• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Starbound |OT| Boundless...

Morokh

Member
The difference is that Terraria figured all the things out first, so there's an expectation that other games using a similar formula (2d survival/whatever) would adopt things that work like the UI and basic combat.

I can give props to Starbound for doing amazing things with the building, liquids, costumes and little touches like fossils and musical instruments. That said it feels like they started from the wrong end, there is no excuse for the combat, UI or vehicles to be in the state that they are. It hasn't been 3 years of iteration, it has been 3 years of throwing stuff at the wall and cleaning up the mess.

All the games that wanted to, say recreate the mechanics of Minecraft (and succeded at doing some of them better) and ultimately failed would like to have a word with you ! xD
For the UI I fail to see how Terraria's UI is so much better, they both have major pros and cons.
As for combat the only thing the two games have in common that really work the same is the 'going through different tiers of materials' aspect, everything else is different enough in it's own right to warrant trying something different.

Now Iteration is exactly how game development works which points back at what I was saying about Starbound/Terraria comparisons and making fair comparisons.
Since games nowadays are heavily patched even after their release, you see developers do it even there, going back to Minecraft as an example, they did it several times with Redstone/Biome generation, and even recently completely changed how combat works.

As a potential buyer I would appreciate someone telling me what's messed up with combat and vehicles? (combat I've seen mentioned before but didn't even know about vehicles?)

It's serviceable but balance is off, it's very spammy, and lacks fluidity.
It just doesn't have a satisfying feel to it.

Vehicles, is this kind of thing that was great on paper when they pitched the game, but doesn't really work properly. So it's in the game in a very barebones state, the framework is there (because many popular mods use it) and there is hope that they rework expand on it in the future, but in it's current state it might as well not be in the game.

To be fair there are some specific aspects of the game that feel like they have been scaled back when you compare them to specific times in Early Access, but they're implemented in a way that seems very easy to change or expand upon.
Vehicles are part of that, randomly generated creatures and creature mini bosses too, and even the tech system falls into that.

That's kinda part of the problem I am getting at. Terraia does force you to switch weapons and build a base, even if it is just for the NPCs. While in starbound, you can if you want to, but the game more or less discourages you from doing it. For example by making building a planet base less efficient than a tiny ship base and scaling the weapon's damage.
You can do a lot of things in starbound, but from my personal experience the game mechanics only drive you to go mine, upgrade your gear, and then go mine again on another planet. While in terraia you have to be more "active" to progress (build homes for npc's, construct boss arena, search for new weapons and fight bosses).

Building a planet base has it's perks compared to cramming everything into your ship.
You set up a teleporter there and you can access it in an instant from any other teleporter, you have way more freedom to build what you want, can set up farms to create way more efficient food and have access to a wider variety of things through your colonists.
Saying that the game discourages you to do so because it doesn't force you to do it is very arbitrary and ultimately untrue.

Once again it leaves you with choices with how you use the space on your ship and your planetary base(s).
Some people will just decorate their ship for their crew, others will use it as crafting central, others for storage, or for a mix of all that.

I understand what you mean with Terraria forcing you to do things to 'progress' but it's just two different ways to go about it.
One forces you to go through a certain number of steps to get further, the other lets's you choose which steps you want to go through, none of them is ultimately better than the other, it just boils down to whichever one prefers.

You keep mentioning that some things were added to terraria long after release. To me this fact isn't relevant. Since I am playing now, whats relevant to me is the state of both games today, I don't really care when they were released.
Basically, it looks to me that starbound is more focused on survival and overall has more different things to do. But I think that a lot of the things that are common to both games are done better in terraria (partially because it is an older, more mature game now).

giphy.gif
 

BrettWeir

Member
Any help would be appreciated:

I went to upgrade my ship for the first time, now the game won't load....

Well, the game will load, just not my character. I click my character and the game just freezes or goes into a non-ending load. I've tried to load both regular and 32-bit with no luck. I have no mods installed at all.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!
 

Costia

Member
...
Saying that the game discourages you to do so because it doesn't force you to do it is very arbitrary and ultimately untrue.
...
It doesn't just "doesn't force" me to build a base, it makes building a base less efficient than cramming everything inside the ship (extra loading screens and waiting), so i would call it "discourages".

