well its quite simple as we had before, a post explaining how Eve is Elite just taken to the next logical step, back in the 1980s what you got with elite was nothing more than a clever use of data compression from what i've read, now that isn't a problem, we aren't limited by what the computer can do or how much space is on a floppy disk.
Eve has had YEARS to mull over the aspects of a space sim/sandbox and incorporate features into its core that improves on what you can do lets just say this again YEARS and years and years of time to plan and create features that makes sense in such a world.
what it comes down to is, this game did it X many years ago, why hasn't the new game hinting at the same premise, not doing so?
if your happy playing elite as it was in 1984 thats great more power to you, although just because you are happy with watching paint dry that doesn't mean everyone else has the same standards.
so comparisons are made, personally i like to compare elite to X3 because to me that is the game its more akin to. except when i do, i see a polar opposite, X3 has a small world with tons of depth and elite and a large world with very little depth. X3 felt like a space sim to me, stations has limited supplies of everything, things were created over time, you could spend months trying to earn enough creds to buy your first station, when you did, you bought a trader and setup a route for it, then you added to your assets. eventually hitting the player HQ and collecting ships to break down so you could build your own, all taking tons of effort and time to do, i found fitting one ship in X3 with the weapons you wanted could take hours flying from system to system docking in every equipment dock trying to find another hept or whatever, it just had things that made you feel like it was going somewhere, even though in the end it becomes basically a never ending battle vs unlimited ai's everything upto that realization is fun. in the end i just had fun trying to crash my pc with X3 jumping loads of capitals into khaak sectors and watching the frame rate drop to 5 or so. lasers everywhere. or building frame destroying complexes where you have to aim the camera in a certain direction when you go into a system so your pc doesn't choke.