how does ED compare to SC ?

[Chrome]

I have to say, SC actually made a sceptic of me. The ambition is there, but i doubt they can make it all happen. The combat will be great, but everything around it will, i believe, feel very half-hearted at best. The thing is that it feels that there's no actual focus in the project. Roberts is like a kid yelling "i want to do that and that and that and that", who will most likely drop everything he's trying to do and try something else midway through.

Honestly, you have to question the man's focus when the first thing he decides to release is an app where you can walk around in a hangar looking at ships.

I'd love SC to succeed, but so far i'm just not seeing it... I honestly don't want to seem like i'm deriding the game for no reason, but all the little things i see, hear and read about it seem just a little bit off.


I'm not going to say E is better or worse, but it's different. The game has an actual focus (sort of, on exploration), and it's already playable to some degree. The game also wants to be a lot more realistic and 'lonely' as opposed to the action packed world of SC.


I do wonder why no one has mentioned No Man's Sky yet. If there is any direct competition for Elite, i'd expect it to be that game.

 

[jedt]

I am considering backing the game. Doing some research on the internet I got blown off by the mega budget Star Citizen project..and it got me wonder, how does ED compare to SC ?

I dont really need opinion on which game will be better, but rather what are the differences ?

I have played ELITE frontier in the past and really liked it. I have also played freelancer and hated it (If I had to describe my exprience I would say freelancer was for me like World of Tanks but with spacecrafts).

I read a bit both forums, saw videos, but at the end I dont really know what are the "selling points" of each game, or at least of ED.

Can any well informed person can to enlighten me before I make my choice ?

Thanks,

Inquisiteur out

does it matter?

 

[Ref Minor]

does it matter?

This^

If you like space sims you will want to play Elite, period. You would also be able to play it for more than a year whilst SC get their act together.

 

[Memnoch]

Honestly, you have to question the man's focus when the first thing he decides to release is an app where you can walk around in a hangar looking at ships.

It was either that or suffer some kind of community revolt! And that's the last thing he needs right now. They need as much support as they can get, not just financially. Nerd rage they don't need!

 

[jedt]

It was either that or suffer some kind of community revolt! And that's the last thing he needs right now. They need as much support as they can get, not just financially. Nerd rage they don't need!

ah, come on. nerd rage is always fun to watch.

 

[Jezzah]

ah, come on. nerd rage is always fun to watch.

LOL

Get on over to the SC forums then and see it in nearly every thread where ordinary nerds post stuff and get it torn to pieces by the apologists/dev ass lickers/naysayers/downright malcontents. Choose as appropriate.

 

[Fromhell]

Have to disagree there @Fromhell

ED released a solid playable representation of their work to date and it was widely loved by its backers and the media.

Sure you disagree. I simply do not agree with people who hype the ED Alpha as if it would be anything more than a single player combat demo and one cockpit. Because that is what it is.

SC banged on for months about how their DFM was going to be released in Dec and they ended up eating their hats for saying it so often.

They need to have a working backend for 350,000 people with alpha slots which was neither planned nor expected. They could have hacked some code in to throw away later or do it right from the beginning. I prefer they do the right thing and not waste my backer money on temporary hacks to please some whining impatient teenagers. People don´t get the fact they are building a world wide server infrastructure in the size of any upcoming triple A MMO.
ED is a Peer2Peer game, so there is your difference.

but in the end they don't have anything near a releasable DFM and how they could keep saying that DFM was coming knowing what they had on the drives at work was a bit shady to be honest.

ED Kickstarter page says "Release date: March 2014"
How you think the single player combat alpha is anywhere close to that release version, coming in 2 months? Show me stations, the whole universe to travel around and at least 10 ship interiors and exteriors, and a hangar where my ships will be docked. What you are seeing now in the "alpha" is a tech demo.

I back both and im certain that SC will be a great game but it will be a very rocky road and i think 18 months to full release is being generous.

SC has 18 months, ED has 2 months. Let´s wait and see.

 

[Shishakli]

I do wonder why no one has mentioned No Man's Sky yet. If there is any direct competition for Elite, i'd expect it to be that game.

IMO No Man's Sky is vapourware.

It's an excellent tech demo, no doubt. But there are dozens of excellent tech demo's out there. Being that it's a "4 man team" and their office just got flooded, they've lost all their physical assets and insurance doesn't cover it.

At best I can see "No Man's Sky" being direct competition for "Star Bound", which IMO would still be a lot of fun, just no match for ED

 

[CaptGrumpyPants]

I do wonder why no one has mentioned No Man's Sky yet. If there is any direct competition for Elite, i'd expect it to be that game.

I haven't mentioned No Man's Sky yet because it looks like the BattleCruiser of the Elite styled sandbox games. Pretty much the same things everywhere you go and fairly outdated engine with poor animation. BattleCruiser.

 

[Jezzah]

@ Fromhell

Understand all that

 

[Stoo]

I haven't mentioned No Man's Sky yet because it looks like the BattleCruiser of the Elite styled sandbox games. Pretty much the same things everywhere you go and fairly outdated engine with poor animation. BattleCruiser.

It looks interesting, sand-boxed universe stylee, but Elite was about combat, trading, etc... No Man's Sky seems more generic. Master of none.

 

[jedt]

LOL

Get on over to the SC forums then and see it in nearly every thread where ordinary nerds post stuff and get it torn to pieces by the apologists/dev ass lickers/naysayers/downright malcontents. Choose as appropriate.

i'm sure you are right but i will not be accepting your invitation. i may play sc at some time in the future but, for now, i am content to wait for ed and eso.... am i allowed to mention that?

