I’m hoping that between VR (it really changes how you experience a game) and the purported anti-grind and QOL changes, it’ll help scratch that survival/exploration itch. Minecraft has become old hat, even with VR, and I’m still hoping for better VR integration in Subnautica for one last play through. ED is now great for space exploration, but leaves something to be desired when it comes to planetary exploration, at least outside the Bubble. I still land on at least one planet per session, because the gravity can really affect taking surface samples, but I’d still like more survival gameplay with exploration, since I believe they should go hand in hand.
Why can we only Land on Barren Planets after almost 5 years?
- Thread starter Cosmo
- Start date
I’m hoping that between VR (it really changes how you experience a game) and the purported anti-grind and QOL changes, it’ll help scratch that survival/exploration itch. Minecraft has become old hat, even with VR, and I’m still hoping for better VR integration in Subnautica for one last play through. ED is now great for space exploration, but leaves something to be desired when it comes to planetary exploration, at least outside the Bubble. I still land on at least one planet per session, because the gravity can really affect taking surface samples, but I’d still like more survival gameplay with exploration, since I believe they should go hand in hand.
You could always use a ship with a small jump range and use injections to go out the rim. If you want to get home, you're going have to blast those rocks! Oh, and definitely explore shieldless
Your lack of scientific understanding is disturbing.
Now if you want to complain, complain about the fact that FA-on pretends there is drag in space (engines are always firing to maintain velocity). I wish FA was true FA, using thrusters and engines realistically like they are modeled with FA-off.
Lol, of course it does. The way you play a game is a direct result of what and how something is build.
Example: mining an asteroid in NMS boils down to shooting stuff and the refined product is sucked right into your ship. No faf with scanners and searching and hotspots and a depletion mechanism and using different l4z0rsz and refineries and seismic charges and explosion noises and fissures and limpets and controllers and more limpets and more controllers and all that. Now if you think both mechanisms took the same amount of development effort, then you have no idea what you are talking about.
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A myth, like Santa Claus, or an honest politician.
I didn’t expect scientific accuracy, but until the release fiasco, I had been following it closely. The overall impression I’d gotten was that it had been trying for a 1950’s sci-fi vibe. Which is why when I finally played it following the release of Next, I was so disappointed. I’d been prepared for 1950s zeerust. I hadn’t expected the sheer degree of special effects failure I’ve saw while playing that game.
It’s mine as well. Which is why I find the premise of the OP to be... disingenuous at best. It’s like comparing B-reel special effects from the 1950s to the special effects of the Martian or Gravity.I think its in my nature to give credit where its due, and like using good performance as a benchmark when i see it. I see its a mistake to apply it on others who are not up to the task though
Two of my desktops in circulation are screen shots taken from ED. The first was from early in the Premium Beta. It was after the Supercruise nerf, and I was still trying to find some way of making gravity braking work. I had misjudged my approach from the dark side of an inhabited Eartlikevwirkd, and slammed into the exclusion zone. As I waited for my FSD to cool down, I took a look around (this is pre-VR for me) and spotted a razor thin band of red along the horizon. I realized it was either just before sunrise, or just after sunset, so I decided to just fly towards the horizon and hope for the best.
It was before sunrise. What followed was the closest thing to watching the sun rise from the ISS I’d seen in a video game, although heavily modded KSP came very close. I took a 16K screen shot of my ship (then a Cobra III) silhouetted by the city lights of the planet below, an outline of a harbor visible above mybship, and the limbs of the newly risen sun combined with the ocean above looking like a tiara. I’d post the actual screen shot, but it’ll have to wait until I get home, and not on my phone.
The second is from the 3.3 Beta. I’d spotted an eclipse candidate on the FSS, a d it was a race against time to get to a probe the moon and reach a geological site before the eclipse started. Sitting on the surface of that moon beside my SRV in VR, watching the planet slowly eclipse its star, was quite an experience.
Trying to recreate the former in NMS, and noticing an opportunity for the latter, is what made me notice the “special effects failures” of the game. It’s hard to feel some the same kind of awe when you realize that the the sun of a NMS system is attached to a sphere, that seems to rotates around you.
I have high hopes as well. But I’m willing to wait a few days for them to get the major bugs under control.
I wish it took Frontier only a couple of days to get major bugs under control. I suppose "days" sounds a lot like "decades" to FDev
Lol, of course it does. The way you play a game is a direct result of what and how something is build.
