how does ED compare to SC ?

[Stellen]

I must admit that I've become quite interested in how CIG are managing the Star Citizen project and how it compares to ED.

When I first found out about both games - the first thing that struck me is that I very quickly had a clear idea of what ED is all about, whereas I'm still a bit unclear as to what lies at the core of SC.

And nowhere is this more obvious than the SC forums. Any discussion of any facet of gameplay there breaks down almost immediately into a war of diametrically opposing view-points. By the time the SC beta rolls around there will be a lot of angry and unhappy members in the community, and that rarely ends well.

There is a very vocal group of EVE players who are dedicated to turning SC into "EVE with cockpits" and who will attack anything which doesn't slavishly follow the EVE ruleset. If they get their way, I expect that the bulk of SC's community will abandon the game pretty quickly. If they don't get their way, I anticipate that they will try to tarnish SC's name as far and wide of possible out of spite.

 

[Viking]

There is a very vocal group of EVE players who are dedicated to turning SC into "EVE with cockpits" and who will attack anything which doesn't slavishly follow the EVE ruleset. If they get their way, I expect that the bulk of SC's community will abandon the game pretty quickly. If they don't get their way, I anticipate that they will try to tarnish SC's name as far and wide of possible out of spite.

They are vocal, but small in numbers. The large majority knows SC won't be as EVE and just sit back and wait for the EVE kids to realize this and leave. Yes, there will probably be outrage and protests in the line of "This isn't what we were promised (or expect)!" but it'll die down.

 

[Fromhell]

There is a very vocal group of EVE players who are dedicated to turning SC into "EVE with cockpits" and who will attack anything which doesn't slavishly follow the EVE ruleset. If they get their way, I expect that the bulk of SC's community will abandon the game pretty quickly. If they don't get their way, I anticipate that they will try to tarnish SC's name as far and wide of possible out of spite.

isn't that cool? Neither ED nor SC are player driven online sandboxes, basically two single player catering spacesim games with rather meaningless multiplayer, coming out at the same time, both trying hard to offer nothing what made EvE successful.
CCP must be incredibly happy.
Although I would love to see the surprised faces at CCP if some giant publisher like EA would announce a 100 million Dollar EvE clone with twitch combat and cockpits, cinematic story and procedural galaxy and planets.

 

[Gibbonici]

And so it begins.

 

[Ittiz]

isn't that cool? Neither ED nor SC are player driven online sandboxes, basically two single player catering spacesim games with rather meaningless multiplayer, coming out at the same time, both trying hard to offer nothing what made EvE successful.
CCP must be incredibly happy.
Although I would love to see the surprised faces at CCP if some giant publisher like EA would announce a 100 million Dollar EvE clone with twitch combat and cockpits, cinematic story and procedural galaxy and planets.

Eve and ED don't cater to the same crowds. I played Frontier and FFE and loved them. I beta tested Eve and never bought the game when it released. The lack of realism sticks in my craw so bad I couldn't play it.

 

[Dr Wookie]

isn't that cool? Neither ED nor SC are player driven online sandboxes, basically two single player catering spacesim games with rather meaningless multiplayer, coming out at the same time, both trying hard to offer nothing what made EvE successful.
CCP must be incredibly happy.
Although I would love to see the surprised faces at CCP if some giant publisher like EA would announce a 100 million Dollar EvE clone with twitch combat and cockpits, cinematic story and procedural galaxy and planets.

EvE is a relatively small game (a few hundred thousand players maybe? SC has nearly as many backers!), and something that I would never ever want to play, although there is some gruesome fascination about some of the stories I've read. I know DB has a clear vision for what he wants, and I'm pretty sure that CR has a good idea too.

ED and SC both have potential for player bases in the millions . I'm pretty sure that the first Elite sold over a million; in its first incarnation there was one game sold for every machine that could run it!

 

[Shishakli]

both trying hard to offer nothing what made EvE successful.

Because David Braben is making the game I want to play

 

[Jezzah]

EVE was destroyed for me by the mega-corps and mega-alliances, from a game point of view those entities were given every chance to succeed and the content was driven right to their doorstep.

I played in a few of these alliances on and off and yeah thats a fun thing for awhile...but it gets oh so serious and everyone's on paranoia watch and being driven around by a very small set of meta gamers from one region to another all the time.

 

[Viking]

ED and SC both have potential for player bases in the millions

Indeed. I said it over a year ago, when SC was still in Kickstarter: SC has the potential of being the next big MMO, with millions of users. My personal guess is 30-50 million within two years after release. ED I'm uncertain of. I know too little about ED to prognose anything.

But both ED and SC are already changing the industry. Space sims are coming back. PC games are coming back. So is stationary PCs and high-end graphic cards, IMO. Big studios are watching (imagine the evil eye of Sauron) the success in crowd funding. It must be tempting for them to try this model when they see all the "free" millions pouring in from end users!

So I think both ED and SC have a bright future. Players will run to try the latest "new thing" and many will stay too.

 

[Jenner]

One thing I will say for EVE - it has one of the best soundtracks of any game I've ever played. I say that because the music totally matched the setting & really made me feel like 'yes - this is a space game. This is the sound of exploring the cosmos.'

