I so badly want to remake Starbound, to make it what it was *meant* to be. I loved the concept of Starbound, exploring an endless universe, but the way it panned out is so disappointing.
Whenever they removed that was the games death knell. My friends all used to play it and love it and we loved the open ended exploration. Shoehorning the story in made all of them lose interest.
This. I haven't actually clicked play yet, but I think the investors or whatnot didn't like the concept out of spite, so they killed it. Much like the directors of a certain movie did the same (the original mario bros movie with bob hodskins and whatnot)
This game could've been good if they didn't have shit progression, combat and digging/placement mechanics that felt like an arthritic 70 year old left out to die on a tanning bed.
@@Filipokerface The only good reason you'd pay for the game is to play the porn mods. That's it. Even then I wouldn't give them money, pirate the fuckin thing.
One of the saddest parts to me was when they completly gutted the original story and lore, only to replace it with the most generic sci-fi plot you've ever seen.
@@JoJo-gt7ty I remember that player character of each race had their own reasons to become an adventurer. Human was fleeing from the destruction of Earth, Avian is an atheist in a fundamentalist society, Apex is a dissident from the oppressive government, etc. Now they are pretty much have the exact same start
@@JoJo-gt7ty species also had different relations to each others. Robots and Plant people went along pretty well, while Plants and Fish people hated each other, it felt like there were some intergalatic political and societal dynamics going on. It was overall a lot darker for sure.
Preach. The fact I had to use a modpack to even have the MOUNTAINS OF CONTENT that got gutted with the lore change.... I preferred the early access builds over the final product I was left flappergasted when i finally YEARS LATER after the early access began playing it... Wondering where certain item was. The lack of random prefabs of towns and dungeons.. Only to realize they had gutted so much for the new things
What I hate the most was that they took what was essentially an open world, non-linear game, and forced a campaign with the most linear and boring loop onto it. Scan stuff, scan alot more stuff, do a mission, kill a boss, repeat.
The original versions felt like terraria and hinted at you to get better ship fuel to explore new stars.. Then they forced the campaign and I stopped playing..
It could be such a great game, especially with the bounty missions. It could’ve been space terraria, instead though you gotta be Esther’s b*tch/errand boy
Terraria dev also keep breaking their promise too. They said "this is our last update" so many time but they keep updating and polishing the game.. sigh 😪. And nobody were mad at them idk why
Published games don't bite the dust, you can still play them. There are some exceptions where the game won't run without its servers, but i stay clear of them mostly. I can still play trough the complete Wizardry line, Might and Magic still exists, as do good old Doom or, to get back to the topic game, Starbound. Software has no Best Before, you can always make it run, and so even in twenty years from now you will be able to play Starbound, it is not going anywhere.
Currently in a playthrough and having a lot of fun with it, there's a mod called 'Story Disabler' with an official 'Story Disabler Collection' that I can't recommend enough. Really puts back the freedom and discovery into the game
@@trixelized912 There's one called 'Optional story' as well which is pretty good. The story is really tedious and removes some of the sandbox nature because of the way it's done. I just want to make a character and explore the universe. But no, without mods you have to go through the intro planet, get the core fragments, do pointless busywork etc. Really wish it just had a story that doesn't immediately force you to slog through it. Aside from story issues to me the game feels really shallow, even with mods. I can add a dozen new planets to the game, but what's the point? They all feel the same to explore with the same copy/paste structures and usually no new ores or anything. I think Starbound is decent as purely a building/exploration game but the lack of any depth makes me not want to play it. I could build a big colony on several different planets, but why would I do that? It's cosmetic as far as I know and serves almost no purpose. This game had so much potential and we're left with a pretty soulless "sandbox" which gets boring after an hour or two unless you're using big mods.
Yet the modding scene is also being tainted by the blight that is "Frackin Universe". Seriously, the guy's behaviour actually makes a lot of the competent modders leave Starbound. Especially considering his constant theft of other modders assets, falsely copyright claiming mods he dislikes, making his own mod unplayable (forced research system anyone? He even made god damn ANTICHEAT system to force you to use it.) and using bots to boost his own mods numbers. Also anytime a different mod pops in that would have a chance to be a competitor, the FU devs go out of their way to make the mods incompatible with FU via a hotpatch. I have been in touch with a lot of the modding and creator community and a lot of them agree that FU is a blight onto the community.
Seeing the logo in the thumbnail activated all the dusty synapses in my brain like I was meeting an old friend I haven't seen in 20 years. I completely forgot this game existed.
I made a mod for Starbound that got super popular in the early days of Starbound (The Avali player race) and a lot of people kept asking if they could be added officially; though the clunky design didn't really make that feasible IMHO, their design was always intended as a proof of concept to bend the game engine in ways it wasn't designed for and so had a lot of issues. At some point, a little after the game resumed development, Brice approached me over Skype about whether I'd be willing to transfer Chucklefish the exclusive IP for them and also help in their implementation in game. By this point though I'd mostly abandoned the project as Chucklefish had been so slow to implement important code hooks on their end, combined with it's seemingly stalled development, had made me think they'd probably given up on the game. Obviously, the first question I asked is how much I'd receive, given he wanted both my labor and the IP rights. His response was basically "You'd be getting exposure in a major title, which is pay enough!", needless to say the conversation ended there and then. I was not shocked to learn some years later that he'd also approached others in the community with similar offers, and had absolutely screwed them over in the process. I'm glad I didn't take the offer; under Creative Commons people have since proliferated the Avali to countless other platforms and games through spin off creations. It's always heartwarming to see they still bring people joy years later.
Yo I absolutely loved the Avali race, I played Avali in almost every new run of Starbound. Thank you for your work on such an awesome addition to the game! I’m sorry to hear about what happened with Chucklefish, but it’s real indicative of why the game failed honestly.
I was confused for a second why it was considered a failure. Then I remembered how they completely scrap the truly random planets. It turned from an exploration into "Go to ice planet for Cryo Ore!"
That's sad to hear. For the longest time I was more so into Terraria over Starbound but I always thought it could be a cool game to eventually give a try and play. Hearing this the little interest I had is gone.
@@YuYuYuna_it can still be a good experience especialy if you have a bit of patience to go into the steam workshop and mod it that can make the game a lot better Things like fracking universe mod which indroduces research trees and better planet and quest generation a lot of new content and items the whole madness mechanic Then mix it with mods like rpg growth that adds a more personal progresion and customization to your character and mods that add new races as well as make races each have unique traits, resistances and weakneses Then there is ar arcana that expand the barren magic system of og starbound to be more expanisve and interesting it also adds a new civilization and quests and a few other things Throw in a few generation mod to have things like landable gas giants or random seas or a few special types of planets and a generaly more randomised planet generation Then top it all of with a few mods that adjust the gameplay based on your preference ( harder and more expansive or more convenirent and smooth or a mix of both) And boom you can enjoy a good adventure I have about 800 hours on starbound and only about 50 or so are on vanila starbound since I too tossed it away prety quickly after it came out since it disapointed me but after some time I came back and looked at the mods on steam workshop just for the hell of it since I had nothing better to play at that time and I was blown away at what the modders have done with the game
Starbound was a pretty great game, though the devs promised far too much, and ultimately the aesthetic and vibe of the game fell off as the game had a story forced into it. When things were more vague and unexplained is when the game had more charm. It felt more like exploring, less like an amusement park. Now everything feels fairly shallow.
You forgot to mention that the game is singleplayer yet has entity and enemy lag. Like a mob is charging at you, you kill it and it still hits you because even dead it keeps charging.
But it's... not single player. I network game it all the time. They had non-Steam networking support very early on, you can find videos here on UA-cam. Who told you it was single player?
@@lordmarshmal_0643 games do this because you either essentially build 2 identical games, (one single player, and one multiplayer) wich is as you can guess twice the work. or you set it up in a way that single player is just your own internal server so you don't need to constantly develop EVERY SINGLE feature twice. This isn't a bad thing usually, unless the game has certain optimisation issues.
@@sosig6445 i can tell you with ease, having 2 identical games is not twice the work. might need some things changed, sure, but you absolutely dont have to do everything twice from scratch. i dont really think you know what you are talking about, at all
I was a moderator on a Starbound multiplayer server during beta through 2017, and one of my favorite moments was at the 1.0 launch: a ton of players sent reports to us that, when they launched the game, they would see the chucklefish logo and then the game would hard crash. It took a few days before that glitch was patched, but I will never forget the feeling that the glitch summarized our experience with Starbound: chucklefish laughing at its playerbase as their game went up in smoke.
I remember when a friend and I went back to Starbound on a multiplayer server a few years ago and an invisible mod messed with us for a few minutes then gave us some goodies. That was a funny experience
whats actually really funny is that this still happens to me i think, a while ago the game would boot, the logo would come up, and the game would just stop working, i dont know why. now it doesn't even boot and nothing i did fixed it, not that i mattered, i didnt like the game anyways.
Starbound has an interesting place in my heart. Chucklefish as a company, not great. But I got Starbound as a gift from a friend, and I played a little of it with my friends during the beta. They got too far ahead in a very short time, so I decided to play on my own. Put the game down a while, picked it back up years later. The game's campaign was completely different, everything was changed, boss monsters were different. I quite liked the campaign when I played it, I liked the game, its one of the few games I have actually beaten. But after beating the campaign I decided that the rich lore of Starbound's universe was something I had to roleplay in. I joined the Orion's Edge roleplaying server, their website is long gone now, but I played as a fellow named Dich Dioxide (pronounced like Ditch). He was a Novakid and a bar-hopping space bard, playing music wherever he was welcome to. I had befriended a character named Stranger, she was a wierder Novakid (most Novakids are wierd, they live for ages) who apparently used to be a part of an old mercenary organization. There were ingame spats between her and the Avian bartender over the wings she wore, as the bartender didn't appreciate them (He was very against Avian religion, and wings are a symbol of that oppression), the wings were a symbol of her crew however. There were arguments between my character and the barkeeper as well, mostly about music choices. Anything too experimental or meme-like was forbidden, but occasionally he would slip something in. There was even a bar fight I played battle music for. Unfortunately Dich died in a shootout due to some poor decisions on my part involving metagame knowledge. The writing was also on the wall, as the servers playerbase began to dwindle, until finally, Stranger met my new character, gave him Dich's old guitar and sake barrel (Long story), as well as her hat. And I saw her jump off a pier and log out. She killed her character off in canon. And left the server without another word beyond a simple "Goodbye Stranger." I gave the hat to a good friend of her character's, who understood immediately what had happened, and I left the server, my final task having been completed. I miss that old roleplay server. Some of my favorite interactions between characters and some of my first interactions with roleplayers as a whole were on that server, and it was the first Whitelisted server I ever joined. If you are out there still Stranger. I would appreciate one day being able to meet with you again, but this time out of character, and as old friends. I still have hundreds of hours in Starbound, and I still go back from time to time. I miss my old guitar though...
The hings I can't believe they removed: - gravity: only moons are diffrent - temperature: EPP goes brr - random minibosses: those things were ruthless - dungeons: like that underground facility with planet displays - uranium & plutonium: just... why?
gravity: space environments are zero G and can be navigated with any form of propellant, even with the rocket spear ability. temperature: EPP is a simple system, no need to overcomplicate things, and there's many mods to choose from if you're unsatisfied. random minibosses: they are in the game. ancient gateways lead to large procedural dungeons filled with ultra-powerful base game enemies (on steroids), and all have a randomly-generated uber-powerful miniboss (some stronger than story bosses) at the end. dungeons: dungeons are in the game and have been for... ever. They can be found in space too, at space encounters, and are procedurally put together by the game like puzzle peices and can get quite large. uranium and plutonium: there are so many materials in the game to use. Why do these two matter so much?
@@singingorgames Uranium and Plutonium could've been an alternatives to the fuel, or to make nuclear energy weapons. If different planets had different levels of Gravity that would've been cool. High gravity means harder to navigate through mountainous terrains and low gravity means easier to navigate through mountainous terrains. Dungeons appears to be..... lacking. Don't get me wrong, they are fine but for me I find them to be not quite enough. Crap I couldn't tell for this one myself.
I knew when Eric Barone (the Stardew Valley Creator) was publicly distancing himself from Chucklefish (the publisher of stardew valley), and then when Chucklefish announced they were going to make a Harry Potter esque Hogwarts adventure game set in the stardew valley universe with stardew valley style graphics. And Eric Barone publicly said he had no part in that project and was annoyed people on social media constantly thought that project was associated with stardew valley or was a possible spin off of stardew valley. I knew some shit went down at that point. Had no idea it was this bad.
13:00 *BRO.* IMAGINE getting TOBY UNDERTALE FOX to compose music for your game, _AND THEN THROWING IT OUT BECAUSE HE'S NOT IN YOUR IRC CHANNEL ENOUGH????_
@@digitaldritten Internet relay chat, essentially a client - server text communication. Slack is one for example, but even discord and others like that.
Frackin has, its own problems. Stolen assets, the dev being actively hostile towarss the community, the entire research system needlessly padding out the game...
I really love Starbound, but I started playing several years after release with no outside knowledge of dev promises so I had no expectations for it. There's a lot of charm to this game and its world, but I'm sure for people who were promised a lot more than we ended up getting it could feel like a real disappointment.
I had similar experience, I had seen a tiny handful of videos from early days when was in development, but only got it a few years later after never keeping up, around 1.2, so I never had the experience of the procedural open vastness people seemed to have loved from earlier versions, but even then I still loved the experience, though nowadays knowing how bad the development was does make it harder to reminisce freely about just starting out playing game for first time.
I was someone who followed development closely from the first ever teaser Tiy released; "Starbound Lighting Demo". I was 15 at the time, me and my best friend were glued to the news blog eagerly awaiting what we expected to be the ultimate sci-fi sandbox game. I remember posts about being able to scan wildlife and collate it into a scientific journal of sorts, as well as having motherships that could terraform and bombard from orbit. It seemed like it was going to be a fairly gritty, but roleplay centric kind of game. And for the most part, it still felt that way in the initial beta back on the 4th of December 2013. It had a very Terraria like progression. You'd fight bosses at your own pace and slowly unlock new materials, planet types and so on. I remember the hunts for the elusive 'Earthlike Planet' and forum posts of all the weird and wonderful creatures people had found. Oddly enough, I actually preferred how the old beta used to play. It felt a lot more like a survival sandbox than what we have now. Arguably, the big update that changed the entire trajectory of the game was the Winter Update. That was the one that removed the temperature system, introduced the Erchius Horror mission, completely changed the tech system, and stripped out the old boss summon, sector based progression with what would become the modern story line. The original 'story' was a lot more free form before the introduction of the protectorate. Each race had its own reason for being where they are when the game starts. Avians for example, were fleeing from their cultures routine sacrificial ritual. Abandoning their home and way of life to become a 'Grounded'. Apex were fleeing from a failed rebel attack, being the only surviving member of their group. Humans had the typical 'I thought this alien was cute so I brought it on board, but it woke up and slaughtered everyone' approach. It was fun. Instead, it all got thrown out the window for a 'Space Jesus' story. And that also says nothing about the gradual change from a gritty, roleplay centric game into a slapstick, barely cohesive and poorly paced space opera. Though, if I were to pin the games failure on one thing, I'd honestly say it was internal strife. I had the opportunity to chat with Rhopunzel a few years back, who cited a lot of office political drama and other similar shenanigans.
It's just too shallow imo. Exploring planets is fun until you realize there's barely any variation or point to exploring them, the story in my experience just dampens the fun of the sandbox (with the way it has been implemented) and aside from all that the universe doesn't feel alive. Other ships are static, npcs don't do ANYTHING except walk around and maybe sell you some bits. I really like the visual style of the game and the foundation, but there's not much there to actually get your teeth into. If you're someone who can deal with the tedious nature of Starbound then you could probably get 50-100 hours if you like building or you're playing with mods.
starbound is basically spore in that regard, both of these games i went into completley blind of them being huge dissapointmenting overly hyped games that went through dev hell. and both games i loved to death. to this day i still go back to playing starbound because theres something charming and comftoriting to the game that terraria can't nail. the races, the art, the sound and atmosphere is just.. perfect. making my little plant ship makes me feel very happy and i really do regret it not becoming something better. that being said i cant believe how cynical and fucked up chucklefish became. and i can't forgive that. periodically id go back and check out some of their other games, like starmancer and its just always the same story, unfinished messes over overpromised crap. feels bad.
There would be even more charm and love poured into the game if the devs were paid and stayed on with the company instead of having their visions constantly swapped out as it was cobbled together callously Luckily for you there are mods that completely overhaul the game to be a wonderful experience
There's a fair few bits about the game that I still like, but one thing that really bothered me was that even though you were given an entire galaxy to explore, 80% of all playtime was spent underground because that's where all the resources were
No Man's Sky has the opposite problem: there's deep cave systems and even underwater caverns, but the only thing you find is Cobalt, which you can find elsewhere anyways. The only resources are spread out over wide, vast, and same-looking surfaces.
