Ennui with gaming.

Post Reply New Topic

I was wondering... Does any of those games (Elite or Star Citizen) allow me to just go out there exploring space? Or will I only be able to play them to battle? I would love to play the one that let me do this.

Elite will let you do that, yes. Or whatever the heck you want. The site claims "400 billion star systems!! !! !! !! !!1" and... yeah, there's a TON of.... everything.

Combat, usually you go looking for it, not the other way around... unless you've broken enough laws, at which point you can be hunted down. By other players if playing online, or by the AI if playing offline.

Or you could go mining asteroids or doing delivery missions or whatever. Or just roam for no apparent reason.

The game has a nasty learning curve though. Even doing something like docking, normally simple (and often automated) in other games, is complicated as hell compared to how it's often portrayed. You can even get fines if you do it wrong (and there's a whole bunch of ways you can screw it up).

Just go have a look at the site or some videos to see what it's like. Just be warned about the learning curve, and about the fact that it IS a full-priced game. It's not some little $15 download or something.


Also, look up a game called Space Engine. That one is... special. Just blew my mind the first time I tried it.

Wow! Both of them are mind blowing.
This Space Engine game is absurdly awesome!! I'll download it when I'm back home.
But elite seem a bit superior on a few things, especially the fact that the feeling of exploring with the space ship feels a little better than just setting coordinates (I'm not sure if I understood it right).
But I'm not sure how their performance will be in my outdated PC, it might not even work at all. I need to update that thing as soon as I can.

It's actually a bit hard to define Space Engine as a "game", really. There's no elements of that in it yet (there's a long list of game things they eventually want to have it do, and they all sound amazing), but they're heading in that direction later on. Right now, it's a sandbox exploration thing that you just mess with. There's ALOT to it. Just.... not any actual game elements.

Also, you'll be dealing with coordinates in Elite; the distances between stars is too far to travel without "locking" on to one. Well, okay, that isnt actually COORDINATES at all, but.... you get what I mean. The process of doing this is really damn awesome though. Like jumping to warp speed in Star Trek. You use this map thing to figure out where you want to go and how you want to get there. There's also a "lesser" warp that is specifically for roaming around solar systems (distances between planets are too ridiculous for simple thrust to work!) but you have to be careful with it. You can imagine what happens if you zoom towards a space station but fail to disengage the warp at the proper time.

The only thing that bugs me is that for whatever reason, the star-to-star jump will ALWAYS end with you REALLY CLOSE to that star; you have to immediately turn and pull away from it after the warp ends. I'm sure there's a logical reason for this. I'm also sure I dont know what that reason is.

If you end up picking up Elite, you're going to want to watch the various tutorial videos that cover the basics like docking, warping, dealing with the interface when inside a space station (since that's where all the important stuff is done, like buying/selling or repairs or whatever), among a pile of other different things. DONT just jump into the main game though; do the "combat training" thing first (actually a bizarre seperate install, no, I dont know why) since it's easily the best way to learn to maneuver your ship without it feeling like you're piloting a drunken walrus.

And yeah, it does seem to need a hefty computer.... er.... I think. I'm not sure. I'm used to just maxing all the settings out right away on mine, so I dunno how far they can be pushed down. Just be sure to check those specs first. It's not any fun at all to buy a full-priced game and then find out you cant play it!

Yeah, I saw that it wasn't exactly a game but I'm okay with that. I'll try it first for the sake of curiosity and to have an idea of how my PC will perform.
Elite seems to be a game that wanted to seem like a real space simulator then. I like that. And I just saw a few videos with the battles and they seem fun, so that's cool. I just wanted to make sure that if I wanted to explore "in peace" I would be able to do so.
About my PC, yeah I think it can handle them at least at minimum/good. I was able to play Shadows of Mordor on it with good graphics (wasn't ultra, but it was better than the PS3 version) without speed/fps issues. Just some quite long loads.
I'll try out Space Engine tonight.

