3.17 Opinions

Hatefull

Just curious how everyone is feeling about 3.17? I like finally being able to sell bunker loot, it's just a pita to get a cargo box to sell it in. Anyway, not really looking to debate, I am just kinda curious about people's thoughts on the patch so far.

Babuinix

Performance and network improovements (FPS increase of 40/50% in some areas and reduced dsync)

Which made Ai  more challenging and flying in groups better)

Mining improovements (scanning is more skill based. Mining gadgets: haven't needed them but it's more options)

Refueling and Loot selling brings new dynamics to the gameplay. 

It's another great patch that pushes the game forward content and tech wise.

GrindcoreTHRALL

3.17 is feeling good. I think the only real problem I have had with 3.17 is body markers disappearing. I am REALLY happy SC went with a full loot model. It has been pretty harsh for my friends who actually care about their loot. It doesn't affect me as much since my personal goal is to get better at the game. There is some really good pilots, I use to fancy myself as one of the best but dogfighting has evolved and some people are insane like, Avenger_One on youtube. 


I have had like one 30k Error over the course of 7 hours or so of playing. Star Marine (The FPS practice Team death match) also got an update and is playing sooooo smoothly now. Its feeling polished where as before 3.17 it was a complete joke. Overall 3.17 is in a spot that makes me want to play the game. I try out all the patches and if a particular patch is not very smooth, I just wait for the next one to play. 3.17 is a great patch to really dig into.

Slapshot1188

Torval said:

I'm not a member, so I can' t answer your question but I do have one of my own. Outside of the systems and content changes, have you noticed any performance improvements or changes? Apparently there have been optimizations and engine improvements. Have you noticed them and how do you feel about this part of the update as well.

I find that performance gets better or worse between patches.  Sometimes they get better.  Sometimes they get worse.  I cannot complain about my FPS.  Maybe they aren't going to set any records... but I don't have any super computer either.

Running a Ryzen 3700X with 32GB RAM and a still rocking a 1060 with 6GB on it.

I think that if you have a bunch of RAM and a SSD the game is playable.

Some patches I get higher FPS and then the next one it will go down.. or vice versa.  I wouldn't worry too much about a particular patch being good or bad until it gets closer to release.  FPS has never made be quit.

I'll load it when I get home and post the exact FPS I get.

Babuinix

Game performance depends on a lot of things but:

- SSD is mandatory

- RAM 16 minium + pagefile , 32GB ideal

- The beefier CPU the better

- GPU 1060 and up should run fine

Put game graphical options on High setting.

Clouds on Medium.

When starting the game YOU will have very low performance for 2 main reasons:

You're starting in the most demanding area (City) AND the game is creating the shaders from scratch. As you play things will smooth out.

This shows average FPS expected per HW: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/telemetry

Also this trick helps for NVDIA card users:

Hatefull

I played for a few hours today. I am liking 3.17 this patch I have been getting good performance, and for me, it has been a steady improvement.

Thanks all for the input, it is appreciated.

Sytheeverblade

I don't often play as I don't currently have a big enough SSD to run the game (which may change soon) but I jumped in yesterday.  My pc is getting older so I was really surprised at how well the game ran.  I only played two hours and while loading into the game took forever (HDD is rough on startup) I didn't see a single bug or experience a streaming error that I normally would.  I may have been randomly lucky in that regard but it's come a long way since I first played when Lorville was released.

MaxBacon

The game got far more playable for me, the performance improvements with fractions of gen12 implemented (the new renderer) do noticeably start to see this long-term problem haunting the game being sorted.

Game-play wise the refined looting and ability to sell also gives far more of a point to explore around,  which is something that hits more closely to the way I play.



I would say SC already has gameplay to provide decent longevity and replayability, its 2 major issues are really the client performance that finally started seeing decent gains, and the sorry state of the servers that is the one that is still waiting on improvements. If they move on past those 2 major issues and mitigate gameplay-breaking bugs, game will flourish on itself.


