Hello
First, forgive my turns of phrase a little bit “barbarian” sometimes, English isn’t my native language.
I’m a newcomer, but, if it’s the first time I write here, I sometimes had a look at the I-Novae website. How could it be otherwise !? The I-Novae Engine is wonderful, amazing ! It creates the most beautiful real time computer generated images of space I have ever seen ! As the final goal is to create a game, I could only be very interested by the project. I saw and admired the aesthetic of the game (ships, stations,…), all the images and all the videos I can found, and, of course, I became logically more and more thrilled.
Until I read that :
“Thus we’ve decided to build a game with a heavier focus on space combat.”
Again…
Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, Infinity: Battlescape,… all heavily focused on combat, a very great disappointment for players like me !
In fact, I’m really very disconcerted to see that all the beauty that I-Novea engine can create is destined to the people who, after all, will have their attention focused mainly on their “target”, without really worrying about the beauty of the environment. It’s my very personal opinion but I think such “graphical quality” deserves another “thing” than “an arena shooter” (TerranAmbass’s definition).
Despite this opinion, I understand that I-Novae is, above all, a company, that has the purpose to make profits. The Star Citizen’s Kickstarter project seems to show perfectly that a game project shaped for “players who love combat experience” is surely the best way to achieve the goal of a Kickstarter project, as they represent the largest group of players, so the largest number of potential contributors.
Unfortunately (for me), I’m classified as “minority gamer” (a very small minority, it seems) : I’m 50 years old, and because of what’s in my “old gamer head”, I generally don’t have “expectations” about a new/recent game. I much prefer something with a (big) pinch of “simulation”, interactions, reflexion,… No need to say that this sort of games is an utopia nowadays… Because “most of today’s gamers want 1) a smaller learning curve, 2) faster results, and 3) less and less reading” (copy-paste from another forum, not my words, but I’m agree), I can’t be in line with most of the recent games/gameplay concepts (which can be summed up by “pew pew”)
I’m not nostalgic and I’m confortable with technological progress, but I’m not often agree with the ~use~ of the technological progress. I wouldn’t return 20 or 30 years in the past, at no price ! But having now the technology we dreamed to have in the past, at hand, and see, let’s say, the “simplistic” use of this technology, is somehow very frustrating (at least for me). To make a parallel, it’s like Star Wars movies: The first trilogy suffers from old bad special effects but compensates with good scripts and charismatic characters, whereas, in the new trilogy, there’s a huge amount of high-quality effects which masks a poor story and mediocre characters. I begin to wonder if original concepts and amazing visual effects wouldn’t be incompatible, for mysterious reasons…
So, and I am very sorry about that, I probably won’t be a kickstarter of I:B, for the reasons above (and the fact that I was very disappointed by the result of the majority of crowdfunded game projects in which I was involved). No matter, because, as said before, I belong to a minority of player. I think that “old fashion gamers” and/or “simulation lovers” won’t be the biggest contributors part… at least, I-Novae had the honesty to inform early on what will be the gameplay, unlike Frontier Development, which baited old Elite fans as me, who expected a lot of “things”, especially something more “simulation” then “arcade” (I am one of the disappointed contributors of Elite Dangerous, if you do not have guessed )
But may be there’s 2 glimmers of hope, and it’s the main reason which urged me to write :
About the single-player “exploration mode” (“allowing players to view and explore the Battlescape solar system without fear of getting shot.”), if the exploration mode is just to fly to the planets and land, without any other interactions, it will be closer from a “demo” than from a game (or closer to Space Engine, which is free), so it may be necessary to clarify a little what will be this exploration mode (for me at least).
I read this on Keith Newton’s blog : “If we raise enough with our Kickstarter there will also be plenty of support roles combined with deeper strategy and tactics for those of you who aren’t so keen on combat.” That’s funny and very ironic to think to the money of “combat fans” could bring in the game the “things” that my kind of players likes : strategy, reflexion,… And may be pretty hard to believe too… Again a clarification about the “life with less combat” could be useful.
Kind regards