this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2023
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The problem is that the game fell flat even on a lot of basic expectations, especially exploration.
When you first arrive on a new star, you're automagically orbiting the "most important planet", if it has one. Without doing anything other than arriving, you already know all the inorganic resources of every planet and moon around that star (you don't know where, but you already know it's there without a scan). Not only that, you know which planets have abandoned mines or settlements and where. While flying in orbit, if "nothing happens" in the first 10 seconds, nothing will happen, period. POI in space all have to be fast traveled to.
It manages to be worse than NMS where the parallel is obvious, like in scanning fauna/flora, where you activate the scanner, point and click and call it day. But do it 8 times just to say it's different.
Shipbuilding is fun, but the fucked that up by locking many parts behind two different skills, Piloting and Starship Design. It really feels like something they did because they couldn't figure a way to balance the economy around ship prices. They could've made it so that you get access to better parts by completing faction missions, that'd give actual reason for the players to do them other than sheer curiosity, but nope, spend precious skill points to get better ship parts!
This game is a pile of bad design decisions on top of more bad design decisions and whether the company is AAA or not is irrelevant. Bad implementation, aka errors and bugs, is a matter of coding. Bad design is a matter of direction, or lack thereof.
And upgrades locked behind levels, plus not having all parts at all shipyards (or even all parts of one brand at their main location).
i agree that the exploration outside of the main areas is very sparce, but i think its important to cosider thats is what was promised, and the lore backs it up. i liked the hand-crafted areas a lot but outside of those areas tends to feel like NMS with a couple generic things to do every some often. but i still enjoyed building my bases and running in a circle around them destorying all abandon factories with rando baddies i could find.
i agree the fact that they are a AAA studio is irrelevant, but most people do judge things differently when considering this. its too often i see people praising indie games that i eventually try and hate. but i dont freak out and call it terrible, i stop playing. and i see well made AAA games that i greatly enjoy get review bombed for defending there design decisions which were based of what the designers consider fun.
but i dont agree that they made a "pile" of bad decisions. Again i think they were trying to make a fun game and most of the designer probably enjoyed playing it before releasing. but the majority of people who thought bethesda was making "their" dream space shooter didn't like it so know bethesda is evil for some reason. i liked this game, i will play the dlc, and likely replay it.
I agree that the skill-locked purchase of physical equipment is garbage but I found myself sticking on the question of if you got the 'de-facto' best ship part for each category because you had the relevant skill.
Like some quest is occuring and, in dialogue, you have a choice locked by being the most-skilled pilot and choosing it leads to one set of the best ship parts. How does that flow? Does that read as the same thing, or is it more enjoyable now as a reward for character build?
You got my idea wrong
I meant that, as a reward for finishing a quest, or series of quests, the ship parts become available. It's not "choose to get a ship part during the quest", it's "complete quest, vendors now sell new stuff".
For instance, completing mission 4 of the UC Vanguard opens up B class parts because "congratulations, we're promoting you" or, given how that questline flows, "We're promoting you because things are getting dangerous and you need access to the extra stuff". Completing the final mission unlocks C class parts. But those are only at the Deimos Staryards, since they're the sole contractor for UC. It wouldn't make sense to complete their questline and also get access to FC's B and C class ship parts, for that you'd have to complete their Freestar Ranger questline. That's the idea.