Starbound to give you buyer's remorse.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Starbound to give you buyer's remorse.

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Cat Mattress posted:

This is the precise opposite of fun.
I wouldn't mind if it was a one-time affair and after you've done all these steps, you get a one-click recipe; but the idea of following "realistic" recipes step by step like this all the time just makes the game worse. I dpn't understand how people can want that.

I think there's a lot of this sort of thing in Minecraft mods, but most of the time those mods also include ways to automate the process, so the fun is going from needing to do all those steps by hand, to making it so you have a completely automated factory spitting out chocolate or whatever for you. But this kind of design doesn't work as well in starbound, where most things you'd want to make in the base game are fast and don't require many intermediary steps, if any.

# ? Jul 25, 2018 11:22

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# ? May 13, 2024 04:49

Cicadas!: Oct 27, 2010

Cat Mattress posted:

That was one of the "yeah, definitely not going to install this" points.

In the same vein, this looked cool (I like variety) but then I read the description and see this kind of things:

This is the precise opposite of fun.
I wouldn't mind if it was a one-time affair and after you've done all these steps, you get a one-click recipe; but the idea of following "realistic" recipes step by step like this all the time just makes the game worse. I dpn't understand how people can want that.

This sort of thing originates from Minecraft modding communities, where the base game is so unsalvageable in terms of depth they have to make everything a complicated series of multi-step progress bars so the player can pretend they're actually accomplishing something while they play. Nothing is fast in modded Minecraft, everything has a 30 minute wait timer and too many intermediary steps and takes way too much raw material, and this is after years of doubling down on these design decisions to the point where it's considered normal by the majority of the playerbase. Boiled down, modded Minecraft is an idle clicker that has unfortunately infected the modding scene of many other games with its terrible ideas by way of user cross-pollination

If you ever need some kind of red flag to look for to see if a mod has the Minecraft scene's stink on it, all you have to do is CTRL+F the word "bees".

# ? Jul 25, 2018 11:34

Section Z: Oct 1, 2008; Wait, this is the Moon.
How did I even get here?; Pillbug

Cat Mattress posted:

That was one of the "yeah, definitely not going to install this" points.

In the same vein, this looked cool (I like variety) but then I read the description and see this kind of things:

This is the precise opposite of fun.
I wouldn't mind if it was a one-time affair and after you've done all these steps, you get a one-click recipe; but the idea of following "realistic" recipes step by step like this all the time just makes the game worse. I dpn't understand how people can want that.

Even the most casual of games with any trace of survival elements make people go a little stupid in the head.

If you provide people multiple sources of infinite food and infinite water. They will cry for nerfs over the large 2x2 fruit that rots within a minute after picking, even when it's early in the development eating too many in a row will make you vomit blood "Because you can eat it right off the tree without replanting!". An automated water purification machine will take 15 minutes, and 1/4 of a nuclear reactor's fuel per cycle, and "It's still too good because it's for free!"

Meanwhile, a self replenishing tank where the animals inside can be crafted into preserved food and plastic sports bottles of water? A single solar panel letting you hammer out 1 tile preserved food and water on the fabricator? Oh, that's the height of hardcore survivalism.

Regardless of the actual effectivness of what is being used, QoL does something to the hardcore survival gamer lizard brain.

It's why even the most high tech settings seem to feel obligated to keep you as constantly staving as a flannel shirt wearing hobo running from zombies in the woods.

Take yet another unrelated space survival game, Planet Nomads. A game selling itself on building excavation machines that would make a captain planet villain jealous (How does a 48 wheeler sound to you? or an airship). So of course the big priorities of the Devs include nerfing water in planet gen (because people were just DRILLING for water and not being at risk of thirst! Who would do such a thing in a survival game?).

Section Z fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Jul 25, 2018

# ? Jul 25, 2018 11:53

Nalesh: Jun 9, 2010; What did the grandma say to the frog?

Something racist, probably.

Cicadas! posted:

This sort of thing originates from Minecraft modding communities, where the base game is so unsalvageable in terms of depth they have to make everything a complicated series of multi-step progress bars so the player can pretend they're actually accomplishing something while they play. Nothing is fast in modded Minecraft, everything has a 30 minute wait timer and too many intermediary steps and takes way too much raw material, and this is after years of doubling down on these design decisions to the point where it's considered normal by the majority of the playerbase. Boiled down, modded Minecraft is an idle clicker that has unfortunately infected the modding scene of many other games with its terrible ideas by way of user cross-pollination

If you ever need some kind of red flag to look for to see if a mod has the Minecraft scene's stink on it, all you have to do is CTRL+F the word "bees".

At least minecraft mods have competent automation.

