Why does Starbound get boring so quickly?

[Wolfo]

I've played for 133 hours mostly the first weeks the game came out. It wasn't bad, but having played Terraria for 430 hours I was expecting something more of that genre.

Please, tell me if I'm the one playing the game wrong but:

Combat sucks - It's the same thing all over again, mobs have two / three different attacks (Jumping, Ramming, Flying), some shoot some don't. Sure, you have to dodge and attack, but have you ever played Monster Hunter? That game is the same thing over and over, fighting monsters, but it's ALWAYS fun! You got to dodge at the right time and stuff like that, missing in Starbound. Also, mobs are all the same throughout tiers, different skin and health, same moves.

No Building - I made my ship look fancy, but there's not much space. I want a big ass base like you'd do in Terraria, but you can't do that cause you're gonna change planet soon and it'd be just a waste of time to go through your ship just to access base for basic tools. No purpose!

Exploring - That is the most enjoyable thing, you find all sort of stuff, castles, bases, prisons... and that's all. Really. You can explore thousand of worlds and the only thing changing will be wether there's a castle, a base or a prison and the texture of the planet.
Minerals change over tiers but you acquire them the same way over and over, it's like the first five minutes of the game repeating forever.

(yes I did play with friends all the time)

Overall, I get bored quickly. I just play hoping to find something interesting.

Where am I wrong?

[Bluezero2x]

Lack of content and things to do.

[Poe]

You're nowhere wrong friend. It's not surprising that you'd be bored with all the lack of content.

The game is still a long way out from being complete, or even having a tangible form.

It's natural that one would spend more hours in Terraria at this point (provided he likes both the games), since Terraria is enormous in terms of content in comparison.

But, you have to remember that Terraria has been a complete game for over 3 years, with 2 MASSIVE content updates during that time, that increased it's content by 6-8 times. Just a reminder, Terraria 1.0 didn't even have Hardmode.

The fact that you spent so many hours in a game with all the agreeable flaws you stated, shows what kind of potential it has.

To repeat myself. You're doing nothing wrong. Starbound will find itself with time.

[Tripping Pug]

You are 100% correct. The lack of stuff to do early on durring the nights is almost unbearabley borring too, and is 49.2% of the reason why I quit playing.

[Sky]

I played terraria for like 100-200 hours. I played Starbound for 10 hours and got ungodly bored of it.

It's just boring. Mostly what you said. You have to take into consideration all the little things Terraria did.

terraria had much better sounds. When you killed an enemy with that little squish it felt SO satisfying, especially when pieces of them flew across the screen. There's actually music in the caves so you're not just listening to silence

bunch of other stuff i dont feel like listing right now

[Skyblade799]

Yeah, there really isn't anything interesting to do. After reading the developer blog and reading info about the nightlies, I can safely say it'll be that way for a long while. They seem more intent on putting more of the same into the game without making anything particularly interesting.

Originally posted by Mayhem:

But, you have to remember that Terraria has been a complete game for over 3 years, with 2 MASSIVE content updates during that time, that increased it's content by 6-8 times. Just a reminder, Terraria 1.0 didn't even have Hardmode.

Yes, but remember, hardmode was put in the same year of release, when development started january that same year. Plus Andrew took a year and a half break off after talks with his wife about his newborn kid (remember that? That was awhile ago). So technically, if you cut that time off, not only does the current development time of starbound only have a few months less then terraria, it has had more developers then terraria, and it still has less done.
And sadly I don't expect that to change.

[madzai]

Well, it's normal if one get bored while trying to play a tech-demo. Because you know, you not supposed to play it. You're supposed to evaluate it and wait till Devs release at least a beta. And here things started to go downhill for SB.

[Poe]

Originally posted by CZSkyblade799:

Yeah, there really isn't anything interesting to do. After reading the developer blog and reading info about the nightlies, I can safely say it'll be that way for a long while. They seem more intent on putting more of the same into the game without making anything particularly interesting.

Originally posted by Mayhem:

But, you have to remember that Terraria has been a complete game for over 3 years, with 2 MASSIVE content updates during that time, that increased it's content by 6-8 times. Just a reminder, Terraria 1.0 didn't even have Hardmode.

Yes, but remember, hardmode was put in the same year of release, when development started january that same year. Plus Andrew took a year and a half break off after talks with his wife about his newborn kid (remember that? That was awhile ago). So technically, if you cut that time off, not only does the current development time of starbound only have a few months less then terraria, it has had more developers then terraria, and it still has less done.
And sadly I don't expect that to change.