As for the gif, when I was reading your previous post I got the feeling you were using it as an excuse , as in "X is better in terraria, but its older so it's OK". Even in this post you talk about "fair comparisons" due to extensive patching after release. For the purpose of choosing a game today, I find this irrelevant. In the end only the current state of both games matters.
It is deffinately one of the reasons why certain terraia features are better, but I don't feel the need to be more forgiving towards starbound because it was out for a shorter period of time or because the other game was worse at some point in time.

Don't get me wrong. I like both games. But terraria better suits my playstyle for the reasons that I have already mentioned.
Or in other words i don't think that Starbound is just a better version of terraria like Retro seemed to imply.

Edit: Another thing is meaningfull enemy variety. Maybe I just didn't play Starbound enough, but to me it seemed that a lot of mosters share the same behaviour, and while there is a lot of visual variety, the only differnce I noticed between the easy and the harder planets is the health and damage of the monsters. While in terraia each biome had its own small set of unique enemies with unique behaviours. So while the variety was smaller, each monster by itself was more memorable to me.
And that's more or less the only reason I haven't played NMS yet. A lot of different planets, but the objects the player interacts with are more or less the same everywhere.
 
You can do a lot of things in starbound, but from my personal experience the game mechanics only drive you to go mine, upgrade your gear, and then go mine again on another planet.

Um, how do you expect to upgrade your ship without building colonies or doing NPC quests?
 

Costia

Member
Um, how do you expect to upgrade your ship without building colonies or doing NPC quests?
Upgrading your ship seems to be optional and has no effect on your combat abilities or story progress.
also, I think that it's possible to upgrade just by paying 20k pixels, which you can get by mining and feeding the ores into the refinery.
 

VandalD

Member
I created 5 characters that I was thinking can meet in the middle of where they all started and build a huge HQ there. Is that doable or will it be a headache to figure out where they all are/have to go?
That's totally doable. Just note the coordinates and planet you want to meet up on, and all of your characters can go there. Unless you're wanting to literally find the middle point of each of their starting worlds. That sounds like a huge pain. Just pick a world with someone and remember it for the others. The maximum fuel cost is 500, I believe, so you can warp across the galaxy no problem.
 

Spyware

Member
Um, how do you expect to upgrade your ship without building colonies or doing NPC quests?
You can buy fake licenses if you don't want to do the random quests.

That's totally doable. Just note the coordinates and planet you want to meet up on, and all of your characters can go there.
Ah, it's that easy, of course. Forgot all about the coordinates. Haven't played for a couple of days.
Great! :D
 
Upgrading your ship seems to be optional and has no effect on your combat abilities or story progress.
also, I think that it's possible to upgrade just by paying 20k pixels, which you can get by mining and feeding the ores into the refinery.

1) If you don't upgrade your ship, you don't have space for all the crafting stations, crops, etc.
2) Not doing quests also means no quest rewards, in turn forcing you to rely only on looting to get manipulator upgrade cores, etc.
3) Not having colonists means no rent, which again means no cores, no extra pixels, etc.
4) The costs for each succesive fake license quickly escalate to ridiculous amounts. You can of course grind endlessly for minerals to pay for them.

I'm not sure if you see what I'm hinting at here. You're saying that the game forces you into a gameplay path (mining), when not only is one of many, it's not even the optimal one by a long shot (you need to mine much more in order to pay for the licenses). It's you who railroaded yourself into a boring gameplay style, not the game, and criticising it for focusing in one part and neglecting the rest is, to be generous, misguided.

Ironically my gameplay is the opposite, I barely mine enough to upgrade the crafting stations and to make new ones. The vast majority of my time is spent building colonies for residents, exploring the surface of worlds, doing quests, etc.
 

Costia

Member
I am not saying that the game forces a certain gameplay style on me. I am saying the the game is guiding you towards a boring playstyle. Since the most obvious way to progress that is being presented to you is upgrading your armor, which simply requires more mining and allows you to ignore the rest of the game.
From your post it's also sounds like your de-facto main base is on your ship as well.

