In Defense of Starbound

[Baalf]

I swear, I've seen quite a few videos like "Why Starbound Lost" or "Why Starbound Failed," except... no? It didn't? Like, the game actually has a pretty healthy modding community that's actually pretty close to Terrarria. There's a dedicated fanbase for Starbound, and me and my friend play it every now and then, especially since we can't get modded Terraria to work online. I know a lot of people are disappointed in the story change being "cliche," but frankly, there's still things I appreciate about the story that could have been worse.

For example, I appreciate having diverse alien designs when I see one of two things way too often. Either EVERY alien is inherantly evil and exists to kill and be killed by humans or there ARE goodguy "aliens," but they're just humans. I'm more interested in the lore of these races because of this. And, I'm gonna say this, I know having individual intros for the aliens would have been cool, but the humans intro isn't exactly the super-creative idea it's made out to be. It basically boils down to "Surprise! The non-human entity is evil/antagonistic!" Which is honestly FAR more predictable than people make it out to be because I usually expect non-human characters, even if they're presented as good or harmless, to be evil/antagonistic.

As for comparing it to Terrarria, again, the races really make me appreciate Starbound. Sure, Terraria has tons of playable races. ...except not in the official game. The bare-bones base game forces you to play as a human. You get no options. The base Terraria, in general, kinda suffers from that humans=good/everything else=bad syndrome I keep bringing up, and it's a huge pet peeve of mine that generally causes me to avoid buying games. Sure, you can mod Terraria if you have the PC version, but none of that is in the console ports nor is it official. In order to get all those mods, I have to support the humans=good/everything else=bad story that is the base game, where with Starbound, it already doesn't do that thanks to having multiple different races. I always look for games with different race options, and I tend to support those kind of games.

[Ccrack]

you sound like a furry

[maestro]

Originally posted by Baalf:

I swear, I've seen quite a few videos like "Why Starbound Lost" or "Why Starbound Failed," except... no? It didn't? Like, the game actually has a pretty healthy modding community that's actually pretty close to Terrarria. There's a dedicated fanbase for Starbound, and me and my friend play it every now and then, especially since we can't get modded Terraria to work online. I know a lot of people are disappointed in the story change being "cliche," but frankly, there's still things I appreciate about the story that could have been worse.

For example, I appreciate having diverse alien designs when I see one of two things way too often. Either EVERY alien is inherantly evil and exists to kill and be killed by humans or there ARE goodguy "aliens," but they're just humans. I'm more interested in the lore of these races because of this. And, I'm gonna say this, I know having individual intros for the aliens would have been cool, but the humans intro isn't exactly the super-creative idea it's made out to be. It basically boils down to "Surprise! The non-human entity is evil/antagonistic!" Which is honestly FAR more predictable than people make it out to be because I usually expect non-human characters, even if they're presented as good or harmless, to be evil/antagonistic.

As for comparing it to Terrarria, again, the races really make me appreciate Starbound. Sure, Terraria has tons of playable races. ...except not in the official game. The bare-bones base game forces you to play as a human. You get no options. The base Terraria, in general, kinda suffers from that humans=good/everything else=bad syndrome I keep bringing up, and it's a huge pet peeve of mine that generally causes me to avoid buying games. Sure, you can mod Terraria if you have the PC version, but none of that is in the console ports nor is it official. In order to get all those mods, I have to support the humans=good/everything else=bad story that is the base game, where with Starbound, it already doesn't do that thanks to having multiple different races. I always look for games with different race options, and I tend to support those kind of games.

Terraria released an official content patch on Nov 17th, 2022.
It's most recent major content Patch was May 16th, 2020.

In this content patch, was a HUGE amount of content, such as a new game mode, new bosses, lots of weapons and armor, just a huge swath of content.

In between May 16th 2020 and Nov 17th 2022, there were 29 patches to fix bugs and even add a few things in, along with lots of balance tweaks.

1.4.5 is upcoming, no release date yet, but it promises to be every bit as big as 1.4.0 was.

The last time Starbound released an update was August 7th, 2019 and it included a new system, but like many things they've added, it didn't really add a whole lot of content, and has almost zero rewards for doing such content. Sure, you can do bounty hunting stuff, but you get jack-all for doing it.

If it wasn't for Frackin'Universe and similar mods, Starbound would have been mostly forgotten. Terraria, the vanilla game, is easily robust enough that people still play it to this day, and are still excited every month to see the latest official developer release of information.

