Zero Punctuation: Survival Special (Rust, Starbound, 7 Days to Die)

[blackchibisan]

I know at least three people had to have said it so far Yahtzee but I wanted to inform you that the main lead on Starbound was one of the main members of the Terraria team. This is just what he wanted to do with it in the first place using his own crew.

I prefer to think of Early Access as the new term for Open Beta. People were on their site saying that they would never release it(because it has been a long road getting it this far) and so I believe an open beta was their way of showing they care and are getting this game out if it kills them.

I am not disagreeing with the rest of what you said though, namely because others have already banged on about things like the planet size. Just keep playing it in your spare time and hope that you can eventually come across instruments. They are like the holy grail, in the fact that once you find one you find a million of them coming out of the walls.

Joined this site just to post this so I hope you are pleased with yourself, Yahtzee, you incredibly rugged sexy weasel of a heartless man!

 

[Thanatos2k]

So you never upgraded your bow because the game never told you too? Knowing to get stronger weapons should being part of gaming 101 especially when the mission warns "be ready for anything."

I feel this is one of those situations where you'd discover more about the game if it DIDN'T tell you what to do.

When it doesn't tell you what to do, it triggers the instinct to figure things out for yourself. Terraria was wonderful in this regard.

Yea, Yahtzee is funny and all, but his views are always skewed by him being a colossal noob at almost every game. I don't think that I'm the only one who has noticed this. There was a thread about it a while back.

Well it's not that, it's that he has to rush most games so he doesn't spend time faffing about when the game gives a clear objective. Notice he played three games in a week!

Unfortunately, games like Terraria and Starbound are ABOUT faffing about.

 

[blackchibisan]

Well it's not that, it's that he has to rush most games so he doesn't spend time faffing about when the game gives a clear objective. Notice he played three games in a week!

Unfortunately, games like Terraria and Starbound are ABOUT faffing about.

Sorry, hate adding to the windows within windows.

I get that and I don't blame him but in the cases of this, he could just spend a whole video on Starbound, just like he did with the original Day Z review. I get his pain. Trust me. Just playing devil's advocate.

 

[Hutzpah Chicken]

There are two types of people in this world. Those who dig, and those with guns.

 

[Hiroshi Mishima]

Why are you doing this to early access titles? You're giving them the same once over you use on finished titles, you even acknowledged that they were unfinished but then essentially ripped into a Beta product as if it was the final release. I'm not saying you should have taken it easy I'm saying you shouldn't have bothered doing these titles.

I think you need to watch this Jimquisition video. Early Access is a big deal, and Jim goes into pretty good explanation of why it's important for Yahztee to be doing these games and treating them as final releases. Especially since some never leave beta after you've bought them.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/8681-Early-Access

 

[Shjade]

- Place Distress Beacon on the roof of a building that has easy access to said roof from the interior.
- Activate Beacon
- Drop down into top floor of the building.
- Wait for UFO to slam into the roof.
- Remember that the UFO slam attack can destroy blocks and immediately be crushed by UFO.

I tried a very similar tactic to what you describe because my house was already set up in that way (not the entire roof, just a small section of it was jump through-able) and he immediately flattened my entire house by downward ramming it.

It destroys a limited number of blocks, possibly dependent upon how dense/tough the blocks it's hitting are. I usually see it go through maybe 2 to 3 layers of blocks on a slam when it's hitting something wood-ish. On the ape-style stone/metal buildings it typically just cracks a hole wherever the center of the UFO hits, but the rest of the surface is largely undamaged. I pop up through the hole, ginsu the dish, drop back down and wait for the next slam. *shrug* Works for me.

Anyway I enjoyed Terraria and loving Starbound even more. There is no doubt that it still needs work but then what game doesn't?

Thief
Left 4 Dead
Starcraft
Rogue Legacy
Portal

I could go on...but I won't. But I could.

 

[gamegod25]

Anyway I enjoyed Terraria and loving Starbound even more. There is no doubt that it still needs work but then what game doesn't?

Thief
Left 4 Dead
Starcraft
Rogue Legacy
Portal

I could go on...but I won't. But I could.

Yeah because none of those games have/had bugs, glitches, imbalances, and not been patched or updated at all...

 

[Shjade]

Yeah because none of those games have/had bugs, glitches, imbalances, and not been patched or updated at all...

You asked in the present tense, not the past. But, if you insist...

