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but vote with your pockets... Buy the game - keep the franchise and genre alive!

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Uh... yes... he DID say he'll be buying the game. However he also stated a bug report of something that should be brought to the developers' attention, IMHO.
But that... "vote with your pockets"... that just don't sound good, man - not saying you're wrong, or right, just that it doesn't have a good ring to it.

Bargib simply meant that Freelancer can be improved on if WE...the gamers....support it too with our money. You think the Freelancer DA team has no bills to pay?
If Freelancer sells well...then Microsoft will have the resources for the DA team to improve on Freelancer. Simple economics dude.

Edited by - WhiteTiger on 26-02-2003 14:54:02

Sounds like they need to make a patch that gives you a temporary reputation penalty when attacking a trade lane gate.

Permanent is too harsh. You get that when you attack ships.

It´s more here about reputation.

If a game sells, and gets not supported, you lose repution, if you do it do often you end up like westwood for example

with lousy reputation and customers that look very carefull at every produkt.
if a game did not sell, its not important cause nearly no´one will remember that you had sucky support. so you can start right of for the next projekt. (what you normaly do anyway, you just leave a few coders at first at patch writing, while the rest of the team moves along to the next projekts (in the beginning the coders are needed not that much, so the artist can and story/game developers can start their work ...

ElectricBrain is right from what I have seen so far.

I have done the same thing in hacking the trade lanes and so far I have had a patrol of Police come by as I was attacking the ship, one time I had about 3 or 4 show up at once and then while attacking them more ships flew through.

Also, the ship that just sat there, was it a neutral ship or a known enemy? Did they show up as red on your map or white or green? If they were anything other than a total enemy then why are you supprised they did not flee in terror from their friend?

If a trade lane was down then common sense would tell you not to take that route.

While I might agree that maybe this tactic demonstrates that the Freelancer universe is not a truly dynamic world, I think that the methods used do something sort of called "breaking the 4th wall." It's a film term that means reminding the audience that what we're watching is fabricated. Sometimes just seeing a light or a microphone in the shot that wasn't meant to be there can do it, sometimes it's the punchline to a bad joke when suddenly we see the whole crew on set while the actors have their moments.

Now say the trade lanes were disabled and you had attacked the stranded ships. The whole moment would have played out as the game designers intended. Instead, the approach was that this is a game and I want to prod and test the mechanics of Freelancer as a game. Suspension of disbelief was not an issue. It's tough to account for what players might think of to test the game.

That being said, it would have been nice to see the ships start evasive manuvers or start heading toward the next trade lane though.

A few things though. If you don't constantly hit the trade lanes then ships will start flying through again, I see nothing wrong with that in any way that takes away the reality of it. If a lane is being attacked then you wont fly it if you know. As far as the ship just sitting there one question is was the ship an enemy or a nuetral/friend? If they are not a full fledged enemy then why would they run in fear?

So far every ship I have come close to that is a full blown enemy will attack me if I get too close. Every freighter I've seen has some other ship flying with it like fighters.

No cops came in 40 minutes? It depends on if it is a heavly patrolled area. If one cop showed up he could call in reinforcements to help out.

You could always fly to the next lane, what is what I normaly do when a lane get disrupted and no disrupter missiles are arround, go to cruise speed reach the not disrupted lane and fly away.

sitting 40 minutes at the same place while just one of about 20 trade lanes are disruped seems, well stupid

I can see what your saying about them just sitting there and not moving. I think it is programed to use the trade lane if its there and since you keep disabling it, it is actually stopping and starting but you can't tell. This is something also that may have changed in the retail game.

But about no one else flying through and no cops coming I don't think is a valid arguement.

Honestly none of us frmo what I can tell have played the gold version, if someone says they have then they probably have a ripped copy of the PR anyways. If some one has played the legitimate retail version can you shed some light on the little nit picking going on if we need to worry about it or is it fixed in retail.

Hello....

Hi cyber pack.... you must have missed my second post down the line. In it say that three of the six ships standing there were police and they didnt do anything at all!!!!!!!!!!

I was just trying to point out that freespace does NOT have a dynamic and LIVING universe as claimed by the developers.

Now I've found another support fact to show that its not dynamic at all, ill post that in a new thread....

Yapa

So what's worse, not having a dynamic game? Or having the desire to shoot a jump gate for 40 minutes?

edit: typo

Edited by - spartan on 26-02-2003 20:52:10

Some people play games, some people test / analyze games.

Im from a programming background, I know how AI is written. Thats why when I get a game as advanced as this I play with it, bcos for me half the fun is playing and half the fun is workin the game out.

Yapa

ROFL - as it stands... In my the ILLUSION of having a DYNAMIC and LIVING universe works nicely...

But of course somebody has to point out the universe is not LIVING....

Come on, can't you see your arguments are insane...? No - the universe is not TOTALLY DYNAMIC and not TOTALLY LIVING (the latter would be a miracle - a living universe inside your PC - oh man..)

But you have ATC, you have chatter in the universe, you have tons of people going to and from places, you have a very nicly thought out universe. These things make for me an illusion of a living, dynamic world, where I have a role to play...

It's like I said earlier in another thread: If sit down watching a movie with the purpose of finding flaws, there is an about 0% chance that you will enjoy the movie!

Best Regards
Christian "Bargib" Koerner
Editor in Chief, The Lancers Reactor

So yours saying that I actually thought it would have a 'real living' universe ?

Yapa