# ? Jul 25, 2018 13:53

I Said No: May 21, 2007; jesus dude ur gonna kill someone with that av

That poo poo with the chocolate is just anathema to me design-wise. It's part of why I scrapped my old science mod - you just end up with too many cruft items where the sole purpose is to go into one or two recipes and nothing else. At that point the entire item itself is just redundant and could easily be substituted for something else like part of a process or whatever. Lord knows SB's already got some pretty bad inventory issues as it is with the million crafting items.

# ? Jul 25, 2018 14:08

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

Nalesh posted:

At least minecraft mods have competent automation.

And in some ways there's a perk in actually having a reason to build things like big factory complexes and warehouses in a game where otherwise you might as well just build a hut with a fence, garden and mineshaft and you're good. At least for some people.

Though these days, you might as well just go play Factorio. Even Terraria has a better approach with things like potions being simple to do and not requiring much specialised construction.

# ? Jul 25, 2018 14:40

Rhopunzel: Jan 6, 2006; Stroll together, win together

Section Z posted:

Even the most casual of games with any trace of survival elements make people go a little stupid in the head.

If you provide people multiple sources of infinite food and infinite water. They will cry for nerfs over the large 2x2 fruit that rots within a minute after picking, even when it's early in the development eating too many in a row will make you vomit blood "Because you can eat it right off the tree without replanting!". An automated water purification machine will take 15 minutes, and 1/4 of a nuclear reactor's fuel per cycle, and "It's still too good because it's for free!"

Meanwhile, a self replenishing tank where the animals inside can be crafted into preserved food and plastic sports bottles of water? A single solar panel letting you hammer out 1 tile preserved food and water on the fabricator? Oh, that's the height of hardcore survivalism.

Regardless of the actual effectivness of what is being used, QoL does something to the hardcore survival gamer lizard brain.

It's why even the most high tech settings seem to feel obligated to keep you as constantly staving as a flannel shirt wearing hobo running from zombies in the woods.

Take yet another unrelated space survival game, Planet Nomads. A game selling itself on building excavation machines that would make a captain planet villain jealous (How does a 48 wheeler sound to you? or an airship). So of course the big priorities of the Devs include nerfing water in planet gen (because people were just DRILLING for water and not being at risk of thirst! Who would do such a thing in a survival game?).

Reminds me of Project Zomboid, I got it a few weeks ago to play with a friend and the extremes they take some of the ~survival elements~ is ridiculous. It's really giving a great example of what not to do with the game I'm making with a couple people from this thread.

It's a fun game but there's so many things to keep track of that staying alive at all is just a chore. At any given time you're either hungry, thirsty, too hot, too cold, depressed or sick. There aren't any obvious indicators that you're dying or seriously injured other than very subtle tells and tiny icons to the side of the screen that's barely noticeable, otherwise the only way to monitor your health is to have the entire character window open constantly, eating up into screen real estate needed for the game world, so a lot of the time you'll be totally unaware your guy's hurt because they visually look fine, and they'll suddenly drop dead with no obvious warning.

Crafting is super cumbersome and making even the simplest things needs ton of specific obscure items that only spawn as loot, and the devs couldn't decide whether they wanted you to craft things directly from the inventory or the crafting menu, so some things are only accessible from one or the other, but not both.

They also did the Starbound thing where guns are next to useless because they attract zombies from across the entire map if they're ever used, so the game's combat is 100% melee reminiscent of that terrible The War Z game where fighting zombies is just monotonously whacking zombies until they die.

Minor rant but good lord I'm sick of the whole trend of thinking tedium = fun that plagues survival games

# ? Jul 25, 2018 17:36

Ichabod Tane: Oct 30, 2005; A most notable
coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of no one good quality.

https://youtu.be/_Ojd0BdtMBY?t=4

Project Zomboid is definitely bogged down by too much bullshit and a terrible dogshit UI.

# ? Jul 25, 2018 17:41

Zamujasa: Oct 27, 2010; Bread Liar

Cat Mattress posted:

That was one of the "yeah, definitely not going to install this" points.

In the same vein, this looked cool (I like variety) but then I read the description and see this kind of things:

This is the precise opposite of fun.
I wouldn't mind if it was a one-time affair and after you've done all these steps, you get a one-click recipe; but the idea of following "realistic" recipes step by step like this all the time just makes the game worse. I dpn't understand how people can want that.

"Putting the yum in tedium"

I assume part of the drive towards making these absurd 'do 20 things to make one thing' trees is for some sense of "accomplishment", but at some point it just feels forced and ridiculous.

Especially in Starbound, where you have a device that literally turns money into anything.