Edit: I also completely missed the colonies part of the game. I saw the item in the shop, but didn't understand what it does.
Is there a mandatory/tutorial quest fo it somewhere that I missed? Does the game introduce you to the colonies concept at all?
 

Morokh

Member
Are NPC's supposed to recognise the different shop signs you can find in the game ?

I'm asking because I jumped twice on the GAF planet on the server and dismissed my Medic by mistake because of the lag, and twice I found her back in the actual med-bay when I realized it.
 
I kind of agree with this. Starbound is perfect for the people wanting to build their stuff, wire up some crazy door-elevator stuff, chill out with farming and collect the billion decorative items. Terraria is better at the action/challenge stuff.

One day, maybe a game can combine the best of both worlds :p

See, I got bored with Minecraft because it seemed to lack any real depth... No NPCs, no complex generated buildings, pretty basic farming and things of that nature. It was enjoyable just starting out and making bigger and bigger things, but when that wore off, the mining felt pretty basic once you got to diamond and just made things like armour.

The lack of online servers on console was such a bummer, and I wish I could download worlds.

Anywho, I greatly want to enjoy a game where Im farming, building, decorating, but also want to enjoy talking to NPCs, meeting people, having tenants (this sounds really cool, what's that about?), finding rare and meaningful things that may have a story driven purpose, fight bosses/combat, etc.

Ill go with Terraria just because Starbound isnt on console, but I intend to try Starbound eventually. Seeing as its newer, I am sure it will get some good updates.

I really like the idea of staying on a planet in Starbound and expanding on it. I get the idea that maybe starter planets dont have much in it compared to later stuff, but it's all good. I can enjoy both for different reasons.

It's strange, I never really knew of this sandbox building genre, but since trying Minecraft, Ive been wanting more of it, and hoping for a perfect game that blends everything together.
 
I am not saying that the game forces a certain gameplay style on me. I am saying the the game is guiding you towards a boring playstyle. Since the most obvious way to progress that is being presented to you is upgrading your armor, which simply requires more mining and allows you to ignore the rest of the game.

You're generalizing again. The game gives you enough hints to progress in other ways; the main story quests point you towards finding settlements, which have NPCs, which give you more quests. It's entirely on you to ignore everything and focus on mining.

Any open world (or universe) game can do is to point you in the directions you can explore. It can't and shouldn't force you to explore them, or it stops being open world.

From your post it's also sounds like your de-facto main base is on your ship as well.

Nope, my ship is not nearly large enough yet, and I spend most of the time on the planet anyway. I only use it for a bit of storage.

Edit: I also completely missed the colonies part of the game. I saw the item in the shop, but didn't understand what it does.
Is there a mandatory/tutorial quest fo it somewhere that I missed? Does the game introduce you to the colonies concept at all?

There's an item you can buy in the very same shop that's a manual for building colonies. It's all quite simple really, you just need a closed space (platforms don't count as closing), with background tiles (no open spaces in the background), a door, and a light source. Place the deed on the wall and a colonist will instantly appear. You can summon different colonists depending on what other furniture you place beforehand, including colonists from NPC races like alpacas or frogs. Here's a list of all tenants and how to get them.

There's a lot of meat in the colony system, too. Sometimes your tenants will ask you to capture a monster for them. They'll supply you with a "pokeball", and when you capture it and return it to them, they'll give you both another empty pokeball, and a filled one with another monster. This way you can amass pokeballs and monsters for free, but the best part is that the one you gave them will stick around as a friendly monster and fight away other monsters that enter your colony, protecting your NPCs!

Another thing is that they'll sometimes ask you to have someone else craft an item of furniture, then place it in their homes. Which is why you should make their homes reasonably roomy, a lesson I learned the hard way when a colonist asked me to place a HD Apex TV, which is huge; I had to expand her house. :D

They'll also ask you to create new houses, providing the furniture during the quest chain, and even the colony deed. Or give you seeds and ask you to grow the crops. Or crafting headwear they then wear permanently. You know what, you're right, colonists teach you so many mechanics that I think the main quest should actually force you to build a couple houses.
 

