Support NeoGAF

[nemiroff]

Everything I see of Star Citizen no matter how impressive, leaves me not even feeling cold but feeling nothing.

It's so indistinct and bland. It seems devoid of any personality.

I don't really take issue with opinions like these. I often feel similarly about titles like Dwarf Fortress, which are completely out of my comfort zone. Moreover, SC isn't your typical single-player experience; it's an alpha with complex mechanics that require countless hours to fully grasp and appreciate. It's currently quite rough around the edges, so no wonder why it seems dumb on the outside, especially for front loaded top of the pops console gamers. This is a PC game through and through.

I'm an old-school gamer who has played virtually every space game out there, I've spent over 200 hours in No Man's Sky and over 350 hours in Elite Dangerous (Frontier Elite II was my favorite Amiga 500 game back in the days), yet they still fall short of SC's potential, almost gimmicky by comparison. Billions of planets..? Meh, games did that decades ago, it kinda feels like the same planet reskinned repeatedly. SC isn't entirely soulless either. This is a multiplayer game, and the soul comes from playing with others. When it comes to atmosphere though, the potential is infinite. Even a simple blizzard in SC offers a level of atmosphere that surpasses anything available in many other similar games. SC has a lot of depth in its core mechanics. Everything has a purpose, and this becomes evident once you understand the systems (which is not easy, especially when bugs/glitches is kinda in your face). Anyway, the way infamous sandbox players like Summit are able to enjoy it even in its current state, speaks volumes about its potential.

3.23 is a great step in the right direction for enthusiasts and with update 4.0 (which by content and features will be a much bigger leap than 3.22 to 3.23) right around the corner, we're likely to see the final pieces fall into place for a dynamic, fully-fledged MMO sandbox experience that could finally move SC out of alpha and gain even more players outside the metal core.

SC is likely to remain an MMO-focused game, but there's still plenty of accessibility for solo play. And for those more interested in a more narrative-driven experience, Squadron 42 offers a cinematic single-player adventure.

 

[Buggy Loop]

3.23 is a great step in the right direction for enthusiasts and with update 4.0 (which by content and features will be a much bigger leap than 3.22 to 3.23) right around the corner, we're likely to see the final pieces fall into place for a dynamic, fully-fledged MMO sandbox experience that could finally move SC out of alpha and gain even more players outside the metal core.

Everything is dependent on server meshing, all of it.

It's why SC PU was frozen in time. No point in trying to shoehorn the features that would immediately break without server meshing, it would only have a bunch of peoples yell at the team that did the feature but would be thought of as broken since the other's team server implementation is not ready. Without offloading the servers from managing all the sim aspects, you can't have Virtual AI (VNPC), quanta for the simulation of economy, capital ships with crews of >20 peoples, theater of war (again big crews with capital ships) , base building with many players and persistence of it all (when there's no more wipes)... Very hard concept for peoples to grasp. Devs weren't twindling their thumbs looking at the sky for 7 studios globally and thousands of peoples doing nothing. The tech behind it is advancing, but the key-piece that allows those modules working was delayed.