Final review and suggestions before EA after 600 hours in CA

NikofrankoV

Learned-to-sprint endo
Joined
May 8, 2020
Messages
21
#1
Well, now that the date has been announced, Starbase is in it's final stretch to reach Early Access. So I figured that since there is so little time until release left, this will be the last time to provide feedback when it actually matters. After almost 600 hours ingame and god how many hours in SB discord... Here are my final suggestions/opinions/reviews of Starbase CA/EA

Before I begin: We all love Starbase, and we only want the best for it. I feel like critique can be helpful and that is the only reason I wrote it.

One thing that is abundantly clear is:
Get ready for a lot of negative reviews on release

I think this goes without saying. But it seems devs have rose-tinted glasses on, since this is EA and not a release, that everyone will just deal with the issues and move on. That is not the case. After all, Origin, the place where hundreds of new players will spawn lags ridiculously even when there are 10 people around. And that is not only my internet/PC problem. Everyone knows this. Origin is the lagiest place in starbase and it will 100% form first impressions that are not flattering at all. Anyway, lets take a look at my reasoning why SB steam review page will be mixed at VERY best.

1. Trailer/Reality.
Yes, EA is not the full release of Starbase and we all know that. The public doesn't though. So what will they say when they open the game and find that there are no: faction colors, capital ships, gas mining, moon mining, big asteroid mining, ship selling, ship stealing, store building, ECONOMY DOESN'T EXIST, turrets are borderline unusable, missiles explode inside tubes and the game dies when more than 10 ships are engaged in combat.... the list goes on. All those features were shown in trailers and yet they are not in public release. The crowd will be furious. We saw that many times over and over again with many different games. Unless starbase main steam baner will SCREAM at people that this is not ready yet - Starbase will get review bombed.

2. Gameplay loop.
Yes, singular.
A year ago, when I joined CA, there was only 1 thing to do in Starbase: mine. A year has passed and there is still only one thing to do: mine. But even if you have trillions of credits and thousands of stacks of Xhalium.... what next? stay in SSC for hundreds of hours? That worked for some of us but we are a tiny minority. Half of the community burnt out on the game HARD, because there is simply nothing to do. Once factions established logistics fleets... this is it. You've reached the endgame! You can now... stockpile ore and... what? build combat ships? for what? There is 0 profit in combat... alright.. what else... station construction! Nope, stations are just big storage chests... well... we could... start a war with another faction! Except station capture is not here and you can always just hide in permanent safezones. There is simply nothing to do. Once solo players will be tired of mining. This is it, they will leave.

3. Cyberpunk.
Yeah-yeah, I know it's a meme and all, but I really like this metaphor. Cyberpunk is a game about body customization that released without players being able to customize their bodies. Ridiculous right? Starbase is about to do the same. At it's heart Starbase is an economy based MMO, and it's going public WITHOUT AN ECONOMY.
how is no one talking about this?!

Auction house that sells ores and bartering ships with materials to magically spawn them in SSC does not count as a functioning economy. It does not matter how many people you add to that system 10 or a million, it's not functional! Players can not even produce anything! NOTHING! There is no production! We can not even make self- sustaining stations! No fuel making! No reactor rods! These are the bare minimum! We are not even asking to make it possible to construct SSC's and ship parts on station, we just want the bare minimum!.. this is my biggest problem with starbase right now. In a game with "player build economy" we can not even open a store, or set prices for our own ships. Hell! We can not even sell ships!

Yes-yes. I know Starbase will have all this and more, but right now FB is promising people a living breathing world with player built communities, but sells a spasse rock mining simulator. This will not end well! IT NEVER DOES!

I don't know how to fix this. And I do not have suggestions. Well... Only the same suggestions that the whole CA community has been screaming about for months. Delaying... obviously... Until the bare minimum is implemented. Until there is more than one god damn gameplay loop ingame. I was hoping FB delays SB at least half a year. Now we have only one month, and I am very skeptical. The discord surveys that FB has been sending us had the same question in them: "How likely are you to recommend SB to a friend" and i usually gave it a 3/10. But now, seeing in what state SB is set to go public... I wouldn't want my friends first impressions to be ruined like this.

Final words:
We all love Starbase, and we only want the best for it.
And that is why this post has been so critical. I'm just afraid that this community-based game will alienate it's community in the first days of going public and join the looooooooong list of "overly ambitious space games". Unless devs have some sort of miracle giant release patch... i'm afraid on the current path. Starbase is right on course to join that list.


