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Starbound Beta Thread - Begins December 4th!

Yeah, what Biomes has everyone seen? I'm just curious, because I've only seen 4 in my brief exploration of the universe (though multiple planets of the same biome have been very different). I will spoil just in case anyone thinks this is spoiler territory:

Alpha Sector:

Desert
Forest
Snow (barely visited as I didn't have any snow gear and the cold was annoying)
Moon (I haven't actually visited this one at all yet)

One thing I thought was interesting is that the basic non-ore components of the world seemed to differ a bit. On a
Desert
world, it was made up entirely of
tar, sandstone, sand, and gravel
, none of which I saw on any other world. Really hoping the crafting system takes advantage of that eventually and hording some of that stuff could come in handy...
 
I was digging straight down on my Forest starter planet and went through

Sand/Desert
Snow/Ice
Flesh/Bone/Corrupted Dirt?
<-pretty surprised running into this one

before I died.
 
Has this been confirmed? If so, what's the point of the wipe?

Purpose of the wipe is to get the progression more manageable. Unfortunately, in doing so, it'll pretty much kill character saves.

Oh really? they confirmed this? So if i put all my stuff in a chest on a planet I can go to that planet post wipe and it will be there?

Yes, it was confirmed. The devs were explaining during a stream before beta launch, that they were expecting at least TWO wipes. One for characters, and one for the actual universe.

When it came to character wipes, they actually were working towards it being where they'd like it to be only one wipe, and then the basic data structure would be stable enough where additional character wipes wouldnt be necessary.

They also mentioned that they were trying as much as possible, to not do BOTH wipes at the same time. Either one or the other. They mentioned specifically that they would warn players when a wipe would occur, and then they detailed what to do in terms of saving/salvaging your gear. They said that a wipe shouldn't completely make you start over, because as long as you had the right gear, you can pretty much breeze through the quests/progression. If you've ever played Terraria, you know how easy it is to breeze through the game if someone happens to give you some nice gear early on in the game.

NOW GRANTED, THIS IS A BETA, THINGS CAN STILL GO WRONG. But the basic plan is: When a wipe is going to occur, just stow your gear somewhere.
 
Does everybody start on the same planet? If so could somebody give me the coordinates? I changed my home with a single miss-click by mistake and it's currently on an arid deathworld, I just don't want to lose this sweet get-up after the wipe:

EBl7Iy1.png
 
FRIENDLY REMINDER:

-This is a REAL BETA, shit will break and shit will break hard. So expect things to break at the least opportune moment.
-Report any bugs and crashes you may have, this will help the dev fix them.
-Try and avoid posting things that may be too spoilery (Including Screenshots) in the mean time,ie you played these next 12 hours consecutively and you found some really cool mid game thing. If you must post something, use the spoiler tags.

Remember that the game just came out and a lot of its enjoyment is exploration. It's just until everyone has had the chance to play the game and see stuff on their own. And that way people will know they wont get spoiled and keep coming to the thread to talk.

I already saw someone spoil a boss with a screenshot, which sucks for those that had not seen it. Please be nice to your fellow gaffers and spoil tag spoilers and hide spoiler imgs behind links.


Also Retro, I see someone proved your point from our conversation in the GW2 thread... Igiveup.gif
 
Looking for a little guidance. I have done pretty much all of what I would consider the early stages. Gone through all the quests up to the beacon. I have been digging but that doesn't seem to produce much more than ore and meat. I went to a new world and found a town that sold some better weapon but they are not much better than what I have and can make by default with the anvil. What should I do now? Keep going to other worlds where the threat level is higher and higher? I want to find some loot to help fight the boss. Or find plans to build stuff.

If you know what threat level the boss is (if you're talking about the first boss, its Level 9), then a good way to figure out how well you'd survive the battle is to gradually go to planets with a higher and higher threat level.

If you can survive a Threat Level 9 planet without too much issue, then you can probably take on the boss.
 