Costia

Member
You're generalizing again. The game gives you enough hints to progress in other ways; the main story quests point you towards finding settlements, which have NPCs, which give you more quests. It's entirely on you to ignore everything and focus on mining.
Any open world (or universe) game can do is to point you in the directions you can explore. It can't and shouldn't force you to explore them, or it stops being open world.
....
The chosen path is entierly on me, but it think that i simply chose the path of least resistance towards progress. The path that seemed to be the most efficient after completing the tutorial missions.
I did encounter NPC quests, but why would I choose to do escort missions for a reward of a single module when I can get modules from chests underground, while at the same time mining the ore required to get the next armor set upgrade.
I did a story boss fight, I don't remember getting anything significant for beating it. I think I got 20 bars of the next tier metal. The type of bars I got ~100 of in my next mining trip. So again, simply mining seemed to be more efficient.
Playing this game after terraria I know more or less what I can do next, after getting the T6 armor. But someone new to this type of game might just decide that he "finished" the game and move on, and if he followed the same path as I did, his impression of the game will be "boring".
I think that a game should force you to break the monotony of your chosen path once in a while. Otherwise people will tend to keep doing whatever they chose at the beginning, whatever they found to be more efficient, and eventually find the game boring, even though there is a lot more to do in the game.
 

Whales

Banned
guys im kind of lost right now

I got the game not too long ago and i'm at the ''scan objects for florian clues'' quest but I just can't find anything..?

My starting planet has no settlement or dungeon.. I searched everywhere, dug deep, nope can't find anything at all. Tried scanning everything I saw to no avail

I can't go on the moon because I don't have a breathing EPP, I need tungsten but there's none on my starting planet

am I missing something? starting to get bored of searching now
 
The chosen path is entierly on me, but it think that i simply chose the path of least resistance towards progress. The path that seemed to be the most efficient after completing the tutorial missions.
I did encounter NPC quests, but why would I choose to do escort missions for a reward of a single module when I can get modules from chests underground, while at the same time mining the ore required to get the next armor set upgrade.
I did a story boss fight, I don't remember getting anything significant for beating it. I think I got 20 bars of the next tier metal. The type of bars I got ~100 of in my next mining trip. So again, simply mining seemed to be more efficient.

Efficient for what? You're setting "ore" and "armor" as the bar for progress, when it's only one avenue.

Playing this game after terraria I know more or less what I can do next, after getting the T6 armor. But someone new to this type of game might just decide that he "finished" the game and move on, and if he followed the same path as I did, his impression of the game will be "boring".

I think the bolded is precisely the issue, because you're playing the game exactly like Terraria and thus ignoring everything else. I mean, you just admitted you ignored the story quest chain because it didn't give you much ore. I hope you at least can see that most people wouldn't play as you do. I mean, if you really think that anyone in their right mind would consider the game "done" without touching the main story, we may not even have any common footing for this discussion to make sense.

I think that a game should force you to break the monotony of your chosen path once in a while. Otherwise people will tend to keep doing whatever they chose at the beginning, whatever they found to be more efficient, and eventually find the game boring, even though there is a lot more to do in the game.

The game has done plenty to try to wrench you from your chosen path. You're just dead set on following it, no amount of distractions or pointing in other directions will change that. Again, I find it extremelly backwards to fault that on the game.
 

Dr.Acula

Banned
guys im kind of lost right now

I got the game not too long ago and i'm at the ''scan objects for florian clues'' quest but I just can't find anything..?

My starting planet has no settlement or dungeon.. I searched everywhere, dug deep, nope can't find anything at all. Tried scanning everything I saw to no avail

I can't go on the moon because I don't have a breathing EPP, I need tungsten but there's none on my starting planet

am I missing something? starting to get bored of searching now

I think you can go to other planets in the same system without fuel. You should have other planets you can search. Build an EPP as soon as you can, get fuel off a moon, then travel to other systems if you really can't find Florian settlements.
 