Interesting year this for SC, with the plan to already start testing major pieces of the server mesh next update, after many years of that being in-dev.

Scot

Sytheeverblade said:

I don't often play as I don't currently have a big enough SSD to run the game (which may change soon) but I jumped in yesterday.  My pc is getting older so I was really surprised at how well the game ran.  I only played two hours and while loading into the game took forever (HDD is rough on startup) I didn't see a single bug or experience a streaming error that I normally would.  I may have been randomly lucky in that regard but it's come a long way since I first played when Lorville was released.

May I suggest buying a good SSD before you buy any more ships.

Sytheeverblade

Scot said:

Sytheeverblade said:

I don't often play as I don't currently have a big enough SSD to run the game (which may change soon) but I jumped in yesterday.  My pc is getting older so I was really surprised at how well the game ran.  I only played two hours and while loading into the game took forever (HDD is rough on startup) I didn't see a single bug or experience a streaming error that I normally would.  I may have been randomly lucky in that regard but it's come a long way since I first played when Lorville was released.

May I suggest buying a good SSD before you buy any more ships.

I got myself an SSD this week, so that's all good.  The only ship I have is an Avenger Titan with no plans to upgrade or buy more ships with cash.  Loading into the game takes less than two minutes which makes me wonder why they don't just list an SSD as a requirement.

Scot

Sytheeverblade said:

Scot said:

Sytheeverblade said:

I don't often play as I don't currently have a big enough SSD to run the game (which may change soon) but I jumped in yesterday.  My pc is getting older so I was really surprised at how well the game ran.  I only played two hours and while loading into the game took forever (HDD is rough on startup) I didn't see a single bug or experience a streaming error that I normally would.  I may have been randomly lucky in that regard but it's come a long way since I first played when Lorville was released.

May I suggest buying a good SSD before you buy any more ships.

I got myself an SSD this week, so that's all good.  The only ship I have is an Avenger Titan with no plans to upgrade or buy more ships with cash.  Loading into the game takes less than two minutes which makes me wonder why they don't just list an SSD as a requirement.

Because marketing told them to keep the requirements to the bare minimum, you don't want to scare punters off. To be fair to CI every studio 'marketing department' would say the same thing.

Scot

Torval said:

Scot said:

Sytheeverblade said:

I don't often play as I don't currently have a big enough SSD to run the game (which may change soon) but I jumped in yesterday.  My pc is getting older so I was really surprised at how well the game ran.  I only played two hours and while loading into the game took forever (HDD is rough on startup) I didn't see a single bug or experience a streaming error that I normally would.  I may have been randomly lucky in that regard but it's come a long way since I first played when Lorville was released.

May I suggest buying a good SSD before you buy any more ships.

There are no more spinning platters in my rig at all and I'm much happier for it.

I still have two remote "platters" for back ups, still don't trust the cloud.

MaxBacon

Sytheeverblade said:

I got myself an SSD this week, so that's all good.  The only ship I have is an Avenger Titan with no plans to upgrade or buy more ships with cash.  Loading into the game takes less than two minutes which makes me wonder why they don't just list an SSD as a requirement.

The SSD is mentioned on the game requirements btw

People also don't need to do any cash upgrades, all you really need is get a in-game money income, some income loops make cut it down to hours to buy a ship with currency that would cost otherwise hundreds of dollah. They get wiped on major progression wipes, but those are not common so it's worth to do that to get ships ign.

Slapshot1188

MaxBacon said:

People also don't need to do any cash upgrades, all you really need is get a in-game money income, some income loops make cut it down to hours to buy a ship with currency that would cost otherwise hundreds of dollah. They get wiped on major progression wipes, but those are not common so it's worth to do that to get ships ign.

We do not know how long it will take to earn credits/ships when the game launches.  Right now it's ALPHA 3.17... followed by ALPHA 3.18... then next year (maybe!) ALPHA 4.0.  Then BETA.... etc...  etc...