# ? Jul 26, 2018 04:42

clone on the phone: Aug 5, 2003

There�s a mod to have sex with cockroach people. Nothing is beyond them.

# ? Jul 26, 2018 04:50

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

Sad thing is the sex mods are probably the most user-friendly.

# ? Jul 26, 2018 05:09

I Said No: May 21, 2007; jesus dude ur gonna kill someone with that av

clone on the phone posted:

There�s a mod to have sex with cockroach people. Nothing is beyond them.

I mean at least they keep to their own little corner to do their thing so they're not really harming anyone. Hell they're probably getting the opposite of tedium out of it.

# ? Jul 26, 2018 05:25

ToxicSlurpee: Nov 5, 2003; -=SEND HELP=-; Pillbug

clone on the phone posted:

There�s a mod to have sex with cockroach people. Nothing is beyond them.

If somebody mods something into a game somebody else, somewhere, will mod a way to have sex with it. That's just a horrifying fact of the internet. Whatever it is somebody wants to gently caress it.

# ? Jul 26, 2018 05:41

Sedisp: Jun 20, 2012

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Sad thing is the sex mods are probably the most user-friendly.

Lol the fact that sex mods come with a need to jerk while operating the UI prerequisite might unironically lead to a revolution in user friendliness.

# ? Jul 26, 2018 05:44

Slowflake: Aug 18, 2010

Sedisp posted:

Lol the fact that sex mods come with a need to jerk while operating the UI prerequisite might unironically lead to a revolution in user friendliness.

Counterpoint:

(From Skyrim or something, not Starbound)

# ? Jul 26, 2018 05:49

Elentor: Dec 14, 2004; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

The new Feral rotation is looking pretty good.

# ? Jul 26, 2018 05:58

Rupert Buttermilk: Apr 15, 2007; 🚣RowboatMan: ❄️Freezing time🕰️ is an old P.I. 🥧trick...

jonsicoli posted:

Counterpoint:

(From Skyrim or something, not Starbound)

Wow.

Qwopulation.

# ? Jul 26, 2018 10:28

spit on my clit: Jul 19, 2015; by Cyrano4747

jonsicoli posted:

Counterpoint:

(From Skyrim or something, not Starbound)

is this a street fighter tutorial??? didn't know blanka was that kind of freak

# ? Jul 26, 2018 13:55

I Said No: May 21, 2007; jesus dude ur gonna kill someone with that av

Oh hey, look who's not only back but in the Most Popular This Week section on the steam library. :ughh:

(spoilers: it's the nazi mod)

Didn't CF kick that mod off their own archive? If that's the case, is there some reason they'd not have jurisdiction to kick it off steam as well?

# ? Sep 17, 2018 16:32

GenderSelectScreen: Mar 7, 2010; I DON'T KNOW EITHER DON'T ASK ME; College Slice

I Said No posted:

Didn't CF kick that mod off their own archive? If that's the case, is there some reason they'd not have jurisdiction to kick it off steam as well?

And risk losing the last vestiges of their fanbase?

# ? Sep 17, 2018 16:56

spit on my clit: Jul 19, 2015; by Cyrano4747

I Said No posted:

Oh hey, look who's not only back but in the Most Popular This Week section on the steam library.
(spoilers: it's the nazi mod)

Didn't CF kick that mod off their own archive? If that's the case, is there some reason they'd not have jurisdiction to kick it off steam as well?

chucklefish has this comin' tbh. they've shown a clear lack of care for their modding community (aka the only reason this dumb game would have any players at this point), and now the most popular mod currently is a mod that makes you a nazi (somehow different from SA mods)

spit on my clit fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Sep 18, 2018

# ? Sep 18, 2018 01:48

ChessPiece: Jul 18, 2018; I will cry if you make fun of me.

I Said No posted:

Oh hey, look who's not only back but in the Most Popular This Week section on the steam library.
(spoilers: it's the nazi mod)

Didn't CF kick that mod off their own archive? If that's the case, is there some reason they'd not have jurisdiction to kick it off steam as well?

It's the Maus mod all over again where they got kicked off the official Starbound archives. However the creator of the Maus expressed their anger by calling the people who reported on their Nazi apologetic mod a bunch of babies.

This whole spiel is really petty.

# ? Sep 20, 2018 05:18

nerdz: Oct 12, 2004; Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.; Grimey Drawer

is the game Nazi yet

# ? Sep 30, 2018 00:30

I Said No: May 21, 2007; jesus dude ur gonna kill someone with that av

Maybe we could get the tankies to fight them

# ? Sep 30, 2018 00:41

spit on my clit: Jul 19, 2015; by Cyrano4747

I Said No posted:

Maybe we could get the tankies to fight them

but they love fascism

# ? Oct 4, 2018 15:04

Molybdenum: Jun 25, 2007; Melting Point ~2622C

Hey I bought this awhile ago and uninstalled after falling into lava at the core of the starting planet. I started a new game and I have questions about the space station. Is that something that I can pull from system to system/planet to planet or does it stay in orbit somewhere?