I'm loving how modular this game is. Figured I'd take this "I don't want to play because of a possible wipe" time to poke around more. I'd bet on someone building a proper editor for it all. It's kind of surprising that the devs themselves haven't already done this. Was able to put in axes past stone, up to gold. It doesn't seem possible to increase the "damage" they do to trees, but they can have faster swing speeds at least.

I really want rebindable keys. I don't like having to press I when I want to press B for my inventory because of habit in other games. I've been looking for some sort of config in the files, but I guess it's hard coded.
Okay, I made a twitter feed for the server.

https://twitter.com/StarboundGAF

If you've got Twitter, follow that feed for updates on the server, as well as any Starbound news. I'll also tweet noteworthy posts from the Starbound threads.
Thanks for all the things you do regarding the server. It's cool to have a place for everyone to go to.
 
Whoa, is that building player made or actually in the game? I wanna visit that!

That Rapture-esque image is a mock-up, but we've since seen a lot of those components in videos and such (the arcade game specifically). Wouldn't surprise me if it's in.

Actually, I've seen Apex (labs, no city yet), Floran huts and a temple, Avian cities and temples, a few Glitch towns and a human prison and sewer. But I have yet to stumble across any Hylotl stuff. Anyone?

Oh my god I need to find the Ocean planets.

I will go on boating adventures ala Windwaker have an underwater house and all will be glorious.

I haven't seen any, to the point that I'm worried they were removed from the game. Maybe their liquid system (which requires background walls or the water drains off) didn't play nice or something. Maybe they're all set aside for later galaxies or something.

/shrug. Beta.
 
By the way, has anyone found an equivalent to the Terraria Magic Mirror yet? Digging too far undergound early feels too punishing without a convenient way to return to the surface besides dying. Especially since you can't beam to your ship unless you're in open air.

There may or may not be one in yet.

Would be cool if it was just "Advanced Beaming Technology" or something as an upgrade you could get to your ship.
 
That Rapture-esque image is a mock-up, but we've since seen a lot of those components in videos and such (the arcade game specifically). Wouldn't surprise me if it's in.

Actually, I've seen Apex (labs, no city yet), Floran huts and a temple, Avian cities and temples, a few Glitch towns and a human prison and sewer. But I have yet to stumble across any Hylotl stuff. Anyone?



I haven't seen any, to the point that I'm worried they were removed from the game. Maybe their liquid system (which requires background walls or the water drains off) didn't play nice or something. Maybe they're all set aside for later galaxies or something.

/shrug. Beta.

I have one of the Arcade Machines!
 
I haven't seen any, to the point that I'm worried they were removed from the game. Maybe their liquid system (which requires background walls or the water drains off) didn't play nice or something. Maybe they're all set aside for later galaxies or something.

/shrug. Beta.
If you look at celestial.config in the assets folder, you can see exactly which planet biomes can spawn in which sectors. Oceans aren't able to spawn in any tier yet, unless you change it yourself. And it might be buggy or lacking content for now.
By the way, has anyone found an equivalent to the Terraria Magic Mirror yet? Digging too far undergound early feels too punishing without a convenient way to return to the surface besides dying. Especially since you can't beam to your ship unless you're in open air.

There may or may not be one in yet.

Would be cool if it was just "Advanced Beaming Technology" or something as an upgrade you could get to your ship.
That'd be cool as a tech, since it could potentially take up a slot for something that might be useful for other situations.
 
Thanks for all the things you do regarding the server. It's cool to have a place for everyone to go to.

I'm kinda wondering why I didn't think of the Twitter idea for when I was running the Terraria server.

Oh, considering how I have no way to actually escape Twitter unless I'm asleep, if there's a problem with the server or you have a question, just send a tweet.

Which reminds me: I WILL NOT GIVE OUT SERVER INFO/PASSWORD INFO ON TWITTER. Quote the OP for that info. :p
 
If you know what threat level the boss is (if you're talking about the first boss, its Level 9), then a good way to figure out how well you'd survive the battle is to gradually go to planets with a higher and higher threat level.

If you can survive a Threat Level 9 planet without too much issue, then you can probably take on the boss.

Thanks for the help!
 
