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Upcoming Starfield mod introduces seamless planet landing - by Frederik Wessberg (i.imgur.com)
submitted 21 hours ago by to c/games@lemmy.world
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[–] 3 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

I really hate this reductionist attitude towards the game. I can promise you there are much more than 5 types of systems - there some 15 star classes, but then there are giants, sipergiants, you have planetoids, star orbiting othed stars, planets orbiting pulsars, moon-moons, sheperd moons, hot jupiters, gas giant pairs and many more variantions and that's just orbital mechanics, before you even get planetside or before you see the dozens of space anomalies. Stations, yes, are about 5 main types, but there are settlements, outposts, the odd science station and megaship, tourist outposts etc. The game offers a diversity in exploration that i've yet to see NMS match, despite it having landable earth likes and alien life. And Starfield somehow can't even match what's in NMS, despite todd bragging about exploration being the main focus.

Elite is a game about flying your spaceship in a space sandbox. If you like the flight model, the combat model, the symphony of sounds your ship makes you're gonna love doing whatever with it.

Now the game has plenty of flaws, and yes it is grindy ( or it used to be, as it's been lessend lf late ) but anything is grindy if you're just doing the same thing over and over. If you find you liked the game but got bored with it, maybe join a community, or join an outgoing expedition. Elite's community is unmatched in its awesomeness.

Apologies for the rant but I hate people besmirching the good name of Elite.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 hours ago

    Not besmirching, but that game is nowhere near being too complicated to have stopped console support. I think it’s just lazy development. The same reason why there’s close to no story or quests in it.

    It’s just an empty sandbox. A fun one. But empty nonetheless.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 hours ago (1 child)

    Yes, it's hyperbole. I didn't mean there are literally only 5.

    These are my criticisms of the game I've played since the closed beta. Namely that it all feels the same. Yes, like I said in my other comment, there's inevitably repetition in any game, but Elite is very shallow compared to most other sandbox games I've played.

    Star types exist, yes, but they're just floating orbs of fire with different colors. Stations and outposts etc exist, but you interact with them in the same way. What is there to interact with? How does it affect the system around it or the gameplay? Factions at war spawn conflict zones, but aside from those, there's very little to make you feel like a war is actually taking place. Exploration? I haven't done that in a long time, but at least before, it consisted of you jumping to a system, honking your system scan and then going to the next system. Engineering is "hey, let's play around with a random number generator", and then wasting a lot of resources you've managed to collect in various places over a not insignificant amount of time.

    Yes, it's a sandbox and I don't mind repetition, but if after a week of playing you feel like you've seen pretty much everything there is to see, barring the things you need to grind for, I wouldn't consider it worth the entrance price.

    If you consider that "besmirching" the game, then I would call you excessively defensive. It's just a game, and it doesn't need you to defend it.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 hours ago

    I wasn't defending as much as offering a different perspective on the game in case someone sleeps on it. I mean, you say "mile wide and inch deep" and it is like that sometimes ( stellar anomalies are drop in, gawk, scan, screenshot and leave ). But they also say it's "space trucking simulator", and it is that too sometimes. And that it's "just a wallpaper generator", and that's also true. But these add up. There's also the "emerging gameplay" which fdev kept yapping on about - things like the fuel rats, hull seals, the dssa and star carrier networks, axi etc.

    I'm probabaly wrong thinking you haven't played in a whole but you might wanna give it another chance. In their defense, fdev corrected the engineering rng bullshit and added a feature to shorten tedious in-system travel. They also reworked powerplay and added some colonization features as well as some squadron activities and operations if you're on foot. On the other hand, some flaws persist: for one, it still does not respect your time, and it still does not explain much and requires third party tools and websites if you want to dive into anything.

    Also I'm genuinely curious what other sandboxes ( preferably space ) offer what elite does. I know x4 does some things much better but the flight model, controls and ui is atrocious every time I play. There's also SpaceEngine, which kinda does what Elite does with exploration but with a lot less travel time and a lot less interactivity. I was rooting for Starfield for a while but the moment todd said "One. Thousand. Planets" I knew exploration would be shite. Any other recommendations?

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