|
Hapless noob here, sitting on a pile of games after Steam fleeced me for all I'm worth. I'm caught between running a Battletech merc company, starting up a new Kerbal career run, or losing a week to Factorio. Alternatives include starting up Rebel Galaxy Outlaw again just to dogfight to catchy music, or logging back into ED to mine void opals and/or get my corvette blown up. My question is - when is PC gaming going to be saved? I can't wait to enjoy PC gaming again.
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2020 22:51
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 10:17 |
|
|
Dogeh posted:You need to buy a starter package and an Idris in Star Citizen. I checked out the price of an Idris. I suspect it's worth more than my whole steam library. Saving PC gaming sure is expensive.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2020 23:27
|
|
|
So I was browsing space games the other day (a discontent soul wandering in the limbo of yet-to-be-saved PC gaming) and stumbled on Star Sector. I was actually tipped off to it by a friend, as it's an in-development item sold solely through an independent website. At $15, it's not quite an Idris. https://fractalsoftworks.com/ Had a lot of fun in a vanilla playthrough as a space archeologist, getting paid to survey fringe worlds and scan ancient wrecks while dodging pirates and AI remnants. Then I started playing with mods and got addicted. I figure it'd keep me occupied in the long years prior to Squadron 42's brilliant 2026 release as a 'totally not a second game, piss off crytek' module attached to the Star Citizen project.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2020 19:53
|
|
|
"Long-term" UEC balance and ship purchase persistence existing alongside a store front selling those same items for tens to thousands of dollars. All catering to a playerbase of whales. Looks like a ripe time for credit-farming bots and some off-shore MMO 'gold-selling' sites to get involved.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2020 01:24
|
|
|
Pixelate posted:
How about a negative percentage? I feel like trying to wrangle Star Citizen, with all of its design baggage and technical debt, into a minimum viable product would actually take more man-hours and money than drafting a new design and coding a game + engine from scratch.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 18, 2020 01:02
|
|
|
Zazz Razzamatazz posted:So I guess that makes CIG a dominatrix? These guys all paying them to get slapped around and stepped on? Except a dominatrix might actually be kind enough to bring you to a satisfying conclusion before you die of old age.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2020 03:16
|
|
|
A point in FDev's favor is that they've depicted, in their custom engine, a reasonable approximation of a to-scale Milky Way. Celestial bodies rotate and orbit in real-time, and have gravitational pull suitable to their size and composition. Anyone who's done a fair bit of rover-roaming in ED, or even just flown close to a surface in a star ship, can attest to how different the experience is on a high gravity versus low gravity world. Player travel is freeform and three-dimensional. By contrast, Star Citizen is a glitch-filled CryEngine mod that has issues with basic physics despite its marketed appeal of having 'fully physicalized' everything. Star Citizen planets (as depicted in the vast in-game universe of a single incomplete star system) are done on 1/6th scale, never move from their positions, and frequently reset their rotations along with the server resets. Player travel is limited to traveling between destination points in straight lines, with any semblance of free navigation coming from dropping a journey mid-way and selecting a different destination. SC's a hack job that gives the appearance of being in space, but would operate the same if the trappings were an underwater setting and all the space stations were sea bases and the planets were islands instead. NGL, I'm probably going to give Odyssey a try when it comes out. People will justifiably criticize ED's heavy reliance on procgen areas and content, a design decision that defines the game. But it will at least resemble a functional universe by virtue of being built with engine made for what the game wants to do.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2020 22:10
|
|
|
