Launching ED from PiTool always launches Oculus Store too - why?

[Octofox]

I actually tell a fair few disgruntled Elite players, even if they don’t want to hear it, that actually it’s not that Fdev are clueless. I’m certain that they are very very smart, especially looking at the Stellar Forge, the BGS simulation etc. The star and planetary tech is astonishing. There’s actually tectonics and everything being modelled, even if we can’t touch it.

The real problem is worse imho. And it’s all down to their design and architecture choices with proc gen, peer to peer instancing etc. What I feel they don’t want to say is that the choices they made at that level, have fundamentally interfered with the ability to deliver the kind of gameplay everyone wanted, and they know it.

I thought it was really telling in December when CIG talked about v4 planetary tech - although they wer criticising themselves, in doing so they totally nailed what’s wrong with Elite too. They said that on v3 they realised they had created big problems for themselves by over reliance on proc gen - this was preventing the art and design teams from creating the kind of landscapes they wanted, and it was preventing the gameplay teams from adding the mechanics and content they wanted.

So in effect, they decided to take the plunge and steer around the proc gen iceberg (sorry to cross the analogies hehe), hence v4 has a much more limited proc gen base, and a lot more handcrafting on top. Sadly, it seems this was the very same iceberg that Fdev ploughed into going full steam ahead.

Sure, they have far less resources to perform a full scale manoeuver like CIG did, but it seems to have left them with a sinking ship…

(and as a rather depressing aside, they have admitted they’re more or less abandoning the Guardian storylines because the code base is a total mess and all the people who worked on it have left )

[DrWilken]

I was thinking it should probably have been “Launch DCS in…” ?

Why would I launch SteamVR in SteamVR mode?

[Octofox]

Lol I didn’t even notice, I’m blind to it now

[dogbite]

You can set Oculus Home in compatibility to “run as administrator” and it won’t start unless you specifically launch it.

[jojon]

@risa2000

…they increment the interface version and keep the old interface in the lib as well…

Aha. Feels kind of like Aperture Science: Drown the old catastrophically run-out-of-control experiments in concrete, and build a new lab on top.

@Octofox

…The real problem…

The procgen, specifically, I have personally zero problems with, and it has unapologetically been a core part of the series’ DNA since the first game (not just because of resource constraints, but as a pointedly deliberate design choice), and a constant point of common criticism all the way from that beginning; Although FDev certainly have their work cut out for them, if they are ever going to imbue any aspect of it with any degree of diversity.
As always, a set of assets that takes months to create, is rushed past, and barely registered, by players, in microseconds.

…and this is from a stubbornly entrenched “story gamer”, who has usually infinitessimally little interest in playing games other than to be funnelled through their neatly prepared narrative once, gawking at their environments, and then never picking them back up again (to the point I loathe if when writers inject some contrived story branch, that tries to force you to slog through the entire game a second time, just to see the 2% that differs depending on your choice, and making the situation seem poignant or profound – almost stopped playing a game just the other week over such a thing - did put it down for a couple of days actually - the railroaded so-called “hard choice” just made my interest flicker out immediately).

Many aspects of E:D are absolutely half-baked, and often clumsily bolted onto it - agreed.

Personally I blame the developers’ desire to force multi-player into everything, for most of the functionality tradeoffs I do not like, or features I do not care for, although I couldn’t ever begrudge those (enormously more numerous) who do like that sort of stuff, their having it. :7

[Octofox]

Don’t get me wrong, I have put way more hours into ED than anything else in recent years. I love the scale they have achieved, and nothing comes close to that. For VR, there’s not much else I can dip in and out of in a long term way. NMS I suppose, I have yet to try it.

However, I don’t feel much motivation to spend huge amounts of time exploring the entirety of the galaxy, because I know there isn’t much variation and I have already seen what it has to offer, save some colour variations. There are no interesting surprises unless you stumble across some of the tiny amount of hand-crafted content, which is largely static and can’t be interacted with anyway. I don’t expect the whole thing to be filled with spawned entities in an unrealistic fashion, but I do want mechanics and interaction from a game. It’s not an astronaut trainer, and not what I’m after anyway.

For the half baked mp elements, I think they hit the limits of what the architecture could deliver, plus the resources they have available. I honestly think they did their best, but it fell a little short.

Good single player games are great for the mechanics, but I rarely find much motivation to replay them, even those that claim to have factored in replayability. Over time I reached the conclusion that for me the future of gaming is open world multiplayer with engaging dynamics, the best moments of Arma / ED / SC etc. Not simple arena / round based deathmatch etc, that got old a long time ago. And we haven’t quite reached what I’m looking for yet, even before we get to VR.

If I was more dev and less dev ops, I’d try to build something SC is showing increasing promise and I find myself testing / playing more and more with each quarter. Infinity Battlescape is good for a small team, fleet battles with an AI Director system. Reminded of old SP sims like EECH that offered a dynamic campaign, the player could drop in and out of any AI pilot position and mission that interested them. It would spawn interlinked missions such as recon, SEAD, CAP, troop insertion (capture airfields, factories) etc etc. The campaign would continue until the opposing side was sufficiently crippled enough that it could no longer carry out its own missions, and would be forced to withdraw or surrender from the campaign area