The game itself has no cutscenes nor does it 'hold your hand' or stick you to following a storyline. Like I said, the videos you see of the game are the in-game lore companies doing TV ads to sells their ships, nothing more. They're basically like fan-made videos (and there are some which are awesome already).

Star Citizen is multiple games in one:

Squadron 42 is the single player, stand-alone game that does feature a storyline. It is more like a very long, immersive 'intro+tutorial' storyline. You can skip it and go straight into the game itself: The Persistent Universe.

Persistent Universe: This is the MMO portion. There is no storyline. It is a breathing living universe with an economy, npcs doing their thing (not just spawning for you to shoot them), politics and a lot of in-depth back-story/history to every race and faction and even individuals. This is the game where its similar to ELITE (and wing commander Privateer) where you start the game with a 'starter' ship and its up to you what you want to do and where you want to go.

Both SQ42 and the PU have a 'game within the game'. Meaning it is merged with what is essentially a game onto itself in the gaming industry: First Person Perspective/First Person Shooter.

FPP / FPS: The first person shooter aspect of the game is not per-say a 'shooter' game. Its a first person perspective. This allows you to walk on planets, EVA in space and walk inside your own ship as it travels the stars. In the FPP/FPS play you can socialize, explore (on foot or on vehicle or EVA) and if it comes down to it, even fight (melee and weapons..including combat exoskeletons..and yes EVA zero-g!). This mode is critical and built into the game. No game out there has achieved the ability to literally walk up into your ship, walk inside your ship, sit down on the pilot chair, boot your ship up, launch, fly in space..and as your ship flies in space (say you give your NPC or player crewman the helm) you can stand up from your chair and walk around your ship and interact with it (system repairs, status, cargo management, crew interaction, rosters, market, etc)...and do this seamlessly without loading screens.



Elite and Star Citizen do both very well. Bear in mind Elite is a released game while Star Citizen is currently in early alpha.

The biggest differences between Elite and Star Citizen are:

1- Elite uses a procedural generation engine. This means that every dot in the sky is a star you can visit and when you travel to it, the server 'creates' that star system. Therefore it has infinite exploration. As Misery said, in Elite you can just point your ship to that dot and engage the FTL drive and you fly there.

Star Citizen will use a hybrid hand-crafted and procedural system... meaning the star systems are not created as you travel to them. The developers will use the procedural generation in-house to create most of the new star systems and then hand-craft certain elements of the system...these elements would be things like alien ruins and the backstory/stuff for you to discover, etc, etc.. in short, things that a procedural engine cannot do. Elite's generated systems are impressive to fly through but they are essentially 'empty' when it comes to lore..aka if you find something there... where did it come from? Why is it there? Are there consequences to this find? etc,etc. Star Citizen does not have a 'free open travel' universe but instead use 'jump point' networks to travel. If you have ever played Wing Commander you will be familiar with this...since its the same thing. After all, this is being made by the same guy that created Wing Commander.

2- Exploration in Elite is 'fly around, spot something, tractor it and 'swallow' it into your cargo hold' type of thing. Its more like a scavenger hunt. Star Citizen will use a very in-depth and complex exploration system where you have to use many different kinds of scans, find the object and then, depending on what you find, you will have to either EVA to explore it or tractor it into your hold (a VERY different process from Elite.. in star citizen the tractor beam only brings the object close to your ship.. after that you or one of your crew has to be in the cargo bay to open the doors and either EVA and attach a cable and pull it into the hold and then tie it down inside the cargo hold (otherwise it would move around in transit and damage your ship... yes this is modeled!) or you need to mark its location and bring in a more specialized ship for retrieval.

For example, if you find a derelict ship (say, a human freighter) you can EVA and spend your time retrieving ships logs and salvaging ship components (including weapons and ammo) and any left over cargo...all of which you will need to do in first person perspective with the use of EVA or space sleds or EVA exosuits. You can also bring in a specialized salvage ship which is HUGE (Reclaimer)..and this ship will literally crush the hull and put it through a refinery it has to salvage the refined metals and materials the ship is made of. Most explorers that find a ship will just strip it of items and sell the location of the derelict to someone who owns a salvage ship (Reclaimer).

