Parkitect early build available

I'm not gonna say you're doing it wrong, but it hasn't been work for me. I cranked out a nice little castle station the other day in maybe 10 minutes, and Simon is starting to get proficient at it too. The coaster building tools are pretty great, and fast to adjust. I've enjoyed most of the scenarios, though I tend to neglect my staff until they quit. There's just as much game there, as far as I can tell. YMMV, obviously.

According to Steam, I spent 42 hours with the game. If I'm not doing it right by then, then I'm not going to do it right ever.

Just a big difference in tastes here, I suppose. I thought the scenarios were simply awful.

The coaster tools are outstanding, but then I found the ratings were meaningless as the system was so flawed. So the one part of coaster building I enjoy beyond making things pretty (the challenge of pleasing the peeps) is irrelevant.

Unfortunately, there's nothing of value in the game for me.

Parkitect is hardly perfect. They've made some odd choices (the weird converer delivery system, lightning storms, etc) and it's glacial in progress, but it's much closer to what I'm looking for in a time waster than Planet Coaster.

At the very least we can all agree that RCTW probably sucks.

As long as your staff doesn't unionize, right? Hahahaha.

I'm with Jeff in that I thought Parkitect was promising until I got my hands on Planet Coaster, after which I can't even look at Parkitect anymore. One of the biggest turn-offs for me has been the art direction of the game. I get that they are trying to go the lightweight route à la RCT 1 and 2, but the end result is plasticky and sterile. Even the original RCT had textures that give the game depth and make the graphics "pop" despite being ancient by today's standards. Despite the low-grade graphics, Parkitect suffers from performance issues which I suspect go back to the use of the Unity engine... there's a reason that you don't see big-name titles being released under Unity. (RCTW suffers from similar issues.)

Yeah, I think Unity is a great tool for making cross-platform stuff that doesn't have to push a lot of polygons around, but it's definitely not as solid as some of the PC-only 3D engines in use. Having abstractions away from any one platform's capability comes at a cost, for sure.

So looks and performance?

Still doesn't adress the underlying fact that, for me, it's not fun to play.

For whatever reason, whenever I look at RCT now, it looks messy. There's too much going on in the textures. Perhaps, I've just gotten used to Parkitect. And maybe it's my POV - I still feel like Parkitect (like RCT before it) is more like working with models than an actual park. There's something appealing about that to me. Planet Coaster feels more like building an actual park. With Parkitect I'm building the model of that park in my basement. And the I think it's the perfect analogy given the amount of work it takes to create in each game. PC feels like building something real - like I need a degree. Parkitect feels like putting together little models - where the only requisite is "don't sniff too much glue."

Just personal preference.

I find the performance thing interesting. A lot of people say that and there's even an experimental Beta line you can use in Steam with performance upgrades. It's not great, but it's not horrible for me.

That Speedway file above runs at a pretty consistent 30fps for me and dips if you zoom way in or get a lot moving on screen. But so did this coaster when I got to the end of working with it. So that's strange to me.

Eh. Who knows? Plenty of people playing PC. I still prefer the niche that is Parkitect.

I haven't played Planet Coaster so I don't know if I'd like it and I can't compare it with Parkitect, but I do like making pretty (and realistic) things so I have a feeling I'd be into it at least a little bit. I dug NoLimits, but it got tedious after a while for all the reasons Gonch hates Planet Coaster. PC seems like a decent compromise between RCT and NoLimits.

Lord Gonchar said:

For whatever reason, whenever I look at RCT now, it looks messy. There's too much going on in the textures.

I completely agree with this. The graphics were kind of dated even when it was new, but it had so much charm and the gameplay was so good that no one cared. But it was almost too detailed in some ways, to the point that it stuff started to blend together and look, as you said, messy. Parkitect's simplicity is its strength. The design is subjective, I get that. But I actually think it's well done. I don't care that it's cartoonish looking. RCT was, too, but in hindsight I think it could have benefited from looking more simplistic.