gen's thoughts - why ya'll should stop giving Starbound flak

i feel like i keep saying i'll get post stuff done at some point, so i'm just going to drop that whole intro line. in the meantime, i need to talk about an issue that's becoming way too goddamn resonant in the Steam early access community.

for those who aren't familiar with Starbound, i'll sum things up quickly. it's a 2d minecraft-style game much similar to Terraria, but what Terraria established in terms of game mechanics, Starbound improves on. you can explore a wide variety of planets, visit dungeons and explore towns, and even decorate your own spaceship.

the game is currently available for purchase for early access on Steam. while it's fairly bare-bones in its current state, it's shaping up to be fairly ambitious. from what the devs have said about coming features, there'll be revamped progression, expansions for your ship, and quests to partake both sidequests from wandering folks and main quests for each race. kinda like a 2d Elder Scrolls in space, but you can build stuff.

however, there's been a lot of people complaining about Starbound's stable build not updating fast enough and the grindy progressing in the current stable build. many of them changed their positive reviews to negative, fearing that Starbound may go the way of Towns and Cube World, two games that have been infamous for having no updates in months with no word from the devs.

well, first off, the game being unfinished is an obvious risk of early access. many of Starbound's progression elements are in the process of being overhauled; what was presented in the current build is just a placeholder until the actual progression system is finished. a lot of ingame systems (such as the tile rendering system and monster generation, for instance) are also getting improvments and such so everything will run smoother. Chucklefish is a rather small studio, and while news on the changes are frequent on the devblog and the nightly build, it'll still be quite a while before things are in working order.

what people don't seem to understand is that at the very least the devs are keeping us posted on updates and systems in the game and how they're coming along, compared to something like Towns which hasn't updated or posted any development info since... september of 2013, apparently. yes, i'm upset at the lack of updates on Starbound as much as everyone else is, but at least Chucklefish is showing us that they are indeed actually working on it, even if it's taking a while.

when you buy early access to a game, that's what you're getting: early access. to the people whining about the current build's grindy progression, Starbound is still well in beta, and what is in beta doesn't necessarily exactly reflect what will be in the actual release. early access is how devs get funding for their projects, and it's also a way for them to get feedback for their games. however, there's a fine line between constructive criticism and callous whining, and complaining about how unfinished the game is and how updates aren't coming out fast enough isn't going to make things easier for the devs.

just my two cents on the whole matter. i'm still hyped for Starbound and heartily recommend it for anyone who liked Terraria, but i have a feeling situations like Cube World and Towns are why people are so leery of updates taking a while.