Morokh

Member
Ugh ! Don't know why but there is one particular spot on my base where I can't paint some blocks, no idea why .... (it's in an area where a quest spot is so maybe it's that)

Also just discovered Drains ! that's one of my major complaints about building gone ! :p
 

Nohar

Member
How is the GAF server? Are there people still playing (and if yes, during which hours? I'm european, so I need to adjust to a 8 hours gap with americans)? I'm interested in visiting Retro's base (it looks splendid by the way). How about the lag? Initially when the server was up the lag was very noticable here, making me stop playing online altogether.
 

VandalD

Member
How is the GAF server? Are there people still playing (and if yes, during which hours? I'm european, so I need to adjust to a 8 hours gap with americans)? I'm interested in visiting Retro's base (it looks splendid by the way). How about the lag? Initially when the server was up the lag was very noticable here, making me stop playing online altogether.
Not sure how active it is now. I built a small base on the server and have only been checking in every now and then to see if something else has popped up somewhere. Generally when I want to actually do things, I'll do it offline since the lag can be bad for me too.
 

kromeo

Member
After restarting multiple times I've settled on playing casual with a mod to turn hunger back on, think I'll stick with that
 

Nohar

Member
Well, I decided to forget about the adventurous/combat aspect of the game, and focus on building (which is definitly Starbound's forte). I'll upload a few images of my greenhouse, once it is done (assuming I manage to make a big picture of the whole thing... and, well, I almost never use image editing software).
 

clo1_2000

Banned
Having just recently played Starbound and No Man's Sky; I have to tip my hat to Starbound. It has myself and both my sons totally engrossed. Thanks to everyone who has left tips in here; it has greatly helped out this noob.
 

mnannola

Member
Loving this game so far.

One thing I hope they add at some point are gamepad controls. Would love to play this on my living room PC with a controller on the couch.
 
Any great new mods lately? I haven't checked out frackin (sp) quite yet. How is that?

Loving this game so far.

One thing I hope they add at some point are gamepad controls. Would love to play this on my living room PC with a controller on the couch.

They've said controller is being worked on. I think it's also coming to consoles so it's going to happen eventually anyway.

edit:
Oh boy, I found a time rewind mod... and a overwatch costume mod. So... Tracer here I come.
 
People need to check out Frackin Universe mod if you haven't yet already. I'm not that deep into it yet since I started a new character and am starting from scratch, but it's so far pretty great.
 

Niel

Member
The power went out in my flat and I've lost all my progress in the outpost and I see no way of retrieving it... I know some of you have been having the same issue before, anyone found a fix for this? Can't believe they haven't patches this issue yet.

EDIT: nvm I fixed it by doing every mission again through the SAIL.
 
Speaking of Outpost progress, the missus and I have been doing the missions together and it only counts for the one hosting. The weird thing is that when you redo the mission on the other computer, the relic isn't there (must be tied to your character instead of universe), so you don't get the "relic get" animation that you get the first time, but it does add it to the door as well as the relevant NPCs.

I kind of expect this to be a bug, although it might be kind of hard to work around considering it would entail affecting two universes at once, set on different computers.

BTW, does this mean that if you start a second character, all relics that your first one set are already there?

Edit: It does, I just created a character to try it out.
 

mileS

Member
yoooo IceMarker it shows you spent some time with it. That is fantastic! I played 180hrs of it pre 1.0 and I was still getting confused with the new progression here in 1.0. Beautiful work! thanks bro
 
Improved containers has slowly gone from important, to essential, and now is god tier. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=729427606

It nows has:
quick stack - fills containers with items from your inventory that are already in the container
sort - quick sort just like player inventory
rename - rename boxes
moveable containers - when you break a container you put items in, the items stay inside the container so you can easily move them without the contents spilling out

And best of all, what makes it god tier:
item search - has a text input search and it highlights items that fit the critera, can search by name or category


Also a new mod I tried out and thoroughly enjoy:
Weapon fusion station http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=741491949

This lets you put two weapons of the same type in a machine and it lets you pick between 3 attributes to form a new weapon out of the previous two. So if you have two assault rifles and you like the visual of one, the element of the other, and the alternate fire of one of them, you can make that weapon. And this also means if you pick up a weapon you really like but it becomes weak later on, you can carry over the attributes and visuals onto a weapon with higher dps.

I don't think this works for all weapons, like legendary weapons I think can't be fused although I'm not 100% sure on that.