Thanks for all the things you do regarding the server. It's cool to have a place for everyone to go to.

He deserves a lot of appreciation since for the longest time, people thought (and probably still do) that I hosted the Terraria server just because I was the one who was on it all the time.
JUWnj.gif


I'll add the Twitter info to the OP too, fyi.

Would be cool if it was just "Advanced Beaming Technology" or something as an upgrade you could get to your ship.

Probably similar to the Star Chart upgrade you get at one point. Also keep in mind that the ship itself will eventually be expanded from a single room to a more complex craft. We've seen it take on a "Y" shape, but who knows if there's steps in between or an even larger form after that.

Wouldn't surprise me if that kind of stuff is tied heavily to progression rather than chance. I know for some people, they never found a magic mirror. Having it tied to quests or crafting would ensure that everyone has a standard 'quality of life' by the time they reach level 10 (formerly 100) planets.

I have one of the Arcade Machines!

We need to start a list of planets that have good / rare things on them, I seriously want one of those for my eventual giant-ass city-sized fortress.

I dunno how the random generation works though, if certain things are always present. If anyone wants to hit up (-20596656 / -16982438) and see if there's an Avian air ship there, we can at least confirm a place in the galaxy to get guns consistently.
 
I'm almost even okay with the slow matter manipulator speed at the start to get wood/stone/iron...IF there were some way to toggle the mouse button. Holding down a mouse button for so long gives me horrible carpal tunnel or something. :P
 
Random minibosses with hearts floating over their head (whats up with that?) have been the most generous when it comes to rare weapons and loot. Random dungeons full of dudes with automatic weapons not so much...

Got a spear that deals poison status. This'll be useful.
 
I just found
what appears to be an Apex hospital. it was dark so I went in and there was an Apex inside who appeared to be in a wheelchair. it killed me.

newb travels!
 
I'm kinda wondering why I didn't think of the Twitter idea for when I was running the Terraria server.

Yeah man, you've gone above and beyond with your hosting with Terraria and now with Starbound. Thanx! I have not had the chance to play on the Gaf server, only popped in once to say hi but I cant wait to build my mega castle over there once world wipe occurs!
 
I'm getting fairly annoyed. Why does the game not explain how to cook the fucking alien meat in the tutorial? You'd think standing next to a camp fire with a slab of raw meat would do the trick but apparently it isn't that simple.
 
What planet is the main GAF base on?
Sorry, didn't see your post before.

Alpha Alpha Ant Minoris I
x: -47078397 y: 38152688

That's the planet a lot of us started on, but another place has been built up that I haven't seen yet. There's a screenshot that was posted earlier in the thread for the coordinates. So there are two options at least.

I'm getting fairly annoyed. Why does the game not explain how to cook the fucking alien meat in the tutorial? You'd think standing next to a camp fire with a slab of raw meat would do the trick but apparently it isn't that simple.
Hover over the camp fire and press E. That should do it.
 
Probably similar to the Star Chart upgrade you get at one point. Also keep in mind that the ship itself will eventually be expanded from a single room to a more complex craft. We've seen it take on a "Y" shape, but who knows if there's steps in between or an even larger form after that.

Wouldn't surprise me if that kind of stuff is tied heavily to progression rather than chance. I know for some people, they never found a magic mirror. Having it tied to quests or crafting would ensure that everyone has a standard 'quality of life' by the time they reach level 10 (formerly 100) planets.

I might post it on the suggestion forums, would certainly be a great addition to the game if they haven't planned to add/added something similar already.
 
I've "finished" all the current content in the game

And how did You get Platinium? And what did You think about platinium based armor when You found out that before You get enough platinium for new tier set, You'll get thousands of titanium that will give You 2x times better armor just after You kill tier 3 boss.

And what did You think about 30 armor rating when lvl 30 npcs still one shot You?

Would You design game this way if You were in charge? No, You wouldnt.
And would You automatically report it if had ability to play in alpha? Yes, You would.

So why arent You agreeing with me?


