Just for comparison ED vs X3 pros and cons. I tried to keep it as balanced as possible, but as I began thinking of things to write, it started to become harder to do so. So here we go.
Pros
ED: Great built-in support for peripherals such as the Rift or X-55 Rhino.
X3: Poor built-in support, but can be tweaked and configured to make it mostly functional.
ED: Amazing sound design across the board.
X3: Decent sound design and effects, quality varies wildly.
ED: Great visual effects.
X3: Good visual effects, but is showing it's age.
ED: Multi-player. Though the implementation leaves much to be desired.
X3: No multi-player whatsoever.
ED: High quality cockpits help you feel immersed, especially with a Rift.
X3: No cockpits by default, but can be modded to have the cockpits from X2, though they aren't nearly as good as ED's.
ED: Feels much more like a simulation, with much better physics.
X3: Feels a bit more arcadey.
ED: The heat and stealth system is pretty cool.
X3: Nothing like this exists.
ED: The feeling of emptiness in space is real.
X3: Feels overpopulated. Does anyone even live on those planets anymore?
Cons
X3: ~150 flyable ships
ED: ~10 flyable ships
X3: Dozens of vastly different stations per sector.
ED: Just a couple of very similar stations per sector.
X3: Every solar system feels vastly different, and has different music.
ED: Every solar system feels exactly the same, boring.
X3: Can use accumulated credits to actually build your own stations and create your own business, or venture on the stock market, or hire wingmen, or create an entire army that follows you around.
ED: Can't do anything AT ALL with your credits except by more ships, a loop that makes no sense.
X3: Excellent single player experience, with many different things to do, all of which are viable.
ED: Boring and tedious single player experience with only a handful of things to do, with few being viable.
X3: A variety of alien life, when you received a message saying that the Xenon or Khaak are invading a sector, it's an "oh crap!" moment.
ED: Nothing like that exists, just faceless humans fighting for credits so that they can continue their endless ship upgrade loop.
X3: Can mod and script the crap out of it, and we all know how great modding is, just ask GTA IV or Skyrim.
ED: Unsure of if mods are even possible given the server-sided nature of the game.
X3: The faction system is simplified, but better. You have a trade rank, a combat rank, and a ranking with all the alien races. Every alien race has a plethora of ships that look and feel unique to their race, and you can only purchase better ones once you have ranked up with that race.
ED: Convoluted faction system, every solar system has five factions that have no personality whatsoever. Do I join "Styx First" or "Styx Organization" and even if I did, there is little to no gameplay effect from it.
I could go on an on but from my experience playing literally 500 hours of X3, and now roughly 150 hours of ED, I can say that ED feels like a more "modern" and simplified game. It lacks in all the stuff I have come to love from X3. It isn't redefining the genre by any means. Single-player replayability is almost non-existent. This brings up my biggest flaw with the game: So let's say that I DON'T want to buy an Anaconda. Let's say that the Viper is my favorite ship and that's all I wanted. So I trade up until I can afford a Cobra, so that I can do some trading runs until I have about a million credits, which would takes roughly 3-4 days, then sell the Cobra, buy my Viper, and outfit it to the max with the money I made trading from Aulin to Styx, which is right at the starting point. Now what? I've got my fully decked Viper... and? Go bounty hunting? Why? Trade? How, I have a cargo rack of 4, and even if it were bigger, what's the point? Credits have no use other than to buy ships and upgrades, and since I have the ship that I want, there is literally nothing else left to do. In comparison, when you play X3, say you get enough credits in your Argon Buster to upgrade to an Argon Nova and that's the ship that you want to keep. Well, you can then use any credits that you make to buy ANOTHER ship, and have him follow you around, protect you, or you can send him off galaxies away. When your done outfitting that ship? Buy a trading ship, and give him a route to buy and sell for you. Made a ton of money? Buy a carrier, and then dock your Nova on the carrier you just bought. Tired of buying ships? Build a mining station. Now build the refinery for your mining station. Now build the manufacturing station for your mining station. And so on and so on. You can NEVER have too much money in X3 because there are so many money sinks, all of which are fun and engaging to participate in. Meanwhile in ED, I have no reason to leave the station. Let's be honest with ourselves, ED is currently heavy on grinding. The more I play ED, the more I want to play X3. Yeah I know what you are thinking, "beta". Well we will see if the final product will actually live up to the expectations.
The reason I brought up X3 as a comparison, despite it's lack of multiplayer is simply because I think people need to start getting used to thinking of and reviewing ED more as a solo or co-op experience. There is a very serious issue that needs bringing up in regards to player saturation vs universe size at launch. Space sims are only just recently breaking out of their niche and hitting the mainstream, but they are no where nearly as close to the quantity of players in traditional MMO's, RPG's and FPS games. With the absolutely ludicrous amount of sectors that will be added via procedural generation, it is highly likely that after a few months post release, everyone will be so far spread out that human contact will be uncommon. Then there is the fact that sectors in the current beta, despite having 15+ players all in the same place, still have so little interaction player interaction that you may as well be playing solo. Now imagine if it takes 5-6 jumps to encounter just one player. This scenario is an almost certainty and will only get worse with time, assuming you aren't camping the starting sectors of course. Thankfully it's unlikely to reach the levels of solidarity in No Man's Sky. Ultimately, it's inevitable that you will be spending some time alone at some point, so the features in ED *must* be able to support that, it won't be able to use multiplayer as a crutch for much longer.
