Good luck beating Dwarf Fortress or Crusader Kings II to name a few.
I've played both. Good luck expecting people to take you seriously when you compare a text based game, and a SP wargame to an MMO developed in Cryengine.
SC fans just love to throw these ridiculous remarks all over the place

Good luck beating Wolf3D, Space invaders, Super Mario, Half life, Sim City etc etc
Thanks?
~300 people working for how many years and have produced AC?
We'll see in the next months how the FPS module is but if it's anything like what they demoed, it was very uninspiring and boring.
1 year. Less than 200 people at this time last year. Less than 30 at this time 2 years ago, but you being the knowledgeable game developer that you are take creating a company, building the team, organizing all the work, planning the logistics, and all the other things that go way above my head into account, don't you?
Also, they've produced way more than AC. AC is just all that we have to play right now. Nowhere does it state that we'll be able to play all the content as it's developed, but sure, please do throw more irrelevant numbers and names at me.
Note: This is why I mentioned following the development. There are literally hundreds of hours of content showing off what they've created. From numerous page long articles of lore published weekly. To some 3 or 4 weekly podcasts, and 2 weekly 20 min shows that detail the development, and explain the progress that's being made. A monthly magazine which literally breaks apart the development of various assets and ideas, and lets us see how things are made. A frequently visited "ask a developer" forums section, and even a CIG sponsored competition that let us follow multiple teams in their development of a ship. If you actually followed the development, especially in these past 5 or 6 months, since it started ramping up with all the studios, production pipelines, and other foundations in place, you'd know just how ridiculous it is to state "~300 people working for how many years and have produced AC?".
Did I mention they had something like a 10 hour long panel a month ago in which they discussed just about everything?
So Elite is an empty framework... but AC is fine?
AC is an alpha. AC only represents a fraction of the final product. Elite is the final product. If CIG took AC and said "this is the pinnacle of SC", it would not be fine. Not in the least.
One third of the developers managed to produce a game that was widely very well received in 2 years of development.
CIG isn't even close to accomplishing anything similar to that.
A single, multi crew, Star Citizen ship also has more poly's than half the ships in ED, and the game is being designed to a completely different level of complexity.
Not to mention that ED was being planned for the better half of decade, used an in house engine that was being worked on for years, and launched with half it's ships missing. I won't even bother to go into detail explaining that most of the games activities boil down to repeating 4 simplistic actions for all eternity.
And disregarding all of that, if it took 100 people 2 years to create $3,000,000 worth of content, using that same logic, it should take 300 people 10 years to produce $45,000,000 worth of content. Even if we were to say that CIG would be releasing only $24,000,000 worth of content, that's still over 5 years, and CIG has had a team of 300 people for less than a year.
Of course, it's foolish to try and quantify game development with money and dev team size's, so this is all entirely pointless. I'm expecting you'll use this to
prove that the game will never launch or something, but whatever.
It is unfair when the only way of flying these ships in AC is by buying them or grinding away in order to be able to fly them for a limited time.
It's what fremium games have been doing for years.
Fair enough. I do agree that they need to better manage AC as to not set a precedent for other companies. Although, a 7 hour 'grind' for 168 hours of in-game (see: not real time) play time, for something that others have paid $110 for, can hardly be called unfair.
I've actually written a rather long post about this directed at CR himself, as he took to the forums to discuss this topic, and he latter addressed some of the concerns that myself, along with many others, raised. I'm still rather uncomfortable with the system, but CIG has promised that they'll further examine it.
Hardcore SC fans have been telling me this for 2 years now.
All that really says, is that you've been bashing this game for 2 years now. That is, you've been doing it since it's inception, before there was any game to criticize. Seems like it's pretty irrelevant to you if there is, or isn't any content. You'll still needlessly direct your negativity towards it.
These people would fly the initial version of AC and think it's the most amazing game ever.
Hardly the consensus on the main forums, but ok.
Numerous iterations later and the ones that haven't disappeared still think it has the most amazing flight mechanics ever.
It's gotten a lot better, but, again, hardy the consensus on the main forums.
I didn't and I certainly don't. I'm still waiting for some kind of amazing gameplay experience.
I still have my basic package, still waiting.
Great. I don't think it would hurt you to wait in silence, since you don't seem to have anything nice to say, or have any actual criticisms that don't revolve around something you know little to nothing of.
You should just drop this. I frequently partake in directing, and addressing real criticisms directed at CIG. There's really nothing reasonable you could say without actually taking a few hours to objectively figure out where the game is at, and where it's going. I feel dirty simply bothering to discuss this with someone so misinformed and biased.