Star Citizen should just go full space second life. Online real estate becomes space ships. Being the proud owner of an Idris means you have that much more space for your personalized 'inevitable consequences' space dungeon. Fifty people max is no longer a problem when you're just hopping from one personalized space to another for hobnobbing with other space nobles and griping about how the space plebians are doing a poor job keeping your space yacht clean. The absurd monetization of space ships, vehicles, and costumes starts to make sense when it's understood to be solely a social ranking exercise involving flaunted cosmetics and not the purchase of actual assets with the expectation of attached gameplay. Each space ship / server can have its own PvP slider. Opening up map tools and modded spaces can circumvent the perpetually-clogged content pipelines. Second Life is known for overblown social hubs sparse in actual traffic and reliant on imagination, roleplay and screenshots - a perfect match. It will have just as much to do with flying around in space and doing interesting space things as the current PU does.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2020 21:27
|
|
|
Jintozook81 posted:Ponzi scheme of the decade! Kidding aside, it seems like if they want to implement everything they've planned/promised it would be in development for several more years at least. I think they could have Squadron 42 out in a year or two, but I've heard that the graphics demands on your system are extremely high. Answer the Call 2022? Star Citizen 2024? Party like it's 2014! Why worry about kickstarter goals or past deadlines when you can let old age and once-in-a-century pandemics weed out the original generation of backers?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2020 21:39
|
|
|
The celebration of pretend-commercialism is the one constant in a project all about milking the whales. I like how 'express yourself' is the tag beneath a sampling of corporate logos. If the project had any hint of self-awareness, I'd say it's satire.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2020 22:18
|
|
|
Admittedly, I haven't been keeping track - Are people having fun yet with the S42 Beta Q3 2020 release?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2020 20:00
|
|
|
The sad part about the whole bartender fiasco is that the game is set in the far future. There could have been any number of wild future-tech mechanics that would have streamlined the process of ordering and receiving a drink. Whizzy Jetson tubes that lead right from the drink-making robot to a little platter at the center of your table. Star Trek materializer thingabobs where you order a classic drink on the rocks, have it corporealize in your hand and then sip elegantly on it while talking with the chaps about holodeck shenanigans. Grimdark industrial dystopian lunch packages where you press a button or add water, whereupon the soylent green plops, pop-up book style, into a full meal. Nah, let's go with sinking three years into mocap and scripting to produce a stilted mannequin that still stares straight ahead with his dead, uncanny valley gaze. Also let's have it annoyingly repeat the same pre-canned barks while you struggle with the interface. The problem is organically replicating human behavior and adaptability in even menial tasks is a super-complicated project in its own right. That's the entire endeavor of cutting edge tech firms working on robotic surgeries, prosthetic limbs, automated bomb/mine disposal, and mechanical caretakers for many countries' increasingly aging populations. You're telling me that your two-bit gaming company, that hasn't yet released a product, is going to accomplish it for background NPCs? It takes a certain combination of ego and small-mindedness from the top to push a project that is conceptually simple, but actually really freaking hard if you stop to think about the details, and then repeatedly tout the futile endeavor in update and patch notes. Anyways, I'm still holding out hope for a S42 release/beta. Mostly because I wanted to see the full extent and folly of a Chris Roberts written script, unchecked by such annoying constraints as budgets and deadlines or the fact that modern movies generally don't go past the three hour mark.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2020 22:45
|
|
|
Sanya Juutilainen posted:Doesn't Skyrim already do this? There are shopkeepers with daily routines and proper reactions, there are NPCs shopping. You can even have superb fidelity with mods. What am I missing? Funny story, my SO walked by while I was watching one of the bartender clips, peered over my shoulder, and made the off-hand comment, "That looks like a Skyrim mod." Which is completely understandable, given the NPCs still have the awkward stiff-shouldered posture between changing directions or switching between animations, and one of the random passersby in the background was constantly walking into the bar. For all of Robert's talk about NPC 'actors' being indistinguishable from player-characters, Star Citizen NPCs behave very much like primitive versions of the NPCs from a game released in the early 2010s. Admittedly, Star Citizen itself is a janky old game from the early 2010s - it just never got a proper release. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMTyN_NMnhM is part of a series lampooning Skyrim NPCs, but reminds me a lot of Star Citizen 'AI.'