I have a basic cave on the first planet but I was thinking of moving everything up to my ship once it is large enough, but if the space station is just a big ship I'll do that instead.

# ? Oct 9, 2018 14:46

Cat Mattress: Jul 14, 2012; by Cyrano4747

Stations are stationary. You cannot move it from system to system. You can own several stations, but your ship is your only mobile base.

# ? Oct 9, 2018 15:11

ToxicSlurpee: Nov 5, 2003; -=SEND HELP=-; Pillbug

Uninstall the game and play terraria instead.

# ? Oct 9, 2018 15:14

Patware: Jan 3, 2005

a post in the starbound thread! after ten thousand years i rise again!

*erupts in a screaming column of blue fire howling GAME BAD*

# ? Oct 9, 2018 16:55

ToxicSlurpee: Nov 5, 2003; -=SEND HELP=-; Pillbug

We must not forget the sins of the past.

# ? Oct 9, 2018 17:12

I Said No: May 21, 2007; jesus dude ur gonna kill someone with that av

Molybdenum posted:

Hey I bought this awhile ago and uninstalled after falling into lava at the core of the starting planet. I started a new game and I have questions about the space station. Is that something that I can pull from system to system/planet to planet or does it stay in orbit somewhere?

I have a basic cave on the first planet but I was thinking of moving everything up to my ship once it is large enough, but if the space station is just a big ship I'll do that instead.

Once you've deployed a space station it's there forever, you can't move or remove it at all. The ship when upgraded is big enough to hold everything you'll ever need and more.

# ? Oct 9, 2018 17:23

frogge: Apr 7, 2006

The station stays wherever you put it, but you can always teleport to it from your ship so I stopped bothering with upgrading up my ship once I got one. I use the station for storage and even put in a few merchants and other residents to collect rent from and buy/sell stuff to.
Protip: Put the station in a system with a hot star so the rating for merchants is the highest and you'll potentially get the best possible stuff available. You're investing a lot of resources into a station anyways, may as well put your first one in a good spot.

Question- can you infinitely build parts for your station or is there a maximum size for it?

# ? Oct 9, 2018 19:17

Patware: Jan 3, 2005

what's worse in a general sense, starbound or star control: origins

star vs star let's go

# ? Oct 9, 2018 19:27

ToxicSlurpee: Nov 5, 2003; -=SEND HELP=-; Pillbug

Patware posted:

what's worse in a general sense, starbound or star control: origins

star vs star let's go

Every game is the worst game ever.

# ? Oct 9, 2018 19:43

I Said No: May 21, 2007; jesus dude ur gonna kill someone with that av

Patware posted:

what's worse in a general sense, starbound or star control: origins

star vs star let's go

well i mean bad as chucklefish is, tiy doesn't literally go on record saying that he'll punish everyone by closing down the studio if his right to sexually assault his employees is harmed in any way, nor park his expensive sports car horizontally across disabled parking spaces or go on big rants about how being "forced" to cater to the disabled is tyranny

# ? Oct 9, 2018 21:31

Patware: Jan 3, 2005

I Said No posted:

well i mean bad as chucklefish is, tiy doesn't literally go on record saying that he'll punish everyone by closing down the studio if his right to sexually assault his employees is harmed in any way, nor park his expensive sports car horizontally across disabled parking spaces or go on big rants about how being "forced" to cater to the disabled is tyranny

good, we're in agreement

you see, gently caress chucklefish, but destroy stardock

# ? Oct 9, 2018 22:17

I Said No: May 21, 2007; jesus dude ur gonna kill someone with that av

Patware posted:

good, we're in agreement

you see, gently caress chucklefish, but destroy stardock

if those are gently caress and kill, who's marry

# ? Oct 9, 2018 22:43

Patware: Jan 3, 2005

swery

# ? Oct 9, 2018 22:44

Cat Mattress: Jul 14, 2012; by Cyrano4747

Patware posted:

what's worse in a general sense, starbound or star control: origins

star vs star let's go

Starbound created its own franchise to ruin, instead of preying on an existing one like SC:O.

# ? Oct 9, 2018 22:49

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# ? May 13, 2024 04:49

Molybdenum: Jun 25, 2007; Melting Point ~2622C

What's so terrible about the game, excepting developer social media gaffs?

# ? Oct 10, 2018 00:49

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Starbound to give you buyer's remorse.

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