Go to the TCF and look at the monthly blog posts on its forums, and see how many people are there, excited to see more news, however small.

Then go to Chucklefish's official forums and see what they got going on for Starbound.

Oh wait. There hasn't been an official post from anybody from Chucklefish in years, at least wasn't last time I looked a couple years ago, and the last thing I remember seeing them post, was about porting the game to Xbox one. I think they're just a weee bit late on that, since you know, the Series X is out, lol. I've pretty much forgotten that Chucklefish Forums are even a thing, I think the only reason people go there, is because of Stardew Valley.

Starbound is pretty much a dead game, only kept on life support by modders. Even Minecraft, devoid of content as it is, is still at least being actively developed, even though all Mojang does these days is add yet more useless fluff critters and then act like it's something you should be excited about.

Meanwhile, Stardew Valley and Terraria are showing us how indies should really do games, and how much people will love you if you keep caring about and developing the game they care about and love.

EDIT: And if you wanna talk about mod support? Terraria officially embraced tModLoader and are giving the team behind it official support, and tModLoader can now be downloaded as a separate thing on Steam so that you can install the Vanilla game and a Modded version at the same time without dinking around with files, *AND* tModLoader is a full-blown modding platform unto itself, it can browse, download, install, and detect mod conflicts all from within the game's UI.

EDIT2: CF's most recent Dev Blog post was from June '19, five years ago. going into its General Discussion forums, only the top 3 threads have replies from within the last month. IF you go to TCF and do the same thing, the first 2 and a half pages have threads that were posted in within the past month, with the top 9 threads seeing activity within the last week.

[Baalf]

Originally posted by maestro:

Blah Blah Blah Terraria's so great, Star Bound is so awful.

Honestly, I don't care. One thing I look for in a game is a protagonist I will have fun playing as. I've played quite a few games considered mediocre by a lot of people like Biomutant, ChimeraLand, 12 Tails, etc. Games that really aren't that good. BUT they had the potential for characters I could really attach myself to. Biomutant has these cool animal mutants that you never see in games while ChimeraLand and 12 Tails have tons of different unique anthros, such as being able to play as a rhino or a hippo in ChimeraLand or a mole or a whale in 12 Tails, and the characters can have some really charming designs.

You CAN'T get me to connect with a generic human. Period. Give it all the armor and superpowers you want, it's still a human, and it will never be MY character, especially not when a game goes out of its way to portray just about every living creature as something for humans to kill. I actively will NOT play games that do this. While Terraria is FAR from terrible when it comes to that. I mean, you can have pets and mounts, and one of the NPCs is a mushroom while another is a literal furry, as in a member of the furry community. But in the end, the protag is still human. Even Stardew Valley soooooorta has a bird option for the protag since you can technically give your character a bird beak as an accessory in that, but vanilla Terraria has no such options without mods, and ONLY the PC version.

And, I'm sorry, but I really respect Starbound for having different race options in the base game. I have an easier time connecting with the birds or the aquatic monsters because they're more unique, more out there, but also, just simply, they're not humans. You may find this a minor thing to praise, but again, I want to be able to like the character I'm playing as to a degree, especially if a game makes the villains charming and likable. If I like the character, then I have more fun playing as them. If I DON'T like the character, then that makes it less enjoyable for me. If I literally hate the character, then gameplay is pretty much irrelevant to me as I will be forced to see through the goals of a character I can't support, and I'm sorry, but most human characters in media aren't even tolerable for me, let alone likable.

[tigerfestival1988]

Lol @ this thread

[maestro]

Originally posted by tigerfestival1988:

Lol @ this thread

Yeah, a furry's main defense of Starbound is "it has furry races". Nevermind that many games could be modded to have furry races, and that he puts down other good games because "you can only play a human"...

For example in Terraria it's not like you can TELL what your character is underneath all that armor that you typically wear. Heck, use the Fishron Wings, and I'm sure there's a helmet that makes it look like a lizard and call yourself a dragon. You don't even need to do any modding to do that.

Or, if he loves the fox NPC that much, I'm pretty sure there's a pair of fox ears in that game too.

[Baalf]

Originally posted by maestro:

Originally posted by tigerfestival1988:

Lol @ this thread

Yeah, a furry's main defense of Starbound is "it has furry races". Nevermind that many games could be modded to have furry races, and that he puts down other good games because "you can only play a human"...

