ELITE:Dangerous !!! Kickstarter Project

AdmiralZeratul wrote:

7upMan wrote: WRT Broussard, he's mainly responsible for the debacle around Duke Nukem: DNF (Did Not Finish). How long was that thing in development hell? 11 or 13 years? Anyway, he's a lousy manager and a bad designer as well. DNF was not even remotely as good as it could have been. I wonder just how bad a Kickstarter with his name on it would fail!

Just thinking about that mess pisses me off. I remember that the company that "finished" DNF went on to also ruin the Mechwarrior franchise with Mechwarrior Online, and they took down Mektek's completely free and much more fun version of Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries. Mechwarrior Online crushed my hopes of having a good, recent Mechwarrior game, and it's the reason why I am so much more cynical about game developers nowadays. I only trust a few companies.

What did you hear that? It was Gearbox who finished Duke Nukem: DNF, this Frankenstein of a game (apparently, the devs themselves called their engine the Frankenstein engine). Gearbox is responsible for failures like "Aliens: Colonial Marines", and "Homeworld Remastered" is also not in a state that it should be in (formations don't work, for example). But they also made Boderlands, which is extremely successful. To my knowledge, they never had anything to do with MechWarrior. Do you have a link that proves otherwise?

Now, the story about MechWarrior: Online and MechWarrior: Living Legends is a completely different matter. First, IIRC, Mektek and their MechPacks for MW4 is still available. MW:LL however was developed by fans using an IP that they never owned. When Piranha Games acquired the IP, they let MW:LL roll on for some time. Only when it became apparent that the free version is more successful than the F2P one, they put an end to MW:LL. This is a pity, but on the other hand, MWO is a much more polished gaming experience with people who have talent as designers and try to make Mechs playable in a way that actually makes sense. Look at the original Timber Wolf and the MWO version. I like the latter one infinitely more.

Incidentally, I'm about to buy sculpts of MWO mechs for my tabletop BT game. Comparing the original sculpts (be it the plastic ones or the metal ones) with the MWO ones makes me cringe with pain about the former.

Anyway, I do enjoy MWO and consider it to be a product in the making. I like CW matched in particular, especially when doing them with my clan, the German Ghostbears. We also have strong ties with CGBI (Clan Ghost Bear International), so if you like and are lucky, you'll see me in their TS.

Just had a quick look, and it seems that MekTek is actually offline. However, this has nothing to do with Gearbox and everything with missing permissions from Piranha Games and Microsoft (who, after all, own the license to MW4).

web.archive.org/web/20131027154119/http:...ing-on-mechwarrior4/

I don't really have any proof that Piranha Games "finished" DNF. I just vaguely remember reading about it. So, you're probably right about that.

That's a different Mechwarrior Online than the one I remember, though. Last time I read or played about it, there were constant unfulfilled promises from the devs, grab deal after grab deal, and disastrous rebalance decisions that overcompensated for whatever problem currently being complained about on the forums (which also conveniently made the new grab deals more useful :lol:).

It has been a few years since then, I think. I take it things have improved since then? If so, that is excellent news! I'd even become a bit less cynical, although EA is still an awful company.

That sounds like a good opportunity for me to learn more German, too. I learned some in high school as part of a "World Languages" course, but I never quite mastered it for some reason. I remember it being my favorite out of the three languages I was partially taught.

German: Well, German has, like most other languages, an actual grammar, not that kind of Mickey Mouse grammar the English uses. You have grammatical cases ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_case ) that the English doesn't, and that makes it hard for English native speakers to learn a foreign language.

MWO: Since MWO is a Free-to-Play game (and it is NOT Pay2Win), you can always install it and try it out yourself. Of course the devs are after your money, but you don't need to spend a single buck if you don't want to. You don't even need to spend real money for Mech bays, as you can earn them in Community Warfare.

Granted, the game in its current state is controversial, however, even the most die-hard critics always come back for another round, and another, and another one after that. Why? Because it never felt so awesome, so "real" to sit in a Mech. No other MechWarrior game, NONE, has ever achieved this perfection.

I could tell you a lot about the strengths and flaws of MWO, but I think even better would be to just try it out. You might need some hand-holding, so if you hit a wall, visit the CGBI TS server on rubidium.typefrag.com:9545. There is always someone who'll willing to help.

P.S.: MWO is still considered to be largely Beta, as is its Community Warfare game mode. However, I like the fact that the devs are concentrating on one issue at a time, rather that being stuck in development hell forever. Stay with MWO for a while, and you'll see it grow and shine.

P.P.S.: In one of the next patches (probably the next one), destructible stuff is being introduced, like lamp posts, burnable trees (good if you wield a flamer) and whatnot. This has been demanded for years, and finally the devs are getting to it!

It sounds like the devs are improving, then. I'll have to try the game out again at some point.

I got Elite: Dangerous last Sunday on a 25% summer sale on Steam, and it's description can be summed up in one line.

It's everything Unstable Space never was.

To elaborate, it's got trading commodities with a dynamic economy, mining, pirates, bounty hunting, exploring 400,000,000,000 stars, huge factions with cold wars, hot wars, rubbing-shoulders-on-the-border wars, and probably about anything else I haven't run across, all remarkably and amazingly polished. The flight model is pretty good, although not as good as EoC's. It feels like a cross between EoC and IL-2, because the have some airplane-style stuff in there. It's still addictively fun though. After this post - off to a conflict zone to blow stuff up!

I highly recommend the game to anyone who likes space games, if you can swing 60 US dollars. If not - it'll surely be on sale again.

--IronDuke