Maybe you should have waited for phase 2 of beta testing. Sounds like they were targeting someone like you when they said that, if you can't take a broken game, then wait.

I like being part of the feedback they need to make a complete game, and I'm glad that they put the beta out when they did.

Seriously, what part of my post did You not understand?
There is difference between bugs and having totally botched design.

Very small team that works from remote stations around the world who was under a ton of pressure to get to a shipable testing phase.

They warned everyone going in not to play the early stages of the beta if they were didn't like these sort of things.

You should have waited to get the game if you weren't willing to test the game for them.

Nothing You bolded describe what i'm talking about. Its really that hard to read few sentences in my post?
Its not my first real beta!

And having small team does not change a thing. Tons of game were made by small teams, like Path of Exile for example, much more complicated game and yet they handled beta much, much better.
--------------

Does people really are so blind at defending everything about their game in likings? Its messed up and should be noted as big fail from Chuckelfish.
 
I wish I found things ever. I found the glitch fortress once and some underground egyption ruin once in 10 hours. How do you guys find things? digging gets me no where, just lava eventually I try following the premade paths underground but still never find anything aside from a chest with a rotten apple in it:(
 
I'm getting fairly annoyed. Why does the game not explain how to cook the fucking alien meat in the tutorial? You'd think standing next to a camp fire with a slab of raw meat would do the trick but apparently it isn't that simple.

You hit "e" to use items in the background like campfire, furnace, crafting table etc
 
You can change the day and night combat music in client.config, and it keeps proper fading in and fading out after combat. Favorite game becoming most favoritest game.
I know Starbound already has great music and it shouldn't be replaced, but I love that you can do this so easily.
 
I'm getting fairly annoyed. Why does the game not explain how to cook the fucking alien meat in the tutorial? You'd think standing next to a camp fire with a slab of raw meat would do the trick but apparently it isn't that simple.

Move the cursor over the the object in the world you want to use(starts glowing when the cursor is over it), press 'E', then the menu comes up. Then move the item into the window and click the 'cook' button.
 
Has the update come yet? I never finished my storage house. Also will it fix platinum? I cant find it on a planet to save my life(literally).
 
I'm getting fairly annoyed. Why does the game not explain how to cook the fucking alien meat in the tutorial? You'd think standing next to a camp fire with a slab of raw meat would do the trick but apparently it isn't that simple.

GENERAL TIP: Whenever you want to interact with ANYTHING in the game, mouse the cursor over the target, and press 'E' on your keyboard.

HOW TO COOK: Mouse cursor over campfire, press 'E', drag the meat from your inventory over to the small cooking window box that appears. Hit the button to cook.
 
Sorry, didn't see your post before.

Alpha Alpha Ant Minoris I
x: -47078397 y: 38152688

That's the planet a lot of us started on, but another place has been built up that I haven't seen yet. There's a screenshot that was posted earlier in the thread for the coordinates. So there are two options at least.

Here you go:

I think after yesterday some people spawn on a second planet, now. You can find the two coordinates in this screenshot (GAF Planet 1 in the chatbox, GP2 in the spacemap):

STJw1dx.png


Lila already built a new GAF Inn on this planet:

0iHHVqI.png

Okay, I made a twitter feed for the server.

https://twitter.com/StarboundGAF

If you've got Twitter, follow that feed for updates on the server, as well as any Starbound news. I'll also tweet noteworthy posts from the Starbound threads.

Thank you so much for everything - playing online is a great experience!
 
Does people really are so blind at defending everything about their game in likings? Its messed up and should be noted as big fail from Chuckelfish.

Because Hype is too damn high :) And 90% of peoples are stil in Alpha sector :)
I have 43h ingame... and sorry its not beta - its mid-alpha.

In MANY betas I have participated I have never saw such a fundamental flaws in CORE mechanics :/

Don't get me wrong, I love this game and I will propably spend at least 500h in it... but defending current state of it and calling it "beta" is just silly :|
 
Thanks guys. Don't know why I can't just cook from the crafting menu while standing next to the crafting place, but I'll just press E when in doubt now.
 