If there's one thing I had to give shoutout to Starbound for it's the music. Everyone who worked on that music really knew what they were going for in a mysterious, empty and fascinating space frontier.
Not true lol. All of the present ost was made by one person all the way back. They also removed quite a few amazing tracks by this pretty niche artist that used to be on the team named _TOBY FOX_ because of some genuinely senseless thing that didnt really matter
While I never knew about the story of Starbound, personally I just loved the game. It felt like it held my hand a bit more than Terraria did which helped me stick more to the game, and allowed me to actually learn mechanics and get interested. Of course add easy to add mods to enhance the experience and I really have nothing much to say about it, it's an entertaining game and also amusing with friends, to develop, build and fight together.
I actually played the beta, and when the full release came out, the game felt broken compared to the bata (like what was said in the video), I liked the story and lore in the beta, but the story for the full release was just different, and for me, not in a good way, it's almost like they're two different games using the same engine
Early in development, I remember getting to a moon with barely any fuel left and having to dig deep to get to the liquid fuel. I was using ropes and torches and it felt like an actual adventure getting down there. Then they swapped that out for a ghost thing that chases you while you try and grab as much fuel as you can dig up on the surface. Lame, very lame.
probably wouldve been ok if you could ward it off with specific weapons/gear, but yeah i basically just make a deep staircase, then mine from the bottom up while being chased
Fuck that giant ghost thing. It caught me in a dent in the moon I was exploring, naturally none of my weapons worked on it, and I couldn't beam to safety. I felt no shame in turning on admin mode to get my stuff back. Who thought that would be fun and engaging gameplay, especially because you can just buy fuel at the Outpost for much less hassle?
@@punkysnarksoutpost trader in itself is an issue. Someone made a video about what went wrong with Starbound, and the most obvious one is the spoonfeeding, with generic procedural blandness, and overall lack of lead design view.
see one thing i didn’t clarify enough in the video is that the “kickstarter” wasn’t actually on the kickstarter platform but was actually crowdfunded on their website in kickstarter fashion
I played over 100 hours of Starbound's early access, and loved so much of it. The almost comedic nature in how boss fights were incorporated was inspired, as was the idea to tie different races stylistically to different eras of human technology and culture. Heck, it even includes one of the most robust player controlled music systems I've ever seen, using a MIDI-like system to play whatever custom songs you want without your friends ever having to install the mods you got them from. When the full game released, i was devastated to say the least. Trading in the hundreds of randomized animal types for the same boring rotation on every planet? A boring story with worse boss fights than the beta? After the 20-30 hours i put in just to beat the story with a friend in co-op, i never touched it again. The only saving grace it offers is a seamless and expansive modding experience that meshes well with multiplayer. Try to find it on sale if you can, i don't know if its even worth the US $15.
This video is completely clickbait. 91% of positive reviews on steam and 2.5 million sold copies is not a failed game. This guy should be ashamed. Just rewatch 4:42, those comments be selected completely go against what he JUST SAID.
@@atersol346 the thing is he isnt wrong, the game might have been financially successful but it wasnt what was promised and has since been left to rot, people from all sides say the same thing, its story is unecessary, its gameplay is weak and its crafting/building mechanics are borderline faulty at the best of times also the timestamp you put in is him showing examples of people being optimistic ... of course the comments are going to be hopeful, thats kinda the point of him showing them lol
@@speurtighearnamacterik8230 let me just point this out, saying its being held up by mods isnt a good thing, its a bad thing, it means the base game isnt interesting or indepth enough to be held up on its own, thats an issue base starbound is boring after just a little while because everything feels slow and samey
@@atersol346 I was very disappointed by the game and never understood all the positive reviews. So for me the video title was okay as I read it as a failure from an artistic perspective.
I played Starbound in 2014, I loved the idea of exploring other worlds and improving my ship. Unlike Terraria, which I played very little and already got sick of and dropped because it didn't have a story, Starbound has it and that's what drew me to the game. I played again in 2022 with my wife at Coop. In general, I loved Starbound, the ideas of the species, the items, the types of worlds. Of course, there could be fighting in space. I didn't know about the game's development problems, here in Brazil people loved the game, I followed the blog for updates and it was very active, there were several new features that made the game more robust. I honestly liked the game and I miss games like this.
The irony of Terraria and Starbound, is that Terraria had a "last" update that basically made the devs go "yeah lol we cant leave this its too good" and they went on to make more updates after the "last" update. Then we have Starbound, which was dead on arrival basically, but was hailed as the New Terraria, the next Terraria, Terraria 2.0. But became Terraria 0.5. The only good thing was the infinite planets.
It was not "dead on arrival", I have about 200 hours of playtime and I did a crap ton in the game, built multiple bases, and beat the whole game. It was a solid game for $15 which is dirt cheap, I definitely got my money's worth. I think people just had severely unrealistic expectations. I've spent way more on games that only have like a 30 hour story and then you're done.
@@kinotsu3017I don't think the expectations were "unrealistic" at all. Having multiple fun features in the beta and others planned to then completely ruin it on release does make it perfectly reasonable for people to be upset about the game's state.
Modded Starbound is one of my best gaming experiences. Everything that was wrong with the game, Likely has a mod to fix it. Crazy how long the modding community lasted too
Completely agreed. Idk I feel like I'm completely alone thinking that modded starboard was way more fun than modded terraria. I just didn't really enjoy terraria because of how confining it felt. Me and my decently large friend group are currently playing through the Arcana mod along with a large mix of other mods and it's been an experience unlike any other
I know that feeling, bro. Koala versions were awesome, the first giraffe (the one that still had unique races) was me being Homer as he pursuits his barbeque pig... Then I learned that you can't count on anyone, specially your heroes
I mean, why wouldn't it be abandoned some day? Do you honestly expect a dev to indefinitely develop new, free updates? They finished the early access. They even gave us multiple free content updates afterwards. It's normal for devs to move on to new projects when they are finished with their old ones. There are some exceptions, yes. But these are goodwills from the devs, not something that should be expected. And releasing content dlc would probably have brought so much more fury amongst players that don't understand companies need to make money.
I would describe the game as a collection of thousands of half finished ideas. That's the big difference, you see Terraria implemented professionally designed and completed mechanics and a tight gameplay loop every time they made an adjustment. They would actually finish an idea before stepping over it and onto the next thing. Starbound is a showcase of great potentials with no focus sort of like a 2D No Man's Sky that never got fixed but just stayed in early access for like a decade. It's really sad, the whole era for this kind of game seems to have passed but I hope that somebody will revive it with something great in the future, something that they actually finish.
That's the point, Terraria was said to be dying, while tarbound soared. Now Starbound is dead and Terraria has gotten ridiculous second wind success.@@ssourbell
I'd love to see Re-logic take a shot at reviving the game, if in any universe they ever stop updating Terraria and actually put their heads down to focus on a new project.
Kinda reminds me of the Megaman/Mighty nº 9 situation. Megaman was in the pits, MN9 appeared like some kind of savior of the fans. Game turned out to be dogshit, then Capcom released Megaman 11 afterwards and completely turned the tables.
@@TheOrian34 All terraria needed was just more of the same (as in stay in the current gameplay formula) And Re-Logic sat down and delivered without revising the entire game, they just extended what already worked. Starbound on the other hand scrapped dozens upon dozens of features and reworked others and in the end we were left with inferrior bosses, inferrior lore, inferrior exploration, and inferrior surivor mechanics
@@robokastPart of its presence in the video makes it similar to someone smacking their lips before they speak. I think it wouldn't be as bad if it was used in a more natural way, if that makes sense?
I played this game during beta with my friends. I found an entire moon full of healing glowing water. My entire existence was about collecting and distributing it. We had mods like crazy. My ship ended up with massive tankers of the stuff. I built a mega factory base on that moon, ans my friends came to buy it and use the spas i made to heal and relax. It was awesome. I played it a year later and it was entirely ruined.
Same, had a ton of fun in the beta, came back after years to see the release gutted almost everything about the game that had made it fun. Facepalming dev decision. I wonder if all these systems and assets were created by their unpaid "interns" and they had to remove them because of that...
dude I really like starbound, didnt know about all of this, so sad, developers and creators like chucklefish should know people can wait like we wait on terrario or stardew updates, we only want honesty and transparency
Starbound isn't just one of those games that's better with mods, I feel like it NEEDS them. It really did feel gutted after the Koala builds, something you didn't mention that irks me personally is the removal of unique race traits in favor of unique racial armor stats, because apparently it's bad to have players chose a race based on stats. Despite the fact Novakids still glow in the dark and start with gun crafting. There is no reason for a minmaxer to play anything except Novakid, so why remove flavor from the rest?
You know, I really enjoyed Starbound when I started playing it. I don't remember everything, but I remember I would tend to find these desert settlements with the Apex towns, or these occasional lab buildings with sci-fi chests or whatever they were called. The game was fun to explore. I liked making my home on winter planets and using the Old Radiator for heat and the apex fridge for food preservation, if memory serves. Then, I remember the temperature aspect got removed entirely, along with ships having to run on purple fuel pumped from moons rather than coal and such. When an update would happen, it would reset all my progress, which got old after awhile, but at least I could explore promptly. Then they added some sort of a tiered mandatory progress thing where you had to do these missions through the ship's computer or something. It got to the point where you couldn't just get in and go, explore. Other things changed, like removing the ability to scan furniture you found and use pixels to make the stuff with the ship's replicator. I played the game with friends a little bit, and it was cool how if a friend had a modded feature, like custom ships, I could still see it and travel with him, ride along. Coordinates were consistent so you could share them with friends. I really did enjoy the game. It eventually got to the point where the lag was so bad, I could no longer play the game on my computer, but I still had hope for it to improve. I figured the development would be a little rocky until it found its place. It's a shame that from what it sounds like here, it's at a dead end.
The listed problems aren't all that happened, and I'm certain it only goes deeper. For example, at one point in time, the author of one of the most popular ammo overhaul mods was approached with the possibility of making the mod an official part of the game. Needless to say, said individual seemed pretty ecstatic, but, and this is where my memory gets a little hazy, I believe they had some NDA clause stuff before they could bring this individual on fully, and said individual asked a few questions to get clarification or reassurances before they ended up getting ghosted by the team member that had approached them. Multiple attempted communications later with zero replies, they got frustrated enough to make all public, and it was only after that moment that they got any kind of response at all. Given all the other stuff Chucklefish's done, and this, I'm like 100% certain there's a bunch of stories of awful management and treatment that simply haven't gone public yet. I categorically refuse to support them. They got my money for Starbound - anything else they put out isn't getting any more out of me, no matter if they developed it or simply published it.
I think same happened with Avali mod from RyuujinZERO. Their modded race was about to become official but the devs of Starbound tried to fully claim race IP without any credits to RyuujinZERO and they wanted that mod maker to give up on race. I am glad that mod maker disagreed and did not allow them to claim Avali race.
Funny, I saw Starbound as part of one of those games I picked up as a bundle and thought "hey, I remember everyone being excited about this, why don't I hear about it anymore?" And now I know why. Jeez, to be mismanaged to the point even Toby Fox and Eric Barone don't want to be associated with you, ouch.
You didn't mean it this way, I imagine, but usually when someone says "even" XYZ person(s) "don't want to be associated with you" it means that XYZ person is a low standard and even that low standard of company doesn't want to deal with you---meaning that you have fallen to such low regard by comparison. Fox and Barone are a high standard, and rather than not even getting their association it is instead a case of a huge missed opportunity. Chucklefish squandered the labor and passion of eager, creative minds and lost bigly by doing so. It is truly their loss, and a measurably huge one. A lot can be said in a few words, so you may wish to reflect on how you use this phrase in the future.
@@Diamondragan sure, "don't want to be associated with you" can be taken in that negative light, but there's a positive alternative you're overlooking which fits the original comments intention better: even 2 authors who are reasonable/forgiving/kind don't want to be associated with you, then you know you've F'd up.
This doesn't even touch on the whiplash on features and gameplay. I recall them constantly nerfing firearms the players could use while enemies could destroy you from afar and then there is the complete nerfing of how inventory worked which would make any base building a task of just moving resources.
This is painful to watch... I remember stumbling onto starbound in 4 to 6 years ago, and I was immediately enthralled. I had no idea the past that it had, but I found it super fun. Every now and then, I play it again, though usually with the Frackin' Universe mod, which I suppose could be closer to the original vision of Starbound. All this explains why no one knows about Starbound when I ask if anyone knows about Starbound. This game was super influential on me, my profile picture is a dang floran. I wish everyone who worked on the game got paid.
The main questline needed a rework as the artifact scanning quests are so tedious. I think they also made the mistake that a Lot of indie or small studio games make of adding more random content like pokeballs, flying cars, pocket dimension platforming challenges, that late game dungeon crawl thing (forgot the name) or mechs to get attention instead of really polishing the core experience. We need like 10x the variety in planet types AND manmade structures, and a rework to the progression system. Like, compare exploring a cave in terraria to exploring a cave in starbound. That right there is what separates an evergreen game like terraria from something more forgettable. It really is a shame because the game did so many things right. I loved upgrading my ship and decorating the interior. A lot of the story dungeons and bosses were pretty cool. And i think the sandbox elements and the setting (florans are also my favorite. Pretty flower people who are also carnivorous barbarians with funny mannerisms, awesome) are really well done. But, its just sort of sloppily executed in a lot of ways. It feels like a waste. I hope someone else can pick up where they left off. Even no mans sky really fell short of this concept for a game, and it has a lot of the same problems. The 10/10 procedurally generated space exploration game is like the holy grail of ambitious gaming projects, someone will nail it eventually.
@@AveragePearEnjoyerI remember another video about the story of Starbound's development, and it does bring up a good point in that due to all the unpaid labor, game got so many systems/overhauls that were all ultimately surface deep, because the people making those would either be basically left on hold when they needed a break, lost the initial drive that fueled them, or left the project when it became clear they weren't gonna be getting a paid job at company, no one was there to understand or flesh out the system to any real degree, like, as you mentioned, archeology, "pet" system with those capsules, or terrain navigation when generation was overhauled
Same here. Florans and Novakids are probably my favourite fictional races ever. I just hate frackin universe. At some point I'll try it again probably but it felt like it was tacking on weirder, more complex ways to get stuff that already exists in the base game, as well as locking basic gear behind an ugly looking tech tree. Vanillla starbound's saving grace was that it initially gave you direction, but I felt so lost when playing FU.
@@AveragePearEnjoyer I think more devs need to treat space like the creators of Star Citizen are doing - only including a few systems and populating them with planets, moons, asteroids all chock full of content, rather than like in Elite where it's a literal 1:1 recreation of the Milky Way, but every system is almost exactly the same. I do hope someone nails it eventually though, and DOESN'T make the flight insultingly arcadey as well as focusing too much on a hamfisted in FPS aspect.
@@Jenna_Talia i think procedural gen can work. Look at helldivers, the maps are procedurally generated from some canned geographic features and populated with repetitive objectives. But the game is actually challenging and high energy. Extremely fun. NMS and starbound feel like a slog because the main focus of what you are doing is actually on the terrain itself. But if games could REALLY pressure the player while they are looking for resources on the planets with well designed combat or stealth or whatever, so you can get away with a more practical amount of content to populate the world. Put a timer for how long you can stay on the surface at a time, and then reset and re-generate the map when it runs out. That kind of mechanic makes picking up rocks in subnautica really, really engaging. Thats what i mean when I say it feels like a waste. It just needs a little bit of that sauce and it would be great.
This. I think the only thing I ever built on a planet was a small garden, just because it couldn't be done on the ship like I wanted. All other planetary fixtures were pointless.
Any while you could attract colonists and collect rent from them for some reason you had to collect it in person which quickly became a pain to bother with especially if you had more than one colony.
I built a colony, because I wanted to build a whole planet worth of a city. Even built the space station. It plays well as a sandbox game, not as a story game.
something to mention - Starbound has a weird corner that kinda exists on its own. Since the game was so broken, it was super easy to spawn in custom sprites and items (without anyone on the server needing to download a single mod), which facilitated a large and thriving roleplay community at the time. It existed and was arguably much larger before that, but that simple fact of the game being able to be so easily modded in vanilla without need of downloaded mods definitely helped it survive. The community is active to this day, albeit in super modded versions or super dead servers.
Hey there, person who was part of the original kickstarter backers. Me and about 3 other friends decided to back the game way back in the day. It looked cool, promising, and the devs were very active. Despite it's rough edges, me and my friends all thoroughly enjoyed the game. Every new alpha update was a ton of fun to explore, and we loved messing with the new features. The temperature system was also cool, having to sacrifice armor protection for temperature protection, so you could continue to progress. Seeing that go was very sad. We had been having a lot of fun despite some of the weird changes because we trusted the process with the developers. Our only big issue up to that point is the amount of time it took for them to implement the community made race (which was embarassingly long, mind you. Only a few updates before official release.) Then, the game released. To say it was a downgrade would be an understatement. Locking the progression behind the lackluster, cookie cutter, boring as white bread story was the game's largest mistake by far. The missions were often more annoying than interesting, and clearing them usually involved having to planet hop to find a randomly generated legendary weapon, which may or may not even be very enjoyable to use. Certain tools had been entirely reworked, often for worse. Crafting building materials and furniture wasn't improved at all. This made playing the game post-final boss terrible. The only thing that carried the game into any sort of enjoyment was the modding. And modding starbound is actually excellent. **So excellent in fact, that Tiy actually offered to add one of the most popular custom races (Avali) into the game, but refused to pay, so it never happened.** Bryce is by far one of the most insufferable and sorry excuses for a developer the industry has ever seen, I hope nobody falls for his tricks again.
