Infinity: The Quest for Earth (The Greatest 4X Game Ever?)

[Mr. Freeze]

Features:

-200 BILLION Star systems to explore, with surrounding planets you can land on and explore from a first-person view. Or colonize. Or mine for resources. Or invade. Or destroy.
-Newtonian physics.
-Real-Time PvP and PvE, either in space or on the ground.
-Ability to own/join corporations and fight/trade with rivals.
-Possible FPS sections.

Imagine the following combat scenario:

You and your megacorp buddies jump to an occupied planet with the intent of conquering it. Engaging the planet defenses proves a cakewalk, so you begin to send in troops and vehicles to destroy the local defenses. You yourself choose to get in a vehicle and direct the fighting right from the frontlines.

After a long and hard-fought campaign, your forces are pushed back. But no biggie: you still have your final "Fuck You" ready. Your supermassive carriers bombard the planet, cracking it open and wiping the enemy's forces out as the planet is destroyed. As the remains drift apart, your mining vessels begin to dig through the ruins, all the while you and your corporation are figuring out where next to invade.

The only bad part? It's STILL in alpha after multiple years. Good thing I'll have a decent PC by then.

[Technician]

Sounds like a chore.

[Mr. Freeze]

It's a 4X game, brah. You need to invest time into these things in order to succeed at them. But yeah, the balance of grinding and fun has to be struck somewhere interesting (AKA the opposite of WOW). Considering the means of acquiring resources hasn't been revealed yet, it could go anywhere in quality.

[Quast]

I was hoping for space empires 6, not another eve :(

[Scripten]

It seems like this is more akin to say, Vega Strike or Noctis. I like the procedural generation, and the graphics are gorgeous. I just hope the gameplay is as good and accurate to what's described.

[david_a]

Was there a link that got deleted or something? Infinity homepage

I've been following this for a while. The game doesn't interest me at all, but the engine sounds very cool. What's most impressive is that nearly all of it was written by a single programmer (hence why as much stuff as possible is procedurally generated). A 'game' like Noctis using this engine would be very cool.

[Mr. T]

Sorry, but everything after Civ2 has just been downhill.

[Craigs]

I googled it out of curiosity. Lost interest as soon as I saw the letters MMO.

[Bank]

Mr. Freeze said:

It's a 4X game, brah. You need to invest time into these things in order to succeed at them. But yeah, the balance of grinding and fun has to be struck somewhere interesting (AKA the opposite of WOW). Considering the means of acquiring resources hasn't been revealed yet, it could go anywhere in quality.

I cannot imagine that doing anything 200 billion times would be either fun nor the opposite of WoW.

200 Billion? Really? That seems incredibly stupid because no matter how they make them they're all going to look like they're pulled from a pool of about 6 planet types with awful randomized peaks and valleys terrain with a random name generator that picks a roman numeral to stick after the same 10 planet names.

[Maes]

Sounds too much like a glorified version of this. And then space/planet sims are boring. I think I'll just keep playing Doom (the only game I can keep an attention span longer than a few minutes) and some Mario on my bootleg famiclone.

[kristus]

Sounds like a pain in the ass. Also, what is the likelyhood of coming across another player when there are 200 billion starsystems in the game?

[Use]

Reminded me of this dumb old game.

[Sharessa]

I remember playing Noctis, like, a decade ago. I think it was on about the same scale, but it wasn't an MMO.

Anyway, I don't see this game doing anything that EVE doesn't. Unless they find a way for space battles to look realistic instead of firing missiles at the dot a parsec away.

[DooMAD]

I was following development with great interest until I saw they were moving towards a subscription based payment platform. It's basically Elite, only multiplayer, so I know I'll love the finished product. It's just unfortunate that you can't simply buy the game, as opposed to renting it on a monthly basis. Fuck you, World of Warcraft, for making that so successful.

[Mr. Freeze]

DooMAD said:

I was following development with great interest until I saw they were moving towards a subscription based payment platform. It's basically Elite, only multiplayer, so I know I'll love the finished product. It's just unfortunate that you can't simply buy the game, as opposed to renting it on a monthly basis. Fuck you, World of Warcraft, for making that so successful.

If this thing delivers on its promises, I would gladly pay the subscription fee. And this is coming from a guy who hates most MMOs.

TBH, $15 a month is not a whole lot if you work 35-40 hours a week.

[Craigs]

200 billion star systems (by the way, I smell bullshit on this).

And earth is the planet everyone's questing for.

[Technician]

My, God. They were right, Earth is the only planet with the right conditions to support life in the universe.

SCIENCE IS WRONG!

[Mr. Freeze]

Craigs said:

200 billion star systems (by the way, I smell bullshit on this).

Procedurally generated star systems. No bullshit here, son.

[Aliotroph?]

I remember seeing this a couple years ago and being amazed by the scale of it. I imagine it will be different from EVE because of the inclusion of planets and the scale.

I wish the spacecraft styles they have didn't retain the generic game sci-fi look. It's boring and any spacecraft that can do FTL jumps really should have massive engines and fuel storage.

Digging around their site I find even their preferred music style is generic sci-fi game epic orchestral. I suppose the scale of the thing will be its stand-out feature.

[DooMAD]

Mr. Freeze said:

If this thing delivers on its promises, I would gladly pay the subscription fee. And this is coming from a guy who hates most MMOs.

