[RANT] guess who killed all of the good roleplay ideas

It isn't anyone here (I would think)...

No, it isn't me either.

It's the devs of Starbound themselves...

...who removed ALL -
and I'm not even exaggerating -
of the interesting side-conflicts of Starbound
along with their lore books, to make Starbound "child-friendly"
even though a lot of those were just interesting books and not child-unsafe.

(new-ish part) If I had to come up with a solution, it would be just to add a child-friendly on/off setting that changes some of the items and hides some items if it's turned on - kind of like how Terraria lets you turn off the gore when your character or a monster dies.



Thoughts?

 

I understand your concerns but honestly, if you feel like its 'true' lore then feel free to apply it.

Personally, I liked the additions in 1.0 but I can understand how the removal of prior fluff can tick off people.

 

I like some of what they did to the gameplay but they definitely dumbed down pretty much the whole rest of the game in favor of a "let's all be friends" 'star-trek style' narrative. I don't really like how they got rid of pretty much all of the major, overt signs of conflict in the setting; while a lot of it is still in-tact and there if you look for it, they did get rid of several significant aspects, like the USCM, as some have mentioned. A lot of my major issues with the lore of the game stem from the inclusion of the Protectorate, how humans are now the bedrock of the new storyline (protectorate HQ being on earth) despite the game including and largely being about multiple species exploring the vastness of space, and how the player is essentially forced to be a 'hero' - even the matter manipulator itself, the game's central means of modifying the game world, is a symbol of heroism and righteousness in the vanilla canon (as seen by how some characters address you).

I remember when each race had its own original starting exposition that told you why you were in space on a broken ship, when the faction wars in the canon were more pronounced, and when violence overall wasn't something the developers shied away from as much. I feel as though they got rid of a lot to make development "easier" on themselves because they bit off more than they could chew with their kickstarter goals and may have run into a lot of creative dead ends with too few people to flesh out existing ideas. That, or they just got lazy and wanted to make a quick buck with minimum development effort ($4,000,000 for almost nothing, anyone?) so they could expand their business horizons afterward.

I backed the game and played from day one and I can say with certainty it had a much more interesting artistic, literary and functional vision then than it does now. It's not really an unplayable game, or a competely barren field in terms of worldbuilding, storymaking and roleplaying aspects, but it's certainly inferior to the original product.

 

I remember when you had to sacrifice a Glitch virgin to summon a giant bone dragon
I also remember when you weren't the center of the goddamned attention and you weren't the Mary Sue of the Universe

 

On one hand, I actually agree with the removal thing, and I'm glad to see someone else mentioning it finally. Koala and Giraffe Starbound were far from dark or edgy as games, having some elements of "cutesiness" just like the current build, but as Chucklefish decided to rush to the finish line the way they did, they definitely opted for a lighter and softer theme for the game.

Any real traces of dark humor were removed or significantly subdued. Several of the codexes that depicted darker elements about the galaxy were zapped out of existence. The multiple race-dependent character backgrounds that were more about desperate and/or selfish motivations were replaced with the squeaky-clean, white-morality Protectorate. The backgrounds of the individual races were simplified, with everything from the Florans' savagery, to the Avians' immoral fanaticism, Apexes' general oppression, Humanity's great loss, the Hylotl's deeply-personal racist relationship with the Florans, the mystery of just what the hell the Agarians are and what they want, and so on, all still being in the game, but horrendously watered down. All the new, pre-generated animals and monsters resemble Pokemon even more than both the old ones that were axed to make way for them, and the randomly-generated ones that have been around since Alpha...somehow. Even subtle little things like all the placeable bottles being renamed from alcoholic drinks to generic juices, nectars, and I think even one soda; to the old, walker-shaped mechs being overruled in favor of Anime-like "Rayman mechs;" were all altered to match this new... "direction." Remember how the USCM went from an ambiguous and mysterous group to one that was just pawned off as generically overambitious and evil that went from a present force in the setting to a tacked-on name in the mech update? Things like that.

Now, on the other hand, I don't think this harmed RP in the slightest, at least for people that were around for all the old stuff and remember it as a result. GC leans very lightly on existing, vanilla assets; nothing in the gameplay department matters, since on-server "gameplay" is just a matter of "how does chat work," "can you move," "what items do you have," "what does your character look like" and "what does the area look like on the planet you're on?" As three of those five things are purely visual, custom furniture, drawables and clothing can just be made to "revive" anything that was cut from vanilla assets; on Discord, since there is no "gameplay," it's just a matter of pretending. GC's lore deviated from the original design of Starbound even back in the alpha and beta, so it's just chugged along fine despite Starbound being cut down the way it was. The only way RP may be harmed is that newcomers that weren't around for all the old SB content may not know of it, meaning they take longer to get initiated due to unfamiliarity, or don't have those things to get inspiration from anymore.

 

Starbound has lore?

 

It's kinda sad seeing how a game with potential got gradually more and more dumbified and child-friendly
Lost it's charm, really