Starbound failed making the gameplay interesting. You flew around, did a loop around a planet searching for ruins to scan, went on to the next planet doing the same loop for ruins until you had enough to go to the actual civilization to do a trial, then you did the whole cycle again but with a new theme of planets and for a new race. Remember once spending hours because I could not for the life of me find the last few objects needed to scan, it'd be like playing Terraria but you're searching for world-gen paintings in a large world. Put 70 hours into the game compared to my 1k in terraria.
If someone promises "procedurally generated worlds" and "flashed out and unique" at the same time, you can be sure that's a completely and utter lie. It's like saying you'll make a cold and hot drink.
I mean, all procedurally generated world are unique, as for the fleshed out part, you can definitely do the procedural generation over multiple iterations to hone in certain features. It is possible, it's just that no studio that I know of bothers to do it, cuz it costs time and therefore, money.
@@nati0598 callingp procedurally generated worlds "unique" is quite a catch. you can call unique in pattern, but not in design, and if someone hears "unique" something, they think of truly unique, not just a change of texture or elements order, that's not unique, that's just a inversion of pattern/elements. Naturally it's possible, but just because it means it's possible, it doesn't mean it's cost effective, and that's the point. It's not just a matter of "hmm I'm not feeling like spending money in this", it's that the scalability is exponencial, and fleshing out procedurally generated worlds literally defeats the purpose of procedurally generated worlds, that is to generate tons of worlds without the hassle of manually creating/customizing them. You can change the word "world" for anything else.
@@AmodeusR First time when someone started using their own definition of the word "unique" instead of the one everyone else uses. And yes, I specifically agreed that companies don't do this because it's not worth it. It's almost like you didn't read anything past the first sentence.
@@nati0598 just changing the position from 12 to 21 doesn't make something "unique", changing the order of 2 obstacles in a map won't make "unique". It's a simple definition on experience level, if you can't understand, don't blame me. It's not a matter of me not reading the following sentences past the first one, it's just that you aren't capable of understanding the difference of mere "it's expensive", and "it's simply contradictory to flash out procedure generated worlds since we procedurally generated them exactly so we didn't need to work on making multiple different worlds" and the exponential cost growth involved in just thinking of it, and that not considering the ineffectiveness, doesn't translate well in just "it gets expensive".
@@AmodeusR ... Do you know what procedural generation is? It's not 12 or 21, it's inventing new numbers. But I guess modular procedural generation is more popular anyway due to the aforementioned lower cost. Seems like you're the one who's incapable of understanding the difference. Btw, if you're gonna claim it's impossible, don't go saying companies don't do it because of "low effectiveness". It's either impossible or not.
What I liked most about starbound, at least in the early days when I played, was the building. Specifically, that any block could be used in the fore ground or back ground. Something I wish terraria had, as sometimes background walls are not the same texture as their foreground counterparts
There's also another thing to consider, and that's the community itself. The mod 'community'. Let's be frank, if it wasn't for being easily moddable, starbound would have died far earlier. It's only because of the mods that it still has a playerbase at all. However, the mod community has its own problems. Notice I put it in scare quotes earlier because in all honesty, it's not really even a community. It's just a collection of little tribes revolving around a few cults of personality that all hate each other.
the mod scene being filled with insular tribes is honestly kind of amazing considering part of Starbounds planets are separated out tribes and groups with their own beliefs
I just wish more mods actually contributed to the story rather than being their own thing, its uncanny playing with friends and they send you a 200 page mod list and none of them add anything of value. Hell some of them will add one item and theres no way in hell anyones going out of their way to use it in game
You should check out all the controversy the largest mod (Frakkin Universe) has caused. It was like the entire mod team looked at what Chucklefish did, and decided to somehow be *worse* than them. From bullying other mod creators into adding their mods to it (and if they refused, the mod dev just basically created the same mods to put into his own so no one had a reason to download the original mod) to intentionally adding in code to fuck with your game if another mod was used that "wrecked the balance of the mod", to plenty of other things. It is a rabbit hole to go down.
I think people overplay the FU drama. To be fair to FU, what were they supposed to do? Sayter wanted a feature on the mod, he sees that said feature was already implemented by another mod, he reaches out and asks if they can to add the mod to FU, some modders agree, and some didn't, the ones that didn't then went on to complain when the FU team wrote their own code that basically does the same things as their mod does as if they somehow have rights to concepts of mods. Do you just NOT add features to your mod then because someone else has already done it and they refuse to let you add their mod (and they also will complain if you code a similar mod)? That's just completely unreasonable. That's like me adding guns to a minecraft mod and then complaining when someone's modpack includes guns aswell because they are conceptually too similar to my mod, it's nonsense.
@@enemote "Your honour, this man didn't want to give me his icecream recipe. I had no choice but to steal it from his house then launch a lawsuit against him for selling the same icecream as mine". Dude didn't do "similar" he straight-up ripped the code from the mods and forced incompatibility with those that couldn't, along doing copyright strikes on anyone he doesn't like.
@@scorpixel1866 Now I am very unfamiliar with that whole thing, but the absurdity that he could copyright strike other mods makes me seriously doubt the full validity behind this.
I loved Starbound. It was legitimately the game that got me into PC gaming. My best friend and I were addicted to it - and my favorite aspect was the city-building, since it was everything I dreamed of. It was the first PC game I put over 100 hours into. But... for some reason, once 1.0 came into view, the game started getting strangely worse. It was like the quality was dipping instead of rising. And once 1.0 actually came out, it was like the game had somehow regressed from beta to alpha. My friend and I stopped playing it a few weeks after that. I still think about Starbound sometimes. But instead of feeling nostalgic, it only feels sad.
i remember this game from years ago. amazing to see how much this title was dragged through the mud. there has been drama with the game for years and its still going.
Man I tried to watch a video last night. “ 1 hour of useless information about fallout new vegas “ Every single thing he said started with “ in this area in fallout new Vegas you can find… “ and ended with “ that’s where you can find a in fallout new vegas “ Every single minute or so, starting and ending with “ in fallout new vegas “ Compared to that type of padding, this guy saying a little bit of hyperbole is a-okay in my book.
Let's not forget the fact that Finn Bryce used to work on Terraria as a sprite artist, and after doing some scummy(too long of a tangent to explain) stuff behind the scenes, he got kicked out of Re-Logic and founded Chucklefish.
We were unaware at that time, Terraria was stuck because of Finn and left in an abysmal state... It still had FF sprites with merchant being Galuf and Drías being Rydia, hell was an adornment and the dungeon was endgame content, all it had was fishing (thankfully there was no angler yet... I still think fishing ruined Terraria though) and after he left, we just had the "pizza oven no more" update and character editor. But in the end, re-logic keeps bringing that "werewolf the apocalypse" gameplay each update
@@solouno2280 fishing in terraria is such an odd concept-- like getting fish for buffs as an alternate source to herb growing would have been fine-- but by tacking on too many rewards, and just strictly better-than-current upgrades-- you really had no choice but to fish. (iirc the old shark pick had basically molten pick power- and you could get it before making any other pick)
Modern Starbound is a game that is fundamentally carried by it's modding community. There are so many people online who put far more effort into making the game fun then the developers did that playing the game unmodded is just a worse experience over all. Frackin Universe and other overhaul mods really do a great job of fulfilling the promises Chucklefish failed to do (if you can get past the required Master's Degree in Chemistry it takes to understand how to craft things in FU.)
The other problem with FU is it being 95% stolen content. Like, “copied from people’s GitHubs with the metadata filed off” stolen. Try Arcana, Starforge, Project Ancient Cosmos, Betabound, Shellguard, and/or Maple32 instead.
A lot of people defending the game seriously overlook the fact the mods probably have a lot to do with the game's current positive rating and playerbase.
@@sneedchuck5477 Most open source code has a license that does not allow its use without attribution at the very least. Just because something is available for copying does not mean there is no copyright on it.
Starbound failed primarily because it lacked a sense of permanence. The size of the ship on which the main character travels should have been larger. It should have been about the size of a small world, something like the TARDIS but better, so that the spaceship would resemble not a tin can, but a space station from Mass Effect, full of everything. A place where you could store items from the worlds you visit, where there is room for development. This place should have been the home, not some planet a thousand light years away. The lack of a proper base, unlike Terraria, did a disservice to Starbound. In Terraria, you can always easily return to the main world while traveling to other worlds with your main character, whereas in Starbound, this was a problem from the start.
After playing Modded Minecraft; no you don't need a Fleshed out world. Having the world react to your choices like mining magic ore in a area for an example causing more chaotic disruption events with the world reacting to your choices, your actions feeling like they hand meaning. That and having an RPG mod that allowed you to add your own NPCs/ quest if need be. My point is; you can have an in depth great game that's RNG generated.
As somebody that player a good bit of Starbound throughout the last 3 years I'm kinda shocked I personally went to it after having a friend recommend me and have spend a few thousand hours in it The time I spend was great but it sucks to hear the backstory of what happened before.
@@kane_lives And I would do it again ^^ I personally really enjoyed my time in it and Isent that the most important part about playing a game, finding a game you truly enjoy with your heart? What was going on sucked but that does not mean that people that don't know anything from what happened won't be able to enjoy the game.
oh god, the bright low framerate constantly changing high contrast crumbled paper background, and the video jumping from dark cave gameplay of starbound to that and back at complete random, and the flashbang transitions from that dark gameplay, is all painful on the eyes
@@Hallaw345yeah, you're basically space naruto tasked with the mission to kill an evil god because an old lady told you so and everybody competent is already dead in the intro (insert absolutely long and boring fetch quests in between). Also the story is the same no matter what race you chose and you have to manually type in a command to reset the story triggers in case you made a new character.
You forgot to mention that the guy main guy from Chucklefish studios actually broke off from Re-logic (The creators of terrarira) and basically cloned it 1:1 thinking he could do it better and make more money, The game was a failed clone, not just employee abuse- though it was so systemic that ConcernedApe (the creators of Stardew-Valley) actually cut ties with Chucklefish studios because of it, way-back-when if those actually recalled seeing the Chucklefish studios logo popping up on launch when you played Stardew-Valley.
@@Necrius WAIT THAT WAS HIM!??! I remember hearing about this so long ago it makes so much sense that the lazy prick who tried to copy Terraria wouldn't even be creative enough to make things while he worked for Terraria.
And he still managed to form a team that made Starbound, which easily blows Terraria out the water if you use mods. Base game? Sure, Terraria is more fleshed out. If you include mods though? Starbound is lightyears ahead. Terraria mods are so... meh. Meanwhile Starbound mods make the game so much more interesting.
Starbound had the same problems NMS later had - lack of direction, reliance on RNG to deliver sustainable content, and disconnection in game elements. Terraria, as a direct comparison has a clear goal in front of a player at all times - killing bosses. You get better gear, build arenas, get food and buffs (and set up farms for thous), get potions and try to kill whatever boss is in your sights. What do you have in Starbound? Borefest of a main quest that asks you to do the same thing over and over again? Traveling from planet to planet digging recolored ores? Dungeons that pop up from time to time with a boss that has 5% chance to drop unique loot, that would be outclassed by a sword that you'll find in a random dumpster? None of that gives a interesting goal for player to work towards. What it did had and what it prided itself upon is an randomly generated world with randomly generated inhabitants on it that would give you randomly generated quests. Except the problem was, that randomly generated content isn't exactly interesting to explore. It can be a filler for some handcrafted content that you can hide behind it, but as I said before, it just wasn't there. And then came patches. Pointless grind upon pointless grind that doesn't connect to the main systems in any way or improve on the base formula. Complete hundreds if not thousands of mech missions to upgrade your mech that you can basically use only for mech missions was a peak of it.
I wasn't aware of the whole background story. Started playing the pre-1.0 version. It was a love/hate relationship. Part of my liked this game so much. It was amazing, what you could build within the realm of 2D, including all kinds of mechanisms. And there were amazing servers out there, with communities creating beautiful worlds. Together with friends we built secret orbital bases, secret deep ocean bases, colonies, ships. But there were some serious limitations in regard of protecting your assets. Also multiplayer had a very limited player capacity and suffered from lags, especially with all the player mods going out of hand. Imagine this game with hundreds of players in the same universe! Once they released 1.0, most servers shut down, because the worlds they created did not work in the release anymore. And they forced a reset of all worlds, iirc. I stopped playing then. It was a really bad move from them. That game really had a lot of potential.
2 more major issues & scandals you forgot to mention are: despite promising KS backers like myself (ugh...) that we'd get to name an NPC in the game, the names never appear anywhere ingame. The names are just hidden in a single file. Also, they got a puppy, kept it in their office to take pics of it and drum up attention on social media, and indirectly killed it due to their own negligence and incompetence after fans kept warning them not to have exposed wires it could chew on -right next to its effing bed.-
Oh come on, good thing I was banned so I couldn't see that stupid negligent caniscide. I was early in mid school and still kept my cat away from live wires
I tried searching around for anything about this puppy scandal and couldn't find anything. I've confirmed they have office dogs, but not a single peep about any of them dying due to negligence. Which would be a pretty big thing and absolutely findable on google. Do you have any sources for this puppy scandal?
I played and greatly enjoyed the Starbound Beta. I was disappointed when 1.0 released, and so much changed. Procedurally generated creatures were a highlight for me, but from 1.0 on, a lot of planets had more or less identical wildlife. The scanning portions between actual main plot missions was tedious, the Novakid race lacked a quest, and all of the sudden, instead of using radioactive materials for fuel, it's a form of macguffinite that only appears on moons and prompts a ghost to chase the player around. When I was playing with friends after the 1.0 launch, I volunteered to be the fuel guy because all of us found the ghost annoying, and I was the best at escaping it. The temperature mechanics got simplified to an upgrade you equipped and upgraded, making the game even more shallow. Circling back to the main quest, nothing is really explained. OK, so the six species scattered across the galaxy have artifacts that open the door to The Ruin, the remains of Earth that was destroyed by a colossal tentacle monster. But we learn little to nothing about said tentacle monster, only that it's a force of destruction that the Cultivator, a sort of creator god figure, basically died to seal away, and the Novakids were born from his remains. A lot of lore from the beta was struck out, and we don't know a lot about the Cultivator either. The game was still fun, but despite adding mechs, it was a lesser experience than the beta. I haven't played the Bounty hunter missions from the 1.4 update. Maybe I'll replay the game again sometime soon and play them after I finish the main quest.
To me procedural creatures lacked variety too, as there was just too few templates to pull from. Frankly i'd rather have a decent pool of pre-made creatures than "totally different" creatures whose only difference is that one breathes blue stuff and the other breathes green stuff. And that's how it is in the rest of the game. It's got a lot of potential but due to incompetence and scumminess of Chucklefish it's about as deep as contents of a spilled glass of water.
@@Feuerhamster I agree that there should have been more parts and behaviors for procedurally generated creatures. And while I like the creatures the game has now, I feel like a mix of the current creature population and an improved form of the procedural creatures would be the best solution; the old procedural ones did get a bit same-y, but the visual variety was still nice.
I miss my procedurally generated large bird creatures, they were terrifying. All the premade creatures suck especially when using capture balls, what you really want to do is capture some procedural large creatures since theyre the strongest. Now that you mention it too, the fuel thing sucks. Now moons are completely inhospitable and you cant have a cool moon base anymore! Bullshit!
The Bounty Hunter missions are, in my opinion, much better and more fun than the base game. It's basically a 70-80 cops movie... in Space! WITH MECHS! It's also a direct sequel to the main campaing, so it's better to play them AFTER finishing the game. But I may have a biased opinion because at that point, I played with mods so the mechs were more interesting that the core ones (which are still miles above the base Starbound, so...). And maybe some of the reward weapons and gear were tweaked a bit by one or another of the mods I usually play with. I couldn't say, I have too many mods and it has been years since I played last.
I feel like Starbound's core idea of "what if Terraria but atmospheric space game" worked, it's just that the parts surrounding it didn't really do much to heighten that core idea. I think they could have just downsized the game into basically a space farming sim and it would have worked because the atmosphere, block variety, and NPC designs are the strong points of Starbound.
I remember first playing it years ago expecting a big open-ended space terraria with a spaceship to travel around in and instead I got met with a linear story based terraia-like instead which was extremely confusing, like what is the point of making explorable planets if their is no point in it? They defeated the purpose of they're own game systems. Oh what this game could of been is so so frustrating. Traveling around in your spaceship and having to mine for fuel was a fun loop and visiting different planets was so fun but that's like basically where the fun ended.