Exploration includes things like finding new asteroid fields, new jump points that lead to new star systems (you will get to name the new star system pending Dev approval for the name) and in each new star system you literally have to go through a very long and detailed process to find planets, to scan said planets, then explore said planets...and moons and asteroid fields and comets and any other form of thing you can find in space around a star.

Linked to exploration is the Scientific exploration aspect of the game. Once a system has been explored people will be bringing in science vessels that will analyze and search for anything that might be new. This aspect of the game is going to be used as a player-driven 'technological advancement' tool... aka if the players never find the new element 'omgomium' then the tech advancements that element would've brought in are not applied... because the Research and Development players wont have it available. Also part of 'scientific exploration' is xenoarchaeology...which moves forward any backstory, lore and future universe-wide available missions/quests/jobs/whatever you want to call it.

3- Star Citizen has you playing the pilot of the ship whereas Elite has you playing the ship. In Elite you literally never leave the ship nor do you interact with it in any way other than cockpit controls. You do not interact with NPC or other players in order to operate your ship. Star Citizen has you literally be able to get up from your cockpit chair and repair internal damage or go EVA to do so... you can see and interact with player or NPC crew on multicrew ships. Some ships are so freaking huge you will literally need a crew of 10 to 100 players or NPCs to operate it. While you CAN fly said huge ship solo, the amount of tasks running such a ship requires will mean your performance flying the ship alone is significantly diminished. For example, a Frigate class ship (Idris) carries a complement of marines (to defend against boarding actions...yes you can board other player's ships if you disable them), multiple gunner positions, engineering/damage control crews, there's torpedo and railgun crews that load and operate the device...the ship can launch, retrieve and maintain three fighter craft and 2 small support utility ships, etc,etc. If you fly this thing solo the best you can do is set the guns to AI control (which consumes your computer processing power) and fly the ship.. it will not be able to reload torpedoes or railgun nor launch fighters ('cause, you need pilots).

4- Star Citizen uses simulation for its physics while Elite uses emulation. This is a big difference because although Elite feels very realistic, the game itself is not simulating the physics but merely giving you the illusion of it. What is the difference? Its huge actually. In Star Citizen if you take damage to your ship's thrusters your ship's performance will be altered.. the ships in star citizen are built and function as a simulated machine hence if you get hit by a missile or a gun wrecks your hull, that piece of the hull will be punched through and it will visibly, from the outside and the inside, alter the ship's structure. Aka that hole you can see crew inside moving around, internal components etc. The main difference between Elite and Star Citizen in this aspect is that Elite 'visually represents' damage while star citizen actually simulates the damage in the 3d Model of the ship.


...and lots more but those are the big differences.

Honestly, for as much as Star Citizen sounds cool.... the FPS element DEFINITELY kills it for me, and the MMO bit doesnt help one bit. One reason I grabbed Elite is that it can be played entirely offline (without being in some seperate game mode/type/thing/whatever). Though you can switch easily to online if you should want (without ending up in some different universe or something; same places, but other players can be found there too). I used to be really into MMOs... and then I saw what the genre was turning into. It'll end up either being extremely grindy (because MMO devs have an obligation to keep you playing as long as conceivably possible, so that's ridiculously likely to be the case with the game's final version), bad combat (in some form or other) or both. Though, FPS = "bad combat" to me to begin with (and I dont necessarily mean with guns, melee I've found is actually usually *really* bad when done in first person view), so that only says so much. The "get out and go into stations" bit I personally wouldnt care about; seen games do that in the past, and.... eh. It's neat the first couple times, but it got tedious quickly (I prefer to just use menus, they dont take bloody forever and I dont have to explore the things looking for NPCs that I end up wanting to bash over the head with a brick once I find them). I'd rather just land the stupid thing, tell it what I want, and then I can leave and, I dunno, go explode something. Or whatever. Not to mention with the MMO bit comes one of my most hated things with that type of game: what I call "gated" content. Stuff you simply cannot access through normal play, or unlock/do on your own; often this revolves around certain mechanics/things that only a full guild can do. For example, alot of MMOs often had this whole "build houses!! !" aspect, but when you go into it.... yeah. Alone or even with a couple of friends, you cant even DO that. At all. You NEED a guild, a full guild, in order to do that type of content in most cases; and even then, the MMO nature means it's somehow very restrictive, usually in ways that dont make logical sense. And it usually costs about 10 trazillion credits or gold or whatever to do any of it. Any individual player usually gets very little actual gameplay out of this element of any MMO. And having to wait and rely on others to do stuff like this.... ugh. Just.... no.

