Lack of graphics settings aren’t why I stopped playing. It’s the game mechanics. The game isn’t that fun for two major immersion breaking reasons.
Loading screens. So many loading screens. Just reminds me I’m using software instead of being in a universe.
Over reliance on fast travel. Yeah, space is boring. But why have a space setting at all if we are going to skip through it? Why bother building custom ships if there are no real challenges to overcome with them because spending time in space is not necessary at all ? Worse, it’s a bad experience because of the loading screens.
There should be a happy medium. I haven’t played Elite Dangerous in a year because I’m 50 jumps away from where I need to go, which means like 3 hours of nothing but travel. But the realism is out of this world. This Starfield thing of never needing to fly is too far in the other direction. I think a happy medium would be a system like Elite Dangerous, but if you need to travel more than a couple of systems over, have a long distance jump gate or something like that, and maybe autopilot. Eve online has jump gates and autopilot, but it can still take hours to cross the universe. It’s more entertaining to have a quick travel option for those scenarios. Eve has wormhole systems that will let you cross the entire universe in a few jumps, but finding those connections will take longer than just flying directly, unless you’re in a huge wormhole corporation that uses 3rd party tools to map all of the wormhole connections to known space.
Given every single system in Starfield is already explored and built on, I think they should have just given up on the jump system and gone with a gate system like Freelancer or the X series. You get to fly to every point without menus while still being time efficient. The reason they didn’t go with this is presumably because of the supposed “exploring the unknown” angle, but you never explore anywhere new in Starfield anyway.
Everyone loves to hate on it, but one thing that Star Citizen absolutely nails is the sense of immersion. From the time you load in until the time you are inevitably disconnected from the server, and from ground to ship to space, you are in one experience with no loading screens
Its not about good game design.
Its a kind of DRM - a move inspired by the hypothesis that making a game hard to pirate will improve sales.
The data suggests that hypothesis is false.
An EU-funded study found that profits of blockbuster movies are negatively impacted by piracy, music industry profits are unaffected, and profits from selling books and video games are increased by piracy.
I’m not sure. I guess because they go hard in the simulation aspect of the game. Although if we’re being realistic, it’s unrealistic that you’d have an interstellar space ship without an autopilot. I read that there are mods to enable autopilot, but I also read they can get your account banned, so I stopped looking into them.
I’m 50 jumps away from where I need to go, which means like 3 hours of nothing but travel
If you upgrade your fuel scoop, that’ll cut down your time severely. I can do about 30 jumps an hour with my Krait Phantom. Refuels before my FSD is even cooled down.
I must confess that sometimes fast travel removes a lot of value from a game. While it saves you a lot of time like a cheat. Cheats also save you time.
You see this issue when one of your core game loop isn’t enjoyable. It happens a lot in games, and you notice it if a game gives you and item or ability to play the game less.
This can be okay if this item comes in just as that loop gets boring (like you unlock special flash grab drives part way through the game). But if they let you fast travel from the beginning the likely case is that they found the whole space travel boring and they ended up providing a way around it.
Which leaves people asking “why’d you bother adding it in there”
Lack of graphics settings aren’t why I stopped playing. It’s the game mechanics. The game isn’t that fun for two major immersion breaking reasons.
There should be a happy medium. I haven’t played Elite Dangerous in a year because I’m 50 jumps away from where I need to go, which means like 3 hours of nothing but travel. But the realism is out of this world. This Starfield thing of never needing to fly is too far in the other direction. I think a happy medium would be a system like Elite Dangerous, but if you need to travel more than a couple of systems over, have a long distance jump gate or something like that, and maybe autopilot. Eve online has jump gates and autopilot, but it can still take hours to cross the universe. It’s more entertaining to have a quick travel option for those scenarios. Eve has wormhole systems that will let you cross the entire universe in a few jumps, but finding those connections will take longer than just flying directly, unless you’re in a huge wormhole corporation that uses 3rd party tools to map all of the wormhole connections to known space.
Given every single system in Starfield is already explored and built on, I think they should have just given up on the jump system and gone with a gate system like Freelancer or the X series. You get to fly to every point without menus while still being time efficient. The reason they didn’t go with this is presumably because of the supposed “exploring the unknown” angle, but you never explore anywhere new in Starfield anyway.
Everyone loves to hate on it, but one thing that Star Citizen absolutely nails is the sense of immersion. From the time you load in until the time you are inevitably disconnected from the server, and from ground to ship to space, you are in one experience with no loading screens
Why doesn’t Elite let you travel offline? Like, set the destination, close the game, and reopen it 3h later.
Because they decided to make the game always online in a persistent galaxy so the possibility a ganker finds has to be respected.
That’s not true, you can play solo (but you still need to be online) and you won’t see other players
I actually forgot that’s an option, which just makes the always online an even weirder choice.
Its not about good game design.
Its a kind of DRM - a move inspired by the hypothesis that making a game hard to pirate will improve sales.
The data suggests that hypothesis is false.
An EU-funded study found that profits of blockbuster movies are negatively impacted by piracy, music industry profits are unaffected, and profits from selling books and video games are increased by piracy.
I’m not sure. I guess because they go hard in the simulation aspect of the game. Although if we’re being realistic, it’s unrealistic that you’d have an interstellar space ship without an autopilot. I read that there are mods to enable autopilot, but I also read they can get your account banned, so I stopped looking into them.
If you upgrade your fuel scoop, that’ll cut down your time severely. I can do about 30 jumps an hour with my Krait Phantom. Refuels before my FSD is even cooled down.
I think the X-Series did this really well
I must confess that sometimes fast travel removes a lot of value from a game. While it saves you a lot of time like a cheat. Cheats also save you time.
The GTA 5 problem.
It’s a lot of fun to drive around in GTA 5 though
You see this issue when one of your core game loop isn’t enjoyable. It happens a lot in games, and you notice it if a game gives you and item or ability to play the game less.
This can be okay if this item comes in just as that loop gets boring (like you unlock special flash grab drives part way through the game). But if they let you fast travel from the beginning the likely case is that they found the whole space travel boring and they ended up providing a way around it.
Which leaves people asking “why’d you bother adding it in there”