Watch youtuber XenthorX put Star Citizen through its paces in glorious 4K. He's in a light nimble single-seater ship that can really kick up dust. Watch him first Canyon Run like a pro then launch himself into high altitude space. It all kicks off at the 00:10:00 mark in the following video...
What would have topped this off PERFECTLY would have been a crescendo-leap into Hyper Drive using the Quantum Engine attached to every space-worthy ship.
For some inconceivable reason, that definitely has nothing to do with gameplay, Star Citizen forces the player to Quantum Travel only to a) a specific jump point, which you have to acces via clunky-old #wehateMobiGlas and b) only when you're fully out of any planet's atmosphere. And for the larger planet's this is going to mean many hundreds of vertical miles.
"My quantum engine, my method of use," must surely be the collective mantra here. Use it when I (the paying player) want, to effect a spectacular escape or hurry my gameplaying experience along or whatever valid i.e. personal, gaming reason...
But then there's no interface to support jump-point-free Quantum Travel or Free Jumping... put the Star Map on The Player HUD or Heads-up Display. While a hierarchic rendition of the current star system in faux-3D might look cute, it's horrible to navigate from. Make the Star Map player relative, put it in the HUD, so that he can gauge where to go from where he physically is now. And make it a glorious visual experience too, not some glowing can't read horror experience on a jumped-up inter-galactic iPhone. Make it feel like HUD is pulling the entire mappable star system around him like a 35-tog quilt. Let him feel like a living and vital part of the 'verse.
Allow Quantum Travel into and out of atmosphere. It's that simple.
Debate Magazine