During these times, progress may be wiped, gameplay changed, ships changed, costs changed...

So until it launches, I personally won't make any statements about how long it will take to play the game and earn the thousand dollar RLM ships.

MaxBacon

Slapshot1188 said:

MaxBacon said:

People also don't need to do any cash upgrades, all you really need is get a in-game money income, some income loops make cut it down to hours to buy a ship with currency that would cost otherwise hundreds of dollah. They get wiped on major progression wipes, but those are not common so it's worth to do that to get ships ign.

We do not know how long it will take to earn credits/ships when the game launches.  Right now it's ALPHA 3.17... followed by ALPHA 3.18... then next year (maybe!) ALPHA 4.0.  Then BETA.... etc...  etc...

During these times, progress may be wiped, gameplay changed, ships changed, costs changed...

So until it launches, I personally won't make any statements about how long it will take to play the game and earn the thousand dollar RLM ships.

One thing I know is that no matter the game, there will always be meta playing for best earning incomes, on a game like this where things are generally sandboxy on how you can interact with the game I would say is safe to say there will be such things.

For now at least, the last progression wipe took I think a year and half from the previous one,  I think we might be up to see one soon due to the server mesh shenanigans having fundamental changes on how the game works, especially with full persistence stated to enter testing phase with this next 3.18 major update. But for at current rates it's fast earning to play with the ships you want.

Vrika

MaxBacon said:

Slapshot1188 said:

MaxBacon said:

People also don't need to do any cash upgrades, all you really need is get a in-game money income, some income loops make cut it down to hours to buy a ship with currency that would cost otherwise hundreds of dollah. They get wiped on major progression wipes, but those are not common so it's worth to do that to get ships ign.

We do not know how long it will take to earn credits/ships when the game launches.  Right now it's ALPHA 3.17... followed by ALPHA 3.18... then next year (maybe!) ALPHA 4.0.  Then BETA.... etc...  etc...

During these times, progress may be wiped, gameplay changed, ships changed, costs changed...

So until it launches, I personally won't make any statements about how long it will take to play the game and earn the thousand dollar RLM ships.

One thing I know is that no matter the game, there will always be meta playing for best earning incomes, on a game like this where things are generally sandboxy on how you can interact with the game I would say is safe to say there will be such things.

For now at least, the last progression wipe took I think a year and half from the previous one,  I think we might be up to see one soon due to the server mesh shenanigans having fundamental changes on how the game works, especially with full persistence stated to enter testing phase with this next 3.18 major update. But for at current rates it's fast earning to play with the ships you want.

It's common for a game still doing wipes to intentionally make some long grinds shorter, because otherwise people wouldn't bother playing with the grindy feature at all.

It's possible that RSI is planning to have short grinds after release, but it's also possible that they're planning to dramatically increase grind length.

Personally I don't think even RSI really knows how long they want the grinds to be at this point - it'll likely be something they decide only after it's time to lock down how they plan to continue monetization after wipes.

MaxBacon

Vrika said:

It's common for a game still doing wipes to intentionally make some long grinds shorter, because otherwise people wouldn't bother playing with the grindy feature at all.

It's possible that RSI is planning to have short grinds after release, but it's also possible that they're planning to dramatically increase grind length.

Personally I don't think even RSI really knows how long they want the grinds to be at this point - it'll likely be something they decide only after it's time to lock down how they plan to continue monetization after wipes.

I wouldn't even think the grinds will be very related to actually buying X or Y ship, seeing that the game added the renting option on top that allows to be able to play with the ship you want upfront.

The game has a logic of "gear progression" because what you get when you buy a ship is just the base hull with the default setting, there is a whole array of progression and reputation rewards (as they mention things to be locked behind reputation) to upgrade from the internal components (shields, power, etc) to the weapons and all. 

The base hull is the start, you have more to grind for and that's where they can make long grind hauls for a most-wanted ship weapon component that's the reward for a high rep with X faction.