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2020 21:01
|
|
|
Bumble He posted:besides all the antics/bugs etc. if we assume that all this will be better one day, well then still how would chris & the gang roll out content fast enough? i dont know how this would be possible, since content is always consumed way faster then produced. This is particularly problematic since Chris Roberts claimed around 2015 that SQ42's (then 21) chapters would take about twenty hours to complete - which itself is uncommonly long for an FPS shooter campaign. I can only imagine the time estimate was bulked up by walking simulator elements, overwrought cut scenes and long periods of flight time during the spacesim segments. (Quoted here, which just links to the youtube vid where he actually said it: https://www.pcgamer.com/star-citizen-squadron-42-release-date-trailer/ ) So that's supposedly twenty hours of heavily scripted, quality single-player content on hand-made levels. And that's before the number of planned chapters jumped from 21 to like 28. ofc, any backer worth his salt will tell you that all this has been finished since the early 2010s, that CiG is merely polishing it at this point to meet Chris' stringent standards, and that CiG is merely withholding the trailers due to fear of spoiling the best and most immersive space experience since the Wing commander series. PC gaming has to be saved, after all.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2020 20:32
|
|
|
Nyast posted:Hum, no, I think that was the old vision. The "new" one which Chris detailed was that SQ42 was kind of semi-open-world-ish and that you had plenty of side missions and that the game had thousands of hours of content. Of course, out of the 1000 hours of content, 980 of them are repetitive procedural fetch quests, 19 of them are cinematics and 1 is actual fun gameplay, but don't say that to backers, it would make them stop buying an Idris. Let's be honest, neither version is going to accurately represent the product that hits the market. If it ever does.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2020 22:24
|
|
|
Klyith posted:Rebel Galaxy Outlaw's reception, even with Epic exclusivity, probably indicated that the number of people who actually want a Privateer remake is less of a crowd and more of a small gathering. I liked Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, but I won't deny it's a niche genre. Incidentally, the TwoBestFriendsPlay community ran into the Star Citizen subreddit post "Your suffering is why I play this game." Along with a discussion about sunk cost fallacy and references to Bootcha's video series, there were some choice quotes. quote:So like. quote:At least when you simp an E-girl or Vtuber or whatever, they still make more content to watch or jerk it to regularly. quote:... So what youre saying is we start calling these people "Simp Citizens"? As usual, whenever Star Citizen intersects with a normal gaming community, the reaction is incredulity and ridicule.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 30, 2020 20:00
|
|
|
quote:Though your math is incorrect. After 6 years it's capped at 50. The project isn't even 9 years old. Turns out SC development is measured in reverse dog years. It will reach its 10th year of development in 2081.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2020 07:37
|
|
|
Mirificus posted:Lore Updates Internet historians will cite this as an early example of SC's slow desiccation into a forum-post roleplay community clinging to the skeleton of fan-run PU servers. Some true believers still hold that CIG will rise from the ashes of a disastrous S42 "Ep. 1" release and bankruptcy to reclaim and rebuilt Star Citizen using Unreal 9. Others have embraced the lifestyle of simply typing out their dreams (as they always have) and only occasionally use the live server for space dungeon hookups and RP post screen shots. A few brave souls spend sleepless nights untangling the esoteric mysteries of "Star Engine's" spaghetti logic, believing that somewhere beneath the chaos and inane hacks necessitated by malicious Crytek lawsuit is the hidden key that unlocks the deep patterns of Roberts' coding genius. That slender hope is the trail to their promised land: fully physicalized server meshed fidelitious subsumption.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2020 20:54
|
|
|
SW Squadrons is pretty fun for what it offers. IMO, Star Wars is pure camp, and Squadrons lets you fly around as a space-themed WWII fighter pilot while voiced characters give stern, totally-serious lines about "Death Stars," "Star Destroyers" and "Starhawks." Admittedly, having fond memories of a pixelated Admiral Thrawn in the old Tie Fighter makes me the target market for this game. Diverting power and shield facing is pure nostalgia, as is being able to shoot down concussion missiles and trying to avoid turning battles with A-Wings. Ultimately, Squadrons is a good illustration of focused design. The click-through conversations and hangar segments exist as immersive vehicles of plot, and do what they need to to set up the context for the real game: zipping around space and watching the broken wings of destroyed enemy fighters tumble precariously past your cockpit. It's unabashedly fun Star Wars camp where you get to play a space fighter pilot. For that, you don't need physicalized elevators or 'bartender AI' or simulated gas pipes.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 5, 2020 00:14