I don't recall any patches for Thief. It was sorta before that was a thing for everything. It needs an update/patch to run on modern-day machines since it predates the new hardware and OSes, but that's it.

Left 4 Dead had a few that, by and large, they didn't really affect how I played the game until the sequel came out and they started changing all kinds of things.

Starcraft's changes were mainly for balancing multiplayer, not because it "needed work."

Rogue Legacy got a mini expansion and a few minor fixes, nothing about the core gameplay that had to be fixed, at least not that I know of.

Portal is Portal.

*shrug*

 

[blackchibisan]

*Remembering Yahtzee's words on social media being added to gaming*

I was wrong, Yahtzee. I shouldn't have joined just to attempt to be somewhat helpful. This place is clearly too filled with unbalanced cynics that wish to be you so bad they would hang themselves if they thought it would help. Half of you don't know what you are talking about and probably have raging boners for taking the piss out of other people's gig. The other half are trying to be balanced but failing the key aspect of being educated on your topic. The last ten percent are smugly watching from the outside of this pissing contest of a board.

I do hate to be a troll but I really need to lay this out. Starbound is barebones, but functioning and though it is unforgiving, it is like your father pushing the bike. It helps you get the basics and then leaves you to your own devices so you can learn crap like this. You have to build your own arena to fight bosses in the first case so while it doesn't tell you that that summons a boss it gives you the chance to realize for the next time that unique craftable items that seem out of place are for bosses and to be prepared for them. It makes no excuses, giving you just enough to get on your feet and then pushing you out of the house with a pistol and a piece of bacon that that pack of wolves is finding quite delicious.

We don't have Demos anymore because, as Yahtzee has said, most companies don't want to show you how the game plays, just showing you how pretty it can be on the new hardware with their freshly polished title they slap on everything. These betas are the only thing we have from that old era of gaming. The era when gameplay and story were what mattered, not shiny guns, skyboxes, gimmicks, mindless tutorials, and the stupid pissing matches over companies. Is it too much to ask that I want to hope that not only can people on the internet take an educated look at the information offered, research the rest themselves and offer intelligent well thought out and stimulating discussions instead of ragging on anything they don't understand and spitting on the underdog because most give up? I mean, do you ever think that some of these games never get finished because of people like you that drive them to the point of considering mass genocide as a viable business expense just so they can finish without having to listen to your incessant whining? You people have no class or decor. No hope or belief in your fellow man and while Yahtzee can be cruel, he does it out of tough love for an industry he hopes can be saved.

The little resistance that has a chance of doing that gets beaten down by you people, not him. The indie, the never say dies, may end up making games like Duke Nukem Forever but if you let them breathe you might find that some IPs are more than culture that will be passed by but a work of blood, sweat, and tears. You want new original IPs, stop being half-cent imbeciles and start realizing that if you support the little guy, as long as he does something new with an old concept, you are breaking through the sea of crap that the industry has become? Stop being critics of the only hope we have of being respectable again instead of being grouped in with the lunatics that think GTA V is a viable life course as opposed to a reality distant from our own that makes for a great way to blow off steam.

 

[blackchibisan]

I should make a retraction of parts of my previous post.

I don't think all of you are a joke. I do agree with Jim and just wanted to remind you guys that by both of our british friend's standards, Starbound fits it and the only reason Yahtzee got butt hurt was because his little house got smashed.

Starbound is also only 15 bucks, one quarter of the price of most games in this day and age. Not to mention, it is at least at Terraria's release level of completeness. It functions, has a crapload of content and infinite potential. Stop laying into it.

 

[Atmos Duality]

While the difficulty in Starbound is a step up from Terraria (especially starting out) it's not that bad imo.

For first week of the Beta, the initial difficulty was somewhere between soul-crushing and ball-smashing.
As in, everything on your starting planet could 2 or 3-shot you right from the start, and it stayed that way until you got a full set of armor.

Progressing up the tiers lead to hilariously short lifespans and one-sided encounters, especially since ranged weapons were EXTREMELY scarce until around Tier 8 or so. (well, without using coordinates to a planet someone else found that had a gun merchant on it; with coordinates, cheesing your way to Tier 10 is a trivial matter)

Granted, I haven't played Starbound in nearly a month now, since I'm still waiting on that next major update.
That, and it lacks Terraria's cohesion, though that's to be expected for a game that is still in development vs one that has had TWO massive content updates applied to it; each one doubling the content of the game.