Along that line, the whole idea of going into a new solar system and exploring and doing science stuff does sound cool.... or it would if it wasnt for the MMO part. At least, not in my view anyway; others are likely to disagree.

Doesnt help that I'm about as social as a brick. My typical group experience in an MMO was usually: Find group, join group, stand around for 50 years while waiting for group to get together, stand around for another 50 years waiting for everyone to VERY VERY SLOWLY type stuff to figure out what we were going to do, follow everyone to location, set things on fire or hit them with lightning bolts, hope nobody does something bloody stupid and gets us all killed, set more things on fire, get experience, leave. I usually didnt have to say much (if anything) as I generally knew my role well, and I wasnt about to be told HOW to do it (or argue about it). It's like, okay, stop talking at me and let me just throw the damn ice brick at the damn elf zombie. Or in the case of City of Heroes, my main character just screamed at everything, which still has the top spot of "best powerset ever" as far as I'm concerned.

As a rule, I end up just preferring to do everything myself; multiplayer for me these days means competition, not co-op. Just cant seem to get interested in MMOs anymore. Which is a shame, really, I used to enjoy them so much, back in the days of Everquest. And then WoW happened, and everything went downhill. At some point I'll give the genre a go again, but for right now it hasnt happened yet.


The single-player story mode I wouldnt bother with at all. Just... bleh. Which is my opinion on all story-based.... everything. But then that's to be expected for me and not a strike against the game at all.

Although I'm not completely against MMOs (stopped playing WoW a few months ago) this is the main reason that I stopped playing.
As someone who works all day, go to university at night and have only weekends to REALLY play video games (during the week I use the 3DS when I can or I play at home when I'm not completely tired after uni) I couldn't afford to play anything that works the way WoW works.
When I wanted to, let's say, kill a boss (something that I didn't like too much on WoW to begin with) the process was usually like this:
1 hour ~ 1 hour and a half - creating a group
30 mins - preparation after everyone was ready
2~3 hours in an instance where half of this time was easily wasted dying at stupid stuff because... people. And this for, in the end, have a small chance for a item.
So this is an valuable entire afternoon of playing for me with high chances of almost none (or actually none) improvement or progress. Not to mention the high chances of feeling exhausted and tired by a process where only half of the time that I spented were actually playing. Even thinking about it right now sounds really stupid.

About Star Citizen it seems even more realistic than I thought Elite was. The fact that there might be some in depth things to discover in a planet is a huge yes for me. But it did seems like it hardly can be played just to relax and explore space, which was my intention in the first place. I might try it in the end, but only when I have enough time to invest (probably just at the end of semester).

You don't have to play FPS if you don't want to, but the game is heavily in first person avatar perspective...meaning you do have to get out of the pilot's chair and do stuff..like 'modding' your own ship systems. In the game the equipment you buy (engines, shields, hulls,etc) has certain stats which you can, with the right tools, change within certain parameters to change their performance. The hulls of the ships have their own cooling and data pipelines so if you want your shields to regen faster than the default specs you can increase the shield's heat coolant pipe and assign more data bandwith to it so your ship systems can keep it from frying itself.... though too much of a modification can and will fry it. You also do stuff like window shopping in planets, getting jobs at bars planetside, walking through stations to meet NPC mission contacts and other sorts of things.