Pros
ED: Great built-in support for peripherals such as the Rift or X-55 Rhino.
X3: Poor built-in support, but can be tweaked and configured to make it mostly functional.
ED: Amazing sound design across the board.
X3: Decent sound design and effects, quality varies wildly.
ED: Great visual effects.
X3: Good visual effects, but is showing it's age.
ED: Multi-player. Though the implementation leaves much to be desired.
X3: No multi-player whatsoever.
ED: High quality cockpits help you feel immersed, especially with a Rift.
X3: No cockpits by default, but can be modded to have the cockpits from X2, though they aren't nearly as good as ED's.
ED: Feels much more like a simulation, with much better physics.
X3: Feels a bit more arcadey.
ED: The heat and stealth system is pretty cool.
X3: Nothing like this exists.
ED: The feeling of emptiness in space is real.
X3: Feels overpopulated. Does anyone even live on those planets anymore?
Cons
X3: ~150 flyable ships
ED: ~10 flyable ships
X3: Dozens of vastly different stations per sector.
ED: Just a couple of very similar stations per sector.
X3: Every solar system feels vastly different, and has different music.
ED: Every solar system feels exactly the same, boring.
X3: Can use accumulated credits to actually build your own stations and create your own business, or venture on the stock market, or hire wingmen, or create an entire army that follows you around.
ED: Can't do anything AT ALL with your credits except by more ships, a loop that makes no sense.
X3: Excellent single player experience, with many different things to do, all of which are viable.
ED: Boring and tedious single player experience with only a handful of things to do, with few being viable.
X3: A variety of alien life, when you received a message saying that the Xenon or Khaak are invading a sector, it's an "oh crap!" moment.
ED: Nothing like that exists, just faceless humans fighting for credits so that they can continue their endless ship upgrade loop.
X3: Can mod and script the crap out of it, and we all know how great modding is, just ask GTA IV or Skyrim.
ED: Unsure of if mods are even possible given the server-sided nature of the game.
X3: The faction system is simplified, but better. You have a trade rank, a combat rank, and a ranking with all the alien races. Every alien race has a plethora of ships that look and feel unique to their race, and you can only purchase better ones once you have ranked up with that race.
ED: Convoluted faction system, every solar system has five factions that have no personality whatsoever. Do I join "Styx First" or "Styx Organization" and even if I did, there is little to no gameplay effect from it.
I could go on an on but from my experience playing literally 500 hours of X3, and now roughly 150 hours of ED, I can say that ED feels like a more "modern" and simplified game. It lacks in all the stuff I have come to love from X3. It isn't redefining the genre by any means. Single-player replayability is almost non-existent. This brings up my biggest flaw with the game: So let's say that I DON'T want to buy an Anaconda. Let's say that the Viper is my favorite ship and that's all I wanted. So I trade up until I can afford a Cobra, so that I can do some trading runs until I have about a million credits, which would takes roughly 3-4 days, then sell the Cobra, buy my Viper, and outfit it to the max with the money I made trading from Aulin to Styx, which is right at the starting point. Now what? I've got my fully decked Viper... and? Go bounty hunting? Why? Trade? How, I have a cargo rack of 4, and even if it were bigger, what's the point? Credits have no use other than to buy ships and upgrades, and since I have the ship that I want, there is literally nothing else left to do. In comparison, when you play X3, say you get enough credits in your Argon Buster to upgrade to an Argon Nova and that's the ship that you want to keep. Well, you can then use any credits that you make to buy ANOTHER ship, and have him follow you around, protect you, or you can send him off galaxies away. When your done outfitting that ship? Buy a trading ship, and give him a route to buy and sell for you. Made a ton of money? Buy a carrier, and then dock your Nova on the carrier you just bought. Tired of buying ships? Build a mining station. Now build the refinery for your mining station. Now build the manufacturing station for your mining station. And so on and so on. You can NEVER have too much money in X3 because there are so many money sinks, all of which are fun and engaging to participate in. Meanwhile in ED, I have no reason to leave the station. Let's be honest with ourselves, ED is currently heavy on grinding. The more I play ED, the more I want to play X3. Yeah I know what you are thinking, "beta". Well we will see if the final product will actually live up to the expectations.
The reason I brought up X3 as a comparison, despite it's lack of multiplayer is simply because I think people need to start getting used to thinking of and reviewing ED more as a solo or co-op experience. There is a very serious issue that needs bringing up in regards to player saturation vs universe size at launch. Space sims are only just recently breaking out of their niche and hitting the mainstream, but they are no where nearly as close to the quantity of players in traditional MMO's, RPG's and FPS games. With the absolutely ludicrous amount of sectors that will be added via procedural generation, it is highly likely that after a few months post release, everyone will be so far spread out that human contact will be uncommon. Then there is the fact that sectors in the current beta, despite having 15+ players all in the same place, still have so little interaction player interaction that you may as well be playing solo. Now imagine if it takes 5-6 jumps to encounter just one player. This scenario is an almost certainty and will only get worse with time, assuming you aren't camping the starting sectors of course. Thankfully it's unlikely to reach the levels of solidarity in No Man's Sky. Ultimately, it's inevitable that you will be spending some time alone at some point, so the features in ED *must* be able to support that, it won't be able to use multiplayer as a crutch for much longer.
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