"Elite Dangerous & Star Citizen: Different or Doppelgangers?" tonight at 8:00 PM ET

bikerlater

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With ED being a "finished product" I've been wondering what advantages it has over Star citizen besides the obvious answers(multiple systems, less bugs, stable framerate and servers) I've been trying for the past week to get invested in ED the same way SC has had me in its clutches since early 2020 but everything feels 192.168.100.1
 
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Bambooza

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With ED being a "finished product" I've been wondering what advantages it has over Star citizen besides the obvious answers(multiple systems, less bugs, stable framerate and servers) I've been trying for the past week to get invested in ED the same way SC has had me in its clutches since early 2020 but everything feels bland.

It's one of the reasons the size of the map is not as important as the amount of content with in the map. no mans sky had a similar issue in that they had lots of places to visit but they all started to feel like the same place with the missions being more of the same. Compared to games like Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout ... having relatively small maps that were packed with stories, events and unique towns that made for a far more engaging experience. Its what CIG is attempting to do with Star Citizen while not having as many locations as ED they are attempting to place far more interesting and unique POI's with their own stories and events.
 

BUTUZ

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ED a finished product? They're about 3 years behind schedule for what they promised would be on launch lol.
 

Lorddarthvik

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ED's downfall is exactly it's vast universe, cos it's empty. This is emphasized by their aim to be "realistic".

ED is like playing COD/BF maps totally alone. Not even with bots. All the game mechanics are still there, the graphics are there, but there is nothing to do.
There is no sense of place. It is an insanely huge world, but the variety is so limited, that every place feels the same very fast. Everything in the game only exists to serve a basic purpose.
Stations/outposts = main menu for trade/missions/repairs
Planets/moons = nav point
Ships = targets/set dressing
Asteroids = click to gain money/set dressing
Star = fly around for fuel/nav point
That's it. Everything is as minimal as it can be.
The way all these are represented was outdated from day 1. It's like pictures in a dictionary. Basic accurate representations, nothing more.
Ships don't have any fun articulation or any action outside of being bricks (ignoring the basic landing gear and weapon deploys which is not that interesting after 10 seconds), planets are just balls of blue or green, moons are smaller balls of brown, even from up close. Stars are kinda cool looking sometimes, but that gets old very fast as you travel from system to system.

There is no sense of self. You were your ship at first, then you were a basic bitch mobility scooter, and now you are a generic character in generic suits with generic sci-fi guns. But you are still not Your character, that freely moves around and does whatever it wants in a world. There is no "filler", where you can just walk about and do whatever. It is a tiny bit better now that you can actually go up to the generic shop on the generic station to buy your generic equipment, but that's about it.

The gameplay loops are hollow. You spend 95% of your time traveling between nav points, waiting to access the next menu, whether it's for missions or trade. For foxs sake, the most interesting part of the game is turnin off all the aids and landing on a station. If you have a tiny bit more patience then a 6 year old, it's easy, and takes annoyingly long after the first couple of times, so it's back to fully aided flight. You can even just push a button and autodock.
There is no payout in terms of time invested vs profit. Long term goals like getting high enough reputation and buying a large high-end ship takes waaaaay too long, because the grind is insanely boring.

The multiplayer just doesn't work. First off, there is nothing to do in MP apart from a few types of missions (kill ships, reach interaction point on ground). Even if there was, the way it works is so cumbersome, and it's more broken than what we have in SC when it comes to actually putting ppl in the same instance. You can't just "be" on the same server and do whatever you want together.

Ships lack diversity. And I don't mean in color... You can basically do the same things (trade, fight, mine) with almost every ship. You can do it slightly more efficiently with more expensive bigger/better ones, but getting a bigger better ships only means you can take more damage you or can fit more cargo. There is no equivalent ot a Prospector or Cutty Red or Reclaimer here. Almost every ship can be outfitted to do any of the few gameplay loops there is, and thus is the same. This severely limits progression, as there are only two types in the game: earning credits to buy better ships/equpiment to be more efficient, and earning reputation to unlock better ships/equipment to be more efficient. That's it. There is no such thing as "earn enough to buy a Mole so I can mine with my friends".
This in the nd leads to no incentive for progression. Why the heck should I keep grinding away to get X if all I can do when I get it is the exact same grind I'm doing now, without anything to show for it.

