Starfield player counts will go way up once the modkit is released. Every single one of those people playing Skyrim on Steam have modded it out the wazoo.
I love the idea. Worker co-ops and subscription-based news (just like a newspaper) are both perfect models for this. I’m a big proponent for and supporter of the Patreon model for small creators.
…But I read through their articles and they’re just not in sync with my taste in gaming. I think they need more writers who are into sandboxes and sims, because they all seem super into smaller, narrative-core games, and somewhat derisive of open worlds that don’t hyper focus on a story.
Hmm, they aren’t clear whether it’s fully voice-acted or whether he provided phonetic sounds for them to synthesize according to the text, but in either case, it’s not AI whatsoever.
Important to note that ESS Technologies (the company cited there) was literally a company who made synthesized speech for video games.
Electronic Speech Systems produced synthetic speech for, among other things, home computer systems like the Commodore 64. Within the hardware limitations of that time, ESS used Mozer’s technology, in software, to produce realistic-sounding voices that often became the boilerplate for the respective games.
That was a standard that existed because of older, ‘linear’ SDLCs. It stopped being the case when Agile development took over. When you’re using Waterfall, and all your milestones are planned out before a single line of code is written, you can do that.
Modern software development doesn’t work like that, and it’s silly to use nth-degree nested decimals (0.1.0, 0.1.1.2) when you can just use 1.1, 2.13, etc, and call something RC1.0 and 1.0 on release without bothering with internal version numbers or project codenames (or just keep the working version numbers anyways).
There are like 14 people who play the current iteration seriously, everyone else are just trying to keep up to date on the status of SC.
At this point you are just flailing.
If you actually had any clue about SC or had bothered to Google it, you’d know DAU numbers (50,000 average daily players across all regions, in 2022), and you’d never have made such an inane claim.
And no, CIG does not call it a tech demo, they call it an alpha, the 2 of which are not remotely similar.
Well, if taming dinos in ARK was instantaneous, it would massively change the game, and turn it into nothing but a constant stream of t-rex (or other large predator monster) battles. Those 1-hour countdowns are a time-gate for balance.
If reloading in CS:GO was instantaneous, there would be no tactical decision around when you do it, or danger presented by it happening at an inopportune time. Those 3-second reloads are a time-gate for balance.
There are tons of time-gated mechanics across all sorts of games. You just don’t like this one.
How does the user experience improve or degrade if the wait is [less]?
Well, it means that other players may have to contend with them too-quickly returning to a fight as though nothing happened, which would be pretty crappy if you just got finished killing them. It would mean that if you fly across the solar system in a ship with a very fast Quantum Drive, you could potentially just summon your large, slow ship at your destination, effectively obviating the difference in travel time.
What’s the difference between acceleration humans can’t survive and wait times? What’s the line we can’t cross to suspend disbelief?
It’s not about realism, it’s about game balance. Your ships are something you need to take care of. Dying is and will have major consequences (loss of items, for instance). Do you think that Eve’s manufacturing timers are about realism, or that they are disrespectful to the players? Should a tiny shuttle take the same amount of time to build as a Titan (the largest ship class in the game)?
The only time you have to wait for the ship is if it’s destroyed or lost. If you fly it to the station or landing zone and stow it, the delivery is immediate.
And you can buy and rent ships in-game, using in-game money. This is about preventing you from instantly jumping back in the same ship repeatedly which could have huge implications for PvP, for instance.