Herrick: I'm enjoying the game so far but there are some legitimate criticisms. Right now the game is scoring so low because of technical difficulties. Many people aren't even able to play the game to find out if it's good or not.
That's.. probably not far off.
I'm just.. having some trouble with the criticisms people seem to have. One thing is: "I don't see the point, I don't want to go to space, space is stupid". That's fine. Or, were you looking for a scripted series of missions, with film-like cutscenes between the battles determining things in the next few missions - sure, I can see why you're disappointed. Were you looking for tension in the transportation segments, in planning the journey, managing resources - I can see why you were disappointed. Were you looking for newtonian physics, ship maneuvers that sometimes require a manual touch and an autopilot override to avert disaster, along with careful planning to solve the strategic encounters, etc. Or deep story-telling that pursues you across the universe, convincing you at every point that there are entire populated worlds going about their business around you when you log off and turn off the game, etc.
Then I can see why you would say things like: well, I liked this aspect of that other game better, and think it would be a better space-exploration game if similar elements were added. Or maybe you look at something in the game and say: inside this design, for this obviously overpopulated genre in space-exploration games *cough* then this particular function, with different layers to how the factions work and how the missions could be set up, would do a lot to increase the depth of the game, etc. That would make sense.
What I don't see is why someone would sincerely describe how they play the game, and prove forever that they have absolutely no imagination, and then complain because, for example:
1. ship and suit inventory is too small.
-Why wouldn't you complain about that the amount of mining grind you would need to go through with is a bit weird instead. I.e., if you have such and such many slots, you should be able to hold just the resources needed to get the ship moving to the next system. That's sort of the point. Why would anyone say: I want more slots so I can earn twice as many credits (which is 10% of the price of an antimatter unit), so i don't have to /throw away resources I spent five hours collecting/.
You know, who says that? Who plays a game and goes mining a planet hollow, and then demand more backpack space so they can haul their loot up to the space-station to get more space-currency? It's bonkers. If you made an economic argument for this, then you'd say that the difficulty of hauling elements up into space is so high that I'm going to raise the prices of my services, you greedy Gek ****!
2. Procedural elements are repetitive.
-Yes. That's correct. The question is if the variety that emerges in the game is entertaining to you in spite of that. Does it ruin your immersion that similar leaves turn up on a flower at a planet five galaxies away? Or does it amuse you to gawking distraction that you get to visit a water-planet where everything is green, because it's being illuminated by a nebula refracting the nearest sun at a completely random angle that happens to give that light spectrum prominence? Does it amuse you that you can look up in the sky and fly to the moon because you liked the look of it when the sun set? Because that's how this stuff works.
3. Gameplay isn't procedural, only the world is. So it's a design flaw.
-sort of valid enough. From a design point of view, you would perhaps ideally want, or even just imagine, that your procedurally generated games had procedural story-elements. That when you go to a "key location", then that key location is actually random, that the thread of the conversation is procedural depending on earlier events, and that all locations should be melted into the scenery.
So when NMS has the same buildings on every planet, and all the races act the same way, even though they look different, etc. Then that can be repetitive. No problem seeing that.
On the other hand, when you're uncovering this, what you're going to be spying eventually (I think) is that there's a reason why all the tech is the same across the universe, and that they all lead to one place. There's something they want to tell us about exploration, solving the riddles of the ancients, and free will that is described well by that aspect of the game.
So the valid criticism involved here is that the way you interact with the aliens and how the origin stories are meted out is more obviously linear than the overall universe is.
And the way to improve on that is to complete a feat in interactive art that has never been attempted before.
Or, according to reddit, to make all the guns look more different. Could be either way.
Point is, the complaining is /made to sound/ more reasonable than it is. And it's pretty annoying to read. Specially when the way I play the game is basically about launching out of the atmosphere, rolling the viewport around to face the surface. And then boosting to another planet.
I mean, it's just something so unbelievably solid they've done here, there's no need to excuse bad flight or horrible controls to say: but at least you get to visit the stars. It's just that densely populated with interesting stuff. All the navigation to the next galaxy, all the gradual distance from the first time you run around in the suit, to when you warp for the first time - it's conducted so well and so thoroughly it just defies any expectation I had.
But no, it should be more like Elite and Borderlands. Like I said - I understand why people stop making creative games eventually, when you have to listen to crap like that.