A friend of mine worked on the soundtrack for the game, and showed it to me and a few other friends at a LAN party in probably 2010-2011. He left during the volunteer fiasco and all his stuff has been removed since they redid the OST during release. The whole thing is just sad, the game was really fun.
I was incredibly hyped for Starbound back in the day but just realized seeing this video that I haven't thought about it since the day I uninstalled it which was the day it released, I remember a friend of mine bought it based on how hyped I was and we played it together. I don't remember much about the game other than how frustrating it was and that even the starter quest seemed entirely unpassable because a boss would show up that you had no meaningful way to defeat with the things the quest gave you. I just went and checked out of curiosity how long I managed to play Starbound via Steam and apparently I played a grand total of 7 hours.
Overall good video, but I felt like your dig against procedural content made no sense. It doesn't at all explain why Starbound failed to live up to Terraria, considering Terraria also has procedurally generated worlds. Furthermore, Realms of Magic, a 2D sandbox game with a handcrafted world was a much bigger financial failure than Starbound. The best selling game of all time (Minecraft) is also a procedurally generated sandbox game. I don't see any evidence that people find procedural worlds boring, especially in the sandbox genre where the player has the ability to shape the world. Calling procedural worlds in a sandbox game boring is like calling a blank canvas and amazing set of brushes a boring painting. What makes a good sandbox is creative freedom and fun tools. What really crushes creative freedom is obligations, and there's no bigger obligation than a mission to save the universe. It feels awkward to settle down and build a cabin on a pretty planet when the world needs you. Also being told what's at your location by a quest giver destroys the joy of exploration. Just think, what's more exciting: A (Being told that there's a monster in a bunker, then going to that bunker and saying that monster) or B (Finding a bunker, going inside, and being ambushed by a monster) Sandbox survival games need to careful with pacing, Starbound's gameloop is subtly but notably slow. Terraria rewards the player with new tools more frequently. idk why procedural generation keeps taking strays from video essayists.
Starbound is a joke, is a case study on what not to do. Everyone talks about how No Man's Sky became good, this game is the opposite: Started out promising, and became a nightmare to deal with.
It's not that bad if you ignore the drama. Me and my husband has been playing for years and it's been our favorite game to play, especially when he's away from home for work. We only played vanilla too, found the FU mod too complex. It's our cozy game and many others feel the same way.
@@whiteRiceSupremacist it is that bad since the game turned for the worse because of the drama. Stop defending the undefendable, these ones promised something that they didn't delivered.
@@midorifox I mean the game is still pretty great despite of that. If you're upset about the potential wasted because of drama, it's understandable but the game itself is not a joke as it is still genuinely being enjoyed by many players.
@@whiteRiceSupremacist only those on the echo chamber that's the steam forums. I'm not upset because of the drama, I'm upset because this game is a all in all a con. It's undefendable, and I wish people would stop defend this since it's all but defendable. It's unfinished, crashes a lot, a downgrade from beta, it's a joke. You like it, that's great, but don't come tell me that I shouldn't be upset at those lazy hacks that messed up everything just because you like it.
well this came at a bit of a shock to me. Never knew there was this amount of controversy, I kinda just put in my hundred hours and moved on after generally having a pleasant experience years ago. Quite a shame that it became this, I was thinking of playing it again at some point.
I remember playing this back before the inclusion of a story. You just started the game and you'll come across pieces of a story as you play. Why did I stop playing? It got released and my progress got deleted. 💀💀
Honestly it's the mechanical and lore gutting that IMHO was it's biggest issue. Most people don't tend to see or hear about E-Drama and the majority filter it out, but "Somebody stole/removed things I paid for" is the kind of shit that people magnetize to every fucking time.
I kinda hope that chucklefish will one day just look at starbound and just say, "huh, I wonder what would happen if we updated or made another starbound."
They did. Farworld pioneers, not from chucklefish but from the devs of starbound. As you can imagine it failed too, so not all of the starbound fail was because chucklefish
@@armando92 Yeah checking out one of the Reviews on it's steam page mentions that they stopped updating it and are relying on volunteers to continue support.
They clearly wouldn't have any good idea on what to add. Instead of fleshing out the game with the final update they just randomly added mechs that have barely any integration with the game itself.
Unless they summoned a genie to grant their wishes, signed pacts with several devils and demons, bribed Lady Fortune for their luckiest break in their lives and had a time-traveling cyborg from an alternate universe all to help them make the best possible update to the game, you can bet your ass that they would get hate for it on the grounds that they borked everyone's favourite mods.
its mad playing it on early access versus now, systems I loved back in the day like having two hand slots and random generation of mobs was completely removed
You still have two slots!!! Mobs are still pretty random, they just simplified it. Having 10,000 random ass mobs would make progression a hassle, since so many mob-specific drops are used for crafting. Everyone complains, but the game is fine. I’ve played it since beta, and its current incarnation is a vast improvement over the blind wandering.
I was there when the game first hit early access. They abandoned developing it very fast in favor of adding in twitch support into the game. Somehow they though adding their own OBS directly into the game was better than actually developing said game when it was barebones. Not all but a lot of threads and comments complaining about this on their forum have been deleted by them real time, I watched it happen. It was a sh*t show. I avoid anything they make or sponsor like fire.
Great video, but getting flashbanged every 10 seconds with white-on-white text/background makes it unwatchable. I almost got mild epilepsy from it lol.
For me yes the background is the problem but I also believe it's due to the transition between your 'b-roll' footage and the moment the white screen/text appears on screen. There is a flash that is triggering it.
I have a friend who is adamant that Starbound is the best game ever, even when its most basic mechanics (jumping, movement techs, combat) are unfinished/unpolished. It doesn't have a tickrate or anything, its based on the framerate, meaning that its literally slower if you don't have max fps (60), and not to mention that it was built on the revolving door of unpaid labor, which is why the mechanics are crap, because one person, who wouldn't be anywhere near an expert at programming, would start working on them, then leave after not getting paid, and would get replaced by another person, who also wasn't being paid, and they would make progress and the cycle would repeat itself, leaving the mechanics as horrible frankenstein/patchwork that don't fit together in any meaningful way. Then there is the fact that they once updated the game in a way that caused most mods for the game to become incompatible, meaning modders would have to go back and fix their mods to get them to work, and the update didn't fix anything, it added a crappy bounty hunting system that wasn't fun or even worth anyone's time. Don't spend your time trying to find any fun in that game, you'll just waste your time.
Chucklefish also made Wildfrost. It's a pretty good game I got a good 25/30 hours but I wish there was more content. PS After finishing this video, damn I didn't know they had such a bad history.
I never was really invested in Starbounds Development and stumbled upon it when it already was nearing its full released state. It was the time where i was simply too young to know what "kickstarting a game" even was. The recollection I have of this game is that it may not the most fun gameplay wise. But i fell in love with the theme the style and the music almost instantly. Also i would not call the game dead without hesitation because there are many many mods for this game. And considering the state of the game, the modding community for starbound is surprisingly active. Even with all that went down, I would not call it a complete failure, because there are still a considerable amount of people having fun with starbound. P.S. I think that it is not that awful that Toby Fox didnt get to make the music. If Curtis Schweitzer didnt make the music I would never have been able to listen to Mercury for hours on end because i love that track so much.
Hey, these kinds of videos are nice and interesting as a synthesis of a specific subject. I have two enhancement suggestions for you: 1. As others have mentionned, the cuts to the white background and single word subtitles are quite annoying. They seem like they are randomly added about every minute, wihtout even emphasizing a specific point. 2. It is obvious that a lot of research has been put into writing the video, so I think it is too bad that you don't cite any of your sources. Listing in the description at least links to the pages you show (wikipedia article, reddit threads, etc.) would help people that want to look for further info, it would also look more professionnal and be a testament that you actually researched the video and not invented or copied everything. Have a nice day
Ok, hear me out. I'm NOT going to defend Chucklefish, because, dear god, they are awful as developers and human beings, BUT, in my personal experience, I loved Vanilla Starbound from start to finish. Yeah, it lacked a ton of stuff that Terraria has been offering to us for more than a decade, but I... I just liked it. Its complexity feels right in the middle, between Minecraft and Terraria. I was doing a vanilla side-quest, where a villager from a desert planet asked me to search for their missing cousin. I was kind of low on food, but I said, YAH, WHY NOT? Midway through the desert, it started to get dark, and nocturnal fauna was something I didn't want to mess with, so I built a camp, put a portable stove, and then cooked my dinner while I waited for the night to end. My little camp was inside a cave, but I had enough space at the entrance to look at the stars, and then one of the cutest songs in the OST kicked in. I feel that Vanilla Starbound is about that, taking your time. HOWEVER, LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT WHAT I THINK THE -TRUE- STARBOUND EXPERIENCE IS. If you go to the Steam page right now, you will see that Starbound has positive reviews!... Due to the workshop. YEAH, this is one of those games saved due to the workshop mods. Fracking Universe, Shellguard, the whole Avali race, Arcana, competent mechs and ships... I think I have nearly 92 mods installed and the game barely crashes from time to time. I just love it to such a degree that I used to spend hours and hours building giant bases, exploring new planets with new mechanics and bosses, etc etc etc. My recommendation for Starbound? Try to finish it at least [Once], so you can learn its core mechanics, and then, go crazy with the workshop. FUCK CHUCKLEFISH, long live the modder's comunity.
A very insightful and well made video, thank you for your work. The only thing I have to say is in certain places your descriptions do not match the posts you’re showing on the screen. It’s somewhat important to me personally that’s why I’m writing this. For example, on 4:42 you say not all fans were optimistic; but the posts you show, albeit criticizing obvious flaws, are actually pretty optimistic about the game’s future. Or on 7:01 where you said many of the game’s supporters started to see it a sinking ship, while the post shown is talking about excuses via chucklefish regarding the game and how in op’s opinion they just have to put something out there since they’ll have time to fix it. And here 8:38 video says from passionate trailblazers to _irresponsible scammers;_ while the post itself just talks about broken promises, how the game had insane potential but the final product was bland, with no such jab at the studio calling them scammers or some sort. As I said, everything is very insightful. It’s just these personally important points I wanted to make. Again, thank you for your work and research that went into making this video.
Funnily enough I was one of those people that just fell in love with the game's design and aesthetic (I have like 1500 hours sunk into it), but it took me over 5 years to learn about all these things since I've never been one to bother with community mingling. On a side note, this game had a knack for luring people of dubious character: Sayter, creator of Fracking Universe, the most popular mod for SB, was accused by many modders of stealing their work and incorporating it into FU, as well as being extremely rude and instigating his followers to harass his perceived "enemies" online.
Man, that’s even more sad, I thought FU was one of the coolest things to come to the Workshop on Steam for Starbound. I loved Starbound so much, but it seems that almost everything about it has been corrupted nowadays. Tainted with scandals and bad development decisions and bad people.
@@jalakor Well, while its true those people suck, the mod is still one of the best things to have happened to Starbound and I honestly wouldn't go back to playing the game without it! Also, there were many awesome contributors working on FU as well, so I'll do it for them, I guess :D
Enjoying this video? Check out my newest one on the tragic downfall of Guitar Hero:
ua-cam.com/video/s0HNWqq7mx4/v-deo.html
I so badly want to remake Starbound, to make it what it was *meant* to be. I loved the concept of Starbound, exploring an endless universe, but the way it panned out is so disappointing.
Bad management was what really killed it. I remember when they had cool temperature mechanics, only to replace it with pass/fail environment upgrades.
Whenever they removed that was the games death knell. My friends all used to play it and love it and we loved the open ended exploration. Shoehorning the story in made all of them lose interest.
This. I haven't actually clicked play yet, but I think the investors or whatnot didn't like the concept out of spite, so they killed it. Much like the directors of a certain movie did the same (the original mario bros movie with bob hodskins and whatnot)
This game could've been good if they didn't have shit progression, combat and digging/placement mechanics that felt like an arthritic 70 year old left out to die on a tanning bed.
@@DirtyDerg THAT'S GOT TO BE THE MOST MOST SPECIFIC AND ACCURATE THING I'VE EVER HEARD ANYONE SAY
@@Filipokerface The only good reason you'd pay for the game is to play the porn mods. That's it. Even then I wouldn't give them money, pirate the fuckin thing.
One of the saddest parts to me was when they completly gutted the original story and lore, only to replace it with the most generic sci-fi plot you've ever seen.
What was the original story like? The final version being a padded fetch quest is beyond boring and tiresome
@@JoJo-gt7ty I remember that player character of each race had their own reasons to become an adventurer. Human was fleeing from the destruction of Earth, Avian is an atheist in a fundamentalist society, Apex is a dissident from the oppressive government, etc. Now they are pretty much have the exact same start
@@JoJo-gt7ty species also had different relations to each others. Robots and Plant people went along pretty well, while Plants and Fish people hated each other, it felt like there were some intergalatic political and societal dynamics going on. It was overall a lot darker for sure.
Preach. The fact I had to use a modpack to even have the MOUNTAINS OF CONTENT that got gutted with the lore change.... I preferred the early access builds over the final product
I was left flappergasted when i finally YEARS LATER after the early access began playing it... Wondering where certain item was. The lack of random prefabs of towns and dungeons..
Only to realize they had gutted so much for the new things
dying light 2 incident
What I hate the most was that they took what was essentially an open world, non-linear game, and forced a campaign with the most linear and boring loop onto it. Scan stuff, scan alot more stuff, do a mission, kill a boss, repeat.
True, the campaign is..., void.
Yep it was a moronic decision
The original versions felt like terraria and hinted at you to get better ship fuel to explore new stars.. Then they forced the campaign and I stopped playing..
It could be such a great game, especially with the bounty missions. It could’ve been space terraria, instead though you gotta be Esther’s b*tch/errand boy
Just think, star field follows this to a T but has even less on the list
Terraria dev also keep breaking their promise too. They said "this is our last update" so many time but they keep updating and polishing the game.. sigh 😪. And nobody were mad at them idk why
Cause they love their game so much, that's why nobody is mad
Why would you be mad at the devs polishing the game, even if they did lie, it has a good effect
Sarcasm my friends, sarcasm...
"It's the Final Update, trust us bro"
~Devs for the 19383th time
Person A: I'll make you a cake. * Makes no cake *
Person B: I won't make you a cake. * Makes a cake *
It's only saving grace today is a huge amount of mods that basically overhauls the entire game. Sad to see one of my favorite past times bite the dust
mods were literally the only way for me to play the game singleplayer. And I also played with my friends, again, heavily modded
Published games don't bite the dust, you can still play them. There are some exceptions where the game won't run without its servers, but i stay clear of them mostly.
I can still play trough the complete Wizardry line, Might and Magic still exists, as do good old Doom or, to get back to the topic game, Starbound.
Software has no Best Before, you can always make it run, and so even in twenty years from now you will be able to play Starbound, it is not going anywhere.
Currently in a playthrough and having a lot of fun with it, there's a mod called 'Story Disabler' with an official 'Story Disabler Collection' that I can't recommend enough. Really puts back the freedom and discovery into the game
@@trixelized912 There's one called 'Optional story' as well which is pretty good. The story is really tedious and removes some of the sandbox nature because of the way it's done. I just want to make a character and explore the universe. But no, without mods you have to go through the intro planet, get the core fragments, do pointless busywork etc. Really wish it just had a story that doesn't immediately force you to slog through it.
Aside from story issues to me the game feels really shallow, even with mods. I can add a dozen new planets to the game, but what's the point? They all feel the same to explore with the same copy/paste structures and usually no new ores or anything. I think Starbound is decent as purely a building/exploration game but the lack of any depth makes me not want to play it. I could build a big colony on several different planets, but why would I do that? It's cosmetic as far as I know and serves almost no purpose.
This game had so much potential and we're left with a pretty soulless "sandbox" which gets boring after an hour or two unless you're using big mods.
Yet the modding scene is also being tainted by the blight that is "Frackin Universe".
Seriously, the guy's behaviour actually makes a lot of the competent modders leave Starbound. Especially considering his constant theft of other modders assets, falsely copyright claiming mods he dislikes, making his own mod unplayable (forced research system anyone? He even made god damn ANTICHEAT system to force you to use it.) and using bots to boost his own mods numbers.
Also anytime a different mod pops in that would have a chance to be a competitor, the FU devs go out of their way to make the mods incompatible with FU via a hotpatch.
I have been in touch with a lot of the modding and creator community and a lot of them agree that FU is a blight onto the community.
man first time hearing the name starbound in years
Seeing the logo in the thumbnail activated all the dusty synapses in my brain like I was meeting an old friend I haven't seen in 20 years. I completely forgot this game existed.
*checks date starbound came out
“8 years ago?!?”
@@cara-seyun That's only the release. The good versions of beta date back to 2014.
Same here! Anyone wanna set-up a Discord server and play together? Could be fun!
