What's Wrong With Starbase?

Starbase started off with a promising concept but things went sideways quickly after launch. After being out for just less than a year, it now remains on life support with reduced development. Starbase does have a supportive and committed community who are welcoming enough to help new players out, but with the way that Starbase is right now, it's struggling to take hold on new players joining in for the first time.

For something that calls itself an MMO it's lacking in both players and PvE content. It is a sandbox MMO not your traditional "theme park fantasy" MMO. But it does have a pretty in depth ship and station building system, that is ideal for fans of engineering.

This is not a What Went Wrong video, if this was a What Went Wrong video it'll be more of a conclusion rather than a running dialogue. I hope you enjoy this new What's Wrong With series, it's less granular and more general but serves to

[craneshot]

i Feel like alot of these indie game companies have really Good ideas, but they keep expanding their scope without thinking about the work needed to flesh out extra features.

[gearhorse]

For an MMO, you saved one of the biggest blows for last; the lack of NPCs.
A game like this needs to keep players engaged in some way, and not having NPCs to track, kill, and trade with, is a huge downside to the games core loop

[shadamethyst]

I sunk a hundred hours into this game, the whole engineering side was incredibly interesting. But I started losing interest when it became clear to me that this game wanted to be hardcore, and that I would never be able to afford the cool ships I had designed. That, the glitches, the ban on family share and the dwindling playerbase got me to stop playing the game and focus on other games

[dominatorandwhocaresanyway]

To put it simply : so far everything takes really long to achieve, you have no motive, and you can easily "softlock" yourself like every second

[zroku]

Honestly as someone who played the Alpha and early access. I had high hopes for the game. I really liked the concept and the details put into it but what killed it for me was the massive unavoidable bugs and the lack of resources. See the devs made all astroids and structures persistent so the available astroids within the "safe zone" were almost completely gone without the first few weeks forcing new players to fly their starter ships into dangerous areas where higher level players would grief them creating this barrier between new players and experienced players and later heard that the devs have no intention to respawn the astroids in the safe zone once a week or at least a month allowing new players the opportunity to get what they need to obtain better ships

[KenetorTV]

as someone who has played (3600+ hours) Starbase in closed alpha and live, and covered it extensively via my channel, i can only agree with this video.
But personally I do not see this game coming back and if it does, I dont see its many issues (no PVE, Easy Build Mode to name a few) being fixed.
This game has some of the best ship building ive ever seen in a game, and the concept itself has HUGE potential, Frozenbyte however are just not the team to fulfill this potential which ultimately is just sad.
However i dont regret the time i spent and still had ALOT of fun and made some great friends along the way and for me that enough :)

[discoboards]

I'd love to see a "What's wrong with Due Process", it's a game I've "invested in" since I see it being potentially big in the future but for a while the devs just update the game while only a handful of people play

[RemittentDig]

This is like the “no man’s sky” syndrome there’s things that were promised that was never shown, was increasing the scope of the game without giving themselves enough time, and releasing as a big buggy mess even after delaying multiple times. It might be a problem with some indie developers having grand ideas, but not being able to implement them well.

[cattysplat]

Looking at those player numbers, whatever market audience this game had, clearly doesn't know about it's existence. Or they are simply otherwise occupied with other space ship games already. Seems like a massive failure of marketing to me considering it's the first time I knew of this game's existence, but losing all your playerbase after launch is also telling of massive failures.

[hivecentralmind]

I spent about a year being hyped for the game as part of one of the biggest factions. We created so much lore, made so many detailed plans and created working governments and diplomatic ties and relations and spent so much time in the game before we even had a release date or promises for closed alpha. In the closed alpha, the game was very fun and exciting before even a quarter of its features were implemented. Once I was kicked out of my faction due to a misunderstanding I saw what it was like to play as a solo player: it was boring, there was no progression, and there wasn't anything to do.
If you're someone in a big faction that participates in constant developer events, it's a fun game, but when you're a solo player trying to play the game without dev tools, it's barely a game at all.

[TheRealToaster]

I’ve been greatly anticipating this game for a long while. Haven’t bought it yet because of the state it’s in, but glad to see you cover it!

[Vindictator]

Me: This game looks ok for a singleplayer or friends group romp.
Wiz: They’re not going to add PvE or NPCs to the game.
Me: Fuck that I’m out.

[DeathMetalDerf]

If it means we keep getting videos with this kind of in depth coverage and analysis, take as long as you need to in between uploads. Very glad you're feeling better, thanks for another great video.

[carelesslygeneric]

I'll say this, the ship graveyard at least looks pretty damn cool

[austingeorge]

"The community is the lifeblood of a game" is the most important quote of the entire video. The community is what can drive new sales, continued support, and the drive for consistent play.

[RichyN]

Starbase could be a great game, and I had a ton of fun playing it and I loved the destruction mechanics and such, but they relied too much on playerbase content and the PVP was way unbalanced, took days to grind research, farm materials, engineer and build a ship, and then it could be destroyed in seconds by 3 dudes in a space technical (truck with machinegun), if they added PVE elements it might help, the universe is just empty rocks without it. Last Oasis devs realized their game was dead unless they added PVE elements, and now they are overhauling the game, I hope Frozenbyte can realize the same.

[romanfuchs]

This "what went wrong" series is so awesome, I love it! Every video is a banger, please never stop!

[raymonddfigueroa]

Just wanna say, I find these videos very entertaining and I'm also very impressed at the rate you can pump these out. Good job

[physixtential]

Man the fact that I forgot this existed shows how sad it failed. This couldn't be more my favorite kind of game, yet I have totally blocked it out.

[Capitalism]

I really love starbase and played it when it first released to the public. Then a pick axe duplicated in my inventory perma stopping me from playing (since my inventory was constantly full with invisible items). This problem persisted even when I had my player wiped so, I had to give up. In short I loved almost everything about it for 15 min then I was unable to continue.