Oh certainly I'm not comparing development times here. There's no debate on that. Nor am I trying to demote Terraria. I love Terraria, it's my best game in the genre. And I can't wait for patch 1.3 to dive back into it.

I'm just optimistic in that once this bloody game does reach 1.0, it will be far easier (and faster) to enrich with content.

They are still writing the code for how dungeons work for example. This is not necessarily due to them being bad at coding, but that they have changed their minds on how things "should" work countless times. Andrew had a far clearer concept on how he wanted his game to work.

I believe it's far easier and faster to make 10-20 dungeons with new art once you got a dungeon generating code down, than to code that initial dungeon. One thing we can't deny about Chucklefish is their excellent art department. All that superb art is simply fluff and polish though atm, since it has nowhere to stick to.

Starbound development times suck, that's common knowledge. I won't let my optimism for the game deny that. It's got a soul, but it's missing the skeleton. Once they finally finish that skeleton, I'm certain development time will pick up exponentially.

You can apply the dungeon example logic to any technical aspect of the game atm, and you'll see the point I'm trying to make.

[Noodlesocks]

There's nothing to do. The enemies are the same everywhere you go but with a different skin. There's nothing really to progress towards other than loot and there's no side activities to keep you occupied.

[Shadders]

Originally posted by madzai:

Well, it's normal if one get bored while trying to play a tech-demo. Because you know, you not supposed to play it. You're supposed to evaluate it and wait till Devs release at least a beta. And here things started to go downhill for SB.

Ahh there I was, trying to play it. Silly me.
Ok my "evaluation" is BORING.
Nothing tempts me to reinstall it.

[Decay Tempest]

For the building, I actually make use of the Home planet option.. So my main base is Home, which you can always teleport too.. no matter where you are. Also, keep it in Beta, since I'm not sure if they ever fixed the lack of Iron in the higher level sectors.

I like the building, and the tools in Starbound, combat is pretty boring.. feels like the mobs constantly want to hump you, more then anything else. I've played Terrania, Crea, Sign of life also.. It's hard to find a favorite as they all offer certain things that work well for me..

[Jolly]

Originally posted by Wolfo ❤゛:

Where am I wrong?

I pretty much agree with you as the game stands now, and hope things change a bit in a couple years when they finally update the live branch...or even the unstable branch..

The game feels very repetitive to me too. There's lots of fluff - different textures, decorative items, and all that for the different locations but there's no equal variety in mobs, mob behaviors, or things you do.

It looks like there will be way more to do - IF - IF - EFFIN IF they ever patch the freaking game. This whole problem is being magnified by the fact that they are in infinite dev mode and never update the live game. The nightly build thing is neato and a good tease/preview, but not something anybody can really play full time.

What makes Terraria amazing to me (among many things) is the progression it has - it has an MMORPG like progression of content and bosses that's very organic. You improve yourself and expand your base over time because you want to see what's next, not because you get some hokey quest to build an item that summons a boss and unlocks the next tier (and this looks to be going away in SB if they ever update the game).

And the sheer amount of STUFF. Even the NPCs add a lot as simple as they are (give you a reason to build a base, for one thing).

The way trinkets work in Terraria is also huge - the ability to customize and tweak your character to try different things. And the grappling hook owns. And all the vanity clothes - stuff you can interact with and dink with for your character. Having 1000 different types of wall decorations is ok, but having tons of stuff you can directly mess with for your avatar is better.

Terraria has a wide variety of different kinds of weapons and other destructive toys that all behave differently. Terraria has more diverse mobs and behaviors. Terraria has a relatively small and static map yet it still feels far more interesting (and dangerous) to find the features on that map.

IMO, these kinds of things are sorely lacking in Starbound. The current progression is not so hot - very boring really - it feels very artificial. The tech system is primative compared to daddy's vastly superior trinket system. The infinite planets and randomness in mobs end up feeling very generic and repetitive. There are lots of "features" you can find on planets but they all lack the punch.

I had high hopes for SB when I bought it, and I continue to have high hopes for it as it continues to be developed. There's no doubt CF is doing a ton of work on it. I don't really like how they (don't) update anymore (compared to the early days of update overload). One can only hope that SOME DAY the game will get closer to living up to expectations. At this point I just hope that SOME DAY the game gets updated.

And like the OP, I have well over 100 hours in the game, mostly from months ago. No clue how I played it so much when I'm always bored to death by tier 2 and have never had the endurance to get past tier 4 or 5 in the current system. Could be because you have to dig up a billion bits of ore for each tier to make the exact same gear with a different graphic in every tier.

