How Did it all go so WRONG? Starbase | Development Stalled

Starbase is a space game of missed potential, and it's facing an uncertain future due to paused development. This early access game, developed by Frozenbyte, has experienced significant challenges that put its success at risk. There appear to be many factors to Starbase's halted progress, the potential consequences of continued development delays, and the impact on the space gaming community. Is Starbase another tale of the risks associated with early access games?

Any support is massively appreciated!

#starbase #SpaceGame #Frozenbyte #PausedDevelopment

[konvic]

I have over 700 hours in Starbase and it will always hold a special place in my heart for having such an amazing ship building system. I hope one day they come back to it but alas it is what it is.

[jamie]

I think their biggest mistake was their focus on being an MMO 1st.
I think if they had focused on being a great sand box builder 1st then incorporated multiplayer features later it could have been a lot more successful.
We saw this with space engineers and project zombie.

[cold_ultra]

Space sim fans are thruly the most unlucky people on earth

[MrZenzio]

After I realized that a lot (not all) companies use "early access" as an excuse to have people pay to be testers, and hide behind the "it's early access!" excuse when things don't work well, I started to just wait for the final (if any) release. Means I've fallen victim of spoilers and such, but overall I've found it worth it.

[ericgibson]

I bought Starbase not long after launch, hyped and hopeful for the future like so many others. What killed this game was that they let its most impressive features, those being its ship building and destruction mechanics, be overshadowed by their insistence on making Starbase an MMO. Most players never got to explore these features because they were mostly locked behind a grind to unlock parts and gather resources to build ships, and once you finally did, the last you wanted was to risk all that time and effort being lost in combat

[TheActualJae]

I feel like Steam should have a way to notify customers that development has been paused. A big 'ol banner. Potential players deserve to know that what they see currently is what they will likely end up with.

[nickmckay]

This game could have been one of the best space sims ever made. It had SO much potential, wish they would sell this title to another studio that could actually do something with it.

[pHixiq]

I think many of these sims could could benefit more from vertical integration expansions of content(depth) over horizontal(simply quantity)

[entityunknown]

I loved starbase, I have 117 hours in the Beta, building ships and taking part in combat events.
But they changed so much going into actual release that it didn't feel the same.

[MinerBat]

I am one of the few remaining players, but even i am probably going to leave once i finish my final project which is visiting every moon of eos. Then i will probably only return for eoscon (a community organised event for showcasing custom ships that takes place twice a year).

It is a big shame because it is one of the very few games that has the right mix of exploration, creativity and technical complexity that i enjoy most in games which i otherwise only find in Minecraft and ksp, giving it a solid third place in my most favorite games ever (and second place for most favorite space games). It has some huge potential, but also many big issues, many of which can be solved if you are a more experienced player, but are big hurdles for beginners

If the game ever continues again i plan on starting an in game corp focussed on making publicly accessible infrastructure, information, ssc modules, etc. So i hope the game is one day able to live up to its full potential, but sadly, as much as i hope it, i dont actually think it will...

If it does continue, i definitely recommend it for anyone who doesnt mind a slower pace game (except the occasional pvp encounter, which i tend to avoid since i dont enjoy combat in games) with lots of exploration, creativity and technical complexity. In its current state i dont recommend buying it, but i wont discourage it either, just make sure you know what you are getting

So all in all, lots of wasted potential with some very big hurdles that can result in a great game if overcome, but that is a long way away, if ever. Or to use an ingame analogy, its like a big tier 10 ajatite asteroid filled with ymrium, lots of potential value inside, but also a lot of effort to get to...

[mossbogger]

I think starbase already has all the ingredients for a good game, just lacks a design team that knows how to assemble them correctly

[Michael-fmxx]

Starbase to me is a similar fate to Anthem, a lot of hype and potential but dragged down by elements in the game. I was in the community a bit around launch, and one of the big problems was that they made a lot of decisions that differed from how the game operated in beta, such as requiring players to go through a crafting tree to access parts, instead of just being able to make it from launch which heavily bottlenecked how players could progress.
I do hope that one day Starbase can return, but it would definitely take a miracle at this point I fear.