While it is true that you may indeed be forced into FPS combat...that would be rather rare....since you would have to be outside of your ship in non-safe zones OR your ship would have to have been shot up so expertly that you got disabled and then you get boarded. You can always surrender too though..there's a mechanic for that as well. Pirates (npc and players).

Star citizen has no levels or stats or skills...and its basically just like ELITE in the sense that the only 'grind' is your grind for money to afford better gear (ships, equipment,etc).

When you land your ship on a planet or station you enter your hangar.. your own personal space. There you can order NPCs to load/unload stuff (for a fee...or do it yourself) and general market items can be purchased through your MobiGlass (think Iglass but its a holo-projector on your wrist..augmented reality type interface) and delivered to your hangar. You would leave your hangar to acquire things that are not in the general marketplace or to window shop (try clothes before you buy? you can do that! go to the clothing shop!).

There is no gated content either. Sure, there are some things that you would do a thousand times better if you had a corporation/guild with you..like operating a capital ship. As I said earlier, you can fly it solo by hiring NPC crew but their performance compared to a human crew is dismal.

There is no crafting in star citizen so there is no 'i need others to do this for me' stuff. The science stuff and research and development are things any player can do IF they own a research/science ship...and any new tech that comes out of that research is made available to everyone (the discoverer getting royalties or something like that...this is still being designed).

The multiplayer aspect of Star Citizen is both co-op and competitive. You have single pilot ships and you have multicrewed ships. For example, the mining ship that was recently released requires either multiple players doing the mining process or a single player with an NPC mining just the same albeit maybe not as efficiently as a fully crewed ship. You can also mine with a non-mining specific ship too.... so its not like you're forced to get a mining ship. However the cash would flow much faster with a dedicated mining ship.

Star Citizen is a lot like ELITE in the sense that you can just play it as 'single player' although you'll be in the MMO universe. There is in fact mention that it will be very hard for you to tell the difference between a human player in a ship and an NPC because radar scans will not show the ID of the person, just the ship type/info and you'd need to do a deep scan to reveal who is flying it (even then you'd have to guess if Bob Smith is an NPC name or a player that chose to use a 'normal' name to camouflage himself). While true, you will not be able to play star citizen's MMO universe without being part of the MMO universe (aka logged in) you are still yourself doing whatever you want to do and you do not really need to interact with others to succeed or enjoy the game.

The "lack of grinding" is one I never, EVER believe until well after a game has been released; *every* MMO developer says it wont be there. *Every* MMO developer lies through their teeth about it. I've not seen even one exception. It's one of the reasons I got into pure-competitive type multiplayer games only these days: There's nothing to grind FOR. Or in the case of something like League of Legends, you CAN grind for character unlocks.... or just throw money at them, which is what I do. Which would be a huge no-no in an actual MMO.

The bit about the capital ships I also have trouble with; even if the ability to use them solo is TECHNICALLY there, I'm guessing it'll turn out to be the way Eve Online did it: Yes, TECHNICALLY, you can use the major capital ships in that game, getting them totally solo, using them totally solo. .....if it wasnt for the part where they are freakishly expensive, in the "no way in hell you're ACTUALLY doing this on your own unless you win the space lottery" kind of way. Most MMOs have some sort of content that works along this line; yeah, you CAN technically do it on your own. But nobody ever actually WILL. Being technically able to though lets them put it into their bullet list of why to buy the game. ....and if it's NOT gated in that way, things get all warped. You'd get capital ships flying everywhere in huge blobs as everyone and their grandma buys them because they're huge and cool. That sort of balance problem is one of the things I ended up *really* hating about the genre. They end up with the sort of design where they HAVE to use gated content if they want certain concepts to appear whatsoever, because if every individual player could, say, build their own entire castle, you wouldnt be able to get anywhere without drowning in the things. By keeping it gated, they keep it relatively rare, and they keep it having the feeling of being important/powerful, as opposed to just yet another thing that everyone has (as is the case with something like "epic mounts" in many games that use them; they're not so epic when 50 other players in the same zone have them).