|
|
|
Fargin Icehole posted:I can't think of any game with the cryengine that was stable. Please help me on this if there are any Hunt: Showdown does pretty well. On a bounded map measured in single digit km with at most a dozen players per session. It's actually a fun gem, and suitably uses cryengine for a small-scale first-person session-based shooter that is grounded in a detailed, hand-made map. Imagine trying to use cryengine for a persistent-world MMO involving thousands of players, uncountable npc actors, and an environment spanning multiple star systems. That's just crazy talk.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 8, 2020 21:28
|
|
|
Fargin Icehole posted:Thanks, I forgot about that one. I myself haven't played one since crysis 1& 2 and Warface, and I can run them NOW, but back then it was such a demanding engine. I could barely run Far Cry 1 during launch and it's fair to say most people couldn't back in 03'. It's true, ArcheAge did use CryEngine. And it did do well for itself before experiencing population drops for reasons unrelated to its core engine. ( Those reasons largely summed up as design decisions shifting the game away from sandbox gameplay to an eternal grind epitomized by lengthy daily quests and an extreme gear imbalance between players who put in literal months of full-time-job effort and everyone else. ) Even so, there are a few caveats. Archeage did have long loading times and stability issues, with some of its more infamous stability problems cropping up during key moments, such as the initial opening of the northern continent where guilds could claim land. Archeage was also divided into servers rather than having a unified population sharing the same gameworld, and those servers had population caps and queues to get in when they reached max pop. Also, it was also very much not a twitch shooter game, with combat using the standard cooldown abilities you'd see in many isometric MMOs. Auto-targeted attacks were common. From what I hear, the makers are working on Archeage 2, and they are -not- using Cryengine. Instead, they've decided on Unreal 5. https://www.mmorpg.com/news/archeage-2-announced-running-on-unreal-engine-5-2000119374
|
|
#
¿
Oct 9, 2020 02:24
|
|
|
Quavers posted:That hack Braben trying to get in touch with Musk. Chris Roberts has him on speed-dial. Sol is an actual star system in E:D with a bunch of landmarks concerning early space exploration. For example, if you fly out far enough you can breeze by the Voyager 1 probe. There's also some car launched into space as part of a publicity stunt. My guess is that, with the Odyssey expansion, they're planning to add a SpaceX reference or two.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 12, 2020 18:37
|
|
|
Dwesa posted:It seems that a large group of people simply cannot distinguish real successful professionals from narcissistic fraudsters who lack competencies and results, whether it's in the field of game development or other fields. CR tells them what they want to hear, CR wants what they want, therefore he is trustworthy. During a more innocent era of... just a few years ago, I would have had difficulty wrapping my mind around how people would continue to believe in Chris Roberts and the Star Citizen project in 2020, to the point of squandering not-insignificant chunks of disposable income for the sake of keeping "the dream" going. And to the point of demonizing critics and skeptics as anarchy-loving trolls or a cabal of FUDsters comprised of Goons, Derek Smart, and persons even worse. But after seeing the spread of insular belief systems like Flat Earth and QAnon, the whole Star Citizen thing is much more plausible.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 13, 2020 18:51
|
|
|
Mirificus posted:NPCs with advanced AI that follow us visually and can accompany us and have nothing more and nothing less than several alien languages developed in detail. dreams.txt strikes again. I'm sure the same artistic giants that brought us "t-posing uncanny valley atop table" and "the ennui of eternal wall-walking" will soon deliver organic, responsive AI fluent in -nothing less- than several fully-realized fictional languages. Buy an Idris.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 14, 2020 00:19
|
|
|
Star Citizen: A project so revolutionary and avant garde that it questions even the use of binary in machine language. Brave! Little wonder then that Citizens are called to critique concepts taken for granted by more pedestrian consumers. What is a "game?" What is a "release date?" What is a "roadmap?" An amateur or casual observer might readily offer up a specious answer based on such trivialities as 'common usage' or 'plain definition.' What distinguishes a true Citizen is the ability to look past such fictions, and embrace the ambiguity that Robert's project, by its very nature, calls into being.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 17, 2020 21:04
|
|
|
Not sure who does less work at this point. EA recycling FIFA for another year, or CIG placating whales for another year.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 20, 2020 03:23
|
|
|
Zaphod42 posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2FhlSDG2Eg Funnily enough, youtube autoplay queued up for the next video something entitled 'Star Citizen - Another Year of Failure | TE.'