And this is the rub. In Terraria you do much the same - you need to dig up tons of ore to make your next set of armor - but there's variation in how it's done at times. Sometimes you dig, sometimes you get mats in other ways. And every set has different kinds of bonuses, very different appearances, and sometimes variant pieces you can mix in for different gains. And you feel compelled to get that next set, not obligated, it's just the right thing to do, get to it.

In SB the armor tiers just feel completely repetitive and when you're starting a new tier it's more like, groan, now to gather a billion of ore #2 to make set #2 to updrage to slightly better set #2 that is exactly like set #1 and upgraded set #1 with a slightly different graphic. So we can craft item #2 to summon boss #2 to get out of tier #2 and into tier #3.

ZzzzzzzZzzzzzzzZzzzz...

This is why they're revamping progression.

[Yarn W. Cotton]

in terraria theres bosses you want to work hard to fight, and gatting supplies is a challenge, in starbound you can spend 30 minutes strip mineing( only having to travel about 15 blocks down or so), and you have enough to make the armor you want, all the weapons, and even have ore left over to instant make a alloy out of it and coal once you kill the boos, so starbound is a quick game with collecting resourses, while terraria takes time. also all the monsters have a similiar attack pattenr in this so that makes it easy to fight, or makes them supper op in groups

[Wolfo]

GLAD TO SEE YOU ALL AGREE WITH ME

Honestly I think the Devs ♥♥♥♥♥♥ us up. The videos and topics showed a game with A TON OF QUESTS, EXPLORING WORLDS, AUTO-JUMP STEPS (which Terraria got in one patch). They showed this RANDOM MONSTER GENERATOR and RANDOM WEAPON GENERATOR. Little did we know, it was just the same monster with different skin... sad.

They really should go for something more similar to Terraria, I know it sounds bad but it just isn't fun compared to that. There's so much to explore in Terraria and the bosses, all the ACTUALLY DIFFERENT weapons and enemies! It's just SO MUCH ACTUAL CONTENT not just sprites like in Starbound.

I guess we can just wait and hope for the best. Like for Cube World.

[Wolfo]

Anybody wanna play Terraria all over again with me? :D

[Fool]

I tried to get back into it.

I uninstalled after 10 minutes of gameplay. That's how boring it is. For exactly the reasons the OP stated.

Gotta build a crafting table. To do that I have to chop down tree, which is slow. Then there was coal EVERYWHERE, and I've just been conditioned to mine every ore aside from FILTHY COPPER by other games (eg. minecraft, terraria, etc.). Then that took forever without a pickaxe, but there was stone nearby, and I need about twenty. Then the monsters set out to give free hugs and STD's when they ♥♥♥♥♥♥ me. Then I shut it off and played something that wasn't wasting my time...

Like Thief... Gold...

-SOLUTION!~ Well they've posted something about an easier area starting off, but that only really solves one issue. Chopping down trees feels like it takes forever, and I feel like it's trying to destroy every block the tree is made off, rather than the two or three at the base.

The matter manipulator sounds like it should be reckless technology. IT MANIPULATES MATTER, and it's portable, which is the only thing I can think would explain how weak it feels. Technology like that should be prone to mishaps such as changing titanium into marshmallows, or making geiger counters greet you as you walk by from all the sweet rads you've gained. Preventions of said such benefits are what d̶o̶w̶n̶ Upgrades are for.

-PLOT A COURSE, and no I don't mean the devs... Well sort of.
We have to keep from being bored, not just in the early stages. (Honestly, who thought it a good idea to start the game off slow.) While I don't mind tiered progression, and find that linearity is far under-rated, non-linearity can be toxic. Planets that feel the same, progression that mimics it, monsters that are just bits and pieces of other mosters. It all gets boring quickly. I want to fight dragons and ♥♥♥♥ by tier 3, not Fluffzilla at tier 10, cousin of Fluffinator at tier 1. Bosses don't count, since I only really have to fight them once.

By plotting a course, I'm suggesting that the ship's navigation system be programmed with a predetermined, albeit random per character, course through several solar systems. With intervals of roadblocks wherein you need upgrades to traverse certain areas. This is linear design, but it should feel natural, like you're growing. This can be done with some coderalgorithmicythingy that makes the randomly generated course not so random, to ensure the player gets to see everything the game has to offer without them trying too hard to find it.

-TL;DR
Make surface enemies non-hostile on first planet.
Make Matter Manipulator actually viable early on, with fun things that screw you over, like nuclear winter.
Make predetermined courses for your ship to follow to change things up without trial and error, all the while giving the player control to stray from said path.

There's plenty more I could probably think of, and I suppose I should be posting this on the official forums...