Fri Mar 07, 2003 5:09 am
What to do?
I know I shouldn't bring this up, but I have to ask.
What is there to do?
I'm looking at all these posts comparing Freelancer to the Privateer series (at least Privateer 1 I can speak for, I can't speak for Privateer 2 since I barely played it), or the Elite series, but this question never came up for a long time in those games.
Here's what I mean:
Elite and Privateer, for their time, had enough of a core concept, and the depth of realism (relatively speaking, it's impossible to judge how physics would work in a situation presented by these games, but at least Privateer and Elite had pitch, yaw and roll. Freelancer can't say that much) to be give combat more than a point and click (again, relatively speaking, were talking about a space sim not Diablo clone, although admiitedlyFreelancer has a bit more depth than that, but not by much) style.
Plus in Privateer and Elite in the SP modes you had something to do besides basic sticking to the storyline. I hate to break it to you people who can't see it but if you really look that's all there is to SP Freelancer, the storyline. Yes I know you can trade but since the amount of friends you have over the amount of enemies, and the key facilities required for trading being on both ends of the spectrum really diminishes the value. Plus you're limited in the fact that once you get the money to advance a level you can't go any futher until you complete the storyline. And in terms of combat, there's only so much "Go to point A, kill anything there" a person can take. Also, look at how imaginative your missions are, they basically say "Go here and kill the bad guys, nevermind the fact that I know exactly where they will be when you ge there, plus instead of reporting this to the authorities so they can root out the source of the problem I'm just going to send you (usually without help), which I have to pay for unlike the authorities which might give me money in return, to do the job instead."
And look at MP, it's SP without the storyline. What's worse is that once you get about $20,000 in MP, buy yourself a Rhino with top shields and max nanobots/shield regens you can earn a million dollars in an hour. There are trade routes which will give you a profit of over $1,000 per unit at less than $200 per unit. Some of you might say those are through dangerous areas, well they aren't, and even if you do get jumped by pirates you can easily avoid them. Through the use of afterburner and controlling my cruise speed when I approach planets/gates/trade lanes I've yet to be killed by going through almost every system in the universe in a RHINO! (Trade Lanes especially, if you cruise to a trade lane and press your dock, it will point you at the top or bottom ring then switch to free flight and wait until your range to the trade lane reaches 0 then dock with the trade lane. You'll have a second of slowing to a stop then you'll hit the trade lane, thereby avoiding any pursuers, and if you can't survive using nanobots/shield regens to cruise you've got bigger problems than trouble surviving in this game)
So, you've got the biggest ship possible, the best gun loadout possible (took me 8-9 hours in MP using trading to get a fully loaded Sabre), what do you do? You've done everything there is to do. If by that point you can stand another hour running through trade lanes and jump gates, or if you finger hasn't fallen off from all the clicking, you're immortal.
And many of you say it's very open ended, yet you can't even hire wingmen. Now I understand the lack of some features. I've coded before on a small time, and that was tough enough, I couldn't imagine coding something to this scale, but FREELANCER ALREADY CONTAINS THE AI FOR WINGMEN! (Remember all your friends from the single player storyline, news flash they were wingmen) So would it have been so difficult to include another few people in the bars that agree to form up with you when you leave the planet? I can't imagine that it would given all the other interactions that take place in the bar.
Now, above I compared the game to Elite and Privateer without much of an explination as to why, and this is why. Several features that have been proven to work in Elite and Privateer (plus others), which have been mentioned by me in this post and by several others in the forum are not present in Freelancer when they aren't complex additions (or like Wingmen, are already there). So why weren't they included? Furthermore, why was something as simple as trade missions not included?
And in terms of my subject, yes I reached a point where Elite and Privateer reached a "What to do?" situation, but that took many months for all games involved, Freelancer took me less than 24 hours (I'm having trouble justifying myself to complete the storyline as well).
So someone tell me, where is the challenge over time? It was a lot of fun when it was new, but it didn't last long.
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Also I read a few posts that refered to Freelancer as a space sim, that's not true. Simulations require some realism and as I mentioned above, Freelancer doesn't even include the three core ingredients for turning any sort of vehicle that doesn't touch the ground, be it helo, plane, or space shuttle, if it can't even get that far it's not a simulation, it's a action/shooter.