 

[Fromhell]

I haven't mentioned No Man's Sky yet because it looks like the BattleCruiser of the Elite styled sandbox :

Their office is under water now anyway.

The space sim mafia ...

 

[Jezzah]

Their office is under water now anyway.

The space sim mafia ...

Yeah that was rubbish that happening to them.

 

[StarTux]

I have to say, SC actually made a sceptic of me. The ambition is there, but i doubt they can make it all happen. The combat will be great, but everything around it will, i believe, feel very half-hearted at best. The thing is that it feels that there's no actual focus in the project. Roberts is like a kid yelling "i want to do that and that and that and that", who will most likely drop everything he's trying to do and try something else midway through.

I disagree . I don't think I saw anything in the Wing Commander's which seemed half-hearted and I doubt this will be the case here.

Honestly, you have to question the man's focus when the first thing he decides to release is an app where you can walk around in a hangar looking at ships.

A by-product of design instead of main focus, simply that. Although a few take it too seriously and keep asking when they're ships will show up in the Hanger, seriously once you've spent 10 minutes checking out your ship or ships you're pretty much done until the next update.

I do wonder why no one has mentioned No Man's Sky yet. If there is any direct competition for Elite, i'd expect it to be that game.

It was a nice demo, just need to know more and see more. The space side of things were too blocky for my taste and we have no idea of game play, David Braben has not only gone into detail on the art side of planetary landings, but also to say we need a good reason to do it in the first place. Still, they have a demo of the atmosphere and Elite will show this sometime after release. It seems the demand for being able to land on/take-off from planets is increasing since last year!

Anyway, Hello Games unfortunately have much bigger issues to deal with after being flooded and not being covered for flooding, hopefully they kept backups off-site and can afford the costs of repair and replacement, the extra exposure to these sorts of games can only be good.

 

[Calebe]

As far as SC is concerned their hangar module is not working for me and a lot of others currently. They are aware of the situation and working on it. The issue the game, well it isn't actually a game. The hangar loads takes errors and you see no ships. The main point of this module executable is to see, examine, walk around and get into your ships and it is not working.

I think people need to stop calling the SC hangar module a game, it isn't yet. Does it look cool to see your ships absolutely, but do it a few times and why go back till something new released for it. As for the rest I have 2 ships a Connie and a 300I explorer ship so I backed them, but so far I have not seen a lot for my money but fancy scripted advertisements. They look great, but I can't play them. There is no game yet.

The thing is Elite is in alpha testing, and contrary to what Fromhell is saying, it is not a tech demo, it is alpha testing. A huge difference and even he knows it but won't admit it. We are testing flight dynamics, weapons, AI, graphical glitches, keyboard mappings, sound effects, and a host of other things. It is what an alpha is suppose to be. A test of part of the game, with more to follow shortly.

I have no idea what he expected but I am sure whatever it was he would find faults with it, so seems to be his usual negative posts. He is of course entitled to that, but so far every alpha testing is enjoying what they see and with 3D already available that was a surprise that shocked many it was ready for testing. Talk about a tech demo and they throw in OR, Track IR and even the 3D glasses option, shows they are further along then many thought. Tech demo what a joke. Will he be happy when the multi-player is tested we can hope but I won't hold my breath.

Both games should IF they live up to their promise be excellent. So far Elite is doing so and I hope continues down the road and releases a polished and fun game. Star Citizen on the other hand has a lot of work to go and a lot to deliver on. Can they do it in 18 months time? I hope so as I said I invested a lot in their game, but so far it is all promises they need to start delivering on.

Calebe

 

[Memnoch]

A few people have come up with flyable SC ships outside of the garage, at least the second video is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0fEsQ_ke28

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Fpw0jmhhc

 

[Echo Seven]

... I still believe that patience will pay off. Both games are in early stages, it's unfair to judge them just yet, no matter what they promised. A month or two of delays is normal in projects this big.
People need to calm down, give them some time and come back later

+1

A voice of reason

 

[Ref Minor]

+1

A voice of reason

Yes, however the developers seem to be keeping the hype high to encourage donations, that is the cause of the discontent. They need to lay off the marketing for a while and be seen to be focusing on production more.

 

[Elenoe]

People don´t get the fact they are building a world wide server infrastructure in the size of any upcoming triple A MMO.

actually they did "MMO" before. It's called Freelancer. So you can compare CR visions (and our dreams) with reality.

And then on top of that we're doing a massively multiplayer server version of the game which really fulfils the promises of an Elite or a Privateer where there's all these great roles. You can be a pirate, I can be a merchant, someone else can be a bounty hunter. You'll show up and the pirates are real people and the merchants are real people and I think that's really compelling and that's better than I've seen on other massively multiplayer games. It's a little different than an EQ or a UO and I think that dynamics when we get it up and running will be interesting. Hopefully it will do well.

IGNPC: But in some online games, anarchy rules the day and there's a lack of direction and perspective for the player. How are you going to provide that or work around that?

Chris Roberts: We tried to resolve that in the game. Like in the real world, you don't go by a shop and smash a window and take a TV set because the police are around. But maybe if there was a blackout or a riot and there were no police around, that would happen a lot more. And so we actually set everything inside the rules of the game. When a newbie comes along, one of the problems is that the newbie gets beaten up by some tough guy and looses whatever small gold he's got. And some designers say you just can't kill people but that doesn't feel right. I'd rather have the rules of the universe say no you shouldn't do that.

source: http://www.ign.com/articles/2000/05/20/freelancer-interview

there is much more, CR is good speaker, but these two are familiar and addresses topic I care: headless piracy. And if you've tried Freelancer multiplayer you know what SC will be like. Because CR haven't change anything about his visions. He says the same things again.