It's not like you usual mmorpg where you do the same grind, and then earn loot so you can grind more, because there is no challenge. Even if there was, there is nothing justifying the challenge. There is no story background which would incentivize the player to tackle the challenge (think raid bosses in MMOs). There is no epic loot to be had to show off for your efforts. There is no social points to be gained. Putting in effort doesn't have a payoff. The grind is there, the reward for it isn't.
In SC, when you start out with your 20k credits and an Aurora, there is no way in hell you can complete the 890J mission on your first try (if and when everything works as intended, which is like never but that's besides the point). It is a challenge that brings some clout with it, and a substantial reward in credits (and later, reputation). If you can honestly say you did it, it means you put in the effort and others will know. Same thing if you can earn enough to buy a Prospector. It's a big deal, because now you have something entirely new you can do. The reward is more substantial then just earning credits... You get what I mean.



tldr.:
ED lacks presence of self, presence of space, story, goals, progression... The only thing it has is menus, literally a handful of the most basic gameplay loops, and an oversized empty void for a universe.

disclaimer: I bought ED on launch, enjoyed it for it's basic stuff for a while and couldn't get back into it ever since, even though I try like every 1-2 years. I really try to like it, but it's just soooo boring!
 

Lorddarthvik

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Just stumble upon this video of some E:D player that tried SC during ILW:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcsLlEZRFkc


I think is a nice point of view of player with some nice and objective consideration. Defenetly worth watching.
Truth!
Good points about having to run SC from an SSD! My friend basically couldn't load into the universe from HDD, and when he got lucky and the game didn't crash, he bugged out pretty much instantly and couldn't play anyways. I keep bugging him to buy a goddamned SSD since I gifted him an account ages ago, I don't want to buy him an SSD too lol

It's sad to hear about how ED is not able to keep it's most invested fans happy with it's new content, and also how the console/PC is dividing the players so much.
 
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Cugino83

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...

It's sad to hear about how ED is not able to keep it's most invested fans happy with it's new content, and also how the console/PC is dividing the players so much.
True but this exist also, and most freaquent, in the opposite direction: hov many Final Fantasy, Metal Gear PC player have missed? how about Orizon that lauched years ago and became available on pc just last year (and I racomand it the story rival with ME trilogy)....
Personaly I consider SC and SQ42 a little revange over console exclusive and poor porting... (yeah I know, I'm a bad person)
 

Lorddarthvik

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True but this exist also, and most freaquent, in the opposite direction: hov many Final Fantasy, Metal Gear PC player have missed? how about Orizon that lauched years ago and became available on pc just last year (and I racomand it the story rival with ME trilogy)....
Personaly I consider SC and SQ42 a little revange over console exclusive and poor porting... (yeah I know, I'm a bad person)
Nope, you are absolutely not a bad person.
Also I'm not talking about exculsivity here, you are ofc right about that! For example I want to play Bloodborne but I will never buy a playstation.

SC is not available on both PC and Consoles so there is No difference between the two versions because there is only the PC version. As it should be, as console controls wouldn't allow for proper complexity in gameplay, even if the consoles were powerful enough to run it, which they are not.
ED is both on Consols and PC, and the new expansion that allows walking and FPS missions (among many other improvements) is delayed by half a year on console, so the those who bought it on console originally now have to wait while their friends who bought it on PC can already enjoy the new content. That sucks, and it's bad for the game's community as a whole.
 
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Talonsbane

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Nope, you are absolutely not a bad person.
Also I'm not talking about exculsivity here, you are ofc right about that! For example I want to play Bloodborne but I will never buy a playstation.

SC is not available on both PC and Consoles so there is No difference between the two versions because there is only the PC version. As it should be, as console controls wouldn't allow for proper complexity in gameplay, even if the consoles were powerful enough to run it, which they are not.
ED is both on Consols and PC, and the new expansion that allows walking and FPS missions (among many other improvements) is delayed by half a year on console, so the those who bought it on console originally now have to wait while their friends who bought it on PC can already enjoy the new content. That sucks, and it's bad for the game's community as a whole.
It would not surprise me if SQ42 is eventually ported over to the current (at that time) XBOX & Playstation consoles for the single player & hopefully co-op portions, which would provide a massive amount of funding for CIG from those untapped markets. However SC should never be allowed on consoles.
 

Cugino83

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I won't be so sure about the porting os SC and SQ42 on console never happening.
Performance are going to increase over time, after all we already have consoles that are basically pc with a custom OS and some ad-hoc motherboard.
Control wise... well if that happen we'll likeliy to see the first creappy reverse-porting: SC control are really complex both in number and funcionality and porting them to work on a 10 button controller.... good luck with that. SQ42, even if limited, will likely have a similar complexity of controls: sure you won't have a ming interface, but all the fps and flight controls are there, and those are the majority.

If CIG decide to NOT port the game as stated so far that won't be for some control or performance limitation, but for the creazy amount of work that re-coding all the game will require confronted with the potential market...
Maybe if one of the consle BIG (AKA Microsoft or SONY) will put some big $$ on the table that could be a possiiblity, but it sure won't happen before one of the game actually launch and be "compleated".
 
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