There was something else to say but I keep getting distracted by certain things outside of the PC.... I apologize if my post ends up not entirely making sense because of it. Normally I dont post this early, but I was bored....

Like I said, there is no 'grind' in star citizen except for 'gain money' grind (which is unavoidable in any game..single or multiplayer... the only way to get stuff for 'free' is for it to be part of a storyline/quest and that literally removes the open universe type of gameplay since you'd have to follow gated storylines to gain stuff).

There is no gated content either. At all. Ships that are 'rare' (which don't really exist as 'hard to find'.. 'rare' would just mean expensive) do not require faction grinding nor special components grinding (aka like in all other mmos with crafting..because there is no crafting in star citizen).

Capital ships in Star Citizen can be purchased from a ship dealer just like you would a starter ship. You only need the in-game earned money (Credits) to purchase them. As for people being able to buy them because of the expense.. well, that is relative really. You can earn money in the game in many different ways and there is also a means to buy in-game money with real-life money (there is a daily limit you can buy though, must be done to keep economy in check).

More importantly, you don't need to own a capital ship to enjoy playing in one..that is the whole multiplayer ship premise. There are three ways you can crew for another player: 1) Sign up as a crewman, receive payment for it depending on how long you were in his ship as crew (its done via a contract system). 2) Join the ship as a volunteer crewman or 3) 'Possess' one of the capital ship's NPCs. This last feature requires the ship's owner (who pays that NPC crewman) to give you permission to 'possess' (take over control of) the NPC. This is a system in place to allow players to gain human crew while flying in space without having to wait for the other human player to dock with his ship and transfer his avatar over to the cap ship to crew it. It is a risk-free means of crewing for someone since your avatar is not placed at risk (the game does have penalties for your avatar dying) and generally will be a nice way to get some gunners for your turrets at a moment's notice.

Now as far as operating the ship... like I said you can hire full NPC crew and the ship will function... but chances are the NPC's wont be as good as a human crewman when it comes to critical thinking things (shield management, sensor systems, etc).

Finally, the thing of having cap ships all over the place is not something I see happening unless its like a warzone... for ships have very unique capabilities and roles. All cap ships are either military or civilian specialized (transports, science ships, etc) and their capabilities are not as gapped as they are in EVE... aka civilian cap ship would be in serious trouble if a few fighters decide to attack it because they are not designed for combat. Likewise military cap ships are limited in combat roles...the biggest warship is effective vs other large ships but not so effective against being attacked by smaller ships... there are in fact two specialized torpedo attack ships, on that is medium sized and one that is small sized that would make most capital ships crap their pants when they appear on the screen.

There's a balance of power between the vessels... for a cap ship to be truly strong and powerful against everything they'd need to fly with a host of other cap ships and smaller ships to cover their big weaknesses. Its all modeled mostly after WW2 naval combat stuff. Thing is, even if you are solo and there's a fleet like this out there, you would detect it much earlier than they'd detect you...because sensor systems are being designed to be as realistic as possible yet simplified for gameplay... so a formation of cap ships would be easy to spot from very far away but your own cap ship would not be detected until you're much closer (because said cluster ships put out EM interference that reduces each other's sensor resolutions).

I hope you give the game a try when it comes out. Personally I think it will be a game-changer for the industry. They have already given publishers a wake up call with their crowdfunding...and showing the market that it is precisely the publishers that are reponsible for the crap-filled games of the past decade since publishers only want money in short term which makes quality and longevity of a product not be a priority. Also that games get shipped out full of bugs, hardly in working condition and then after a brief period of media-hyping to drive up sales the publishers move the dev teams to other products leaving the unfinished, buggy product sold to people in limbo. Since Star Citizen is fully crowdfunded they dont have to obey publisher deadlines nor slack in the quality department.. and damn it SHOWS... the alpha version of the space combat module is much more functional and has less bugs than any game released on the market or that has been released years before and their devs have been allegedly 'patching' things up.