 

[Firestarter]

I played EVE for a couple of weeks, too much pvp for me but more fun from a distance where you can read about the player corps ganking each other over .

 

[Shishakli]

This is the sound of exploring the cosmos.'

I tried to explore in Eve once... the farthest I got was an exit gate surrounded by dozens of players... then I blew up and lost everything. Realisation hit me that I wasn't going to be doing or seeing anything in Eve unless the other players let me, so I just walked away.

Not gonna grovel my way up the ranks in real life... sure as hell ain't doin it in a game.

 

[Gibbonici]

EVE was destroyed for me by the mega-corps and mega-alliances, from a game point of view those entities were given every chance to succeed and the content was driven right to their doorstep.

I played in a few of these alliances on and off and yeah thats a fun thing for awhile...but it gets oh so serious and everyone's on paranoia watch and being driven around by a very small set of meta gamers from one region to another all the time.

Yeah, that "oh so serious" thing is what puts me off most group-based PvP games, along with the inevitable drama-queenery that goes along with it.

Only game of that sort I got along with was World War 2 Online, and that was because I got in a squad that was both good at what it did and didn't take things seriously. Our speciality was absurd and wildly audacious raids, and always for the laugh.

Like the time we spawned as paras, flew into the heart of Germany (a two hour realtime flight) and jumped on their factories to sabotage them with backpack charges, more or less to see if we could get away with it. We were literally crying with laughter on TS while we ran around dodging the few baffled Axis players who noticed something was up. We did it though, slowed their Tiger production by about 10 hours and helped the Allied armour guys get the upper hand in Belgium for a day. And that was the day I learnt that the only difference between heroism and idiocy is success.

We were also crying with laughter when our marine assault on Zeeland ended with us getting sunk at sea and we spent the next 30 minutes trying to swim the 22 km to shore to continue the mission. I guess you had to be there.

S! BTZ

 

[Dunk]

one would wonder if you like space sims as genre at all I liked E2 a lot. Mostly because of planets and universe models. And since that was the best and the only right way to do it no matter flight model and since nor Chris Roberts nor Egosoft managed to create it I simply conclude they were unable to do that at all. And cannot be used for "no other games did it means it's wrong"

It is a given that Elite was a massive game in its day. Frontier and First Encounters were not as highly acclaimed by comparison. If you like space sims then I can see why you liked them though. However, you seem to be under the illusion that Elite was a space sim more than it was a space trading combat game. Manual docking and dogfighting while you upgraded your ship with money mainly earned through trading and missions was what it was about. Kerbal Space Program is a sim.

hardly. Elite is obsolete. Still unsure what you didn't like on E2/FE but E will have much more similarities with those then with old Elite.

You think? Have you been watching or playing the Alpha? A speed limit and a flight model that guides you to the original Elite style of dogfights. I think you may be mistaken as these are the observations of many and are also in line with David Braben stating during the Kickstarter that he didn't think the flight model in Frontier or First Encounters work out very well.

 

[Ixnatifual]

My personal guess is 30-50 million within two years after release.

What the funk.

 

[JohnStabler]

Indeed, 30 - 50 million would be like double the number of subscribers World of Warcraft had at it's peak.

 

[Kroy]

Indeed. I said it over a year ago, when SC was still in Kickstarter: SC has the potential of being the next big MMO, with millions of users. My personal guess is 30-50 million within two years after release.

33million is the approx number of Minecraft box sales just now (source: a PC magazine). To achieve that it has been launched, and works, on Windows, Mac, Linux, Xbox, PS as well as smartphones and tablets. Oh yes, and it spreads like wildfire through the playgrounds of the UK's primary and secondary schools - and has been developed continually for around 4-5 years.

Even other AAA titles don't reach 30million world-wide sales if I'm understanding sales figures (http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/ figures seem a bit odd because WoW is only down for 10m sales in EU and NA ) correctly, unless you take in to account their cross platform sales.

I'm not doubting SC's commercial success, but if it hits 30-50 million sales, it would be an impressive feat for sure for a PC only game. Taking in to account the level of backing it has already, via KS, that would have to be 30-50 million NEW sales for the figure to have official chart-worthy ness

 

[Amos]

a friend showed me SC trailers and while they look nice and the game has alot of features, when I learned about ED I was blown away, for me freelancer was ok game it was the only game around to play, also all the modding and what not was great and the RP side of it was great, but the game became old and boring, I am one of those people who like to explore game and go places in games where people do not usually go, elite allows me to do this, if I can explore with friends then even better.

I will look into SC when it has been released but I am hoping I wont need to as I will have Elite

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I will look into SC when it has been released but I am hoping I wont need to as I will have Elite

My theory is why limit your games collection to just 1.

from what I can tell, both will offer slightly different experiences and all being well both will be essential additions to the space game enthusiasts collection.

 

[JohnStabler]

My theory is why limit your games collection to just 1.

from what I can tell, both will offer slightly different experiences and all being well both will be essential additions to the space game enthusiasts collection.

I've noticed a lot of people trying to defuse debate over the merits of both games by saying that people can/should buy both games.

However, given the demographics of the Elite Dangerous backers, many don't have much free time and so buying / playing two games isn't an option. Therefore, discussing and contrasting the two titles is actually worthwhile.