Who has already thrown away money for this game and bought an expensive computer, I invite to our server in the discord https://discord.gg/g2a9qHyh ,
I have no plans now about this game, although it is installed, most of my friends have lost interest in this game.
After the citizen con stuff, the StarEngine demo, and the s42 trailer, I'm actually pretty excited for the game. We are supposedly going to see S42 come within the next year as it is feature-complete, and the MMO mode of the game should also be updated alongside that.
However, right now the game's already impressive in my opinion.
Visually, it is absolutely unmatched. There is no space game that gets anywhere close, except maybe Everspace 1/2 - but it's not quite there. None of these other space games can really measure up to Star Citizen's level of detail, and the multiplayer possibilities of its engine. After all, Star Citizen is an MMO game, which completely changes the technical context. It's not just about the single player Squadron game. If it was only that, it would've been far simpler and I wouldn't really care about a 30h single-player game experience anyway. It's just a nice bonus on the side to the main dish - a long-term MMO space experience.
Having that said, I tried the game right now on patch 3.22 and I had the chance to fly in a medium fighter, as well as a big freighter and also the biggest salvaging ship, currently.
They've really got something special in their hands, and flying already feels fantastic. You can seamlessly enter planet atmospheres and then the physics change as well, so your ship starts behaving in an entirely different way based on the context, following a Newtonian physics model, or pretty close to it. It's also quite an amazing experience to enter your hangar and see a massive ship waiting for you - like a C2, or a reclaimer. The scale of the game is mind-blowing and you get to experience it in moments like that.
Trading, mining, salvaging, bounty hunting and pirating, and FPS combat missions are already existing game loops in the game, although it does feel bare bones (parallel to already having tons of depth, though). But it is already possible to participate in such gameplay if you wanted to, and everything they have added so far has immense levels of detail put into it. It feels "real" in a sense, and you can start to tell why everything takes them a long time to make. I've seen some pretty funny pirating clips, and the way piracy works is pretty funny in general with a lot of potential for "emergent gameplay", where unexpected stuff might happen just out of the game's engine and how everything works. The way trading works is interesting, as all cargo is in real boxes, and you have tractor beam tools to move the boxes around. You can disable an enemy ship, forcefully open their cargo bay, and then extract the boxes while floating in open space, out of the enemy ship and into your own cargo bay. Later on, you can sell the stolen cargo on black markets (like on a pirate base), or just do legal trading, or legal wreck salvaging, mining, ground base raiding, or bounty hunting. Most of these can involve PvP as well.
Still, the game is also a buggy mess, and feels super janky at times, yet it has gone a long way since I last checked it out some years ago. At this point, I can see the potential in it, and everything they showed at the citizen con events looked amazing. At one point there will be DLSS/FSR too, which should instantly boost performance for a ton of people.
Most importantly, what they showed in the con events was just insane. The level of detail continues to increase with everything. They are adding destructible surfaces, and deeper physical interaction (for example water reacts to the engines of ships if they get close to it, and two ships crashing results in a convincing explosion and physical interaction). These are just some of the minor changes, but over time it keeps adding up into probably the most detailed game ever - to the point where it feels enjoyable to simply fly your ship and take in the view.
I've been a backer since 2014 and at one point I entirely stopped waiting for the game, so it's nice to see that things are actually happening and development is getting ramped up. I rather have a good game eventually rather than never, and it's crazy how in the last 20 years we've seen pretty much ZERO games that can champion the online space game genre (excluding games in other sub-genres like Eve online, of course). You know, since Freelancer, there just never was anything like it besides everspace and underspace - both of which are completely single-player experiences.
My recommendation is to watch out for the progress of the game over 2024, maybe it will cross a threshold and we'll have something good on our hands.