At that, while the big ships are expensive obviously, they are also multi-crew to not being a brick in space with a guy inside (aka easy target), so you can play on a capital as soon you start the game, it's not really a thing locked with "you need X level to use this", to me that's kinda the beauty of the sandbox they put on it, you make your own goals but it's not artificially locking you out of this ship-related content.

Slapshot1188

MaxBacon said:

At that, while the big ships are expensive obviously, they are also multi-crew to not being a brick in space with a guy inside (aka easy target), so you can play on a capital as soon you start the game, it's not really a thing locked with "you need X level to use this", to me that's kinda the beauty of the sandbox they put on it, you make your own goals but it's not artificially locking you out of this ship-related content.

Sure.. you aren't locked out for the low low price of $xxxxx

TheDalaiBomba

MaxBacon said:

Vrika said:

It's common for a game still doing wipes to intentionally make some long grinds shorter, because otherwise people wouldn't bother playing with the grindy feature at all.

It's possible that RSI is planning to have short grinds after release, but it's also possible that they're planning to dramatically increase grind length.

Personally I don't think even RSI really knows how long they want the grinds to be at this point - it'll likely be something they decide only after it's time to lock down how they plan to continue monetization after wipes.

I wouldn't even think the grinds will be very related to actually buying X or Y ship, seeing that the game added the renting option on top that allows to be able to play with the ship you want upfront.

The game has a logic of "gear progression" because what you get when you buy a ship is just the base hull with the default setting, there is a whole array of progression and reputation rewards (as they mention things to be locked behind reputation) to upgrade from the internal components (shields, power, etc) to the weapons and all. 

The base hull is the start, you have more to grind for and that's where they can make long grind hauls for a most-wanted ship weapon component that's the reward for a high rep with X faction.

At that, while the big ships are expensive obviously, they are also multi-crew to not being a brick in space with a guy inside (aka easy target), so you can play on a capital as soon you start the game, it's not really a thing locked with "you need X level to use this", to me that's kinda the beauty of the sandbox they put on it, you make your own goals but it's not artificially locking you out of this ship-related content.

How is PvP now being handled?

I was under the impression they removed the offline play option.  Is that true?

I'm wondering how PvP and/or economy will be handled considering the above.  For games with open world PvP, this is always a bugaboo.

MaxBacon

Slapshot1188 said:

MaxBacon said:

At that, while the big ships are expensive obviously, they are also multi-crew to not being a brick in space with a guy inside (aka easy target), so you can play on a capital as soon you start the game, it's not really a thing locked with "you need X level to use this", to me that's kinda the beauty of the sandbox they put on it, you make your own goals but it's not artificially locking you out of this ship-related content.

Sure.. you aren't locked out for the low low price of $xxxxx

What I said is that the big ships are by default requiring of a crew, you might wana solo ur gucci Idris, I'd counter that you're ez free raid PvP-wise. The game already enacts the clerar benefit of playing as a crew, be it inside the ship, docked on the ship with your ship, or as a group of ships traveling together. 

So, there is clear room for you to play on capitals, within the possible roles that would be needed, it's not content that is locked out, neither by an artificial level you need to achieve or by a price tag (cash or ign currency).

MaxBacon

TheDalaiBomba said:

How is PvP now being handled?

I was under the impression they removed the offline play option.  Is that true?

I'm wondering how PvP and/or economy will be handled considering the above.  For games with open world PvP, this is always a bugaboo.

The world is generally allowing PvP, the balance is made by lawful areas and unlawful areas, aka monitored, so piracy activities will result on crimes, bounties, etc, etc... 

The offline option was removed, the game is set as an MMO type of world, not an opt-in online.

The PvP is mixed in on design, for example, you're a good rep player and based on that rep you can accept a mission to recover a black box on a ship wreck, you take that mission as the lawful player all gucci, but the game does another thing on the back, there is a mission for a piracy-type player to accept to actually go to the same place but to destroy that black box instead. That is generally the driver for PvP.

