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Star Citizen has a disastrously laggy stream with horrendous vibes, which isn't a great look when you're past $1 billion in funding (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 3 weeks ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] 14 points 3 weeks ago (12 children)

For anyone who wants to play an actually developed space game that has many (not all) of the features of SC, I recommend checking out Elite:Dangerous. It was a fully released game 10 years ago and is still receiving content updates regularly.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

    I'm gonna say elite is generally a hard sell because of the steep learning curve. I love it and have over 1,300 hours, but only after a friend brought me back because I was so lost my first time playing it. I similarly quit trying the on-foot stuff on 3 separate occasions because it's so difficult to figure it out, and failing a mission often results in a fine or bounty you have to then find an interstellar factor to pay off.

    Then there's the engineer grind. I won't speak on that here.

    It's frustrating because the game is incredibly deep with faction mechanics, system states, market demands, etc. but all of that is basically inaccessible in any reasonable manner without 3rd party tools. Outside that your options are exploration, shipping, combat, mining, and that's about it.

    That said, if you want a somewhat realistic space sim, it's probably the best you can find. Just make sure you have a guide and inara.cz bookmarked.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    See I don't really think Elite scratches my space pilot itch very well, and so I don't really recommend it to people and I don't think it's because it's too complex or challenging - in fact the exact opposite. I found elite dangerous extremely shallow, missing nearly any engaging game loop that I could sink my teeth into. Granted this was 3 years ago but I've watched the content updates and they haven't seemed very large.

    I like the flying but the combat seems rather dull with very little progression or optimization capable. Like comparing ED to something like an ARPG or a Dark Souls, there just isn't good itemization or "character" building last I played.

    I liked the trading but there wasn't a ton going on around the logistics sim to make it really exciting, like flying place to place wasn't hard and interdictions were rarely challenging and the ship ladder felt kinda small. Mining also felt like the only other thing to do and again, not even a heavily compelling minigame.

    They introduced planet side first person shooting stuff and that looked appealing as a new mechanic but it never grew into something that got me to return.

    I guess I'm saying to anyone considering it but worried about complexity, give it a go it's still a fun sim for most people for at least a couple dozen hours. Some people will find hundreds of hours of fun. I personally, and I think a lot of people, will find it lacking though from a space game perspective and there is still a massive hole in the market for a real AAA space sim game to come fill.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago

    To your second point, meaningful progression is locked behind engineering, and a little behind powerplay. Yeah you can get a ship and A rank every module but it won't hold a candle to a fully engineered build.

    But yeah, there are some cool things you can do in the game but the core loop is shallow and grindy as hell. I spent most of my time unlocking engineers, making money, and farming materials to the point where I can get just about anything I want. I feel like cartman in the WoW episode saying "now we can finally play the game" after 1000 hours. Though I did finally join a squadron and that gave me a bunch of stuff to help with. One guy has a carrier and we farmed an assload of minerals and then picked up and turned in a whole bunch of 25m-50m credit mining missions all at once so that was kinda cool.

    Oh they also added operations, which are basically multiplayer missions you can join a lobby for, and you don't actually have to physically be anywhere specific. It's a huge quality of life upgrade because previously you'd have to actually be in the same system or use telepresence which doesn't let the telepresence crewmember to use their own ship.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    How is it as simply a space exploration game? Can you just go out and explore our stars, and is there real-time FTL for long distances?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago

    I think it's gorgeous for space exploration. It'll get repetitive after awhile, space isn't exactly teeming with well placed set pieces, but I remember nothing more strongly from the game than setting up gorgeous scenic views with various stars and astroid fields and aligned planets. So ya, space exploration it does well. It also models the stars we know about accurately if I'm remember correctly, like you can go find earth and sol which is fun.

    FTL travel is some form of real-time travel, yes. You can only jump so far and only so fast based on your ship, so traveling across the universe feels like a real trek. If all you wanted to do was get from place A to really far away place B, you could do that and have a good time I think - depending on how wonderous you find the natural world.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago*

    This has been massively improved over the years with the introduction of Exobiology. Just about any new player can get into a ship worth a few mil and be collecting hundreds of millions of credits within a few hours without the need to consult a spreadsheet.

    You certainly can min-max far beyond that point as you mentioned with external tools, but the feeling of ships or mission types being inaccessible is pretty much gone.

    As an aside, I’m currently working on a guide to solve many of the issues you’re describing. Right now, it’s for my personal squadron, but I plan to expand this to a public sister site eventually.

    https://oa.omnigon.network/

    I’m also working on a video series to introduce the game. This is part 1 of 3: https://youtu.be/c9xS9tcn4sk

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    I have 1000s of hours in Elite: Dangerous since 2016 and I would still play it if I didn't have other real-life commitments. I've spent probably half that time in VR which was awesome. I dropped off when they added FPS gameplay that didn't have great VR support, but I can't think of another space game that I've played that gave me the same feeling that Elite did.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

    i droped out of elite dangerous when they made it so you could transition offline. so like, if you are transporting cargo, you would go offline and only be interdicted by the hapless bots. they would save up money to buy the super ships to pirate or to bounty hunt or to guard. but what is there to pirate? the haulers are offline. what pirates are there to hunt? the haulers are off line, what convoys are their to guard? the haulers are off line.

    pvp was relegated to prebuilt nascar like standardization, and prevented limpets from forcing open cargo holds. it got super boring super quick

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