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[Maxono]

So... anyone got a link to a video of said streams?

http://www.twitch.tv/multiplay/b/450635227
Starts at 0:58

[hemmingjay]

<snip>

And before anyone says "The stuff is there, they just haven't posted it for ___________ reason" - look, there's no barriers to truly showing progress nowadays. Creating a quality youtube video of gameplay takes trivial amounts of time and can be widely distributed without cost. It's even a small revenue stream possibility. If it's already been announced that it's been done - there is no reason not to show it to the public.

There is a very big reason not to show it to the public, at least in my eyes.

A game like Terraria, what was its primary draw? The building aspect was but a part of it, as was PvP, but in addition to that you had the challenge of survival, and the excitement of exploration, all together. The problem was that when the continuous support and expansion idea fizzled, and most, even new, players already knew the best and easiest ways to play and what the best gear is and how to most quickly obtain it, neither the challenge nor the excitement remained anymore. It was all down to PvP and showing off constructions.

Starbound is a lot like Terraria, except it puts a lot more weight on the exploration, and a little more on the survival. The randomly generated content, the many procedurally generated worlds, plus a whole lot of handcrafted items and encounters, and a seemingly much longer path to "ultimate" tier - it all extends the life of the game. Starbound has good reason to do it this way - because besides this scope and scale, it barely offers anything that Terraria doesn't. It banks its gameplay length and replayability on the mass of content it has to show the players.

Honestly, I wish they would stop it with these streams and showing off the game, and just got to working on it. I don't want to see the best that this game has to offer second-hand.

I very much agree with you Sean. They have no intention of showing much more than the "tutorial" tier and have made that clear often. Also, not all o the tiers are of equal depth of content. Some are much deeper than the tutorial while others are less. I expect that Starbound will have at least 2.5 times the replay value as Terraria due to exploration and deeper random generation of planets. Obviously there is a little loss with building having some smaller focus.

I am happy they are limiting what they show us, but the amount of the first tier that they are showing. If they show any more of it, it's going to be painfully annoying to have to slog through it since we have seen it so much.

[Darkmere]

I'm not really clear on why we shouldn't be shown things we already "know" to exist. On the site they've put up images of 2 mechs, a starbase, countless biomes, lots of guns, vanity items, the food system, the pet slots, the ore progression, some tiered armor, some mid-tier dungeons, part of the intro cinematics, upgraded ships, etc. etc.

What's going to ruin the game forever by showing off all this stuff they've already showed off?

[miauw62]

Everything else? It's the difference between a teaser video and a walktrough.

E: I found this, btw.

[Rose]

I have watched none of the videos, read none of the release blogs, and in general not kept up with anything related to the game. So far, I have not been given a reason not to get the game once it comes out and reviews give their views on it.

[burningpet]

I am not worried and so far haven't seen any reason to doubt my pre-ordering of it, maybe except this little "quote":

"The entire team is supposedly VERY upset that one team member dropped the ball and didn't finish an important piece of code on time and a bunch of stuff now can't be shown off."

I don't know why, but it really rubs me the wrong way.

[BigD145]

I am not worried and so far haven't seen any reason to doubt my pre-ordering of it, maybe except this little "quote":

"The entire team is supposedly VERY upset that one team member dropped the ball and didn't finish an important piece of code on time and a bunch of stuff now can't be shown off."

I don't know why, but it really rubs me the wrong way.

It's like having a manager yell at an employee in front of customers. You do not do this!

[Sirus]

Er, what? Yelling in front of the customers? My impression was that this is a rumor passed to hemminjay who has contacts on the inside. Not remotely the same thing.

[Chattox]

I am not worried and so far haven't seen any reason to doubt my pre-ordering of it, maybe except this little "quote":

"The entire team is supposedly VERY upset that one team member dropped the ball and didn't finish an important piece of code on time and a bunch of stuff now can't be shown off."

I don't know why, but it really rubs me the wrong way.

This

[Knight of Fools]

I had the impression it was more a case of an employee complaining to a friend (Hemmingjay) about a coworker doing something that affected the whole team rather than a manager calling out an employee in front of the managers.

Hemmingjay is our inside man as far as knowing some of what's beneath the surface and he's just telling us what he's been told. If you want to be upset with someone for revealing that an employee isn't perfect, I don't think the managers are to blame here.