Example: mining an asteroid in NMS boils down to shooting stuff and the refined product is sucked right into your ship. No faf with scanners and searching and hotspots and a depletion mechanism and using different l4z0rsz and refineries and seismic charges and explosion noises and fissures and limpets and controllers and more limpets and more controllers and all that. Now if you think both mechanisms took the same amount of development effort, then you have no idea what you are talking about.
Same can be said of using an SRV in NMS, in ED it comes down to shooting rocks in an empty environment.
Most of ED's features are only partially developed and lead to only one thing, more credits and just so much to spend those credits on.
NMS's features are much more complete and you have much more things to work on/for.
ED and NMS are different games and yes ED looks much more realistic, it looks awesome actually, but graphics and good looks only go so far, gameplay and content are much more importand imho.
If you have no problem with how NMS looks then it is far more complete then ED ever was imho.
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Never too old to smoke a bowl
Yeah but the space combat suuuuuuuuuuuuucks.
"Units received"
(aka +1)
This is definitely one of my biggest pet peeves.
What makes a sim a sim isn't that a game attempts to model itself after real life. It's that a game chooses modeling over faking it.
If a game, for example, chose to model a solar system not on real life, but on concentric crystal spheres centered around a single world, and every other world in the system was attached to a sphere which rotated around the central world. And lets say that the stars were actually small portals on the outermost shell that could be used to as a way to travel between self contained solar systems. And lets say that magic-powered flying wooden ships could be used to fly between worlds, such a game would be considered a sim (of fantasy "space travel") if the developers chose to rely heavily on modeling the behavior of objects in the game, as opposed to faking it by declaring it works via developer fiat.
The advantage of modeling game mechanics vs faking it is that modeling allows for emergent behavior in the game. A classic example of this in Elite: Dangerous is flyving: when on a low-G world in your SRV, turning drive assist off, and using the SRV's thrusters and the terrain to actually fly your SRV around for extended periods of time. Particularly skilled SRV drivers have actually managed to get SRVs from the ground into genuine orbits, and at least one has managed to flyve their SRV from the surface to a low orbiting coriolis station.
The disadvantage of modeling game mechanics vs faking it is the extra work involved. The more complex a model is, the more work is required to develop, test, and of course fix the inevitable bugs that crop up whenever a large player base gets their hands on the game, and start doing things no sane person would even think about, let alone do.
And in order:
- We can hear the engines of our ships "in space" because we're sitting in a sealed metal container filled with air, not a vacuum. Should we lose that air for some reason or another, our ships engines immediately become very muffled, since the sound of the engines can only travel via the metal framework of our ships. Anything outside our ships are simulated via our ships' computers for better situational awareness, a concept that has existed in science fiction since at least the 1950s.
- Hyperdrives don't exist in real life, true. But in Elite Universe, they use Witchspace to get around that pesky "speed of light" problem. One of the main draws of FTL in this game is that Supercruise is modeled, as opposed to fake. It is so well modeled, in fact, that players are not only inspired to create optimal strategies to get to locations much more quickly, but also write well researched "scientific papers" about it in the process. What tickles me that their Witchspace model is not only internally consistent between Supercruise and Hyperjumps, but also neatly explains an existing "gameplay compromise," and is also consistent with how Witchspace operated in Frontier: Elite 2 and Frontier: First Encounters, the previous two games of the franchise which are loosely canon as part of the backstory of this game.
- Feel free to inform these asteroid mining startups that have appeared over the last five years that they're wasting their time on something that's impossible.
The main problem IMO was the change in project leadership sometime between when Elite: Dangerous launched, and the launch of Horizons. It was around that time when Frontier seemed to stop caring about the verisimilitude of their game, and started adding "cool" things without a care for either existing world building, game mechanics, or internal consistency.
Here's hoping the latest change in project leadership pushes the pendulum back in the direction towards verisimilitude.
Planet Elite Jurassic: Dangerous Rollecoaster World
Kestrel Airfighter over a Desert World
View attachment 140274
The SR-71 and it's variants weren't fighters...
If we are getting into that mood, we might as well say those are also an illusion on RL.
I'm now at home, so here's the two screen shots I mentioned previously:
Look at how the light changes from red farthest from the rising star to blue as it get closer.
Actually it does have a lot to do with how it's being developed. It's not just the graphic style but also how planets, stars, flora and fauna are implemented. The game doesn't just look like a cartoon, it is a cartoon.