I'm up to 17 mods now. I don't think I've loaded this many mods onto a game before, except for perhaps minecraft.
 
Just picked this game up today after watching the Giant Bomb Quick Look! Two hours of gameplay time later and I am really enjoying what I have played so far.

I own Terraria, but was never able to get into it. Something about the way the game just dropped me into the world without explaining anything made me feel lost. This might sound strange, but I found the camera in Terraria to be positioned too far away. I find the closer positioning of Starbounds camera makes it easier to keep track of the action, and pick up small details in the environment.

Starbound also does a much better job at teaching the player the basics. While the narrative seems basic, it helps to give the player a sense of purpose in the world, while also giving reason to the various activities you engage in.

Anyway, it's still early going for me. I think after I beat Starbounds I'll give Terraria another go. See if what I have learned in Starbounds serves as a good tutorial to get me off the ground in Terraria.
 

VandalD

Member
Improved containers has slowly gone from important, to essential, and now is god tier. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=729427606

Also a new mod I tried out and thoroughly enjoy:
Weapon fusion station http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=741491949
All of that sounds really great, and I'm gonna go download them now. Thanks for spreading the word on those.
Just picked this game up today after watching the Giant Bomb Quick Look! Two hours of gameplay time later and I am really enjoying what I have played so far.

I own Terraria, but was never able to get into it. Something about the way the game just dropped me into the world without explaining anything made me feel lost. This might sound strange, but I found the camera in Terraria to be positioned too far away. I find the closer positioning of Starbounds camera makes it easier to keep track of the action, and pick up small details in the environment.

Starbound also does a much better job at teaching the player the basics. While the narrative seems basic, it helps to give the player a sense of purpose in the world, while also giving reason to the various activities you engage in.

Anyway, it's still early going for me. I think after I beat Starbounds I'll give Terraria another go. See if what I have learned in Starbounds serves as a good tutorial to get me off the ground in Terraria.
Interesting that the closer camera is helping you get into it. I pretty much always keep the zoom level as far out as I can to see more stuff. And yeah, Starbound has a much better tutorial. Terraria is much like Minecraft in how much it expects you to look at a wiki or figure stuff out for yourself. I still think Terraria is the better combat game (though Starbound does pretty much everything else better), so if you're into fighting things, it's worth giving another try.
 

dLMN8R

Member
Basic construction question - when I'm building stuff in the world using basic materials, it always places those materials in 2x2 squares. How can I craft 1x1 squares instead?
 

IceMarker

Member
Pressing ALT also highlights all interactable objects around you (making it easier to spot underground chests), combine this with the ability to shift your view with CRTL you can scan for chests pretty easily, really helps you get good gear.

yoooo IceMarker it shows you spent some time with it. That is fantastic! I played 180hrs of it pre 1.0 and I was still getting confused with the new progression here in 1.0. Beautiful work! thanks bro
You're welcome, the guide is designed to help people see a smooth progression path.

But what do you do?
I'm not sure how to read your question...
 

ZzzZombi

Neo Member
I looked around official forums but couldn't find any substantial solution. I'm having huge framerate and lag issues. Especially when it's on 2x zoom setting. I have a dual core 3.6 ghz CPU and gtx560ti GPU, 6 GB RAM so I guess it's enough for this game?

- I drop 5-6 frames everytime I open my inventory.

- Sometimes in combat, after I kill an enemy (after the "killed" sound) the enemy just stands there and then disappears in a second. Kind of like the lag you get in multiplayer games where you think you hit the enemy but then it teleports 1-2 blocks away.

- That same combat lag also happens when moving around the world. For example I drop from a fairly high cliff but take no damage but in 1-2 seconds I get the damage from it.

- I also drop 10 or so FPS on crowded areas (other characters, buildings), especially when on 2x zoom setting.

- Some effects seems to affect FPS too. These include particles after felling a tree, grenade launcher sparks, getting pixels from the revolving white things in caves, having too much blocks destroyed quickly (like sand).

Anyone else experiencing any of these issues? Is there anything can be done about these? Because I just can't enjoy exploring and combat like this.
 
Top Bottom