Ok here is my report from SC 3.9 and 3.10 as i spent nearly 50 hours over past days toying with it.
The Ugly:
- stability, game crashes every 2-3 hours like in clockwork. Even if server won't crash something else will force you to restart game. Elevators panels won't work, interaction menu will stop randomly working, mining laser will stop working for some reason, your ship will just decide to stop giving you signal until you re-seat yourself, you will fall through the floor of buildings, doors will stop working. Basically everything connected with bigger cities will eventually lead to some big or crash. Game is pretty stable in space itself and on planets there you can play for whole 2-3 hours before server crashes completely.
- 50 people per system atm. If you want MMO for now it is more like co-op game at best.
- Playing co-op will incrase amount of bugs you will encounter. I was playign with some dude 3 days and once i stopped playing with him most of my bugs stopped occuring. Definitely some sync issues fuckery.
- performance. I have Ryzen3600+GTX980+16GB ram and in cities you get at best 30-40-50fps something even going to 20s. Moreover pure framerate does not tell whole story, frametime is all ovder the place and you get frequent stutters. Not ending this train game actually requires more than 16GB of ram and i had to set page file on SSD to 20GB to stop a lot of crashes. Game at peak in some cities uses 22GB of RAM+pagefile. Performance in space is a lot better hitting 60fps easily and superb in single player Arena commander which is non server bot match reaching 100fps+. If you think train will stop you are wrong. This performance in cities can't be countered with better hardware because most of that is due to servers being overloaded. When you get to actually fresh server you can hit 50-60fps in cities but as servers go they lose performance over time and they eventually crash. 2080Ti gives you same performance same as using better CPU. Only 32GB ram seems to give some meaningful changes since it helps with game stability.
- due to instability it is hard to progress in game. There were multiple occasions where i earned like 100k in few hours to later on lose it because game just decided to crash where i spend 100k to buy cargo worth of goods, spend 2 hours mining in some cave to get randomly stuck in wall, chained few delivery missions for last mission to stop working randomly breaking rest of missions as well as all of them had same destination point. Basically if your mission is longer than 15-20 minutes then you are risking losing time.
The Bad:
- Clunk around every corner. No feature is in state that you could call "gold" standard. There is always something. Character movement looks great ? Then you get stuck in something. Weapons look amazing and feel great ? Suddenly you can't fire a gun. Clothing system looks fun ? It stops working randomly or you putting on gear takes literally several seconds. Buying stuff from shops via interactive menu ? It stops working or you need to wait like 20 seconds before it will respond. Requesting landing zone ? Hangar doors just close before you can put ship in hangar and you need to redo it. I don't think there is sinle feature that is in gold standard.
- You can feel throughout game how features were deployed and then dropped. Elevator system based on "inner thought" system ? There is new city that doesn't use that anymore. Quick buy system in shops. Some ship vary widely how they are made. Freelancer hatchback door doesn't have any button near it so you click on door to open it while Drake ship has button near doors so you click button (though you can still click on doors and open them this way)
- Mission rewards are clearly "work in progress" and yet CIG actually cares if players make too much money doing something. Generally i am from larpers kind where i don't like to cheat my way to end game but the idea here is that this is WIP and it "doesn't matter" that something doesn't work but CIG frequently patches or changes missions if someone makes too much money. Clearly bullshit because they want that $$$ rolling and they can't allow someone to get all ships in a week. Most of rewards also don't make much sense. In 3.9 delivery missions had some randomness to them so taking FLT ones were longer but you got more dough and you could string few of them if you are smart. In 3.10 they scrapped deliveries in that form and introduced only 2 types of delivery either pick up 3 packages and deliver to 1 destination or get to 3 destiantions pick up packages and deliver to 1 destination all of them all for same kind of money regardless if those places are near or far. Finding missing person in cave ? Takes literally hour of searching and you get measly 4k for it. Combat missions wary more widely for now. Combine that with crashing and you get really annoying mix of low paying stuff + wasting time repeating missions.
- Updates that break stuff. 3.9 i played for 2-3 days was much more stable than 3.10. 3.10 is crashfest. Moreover most of bugs come from stuff that didn't have any problem before like elevator panels just work 50% of the time that used to work perfectly in 3.9 or hand mining which worked perfectly in 3.9 now has ton of bugs etc.
