💾 Archived View for paritybit.ca › arboretum › opinions › video-games.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 02:57:30. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I own the Horizons expansion but not Odyssey (for which the launch was a disappointing mess). I do find some aspects of the game fun; the graphics are pretty, the ship models are beautiful, and exploring the universe can be fun and rewarding. However, I found that the game doesn't have anywhere near enough depth or detail to keep me engaged. Most of the professions got stale and felt repetitive after a while. Most of the gameplay feels grindy and the game world feels kind of empty because things are procedurally generated and the world is so large that seeing another player is really rare outside of the super heavily populated systems.
I often find myself asking: "Why am I even doing this?" when I launch it and start to explore or trade or gather some rare material to upgrade my ship. I don't see much of a point because I'm just grinding these things for me and there's no overarching story or goal I'm working towards. The game might be multiplayer, but there isn't anywhere near enough of an adequate framework to facilitate socialization or bonding with your fellow players unless you want to join some Discord servers or forums. Unlike EVE Online, Elite Dangerous really doesn't feel like an MMO, it feels like a singleplayer game that your friends can join in occasionally for co-op play.
It's a game that was revolutionary at its time and a game that many astronomy/spaceship enthusiasts will likely enjoy, but to me it feels kind of shallow and pointless, especially when your friends don't want to accompany you for idle jumping from star system to star system or the hundredth identical bounty hunting mission. Even the "space trucking simulator" aspects are dull compared to Euro Truck Simulator 2 or similar games.
I think the game could be improved by including more social aspects: making it easier to find and play with a group of players, allowing groups to have their own bases (more than the money-sink fleet carriers) or manufacturing facilities, and possibly even allowing them to control/manage a system or two. That would go a long way to making the more grindy aspects of the game feel like they have a purpose and make the game feel much more worthwhile, but I suspect the game is not built to facilitate this.
In contrast to Elite Dangerous, I only recently got into and purchased Star Citizen. So far, despite bugs and the occasional crash, it has been really fun to play and explore. I went into it not only with the knowledge that it is still in alpha and that I can expect bugs, but also that, because it is in alpha, there are going to be wipes of the things you own (your character, your money, etc.) which means that I play with the goal of exploring and having fun instead of having some kind of pressure to get up to the level the other players are at.
Star Citizen offers an experience that isn't like any other game on the market at the moment. It offers a combination of the multiplayer aspects of EVE Online, the exploration and profession (i.e. trading, bounty hunting, mining, etc.) aspects of Elite Dangerous, with the first person gameplay aspects of No Man's Sky in a setting that is more detailed than all of those other games combined. It is, in essence, the kind of space exploration era game I've been wanting to play since I got into games like Kerbal Space Program and EVE Online.
The game is currently lacking mechanics that drive the player to do things. There isn't really a point to grinding to make a bunch of money unless you want to own/use/explore a ship that you don't own (but you can do this once or twice a year during the global Invictus and Intergalactic Aerospace Expo events) or unless you want to practice your skills. Once a new player is done exploring all the game has to offer, it generally becomes a sandbox where various guilds organize things like races, combat scenarios, PvP tournaments, or just roleplay as paramedics or bounty hunters. More is slowly being added to the game to bring a purpose to players' actions, and more is being done to facilitate emergent PvP and co-op gameplay over time, so it's still worth revisiting every few months to see what is new until core gameplay loops take hold.
Finally, although the pace of development has felt very slow, it does seem to be picking up as the development team finalizes core engine components and they finally seem to have figured out exactly what they want the game to be. (Yes, it took a long time to get to that point, but it is what it is.)
When this game came out it was the spiritual successor to the much beloved Sim City 4 and was beloved by fans of the City Builder genre worldwide, myself included. I've played many hours vanilla, I've modded the game to the point that it made my computer run out of free memory (the Unity Engine seems to have a memory management problem), and have built many cities from scratch. I also own a large number of the DLCs available for the game. I can confidently say that it is a fun and engaging city builder and a fan of the genre will most likely enjoy playing for many hours. However, the vanilla game does leave me wanting for more.
Although the game is made by a European game studio, it seems that the cities they have you build are very North American (i.e. bad) in design. There is a lack of mixed-use zoning/buildings, mixed infrastructure beyond roads that either have a bike or a bus lane, and detailed traffic management. The game needs heavy modding to add these, and it's a ton of work to do so, but ultimately worth it when you can make a well-designed city that doesn't have traffic jams everywhere because the AI only seems to ever want to use one lane.
Despite its issues (which are largely fixed by mods and some time and effort), it is a pretty good game. I'd love to see a lot of what the mods have added with regards to mixed use/modern city building in whatever the next iteration of the game is but, if you're willing to put in the time and effort (and have enough RAM), the modded experience is great.