(and besides the 2D, that cohesion is what really sets Terraria apart from Minecraft, though you won't hear Mr. Croshaw say it since snark supercedes praise in all things, and we all know which one attracts the masses)

Also as I'm sure many others have pointed out, Starbound is made by former Terraria people and is the spiritual successor/sequel so of course it's going to be very similar.

Half the Terraria team actually...granted, it's just one of two.

Joined this site just to post this so I hope you are pleased with yourself, Yahtzee, you incredibly rugged sexy weasel of a heartless man!

Yahtzee doesn't read comments. In fact, he hates all anonymous commenters. Including you.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation/10857-To-Hell-With-Comments

So chances are, he isn't going to care. Like at all.

 

[blackchibisan]

While the difficulty in Starbound is a step up from Terraria (especially starting out) it's not that bad imo.

For first week of the Beta, the initial difficulty was somewhere between soul-crushing and ball-smashing.
As in, everything on your starting planet could 2 or 3-shot you right from the start, and it stayed that way until you got a full set of armor.

Progressing up the tiers lead to hilariously short lifespans and one-sided encounters, especially since ranged weapons were EXTREMELY scarce until around Tier 8 or so. (well, without using coordinates to a planet someone else found that had a gun merchant on it; with coordinates, cheesing your way to Tier 10 is a trivial matter)

Granted, I haven't played Starbound in nearly a month now, since I'm still waiting on that next major update.
That, and it lacks Terraria's cohesion, though that's to be expected for a game that is still in development vs one that has had TWO massive content updates applied to it; each one doubling the content of the game.

(and besides the 2D, that cohesion is what really sets Terraria apart from Minecraft, though you won't hear Mr. Croshaw say it since snark supercedes praise in all things, and we all know which one attracts the masses)

Also as I'm sure many others have pointed out, Starbound is made by former Terraria people and is the spiritual successor/sequel so of course it's going to be very similar.

Half the Terraria team actually...granted, it's just one of two.

Joined this site just to post this so I hope you are pleased with yourself, Yahtzee, you incredibly rugged sexy weasel of a heartless man!

Yahtzee doesn't read comments. In fact, he hates all anonymous commenters. Including you.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation/10857-To-Hell-With-Comments

So chances are, he isn't going to care. Like at all.

You too are a sexy brillant people! You are correct that he would not read this but I default to optimist.^_^ That being said, I am not just some anonymous guy on the internet. I am a guy who has been trying to share my love of gaming with the internet for ages but because of no steady pay and creepy control freaks saturating my life I have been unable to make much progress myself. I don't want fame so before you accuse me of being some noobish idiot, I am not. I know that the market is saturated with people who are trying to do the same thing, some out of love like me, but others out of a grab for money fame and gamer pussy. If I had five people who followed me regularly and commented and I would be happy. I just want to know someone is listening, bro.

 

[blackchibisan]

Edit

 

[Mouldy Cheese]

"Unga Bunga"?
Do I detect a Power Pete reference?

 

[conanthegamer]

I hope early access games are revisited when done.

[small]Mostly because I have Starbound and love it. The ship was much harder a couple of patches ago, had to trap it on a dirt pillar and peck at it with a bow for 20 min to beat it.[/small]

Robert A. Heinlein: "An armed society is a polite society."

 

[GuiltBlade]

Good, he insulted products that were released early and buggy. I don't care if it says early access, its still getting money for releasing a broken product of a game which can be harmful to the game itself as well as making people pay to do something they should be paid for.

Whatever you say about Minecraft and its release style, it was at a playable state when they started that model, and could totally be played as a somewhat sparse game. Maybe not a very good one no, but still. Very few of the early access games can say the same.

I see Early Access games that are nearly unplayable in the same way I see Total War Rome 2. Unacceptably broken. Either release by the actual industry standard model, or waste time bug testing every single release before public release like Minecraft did, therefore massively extended your production, while of course SIGNIFICANTLY reducing the price of the game.

So what's the difference between minecraft and starbound. Starbound is in a far better state than minecraft was in upon release, what bugs there are are rarely encountered and more to do with un-implemented content such as NPC's. Which minecraft didn't even have beyond random abandoned villages. Yahtzee's problem with this title was to do with the difficulty, he considered the game to have wasted his time, and that's because he only played a tiny portion of it and ignored loads of features.

What about rust? his problem with it here wasn't about bugs it was again about lack of content, yet Rust is pretty much in exactly the state that minecraft was in but with a functional multiplayer client.

Your holding these titles to a standard that you are not applying to your own example.