Edited by - Ceyan on 07-03-2003 05:09:45
What is there to do?
I'm looking at all these posts comparing Freelancer to the Privateer series (at least Privateer 1 I can speak for, I can't speak for Privateer 2 since I barely played it), or the Elite series, but this question never came up for a long time in those games.
Here's what I mean:
Elite and Privateer, for their time, had enough of a core concept, and the depth of realism (relatively speaking, it's impossible to judge how physics would work in a situation presented by these games, but at least Privateer and Elite had pitch, yaw and roll. Freelancer can't say that much) to be give combat more than a point and click (again, relatively speaking, were talking about a space sim not Diablo clone, although admiitedlyFreelancer has a bit more depth than that, but not by much) style.
Plus in Privateer and Elite in the SP modes you had something to do besides basic sticking to the storyline. I hate to break it to you people who can't see it but if you really look that's all there is to SP Freelancer, the storyline. Yes I know you can trade but since the amount of friends you have over the amount of enemies, and the key facilities required for trading being on both ends of the spectrum really diminishes the value. Plus you're limited in the fact that once you get the money to advance a level you can't go any futher until you complete the storyline. And in terms of combat, there's only so much "Go to point A, kill anything there" a person can take. Also, look at how imaginative your missions are, they basically say "Go here and kill the bad guys, nevermind the fact that I know exactly where they will be when you ge there, plus instead of reporting this to the authorities so they can root out the source of the problem I'm just going to send you (usually without help), which I have to pay for unlike the authorities which might give me money in return, to do the job instead."
And look at MP, it's SP without the storyline. What's worse is that once you get about $20,000 in MP, buy yourself a Rhino with top shields and max nanobots/shield regens you can earn a million dollars in an hour. There are trade routes which will give you a profit of over $1,000 per unit at less than $200 per unit. Some of you might say those are through dangerous areas, well they aren't, and even if you do get jumped by pirates you can easily avoid them. Through the use of afterburner and controlling my cruise speed when I approach planets/gates/trade lanes I've yet to be killed by going through almost every system in the universe in a RHINO! (Trade Lanes especially, if you cruise to a trade lane and press your dock, it will point you at the top or bottom ring then switch to free flight and wait until your range to the trade lane reaches 0 then dock with the trade lane. You'll have a second of slowing to a stop then you'll hit the trade lane, thereby avoiding any pursuers, and if you can't survive using nanobots/shield regens to cruise you've got bigger problems than trouble surviving in this game)
So, you've got the biggest ship possible, the best gun loadout possible (took me 8-9 hours in MP using trading to get a fully loaded Sabre), what do you do? You've done everything there is to do. If by that point you can stand another hour running through trade lanes and jump gates, or if you finger hasn't fallen off from all the clicking, you're immortal.
And many of you say it's very open ended, yet you can't even hire wingmen. Now I understand the lack of some features. I've coded before on a small time, and that was tough enough, I couldn't imagine coding something to this scale, but FREELANCER ALREADY CONTAINS THE AI FOR WINGMEN! (Remember all your friends from the single player storyline, news flash they were wingmen) So would it have been so difficult to include another few people in the bars that agree to form up with you when you leave the planet? I can't imagine that it would given all the other interactions that take place in the bar.
Now, above I compared the game to Elite and Privateer without much of an explination as to why, and this is why. Several features that have been proven to work in Elite and Privateer (plus others), which have been mentioned by me in this post and by several others in the forum are not present in Freelancer when they aren't complex additions (or like Wingmen, are already there). So why weren't they included? Furthermore, why was something as simple as trade missions not included?
And in terms of my subject, yes I reached a point where Elite and Privateer reached a "What to do?" situation, but that took many months for all games involved, Freelancer took me less than 24 hours (I'm having trouble justifying myself to complete the storyline as well).
So someone tell me, where is the challenge over time? It was a lot of fun when it was new, but it didn't last long.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also I read a few posts that refered to Freelancer as a space sim, that's not true. Simulations require some realism and as I mentioned above, Freelancer doesn't even include the three core ingredients for turning any sort of vehicle that doesn't touch the ground, be it helo, plane, or space shuttle, if it can't even get that far it's not a simulation, it's a action/shooter.
Edited by - Ceyan on 07-03-2003 05:09:45
