[lotharbot]

Expanding on this:

when you add the extra degrees of freedom in Descent-like games, relative to Quake-like games (or flight/space sims but in different ways), there are some emergent behaviors that change how the game fundamentally feels. What frequently happens when random devs take on a 6dof project because they enjoyed Descent back in the day is they'll make a game that feels like a shooter with vertical flight, and is missing some of the key things that make Descent feel good. I've heard some 6dof games described as "it feels like I'm flying a camera, not a ship" (lack of turning momentum), or "it feels sluggish when I try to move in multiple directions" (lack of vector independence / trichording), or "it's just spray-and-pray combat" (undersized ship hitboxes relative to projectile speed/size and level size.) There are a lot of things we've learned over 30 years of playing Descent and Descent-like games that don't always get taken seriously by devs of other 6dof projects. And even when they do take everything seriously, there are things none of us have figured out how to articulate but that can make a 6dof game feel bad.

I think it'd be possible to build a great game in the genre, but you'd need a bunch of key things to come together, and then you'd also need great marketing to get the thing in front of millions of eyeballs to make enough sales to keep the community going.