And I'm pretty sure that there's not a company in the world that has to deal with this sort of stuff every once in a while. It doesn't look good, but we should hold back blind judgement since we have no clue what the exact circumstances were.

As far as I can tell it's being dealt with. The whole blame/hype game is ridiculous. I highly doubt a single person not finishing a line of code caused the entire Beta to be pushed as far back as it has. If you want something to blame for that, the single problem is part of a much broader and complex web of things, one of them being the management deciding that the game isn't ready yet.

[hemmingjay]

Let me clarifify as much as I can considering it's third party hearsay....One team member failed to finish a bit of code that was essential to tying in a bunch of new stuff, so that it wasn't ready for the i49 event. There was a good bit more stuff that is "done" but couldn't be shown because of that "late" submission. Most of the team works remotely and deadlines are not really hard set. The team was temporarily upset that their rush work was wasted. I doubt it's still upsetting to anyone other than the person who screwed up.

I have no doubts about my pre-order. I will have something playable by the end of the year and I haven't heard anything other than the Sept-November window. 

[Darkmere]

Well, I treat the info from Hemmingjay as sort of a "behind the scenes feature" on a DVD. Interesting, but I don't base my opinion of the game on it. Internal politics are universal, so there's no worries about that on my end. I don't regret my pre-order in the least. I will only regret it if the game turns out to literally not work on my system, ever. I don't think that will happen. In short, I've been sold on the idea.

Spoiler: Have another text wall. (click to show/hide)

People like me aren't (most of) the problem. Everyone else who had never heard of this game before this weekend got their first look at this massive game and all... but all they got to see was Terraria with new furniture and a spaceship. All the selling points (which are supposedly public knowledge at this point) just weren't there. The stuff that WAS available and that they actively tried to show off were unavailable due to lack of preparation. Remember in the dev panel when they took all of 15 seconds fiddling with the interface trying to find an arctic or lava planet to go die on? Unprepared. Besides, even if the new content show-off wasn't ready (which is fine, shit indeed happens), there was still no recap or sales pitch for people who may have shown up on a lark and wanted to know more.

Back when this trip was announced, one of the draws of going according to Tiy was drawing in modders from the Minecraft community. The only mention of that I saw was at the end of one panel "oh yeah, uh, we're doing a panel of modding stuff tomorrow, it's totally easy, guys!" and that was the plug for the major purpose of the showing.

Also, their trailers and splash images refer people to the website, who likely haven't been there before (Unless you're a regular and have already seen the trailers). On the front page: "oh, eh, we haven't done much on the site in a day or two. Our demo station has some big-ass monitors, though!" and "I'm not there but there's a presentation in an hour. Oh wait, here..." What questions were asked in the interview? Was it anything interesting for newcomers who happened to see the end of the stream or happened to hear about it while not there? No idea. As said, there are people available not at the con who could have taken a quick 20 minutes to sum up the interviews and post an excerpt. Nada.

I get the impression people think I'm down on the game or the people involved. I'm really, truly not. I *am* worried about how little effort went into everything at their "debut" and how much better it could have been with minor effort, and the fact that no-one saw fit to make these preparations. This trip has been in planning of some sort for more than a month; they could have at least had a script to read from. A power-point. Something.

I'm very curious how things will be handled in the coming week. There's an opportunity here to draw lots of people into the community (which was originally the point of the whole thing). However... All the immediate info is hidden behind stream links, the FAQ is completely outdated, vague, and just wrong (it says the game will definitely be released this year, question 3). The about page is very old and still vague.

All the info over the past several months about the game features needs to be collated and put on a list of features. There are tons of new screenshots to go with the handful on the media page. The biome diversity video isn't posted. the wallpapers aren't linked there and are months behind...

[hemmingjay]

In response to your spoiler, yes they are totally unprofessional and they do everything in a sort of juvenile haphazzard way. They ignore almost all professional advice to be honest it still works for them.

[hemmingjay]

double post

[Neonivek]

In response to your spoiler, yes they are totally unprofessional and they do everything in a sort of juvenile haphazzard way. They ignore almost all professional advice to be honest it still works for them.

Well it works because they never break any of the cardinal rules of development nor of PR.

After you have the fundamentals down you can stretch things as far as they will go. A few teams I can think of were seemingly run by children.