The Limit Theory Thread
- Thread starter Philip Coutts
- Start date
No I am not kidding there is a lot of gameplay in LT.
You can manage fleets and engage in warfare with them.
This is not an ED style thing, but do not underestimate the gameplay currently in LT.
The UI in LT has more features.
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From what I can see, LT is not "failing" - it's doing really well. I'm not nuts about the rails thing either, but that's a stylistic decision and if it helps Josh sort out the issue of space being, well, big - then so be it. I'll get used to them. Same with the flight model.
The UI looks lovely - far better than the console-driven mess that is E: D.
The AI looks far in advance of what E: D is currently offering.
There is a proper supply & demand economy, unlike the pseudo random number generator that E: D uses. You can actually see NPCs flying around affecting it - unlike E: D where the NPCs have little or no bearing on the hidden economy.
You can build stations, manage fleets, own planets, and so on in LT. Not so in E: D. If you want to, you can build an empire.
You can play offline without any connection to any "evolving"
universe - and I don't care what DB might or might not say at this point about making the E: D servers public should FD go to the wall or the game cease to be profitable. Without a written escrow agreement in place, his "promises" are worth as much in reality as the promise to deliver an offline mode to begin with (i.e. bog all).
Even mining looks more fun & realistic than the rubbish implementation of E: D.
By the way, I pledged 20 times more for E: D than LT, and have been closely involved in E: D from day 1. I'm not biased in any way here - just calling it like it is.
E: D is currently a mess, and as a game is nowhere near what was promised in every conceivable way bar the flight model & the galaxy. It is actually the one that looks more like a tech demo at present.
LT looks to be far in advance of what was promised already. And LT can be modded to the nth degree - whereas in E: D we have to hack around in XML files (which get overwritten after ever update) just to change the colour scheme to something usable in the Oculus Rift.
Bring on the beta.
The UI looks lovely - far better than the console-driven mess that is E: D.
The AI looks far in advance of what E: D is currently offering.
There is a proper supply & demand economy, unlike the pseudo random number generator that E: D uses. You can actually see NPCs flying around affecting it - unlike E: D where the NPCs have little or no bearing on the hidden economy.
You can build stations, manage fleets, own planets, and so on in LT. Not so in E: D. If you want to, you can build an empire.
You can play offline without any connection to any "evolving"
universe - and I don't care what DB might or might not say at this point about making the E: D servers public should FD go to the wall or the game cease to be profitable. Without a written escrow agreement in place, his "promises" are worth as much in reality as the promise to deliver an offline mode to begin with (i.e. bog all). Even mining looks more fun & realistic than the rubbish implementation of E: D.
By the way, I pledged 20 times more for E: D than LT, and have been closely involved in E: D from day 1. I'm not biased in any way here - just calling it like it is.
E: D is currently a mess, and as a game is nowhere near what was promised in every conceivable way bar the flight model & the galaxy. It is actually the one that looks more like a tech demo at present.
LT looks to be far in advance of what was promised already. And LT can be modded to the nth degree - whereas in E: D we have to hack around in XML files (which get overwritten after ever update) just to change the colour scheme to something usable in the Oculus Rift.
Bring on the beta.
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From what I can see, LT is not "failing" - it's doing really well. I'm not nuts about the rails thing either, but that's a stylistic decision and if it helps Josh sort out the issue of space being, well, big - then so be it. I'll get used to them. Same with the flight model.
The UI looks lovely - far better than the console-driven mess that is E: D.
The AI looks far in advance of what E: D is currently offering.
There is a proper supply & demand economy, unlike the pseudo random number generator that E: D uses. You can actually see NPCs flying around affecting it - unlike E: D where the NPCs have little or no bearing on the hidden economy.
You can build stations, manage fleets, own planets, and so on in LT. Not so in E: D. If you want to, you can build an empire.
You can play offline without any connection to any "evolving"
Even mining looks more fun & realistic than the rubbish implementation of E: D.
By the way, I pledged 20 times more for E: D than LT, and have been closely involved in E: D from day 1. I'm not biased in any way here - just calling it like it is.
