were better oracles of the future than the sensible people. I'm not sure what to think about that.
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Apr 25, 2015 21:18
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moving to London is irrelevant to the development goals of making this as tedious and unfun as possible unless that is what London does to people
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Apr 25, 2015 21:57
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Starbound's combat status: poo poo sucks. So how do you make a good combat? There are two ways that I know of, as far as 2D games go. 1) Megaman, Metroid This is the way to go if you want a game. Your main, starter weapon/kit is okay if lackluster, and if you're put up against the end boss he'll wipe the floor with you since his attacks come quickly, you're a weakling, and you don't have any countertools, however if you're mad skilled and you know the boss' routine and tells, can dodge them and rack up hits with your popgun to eventually kill him. It's hard (since you'll die in 5 hits and he takes 50), but possible. I've seen Dark Souls speedruns of people playing the hard-start class (Deprived? I'm not a DS'er) and finishing without using any equipment or spending any statpoints.As the game goes along, you gather a shitload of collectables and roughly double your health and maybe bring your armor up a notch or two, and that's it. Your weapons are situational, rock/paper/scissory, and no more than five times the power of your basic gun when they're used in their prime element. You also collect a lot of movement-based skills like wallhops, slides, etc. that are useful for dodging and getting good positions on fights. Combat is primarily 1-on-1 or 1-on-3 tops. This is probably the right way for Starbound to go, honestly. Having armor and weapons that multiply your power by whole integers per tier is waaay too much for ing your game. With good enough equipment the enemies are easy; while undergeared the enemies oneshot you or are just impossible anyway. Neither is fun, nor can they be meaningfully skilled around.2) Terraria, Soldat, Bleed These games are fast and spammy. You move around without much care, typically on a very cheap-to-use jetpack or floaty jumps that allow you a lot of Y-axis movement which allows you to pepper large swaths of enemies with lots of satisfying weapons, blowing poo poo up like a boss particularly later in the game. You don't face one enemy who you have to carefully outmaneuver, you face five and pick priority targets to burst down with your BFG, then you switch to the shotgun and mop up the kinda-bigs, then your grenade launcher to blast the little guys to bits. You don't stop to reload or let your energy recharge! You stop because you ran out of enemies! You stop because they are BEGGING FOR THEIR LIVES and you want to revel in it! You stop because you said "Woah, going 20-to-one was a bit much, let's stick to 15-to-one odds". While these games are my personal pick, it's probably not Starbound's flavor.
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Apr 25, 2015 21:58
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Terraria's combat status: poo poo sucks. The choice is clear.
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Apr 25, 2015 22:00
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Evilreaver's got some good ideasTallgeese posted:You know what's kind of ironic to me about this game's development?
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Apr 25, 2015 22:00
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its like rain on your wedding day
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Apr 25, 2015 22:20
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it's dramatic irony because the dev team thinks they're making a good game but the audience knows otherwise
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Apr 25, 2015 22:23
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Server's back up, 69.9.223.65 guest alpaca You'll need: FCSMod and CompactCrops1.1 Silento Boborachi fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Apr 26, 2015 |
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Apr 26, 2015 00:08
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Jackard posted:moving to London is irrelevant to the development goals of making this as tedious and unfun as possible Well, it is kind of a bleak, depressing hellscape... ...Or am I confusing it with New York? --- Vib Rib posted:That's not really ironic, it's just the Starbound team being bad. Irony is the opposite of what you expect so this is the opposite of irony. I knew someone was going to call me out on that. Where does that fall on the irony scale?
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Apr 26, 2015 00:44
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You are the master commander.
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Apr 26, 2015 00:48
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Tallgeese posted:I knew someone was going to call me out on that. Where does that fall on the irony scale?