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2020 01:31
|
|
|
Mirificus posted:The experience of buying a new ship at a dealer should be an 'experience' From the perspective of anyone who wants a space game where you fly around in space and do space things, none of this makes sense. But from the perspective of anyone drawn in by Star Citizen's intersecting power fantasies of capitalist consumerism and video game escapism, it's very compelling. The siren song of consumerism, and the entire point of the service industry, is the illusion of self importance associated with spending money. The entire schtick of a sales rep is to make you, the customer, feel like the center of the world - your needs are being catered to and your preferences are being prioritized while an attractive, socially adept smiling face hangs on your every word. And a good sales rep will maintain this illusion until the deal is sealed, your money is taken, and you are shuffled out the door. Similarly, the appeal of many a video game is the illusion of agency. What shapes the world, the endings, and the fate of all the interesting, out-sized people you meet are the choices made by one person - you. It doesn't matter that all your bad-rear end lines are pre-scripted and chosen from a convo wheel, or that the endings were pre-written and are ultimately the same no matter who is playing the game. The illusion, which lasts for however long the content lasts, is that the player is the decisive agent of change. Star citizen is an intersection of these two power fantasies, as evidenced by its capitalist, proto-fascist lore, and with further evidence provided by the focus of its development. What are the most detailed, expansive, and hand-crafted areas on each planet? Malls and transit, places where you can feel like the important consumer shuttling from one purchase to the next. You can also see this in many of the dreams.txt megaposts of backers fantasizing about the influence and respect afforded to them, as concierge-level owners of expensive space mansions with cockpits and engines. Or as all-powerful agents of change, equipped with the very best brand-name arms and armaments, ready to inflict punishments on the irreverent. Backers are so drunk on these illusions that they will propose the most tedious, time-consuming activities that will nonetheless make them feel important, make their money and their purchases feel important. Otherwise, what is the point of Star Citizen?
|
|
#
¿
Oct 26, 2020 21:41
|
|
|
It's hard to overstate how sterile and un-threatening that Vanduul enemy preview is. Clunky, telegraphed attack animations. Needlessly short-range attacks (why is it kicking air vs an enemy with a gun?). Slow movement that is easily outpaced by a player backpedaling. By the impact animations, they seem to be suggesting that it has armor that is at least somewhat resistant to bullets - but that doesn't necessarily create interesting gameplay if the player isn't under threat. If you can safely kite, all that armor only makes for an enemy that is a bullet sponge, or an occasion to use special munitions. By comparison, here is a melee-themed enemy from a game that is actually fun and well-designed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwGegDlrS8o&t=760s ( This is Doom: Eternal, so cartoon-ey gore warning ) This boss has the potential to be much more mobile than the player, with rapid charges and motions. It has a shield that punishes the player for taking pot shots from too long a distance, ensuring the fight always takes place in 'medium range' where the boss' weapon is always a threat. And it has a clear 'sign' to indicate when the player can counter its charge with a well-timed shot. These aren't extremely innovative or cutting edge mechanics. They're founded on decades of industry experience in making FPS games interesting. Of course, the Vanduul preview is just a preview. "Early days" and all that. But given SC's track record of introducing a shiny stub of a "tier 0" feature and then not iterating on it, ever, chances are that combat with this enemy won't get any more interesting than the clip shown. dejapes fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Nov 5, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Nov 5, 2020 22:37
