When the final update came out a few years ago I really believed in that! Now I still love the game and the dev team and their culture should inspire others!
Which of the “final update, this time for real, believe me you guys, just this one more” do you mean? I think there have been at least 4-6 of those😂 But very happy, that is wasn’t true yet.
Terraria has all the ingredients of a great game:
- passionate developers
- great progression
- great gameplay
- great bosses
- the sense of discovery and excitement is profound and enthralling
- you dont need a good PC to run it
Every game tries to be the next big thing but they all seem to fail to understand that what made games like Minecraft so great was their portability/runnability !
Star Citizen is a prime example of that: tries so hard to be great, 99% of people can’t run it. It doesn’t matter. On the other hands: Terraria is a complete experience that has been gradually extended/improved/optimized and can run on almost any PC.
I’m looking for contradiction because I see no evidence of my take being wrong. That’s also how League of Legends got so big: you could install it on high school PC lol
Virtual worlds are affected by similar problems. If you look at e.g. Second Life, a relatively established one you will quickly realize it has all kinds of users with relatively minimal spec systems and use it in all kinds of contexts where they also do other stuff (e.g. work, watching kids,…). But people who try to build new ones tend to try to build them as VR which is completely useless to that entire user base because they can’t afford a system that runs VR and also won’t work in situations where you need to do other stuff at the same time.
Maybe what we need is more analysis and fewer visionaries.
You’re so right! Vision by itself can only do so much if it’s not helped with expertise. To be totally transparent I’m not super convinced by VR virtual worlds. I feel like Lemmy is a great “universe” because it’s interoperate and it really gives it the independence that a true universe need to have!
The metaverse will not be built by a company but will emerge from a universal, accessible technology.
I think those games hit different brackets.
Star Citizen simply wouldn’t be Star Citizen and would never take off if it looked like Terraria. A major part of its charm is how much life-like immersion it creates - things feel very real, not toyish, and you actually experience spaceflight and everything in between. And for that to work - and for people to spend hundreds of bucks on what is ultimately just a game - you need game graphics to be as great as you can pull off.
The assumption that you need amazing graphics for immersion is deeply flawed. We have had decades of people immersed in e.g. RPGs with very minimal graphics or even text only interfaces.
That’s not exactly what I meant.
What I meant is that Star Citizen wants to be an immersive simulator, the kind of game that makes you feel whatever happens to you to be real and actual.
Terraria doesn’t pretend to be real - it’s magical and funny and silly and that’s its charm. It might absolutely be immersive - but in another way. It’s a game you come to to have some fun and wonderful experiences - not the game that grows to be your second life.
Now I make it sound predatory, and in part it is, but alas, hope I got my point across.
In my experience cranking one aspect (like graphics) up to 11 in terms of realism just makes all the other things that aren’t realistic even more glaringly obvious in an effect sort of similar to the uncanny valley or to the way suspension of disbelief is harder to achieve in a movie that takes itself too seriously.
Sure, but, to be fair, RSI has made decent work at polishing those angles. There’s still plenty wrong about the mechanics, and it’s buggy as hell too, but overall, I’d say I can immerse in SC in a way I cannot with any other game.
What kills SC in my opinion is not the “uncanny valley” feeling but rather the obvious greed and laziness of developers that essentially trapped themselves into profiting more off the unfinished game, thereby incentivizing themselves to stagnate. The game is very good as far as general gameplay is concerned - but the development incentives are screwed, and as a result, what could be a game of the century is now nothing but an empty promise or, at best, a sandbox.
They should crunch because they want great abs.
Terraria: Thriving in 2024.
Starbound: Dead, with its bones eroded to dust.
Honestly had high hopes for Starbound. “It’s like Terraria, but more!” And then Terraria kept gaining content while Starbound basically never got beyond what it had when it launched.
At this point, I want to just mod the sci-fi stuff and world hopping into Terraria.
They need to stop working on that game and move on, can’t believe I’m writing that.
They tried. Starbound didn’t do all that great. Granted, it’s been 10 years.
