GinRummy wrote on Nov 25, 2019, 10:35:
For all the millions of words argued about this game so far, nobody ever actually talks about the state of gameplay in it. Is it an empty solo place? Are there people, quests, enemies, planets, etc. yet even in beta form? What is coming soon and is it actually worth trying the demos now? I suppose I could install it myself and see, but that's work others could do and just tell me.

There is a limited sandbox. The state of your account and progress is generally persistent during each quarterly patch, and you can engage in the following in the play space available:

1> Trading (buying/selling commodities and shipping them)
2> Answering distress beacons (NPC requests for combat assistance, newer feature, not consistently working)
3> Bounty Hunting (Fly to a place, destroy target, get paid)
4> Scan for, find, and destroy spy satellites around Comm Relays.
5a> Go to a wreck and retrieve the black box and bring it back
5b> Go to a wreck and collect the dog tags of the crew to find a specific dead crew members
5c> Go to a wreck and find specific cargo and bring it back
6a> Collect specific cargo from one location, and bring it to another (small quantity transport)
6b> Find a target, destroy, retrieve cargo, deliver
7> Repel boarders on a security station
8> Repel player trying to hack a Comm Array
9> Repel a player trying to hack a security station
10a> Hack a Comm Array
10b> Reset a hacked Comm Array
11> Search a cave for a lost cave diver
12> Ship mining if you have a Prospector
13> Hand mining if you don't have a Prospector
14a> Raid a drug lab, destroy turrets protecting it, kill NPCs present, return with specific drugs
14b> Raid a drug lab, stop another player from stealing the drugs, destroy as many drugs as you can.

And a whole lot more. Much of it works consistently, some of it less so. On top of that, you can now rent ships to enable you to expand the style of missions you can engage in, you can work with others on their ships, and you can use your IN-GAME money to purchase ships (Watch Astropub's Zero to Hero streams sometime). FINALLY, in 3.8 (coming in December), money and in-game purchases will be persistent through several major patches to let people mess around more.

The game has TONS of bugs. It is clearly in a state of active development, and that means there will be nights where a player runs into so many bugs they just lose their mind and want to stop playing. And other nights where someone will run into no bugs at all.

I wouldn't recommend anyone pledge money to the game until we have more bug fixing, and a better tutorial than what we have. But I would recommend people try out free fly events to see how things stand, and if they and their friends have fun.

Hope that helps!

This comment was edited on Nov 25, 2019, 22:34.