@@KnightQQwhy would anyone play a dead game? You would be better off playing terraria
I made a mod for Starbound that got super popular in the early days of Starbound (The Avali player race) and a lot of people kept asking if they could be added officially; though the clunky design didn't really make that feasible IMHO, their design was always intended as a proof of concept to bend the game engine in ways it wasn't designed for and so had a lot of issues.
At some point, a little after the game resumed development, Brice approached me over Skype about whether I'd be willing to transfer Chucklefish the exclusive IP for them and also help in their implementation in game. By this point though I'd mostly abandoned the project as Chucklefish had been so slow to implement important code hooks on their end, combined with it's seemingly stalled development, had made me think they'd probably given up on the game.
Obviously, the first question I asked is how much I'd receive, given he wanted both my labor and the IP rights. His response was basically "You'd be getting exposure in a major title, which is pay enough!", needless to say the conversation ended there and then. I was not shocked to learn some years later that he'd also approached others in the community with similar offers, and had absolutely screwed them over in the process.
I'm glad I didn't take the offer; under Creative Commons people have since proliferated the Avali to countless other platforms and games through spin off creations. It's always heartwarming to see they still bring people joy years later.
i seem these little suckers crop up everywhere man. EVERYWHERE
Yo I absolutely loved the Avali race, I played Avali in almost every new run of Starbound. Thank you for your work on such an awesome addition to the game! I’m sorry to hear about what happened with Chucklefish, but it’s real indicative of why the game failed honestly.
You're the Avali guy? That's awesome! Glad you kept them Creative Common
Shoot I didn't know you made the Avali race mod I'm a fan of it alongside it's many add-on mods for it ^^
The Avali Race will live on far longer then Starbound because of your choice.
I was confused for a second why it was considered a failure. Then I remembered how they completely scrap the truly random planets. It turned from an exploration into "Go to ice planet for Cryo Ore!"
All I remember is a bland and boring game, so I wasn't even slightly surprised.
@@spugelo359It was such a good exploration game until a certain point in development and then it just went downhill, hard.
That's sad to hear. For the longest time I was more so into Terraria over Starbound but I always thought it could be a cool game to eventually give a try and play. Hearing this the little interest I had is gone.
@@YuYuYuna_it can still be a good experience especialy if you have a bit of patience to go into the steam workshop and mod it that can make the game a lot better
Things like fracking universe mod which indroduces research trees and better planet and quest generation a lot of new content and items the whole madness mechanic
Then mix it with mods like rpg growth that adds a more personal progresion and customization to your character and mods that add new races as well as make races each have unique traits, resistances and weakneses
Then there is ar arcana that expand the barren magic system of og starbound to be more expanisve and interesting it also adds a new civilization and quests and a few other things
Throw in a few generation mod to have things like landable gas giants or random seas or a few special types of planets and a generaly more randomised planet generation
Then top it all of with a few mods that adjust the gameplay based on your preference ( harder and more expansive or more convenirent and smooth or a mix of both)
And boom you can enjoy a good adventure I have about 800 hours on starbound and only about 50 or so are on vanila starbound since I too tossed it away prety quickly after it came out since it disapointed me but after some time I came back and looked at the mods on steam workshop just for the hell of it since I had nothing better to play at that time and I was blown away at what the modders have done with the game
Starbound was a pretty great game, though the devs promised far too much, and ultimately the aesthetic and vibe of the game fell off as the game had a story forced into it. When things were more vague and unexplained is when the game had more charm. It felt more like exploring, less like an amusement park. Now everything feels fairly shallow.
Having a story doesn't make a game bad. ???????
@@Alex-hj2jd This game having a story made it bad. !!!!!!!!
This is the level of response you deserve.
@@Alex-hj2jd Read a comment properly before replying.
@@wenelol yeah, I suggest doing that
@@slyseal2091 🤓
You forgot to mention that the game is singleplayer yet has entity and enemy lag. Like a mob is charging at you, you kill it and it still hits you because even dead it keeps charging.
But it's... not single player. I network game it all the time. They had non-Steam networking support very early on, you can find videos here on UA-cam. Who told you it was single player?
@@lordmarshmal_0643
games do this because you either essentially build 2 identical games, (one single player, and one multiplayer) wich is as you can guess twice the work. or you set it up in a way that single player is just your own internal server so you don't need to constantly develop EVERY SINGLE feature twice.
This isn't a bad thing usually, unless the game has certain optimisation issues.
@@sosig6445 i can tell you with ease, having 2 identical games is not twice the work. might need some things changed, sure, but you absolutely dont have to do everything twice from scratch. i dont really think you know what you are talking about, at all
@@lordmarshmal_0643 A lot of games actually do this including Half-Life
@@sosig6445 not at all how it's developed
I was a moderator on a Starbound multiplayer server during beta through 2017, and one of my favorite moments was at the 1.0 launch: a ton of players sent reports to us that, when they launched the game, they would see the chucklefish logo and then the game would hard crash. It took a few days before that glitch was patched, but I will never forget the feeling that the glitch summarized our experience with Starbound: chucklefish laughing at its playerbase as their game went up in smoke.
I remember when a friend and I went back to Starbound on a multiplayer server a few years ago and an invisible mod messed with us for a few minutes then gave us some goodies. That was a funny experience
I vividly remember this happening to me.
whats actually really funny is that this still happens to me i think, a while ago the game would boot, the logo would come up, and the game would just stop working, i dont know why. now it doesn't even boot and nothing i did fixed it, not that i mattered, i didnt like the game anyways.
@@spaceranger13theboi uninstalling and reinstalling works
What do you mean they were laughing at their player base?
Starbound has an interesting place in my heart.
Chucklefish as a company, not great. But I got Starbound as a gift from a friend, and I played a little of it with my friends during the beta.
They got too far ahead in a very short time, so I decided to play on my own.
Put the game down a while, picked it back up years later.
The game's campaign was completely different, everything was changed, boss monsters were different. I quite liked the campaign when I played it, I liked the game, its one of the few games I have actually beaten. But after beating the campaign I decided that the rich lore of Starbound's universe was something I had to roleplay in.
I joined the Orion's Edge roleplaying server, their website is long gone now, but I played as a fellow named Dich Dioxide (pronounced like Ditch). He was a Novakid and a bar-hopping space bard, playing music wherever he was welcome to.
I had befriended a character named Stranger, she was a wierder Novakid (most Novakids are wierd, they live for ages) who apparently used to be a part of an old mercenary organization.
There were ingame spats between her and the Avian bartender over the wings she wore, as the bartender didn't appreciate them (He was very against Avian religion, and wings are a symbol of that oppression), the wings were a symbol of her crew however.
There were arguments between my character and the barkeeper as well, mostly about music choices. Anything too experimental or meme-like was forbidden, but occasionally he would slip something in. There was even a bar fight I played battle music for.
Unfortunately Dich died in a shootout due to some poor decisions on my part involving metagame knowledge. The writing was also on the wall, as the servers playerbase began to dwindle, until finally, Stranger met my new character, gave him Dich's old guitar and sake barrel (Long story), as well as her hat. And I saw her jump off a pier and log out.
She killed her character off in canon. And left the server without another word beyond a simple "Goodbye Stranger."
I gave the hat to a good friend of her character's, who understood immediately what had happened, and I left the server, my final task having been completed.
I miss that old roleplay server. Some of my favorite interactions between characters and some of my first interactions with roleplayers as a whole were on that server, and it was the first Whitelisted server I ever joined.
If you are out there still Stranger. I would appreciate one day being able to meet with you again, but this time out of character, and as old friends.
I still have hundreds of hours in Starbound, and I still go back from time to time. I miss my old guitar though...
I never played in an roleplaying server, but now I regret not joining one
@@thomasguay4157 It was a hell of a ride.
The hings I can't believe they removed:
- gravity: only moons are diffrent
- temperature: EPP goes brr
- random minibosses: those things were ruthless
- dungeons: like that underground facility with planet displays
- uranium & plutonium: just... why?
gravity: space environments are zero G and can be navigated with any form of propellant, even with the rocket spear ability.
temperature: EPP is a simple system, no need to overcomplicate things, and there's many mods to choose from if you're unsatisfied.
random minibosses: they are in the game. ancient gateways lead to large procedural dungeons filled with ultra-powerful base game enemies (on steroids), and all have a randomly-generated uber-powerful miniboss (some stronger than story bosses) at the end.
dungeons: dungeons are in the game and have been for... ever. They can be found in space too, at space encounters, and are procedurally put together by the game like puzzle peices and can get quite large.
uranium and plutonium: there are so many materials in the game to use. Why do these two matter so much?
@@singingorgames mid game
@@АртемийСемёнов-ф3ы doesn't reach mid
@@singingorgames Uranium and Plutonium could've been an alternatives to the fuel, or to make nuclear energy weapons.
If different planets had different levels of Gravity that would've been cool. High gravity means harder to navigate through mountainous terrains and low gravity means easier to navigate through mountainous terrains.
Dungeons appears to be..... lacking. Don't get me wrong, they are fine but for me I find them to be not quite enough. Crap I couldn't tell for this one myself.
Yeah, like why would you get rid of Uranium and Plutonium?!?!
I knew when Eric Barone (the Stardew Valley Creator) was publicly distancing himself from Chucklefish (the publisher of stardew valley), and then when Chucklefish announced they were going to make a Harry Potter esque Hogwarts adventure game set in the stardew valley universe with stardew valley style graphics. And Eric Barone publicly said he had no part in that project and was annoyed people on social media constantly thought that project was associated with stardew valley or was a possible spin off of stardew valley. I knew some shit went down at that point. Had no idea it was this bad.
They seem to have changed the assets since. Now the game is isometric, and the characters look more sleek.
@@nati0598Witchbrook?
@@chilbiyito Yup. When it started, it had a big stardew valley vibe to it. The articles online still have old art.
@@dummobug Yes, that's a part of the problem.
Yes, and this witchbrook game is taking a long time to develop, there barely is any info or pictures about the game. Looks like they haven't learned
13:00 *BRO.* IMAGINE getting TOBY UNDERTALE FOX to compose music for your game, _AND THEN THROWING IT OUT BECAUSE HE'S NOT IN YOUR IRC CHANNEL ENOUGH????_
literally hearsay.
💀💀💀
what is IRC?
@@digitaldritten Internet relay chat, essentially a client - server text communication. Slack is one for example, but even discord and others like that.
@@digitaldritten "Internet Relay Chat", basically Discord haha
Frackin' Universe, enough said. It's an insanely fun game, it just sadly requires mods to unlock its potential.
Frackin has, its own problems. Stolen assets, the dev being actively hostile towarss the community, the entire research system needlessly padding out the game...
I really love Starbound, but I started playing several years after release with no outside knowledge of dev promises so I had no expectations for it. There's a lot of charm to this game and its world, but I'm sure for people who were promised a lot more than we ended up getting it could feel like a real disappointment.
I had similar experience, I had seen a tiny handful of videos from early days when was in development, but only got it a few years later after never keeping up, around 1.2, so I never had the experience of the procedural open vastness people seemed to have loved from earlier versions, but even then I still loved the experience, though nowadays knowing how bad the development was does make it harder to reminisce freely about just starting out playing game for first time.
I was someone who followed development closely from the first ever teaser Tiy released; "Starbound Lighting Demo". I was 15 at the time, me and my best friend were glued to the news blog eagerly awaiting what we expected to be the ultimate sci-fi sandbox game. I remember posts about being able to scan wildlife and collate it into a scientific journal of sorts, as well as having motherships that could terraform and bombard from orbit. It seemed like it was going to be a fairly gritty, but roleplay centric kind of game.
And for the most part, it still felt that way in the initial beta back on the 4th of December 2013. It had a very Terraria like progression. You'd fight bosses at your own pace and slowly unlock new materials, planet types and so on. I remember the hunts for the elusive 'Earthlike Planet' and forum posts of all the weird and wonderful creatures people had found. Oddly enough, I actually preferred how the old beta used to play. It felt a lot more like a survival sandbox than what we have now.
Arguably, the big update that changed the entire trajectory of the game was the Winter Update. That was the one that removed the temperature system, introduced the Erchius Horror mission, completely changed the tech system, and stripped out the old boss summon, sector based progression with what would become the modern story line.
The original 'story' was a lot more free form before the introduction of the protectorate. Each race had its own reason for being where they are when the game starts. Avians for example, were fleeing from their cultures routine sacrificial ritual. Abandoning their home and way of life to become a 'Grounded'. Apex were fleeing from a failed rebel attack, being the only surviving member of their group. Humans had the typical 'I thought this alien was cute so I brought it on board, but it woke up and slaughtered everyone' approach. It was fun. Instead, it all got thrown out the window for a 'Space Jesus' story. And that also says nothing about the gradual change from a gritty, roleplay centric game into a slapstick, barely cohesive and poorly paced space opera.
Though, if I were to pin the games failure on one thing, I'd honestly say it was internal strife. I had the opportunity to chat with Rhopunzel a few years back, who cited a lot of office political drama and other similar shenanigans.
It's just too shallow imo. Exploring planets is fun until you realize there's barely any variation or point to exploring them, the story in my experience just dampens the fun of the sandbox (with the way it has been implemented) and aside from all that the universe doesn't feel alive. Other ships are static, npcs don't do ANYTHING except walk around and maybe sell you some bits. I really like the visual style of the game and the foundation, but there's not much there to actually get your teeth into.
If you're someone who can deal with the tedious nature of Starbound then you could probably get 50-100 hours if you like building or you're playing with mods.
starbound is basically spore in that regard, both of these games i went into completley blind of them being huge dissapointmenting overly hyped games that went through dev hell. and both games i loved to death. to this day i still go back to playing starbound because theres something charming and comftoriting to the game that terraria can't nail. the races, the art, the sound and atmosphere is just.. perfect. making my little plant ship makes me feel very happy and i really do regret it not becoming something better. that being said i cant believe how cynical and fucked up chucklefish became. and i can't forgive that. periodically id go back and check out some of their other games, like starmancer and its just always the same story, unfinished messes over overpromised crap. feels bad.
There would be even more charm and love poured into the game if the devs were paid and stayed on with the company instead of having their visions constantly swapped out as it was cobbled together callously
Luckily for you there are mods that completely overhaul the game to be a wonderful experience
There's a fair few bits about the game that I still like, but one thing that really bothered me was that even though you were given an entire galaxy to explore, 80% of all playtime was spent underground because that's where all the resources were
really? I just did a lot of planet hopping to loot every dungeon I found
No Man's Sky has the opposite problem: there's deep cave systems and even underwater caverns, but the only thing you find is Cobalt, which you can find elsewhere anyways. The only resources are spread out over wide, vast, and same-looking surfaces.
Seems to honestly be the same for every game like this.
to me that was kind of the beauty in it. That every planet could have deep caves with structures, resources, portals and loot
"Some say the ghosts of those players still haunt the moon caves to this day...... Oh hey, there's one!" - some guy just trying to get fuel
If there's one thing I had to give shoutout to Starbound for it's the music. Everyone who worked on that music really knew what they were going for in a mysterious, empty and fascinating space frontier.
I literally listen to the starbound OST when I get tired of the No Man Sky music lmao
Not true lol. All of the present ost was made by one person all the way back. They also removed quite a few amazing tracks by this pretty niche artist that used to be on the team named _TOBY FOX_ because of some genuinely senseless thing that didnt really matter
@@dotdot5906calling toby fox 'pretty niche' is craazyyy all his works are incredibly popular
But that same guy worked on recent halo soundtrack, so I think it’s a win for him
@@dotdot5906cringe critic
While I never knew about the story of Starbound, personally I just loved the game. It felt like it held my hand a bit more than Terraria did which helped me stick more to the game, and allowed me to actually learn mechanics and get interested. Of course add easy to add mods to enhance the experience and I really have nothing much to say about it, it's an entertaining game and also amusing with friends, to develop, build and fight together.
I actually played the beta, and when the full release came out, the game felt broken compared to the bata (like what was said in the video), I liked the story and lore in the beta, but the story for the full release was just different, and for me, not in a good way, it's almost like they're two different games using the same engine
Early in development, I remember getting to a moon with barely any fuel left and having to dig deep to get to the liquid fuel. I was using ropes and torches and it felt like an actual adventure getting down there.
Then they swapped that out for a ghost thing that chases you while you try and grab as much fuel as you can dig up on the surface. Lame, very lame.
probably wouldve been ok if you could ward it off with specific weapons/gear, but yeah i basically just make a deep staircase, then mine from the bottom up while being chased
Fuck that giant ghost thing. It caught me in a dent in the moon I was exploring, naturally none of my weapons worked on it, and I couldn't beam to safety. I felt no shame in turning on admin mode to get my stuff back. Who thought that would be fun and engaging gameplay, especially because you can just buy fuel at the Outpost for much less hassle?
@@punkysnarksoutpost trader in itself is an issue.
Someone made a video about what went wrong with Starbound, and the most obvious one is the spoonfeeding, with generic procedural blandness, and overall lack of lead design view.
