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SpaceCraft is aiming for the gap between Starfield, Satisfactory and Eve Online
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this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2025
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Eh well Elite Dangerous is technically an "online game" in the most minimal sense possible. And it's the best spaceship sim ever made by far. It's not perfect by any means and I hate Frontier Studios, but it's still the best. It depends how "online" this game is. Could be good. Could also be hot dogshit. Idk.
Play freelancer, and see if that statement still holds true to you.
For me, I enjoyed Elite Dangerous way more than Freelancer. Freelancer was too much arcadey for me, and I was never able to properly immerse into it.
Elite, on the other way, thanks to it being a MMO where I got a pretty nice semi-RP guild, along with stunning visuals and VR support, was one of the first games I was able to immerse into and just chill, exploring around. Which surprised me, since I usually get bored easily without a fast progress or a goal in mind, due to my short attention span, but this game completely captured me and it was first game that I just simply spent time in.
Of course, it's just my subjective experience. But there is something Elite must be doing extremely well, because this has not happened to me in any other game to this extent.
My issue with Elite....is probably that I'm dumb. My character is locked to my epic account, my character is also soft locked with no money and a busted ship, pretty sure stranded in space somewhere. I'd like to just start from scratch, but I can't for the life of me figure it out....as I said...kinda dumb.
It has been a while since I played, but afaik ypu can always just self-destruct the ship through one of the side menus or keybinds, and then you can either pay insurace cost to get the same ship repaired, or abandon it for the default ship, which should also respawn you somewhere sensible.
I don't recall if there's any story or anything else ypu'd want reset, the tutorial is standalone and since it's a sandbox I don't think there's much else to reset.
Been a few years since I had a stab at it, maybe I'll have a look and see if I can figure it out
Freelancer is very arcadey and extremely dated.
Agreed, and it still holds up as the best space Sim game ever in my opinion. The reason it wins that award for me is because it's fighting/flying style felt really interesting and dynamic. We're as every other space Sim I played did not capture that as well. That being said, I do enjoy alot of aspects of other space Sim games, so I'm not her to say they are bad. Just that freelancer is the best as a whole package. Only really negative to the game is that Microsoft owns it and because of that the only long term progression of the game is fan made.
I find the combat & flight model the biggest weak point of it to be honest, and certainly light years away from that of Elite Dangerous.
To each there own I guess :)
i wouldn't even classify freelancer as a space sim. it's a point'n'shoot sandbox arcade game with a market. the story is great, the worldbuilding is good, but you could swap out the space part for basically any other vehicle-heavy setting without changing the mechanics. it's sid meiers pirates in space, basically. the flying model, being constrained as it is by the entire world being flat, always felt like a weird compromise.
personally i think games like Flight of Nova or Outer Wilds are far better space sims, but they don't really have most other parts of freelancer, like combat or factions.
the closest one can get in the modern era is probably the X series which to me feels better that freelancer but still feels pretty simple. if i am in space i want to feel like i'm in space. i want more games to go the Rogue System or Objects in Space route.
Yea the flat thing I can agree with. Guessing they decided on that to streamline world building. Everything else I still disagree on, primarily because they are games, not Sims, so when I say space Sim game I mean the general direction of the game. If we want to get all technical, then the x games and elit don't even come close to star citizen. And you will never hear me say star citizen is my favorite space Sim game.
that's a take i've not seen before. i would never compare star citizen to any of those simply because it's not a game. it's a collection of systems intimately connected to one man's hubris and a multimillion dollar grift.
I think the way ships feel in Elite is better than Freelancer, but also KSP has the best space flight physics in any game.
Very good point, "best space sim" is somewhat subjective, as some people consider the best one to be the most accurate physics wise. We're as I considered freelancer to be the best based of my enjoyment of the experience.
Never played it but if it's comparable then I'll check it out.
Fair warning it is a bit old, so it may not run well on newer os, but there are fan made patches to help with that.