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Apr 26, 2015 05:47
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Being able to travel to literally any planet is nice, but it leaves a player directionless and they have to fumble around with hundreds of thousands of options on where to go next. Is this system better than that one?  It's been repeatedly shown that having more options seems like a better idea at first, but people are almost always more dissatisfied than if they had only a few options to pick from.Thus, we choke the player a little bit. Give the FTL drive a modest range (3/4 the initial viewscreen oughta do it) so rather than thousands, you have maybe a dozen stars to check. As part of your progression (as well as sidequest and crafting progression) give the FTL more range and fuel economy. Even though you can only warp so far in 'one go', you can always warp back to systems you've been before (have the UI show multiple 'jumps' though only charge fuel/time for one) as well as jump to systems near those you've visited (show the jumps to the familiar system, plus the destination jump). As part of the main Progression, you can build Gates that allow you to connect to any system in the sector. Free gates are limited, you can buy or craft them as well. Also, there are MOO2 style wormholes that allow you to go over vast distances, plus mid-wormhole encounters/dungeons/sidequests/fun stuff. New characters always start on the same world per multiplayer server (So everyone can play together), though each server will have its own newbie world. Share everyone's jump paths, so late joiners can immediately fly to join their bros. Civilized NPC 'constellations' could have 8-20 star systems pre-jumped, so you can quickly traverse a faction's network, adding range and options as well as giving nonlinear player-driven goals ("If I hit those Apex systems, maybe I can get some quests, merchants, and at least it will open up a dozen new stars I can reach"). Seeing these constellations will attract players, and thus they can be made into large-scale, perhaps multi-planet side-dungeons ("These miners have been hit by raiders! Oh, the mining boss went home to the residential planet? Maybe he has a key on him for this door"). It shouldn't be too hard to make randomized dungeons-systems alongside hand-crafted Progression or Sidequest dungeon-systems. Last but not least, warping time should be dependent on range. Planet->Moon? One second in warp, most of the travel time is spooling. System jump? 1 minute, as current. Multi-jump? 1 minute base, +15 seconds per jump. As part of Progression, Sidequesting and Crafting, warping gets faster, with color variations to the warp (Customizable???). Form a 'fleet' with multiplayer ships so everyone warps as fast as the fastest guy. Slow down larger ships as players tier up so they have some incentive to speed them up and feel accomplished when they do so, as well as giving Gates an additional purpose. As an end-tier ready-for-the-final-battle tech, allow arbitrary warp distance at the 1-minute time even with the largest ship. Or, if a player doesn't want to deal with a huge late-tier ship, they get blazing fast warps. This tech is available in NewGame+. Ships travel with you through It's Just A Game You Should Really Just Relax so you can swap at most any shipyard-- civilized NPC, captured raider, or self-constructed. If you hate wait times but love large ships, have a low-tier speedy ship to get to a distant shipyard then swap in your big ship to get to your destination. The shipyard also allows the player to capture ships not belonging to their faction/race, though this is done through convoluted Side Quests (think Final Fantasy bonus dungeons-- hard, dedicated missions). You can also construct ships as part of Crafting progression. E: Shipyards (and Stations, for that matter) can be quickly selected as warp targets to quickly and cheaply refuel. Manually digging up fuel is tedious poo poo that should be saved for either cheapass grindy players or if you carelessly strand yourself mid-travel. Maybe you find a dungeon on that planet while you're digging up fuel, or if you hit an inhabited planet there could be optional quests to take as a diversion. E2: Harmless customization slots on your ship engine. Start with 3, give maybe 2 more in the Main questline, but a dozen in sidequests and another dozen in the crafting system. Faster spooling, faster warp, lower fuel, colors and effects, cheaper multijumps, stealth engines to avoid random space encounters (given at character introduction so it can be easily toggled player-by-player). Now this is key: When you're in a multiplayer game, you can see your fleetmates in the background warping next to you, and comment on how their warpdrive sucks and yours is the best. Evilreaver fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Apr 26, 2015 |
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Apr 26, 2015 06:27
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Evilreaver.... I demand you mind control tiy and make starbound good before he adds paid mods via workshop support. You all know its coming.
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Apr 26, 2015 06:52
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grimcreaper posted:Evilreaver.... I demand you mind control tiy and make starbound good before he adds paid mods via workshop support. You all know its coming. He's been actively defending the decision on Twitter, so it'll probably be coming sooner than you think. Birdtits + Cumguns bundle mod, only $4.99 for a limited time only! Get em while they're hot! 
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Apr 26, 2015 07:59
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Much Much Much bigger planets that are shallower than they are now because there's nothing interesting underground, fewer immediate choices in where to go, and some sort of teleporting interface that'll let you drop beacons to teleport to and from, then getting rid of mining entirely and let me just be a scavenger and find poo poo to slap into my gun or lightsaber or whatever, and then make the combat like megaman. Let me "gather" materials by killing pleb miners who did it all for me, or steal prototype weapons from science labs. I don't really care how it's done, but ffs just get rid of mining. Also why is everyone throwing such a shitfit over mod makers selling their mods?
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Apr 26, 2015 08:28
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Evilreaver has a lot of good ideas, but a lot of them include quite a lot of change. Sorting them into groups ranging from easy to hard to implement would be a good idea. Then realizing that none of the devs would actually listen because they have their own stupid idea of gameplay. That happens when you let a bunch of kiddies that think minecraft mods are the poo poo lead a programming team.