For a PvE player I would believe this hits more on playing either on lawful zones where piracy is either too difficult/not worth it, or playing part of an organization that on a game of this type always organize themselves.

On full PvP games, from EvE to Albion, PvE players are always there needed because they tend to be the core pillar of the financial or logistic ops of a certain guild or alliance, by general rule they are protected by the group and are not the players who will be frontlining PvP fights. I would expect SC will balance out this on a similar way, but its world, by design, is open world PvP.

Slapshot1188

MaxBacon said:

Slapshot1188 said:

MaxBacon said:

At that, while the big ships are expensive obviously, they are also multi-crew to not being a brick in space with a guy inside (aka easy target), so you can play on a capital as soon you start the game, it's not really a thing locked with "you need X level to use this", to me that's kinda the beauty of the sandbox they put on it, you make your own goals but it's not artificially locking you out of this ship-related content.

Sure.. you aren't locked out for the low low price of $xxxxx

What I said is that the big ships are by default requiring of a crew, you might wana solo ur gucci Idris, I'd counter that you're ez free raid PvP-wise. The game already enacts the clerar benefit of playing as a crew, be it inside the ship, docked on the ship with your ship, or as a group of ships traveling together. 

So, there is clear room for you to play on capitals, within the possible roles that would be needed, it's not content that is locked out, neither by an artificial level you need to achieve or by a price tag (cash or ign currency).

Since we have no idea how many credits the ships will cost at launch... nor how hard those credits will be to earn in game at launch... I have no idea if we will be effectively locked out by not having paid $xxxx money for the ships.

GrindcoreTHRALL

I had installed 3.17 right before 3.17.1 came out and I neglected to delete my user folder again. I was having a horrible time and finally forced myself to delete user folder and verify the game again. I didn't think it would make that much of a difference since I had just deleted the user folder when updating to 3.17, but I was wrong. My game is running so much smoother now. I told myself last time I would delete the user folder everytime and I wasted my own time not following up on that decision. If you are having some fps problems or graphical artifacting, try it out too.

Mendel

GrindcoreTHRALL said:

I had installed 3.17 right before 3.17.1 came out and I neglected to delete my user folder again. I was having a horrible time and finally forced myself to delete user folder and verify the game again. I didn't think it would make that much of a difference since I had just deleted the user folder when updating to 3.17, but I was wrong. My game is running so much smoother now. I told myself last time I would delete the user folder everytime and I wasted my own time not following up on that decision. If you are having some fps problems or graphical artifacting, try it out too.

It sounds like the installation process doesn't bother to clean up things.  These type of things shouldn't be happening in a $400 million project.

Slapshot1188

Mendel said:

GrindcoreTHRALL said:

I had installed 3.17 right before 3.17.1 came out and I neglected to delete my user folder again. I was having a horrible time and finally forced myself to delete user folder and verify the game again. I didn't think it would make that much of a difference since I had just deleted the user folder when updating to 3.17, but I was wrong. My game is running so much smoother now. I told myself last time I would delete the user folder everytime and I wasted my own time not following up on that decision. If you are having some fps problems or graphical artifacting, try it out too.

It sounds like the installation process doesn't bother to clean up things.  These type of things shouldn't be happening in a $400 million project.

It’s Alpha!  

Until the argument needs to be made that ITS THE REAL GAME!

Theocritus

Mendel said:

GrindcoreTHRALL said:

I had installed 3.17 right before 3.17.1 came out and I neglected to delete my user folder again. I was having a horrible time and finally forced myself to delete user folder and verify the game again. I didn't think it would make that much of a difference since I had just deleted the user folder when updating to 3.17, but I was wrong. My game is running so much smoother now. I told myself last time I would delete the user folder everytime and I wasted my own time not following up on that decision. If you are having some fps problems or graphical artifacting, try it out too.

It sounds like the installation process doesn't bother to clean up things.  These type of things shouldn't be happening in a $400 million project.

Well the blow and hookers were 350 million so that only left so much for the game to be made......