Strange Design Choices

[AuGuR]

We understood your point... and in many ways I wish I could see the game the same way you do. The thing is, like I said, the designers can't decide what elements to simulate, and which elements to make fun. There's a balance between fun and a grind... Flying 50 minutes straight to drop off some resources to a station. Not fun. Watching a counter tick down as you approach a station is ok the first hundred times, but the next several thousand? Nope, not fun! The number of times I've flown past a station disengage point is insane. I keep trying to find ways to get there as fast as possible... but sometimes it's impossible to avoid. Remember, the game is designed to be playable with an Oculus Rift. How likely is it that people will want to sit there staring at a Windows 95 screensaver for 50 minutes? Very unlikely. However, they can't take the headset off, otherwise they'll miss their mark or even get interdicted and blown up. Come on! Stop defending the design decisions! The blast shield is completely unnecessary. It's not fun, and as far as it seems the majority apparently feel, it detracts from the game. But sure, like someone else said, let's put on some blinkers, pretend that it's super important, and grin inanely every time the animation starts. Pssst, in real life, it's unlikely the blast shield would be used like that for a VTOL... nor would it wait until you are looking at it before it folds away. Very strange seeing as this is a simulation... right?

In real life, a route driver delivering twinkies doesn't get to skip the driving part, even after hundreds of deliveries. While to an extent, yes it does lose the fun factor doing that in a game, it's still simulating that aspect of life. The thing is, you have a choice to continue trading to those stations far off the primary star, and even the use of the Oculus. No one is forcing you to do either. That twinkie driver, I would assume, would ask for another route in lieu of going GTA and running over people just to spice the trip up. Since you have timed your trips and know they take 50 minutes, that's quite a bit of time to do other things; prepare a sandwich and glass of milk, relieve that bladder, etc. Yes, you take the chance of being interdicted and this would be no different if a pilot got out of the seat to go to the restroom or make a sandwich themselves.

It could be worse, you know. They could actually have you walking around the station, back and forth to various offices to get clearance to take off, force you to wait in an actual launch order because some other pilot got their request in first. Safety in the hanger being paramount, you'd have to make menu selections when prompted or end up being put at the end of the queue. And up until you complete departure procedures correctly, only then with the docking clamps be released. Cargo loading/offloading sequences could be thrown in as well, delaying the whole process.

No it isn't! You're not put in your own instance. I really wish people would stop making this up! The reason the ship should only be viewed while in the hanger is to keep poly-count draws down. If this happened within the main station, you'd have high resolution textures, high res models, and an entire simulation happening in the background, all being rendered at once. It's a waste of computer resources. It's for performance reasons, and it does NOT happen during the animation.

The ships are still flying around you while you're docked. Still getting shot. Still blowing up. You can hear it happening.

I'm done talking about this with you. You're clearly one of the few that rates the game a perfect 10. I'm glad you've found the perfect game for you, well done! Now let the greater percentage of players share their opinion without you telling them they're 100% wrong. I'm not making stuff up, and I'm not sugar coating my opinions. Stop stating things as facts, and while you're at it, go try out a real rollercoaster. I bet it'll blow your mind!

I'm guessing you haven't noticed that "glitch" in the hanger just before the menu activates when moving to the hanger. The sound is easily pulled from another "static" instance such as the dock, and even around the station itself. But have you ever had someone targeted, seen them fly and land, and then completely disappear from your radar? I'm not talking npcs either, as they're easy to despawn and then respawn. When another player does it, they're freeing up a docking space for another npc/player to continue the simulation. I've actually launched from a hanger, looked back and saw I wasn't launching from the same pad I landed on.

Short of a few things that have happened to me in game, I'm offering speculations (guesses) as to the why some design decisions have been made, and attempting to explain their reason for being in game (whether or not I like them myself). Whether or not I gave the game a 10 or a 1 doesn't matter in the end to you or anyone else, but using that as an excuse not to consider another's opinion as valid, to utilize common sense (even in a game environment) as why things occur in game, which is what I think this discussion is really about, detracts from the conversation on the whole. In that respect, though and for your information, I'd give it a 7.5. The 2.5 deduction comes from the players I've encountered in the game itself. See where I've posted in other threads as to the why.