Same. Zxcept i destroy the ghost thing
@@unlimited971 How? I thought the whole point was it can't be killed so you can't just take an entire moon's worth of fuel on one visit
I loved Starbound, had no idea that all this stuff happened. Never knew it was a Kickstarter campaign. Knew the developers were ass though.
hey wait a minute i just watched one of your videos 3 hours ago
Terraria > Starbound 100% though, terraria is a good classic and the devs are awesome
Plus the modding community is thriving
see one thing i didn’t clarify enough in the video is that the “kickstarter” wasn’t actually on the kickstarter platform but was actually crowdfunded on their website in kickstarter fashion
@@robokastPlease have someone at least review your scripts. Getting lilluminaughtii vibes with your video essays. (concerning)
Also what was the background music/theme...
...it was fire.@@robokast
I played over 100 hours of Starbound's early access, and loved so much of it. The almost comedic nature in how boss fights were incorporated was inspired, as was the idea to tie different races stylistically to different eras of human technology and culture. Heck, it even includes one of the most robust player controlled music systems I've ever seen, using a MIDI-like system to play whatever custom songs you want without your friends ever having to install the mods you got them from.
When the full game released, i was devastated to say the least. Trading in the hundreds of randomized animal types for the same boring rotation on every planet? A boring story with worse boss fights than the beta? After the 20-30 hours i put in just to beat the story with a friend in co-op, i never touched it again.
The only saving grace it offers is a seamless and expansive modding experience that meshes well with multiplayer. Try to find it on sale if you can, i don't know if its even worth the US $15.
This video is completely clickbait. 91% of positive reviews on steam and 2.5 million sold copies is not a failed game. This guy should be ashamed. Just rewatch 4:42, those comments be selected completely go against what he JUST SAID.
@@atersol346 the thing is he isnt wrong, the game might have been financially successful but it wasnt what was promised and has since been left to rot, people from all sides say the same thing, its story is unecessary, its gameplay is weak and its crafting/building mechanics are borderline faulty at the best of times
also the timestamp you put in is him showing examples of people being optimistic ... of course the comments are going to be hopeful, thats kinda the point of him showing them lol
@@speurtighearnamacterik8230 let me just point this out, saying its being held up by mods isnt a good thing, its a bad thing, it means the base game isnt interesting or indepth enough to be held up on its own, thats an issue
base starbound is boring after just a little while because everything feels slow and samey
@@atersol346 I was very disappointed by the game and never understood all the positive reviews. So for me the video title was okay as I read it as a failure from an artistic perspective.
@@atersol346 not paying your devs seems to be a bit of a fail,
I played Starbound in 2014, I loved the idea of exploring other worlds and improving my ship. Unlike Terraria, which I played very little and already got sick of and dropped because it didn't have a story, Starbound has it and that's what drew me to the game. I played again in 2022 with my wife at Coop. In general, I loved Starbound, the ideas of the species, the items, the types of worlds. Of course, there could be fighting in space.
I didn't know about the game's development problems, here in Brazil people loved the game, I followed the blog for updates and it was very active, there were several new features that made the game more robust.
I honestly liked the game and I miss games like this.
The irony of Terraria and Starbound, is that Terraria had a "last" update that basically made the devs go "yeah lol we cant leave this its too good" and they went on to make more updates after the "last" update.
Then we have Starbound, which was dead on arrival basically, but was hailed as the New Terraria, the next Terraria, Terraria 2.0. But became Terraria 0.5. The only good thing was the infinite planets.
The planets arn’t actually infinite I think, but it would take more than a lifetime to explore them all
@@vaulto They loop around yeah
It was not "dead on arrival", I have about 200 hours of playtime and I did a crap ton in the game, built multiple bases, and beat the whole game. It was a solid game for $15 which is dirt cheap, I definitely got my money's worth. I think people just had severely unrealistic expectations. I've spent way more on games that only have like a 30 hour story and then you're done.
@@kinotsu3017 Im glad some people enjoy the game!
@@kinotsu3017I don't think the expectations were "unrealistic" at all. Having multiple fun features in the beta and others planned to then completely ruin it on release does make it perfectly reasonable for people to be upset about the game's state.
Modded Starbound is one of my best gaming experiences. Everything that was wrong with the game, Likely has a mod to fix it. Crazy how long the modding community lasted too
I'm playing through the game with the frackin universe mod right now it's actually so much fun
It's too bad some issues are baked into the game. Namely poor optimization
Completely agreed. Idk I feel like I'm completely alone thinking that modded starboard was way more fun than modded terraria. I just didn't really enjoy terraria because of how confining it felt. Me and my decently large friend group are currently playing through the Arcana mod along with a large mix of other mods and it's been an experience unlike any other
@elijah_da_draggo7094 I think so too. Modded starbound felt like terraria 2
It had a sex mod community, no shit it survived.
I had fun with Starbound and I'm sad it's basically been abandoned. Despite all the disaster it still has potential.
I know that feeling, bro. Koala versions were awesome, the first giraffe (the one that still had unique races) was me being Homer as he pursuits his barbeque pig... Then I learned that you can't count on anyone, specially your heroes
Honestly the modding community for the game kinda keeps it on life support
Edit: In a good way
@@Schro701 yep!!
I mean, why wouldn't it be abandoned some day? Do you honestly expect a dev to indefinitely develop new, free updates? They finished the early access. They even gave us multiple free content updates afterwards. It's normal for devs to move on to new projects when they are finished with their old ones. There are some exceptions, yes. But these are goodwills from the devs, not something that should be expected. And releasing content dlc would probably have brought so much more fury amongst players that don't understand companies need to make money.
@@penix3323 that doesn't change the fact they scammed me and many others...
I would describe the game as a collection of thousands of half finished ideas. That's the big difference, you see Terraria implemented professionally designed and completed mechanics and a tight gameplay loop every time they made an adjustment. They would actually finish an idea before stepping over it and onto the next thing. Starbound is a showcase of great potentials with no focus sort of like a 2D No Man's Sky that never got fixed but just stayed in early access for like a decade. It's really sad, the whole era for this kind of game seems to have passed but I hope that somebody will revive it with something great in the future, something that they actually finish.
The whoosh sfx spam gets really annoying really really fast
Comment should be higher up. The constant clicking noise transition is really grating as well
@@AlwaysBlue86the video is really over edited
@@AlwaysBlue86 I didn’t even notice until I read your comment and then realised he had done it 8 times in 15 seconds lmao.
Overedited but didnt even de-ess the voiceover too
yeah, and that one-word-at-a-time crap that's just annoying to watch
It's so ironic to see Terraria and Starbound then, and their state now.
But terraria is doing pretty good tho?
That's the point, Terraria was said to be dying, while tarbound soared.
Now Starbound is dead and Terraria has gotten ridiculous second wind success.@@ssourbell
I'd love to see Re-logic take a shot at reviving the game, if in any universe they ever stop updating Terraria and actually put their heads down to focus on a new project.
Kinda reminds me of the Megaman/Mighty nº 9 situation. Megaman was in the pits, MN9 appeared like some kind of savior of the fans. Game turned out to be dogshit, then Capcom released Megaman 11 afterwards and completely turned the tables.
@@TheOrian34
All terraria needed was just more of the same (as in stay in the current gameplay formula)
And Re-Logic sat down and delivered without revising the entire game, they just extended what already worked.
Starbound on the other hand scrapped dozens upon dozens of features and reworked others and in the end we were left with inferrior bosses, inferrior lore, inferrior exploration, and inferrior surivor mechanics
you are way overusing that photo click sound effect
will reduce it in the next video!
Agreed.
how many photos is bro taking
if not reduced ill just sponsorblock every photo effect
@@robokastPart of its presence in the video makes it similar to someone smacking their lips before they speak. I think it wouldn't be as bad if it was used in a more natural way, if that makes sense?
were the constant shutter sounds necessary?
yeah. also droning on what could have been a 3 minute video
@@dizzlegrizzle1919 Gotta get that UA-cam 💰 🤑
both of you gave the video your time and views, just to bitch. you're the only ones losing in this situation lol.
I played this game during beta with my friends. I found an entire moon full of healing glowing water.
My entire existence was about collecting and distributing it. We had mods like crazy. My ship ended up with massive tankers of the stuff. I built a mega factory base on that moon, ans my friends came to buy it and use the spas i made to heal and relax. It was awesome.
I played it a year later and it was entirely ruined.
Same, had a ton of fun in the beta, came back after years to see the release gutted almost everything about the game that had made it fun. Facepalming dev decision. I wonder if all these systems and assets were created by their unpaid "interns" and they had to remove them because of that...
@@MCArt25 that wouldn't surprise me at all.
dude I really like starbound, didnt know about all of this, so sad, developers and creators like chucklefish should know people can wait like we wait on terrario or stardew updates, we only want honesty and transparency
Starbound isn't just one of those games that's better with mods, I feel like it NEEDS them. It really did feel gutted after the Koala builds, something you didn't mention that irks me personally is the removal of unique race traits in favor of unique racial armor stats, because apparently it's bad to have players chose a race based on stats. Despite the fact Novakids still glow in the dark and start with gun crafting. There is no reason for a minmaxer to play anything except Novakid, so why remove flavor from the rest?
Because novakids father had money in the bank. Their race got immunity to the Naruto cloning machine
@@solouno2280 gave me a big laugh
You know, I really enjoyed Starbound when I started playing it. I don't remember everything, but I remember I would tend to find these desert settlements with the Apex towns, or these occasional lab buildings with sci-fi chests or whatever they were called. The game was fun to explore. I liked making my home on winter planets and using the Old Radiator for heat and the apex fridge for food preservation, if memory serves. Then, I remember the temperature aspect got removed entirely, along with ships having to run on purple fuel pumped from moons rather than coal and such. When an update would happen, it would reset all my progress, which got old after awhile, but at least I could explore promptly. Then they added some sort of a tiered mandatory progress thing where you had to do these missions through the ship's computer or something. It got to the point where you couldn't just get in and go, explore. Other things changed, like removing the ability to scan furniture you found and use pixels to make the stuff with the ship's replicator. I played the game with friends a little bit, and it was cool how if a friend had a modded feature, like custom ships, I could still see it and travel with him, ride along. Coordinates were consistent so you could share them with friends. I really did enjoy the game. It eventually got to the point where the lag was so bad, I could no longer play the game on my computer, but I still had hope for it to improve. I figured the development would be a little rocky until it found its place. It's a shame that from what it sounds like here, it's at a dead end.
I remember the purple fuel and pixel mechanic, miss when the game felt unique
The listed problems aren't all that happened, and I'm certain it only goes deeper. For example, at one point in time, the author of one of the most popular ammo overhaul mods was approached with the possibility of making the mod an official part of the game.
Needless to say, said individual seemed pretty ecstatic, but, and this is where my memory gets a little hazy, I believe they had some NDA clause stuff before they could bring this individual on fully, and said individual asked a few questions to get clarification or reassurances before they ended up getting ghosted by the team member that had approached them.
Multiple attempted communications later with zero replies, they got frustrated enough to make all public, and it was only after that moment that they got any kind of response at all.
Given all the other stuff Chucklefish's done, and this, I'm like 100% certain there's a bunch of stories of awful management and treatment that simply haven't gone public yet.
I categorically refuse to support them. They got my money for Starbound - anything else they put out isn't getting any more out of me, no matter if they developed it or simply published it.
I think same happened with Avali mod from RyuujinZERO. Their modded race was about to become official but the devs of Starbound tried to fully claim race IP without any credits to RyuujinZERO and they wanted that mod maker to give up on race. I am glad that mod maker disagreed and did not allow them to claim Avali race.
Funny, I saw Starbound as part of one of those games I picked up as a bundle and thought "hey, I remember everyone being excited about this, why don't I hear about it anymore?" And now I know why.
Jeez, to be mismanaged to the point even Toby Fox and Eric Barone don't want to be associated with you, ouch.
You didn't mean it this way, I imagine, but usually when someone says "even" XYZ person(s) "don't want to be associated with you" it means that XYZ person is a low standard and even that low standard of company doesn't want to deal with you---meaning that you have fallen to such low regard by comparison. Fox and Barone are a high standard, and rather than not even getting their association it is instead a case of a huge missed opportunity. Chucklefish squandered the labor and passion of eager, creative minds and lost bigly by doing so. It is truly their loss, and a measurably huge one. A lot can be said in a few words, so you may wish to reflect on how you use this phrase in the future.
@@Diamondragan Lol, look how mad he gets
@@Diamondragan sure, "don't want to be associated with you" can be taken in that negative light, but there's a positive alternative you're overlooking which fits the original comments intention better: even 2 authors who are reasonable/forgiving/kind don't want to be associated with you, then you know you've F'd up.
imo that camera click sound between transitions is way too loud and frequent
I started paying attention after reading this, and holy hell you aren't wrong lmao
I was thinking the same thing while watching
Yous all got some condition? Just a click
@@NFSWARFARE i mean 200+ people agree with me, so no i don’t think it’s a me thing
@NFSWARFARE I mean it's just funny to point out, for me anyone
This video series turns out to be something I really wanted but didn't know it. Glad I found the channel!
Thanks for watching!
This doesn't even touch on the whiplash on features and gameplay. I recall them constantly nerfing firearms the players could use while enemies could destroy you from afar and then there is the complete nerfing of how inventory worked which would make any base building a task of just moving resources.
This is painful to watch... I remember stumbling onto starbound in 4 to 6 years ago, and I was immediately enthralled. I had no idea the past that it had, but I found it super fun. Every now and then, I play it again, though usually with the Frackin' Universe mod, which I suppose could be closer to the original vision of Starbound. All this explains why no one knows about Starbound when I ask if anyone knows about Starbound. This game was super influential on me, my profile picture is a dang floran. I wish everyone who worked on the game got paid.
The main questline needed a rework as the artifact scanning quests are so tedious. I think they also made the mistake that a Lot of indie or small studio games make of adding more random content like pokeballs, flying cars, pocket dimension platforming challenges, that late game dungeon crawl thing (forgot the name) or mechs to get attention instead of really polishing the core experience. We need like 10x the variety in planet types AND manmade structures, and a rework to the progression system. Like, compare exploring a cave in terraria to exploring a cave in starbound. That right there is what separates an evergreen game like terraria from something more forgettable.
It really is a shame because the game did so many things right. I loved upgrading my ship and decorating the interior. A lot of the story dungeons and bosses were pretty cool. And i think the sandbox elements and the setting (florans are also my favorite. Pretty flower people who are also carnivorous barbarians with funny mannerisms, awesome) are really well done. But, its just sort of sloppily executed in a lot of ways. It feels like a waste. I hope someone else can pick up where they left off. Even no mans sky really fell short of this concept for a game, and it has a lot of the same problems. The 10/10 procedurally generated space exploration game is like the holy grail of ambitious gaming projects, someone will nail it eventually.
@@AveragePearEnjoyerI remember another video about the story of Starbound's development, and it does bring up a good point in that due to all the unpaid labor, game got so many systems/overhauls that were all ultimately surface deep, because the people making those would either be basically left on hold when they needed a break, lost the initial drive that fueled them, or left the project when it became clear they weren't gonna be getting a paid job at company, no one was there to understand or flesh out the system to any real degree, like, as you mentioned, archeology, "pet" system with those capsules, or terrain navigation when generation was overhauled
Same here. Florans and Novakids are probably my favourite fictional races ever. I just hate frackin universe. At some point I'll try it again probably but it felt like it was tacking on weirder, more complex ways to get stuff that already exists in the base game, as well as locking basic gear behind an ugly looking tech tree. Vanillla starbound's saving grace was that it initially gave you direction, but I felt so lost when playing FU.
@@AveragePearEnjoyer I think more devs need to treat space like the creators of Star Citizen are doing - only including a few systems and populating them with planets, moons, asteroids all chock full of content, rather than like in Elite where it's a literal 1:1 recreation of the Milky Way, but every system is almost exactly the same. I do hope someone nails it eventually though, and DOESN'T make the flight insultingly arcadey as well as focusing too much on a hamfisted in FPS aspect.
@@Jenna_Talia i think procedural gen can work. Look at helldivers, the maps are procedurally generated from some canned geographic features and populated with repetitive objectives. But the game is actually challenging and high energy. Extremely fun. NMS and starbound feel like a slog because the main focus of what you are doing is actually on the terrain itself. But if games could REALLY pressure the player while they are looking for resources on the planets with well designed combat or stealth or whatever, so you can get away with a more practical amount of content to populate the world. Put a timer for how long you can stay on the surface at a time, and then reset and re-generate the map when it runs out. That kind of mechanic makes picking up rocks in subnautica really, really engaging.
Thats what i mean when I say it feels like a waste. It just needs a little bit of that sauce and it would be great.
The game is a mile wide but a foot deep. There was no reason to build a colony, and thus, no reason to build anything outside your ship.
This. I think the only thing I ever built on a planet was a small garden, just because it couldn't be done on the ship like I wanted. All other planetary fixtures were pointless.
I literally did it because I could.
Felt pointless after the build was done, though.
Any while you could attract colonists and collect rent from them for some reason you had to collect it in person which quickly became a pain to bother with especially if you had more than one colony.