The bit with the capital ships being run by a crew of lots of players is.... hm, of all the things in the game mentioned so far, that one would bother me the most. Why? Because there's one huge thing I've learned from both MMOs and team-based games: other players are often A: extremely unreliable, B: jerks, or C: stupid. And sometimes you get trolls, as well. That and joining just to do one part of the whole thing, ehhh.... not my sort of thing. If I'm using something like that, I'd rather just control absolutely everything myself, all the time, which is almost always how I approach things like this. I do this with games that offer co-op play as well; it ends up being a feature I never use, because I"d rather just do it all on my own. That way, I can move at my own usually-quick pace (no waiting!) and dont have to worry about getting screwed over by anything other than my own mistakes. Being at a disadvantage because of using NPC crew isnt too much better than any of this though.

The bit with the ship caps isnt quite what I meant. It's not something that'd be a hard cap; it'd be more like Eve, where there is no cap.... but the extreme expense of the bigger ships essentially creates one anyway. You'll see bazillions of smaller ships everywhere, but the big ones are rare, and it's the expense alone, and nothing else, that balances it this way. That expense simply prevents most players from ever having the chance to own or use one, yet if it WASNT the case, the huge ships would be everywhere, because everyone could afford them eventually. It's a system that's kinda broken from the very beginning, when it comes to this sort of game.

Likely, it'll be the sort of game where I might watch streamers or LPers do some stuff in it, but simply wouldnt have the undying patience.... or tolerance of other players.... to deal with it myself. As is usually the case with MMOs these days.

The value of crowdfunding though, I agree with that. Alot of developers I'm familiar with get their funding via this, and I often throw money at these myself when I think it's worth it. The big publishers really are screwing things up.... inflating costs of making games means deflated amounts of actual content, and lately more than ever this fact is rearing it's ugly head, and players are getting more and more annoyed and angry about it. Yet if you pull back the cost of it by not going quite as nuts with the graphics and such, there'd be an apocalyptic explosion of whining and yelling because CLEARLY the graphics are the most important part. Bah.

I'm just glad I mostly dumped the consoles when I did, seeing that sort of trend getting bigger and bigger. There's so many games on PC I can play that never fall anywhere near that trap, and it's a breath of fresh air after so many years of console gaming with the problems that the big guys put on those.

Like I said, you can hire NPC crew and run the ship yourself. They wont perform as well as a human crew but you can! The one thing preventing you from doing it all yourself instead of the NPC crew is that the ship systems in the game are rather complex. Just the sensors will have multiple scanning systems, adjustments and things to watch for (EM, IR, Cross-Section, Gravimetric, Optical) and you'll have to deal also with ECM/ECCM and even hacking attempts on your ship systems (players and npcs can try to hack your systems to mess with them)... targeting systems for the multicrew ships require attention as you will need to assign targets into priorities, firing clusters, grid point defense, etc. Then there's just flying the ship in newtonian 6DOF and maintaining power levels to ship systems (which are many), shield prioritization, repairs, etc. The whole game is going to be very immersive and one player can't just do it all himself. That's why the NPC crew is needed to run the ship and why they wont be as good as a human player crew at the same task.

I understand what you mean about the cap ship expense 'cap' and that if they were cheap everyone would fly them. That is why I mentioned that in Star Citizen the big ships are much more vulnerable than the small ships because they are very specialized on their specific role...so you can expect most people to own both cap ships and a variety of non-cap ships and use them depending on their needs.

Ship are not replaced like in EVE or ELITE either. If you lose your ship the insurance company will return the ship to you... but with a delay. The more times you lose your ship during the insurance period the longer that replacement time is. This, coupled with the death penalty mechanics means that you will hardly see players doing things like kamikaze runs or the typical eve 'gang hunting till we die' type of play. There is consequences to losing your ship and to dying.