TBH, $15 a month is not a whole lot if you work 35-40 hours a week.

$180 a year just doesn't sound like good value for money to me. I would imagine most of us spent less than that on Doom over the years and it's given us 17+ years of entertainment. 17 years of playing Infinity and you'll have spent $3060. It really is a whole lot, regardless of how many hours you work. Just give me a one-off up front purchase fee and I'll happily pay it, even if it was $100.

[Aliotroph?]

If you play it for an hour or two even half the days in a month it's already a way better value for time than renting movies, going to movies, laser tag, paintball, eating out, attending professional sports, fairs, most people's internet connections, etc. Why are gamers so awfully cheap all the time?

[DooMAD]

Aliotroph? said:

If you play it for an hour or two even half the days in a month it's already a way better value for time than renting movies, going to movies, laser tag, paintball, eating out, attending professional sports, fairs, most people's internet connections, etc. Why are gamers so awfully cheap all the time?

Some of those examples don't quite fit in this context. Aside from the internet connection and sometimes sports events (like if you have a season ticket for your team or something), they're not things that you continually pay out on. If you go to see a movie at the cinema, it's usually just a one off event. Same with laser tag and paintball unless you play professionally in some sort of league. As I said, I have no problems paying out a one off fee to buy the game.

But subscription based gaming is a financial commitment. You're going to be continually charged every month regardless of how much or how little you use it. This is the notion I find disgusting.

[Mr. Freeze]

Aliotroph? said:

I wish the spacecraft styles they have didn't retain the generic game sci-fi look. It's boring and any spacecraft that can do FTL jumps really should have massive engines and fuel storage.

You're forgetting that they're going to release the mod tools right after the game releases. The community is going to build a shitload of custom units. Hell, I've seen plans for Warhammer 40k battle-barges and even Star Wars ships, it's not unreasonable to think that Hard Sci-Fi ships will be in there, too.

DooMAD said:

But subscription based gaming is a financial commitment. You're going to be continually charged every month regardless of how much or how little you use it. This is the notion I find disgusting.

You can always suspend your account if you're not able to pay up. You want to play? MAKE time.

[DooMAD]

Mr. Freeze said:

You can always suspend your account if you're not able to pay up. You want to play? MAKE time.

And that's precisely the all-or-nothing ultimatum I'm referring to. If I buy a game, it's so I can play it at my leisure, not so that it becomes some sort of full time job and that once I pay a month's fee I have to play it or I'm pissing my money away.

You're also failing to address the earlier point of how much the fees add up after a while. Meaning that you've paid well above the odds compared to non-subscription based games.

It's just something I'm personally opposed to. Also pretty sure there's no way anyone can change my mind on that one, so you might as well give up there. :)

[Mr. T]

200 billion... Whoopty fucken doo. They might as well just make it nine planets or so instead of having templates for stuff like Forest World #988767783 and pretending that they are all unique.

I would probably be more entertained if it was vaguely realistic. "Anything on this planet Jim?" "Nope, just another inhabitable lump of shit" "OK, time to get back onto our spaceship and be bored for a few more light years."

[Scripten]

Mr. T said:

I would probably be more entertained if it was vaguely realistic. "Anything on this planet Jim?" "Nope, just another inhabitable lump of shit" "OK, time to get back onto our spaceship and be bored for a few more light years."

Actually, that's pretty realistic. Maybe you don't realize this, but most planets out there are just that: Giant hunks of ugly rock.

[wildweasel]

Mr. Freeze said:

You can always suspend your account if you're not able to pay up. You want to play? MAKE time.

Hell no. I play my games whenever I damn well feel like it, not when some arbitrary billing department says I have the time.

[Quast]

DooMAD said:

You're also failing to address the earlier point of how much the fees add up after a while. Meaning that you've paid well above the odds compared to non-subscription based games.

Any game that requires a sub will almost certainly be a game that is updated very regularly with new content and bug fixes: ie awesome post purchase support. That is to say, you're not paying for nothing. The days of developers offering up a product for $50 and then trying to maintain it with patches and and free map packs and shit is over. Fact is people don't really like buying brand new games every 6 months or so, they buy a game and enjoy it but at the same time want new content and bug fixes and the devs want to get paid for maintaining it, so subscriptions and DLC are the wave of the future. You don't have to like it, you don't have to buy into it, I'm just saying that it is the way it is, for better or worse.

[DooMAD]

Just found an intriguing game that's in the beta phase and currently free to play. Ignoring the outdated web design, it looks pretty damn awesome. Shores of Hazeron looks like a cross between SimCity and Freelancer.

//edit: although apparently not very stable on my machine.

Quast said:

Any game that requires a sub will almost certainly be a game that is updated very regularly with new content and bug fixes: ie awesome post purchase support. That is to say, you're not paying for nothing. The days of developers offering up a product for $50 and then trying to maintain it with patches and and free map packs and shit is over. Fact is people don't really like buying brand new games every 6 months or so, they buy a game and enjoy it but at the same time want new content and bug fixes and the devs want to get paid for maintaining it, so subscriptions and DLC are the wave of the future. You don't have to like it, you don't have to buy into it, I'm just saying that it is the way it is, for better or worse.

Yep, understood and fair enough. Also, Infinity seems to be a special case due to the sheer technical scope of the project. Sounds like it's going to need a pretty colossal server farm to run smoothly, and all the bandwidth has to be paid for somehow.