I have built a couple bases in the time of the game. Both were on servers, so it was a place for people to go to other than each others’ ships.
I built a colony, because I wanted to build a whole planet worth of a city. Even built the space station. It plays well as a sandbox game, not as a story game.
something to mention - Starbound has a weird corner that kinda exists on its own. Since the game was so broken, it was super easy to spawn in custom sprites and items (without anyone on the server needing to download a single mod), which facilitated a large and thriving roleplay community at the time. It existed and was arguably much larger before that, but that simple fact of the game being able to be so easily modded in vanilla without need of downloaded mods definitely helped it survive. The community is active to this day, albeit in super modded versions or super dead servers.
Hey there, person who was part of the original kickstarter backers.
Me and about 3 other friends decided to back the game way back in the day. It looked cool, promising, and the devs were very active.
Despite it's rough edges, me and my friends all thoroughly enjoyed the game. Every new alpha update was a ton of fun to explore, and we loved messing with the new features.
The temperature system was also cool, having to sacrifice armor protection for temperature protection, so you could continue to progress. Seeing that go was very sad.
We had been having a lot of fun despite some of the weird changes because we trusted the process with the developers.
Our only big issue up to that point is the amount of time it took for them to implement the community made race (which was embarassingly long, mind you. Only a few updates before official release.)
Then, the game released.
To say it was a downgrade would be an understatement.
Locking the progression behind the lackluster, cookie cutter, boring as white bread story was the game's largest mistake by far.
The missions were often more annoying than interesting, and clearing them usually involved having to planet hop to find a randomly generated legendary weapon, which may or may not even be very enjoyable to use.
Certain tools had been entirely reworked, often for worse.
Crafting building materials and furniture wasn't improved at all. This made playing the game post-final boss terrible.
The only thing that carried the game into any sort of enjoyment was the modding. And modding starbound is actually excellent.
**So excellent in fact, that Tiy actually offered to add one of the most popular custom races (Avali) into the game, but refused to pay, so it never happened.**
Bryce is by far one of the most insufferable and sorry excuses for a developer the industry has ever seen, I hope nobody falls for his tricks again.
Starbound failed making the gameplay interesting. You flew around, did a loop around a planet searching for ruins to scan, went on to the next planet doing the same loop for ruins until you had enough to go to the actual civilization to do a trial, then you did the whole cycle again but with a new theme of planets and for a new race. Remember once spending hours because I could not for the life of me find the last few objects needed to scan, it'd be like playing Terraria but you're searching for world-gen paintings in a large world. Put 70 hours into the game compared to my 1k in terraria.
If someone promises "procedurally generated worlds" and "flashed out and unique" at the same time, you can be sure that's a completely and utter lie. It's like saying you'll make a cold and hot drink.
I mean, all procedurally generated world are unique, as for the fleshed out part, you can definitely do the procedural generation over multiple iterations to hone in certain features. It is possible, it's just that no studio that I know of bothers to do it, cuz it costs time and therefore, money.
@@nati0598 callingp procedurally generated worlds "unique" is quite a catch. you can call unique in pattern, but not in design, and if someone hears "unique" something, they think of truly unique, not just a change of texture or elements order, that's not unique, that's just a inversion of pattern/elements.
Naturally it's possible, but just because it means it's possible, it doesn't mean it's cost effective, and that's the point. It's not just a matter of "hmm I'm not feeling like spending money in this", it's that the scalability is exponencial, and fleshing out procedurally generated worlds literally defeats the purpose of procedurally generated worlds, that is to generate tons of worlds without the hassle of manually creating/customizing them.
You can change the word "world" for anything else.
@@AmodeusR First time when someone started using their own definition of the word "unique" instead of the one everyone else uses.
And yes, I specifically agreed that companies don't do this because it's not worth it. It's almost like you didn't read anything past the first sentence.
@@nati0598 just changing the position from 12 to 21 doesn't make something "unique", changing the order of 2 obstacles in a map won't make "unique". It's a simple definition on experience level, if you can't understand, don't blame me.
It's not a matter of me not reading the following sentences past the first one, it's just that you aren't capable of understanding the difference of mere "it's expensive", and "it's simply contradictory to flash out procedure generated worlds since we procedurally generated them exactly so we didn't need to work on making multiple different worlds" and the exponential cost growth involved in just thinking of it, and that not considering the ineffectiveness, doesn't translate well in just "it gets expensive".
@@AmodeusR ... Do you know what procedural generation is? It's not 12 or 21, it's inventing new numbers. But I guess modular procedural generation is more popular anyway due to the aforementioned lower cost.
Seems like you're the one who's incapable of understanding the difference.
Btw, if you're gonna claim it's impossible, don't go saying companies don't do it because of "low effectiveness". It's either impossible or not.
What I liked most about starbound, at least in the early days when I played, was the building. Specifically, that any block could be used in the fore ground or back ground. Something I wish terraria had, as sometimes background walls are not the same texture as their foreground counterparts
There's also another thing to consider, and that's the community itself. The mod 'community'.
Let's be frank, if it wasn't for being easily moddable, starbound would have died far earlier. It's only because of the mods that it still has a playerbase at all.
However, the mod community has its own problems. Notice I put it in scare quotes earlier because in all honesty, it's not really even a community. It's just a collection of little tribes revolving around a few cults of personality that all hate each other.
the mod scene being filled with insular tribes is honestly kind of amazing considering part of Starbounds planets are separated out tribes and groups with their own beliefs
I just wish more mods actually contributed to the story rather than being their own thing, its uncanny playing with friends and they send you a 200 page mod list and none of them add anything of value. Hell some of them will add one item and theres no way in hell anyones going out of their way to use it in game
all modding communities are like this
@@ptolemaicfoxxo3032 The story is unsalvageable.
I just want the starbound beta back
You should check out all the controversy the largest mod (Frakkin Universe) has caused. It was like the entire mod team looked at what Chucklefish did, and decided to somehow be *worse* than them. From bullying other mod creators into adding their mods to it (and if they refused, the mod dev just basically created the same mods to put into his own so no one had a reason to download the original mod) to intentionally adding in code to fuck with your game if another mod was used that "wrecked the balance of the mod", to plenty of other things. It is a rabbit hole to go down.
I think people overplay the FU drama. To be fair to FU, what were they supposed to do? Sayter wanted a feature on the mod, he sees that said feature was already implemented by another mod, he reaches out and asks if they can to add the mod to FU, some modders agree, and some didn't, the ones that didn't then went on to complain when the FU team wrote their own code that basically does the same things as their mod does as if they somehow have rights to concepts of mods. Do you just NOT add features to your mod then because someone else has already done it and they refuse to let you add their mod (and they also will complain if you code a similar mod)? That's just completely unreasonable. That's like me adding guns to a minecraft mod and then complaining when someone's modpack includes guns aswell because they are conceptually too similar to my mod, it's nonsense.
@@enemote "Your honour, this man didn't want to give me his icecream recipe. I had no choice but to steal it from his house then launch a lawsuit against him for selling the same icecream as mine".
Dude didn't do "similar" he straight-up ripped the code from the mods and forced incompatibility with those that couldn't, along doing copyright strikes on anyone he doesn't like.
@@scorpixel1866 Now I am very unfamiliar with that whole thing, but the absurdity that he could copyright strike other mods makes me seriously doubt the full validity behind this.
@@Sone01TheFirst False claims exist, harassing someone enough can force many people out of a medium.
@@scorpixel1866 But how can you make a false claim for a _Mod_ ? Can people actually own the intellectual property for that?
I loved Starbound. It was legitimately the game that got me into PC gaming. My best friend and I were addicted to it - and my favorite aspect was the city-building, since it was everything I dreamed of. It was the first PC game I put over 100 hours into.
But... for some reason, once 1.0 came into view, the game started getting strangely worse. It was like the quality was dipping instead of rising. And once 1.0 actually came out, it was like the game had somehow regressed from beta to alpha.
My friend and I stopped playing it a few weeks after that. I still think about Starbound sometimes. But instead of feeling nostalgic, it only feels sad.
A really poorly thought out Alpha
man, please check out mods for this game, im sure they can make the game fun and playable again
i remember this game from years ago. amazing to see how much this title was dragged through the mud. there has been drama with the game for years and its still going.
"change gaming forever"
Y'all say that about every game lmao.
To be honest, I never heard of anyone talking about Starbound saying "Change gaming forever" more like just "Terraria in space".
sometimes is true, most times not for the best...
bro is out of ideas sometimes, just let him cook and the video will be fine later
Man I tried to watch a video last night. “ 1 hour of useless information about fallout new vegas “
Every single thing he said started with “ in this area in fallout new Vegas you can find… “ and ended with “ that’s where you can find a in fallout new vegas “
Every single minute or so, starting and ending with “ in fallout new vegas “
Compared to that type of padding, this guy saying a little bit of hyperbole is a-okay in my book.
It's that or "**Insert game here* killer"
Let's not forget the fact that Finn Bryce used to work on Terraria as a sprite artist, and after doing some scummy(too long of a tangent to explain) stuff behind the scenes, he got kicked out of Re-Logic and founded Chucklefish.
Damn if it's true, it's actually make sense, since this whole game feels like Terraria rip-off lol
We were unaware at that time, Terraria was stuck because of Finn and left in an abysmal state... It still had FF sprites with merchant being Galuf and Drías being Rydia, hell was an adornment and the dungeon was endgame content, all it had was fishing (thankfully there was no angler yet... I still think fishing ruined Terraria though) and after he left, we just had the "pizza oven no more" update and character editor. But in the end, re-logic keeps bringing that "werewolf the apocalypse" gameplay each update
@@solouno2280 fishing in terraria is such an odd concept-- like getting fish for buffs as an alternate source to herb growing would have been fine--
but by tacking on too many rewards, and just strictly better-than-current upgrades-- you really had no choice but to fish.
(iirc the old shark pick had basically molten pick power- and you could get it before making any other pick)
well if that's not a revelation... damn, that gives quite the insight of chucklefish's origins. Had to be so bad among Terraria devs 💀
@@kimmyera174 it was
Modern Starbound is a game that is fundamentally carried by it's modding community. There are so many people online who put far more effort into making the game fun then the developers did that playing the game unmodded is just a worse experience over all. Frackin Universe and other overhaul mods really do a great job of fulfilling the promises Chucklefish failed to do (if you can get past the required Master's Degree in Chemistry it takes to understand how to craft things in FU.)
The other problem with FU is it being 95% stolen content. Like, “copied from people’s GitHubs with the metadata filed off” stolen. Try Arcana, Starforge, Project Ancient Cosmos, Betabound, Shellguard, and/or Maple32 instead.
A lot of people defending the game seriously overlook the fact the mods probably have a lot to do with the game's current positive rating and playerbase.
Cute Pokemon Being Stretched
@@spyr0guy to be fair, open source means open source, whether you like the person using the stuff you made or not so it's not really stolen
@@sneedchuck5477 Most open source code has a license that does not allow its use without attribution at the very least. Just because something is available for copying does not mean there is no copyright on it.
Starbound failed primarily because it lacked a sense of permanence. The size of the ship on which the main character travels should have been larger. It should have been about the size of a small world, something like the TARDIS but better, so that the spaceship would resemble not a tin can, but a space station from Mass Effect, full of everything. A place where you could store items from the worlds you visit, where there is room for development. This place should have been the home, not some planet a thousand light years away. The lack of a proper base, unlike Terraria, did a disservice to Starbound. In Terraria, you can always easily return to the main world while traveling to other worlds with your main character, whereas in Starbound, this was a problem from the start.
Hard to watch this whenever you would flash text on the screen against crinkly paper background. Really unpleasant visual.
>shows dark screen in the footage for a couple of seconds
>super bright camera flash transition effect
MY EYES
After playing Modded Minecraft; no you don't need a Fleshed out world. Having the world react to your choices like mining magic ore in a area for an example causing more chaotic disruption events with the world reacting to your choices, your actions feeling like they hand meaning. That and having an RPG mod that allowed you to add your own NPCs/ quest if need be. My point is; you can have an in depth great game that's RNG generated.
Thought the name looked familiar, and after a quick scroll I realized this was an Unturned UA-camr I used to watch lmao
Can you use less camera sound effects please?
It feels like those hyper stimulation Minecraft vids
As somebody that player a good bit of Starbound throughout the last 3 years I'm kinda shocked
I personally went to it after having a friend recommend me and have spend a few thousand hours in it
The time I spend was great but it sucks to hear the backstory of what happened before.
a few thousand hours in it? LMAO, what a patsy!
@@kane_lives And I would do it again ^^ I personally really enjoyed my time in it and Isent that the most important part about playing a game, finding a game you truly enjoy with your heart?
What was going on sucked but that does not mean that people that don't know anything from what happened won't be able to enjoy the game.
oh god, the bright low framerate constantly changing high contrast crumbled paper background, and the video jumping from dark cave gameplay of starbound to that and back at complete random, and the flashbang transitions from that dark gameplay, is all painful on the eyes
I am an early tester and the game had a good progress, but when the story released it watered down the progress heavily
Was the story trash?
@@Hallaw345yeah, you're basically space naruto tasked with the mission to kill an evil god because an old lady told you so and everybody competent is already dead in the intro (insert absolutely long and boring fetch quests in between). Also the story is the same no matter what race you chose and you have to manually type in a command to reset the story triggers in case you made a new character.
@@jart1984 we'll that's awful
You forgot to mention that the guy main guy from Chucklefish studios actually broke off from Re-logic (The creators of terrarira) and basically cloned it 1:1 thinking he could do it better and make more money, The game was a failed clone, not just employee abuse- though it was so systemic that ConcernedApe (the creators of Stardew-Valley) actually cut ties with Chucklefish studios because of it, way-back-when if those actually recalled seeing the Chucklefish studios logo popping up on launch when you played Stardew-Valley.
He also was an artist for Terraria that stole Final Fantasy sprites and almost got Re-Logic in trouble for this.
@@Necrius WAIT THAT WAS HIM!??! I remember hearing about this so long ago it makes so much sense that the lazy prick who tried to copy Terraria wouldn't even be creative enough to make things while he worked for Terraria.
Did you not watch the video? He said he came from the terraria team, and he mentioned the concerned ape thing????
Up until this exact moment I genuinely thought they were both by the same company, for some reason.
And he still managed to form a team that made Starbound, which easily blows Terraria out the water if you use mods. Base game? Sure, Terraria is more fleshed out. If you include mods though? Starbound is lightyears ahead. Terraria mods are so... meh. Meanwhile Starbound mods make the game so much more interesting.
Starbound had the same problems NMS later had - lack of direction, reliance on RNG to deliver sustainable content, and disconnection in game elements.
Terraria, as a direct comparison has a clear goal in front of a player at all times - killing bosses. You get better gear, build arenas, get food and buffs (and set up farms for thous), get potions and try to kill whatever boss is in your sights. What do you have in Starbound? Borefest of a main quest that asks you to do the same thing over and over again? Traveling from planet to planet digging recolored ores? Dungeons that pop up from time to time with a boss that has 5% chance to drop unique loot, that would be outclassed by a sword that you'll find in a random dumpster? None of that gives a interesting goal for player to work towards.
What it did had and what it prided itself upon is an randomly generated world with randomly generated inhabitants on it that would give you randomly generated quests. Except the problem was, that randomly generated content isn't exactly interesting to explore. It can be a filler for some handcrafted content that you can hide behind it, but as I said before, it just wasn't there.
And then came patches. Pointless grind upon pointless grind that doesn't connect to the main systems in any way or improve on the base formula. Complete hundreds if not thousands of mech missions to upgrade your mech that you can basically use only for mech missions was a peak of it.
All I remember about this game is using the soda exploit during the 2019 steam summer sale to power level my steam profile.
I wasn't aware of the whole background story. Started playing the pre-1.0 version. It was a love/hate relationship. Part of my liked this game so much. It was amazing, what you could build within the realm of 2D, including all kinds of mechanisms. And there were amazing servers out there, with communities creating beautiful worlds. Together with friends we built secret orbital bases, secret deep ocean bases, colonies, ships. But there were some serious limitations in regard of protecting your assets. Also multiplayer had a very limited player capacity and suffered from lags, especially with all the player mods going out of hand. Imagine this game with hundreds of players in the same universe! Once they released 1.0, most servers shut down, because the worlds they created did not work in the release anymore. And they forced a reset of all worlds, iirc. I stopped playing then. It was a really bad move from them. That game really had a lot of potential.
2 more major issues & scandals you forgot to mention are: despite promising KS backers like myself (ugh...) that we'd get to name an NPC in the game, the names never appear anywhere ingame. The names are just hidden in a single file. Also, they got a puppy, kept it in their office to take pics of it and drum up attention on social media, and indirectly killed it due to their own negligence and incompetence after fans kept warning them not to have exposed wires it could chew on -right next to its effing bed.-
Aw, the dog died? I had not heard that
Oh come on, good thing I was banned so I couldn't see that stupid negligent caniscide. I was early in mid school and still kept my cat away from live wires
Whoa. I never participated in the community other than mods on Workshop. Didn't hear about the dog thing. Do you have a link for that? Crazy stuff.
killing a puppy is about as bad as it gets, what the fuck lmao
I tried searching around for anything about this puppy scandal and couldn't find anything. I've confirmed they have office dogs, but not a single peep about any of them dying due to negligence. Which would be a pretty big thing and absolutely findable on google. Do you have any sources for this puppy scandal?