P.S.
For the love of God PLEASE prove me wrong!:LOL:
This is one of those situations that I would love to be wrong! So if you disagree with anything I wrote, by all means, feel free to respond and correct me. I've already said it twice here and i will say it again, we all only want what's best for Starbase! so perhaps a discussion about these major issues can help the devs deal with them in some way. And if devs have something to say - that would be even better! (I know you are lurking).
 

kiiyo

Veteran endo
Joined
Jul 11, 2020
Messages
136
#2
Well said, brother. Unlike a certain "this s-saddens me deepwy", actually has some basis under the criticism. You sum up pretty much all of my concerns for the game's future. The roadmap seems like something great and amazing, but "multiple starting locations" is slated for like Q3 which is... way past EA release. And yet, it is vital to give people at least a bit of a good impression at the start. Delay, delay, delay, delay, we all yelled. Here we are.

God I hope they have some miracle patch or this game ends up in the exact same bin as previous games that tried to do what SB did.
 

JoelFB

Administrator
Frozenbyte
Joined
Jul 15, 2019
Messages
59
#3
Thanks for the feedback Niko (and everyone else who's posted similar thoughts in e.g. Discord). We're fully aware that an Early Access launch doesn't really protect from bad reviews and we're not counting on that either. Starbase will be a "true" Early Access game in the sense that we're providing gamers access to the game early in the development process, while the game is still in a rough Alpha state. It won't be as polished as some other recent EA games.

Our plan is to launch in Early Access and then continue developing from there with 2-3 updates per month and work our way towards all the intended features. We're quite well aware of the game's issues and have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen at EA launch - it'll be challenging for sure, but we will keep our head down and continue development.

We'll re-evaluate the Steam page before launch, I agree that our EA launch version will not include all the features we originally intended. There's some good stuff coming very soon though, so hopefully some of those improvements make it to EA launch.

- Joel, Frozenbyte team, developers of Starbase
 

ExtraPerry

Active endo
Joined
May 13, 2020
Messages
39
#4
I agree with Niko and feel the same.

I'd like to add that it should be made very clear that the game is in EA and is incomplete.
Maybe like a watermark in the menu screen that explicitly says the game is still in development and is on-going. A very clear message that anyone playing the game or watching gameplay can see and notice. (based off of Joel's reponse)
And not like a message you get when you boot up the game like a eula window since people will ignore that.
 

Lukas04

Active endo
Joined
Feb 8, 2020
Messages
42
#5
I agree with Niko and feel the same.

I'd like to add that it should be made very clear that the game is in EA and is incomplete.
Maybe like a watermark in the menu screen that explicitly says the game is still in development and is on-going. A very clear message that anyone playing the game or watching gameplay can see and notice. (based off of Joel's reponse)
And not like a message you get when you boot up the game like a eula window since people will ignore that.
Risk of Rain 2 had a short and small message about the games state, short enough that people read it but had enough context to explain what people should expect from it. Also had some cute art of one of the enemies next to it so it gave a different vibe than something like an Eula.
 

Cavilier210

Master endo
Joined
Nov 12, 2019
Messages
576
#6
I do feel a slight bit better with Joel's response. Usually dev's don't respond at all when a playerbase screams "WHOA!!!" I'm glad they acknowledge the concerns and are willing to admit they're aware they may have a rough go of it. The dev's being this communicative is most of why I support their project this much.
 

XenoCow

Master endo
Joined
Dec 10, 2019
Messages
562
#7
I think you have very good concerns, Niko. I share many of them.

Whether it is right or wrong I feel like FB's plan for now is to let the game attract those who want to play in an alpha now and pick up the players who jumped on earlier than they should and those who wait a year or so from now. There are examples of games that fixed their way into being good after floppy first impressions and ones that didn't. Here's to the chance that allowing anyone to become a core super fan player and enduring until an amazing 1.0 launch is the right call.
 

Verbatos

Veteran endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
220
#8
IMO I think the game could be ready for an EA release if it just had a few things implemented first, notably:
- Trading ships
- Attacking stations

I think that the community could easily build it's own economy if we were able to trade the ships we build or sell them on the market, it would allow for players to buy ships that haven't been selected for the dev run ship shops.
On that, I think that player ships should be removed from the dev made shops, and players allowed to make their own shops on their stations, it would create something more to work towards.

Since there is currently no way to lay siege upon our enemies and capture their holdouts, there is really no reason to get into any inter-faction conflict, so I think a good way to attack stations is needed before full release.

Factories and proper moon bases would be nice too but those can come after release.
 

Walord

Active endo
Joined
Jan 31, 2020
Messages
33
#9
Oh my god, that sums up pretty much my concerns but actually well explained
Very nice to see that devs are very aware of them
 
Joined
Apr 19, 2021
Messages
1
#10
I don't have any access to the game, maybe I'm not the best to talk about that... Is it an option to open the alpha instead of release the game in EA? The community who wait for SB will be happy, and SB community will going to grow more smoothly than if the game is released in EA on steam. That can prevent some problems (bad reviews because the promise game is not here ...). Or maybe publish it on other platforms in EA before releasing it on steam ?
It's just some ideas, maybe bad ideas ^^""
I 'm confident that the devs choose the best solution for SB !
 
Top