E: D is currently a mess, and as a game is nowhere near what was promised in every conceivable way bar the flight model & the galaxy. It is actually the one that looks more like a tech demo at present.
LT looks to be far in advance of what was promised already. And LT can be modded to the nth degree - whereas in E: D we have to hack around in XML files (which get overwritten after ever update) just to change the colour scheme to something usable in the Oculus Rift.
Bring on the beta.
I agree that mining isn't very fun in ED at the moment.
And of course it's much more difficult to have 50+ NPC's flying around in a MMO than in a single player game like LT.
But most of things you have listed in your long comment are "promises" and nothing you can play right now. Promises are irrelevant when comparing games. The same is valid for SC. A lot of promises coming from CIG, but what is actually there to play (AC) is far away of being fun.
Why? Shouldn't it be easier to have lots of dynamic NPC's when you have servers to run them on instead of just a single pc?
Well, let's see:
UI: check
AI: check
Supply & Demand economy: check
build stations: not yet
manage fleets: check (to be expanded upon)
planet owning: not yet (slated for post-release update)
offline play: check
mining: check (to be expanded upon, but already more involved than E: D, since you can actually do prospecting
)Agreed, it's far from finished, but there's a lot more in there then people think.
Why? Shouldn't it be easier to have lots of dynamic NPC's when you have servers to run them on instead of just a single pc?
Well, let's see:
UI: check
AI: check
Supply & Demand economy: check
build stations: not yet
manage fleets: check (to be expanded upon)
planet owning: not yet (slated for post-release update)
offline play: check
mining: check (to be expanded upon, but already more involved than E: D, since you can actually do prospecting
Agreed, it's far from finished, but there's a lot more in there then people think.
What does "check" mean in the context that there doesn't exist any playable Alpha which could proof those promises to be right or wrong?
Means nothing.
You are simply deducing from what Josh is saying in his videos about what already exists. This doesn't mean that the actions of the AI are well balanced nor does it mean you can actually compare the quality of the AI to that of ED.
I only believe in what i have tested myself. So far LT (not even in Alpha) can definitely not be compared to a released game like ED. Period.
Ian Phillips
Volunteer Moderator
I have been following Josh's Dev logs for a year now and am mightily impressed and intend to buy the game once it is released.
The comparisons to Elite Dangerous and/or Star Citizen are somewhat overstated I think - it's all in what you wish for in a game.
Limit theory Is going to have you managing space coorporations or colonies or empires, with fleets, mining and crafting. You will be able to travel in your unique galaxy via wormholes and it is first and foremost a single player offline game.
These feature make it a different game, luckily. It would be boring to have 3 or 4 games exactly the same!
It looks good and should be a lot of fun. I really do not see any problems in it being finished and released, maybe in about 6 months time? In the meantime it is fun reading the dev logs each week.
The comparisons to Elite Dangerous and/or Star Citizen are somewhat overstated I think - it's all in what you wish for in a game.
Limit theory Is going to have you managing space coorporations or colonies or empires, with fleets, mining and crafting. You will be able to travel in your unique galaxy via wormholes and it is first and foremost a single player offline game.
These feature make it a different game, luckily. It would be boring to have 3 or 4 games exactly the same!
It looks good and should be a lot of fun. I really do not see any problems in it being finished and released, maybe in about 6 months time? In the meantime it is fun reading the dev logs each week.
What you see in videos is easy to set up or very open for interpretation.
What happen with other NPC's not visible on the screens? Are they also calculated - of course not, simply impossible.
And what about balacing issues? It's easy to produce some AI space ships that seem to fly around and do their job but it's something much more difficult to balance the whole thing during a whole game. That's when the difficulties come in: Longterm gameplay.
I have seen all of Josh's videos, very impressive graphically but don't tell me that the actual gameplay is anything close to be complete and balanced.
There is still much more work to do then most here think.
As i already said months ago, i predict a released game of LT not before 2016. I am not a 'naysayer', i am simply a realist.
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What. :/
*Rides off into the sunset*
When I saw it was heading that way was when I lost interest.