[Suzuki_Hiakura]

I used to be a pirate in this game back in its peak... most of the clan left in a few months after my joining, and I joined a building clan which preferred to play a ship building simulator instead of a space sim game... touched the game on and off, but the absurd grind and even the ship market place are reason enough I wont return... see no reason to buy ships which I still need to get resources for, some of which could be sold for absurdly high to artificially inflate its value, when I also need tens of thousands, if not millions to build.

I was super hyped when I saw an old station build video with a similar build mode to the ship editor, and was hoping to make a cool looking base with it instead if getting each individual piece... still have my only base floating out there with no roof or even anesthetics as parts kept disappearing or I just couldnt build cause of a bug. Lot of bad memories, such as the constant trip out there with a slow hauler loaded with stuff that would take about 10 minutes of flying... 5 if I didnt gave cargo.

Could have been good, but they relied far too heavily on players to provide content. Some players were incapable of building more than barely mobile blocks, and some like me would build something that looks less blocks, but wont fly straight or well overall. Most people, including myself, ended up grinding several hours to get materials or money or both to buy ships from the store, which were never updated when I played making some ships incompatible at times or just not function. Again, the heavy reliance on player driven content was a big contributor to the game dying off... had to attract players when most only fly 5 minutes, mine for 10, before getting off out of boredom.

The coding is another can of worms imo... super good and able to extend a ships functionality and runtime, but you also have stuff that annoys some, like the pirate missile tracking program they wouldnt share, or a difficult coding language people would need to learn before doing anything remotely similar to complex stuff... I have seen isans code for the ships and have no clue what the hell any of it means... basically a ton of formulas and mysterious calls to the main code (I would assume). Aside from making simple charge scripts and gauges for fuel barges, I couldnt do to much aside from copying other players work and pasting it according to the guide the player made...

Super tired and only just found your video... went on a rant just stating points, several of which or biased and opinions instead of facts, but I felt I should state something... perhaps some can make sense of it, or I will strangely find the motivation to proof and edit the comment later, but I doubt I will be changing it... still have a blender scene I have been "working" on for over two years :/

[Duvoncho]

Problem with the space game genre is that they all promise a vast, complex and expansive universe to explore. These games are designed from the ground up to have hundreds, even thousands of hours of playtime poured into them. People simply don't have the time to commit to them all. You'll tend to pick one or two that you go back to time and again and the rest will be a casual affair and nothing more.

[leventejeney]

I loved capturing whole asteroids and bringing them back for sale :) Will always have good memories of this early access, was a nice try.

[redtsar]

It's a shame, I still play it every now and then, very calming and fun to fly around

[Mr.FreePlay]

It should be even more appreciated how CIG has kept SC & how FDev has kept Elite going amid their own turmoil. It's not easy at all to make a space sim that people care about.

[nurocept]

It's back....hopefully, they just made an announcement about active development again and upcoming updates. Still will take a lot more than this announcement to get me back in and investing more time but still good to see it's not totally dead.

[evenofine]

I'm still on Starbase in my spare time and still enjoy it.

But I have alway been suspicious about the games development even when they were developing Starbase, I personally didn't believe there was a big team working on it, and everything looked like it was happening at a snails pace.

There was to much focus on the cosmetics instead of adding content to keep player's occupied.

The learning process of ship building was bad and to complex for most players, and they should have added the ability for ships to warp jump to places far out to save on the boredom of a player just sat there for hours waiting.

Capital ships was the only way of eventually getting to places far away in a short space of time but the problem was is that they are just basically stations that can only travel from point A to point B.

The players differently needed to be able to travel in there player built ships in the same way as Cap ship but with also the ability to then fly around as well.

That been said Starbase has great potential and could be so successful and make lots of money to be an amazing space sim but it hasn't got a development team behind it, they just don't realise what they potentially have.

[CommandoDoggo]

Buggy and unfinished but has the best ship design imo. Thats why I continue to enjoy the game for what it is. Getting to build unique complex ships, turrets, mechs, and drones without having to learn a difficult programming language is what drew me in and getting to fight other's designs in pvp tournaments/events. If there is another game that fills this niche I would gladly try it but most builders are very basic in comparison or require programming.