The game is also a huge mess with identity crisis and no clear direction. Not to mention the big mismanagement issues and toxic workspace. Been following the development of this game for years and despite the potential and accomplishments the management doesn't make it seem like the game has a bright future. Recently I've encountered news that they banned trading ships between users because they don't make money from it when years before it was advertised that the ships you buy now you can trade with others later so it's not a waste of money. Lmao

You'd think they'd have caught wind of something when they introduced purchasable ships. And most notably their pricing.

And you don't even own the ship, as usual you just own a licence to use it.

Planets have been in the game for years and years and have always been a mix of proc gen and artist crafted stuff. Also the proc gen of the newer planets is the best I've ever seen.

I'm not really defending the game, but i bought a ship like a decade ago during a kickstarter promo or something. I "played" the game maybe once a year ever since then. I got my money out of it a long time ago. The game isn't great. It's probably not even good, but i have never seen anytging like it. It looks insane, (runs rather poor) the space flight sim part is fantastic. The ship detail is something that hasn't been there before and will never been seen again. (Makes sense, since that's where their money goes). People are really nice in the game, and i had the best interactions i ever had in any game.

Long story short, i hate what happens to a game that i generally like, and the idea behind it. The amount of money put into is bizzare. On the other hand, there are "real" scam games, that made 250 million dollars and are genuinely just unreal engine 5 assets scattered around, with no game in sight, and generally people don't talk about it the same way they talk about star citizen.

I really don't see it as a scam. I think I paid $30 for the game and they're continuing to develop it. I've played it a bit and while it definitely feels unfinished, I'd say they're certainly onto something, it has serious potential to turn into something cool.

such as procedural world-building

So no longer “it takes time to build planets”? Just slap on some algorithmic generation and call it a day?

So one thing to mention here, these planets exist at a nearly realistic scale, most a have about a 2000 km diameter, which puts their surface area around 12,600,000 square km. You can't sculpt every inch of that by hand and make it look good, you just can't. At some point you need to leverage procedural methods to fill in the space between crafted areas.

I'm pretty confident that anyone still paying for it at this point knows what to expect.