|
|
|
Popete posted:Star Citizen is a true to life simulator. How often do you get into a "dogfight" driving to work or the grocery store? You seem to be in greater danger from the space police killing you during a routine traffic stop than from the fellow Citizens you've armed yourself to the teeth against. Durn vidya game companies, making gaming political.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2020 22:23
|
|
|
In Elite, smuggling is handled by making use of existing systems involving scanning, heat efficiency, and ship loadout. Patrolling NPC ships will regularly check out nearby PC ships on their scanners, but you can fall under their radar by putting your ship in a 'no emissions' mode which shuts down shields and minimizes heat output, at the cost of rapid internal heat build-up and vulnerability to physical impacts. This makes sliding undetected into a highly patrolled station a matter of timing and player piloting skill, especially if you're smuggling criminal passengers who won't be happy if a collision happens. You can also design a better smuggling ship via a heat-efficient ship loadout that still manages solid cargo/passenger capacity. Now, there's a lot to be said about progression and difficulty curves in Elite, and whether smuggling is really worth it when compared to other "safer" activities, but it is a complete subset of gameplay that builds off of existing systems and player knowledge about how those systems interact. In Star Sector, detection is based on both ship attributes and environmental qualities. Ships have a basic detection value and emission value, both of which can change according to modded layout. Fleets are more difficult to detect in belts and nebulae. There's also active modes (dark, cruise) that affect a fleet's detection capabilities. All this leads to a 'stealth' system making use of the same navigation and positioning considerations that govern FTL travel in the rest of the game, and very frequently you have cat and mouse scenarios where you are dodging a bigger fleet and/or trying to sneak past local patrols so you can do business in a port's black market. This is in fact a core part of gameplay where tariffs can make or break the profit margin of a high-risk voyage. In Star Citizen you've got a chess-board gimmick, a hole in the floor and some vents I guess. Have fun with your imagination.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2020 19:51
|
|
|
There's actually an on-going conversation in defense and national security circles, given the data from the recent conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh, Libya, and elsewhere, about whether the rise of UAVs is posing an existential threat to the presence of armored tanks on a modern battlefield. Tanks probably aren't going away anytime soon, at least not until their role can be fully supplanted. As an analogy, naval mining provided a cheap way to deter/destroy battleships at the turn of the 20th century, but it wasn't until aircraft carriers proved that they could entirely replace the roles battleships used to provide that the BBs ended up obsolete. But there's likely going to be some doctrinal and operational shifts to protect tanks, which have proven quite vulnerable to drones due to the combination of weak top / rear armor and limited situational awareness on the part of tank crews. Anyways, buy a space tank. It will be a good conversational starter in the cargo bay of your Idris.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 27, 2020 21:30
|
|
|
Good thing Chris Roberts saved PC gaming else Cyberpunk2077 wouldn't even exist, amarite? Anyways, with in-game advertisements like this, I can see how a few SC fans might be salty. 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2020 21:49
|
|
|
Mirificus posted:
Guy spends several paragraphs complaining about scripted quests and gameplay 'on rails' and then, to demonstrate the superiority of the sandbox, offers a situation akin to the most tedious of fetch quests. In the glorious universe-simulation sandbox, you get to be the NPC hiding objects and offering petty rewards for their laborious retrieval!
