I think my favorite use of Star Citizen has been from folks like PolarityDnb who use it to create backdrops for ambient electronica compositions.

No way, really?! Well bravo, your abstract word suggestion conjured up just the right game :D

Like a fission reaction between cope, capitalism and hypetrain grease. Compels me though 🤔

Absolutely no way Star Citizen isn’t a massive scam. I mean, people can be incompetent, but

over $580 million

…seems like it has to be some kind of upper limit of incompetence?

Not quite, too new!

Hades?

Outer Wilds!

I know this isn’t right but now I wanna play Hunt Showdown

Disco E!

Jazz fusion subsidiary simulator deluxe

For me, I enjoyed D4 as a nice campaign. Played through a few times, once with my partner and another solo.

D4 pros: Impeccable game feel, moment to moment combat, graphics and even some nice storytelling. Enjoy the QoL features for alts and the myriad of endgame loops; Helltides are a lot of fun.

D4 cons: Dungeons are boring to me. Builds that feel fun and powerful are limited to 0-2 per class; a big letdown. Weird network / instance lag which stands out among the otherwise polished aesthetic. Middling open world re: exploration to reward ratio.

PoE pros: Deeeeeep. Hardcore. Aspirational? Still haven’t cleared the campaign despite getting closer each league. Lots of builds and skill variety.

PoE cons: Feels like the oldest baguette ever to exist. Wildly stiff gameplay. Ugh its such shit compared to D4. Like DMC vs Skyrim level of difference. Disparate, cheap feeling UI and tacked on storytelling. Exudes HardXCore__Statzz.xls energy and feels practically impossible to navigate a viable build without a guide.

In the end I think Grim Dawn outplays both D4 and PoE. Check it out if you love ARPGs

I’m curious about this kind of thing from an engine and console architecture perspective. Any gamedevs able to shed some light?

I work in the industry, but not directly on low-level engine implementation details. Personally, my gut thinking is that the Creation Engine is falling behind in terms of modern asset streaming techniques.

Similarly, I wonder if a lack of strong virtualized geometry / just-in-time LOD generation tech could be a huge bottleneck?

From what I understand, efforts like Nanite in UE5 were an enormous engineering investment for Epic, and unless Bethesda has a massive engine team of their own (they don’t), they simply won’t be able to benefit from an in-house equivalent in tech.

Ultimately, I do think the lack of innovation in the Creation Engine is due to internal technical targets being established as “30FPS is good enough” and frame times below 33ms are viewed as “for those PC gamers with power to spare.”