Whiny nerds who haven’t read a new book in over two decades shed tears over the fact their boring-ass game sucks and is getting swirlied in the toilet bowl by actual cool games
[Worldbuilding spoilers ahead]
Ahhh a different fascist militia that wouldn’t end the war then! Makes sense.
Both sides suck ass and this universe is absolutely missing a socialist faction pursuing a Star Trek-like future. If I end up starting a mod project for the game one of my ideas on the backburner is a socialist faction who are essentially neo-bolsheviks that cite Star Trek in-game as their inspiration for the future they’re fighting to build.
I also think a project is needed to add much-needed depth to the liberal cities. The Well in New Atlantis is getting cited by libs as the “punk” part and the “dark underbelly” but it lacks punch. It’s just the old town, no longer maintained. There’s no real economic criticism in it as far as I can see and it’s only bad because it’s old. Additions like beggars, homeless and desperate peddlers selling trinkets and tourist guff spilling out into the upper level and train station entrances will make an absolutely massive improvement. Throw in some radiants for pickpockets, beggar actions, UC police beating someone to death (give them guns with no ammunition and they should beat the target to death), among other things and you’ll have an environment that gives the player a much stronger representation of the underbelly that should exist more clearly in these places. Might also be an opportunity to tell some real poverty stories, include stories about kids more for some impact, particularly as kids in Bethesda games are almost non-existent and when they do exist they’re always just incredibly annoying.
Anyway that’s more or less my notes-taking so far for mod improvements to parts of the game that annoy me. The only other major settlement I’ve visited so far is Mars and that’s got some relatively ok critique going on because of the fracking explosions. But I haven’t seen it really tell any stories about what the impact of those explosions would be on the people though. Could be an avenue to go down to give it more depth and criticise its society better.
Oh and I hated the quest on Mars where I had to get an admin-assistant job. Why did they send me in my own spaceship up to the spacestation to apply for a job on the planet? It’s so ridiculous. Someone getting an admin-assistant job would not have enough money to own their own starship. There should be a shuttle that the poor people pay to use and get from A to B when needed.
In the future nothing will be handled by e-mail.
All the quests in futurey games where you have to go to some place in person instead of just calling someone on your phone or sending an e-mail are… upsetting.
Someone getting an admin-assistant job would not have enough money to own their own starship. There should be a shuttle that the poor people pay to use and get from A to B when needed.
Something about the future being as extremely car brained as present day North America is kinda unintentionally funny though.
It’s fucking weird. The idea of being a space pilot is literally the fantasy the game sells. But that’s meaningless if everyone in the galaxy with even an admin job has a spaceship like they’re cars. Why would people work as gunner/engineer on someone else’s spaceship if they have enough money to own their own? Why are all these people working with/for the player for wages?
It’s absolutely ridiculous. You need to ground space travel in people who dream of going to the stars but are stuck due to it being out of their means vs the people who do have the means. And you need to give the player many different possible backstories for how they attained these means. Either luck. Or piracy. Or they’re a super engineer who built one. Or they’re actually rich. Etc etc. You’ve got to give the player roleplay options to properly fill this in.
All of these things should be relatively easy to fix though, since the only places you have to change to fix these are the major cities. You can probably fix this with 10-15 new NPCs per city with dialog, and then a bunch of NPCs with no dialog other than a 1 line response.
Yeah I think it’s also a big problem that the money system is so compressed that it’s hard to know how much anything is worth. Like if an apple or a meal is around 100 credits, then the 10k that small ship would cost is basically walking around money for most people. A penthouse apartment on Neon is 25k is, so is property just really cheap there or is food expensive?
Ultimately gameplay balance and all that, but it seems like very strange world building to me.
It’s absolutely ridiculous. You need to ground space travel in people who dream of going to the stars but are stuck due to it being out of their means vs the people who do have the means. And you need to give the player many different possible backstories for how they attained these means. Either luck. Or piracy. Or they’re a super engineer who built one. Or they’re actually rich. Etc etc. You’ve got to give the player roleplay options to properly fill this in.
Yeah, the game starts you off as a laborer working on a job site that can’t even afford have a ship permanently on station, then you’re just given a decent starter ship that’s worth more than most other small ships and that’s it you’re set until you can get a better one or make meaningful upgrades to it. The Frontier really should have been a non-modifiable, non-sellable ship that’s just there to paper over the issue of you needing a ship until you can buy, find, or steal one for yourself.
The powers in particular seem like they can be VERY powerful and will remain strong even when you raise damage significantly.
Yeah, it feels like ME1 biotics all over where they’re just free hard CC options that can lock down entire rooms as every enemy is stuck ragdolling around for 30 seconds each. They really need to just get shunted to zero-g movement with maybe some “disoriented” debuff instead of ragdolling as they drift around. Enemies can literally maneuver just fine in zero-g and it even makes sense that a bunch of people used to fighting onboard ships that can lose or regain gravity at any moment wouldn’t just go limp if gravity suddenly got a bit weird.
