So I basically kept an eye out on SC since its kickstarter in 2012
I managed to get into the public invite week in 2015 and apart from the servers overcrowding (leading to long wait times for ships) had fun,
even though there was not much content, except for putting comm arrays back online
Well, fast forward to late march this year, I had some spare cash, and figured I'd buy myself a starterpack and upgrade to a 325a and finally dive in
Unfortunately I failed to read the fine print
When I did the Public invite, I was running an I5 4440, 8 megs and 560 TI, only upgrading the 560 to a 970 in the time passed
But today, SC needs at least Quad Core (4790 and -you better go- up), 16 megs and an SSD to get more than a laggy unstable mess when wanting to play in the Public Universe (Arena Commander and Star Marine let you get away with less)
Though my 970 does manage top end FPS, it's processor running pretty constantly at 100%
Well, my fault I guess (though I'd wager demanding public testing on systems above average does not help the popularity)
So I grabbed more 'a little more' of that extra cash and upgraded to the specs in my signature
It was time to hit the "Verse"
....Well, I am Underwhelmed, to say the least!
Maybe its my self entitlement, too high expectations,...
Or my natural cynicism concerning software programming, when I look at the 5 years of development and 185 million dollars that have been put into this and what it shows for
I'm 6 weeks in, and done with the content, I mean there are only so many parcels to deliver, so many arrays to repair, so many pirates to kill, so many dead spacefarers to find until it gets stale
And the only reason it has taken that long was because of the bugs and lack of stability
"But it's only alpha" is a platitude I'll only swallow up to a certain point, sure, anything new is bound to cause some issues, you fix them asap so they don't remain PERSISTENT issues
Jumping throwing off the character coordinates getting you temporarily stuck. and speaking of jumping:
having to jump through hoops like a circus animal just to get a parcel in (if it doesn't end up 260m below the surface when doing so), in a ship that has been flying for 4 years already?
Unresponsive NPCs, missions that give no starting point, unstable connection and game crashes
And for the love of everything digital: The elevators at Levski are so bloody unreliable, it took me less than 2 weeks to nickname it "Gulagski", because when you go there, there is no way of telling when you ever are able to get out
(props to the players, there's usually a constant stream of guys willing to ferry stuck players to the other ship retrieval stations, of course no word from the developers so far)
Now after getting bored with the missions, I figured I'd try towards upgrading my ship, ...sure, the next patch everything will be back to zero, but it would give me something to do
So I had the option of going into Arena Commander and earn REC to rent gear/ships for 24 hours, or (what I thought) a more 'permanent' option: to buy components available in the PU
I figured I'd try that and at least enjoy the "fruit of my labors" until the next patch came along
Well, no such luck, after a repetitive grind with many bugs and crashes, I bought a shield upgrade, only to see it gone from my inventory the next day, a small round of questions:
Answer: "yeah the upgrades are currently bugged, better not bother with it
...well why keep it implemented at the moment if it doesn't work anyway!?!?! (mind you, this was on the volunteer helpdesk, I won't fault these guys for being bearers of apathetic news)
As it is, I suspect the developers suffer from "New Puppy Syndrome" where every new thing is hugged, shown off and lauded, until the novelty wears off and it comes to upkeep and it becomes a chore and they get tired of it real fast
Not only that, but I think that until the money coming in from pledges starts drying up, they won't be in much of a hurry to ever go live
(hell some people pledged on concept ships years ago and still waiting on a flyable result, I guess new money is better than old money)
Sure, maybe I've been spoiled by titles as World of Warcraft, that had tremendous amount of content and a vast open world after 4 years of development at release
(and early on switched to its own engine instead of the WC3 one, whereas SC only switched to another already existing engine) and only $63m budget
Or Cliffs of dover, where a bunch of enthusiasts turned a buggy unfinished mess (based on its OWN engine, to which they had no access I might add) into a working game for thanks and peanuts
But really, if this is what the SC developers can deliver in that allotted time and with a budget many AAA titles can only dream of, I'm having a hard time trusting this will end well for those backing it
and I feel that those that religiously keep defending everything are stuck in the "Sunk cost fallacy"
I'll poke my head back in after they redesigned my current ship end of the year (Filled with bugs, I'm sure), but for now, so much for "Exploring the game", because there's simply nothing left to explore
except perhaps finding out the breaking point of the amount of bugs and crashes needed before I melt my ship and free up 40 Gb of SSD space for Transport tycoon Savegames
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