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Apr 26, 2015 09:38
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Bauxite posted:ffs just get rid of mining.
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Apr 26, 2015 09:45
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Doggboat posted:You pretty much want a different game. Me too. Me too... I dunno, building is fun, and even crafting can be okay, but I don't see what mining itself adds to the game other than "adds time until you can go turn this poo poo into something you want." It's like wildstar's attunement, just a bunch of busywork. Even in minecraft there was actual risk to going mining other than "falls too far."
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Apr 26, 2015 09:52
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Michaellaneous posted:Evilreaver has a lot of good ideas, but a lot of them include quite a lot of change. Sorting them into groups ranging from easy to hard to implement would be a good idea. List of ideas that Chucklefish will implement, alphabetically:
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Apr 26, 2015 09:56
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Evilreaver posted:List of ideas that Chucklefish will implement, alphabetically:
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Apr 26, 2015 10:08
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Bauxite posted:I dunno, building is fun, and even crafting can be okay, but I don't see what mining itself adds to the game other than "adds time until you can go turn this poo poo into something you want." It's like wildstar's attunement, just a bunch of busywork. Even in minecraft there was actual risk to going mining other than "falls too far." That's what I like about some of Minecraft's crazy mods. They had quarries and crazy automation and stuff that you had to work up to and once you got some automation in place you shifted over to crafting some of the machines that required a ton of resources because suddenly you could pull entire chunks up. It felt like a nice progression.
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Apr 26, 2015 15:32
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mutata posted:That's what I like about some of Minecraft's crazy mods. They had quarries and crazy automation and stuff that you had to work up to and once you got some automation in place you shifted over to crafting some of the machines that required a ton of resources because suddenly you could pull entire chunks up. It felt like a nice progression. That's exactly it for me, and why Factorio is one of my favorite games. You mine ten metal by hand, then have garbage miners mine a thousand, then have real miners feed trains so metals come in tens of thousands at a time. I love having large-scale multistep productions to build, manage and tweak endlessly (I wish Space Engineers had some multistep construction  )Manual mining is a chore, automatic mining is great. Minecraft had you exploring caves you could get lost in, so you were always doing something, either marking trails or sealing up explored areas or wondering how you're going to get back to the surface now that you're totally lost you jerk. In 2D, you get unlost by digging up then running along the surface. Minecraft caves were sprawling enough that you may very well lose sight of your home from the surface. But Terraria has good mining. Why? Primarily because you can find other things down there. Heart cans, the first hook, and gold chests are all Cool Things To Have and finding one of any of them is a  moment. Starbound doesn't even have monster drops.
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Apr 26, 2015 19:06
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Tiy's thoughts on the paid mod situation valve and bethesda have unleashed: http://www.reddit.com/r/starbound/comments/33x06s/question_to_the_devs_are_modders_for_starbound/ Not for nothing, but maybe he should finish his goddamn game before considering how people could sell mods for an early access game. He also posted some nonsense about possibly doing a kickstarter for a mod competition where the money goes to the winner. Basically he'll do anything not to have to go back and try to figure out how to fix Starbound.
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Apr 26, 2015 21:01
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wish someone would "modify" him to be a good developer hahahaha. instead of a bad one
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Apr 26, 2015 21:06
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quote:Personally I find the idea of Starbound [...] being created by other professional development teams very appealing
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Apr 26, 2015 21:09
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People who get mad about people selling mods are entitled pieces of poo poo who get mad when people want money for content they created. e: I know there is a lot wrong with the modding community, but overall you should probably not get mad against the kind of modders who actually put effort into their poo poo.
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Apr 26, 2015 21:12
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Michaellaneous posted:People who get mad about people selling mods are entitled pieces of poo poo who get mad when people want money for content they created. Modding can't be monetized that way so easily, and perhaps more importantly, using money as the impetus for modding will definitely skew the involvement and production of a modding community. oddium posted:wish someone would "modify" him to be a good developer hahahaha. instead of a bad one
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Apr 26, 2015 21:16
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Afraid of Audio posted:Personally I find the idea of Starbound [...] being created by other professional development teams very appealing 
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Apr 26, 2015 21:34
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Please mock this for my amusement. http://playstarbound.com/colonies-and-endgame/quote:Colonies and Endgame
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Apr 28, 2015 04:55
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Seems okay at a glance.
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Apr 28, 2015 05:13
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That seems cool.
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Apr 28, 2015 05:15
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