And how did You get Platinium? And what did You think about platinium based armor when You found out that before You get enough platinium for new tier set, You'll get thousands of titanium that will give You 2x times better armor just after You kill tier 3 boss.

And what did You think about 30 armor rating when lvl 30 npcs still one shot You?

Would You design game this way if You were in charge? No, You wouldnt.
And would You automatically report it if had ability to play in alpha? Yes, You would.

So why arent You agreeing with me?




Seriously, what part of my post did You not understand?
There is difference between bugs and having totally botched design.



Nothing You bolded describe what i'm talking about. Its really that hard to read few sentences in my post?
Its not my first real beta!

And having small team does not change a thing. Tons of game were made by small teams, like Path of Exile for example, much more complicated game and yet they handled beta much, much better.
--------------

Does people really are so blind at defending everything about their game in likings? Its messed up and should be noted as big fail from Chuckelfish.
You appear to be quibbling about the definition of a beta, which is redundant as they made quite clear what the state of the game would be. The content you are referring you is unfinished and all the later tiers are squished into essentially one. As you have indicated, there is nothing insightful about your observations regarding the current issues with the game. You have to completely lack perspective to believe that they were not aware of them. Instead, as I said, they chose to prioritize other issues to be able to ship the very early beta or alpha now. They had already missed their prior estimates and people who had pre-ordered were waiting to have something playable in their hands.

Their approach to designing was clearly to first design essential systems such as world gen, randomization and functional framework other things, such as combat mechanics. It's not "botched" design, but rather unfinished. If they can't come up with something better later, then we'll talk.
 
Does people really are so blind at defending everything about their game in likings? Its messed up and should be noted as big fail from Chuckelfish.
Here's what I'm not getting. Why are you saying people are defending Chucklefish? They're changing the game. They know it's bad. A lot of us agree that the combat is currently bad. Myself included. What's the point in noting it as a big fail? Fine. Noted as a big fail. Let's move on. Noting how big they botched the initial beta release (I'd disagree) is not a very constructive thing to be doing.
 
I almost wish that, before being able to purchase this game from steam, a huge message with 17 red exclamation points came up that said "READ THIS" and linked to the message from the developers that this beta is a beta.
 
You have to completely lack perspective to believe that they were not aware of them. Instead, as I said, they chose to prioritize other issues to be able to ship the very early beta or alpha now. They had already missed their prior estimates and people who had pre-ordered were waiting to have something playable in their hands.

I thought that it would be impossible that they were not aware of this, but then they released Leather Armor, which means that they have no clue about progression in their own game.
They also postponed beta for at least few months since their first info,its not like game was massively rushed. And they had press/streamers playing this game for a few games before public launch.

Calling armor penetration mechanics confusing in blog post was also strange. There was nothing confusing about it, it was just unbalanced in damage values of monsters and scaling of armor/weapon penetration. It was matter of simple values fix, not scratching whole system down.
Progression over more levels is better in such games, because You can add content more easily between levels and tiers, without braking much balance.
 
I almost wish that, before being able to purchase this game from steam, a huge message with 17 red exclamation points came up that said "READ THIS" and linked to the message from the developers that this beta is a beta.

It all ready saying EARLY ACCESS on the store page. And if you read what is said there like any other early access game that it is in the works.
 
It all ready saying EARLY ACCESS on the store page. And if you read what is said there like any other early access game that it is in the works.

Yeah, but look at the responses in this thread. That obviously wasn't enough.

In fact, they should have had one of the developers fly to every customer's home and explain the situation in person before the person is allowed to purchase.
 
I thought that it would be impossible that they were not aware of this, but then they released Leather Armor, which means that they have no clue about progression in their own game.
They also postponed beta for at least few months since their first info,its not like game was massively rushed. And they had press/streamers playing this game for a few games before public launch.

