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Bjorn

Starbound

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Just saw the news that Starbound is launching into its beta tomorrow.  This is probably the game I have been most excited about this year.  The wife and I spent more time in Terraria than maybe any other game ever. 

 

I'm really conflicted about joining the beta or not though.  Part of me wants to see it RIGHT NAO!  But part of me also wants to be able to experience the finished game fresh as well.

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Yep, I'm with you on all accounts. Super excited about the game, but wary about trying (the very first launch of) the beta.

 

Luckily I have some exams coming up, which forces me away from spending tons of time with an unfinished and very likely buggy version of the game I'm excited about. But I will probably try it for an hour or two tomorrow, and again the day after if it's worth playing. Hopefully by the holiday break they will have ironed out the most glaring bugs, because that's when I'll be more likely to actually dig (no pun intended) into it.

 

Hopefully a lot of thumbs get this game, for some community fun and birdman erotic rolep space exploration.

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I know very little about Starbound funnily enough, though I am intensely excited about it. I have mostly tried to avoid spoiling myself beyond the main stuff, which is very unlike me. I am incredibly excited about playing this game.

 

Now if that Steam key would just show up in my email like it was supposed to...

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Not played Terraria, not necessarily sold on Starbound, but the trailer brought me into contact with the mindblowing soundtrack of the game, that you can listen to on the site, and it's intergalactic.

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That is indeed a very nice detail. I smiled and gave the developers one solemn nod when I saw it myself.

 

Anyone tried it yet? I haven't yet set aside the time to do so myself. I've heard that there are (obviously) bugs and problems, but I'm under the impression that it's not a complete and utter mess, either.

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Yeah, the character creation part was actually available on their site for awhile just to play around with, and I had noticed the M/F options for the robots.  Pretty awesome.

 

I've elected to not play for now.  I'll probably try it before release, but I'm going to let them get a few patches rolling before I try.

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It takes way too long to mine stuff. Even basic rock is slightly excruciating to dig through.

 

That sounds like some core balancing that needs to be addressed, but that's not too difficult.

 

This does raise one of my concerns about the flow of Starbound.  Given the infinite size of the universe, I've wondered if it will have a dramatically different or overwhelming feel to it, compared to the very fixed confines of Terraria.  Or what the difficulty/grind curve will be like.  Or whether it will be hard to become particularly invested in one world when there is always more to explore. 

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I'd say the answer to that lies in exactly how infinite the world is. If there is truly an endless ream of worlds to explore, you'd naturally at one point settle, because you'd understand there's no end game or progress in a territorial sense. If there IS a finite amount, you'll want to 'catch them all' and probably settle on the last, or return to your favorite.

 

Still no idea what kind of game Starbound is, but the hints of possibilities are interesting.

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It takes way too long to mine stuff. Even basic rock is slightly excruciating to dig through.

 

Are you still using the matter manipulator thingy, or do you have a pick? From what I saw on the GB quicklook, tools seem to dig a lot faster.

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I couldn't stop myself from looking through the Steam reviews on this.  You would think that at this point, the proliferation of Early Access, Beta and Alpha releases would have given people some concept of how this process works.  This gem is in the negative reviews:

 

"● Even though Starbound is labeled as a 'Beta' there are still many missing features such as:

○ Total and complete lack of a tutorial. It is possible to figure things out as you go but searching forums and YouTube for answers does not make for a very good first impression of the game.

○ You are unable to delete your character unless you manually delete a few files in Windows Explorer or Finder.

○ There is no in-game help leaving many questions that force you to visit a forum. Even then you may not be guarenteed an answer."

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Not to harp on the subject, but a beta is supposed to be feature complete, but buggy, thus those complaints have some merit.

 

But yes, it's silly that people expect early access games to be basically done.

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I see so many people complaining about how the game is not done yet. I don't think the world is ready for Early Access to exist, it seems like this happens every time.

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John Walker was actually kinda being more firm than he should've been earlier today about Starbound being an early-access in-progress game, but I think he understands that and was just kinda being all, "Oh, no tutorial, welp."

 

I'm waiting for the game to be done. But I hope we have an Idle Thumbs server at launch because I wanna space it up with people.

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Played for 3 hours today and a had a lot of fun. Needs some more depth, but I can see it being pretty cool.

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I also played a bunch today. So far it is Terraria in space. Not much unique about it. Maybe there's some cooler stuff after you gear up for the higher threat level planets.

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Played for 3 hours today and a had a lot of fun. Needs some more depth, but I can see it being pretty cool.

Depth in what respect?

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Well, I broke down and started playing with a group of friends and we had a ludicrous amount of fun just exploring and discovering things. The amount of detail and content and... just stuff in the game seems kind of immense, I'm honestly surprised given the way they described how incomplete this phase would be. We've come across villages belonging to a few different races, each with their own extremely distinct style and cool race-specific structures. We landed on one planet where the ground comprised mostly of compressed bones and sounded awesomely gross to walk on. The water physics are a nice step up from Terraria, but even more impressive are the sand/gravel physics - it's not only possible but dangerously easy to cause a sand avalance, which can be either hilarious or terrifying depending on the outcome. Perhaps most impressive of all is the sheer amount of pointless cosmetic details they've included to fill out the world(s). I noticed early on that you could inspect things, adventure game style, and your character would spit out a line of dialog describing the object you clicked. Some of it is still a bit placeholdery, but much of it is incredibly specific, not only to the item being inspected, but to the race of the character inspecting it. I created a Glitch (robot dude) character, and when I inspected an Apex (gorilla dudes) poster declaring "OBEY!" I expected him to say something along the lines of beep boop look it's a poster, instead he actually had a retort for the message on the poster. I found a specific style of chest which has a protruding tongue when you open it, and he had a line about analysing the organic nature of the tongue. My mind boggles that someone sat there for god knows how long, writing incidental observations for (nearly) every object in the game six times over, to fill out a feature most players might not even notice exists. That's really my biggest takeaway from the game so far, that it's just so lovingly inundated with care and detail that it's impossible not to appreciate the enthusiasm the developers had in creating this.

 

But yeah if you're not sold on "Terraria in space" then I don't know if that stuff will sway you. I find it a much deeper experience so far based purely on how much there is to discover, but it's hard to tell how long that will last and how well the gameplay will hold up once the discoveries start to wear thin. So far everything seems really solid and fun, but there are definitely some major balance issues, some of which are already being addressed (the entire system dictating monster levels and weapon stats is being overhauled in a couple of days). Still, it's hard to believe I've already put 16 hours into this, it doesn't even feel like half that.

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I find it a much deeper experience so far based purely on how much there is to discover

Like what? Honestly, beyond the flavor factor (which is nice, and I love it as much as you), there's not much difference between this game and Terraria. Right now, anyway. I'm confident it will come into its own as more updates come out, but at the moment... what makes it deeper?

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That's kind of hard to quantify, really it just feels like there's a genuine sense of exploration and discovery in going to new planets and exploring both on and under the surface. I guess it's the variety? Gameplay-wise, exploring a cavern, flashlight in hand, and carefully delving deeper and deeper with no easy way out can be incredibly tense, but I guess that was true of Terraria too (minus flashlight). Setting up a base on each planet with a farm and stuff is pretty fun, and constantly shifting from place to place prevents you digging in too hard and just settling with your initial designs. Also you get to decorate it with all the latest stuff you pilfered, which gives it a sense of storied progression which is completely player-driven. Then again, it's hard to say how much of this is influenced by playing with people.

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