while a ludicrous excuse, it also doesnt address the fact that gravity doesnt play any roll at all on anything anywhere in the game.

it also doesnt explain why, if i had a suit that could alter gravity to such an extent...do i need a jet pack...or why i am constantly taking fall damage.

right...the suit is so incredibly advanced and able to alter gravity in such a way as to completely counteract the gravity on any planet anywhere and make it so they seem all exactly the same, but it cant notice my ship let me off a bit to high and so i broke my ankle getting out.

seems legit.

Let's agree to disagree. Truth be told, what's the point of slowing down movement on a planet when I already do everything possible to 'speed up' movement anyway (i.e. the bash-sprint)? Although, if we use game lore, we could assume that the 3 remaining advanced species (by themselves or via another power), have already terraformed gravity to a standard. Or, we can just assume the universe was made especially for travelers, and knows what grav to apply to the seed numbers.

Anyway, as with all things about sales/product, it boils down to the lowest common denominator (or biggest possible audience). Survey says: "7 of 10 space explorers want X,Y,Z." Maybe mods can tweak gravity afterwards for the 1 of 5 people who may want gravity variation.

First sentence = The Suit...second sentence = WTF...why am I taking damage!!! Agreed!

Those are good points too - but there are some almost invisible mechanical things on the.. side of the colour spectrum the toxic planets are, etc. It seems awfully consistent for being random(like someone wanted to use the spectrum bars in a system's sun to predict what minerals and gases likely would be there, etc - before someone added plutonium to everything.. which.. even if it was just some rock that contains a couple of fissible pu, would make every single system in the game glow, since it should also be full of radioactive isotopes with much shorter half-lives, that would still exist in massively larger quantities). And frosty planets have ice-ish transitions, different approach to fog and so on than hot planets. So they're using this for something, even if it's not extremely striking, or even there on every planet.

And I think this says a lot about HG as a developer: they happily put in a bunch of extra variables as long as it means something technically, in the sense that they sort of use it. But don't care all that much if adding something only affects the presentation.

Unfortunately, it also means they're setting themselves up for being cut apart when Sony gets involved: "I don't see why that helps the presentation after two minutes of playing, cut it out of the game please. There's a possibility that you might get stuck without ammo or fuel and have to hunt for ingredients - add more rescue material so the flow is uninterrupted! Give me ice-cream and chickenwings!".

Or, what it looks like is they design an engine, and then make the game happen while running around in it. Instead of what normally (sort of) happens, that you create the main character, and then design the game around them.

And yeah, no studios with design philosophies like that really exist now. Psygnosis, Particle Systems.. not really all that much more. It's all about hooking off bullet-points to make up a "legitimately persistent world", right? Instead of having something actually consistent, that may be somewhat flawed, but - still generated from properly created rules.

well....does that not prove my point? all im saying is it doesnt sound like it would have been as difficult to do as people seem to think. the basic mechanic is already in the game.

i understand if it was omitted as purely a design choice (i mean i disagree, but i understand), but people seem to think that it would have just been too difficult to do...i dont see why one would think that. they already do it with other things in the game.

Yeah, no problem seeing that. And you're absolutely right, no doubt it's technically possible to add some quake-style low-gravity very easily.

But I think with the way they've approached this, they wouldn't do any of the player-sphere only additions if it wasn't somehow based on a variable in the existing universe. So that from their point of view, it really isn't "something they can do". Or, if they haven't had some gravity variable affect the entire universe, they wouldn't think of adding a personal sphere effect as really including gravity at all.

Seems to me this is a pretty consistent thread through the entire thing.

I guess.. a bit of a paradox.. butI really appreciate that for the sake of immersion. Or, for me it's always easier to accept game-world rules that make no sense, as long as they are consistent, and all things in the game obey them as if they were real. Up to a point, and so on. But to have a virtual world that blatantly tries to trick you into believing it's real - in a specific, very narrow situation, up to exactly two cm away from your nose. Never liked that idea. Because it's shallow, and it requires you to suspend disbelief by holding it up by yourself anyway.

For example, if gravity was really strong, then shouldn't you fall down on the planet faster when you fly down? Shouldn't you spend more fuel, at the very least? Shouldn't we be pulled down from orbit, what about all the asteroids.. etc. (Same as with the rotation - no rotation means the gravity on all the planets should be really high. Things like that). Those kinds of consistency problems break disbelief very effectively for some of us.

Some games pull it the other way on purpose - just starting out with the philosophy that it doesn't matter if your opponents obey different rules, or they shoot you behind rocks because they smell you, or something. Because the hero can take five bullets to the head without dying, and heal themselves by eating an apple, and so on. So the whole heroic avatar thing becomes how the design is consistent. To the point where I was told by a completely serious publishing spawn guy that games where all objects obey the same rules as you are difficult to understand, and require too much visualization by the player.

Basically, I'm imagining his ideal game as a series of gimmicks strung together. And he imagines my ideal game as some sort of weird game where you can't win against the AI.

But the other approach really is a design-philosophy that is as outdated as.. you know.. waiting two weeks after the release until the next PC Gamer comes out so you can read the review, etc. Or else take a chance and bet your money on the cover-art. Because that's not how things work any more, supposedly. :)

The thing with gravity is how far do you take the concept? Egosoft (another small team) did well in their latest X-games by including planetary motion in their latest engine. but there is still no landing on planets there

You have a high-G planet. It should orbit close (to primary) out to mid-distance in its solar system (unless it's eccentric or captured rogue) & contain lots of heavy minerals. Life is likely to be sparse if existent, despite the planet having an atmosphere (due to its hi-G). Medium to high radiation from the heavy elements in the crust/core. It will be hot due to atmospheric pressure & likely to be subject to frequent extreme storms, cutting down fauna possibilities. It may be large

You have a low-G planet . It should orbit in an medium to outer ring of its system (unless eccentric or captured rogue). It's unlikely to have retained an atmosphere, therefore likely to be a high radiation environment. It will be cold. Life is likely to be non-existent (no atmosphere) but if it does exist it will be flora only (lichen, etc). It will probably be small

So there you have it: 2 typical planets generated with gravity. They may be good for mining but not much else :(

However, a more pressing concern for me is that the diurnal cycle remains constant: every 'day' last the same amount of time, no matter which planet you're on..Don't get me started on lack of seasonal variety, or lack of tides on liquid-bearing planets with moons..

All they had to do was a little number testing.
Max upgraded jetpack versus what they want min gravity to be, can achieve a max of Y height. So if they say wanted you to be able to go no higher than the low cloud layer, that is the absolute min gravity they could have given any world.
Next would have been a check against minimum speed they would allow the player. Once they decided those values, boom, they have their gravity range.
Really a simple concept.
I agree it would have added quite a bit to the game.

Now, it may have been too complex for their animal and drone AI to handle variable gravity.

BTW - did you know with unlimited jetpack fuel, you can go through the solar system from planet out into space.
You can't leave the force fielded space station though. :(