I wonder why they haven’t provided more activity content. It shouldn’t after all be that hard compared to programming an intractable engine with a bad codebase. It would give a positive spin for players, even with no tech advances whatsoever. I mean, quest writing and so on is not a very challenging task, and you’d think spawning some enemies or whatever in a region for hunting, dropping parts to collect, providing a few elite bosses and the usual boring nine yards would be something that at least gave the appearance of progress.
I think the CIG fans would probably get upset if there appeared to be too much progress going on.
At this point, all I’m hearing from them is, “The longer it takes, the better!”
What does your heart tell you? :)
You think? Well 3.5 is late (was due 03/31), and I’ve got bad news for you.
So what’d they actually release for the big quarter-of-the-year patch? Let’s take a look:
Art Assets
Something about face customization
female character models
New planet + moons (art assets)
New paint scheme for super hornet
NEWS VAN variant ship
Two new guns
Gameplay:
2 new missions + some variants
1 new quest giver for the new planet
Tweaked all the flight thrust numbers and added “Atmospheric Lift” where “Lift” is defined as “Some kind of upward thrust when you’re going forward, but not really necessary, because all the ships can still hover perfectly”
Added item wear/repair (oh loving boy)
What did they cut?
Still Mentioned In Roadmap But Not In Patch Notes:
Heat system
AI Bounty Hunting in Environmental Missions
Vehicle Scanning Hud Improvements
AI Distress Beacons
Vehicle Radar v2
Quantum Travel Improvements
Vehicle Scanning Improvements
Vehicle Tech Updates v1
Groups System Improvements
VOIP & FOIP Improvements
Distortion Damage Improvements
Ship AI Flight Model Update
Ship AI Combat Behavior Improvements
Basic Gunship Behavior
FPS: Collision Avoidance V2
Ursa Rover “Fortuna”
Banu Singe Tachyon Cannon
Performance Optimization
Asynchronous Disconnection Refactor
Network OCS Stall Fixes
Projectile Manager
Hard Surface Shader Improvements
Removed:
Fuel Refining
Commarray revision
Liquid/Gas Exploration
Expanded Cargo
Data Running
Long Range Scanning
Salvage: Scanning
Salvage: Extraction
Salvage: Processing
Salvage: Selling
Buy/Sell Fuel
Fuel Transfer
Manual Repair
Ship Repair In General
Repuatation/Law System
Escort Service Beacons
FPS Combat AI Styles
FPS: Stealth v2
Flight: Quantum & Strafing
Origin 890 Jump
Banu Defender
Origin M50 Improvements
Kruger P52 Merlin Improvements
RSI Constellation Taurus
Origion 300 series variants
Some stupid gun
Some other stupid gun
Parallel Network Jobs
Lobby Refactor
Gas Cloud Tech
Object Container Streaming: Improvements
All in all, another one knocked out of the park! Good work CIG!
As I wrote back in Sept 2018, of the 106 starsystems promised, not a SINGLE one is completed thus far. Crusader was in 3.0 (12/2017), Hurston was in 3.4 (12/2018), ArcCorp is in 3.5, and MicroTech is targeted for 12/2019. So, 7 yrs, 1 system (out of 106).
Makes sense.
Naive question: why wouldn’t they just pay for another license with Crytek? Isn’t that much cheaper than paying for litigation?
It’s actually really impressive from what I saw. Given how ridiculous putting effort into something like this is at this point (while ignoring important things), either they bought a ready-made module by some contractor, or Chris is insane and OCD about stuff that completely doesn’t matter.
Ooh, ooh, I know this one!
Therein lies the rub. They’ve been sh*tting on Crytek since 2014, hiring away their staff etc, along with all the stuff Crytek put in their lawsuit. So, going back to negotiate a second license would mean paying top Dollar with no more favorable terms. So they just “switched” to Lumberyard - though apparently they lied about it. Hence the lawsuit.
It’s all of the above; without the middleware module.
You think that’s bad? In $250M train wreck, they totally forgot about the fact that the much touted women (new in upcoming 3.5) character skeletons are different from the men.
The result is a tophat of lols.
Is that a monocle on her forehead?
It’s a .jpeg of a .jpeg. Very exclusive. Only $3000.
Yeah, the female model is shorter than the male body so all kinds of things handle it wrong because they built a ton of stuff assuming one exact player height.
(note that they only have one female and one male body so everyone playing will have the same height as everyone else)
Why do so many things about this project feel like it’s Baby’s First Videogame? I mean things like height sliders, they’ve been around for decades. It’s not that they don’t have sliders, just that things were built to a fixed height.
I’m not a game dev so could be way off base, but it just seems like you would set up that system for dynamic heights from the start (or surely done that way sometime in the last seven years of development?!).
I found this little bit of craziness interesting. It’s a case study in how f’ed up the situation gets when you’re in the business of selling ships that don’t exist with mechanics that don’t exist for a game that doesn’t exist.
I’m a little fuzzy on the details, so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about something. Basically, you need fuel to travel short distances. The mechanics for it don’t exist yet, but ships have been sold. You also need quantum fuel for long jumps (quantum drive in this game), that needs to be collected from something. Again, regarding mechanics, see above. Additionally, with the latest flight model, if you try to land a large ship on a planet, it takes around 30 minutes or so. Seriously. Why? Reasons. So only small ships can land on planets in a reasonable timeframe. So what are big ships good for? Well, they can travel further faster with their quantum drives (I think). The new addition is that small ships will now randomly fall out of quantum drive due to ‘overheating’ of the quantum engine. So you sit around doing nothing for 20 minutes, and then sit around in empty space doing nothing for 15 minutes to wait for the engine to cool down, and then sit some more until eventually you get to your destination.
Why was this abomination of a ‘feature’ added? Chris claims it was due to science. And game balance. But to me it smells like the kind of inconvenience mobile games add to make you pay more – you know, you can only play so much and then you wait on a timer. See, the theory is that sales are drying up, and CIG has sold everything that can be sold. So in order to keep the funds flowing, they now have to create game mechanics that punish people who don’t buy enough ships ie. you should have a large ship for quantum travel and a small ship for planetary landings.
Even if this theory is false, the fact that every new mechanic in the game could now be questioned in this manner shows how poisonous this funding model is.
It’s no big deal. Game mechanics are the fastest to program, anyway. Can fix it later.
Yes - it’s all elementary stuff. The issue is that all their attachments are designed for the male skeleton. So those points don’t match the female skeleton. Hence monocles on foreheads, and anti-grav tophats. And that’s not even the worst of it.
ps: Yes, a $250M game only has two character skeletons for the players. The NPCs are a bit more varied - but they’re all men. lol!
Chris made up all that “lore” crap to justify the badly broken flight model and drive mechanics which backers are now raging about in 3.5. The heat nonsense, coupled with the QD issue are all artificial. They add nothing to the game - and in fact, makes it worse and frustrating for the player.
What most are slowly beginning to realize is that this all leads to the simple truth: “buy a better ship”. It’s why, for example, with the $45 starter package, you can’t do any meaningful trading, let alone mine. If you want to do any of those gameplay loops, you need to buy* a better ship that costs $100 - $150 - on top of the $45 tin can you first bought. Seriously, that’s how things are.
Watch this
3.5 fidelity @ 10 fps
FYI that train ride through Area 18 (ArcCorp) is on rails. It’s the same as the train ride; but through the city. So no, you can’t fly anywhere close to those buildings.
I love this game!