I played and greatly enjoyed the Starbound Beta. I was disappointed when 1.0 released, and so much changed. Procedurally generated creatures were a highlight for me, but from 1.0 on, a lot of planets had more or less identical wildlife. The scanning portions between actual main plot missions was tedious, the Novakid race lacked a quest, and all of the sudden, instead of using radioactive materials for fuel, it's a form of macguffinite that only appears on moons and prompts a ghost to chase the player around. When I was playing with friends after the 1.0 launch, I volunteered to be the fuel guy because all of us found the ghost annoying, and I was the best at escaping it.
The temperature mechanics got simplified to an upgrade you equipped and upgraded, making the game even more shallow. Circling back to the main quest, nothing is really explained. OK, so the six species scattered across the galaxy have artifacts that open the door to The Ruin, the remains of Earth that was destroyed by a colossal tentacle monster. But we learn little to nothing about said tentacle monster, only that it's a force of destruction that the Cultivator, a sort of creator god figure, basically died to seal away, and the Novakids were born from his remains. A lot of lore from the beta was struck out, and we don't know a lot about the Cultivator either. The game was still fun, but despite adding mechs, it was a lesser experience than the beta.
I haven't played the Bounty hunter missions from the 1.4 update. Maybe I'll replay the game again sometime soon and play them after I finish the main quest.
To me procedural creatures lacked variety too, as there was just too few templates to pull from. Frankly i'd rather have a decent pool of pre-made creatures than "totally different" creatures whose only difference is that one breathes blue stuff and the other breathes green stuff.
And that's how it is in the rest of the game. It's got a lot of potential but due to incompetence and scumminess of Chucklefish it's about as deep as contents of a spilled glass of water.
@@Feuerhamster I agree that there should have been more parts and behaviors for procedurally generated creatures. And while I like the creatures the game has now, I feel like a mix of the current creature population and an improved form of the procedural creatures would be the best solution; the old procedural ones did get a bit same-y, but the visual variety was still nice.
I miss my procedurally generated large bird creatures, they were terrifying. All the premade creatures suck especially when using capture balls, what you really want to do is capture some procedural large creatures since theyre the strongest.
Now that you mention it too, the fuel thing sucks. Now moons are completely inhospitable and you cant have a cool moon base anymore! Bullshit!
The Bounty Hunter missions are, in my opinion, much better and more fun than the base game. It's basically a 70-80 cops movie... in Space! WITH MECHS! It's also a direct sequel to the main campaing, so it's better to play them AFTER finishing the game.
But I may have a biased opinion because at that point, I played with mods so the mechs were more interesting that the core ones (which are still miles above the base Starbound, so...). And maybe some of the reward weapons and gear were tweaked a bit by one or another of the mods I usually play with. I couldn't say, I have too many mods and it has been years since I played last.
Well, just so you know, the Biunty Hunter thing seems kinda dumb, but it has REALLY cool stuff.
And, a Mech Bossfight
I feel like Starbound's core idea of "what if Terraria but atmospheric space game" worked, it's just that the parts surrounding it didn't really do much to heighten that core idea. I think they could have just downsized the game into basically a space farming sim and it would have worked because the atmosphere, block variety, and NPC designs are the strong points of Starbound.
I remember first playing it years ago expecting a big open-ended space terraria with a spaceship to travel around in and instead I got met with a linear story based terraia-like instead which was extremely confusing, like what is the point of making explorable planets if their is no point in it? They defeated the purpose of they're own game systems. Oh what this game could of been is so so frustrating. Traveling around in your spaceship and having to mine for fuel was a fun loop and visiting different planets was so fun but that's like basically where the fun ended.
A friend of mine worked on the soundtrack for the game, and showed it to me and a few other friends at a LAN party in probably 2010-2011. He left during the volunteer fiasco and all his stuff has been removed since they redid the OST during release. The whole thing is just sad, the game was really fun.
I was incredibly hyped for Starbound back in the day but just realized seeing this video that I haven't thought about it since the day I uninstalled it which was the day it released, I remember a friend of mine bought it based on how hyped I was and we played it together. I don't remember much about the game other than how frustrating it was and that even the starter quest seemed entirely unpassable because a boss would show up that you had no meaningful way to defeat with the things the quest gave you. I just went and checked out of curiosity how long I managed to play Starbound via Steam and apparently I played a grand total of 7 hours.
Overall good video, but I felt like your dig against procedural content made no sense. It doesn't at all explain why Starbound failed to live up to Terraria, considering Terraria also has procedurally generated worlds. Furthermore, Realms of Magic, a 2D sandbox game with a handcrafted world was a much bigger financial failure than Starbound. The best selling game of all time (Minecraft) is also a procedurally generated sandbox game. I don't see any evidence that people find procedural worlds boring, especially in the sandbox genre where the player has the ability to shape the world. Calling procedural worlds in a sandbox game boring is like calling a blank canvas and amazing set of brushes a boring painting.
What makes a good sandbox is creative freedom and fun tools. What really crushes creative freedom is obligations, and there's no bigger obligation than a mission to save the universe. It feels awkward to settle down and build a cabin on a pretty planet when the world needs you. Also being told what's at your location by a quest giver destroys the joy of exploration. Just think, what's more exciting: A (Being told that there's a monster in a bunker, then going to that bunker and saying that monster) or B (Finding a bunker, going inside, and being ambushed by a monster) Sandbox survival games need to careful with pacing, Starbound's gameloop is subtly but notably slow. Terraria rewards the player with new tools more frequently.
idk why procedural generation keeps taking strays from video essayists.
I have been playing Terraria again lately and this video came up to remind me that I was so excited for this game. So sad what happened to it.
Starbound is a joke, is a case study on what not to do. Everyone talks about how No Man's Sky became good, this game is the opposite: Started out promising, and became a nightmare to deal with.
It's not that bad if you ignore the drama. Me and my husband has been playing for years and it's been our favorite game to play, especially when he's away from home for work. We only played vanilla too, found the FU mod too complex. It's our cozy game and many others feel the same way.
@@whiteRiceSupremacist it is that bad since the game turned for the worse because of the drama. Stop defending the undefendable, these ones promised something that they didn't delivered.
@@midorifox I mean the game is still pretty great despite of that. If you're upset about the potential wasted because of drama, it's understandable but the game itself is not a joke as it is still genuinely being enjoyed by many players.
@@whiteRiceSupremacist only those on the echo chamber that's the steam forums. I'm not upset because of the drama, I'm upset because this game is a all in all a con. It's undefendable, and I wish people would stop defend this since it's all but defendable. It's unfinished, crashes a lot, a downgrade from beta, it's a joke.
You like it, that's great, but don't come tell me that I shouldn't be upset at those lazy hacks that messed up everything just because you like it.
@@whiteRiceSupremacistno offense but you either have poor taste or you got a guilty pleasure. And the same applies to your hubby
well this came at a bit of a shock to me. Never knew there was this amount of controversy, I kinda just put in my hundred hours and moved on after generally having a pleasant experience years ago. Quite a shame that it became this, I was thinking of playing it again at some point.
I remember playing this back before the inclusion of a story. You just started the game and you'll come across pieces of a story as you play. Why did I stop playing? It got released and my progress got deleted. 💀💀
Honestly it's the mechanical and lore gutting that IMHO was it's biggest issue. Most people don't tend to see or hear about E-Drama and the majority filter it out, but "Somebody stole/removed things I paid for" is the kind of shit that people magnetize to every fucking time.
POV someone is giving you a great Starbound documentary while a toddler plays with a camera in the next room
Yeah I honestly had to stop watching the video cuz of that lol it got really annoying
I literally started gettting a headache
POV you have autism
Yeah I was about to complain about the choice of transition in this video. Watching that repeatedly at 2AM just sucks.
Modded starbound is better than the full game could ever be
I kinda hope that chucklefish will one day just look at starbound and just say, "huh, I wonder what would happen if we updated or made another starbound."
They did. Farworld pioneers, not from chucklefish but from the devs of starbound. As you can imagine it failed too, so not all of the starbound fail was because chucklefish
@@armando92 Yeah checking out one of the Reviews on it's steam page mentions that they stopped updating it and are relying on volunteers to continue support.
They clearly wouldn't have any good idea on what to add. Instead of fleshing out the game with the final update they just randomly added mechs that have barely any integration with the game itself.
@@armando92 ...huh. No wonder that game felt extremely familiar. And I thought it was just another Terraria clone riffing off of Starbound vibes.
Unless they summoned a genie to grant their wishes, signed pacts with several devils and demons, bribed Lady Fortune for their luckiest break in their lives and had a time-traveling cyborg from an alternate universe all to help them make the best possible update to the game, you can bet your ass that they would get hate for it on the grounds that they borked everyone's favourite mods.
8:52 ok but risk of rain was worth it...
I usually don't care about these stuff but the swooshing air sound effect really makes me frustrated, it feels like someone is blowing in your ear...
its mad playing it on early access versus now, systems I loved back in the day like having two hand slots and random generation of mobs was completely removed
What do you mean? Those systems were still in the game last I checked
@@WilliamCleland-e5q idk man was like 2 weeks ago, I can't remember 5mins ago
You still have two slots!!!
Mobs are still pretty random, they just simplified it. Having 10,000 random ass mobs would make progression a hassle, since so many mob-specific drops are used for crafting.
Everyone complains, but the game is fine. I’ve played it since beta, and its current incarnation is a vast improvement over the blind wandering.
I was there when the game first hit early access. They abandoned developing it very fast in favor of adding in twitch support into the game. Somehow they though adding their own OBS directly into the game was better than actually developing said game when it was barebones. Not all but a lot of threads and comments complaining about this on their forum have been deleted by them real time, I watched it happen. It was a sh*t show. I avoid anything they make or sponsor like fire.
Bruh, that paper effect is giving me epilepsy please stop
I remember my ex loved playing this game... this is the only thing that made ne avoid it..
😂
L i hope you contracted something in the relationship
@@rulingmoss5599 🤔 I may have found the saltiest man on the internet guys
Great video, but getting flashbanged every 10 seconds with white-on-white text/background makes it unwatchable. I almost got mild epilepsy from it lol.
Thanks for the feedback, is it just the white background that is the problem? Or is the camera shutter effect annoying too?
For me yes the background is the problem but I also believe it's due to the transition between your 'b-roll' footage and the moment the white screen/text appears on screen. There is a flash that is triggering it.
I have a friend who is adamant that Starbound is the best game ever, even when its most basic mechanics (jumping, movement techs, combat) are unfinished/unpolished. It doesn't have a tickrate or anything, its based on the framerate, meaning that its literally slower if you don't have max fps (60), and not to mention that it was built on the revolving door of unpaid labor, which is why the mechanics are crap, because one person, who wouldn't be anywhere near an expert at programming, would start working on them, then leave after not getting paid, and would get replaced by another person, who also wasn't being paid, and they would make progress and the cycle would repeat itself, leaving the mechanics as horrible frankenstein/patchwork that don't fit together in any meaningful way. Then there is the fact that they once updated the game in a way that caused most mods for the game to become incompatible, meaning modders would have to go back and fix their mods to get them to work, and the update didn't fix anything, it added a crappy bounty hunting system that wasn't fun or even worth anyone's time. Don't spend your time trying to find any fun in that game, you'll just waste your time.
it is still a pretty good game lol
i have around 70 hours in it
Starbound is a great game, even with it's short comings.
Chucklefish also made Wildfrost. It's a pretty good game I got a good 25/30 hours but I wish there was more content.
PS
After finishing this video, damn I didn't know they had such a bad history.
I never was really invested in Starbounds Development and stumbled upon it when it already was nearing its full released state. It was the time where i was simply too young to know what "kickstarting a game" even was.
The recollection I have of this game is that it may not the most fun gameplay wise. But i fell in love with the theme the style and the music almost instantly. Also i would not call the game dead without hesitation because there are many many mods for this game. And considering the state of the game, the modding community for starbound is surprisingly active.
Even with all that went down, I would not call it a complete failure, because there are still a considerable amount of people having fun with starbound.
P.S. I think that it is not that awful that Toby Fox didnt get to make the music. If Curtis Schweitzer didnt make the music I would never have been able to listen to Mercury for hours on end because i love that track so much.
Hey, these kinds of videos are nice and interesting as a synthesis of a specific subject. I have two enhancement suggestions for you:
1. As others have mentionned, the cuts to the white background and single word subtitles are quite annoying. They seem like they are randomly added about every minute, wihtout even emphasizing a specific point.
2. It is obvious that a lot of research has been put into writing the video, so I think it is too bad that you don't cite any of your sources. Listing in the description at least links to the pages you show (wikipedia article, reddit threads, etc.) would help people that want to look for further info, it would also look more professionnal and be a testament that you actually researched the video and not invented or copied everything.
Have a nice day
Ok, hear me out. I'm NOT going to defend Chucklefish, because, dear god, they are awful as developers and human beings, BUT, in my personal experience, I loved Vanilla Starbound from start to finish. Yeah, it lacked a ton of stuff that Terraria has been offering to us for more than a decade, but I... I just liked it. Its complexity feels right in the middle, between Minecraft and Terraria. I was doing a vanilla side-quest, where a villager from a desert planet asked me to search for their missing cousin. I was kind of low on food, but I said, YAH, WHY NOT? Midway through the desert, it started to get dark, and nocturnal fauna was something I didn't want to mess with, so I built a camp, put a portable stove, and then cooked my dinner while I waited for the night to end. My little camp was inside a cave, but I had enough space at the entrance to look at the stars, and then one of the cutest songs in the OST kicked in. I feel that Vanilla Starbound is about that, taking your time. HOWEVER, LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT WHAT I THINK THE -TRUE- STARBOUND EXPERIENCE IS.
If you go to the Steam page right now, you will see that Starbound has positive reviews!...
Due to the workshop. YEAH, this is one of those games saved due to the workshop mods. Fracking Universe, Shellguard, the whole Avali race, Arcana, competent mechs and ships... I think I have nearly 92 mods installed and the game barely crashes from time to time. I just love it to such a degree that I used to spend hours and hours building giant bases, exploring new planets with new mechanics and bosses, etc etc etc.
My recommendation for Starbound? Try to finish it at least [Once], so you can learn its core mechanics, and then, go crazy with the workshop. FUCK CHUCKLEFISH, long live the modder's comunity.
I haven’t ever heard anyone before be so adamant that a dev was so bad. What’s bad about them? Not trying to be rude, I just simply don’t know
A very insightful and well made video, thank you for your work.
The only thing I have to say is in certain places your descriptions do not match the posts you’re showing on the screen. It’s somewhat important to me personally that’s why I’m writing this.
For example, on 4:42 you say not all fans were optimistic; but the posts you show, albeit criticizing obvious flaws, are actually pretty optimistic about the game’s future.
Or on 7:01 where you said many of the game’s supporters started to see it a sinking ship, while the post shown is talking about excuses via chucklefish regarding the game and how in op’s opinion they just have to put something out there since they’ll have time to fix it.
And here 8:38 video says from passionate trailblazers to _irresponsible scammers;_ while the post itself just talks about broken promises, how the game had insane potential but the final product was bland, with no such jab at the studio calling them scammers or some sort.
As I said, everything is very insightful. It’s just these personally important points I wanted to make. Again, thank you for your work and research that went into making this video.
Funnily enough I was one of those people that just fell in love with the game's design and aesthetic (I have like 1500 hours sunk into it), but it took me over 5 years to learn about all these things since I've never been one to bother with community mingling. On a side note, this game had a knack for luring people of dubious character: Sayter, creator of Fracking Universe, the most popular mod for SB, was accused by many modders of stealing their work and incorporating it into FU, as well as being extremely rude and instigating his followers to harass his perceived "enemies" online.
Man, that’s even more sad, I thought FU was one of the coolest things to come to the Workshop on Steam for Starbound. I loved Starbound so much, but it seems that almost everything about it has been corrupted nowadays. Tainted with scandals and bad development decisions and bad people.
@@jalakor Well, while its true those people suck, the mod is still one of the best things to have happened to Starbound and I honestly wouldn't go back to playing the game without it! Also, there were many awesome contributors working on FU as well, so I'll do it for them, I guess :D
Man, Sayter isn't even the worst of them. If you want someone really awful, look at the lead dev of GiC.
1500 hours in it? LMAO, what a patsy!
@@gumebe4349 I did search a bit on the matter but came up empty, what did they do?
I liked the video, but that clicky-shuttery sound you were using for transitions is really, really grating
I met these guys in person at EGX in 2023 and I asked them why Starbound updates stopped, they just said they were a small team and didn't elaborate