Well, that's he beauty of it, you don't have to do that at all if you don't want to, you can just stick to your one ship and do stuff like you do in an Elite game.
Well, that's he beauty of it, you don't have to do that at all if you don't want to, you can just stick to your one ship and do stuff like you do in an Elite game.
So much to the theory. In reality people always tend to play a game the way it is most profitable. That's why DB deliberately decided not to introduce managing spread sheets as a way to make money (like in EVE online or in the X series).
I understand why Josh tries to do the ultimate space game which can do everything, but with this high ambitions the risk to fail is even higher. And Josh definitely does not merit to fail. That's why i would suggest to take more FD's approach of development:
- reducing the list of features for alphas, betas, gammas and even the initial release
- quickly and permanently bringing out playable versions to allow for quick feedback from backers
So even though Josh is taking CIG's style of development (showing and promising a lot of unfinished features at once), at least he isn't taking any money from backers anymore. But i really would encourage him to bring playable Alphas out, even if they would be disappointing to play for backers atm.
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Yep first person EVE looking towards that way but some people like this style of gaming.
I'm sure he will get it all working on his rig but to make it work for all those unique bits of hardware & O/S systems is a whole new headache. Why you think it's taken ED so long to put this game together it would have been easier for them to build it for console but David Braben has taken the challenge to make it work on the thousands of different unique pc setups out there.
Someone quoted can't remember who but it goes like this "Designing & making a game is easy but to make it work on someone's home PC is the hardest challenge"
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Sorry, but this is absolute rubbish. In no way can Josh's development style be compared to CIG's. It's blind ignorance to even compare the two.
CIG spend a lot of time, effort and backer's money producing flashy "talk shows" and pre-rendered videos apparently telling us how "amazing" everything is going to be in SC. They show very little, and hide behind a vast engine of PR and flash. Some folks are happy with that - that's fine - but it really tells me nothing.
Josh, on the other hand, actually shows the features in action & is completely up-front about where development is (sometimes to his own detriment), where he's going with it, and some of the mistakes he's made along the way.
SC is a paper lie. LT is warts and all.
You are correct though that Josh needs to get a build out to the backers at some point soon - and I'm sure he'll get the beta out in Q1 2015.
Actually you got some of your information wrong. Subscribers fund the fan shows, and those "pre-rendered videos" are for the most part rendered in-engine and not actually done by the whole team, only a few guys working with CIG assets. The rest are working on what they are assigned to (being SQ42, AC or the back bone of the game). It would be cool to know what they are working on at every step of the way ofc, but I bet that would be a bit hard to do with the over 200ish team they have now.
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Philip Coutts
Volunteer Moderator
I love the work Josh is doing. Is LT going to be the perfect space sim? Of course not. But what he is showing is huge amounts of promise. The UI is beautiful, really nicely done far better than ED's in fact. As for AI well time will tell because no-one has played it yet! It's a completely different beast to ED and comparisons really can't be drawn at all in my view. I like that LT allows you the freedom to go down a one ship route or build a whole empire. I'm really looking forward to LT as something different and for me a great starting point for a very promising young programmer.
I've been impressed with the 4 man team that came out with NMS for the same kind of reasons. Although Sean Murray has had prior success with Burnout etc, i do have a soft spot of appreciation for Josh's one man band and just what he's been able to make, especially compared to other big AAA products. He may well become a developer to watch after LT (in truth he already IS one to watch!).
I'm really looking forward to LT. Is there any info on when we will be able to get access to the game?
OK, I admit I'm not really fully up on what is going on in SC. I'm a backer, but... nothing I've seen has excited me or made me want to play it. The Fox News style whooping and a'hollering screencasts make me wince. I just see a project that has far too much money, and isn't actually delivering anything besides marketing. Case in point: they might be using the engine to pre-render the videos, but they are still scripted, and don't tell me anything about how the game will actually play. It's like the E: D "cinematic" trailer. All the time.
Oh, and ships I can "buy"... for hundreds of pounds... which don't even "exist" yet...
*cough*
Anyway, Limit Theory. Brilliant... wonderful... can't wait... etc.