Calling armor penetration mechanics confusing in blog post was also strange. There was nothing confusing about it, it was just unbalanced in damage values of monsters and scaling of armor/weapon penetration. It was matter of simple values fix, not scratching whole system down.
Progression over more levels is better in such games, because You can add content more easily between levels and tiers, without braking much balance.
It's interesting that you don't think this beta was rushed. I believe that it absolutely was. I mean, they pushed it all the way back to December, when it was all the way back in April that they were selling pre-order beta access. I have a feeling Tiy would have delayed putting out the beta if he hadn't already promised customers getting something in 2013. They absolutely had to take away final release being in 2013. I really expected the game to be in more of a mess, but I was still quite ready to dive in and check the game out.

And yeah, the armor penetration system isn't confusing. It's just dumb. The only way it could be confusing is because you almost never do the listed damage when you hit an enemy with a weapon. The way the current system works, higher armor penetration means better weapon, period. That doesn't mean completely removing that stat is the way to go, but its importance in the damage formula needs to be massively reduced from where it's at now. We'll just have to see how it plays out with the upcoming changes.
 
In MANY betas I have participated I have never saw such a fundamental flaws in CORE mechanics :/

Having played through (current) endgame - it's an extremely GLARING flaw, but not a FUNDAMENTAL flaw. Scaling is just extremely harsh right now, which doesn't jive that well with armor being on the fives (so hard to get at from below and fairly weak for bosses).

Platinum needs to generate sooner (or rubium/ceruleum need to have armor sets!), and damage scaling needs to be more forgiving (3-5 levels ~= 1x rather than the current 1 level?) and/or armor needs to be more varied and more granular. The currently-announced changes boil down to reducing the scaling effect and reducing the granularity of everything else to armor's scale, which I don't hugely like but makes sense given how asset-intensive armor is.

That doesn't mean completely removing that stat is the way to go, but its importance in the damage formula needs to be massively reduced from where it's at now. We'll just have to see how it plays out with the upcoming changes.

Honestly, I think it needs to stay the most important stat by far; the amount of scale difference you need to reach the edge cases of "even a dagger hits for 100" or "even a hammer hits for 1" just needs to be tweaked a bit.
Remember, D is how much damage it deals if it breaks armor (and scales directly with ASPD for all weapons of a level); when the game's mitigation and survivability scaling is built entirely around armor, since everything but bosses has a fixed HP total (60 for birds, 80 for
reconstructed Apex
, 100 for monsters and players), AP is always going to be far and away the most important offensive stat.

To "change" this would require making armor give huge amounts of HP, like FF Tactics but far more extreme (requires a rework of lava and poison damage + healing recovery to percentile). It can't just be a flat bonus either, there needs to be a big gap between tiers and an associated multiplier in the weapon generator--remember, a major feature of the system now is than an AP10 4ASPD, 8D dagger and an AP1 0.4ASPD, 80D battleaxe do NOT deliver the same damage on all targets, so removing the AP factor and calling them both just 80D makes the axe a LOT more attractive if you're dodging a lot.
 
So is the wipe about to happen? The website seems to be down.

Also, I hope this is the last time entire characters are wiped, I can deal with the Universe by my dood!
 
Yeah, but look at the responses in this thread. That obviously wasn't enough.

In fact, they should have had one of the developers fly to every customer's home and explain the situation in person before the person is allowed to purchase.

Everything is in the OP and also the stages if that isn;t enough info then you didn't read it at all or even visit there website reading there FAQ's that's why they are there for.
 
It's interesting that you don't think this beta was rushed. I believe that it absolutely was.

I havent said its not rushed at all, but i dont think it was massively rushed, like for example launch console games were.

---

But ok, lets stop with this witch hunting. I just hope they learned from this heavily and next patch wont have as terrible fundamental flaws they have now.
I dont mind wipes, but weekly wipes does not really help testing at all.
 
Everything is in the OP and also the stages if that isn;t enough info then you didn't read it at all or even visit there website reading there FAQ's that's why they are there for.

hehehe let me give you this extra sarcasm meter I had lying around XD
 
Any map viewer software out there yet? My friend and I have been digging nonstop for over two hours on our planet and still haven't reached the core, pretty sure we're WAY past the hell level Terraria equivalent. How huge do those planets get?
 
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