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2021 23:18
|
|
|
Balancing small cargo ships versus large ones is do-able so long as you put in a little bit of effort. For argument's sake, we'll simplify cargo-carrying vessels into a single axis of Big versus Small. The variety of designs available fall on some part of the axis, depending on intended niche and role. Big: + Economics of Scale, including fuel efficiency per cargo unit and time efficiency in terms of cargo hauled per run. - High Friction Costs. Larger landing pads, bigger fuel and maintenance costs per stop. This weeds out a lot of small-scale or 'agile' contract options. Small: + Low Friction Costs. Land anywhere, small fuel and maintenance costs. Easy to make side-trips, detours, or run holding patterns. - Outclassed when it comes to economics of scale. So, providing viable gameplay for all points of this axis comes down to presenting contracts and opportunities that cater to both extremes. If your game aims to simulate (or provide the illusion of simulating) a complex economy, this actually comes naturally. You can even create both safe and dangerous contracts of both types, so that progression isn't merely from Small to Big, but from starting Small to better Small, or starting Big to better Big. Examples: (Beginner) Safe Runs: Big: Industrial scale hauling in civilized space. Moving agricultural goods, industrial products, raw materials, etc. Common products with modest margins that become profitable when you move them en masse. Small: Agile contracts in civilized space. Examples: meeting the inquest requests of a small but lucrative operation (such as an orbital laboratory) that has varied and unpredictable, but small-scale material needs. Supplying operations in civilized space that lack larger landing pads (construction and repair platforms, special events). Shuttling wealthy and VIP passengers that require rapid or spontaneous travel outside of scheduled mass transit. More Advanced Runs: Big: Supplying military bases or large-scale operations on frontier territories. Economics of scale is still important to get appreciable margins out of things like rations, fuel and ammo, but there is added difficulty in making use of fewer supply stops and/or potentially defending your big cargo hauler against raiding hostiles. Small: Trading with small but lucrative frontier outposts that produce rare resources but lack the landing pads or large-scale infrastructure to accommodate the big cargo ships. Trading in dangerous areas where your small cargo craft can evade or stealth past hazards. Smuggling. Point is, a clever game designer can make a (space) sim that accommodates both Big and Small and everything in between, while providing for branching or parallel progression so that smaller ship classes are not merely stepping stones for bigger and fancier ships. Will Star Citizen do any of this? If you think so, let me tell you about this limited opportunity known as the Idris...
|
|
#
¿
Feb 28, 2021 20:37
|
|
|
I played EVE for a while, never going back. As a noob, I did the "obvious" thing and joined a hi-sec mining corp. I went to one op, saw a bunch of guys talking big game about their future financial plans while watching lasers buzz for hours on end, and left. Then I piddled around in hi-sec mission-running, making diddly squat. Joined RvB and it was fun, but also felt very staged. It was also a net sink on my finances and was unsustainable for my noob self. Then I joined a small-team wormhole corp and made the big bucks, but spent hours on the edge of paranoia spamming the d-scan. I left before I got ptsd. So I decided my small ship (frigate / destroyer / cruiser) skills were decent enough and my finances (now in the billions of spare isk) bulked up enough to hop into faction war. I actually had the most fun here with the spontaneous small-fleet, small-gang and solo pvp, matched to pretty decent ways of making isk while flying around in combat ships. Learned the ins and outs of transversal, tackling, mid-warp safe spots, and jump gate shenanigans. Also participated in a handful of capital ship engagements since the big corps would have contacts in FW, and basically use us as 'tackle' if one of their rivals was doing something in low sec. Anyhow, burnt out in the end as well. Even after finding the activity most suitable to my temperament, EVE was still hours of tedium for every minute of sheer fun / terror. Conceptually, the game is brilliant, but in practice it's a second job in search of those flickering moments where everything - briefly - comes together.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2021 18:49
|
|
|
A fun and involved space combat system would involve such possibilities as skill-based maneuvers, counters, and 'outplaying' an opposing pilot. That would contradict SC's "buy your way into feeling important" game design philosophy.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2021 20:33
|
|
|
I've been puttering around on ED: Odyssey now that it's on full release. Now ED, too, has dead-eyed station NPCs and awkwardly-animated bartenders. However, I have yet to die on an elevator or a ramp, so it seems it has a ways to go before it catches up with Star Citizen.
|
|
#
¿
May 20, 2021 01:52
|
|
|
quote:NICE! It's funny that the mechanical function of "pledge" - a digital perk assigned to an account - has eclipsed the common language use of the term. I wonder if Citizens are aware that "pledge" now just means a finished digital product, paid for and obtained, rather than money put down for kickstarter daydreams becoming a reality. "Alpha" is just a tag; the current state of the public server is Star Citizen. All that remains is selling more "pledges", tinkering around the edges, and occasionally revealing a new in-game
|
|
#
¿
May 20, 2021 02:09
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 10:17 |
|
|
For the price of CIG's fake X-wing, you could probably buy every single official Star Wars game where you fly an actual X-wing.
|
|
#
¿
May 20, 2021 22:54
|
|