this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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Honest question I have been wondering:
Why SC out of all the space sim/sandbox games? Is there anything that this game has that no other game provides? Something about the community, a combination of features, gameplay loop or something else?
There are hundreds of games in that genre but many people obviously like SC so much that they are willing to spend larger amounts of money on it. I really wonder what it is exactly or if it's just the general feel that game has. It's not an easy question to answer from an outside perspective, its hard finding anything about SC at all except about its monitisation.
And again: I'm genuinely curious and not judging. People can like whatever game they want and spend as much money as they are willing to part with. I have often searched for an answer to this, but most articles/videos either say "expensive crap" if they don't like it or don't go beyond "it's a space sim" if they do.
Thanks for asking a question and not immediately bashing my opinion! It's not a common response I get with this game.
For me, SC as a space sim offers more of the "sim" than any other game. For example, my recent favorite gameplay loop is being a rescue medic. I have a cutlass red, which is red, has ambulance-like lights, and a med bay. I get kitted up with red armor, healing supplies and tools, and lots of extra food and water. Plus a few guns because whatever injured people is likely going to try to get me too.
Once all the shopping is done, I load up my cutlass red and wait for someone to submit a rescue beacon. (they can do this when rendered unconscious with a single key press) Once I get one, I speed over (I have equipped a very inefficient but very fast warp drive) and extract them or heal them on the spot if possible, and clear out any enemies in the mean time.
This is some of the most satisfying and rewarding gameplay I've ever experienced. Because it's not a level someone designed, it's pure emergent gameplay with extremely heavy simulation roots. There is no teleporting in and out of ships. Every door in the ship has a little button I have to press to open it. I have to stay hydrated. The little things add to it. It all comes together to make some of the best content I've ever experienced.
And the people I save are genuinely grateful. It takes time and effort to buy a whole new set of armor and weapons and such, so I'm saving them all that time and money, and while obviously not as impactful as actually saving a life, it makes it much much more gratifying than, say, resurrecting someone in planetside or squad or something.
That's just one type of gameplay. But the principle is the same with other gameplay loops. It's the most in-depth space simulation I can get right now. Sure, some other games are more polished, have better ship combat, run better (okay ALL of them run better), etc. But none of them have everything that SC does, with the level of realism that SC does, with the in-instance ship interiors that SC does.
As far as buying ships goes, honestly I just like big ships. I used to climb on tractors when I was a little kid. They were so much bigger than me and just looking at them filled me with a sense of awe. This game does the same. I have spent quite a bit on it over the years, but only $10 or $30 here and there, to upgrade existing ships to others. You can trade in ships for other ships, melt them down for store credit, use that to get different ships. I've had so many ships just from swapping them around and every time I spend money it's just the price of ordering out, for a lot more enjoyment than I'd get from a pizza. It eventually added up to several hundred dollars and it was personally worth it for me to feel that amazing feeling of exploring what is essentially a mobile skyscraper or a hot rod or an ambulance or a fortress of destruction. You can earn most of these in game as well. But it's easier to get that dopamine hit immediately for the price of an unhealthy meal haha. Now that I have that much money invested, it's still "liquid" in that I can melt down my ships at any time and basically buy any currently purchasable ship immediately with no additional money spent.
Edit: since you mentioned community, the SC community is pretty like-minded. The people I save often go on to be my friends and play with me sometimes. Everyone is very nice. The most toxicity I ever see are people who join the game and shit on it, while insulting everyone else who plays it, then most likely leave and uninstall. These are people who think the game is a scam, maybe they're original kickstart backers who are just mad about the game or even just bought it to ride on the hate train. (being mad after backing the kickstarter is a valid stance, but I'm not going to get into that here. The only invalid stance is believing other people shouldn't enjoy the game.) The people who ACTUALLY play it regularly already know what they're getting into. They have no illusions about what this game is, and because of that they end up being one of the most welcoming communities of any game I've played. Everyone's just here to have fun with cool space ships and each other.
