MasterTrader wrote:
Just a heads up, to the best of my knowledge no dev has said that.
No dev had specifically said that. Originally SS2 was going to be similar 2D art style but an entirely new client and and UI upgrades. About half way through development, Jeff changed his mind and pushed out the concept of a 3D SS2. Except, his idea of a "3D game" is actually a 2.5D game, since while the models are 3D, the game is still played on a 2D plane.
This isn't such a big deal with walking games (WoW, GW2, Pokemon). But to the science fiction spaceship genre calling SS2 a full 3D game like Eve and Star Citizen, it is going to be a huge public flop.
That, and the release of SS2 had what looked like hastily done modeling. Most of the old SS1 ships were very flat. Bringing this concern up with Jeff was met with disapproval at first and ignorance later. Jeff didn't see anything wrong with an EFDN being as short (top to bottom) as that Zebucart he made. Took a loooot of bitching before he got a modeler to increase the size and depth of the various ships to normal levels.
According to some former devs, the reason Jeff pushed so heavily to the "3D" (2.5D) aspect was because of a considerable amount of complaints that 2D was bad and they were not going to subscribe because SS1 was 2D.
Later, Bageese admitted that if the dev team (basically Jeff) knew there was an overwhelming amount of support for 2D, SS2 would have been 2D with the new UI elements C2 brought. The dev team did fuck all for market research and stuck their fingers in their ears when the playerbase tried to have their voices heard. They based their entire development process on a small number of probably non-paying, bitchy ass, don't deserve to even have internet, people rather than at the very least incorporate the opinions of their current customers.
I'd pick SS1 art with SS2 client. Art was sharper and easier to create/edit, but I couldn't live without the client/UI changes.