The Good:
- Remember 90s MMOs/Games ? where sky was the limit and people dared to dream even if they failed and half of the stuff didn't work ?, creating often impossible stuff no one though was possible ? Player driven economies, complexity behind everything, system on systems running systems, autism united, open world size of england etc etc etc. SC definitely feels like that. It does not feel at all like product of some focus team and experienced hero-engine MMO devs who don't know anything other than how to make next WOW clone. Yes it is buggy and shit doesn't work most of the time but under that manure there is that drive. Part of the reason why i completely quit playing multi games is because around WOW release every multiplyer game started to feel the same and as time progressed everything was copied to the point where people were already using "raids" and terminology so dead set that you wouldn't be able to tell that they are talking about different games. It is when SC finally works without hitching doing some quest with 2-3 people that game shows you why people spend money on this despite shitty press 24/7. If it will be actually released in finished form without bugs before they run out of money or Chris will run away with money this will be groundbreaking game. You can "feel it" when game works and all of those little things come together even currently with still features missing.
- Proper take on MMultiplayerO. Remember that time when MMO used to mean that you had to team up because playing alone was sometimes just impossible ? Well Star Citizen takes none of modern MMO cues. Yes you can play solo but if you go to bigger ship you just have to take other players to fly with you, like mining operation where few people work together in one ship or few are flying scouting area while few are mining. I had many occasions where i just wanted to have second pilot just in case i would get attacked by other player or pirates so that turret on my ship would be force multiplayer. Due to how damage and health system works for FPS part of game you also have to get people to do some missions as few bullets can take you out while dudes can finish mission and give you part of money. There are still some hickups when it comes to multi gaming like second pilot/third have issues with controling ship systems in some ships but idea is great and it really feels like old MMOs where you actually had to interact with people. With 3.10 you can send people money so it is not unusually to just hop onto someone ship and work there as crewmate for money. It works and it is one of strongest aspects of game even if rest of the stuff is broken. There are people who play pirates and threat to destroy your cargo ship if you don't pay their toll, there are people who will give you and escort etc.
- Missions variety. There are not a lot of missions right now but what is there is pretty varied from attacking ground base first by taking out AA defense and then occupiers to some DHL like missions with you juggling those boxes in most efficient way. The point is that they are great way segway into playign with group of friends. So for example that base attack mission, you load up your Drake with 5-6 people take 2 more for pilot and turret and first you attack with it from air and then you land and 5-6 people go to occupy base killing people inside then you take them up with ship and fly away. Or take 3-4 people with you to space combat where you with them work a team to defeat multiple opponents.
- Presentation. This game is best looking game i have ever seen. Simple as that. I can never get bored just flying around planets looking at vistas and there are every now and then moment where you just stop and appreciate details or vista. You can't get tired of cities in this game which looks amazing. Sometimes you just land on some outpost trying to find good place to take goods for trade and you just drop everything because outpost just so happens by in some nice place at the right time of day that makes it look like out of some sci-fi flick.
- Flight model and combat. ATM 3.10 it is my favorite out of space sims. 3.9 was pretty meh, better than something like X4 but worse than Elite. Quite frankly even Elite feels less refined than 3.10 version which is huge considering Elite was imo at the top up until now. You really feel weight behind ships, in atmosphere they behave completely different and according to ship shape they behave also differently.
The Amazing:
- Ships. I can finally understand why some idiots pay like shitload of money for some digital JPEGs. Those ships are fucking amazing. Did you ever wanted game where you can fly The Expense ship ? Or Star Trek ship or something else ? Every ship in the game feels like it was designed with intent for purpose and it is meliticolously detailed. They FEEL special. Like star of the show people have been waiting for. Buying new ship in game is not just buying some stats but whole experience that comes with the ship. I never understood why people were hyped for next ship reveal and now i understand. Especially when you group up with people. When i buy ship in X4 i feel nothing as for me it was mainly stats but here buying next ship is experience like you would be buyign actual car or something. The definitely went overboard but you can't be mad at this madness.
- Physicality. This is controversial for some but for me it works very well. All items can be placed anywhere like in Skyrim, weapons could be dropped for someone else to be picked up, you can place boxes with mined stuff into your ship cargo, you turn on switches in your ship, you take a train to get to space port or to business district, you go to shop to buy new clothes/armor. You go to weapon dealer to buy weapons from specific manufacturer. If you brake the law you go to prison where you have to wait IRL time or work toward your release. Your hands pick up things. So on and so forth. You get drift.
- Exploration. Bar none best feature of game. Game at times really gives you that tourism virus. When you see first time New Babbage you just want to fly around it and explore it, when you take hyperloop to various districts you want to move via it several times just for sake of it. When you see new moon you want to fly around it to see all the nice spots. Each bigger site is really different and they don't feel like copy paste from other space games (cough cough Elite)
TLDR: Broken as fuck but day1 when they will finish it in 2050.
