|
Though Jumpgate has quite a bit to offer in space flight, it ultimately misses the mark and could not be a long-term investment for me.
One of the self-proclaimed strengths of Jumpgate is that the game is more a space flight simulator requiring skill than a level-grinding MMO requiring time and mouse clicking. Given that, I bought a Saitek x52 flight control system to try and get the best tactile experience. While mastering basic flight is rewarding, the flight simulator boils down to Lunar Lander. You produce thrust in one direction (opposite your current heading) and Newtonian physics does the rest, with a bit of drag thrown in for balance.
Accepting that I have not played for any appreciable period of time (in MMO terms), the combat is, well, difficult. I tried to fight a single bad guy in the simulator over and over and was unable to win. It probably did not help that my single laser gun is about as powerful as a flashlight, but still, talk about a downer! Maybe I should have stepped up to a better ship, but I didn't have a better ship in the real world, so why practice with one in the simulator?
A lengthy analysis of how I spent my time in game is forthcoming, but first let me get right to the heart of it. I love Bridge Commander. What I want in a space MMO is to have a ship, not to be a ship. The joy of space flight is flying a spaceship. When the player is the spaceship, the concept of the ship is abstracted away and it becomes a first (or third) person game with physics, where the ship simply represents my avatar's current geometry and physics characteristics.
Why is The Sims so popular? People like to manage and control things. Take that to space. Bridge Commander meets The Sims. Give me crew rosters and starship management. Give me problems on my ship, with my ship, and with my crew in addition to problems external to my ship. And along with this, for gods' sake (a little BSG there ;)), give me the interior space and let me walk around inside the frakkin' ship. The USS Enterprise D had 42 decks. Designing even 1/10th of that space would be a huge undertaking for any seriously diversified fleet. Holy crap that's hard, you are saying. Of course it is, but greatness comes at a price.
I now return to the Jumpgate analysis. After a few Fed Ex quests, I started to figure out the early game progression. I got basic flight down, more or less, and realized that I would be spending a lot of time going from place to place, so I started taking measurements. Distances between jump gates vary, but most were around 35,000 units apart. My ship traveled at an average rate of 300 units/sec. Given about 5 jumps between stations, you are looking at around 8.75 minutes per trip. At 1000 exp per trip and needing 10,000 exp between levels (around level 5 or 7), that's nearly 1.5 hours for a level. Not too bad, until you realize that you will be doing this, and only this, for at least 10 levels. I don't know about you, but pointing my targeting reticle at a distant gate and flooring the throttle, then walking away for a minute to get coffee (or staring at empty space) is not my idea of fun for the 20+ hours needed to reach a sufficient level of rank and cash to buy a decent ship and embark on more interesting missions.
|