Disclaimer: I agree that SC is a burning pile of spaghetti code that will likely never be finished. I agree that they made promises in the kickstarter that they did not fulfill. I know you can buy thousands of dollars worth of in-game ships for an incomplete game. It will likely never finish. Yet I still play the game. And it's really fun! Come play with me some time :)
This is actually one of the changes I like least. I love survival games (one of my favourite games ever is Wurm Online/Wurm Unlimited and it's hardcore) and play modded Arma so I know how fun this level of immersion can be, but it just feels awful in SC. Stock up on snacks and water, go to warp to mission, get sucked out of the ship. Ok start the recall timer... get the ship back, load it up again, warp out and back, can't rearm or refuel. Welp junk all my stuff again and relog because nothing but my running costs are persistent (nuking any semblance of immersion). Warp timers clocking 20 minutes? Yep you're playing SC. Guy hotdrops on you while you're trying to have fun and blows your ship up before you can even see him coming? Very immersive, especially because you know he got nothing out of it other than the satisfaction that you didn't get to have fun.
Adding food and health bars while none of this rest of this works right feels like shit.
Yeah I can agree that it sucks major ass right now. The idea is cool, but it does get very annoying when re-buying stuff after dealing with bugs. One change that could fix all of this is getting to take out insurance on not just your ship, but your ship and everything in it (not including, like, ore or something. Only stuff you can buy.). So if I ever claim a ship, I could make that specific ship come with a specific set of armor, specific personal guns, ammo, medical supplies, and even food and water.
I do like shopping for stuff. But if I already know what I'm buying, especially if it's the same stuff every time, I'd like my ship to come with it.
On a side note, drinking while in the pilot seat should be automatic, or at least very easy. I get so thirsty just sitting in my seat flying or idling/waiting.
But the idea of having to tend to bodily needs is something I definitely agree with and think is fun for a simulation, at the base level.
Edit: on many of the bigger ships, like the mercury star runner, there should certainly be waste recycling to provide you with water. It has toilets. It's meant to sustain life for a long time. It has a bed and a fridge. There's no reason to not let the ship help keep us hydrated.
Modern astronauts can drink while in their suits, why is this an issue in Star Citizen? It makes no sense.
I agree with you in concept, but I think certain suits wouldn't make sense with that functionality. The skin-tight EVA suits with the small helmets, that have just a few minutes of oxygen I feel wouldn't have the room/capability to allow the user to eat/drink hands-free. But there are several suits that are bigger, and designed for extended exploration sessions that have tons of oxygen storage and larger helmets/built-in backpacks that would absolutely have other life support like food/water built-in.
The smaller suits are designed just in case you need to EVA, and many ships have dining areas so you can pop the helmet off and enjoy a meal in comfort.
Well, thanks for that in-depth answer. It's nice to talk about the actual contets of a game for once, instead of only talking around it like it's usually the case nowadays.
It's very interesting to hear about all this. I actually think there are a lot of games with far worse monetisation (think all the Airplane/Train simulators where you can buy singular vehicles for hundreds of dollars).
I'll probably won't play it tho, I don't have the money, Conputing Power, or time lol
Yeah time is a big one. It definitely requires time and patience to actually get to the good gameplay sometimes.
That's a great observation about you hanging out around tractors as a kid and having that sense of awe. I had a similar thing as a kid with my grandpa working on semis and old cars. I really hope they do pull the game off despite my brain telling me this is all a house of cards. But exploring ships and space is so damn fun, this is the closest game to that. Tried all the X games and Elite and everything in between and SC, broke as it is, still has me holding out hope. At the very least if they never make it to a full release I hope someone else tries something similar. Starfield is fun but not scratching the same itch.
I haven't played much of it, but what I can say about why I bought the game: Big space ships with interiors (most space sims really just give you a cockpit view) and the game looked cool. I paid $60 for it years ago and hop in it every now and again. You hear all about the monetization aspect of it and it's not really been a problem for me since it doesn't impact me in any way.