100% selling hopes and dreams. I understand there's a playable alpha, I was a backer for over a decade. There is no cohesive vision, just endless theory crafting and half baked implementations to maintain the illusion of progress, but every time they add something, they seemingly need to break something else for their 8 ticks-per-second system to be able to handle it...

I have fun. You don't have to pay more than the 45 € beginner pack, if you don't want to. Its still rough but you can see how the pieces start fitting together.

Hell of a grift.

You did a reverse EriKa KirK there. I think you meant "grift" not "gift"

it's because it's a grift.

Always has been.

Look at the price of those ships you can buy, its always looked like a very obvious attempt to keep rolling in money while always juuuuuuust being a bit too far away to release. But just give us a few more million and we'll toooootally release it.

Started EVE in like 2009, now I find it just ends up taking so much time to do anything. Never been into 1v1 PvP but do like small to medium groups, but that can take so much time to get and you might not even find anything.

So it ends up with you sitting there for ages with nothing going on, then When it does start to get interesting sorry gotta drop off to go to bed.

I think Anvil Empires might scratch a similar itch for me, while being a bit easier to drop in/out. Albion Online is one I tried too but barely even got into much PvP, maybe I should try again. I like cheap builds really, don't want to grind for hours to lose it all in 1 go. Not sure how cheap you can reasonably go in AO.

Elite dangerous is a blast for a while. And it has vr.

I haven't played since before you could go and walk around, but for what it is I loved it for a while.

Wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle but it takes a long while to notice the lack of depth and it's a blast to pop in your vr headset and some good country trucking music and just hop around the galaxy trading.

You have a sandbox for griefers. Nota chance in hell. Eve is not even remotely close to similar except it too grifts players

I really wish another company would come along and just do properly what CIG pretends they're doing. I would love the game SC shows in their marketing, I wish a company would come along and make their own competent version of that experience while leaving the Chris Roberts and CIG jank and practices behind. They should hire Todd Papy.

Not to defend SC too much, and full disclosure I don't play it. But I have friends who DO play it and it seems like they are having a lot of fun?

They aren't evangelists for the game or anything, so its not a fanboy situation. They just play it a lot, and with lots of other people. They have an online community and meet up IRL for events. Post vids of their exploits. It seems fun to me? I asked them about the bugs and stuff and they fully admit it is buggy and things are broken, they make no apologies for it. They figure out workarounds and share it with the crew. I don't know, these guys are usually pretty critical of games but they seem happy weirdly. Maybe a cult?

There is no fucking way that I am ever going to pay for a fake star ship or anything so I'm not even considering it. And the entire funding model of the game seems batshit insane to me. But to me it seems like the idea that the game is unplayable doesn't really match the reality? Its clearly not a good value proposition at all.

Now imagine it being double that good for just $2 billion!

I like this take.

It seems like there are ‘victims’ caught up in the hype and sinking way too much money into SC. But if the gameplay is enjoyable, and fits your budget? Enjoy it. Hell yes.