For example in Terraria it's not like you can TELL what your character is underneath all that armor that you typically wear. Heck, use the Fishron Wings, and I'm sure there's a helmet that makes it look like a lizard and call yourself a dragon. You don't even need to do any modding to do that.

Or, if he loves the fox NPC that much, I'm pretty sure there's a pair of fox ears in that game too.

Oh, I'm so sorry I don't want to be forced to play as a "ree-lay-tuh-bull hooman" because they're actually NOT relatable at all, and are more often than not the exact opposite of relatable and actually playing as one who's goals generally involve wiping out life for a goal that ONLY benefits humans is painful and frustrating for me. Also...

Originally posted by Baalf:

Give it all the armor and superpowers you want, it's still a human

[maestro]

Oh, I'm so sorry I don't want to be forced to play as a "ree-lay-tuh-bull hooman" because they're actually NOT relatable at all, and are more often than not the exact opposite of relatable and actually playing as one who's goals generally involve wiping out life for a goal that ONLY benefits humans is painful and frustrating for me. Also...

Did we play the same game?

Because I don't recall the goals ever being "wiping out all life", lol. In fact, the goals of that game are to destroy the infestations that are plaguing the planet.

Now, obviously in the course of that journey you're going to come across hostile life, and yes, you will need to kill some of it. But the ultimate goal is to defeat the Moon Lord himself who is basically cthulhu and who is responsible for the infestation of the corruption and the crimson blight. And of course, the Hallow that rises up in response to that, is equally as bad.

If the game ever had a goal, the Dryad tells you what that goal is: to restore balance so that life in the world can thrive.

[Baalf]

Originally posted by maestro:

Oh, I'm so sorry I don't want to be forced to play as a "ree-lay-tuh-bull hooman" because they're actually NOT relatable at all, and are more often than not the exact opposite of relatable and actually playing as one who's goals generally involve wiping out life for a goal that ONLY benefits humans is painful and frustrating for me. Also...

Did we play the same game?

Because I don't recall the goals ever being "wiping out all life", lol. In fact, the goals of that game are to destroy the infestations that are plaguing the planet.

Now, obviously in the course of that journey you're going to come across hostile lif...

"Hostile Life" being basically 98% OF life in the game, even if it makes no sense for it to be hostile. You got bunnies and squirrels and bugs and whatnot that just hop around looking cute, but ultimately being useless outside the bugs, who's only real use is to be used as bait for fish. You got The Hollow, made up of hostile mobs that really SHOULDN'T be hostile, as the Hollow is supposed to be a magical and peaceful place. The only creatures that actually do anything useful and are pretty much the only things that don't exist just to potentially kill or be killed by humans ARE humans. At best, some things are a decoration. At worst, 98% of life exists to kill you.

[Legion]

Starbound did fail. It's the modding scene that succeeded, not Starbound itself. It's a shallow framework for better formulas.

[xShapelessx]

Originally posted by Baalf:

Originally posted by Ccrack:

you sound like a furry

Do you have a problem with furries?

Yes we all do

[❀♥.°Rocio°.♥❀]

i Hoestly i think starbound is already finished (when we talk about updates)
sadly didn't got a good history and other things but... mods can save this game a lot. Atleast i really enjoy playing with my favorite race the Avali. Actually playing with FU (i started again the game a week ago again after reading the same news u posting here).

IF the game get uopdates it could broke the actual mods are here, which i think i really don't like that.

[Noodlesocks]

It didn't gain the popularity that Terraria did for sure but it is a competent game that isn't just a pointless sandbox like it was in early access. I have my own criticisms about it but I don't feel like I didn't get my money's worth and more from it.

[Public_Enema]

This game deserved better Devs.

[sanichi]

i had so many ups and downs in life
sometimes i feel hopeless, lonely, have no aim
i just come back to this game, it is my distraction.
idk how this game achieved that or maybe i do but still want to keep it memory locked,
but have you heard of the sand mandalas that buddhists make ?
it is mostly about processes
and it feels so darn good
i play it as much as i can, wipe out my save and start a new one
as many times as needed

[megaphoenixdown]

I love both Starbound and Terraria. When playing multiplayers, I prefer Terraria over Starbound. It has better combat system than what Starbound has. However, if I want to play solo or chilling around with friends, I play Starbound.

Though I love this game so much, I must admit that this game has been abandoned by the developer despite the potentials it has.

The developer had failed us.