Also, since the game actually simulates the ships down to their internal components, it means that its not like EVE or ELITE where shield is a hitpoint buffer, armor is a hitpoint buffer and hull integrity is a hitpoint buffer and when you bring all those to zero the ship explodes... in Star Citizen you literally need to hit the ship at the spot where its components are or you would be doing little damage of no consequence. Shields are a hitpoint buffer but they do not stop projectile or missile weapons (those pass through the shield losing some kinetic energy)... armor is not a hitpoint buffer but an actual layer of armor the projectile needs to be able to penetrate to be able to do damage (energy weapons do melt and weaken the armor layer) and its not a single armor-layer for the ship, each part of the ship has its own armor segment (inner wing, outer wing, etc). There is no 'hull' but rather the internals of the ship each have their own damage threshold and states which affect the performance of the ship it is in.

I can relate to this image all too well. I have tons of games, including a massive Steam backlog, but I have almost nothing I actually feel like playing. Playing video games takes mental energy, and most of the time, I just feel way too lazy to game. It's a curse, I know a lot about gaming, and at times I can be passionate about it, yet I hardly ever do it. Maybe it's one of those cases where I have a special interest in something I don't really take part in.

I'm getting increasingly bored with new games, for many of the reasons that others have stated in this and other threads (such as the focus on multiplayer, the dlc, the micro-transactions, the endless cut-scenes). I haven't really seen anything new since, I don't know, Minecraft. A few years ago I could say to people that gaming was so exciting because games got better each year and games were getting better and better. Look! Physics engines! Look! Open world environments! Look! MMORPGs!

It doesn't feel like that now and we're getting the same thing over and over again.

I'm sure that someone will say that I should look at Indie games.. but again I haven't seen a whole lot to get excited about. Goat Simulator? It may be fun for twenty minutes but I don't really feel like splashing any cash. I could be tempted to give Elite Dangerous a go (even if this is a game series I had on my Amiga and... BBC Micro) I'll wait until I see the reviews for Star Citizen - I remember Chris Roberts' games like Wing Commander and Strike Commander starting a few trends in gaming that I never likes - loads of cut scenes, basic actual gameplay and very high tech specs even though the games didn't look that great.

I've always had a love/hate relationship with PC gaming. I'll admit that mouse/keyboard control is sublime and the format gave rise to many of the most original games out there in the good old days. There is the "upgrade" issue though and for me at least it makes me worry about how well each new release wiil run if I haven't upgraded in the past 3 months. It seems like you're expected to by a new graphics card every year and a new CPU every 2 to keep up. New games are lazily ported over from consoles and run badly even on powerful machines. It's an expensive hobby, especially when all you're getting is the same old FPS with a few more lighting/weather/smoke effects shoved in it.

As the indie games go, there's waaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy more than just the ones mentioned here, and of varying levels. People often have this bizarro idea that indie games are always these little twitchy things that are good for maybe like 30 minutes of play, and then that's it. When in reality it's the other way around these days: If you want HUNDREDS of hours of gameplay out of something that's NOT a multiplayer game, that's where you'll find it; not to mention games of higher complexity.

There are those that are tiny ones made by one guy, yet that still manage 50 to 200+ hours of gameplay; there are those that come unusually close to matching the graphics and such (and some that DO match) of an AAA game. I always say I have hundreds of games on my PC, and buy new ones REALLY frequently... and basically ALL of them are things like this. It's rare that I'll buy an AAA game for the PC, and stupidly rare that I'll buy a console game. The problem though is that 99% of games on the PC, unlike console titles, do not come to you. YOU have to go find THEM. Without actual searching, you'll never hear of most of them, because advertising and such works very, very differently there. Oh, you get some like Goat Simulator that manage to get all over the place in an abnormal way, but.... yeah, that's "abnormal" for these.

Also, there is typically no "upgrade issue" when dealing with this sort of game. Even with the high-graphics ones. Though, in all honesty, I'm finding that's the case lately with PC gaming in general. There's just not much reason to upgrade right now even within the AAA games. Why? Heck if I know. It's almost like they're slowing down.