Rather than try to explain the big differences, I'll just use a much simpler analogy.
EvE is like GalCliv 2. It has a massive amount of depth that takes a long awhile to really take in. Players literally shape the game world with everything they do because the game is designed around that fact. The one thing that people shy away from with EvE is that it's no holds barred. Nothing coddles you or holds your hand. You jump into the ocean and have to swim with the sharks from day one. If you show weakness, the sharks will devour you. Each subsection of the game dwarfs the entirety of ED in it's size, scope and complexity. Indeed, some manufactured items require a larger # of materials than the entire commodity list in ED. I won't even go into how many go into making just one of those as Planetary Industry alone would take awhile to explain.
ED is more like Starpoint Gemini 2. There's a lot of places to go and see, but the amount of stuff you can actually do is quite limited and your impact on the game world is pretty much nonexistant... except in your own imagination. ED is very much a remake of 1984's Elite, and retains about as much depth. If you're not into exploration, you're going to be sorely disappointed. ED, like SG2 is very action oriented.
As for PvP, all I can say it this.... In EvE, people can't submit and instantly FSD to get away. They can't Alt-F4 (well they can, but their ship is still able to be destroyed). And they surely can't drop to a Private Group or Solo to avoid it altogether. If someone's determined to attack you in EvE, chances are you're going to be fighting to the death unless the attacker wants a ransom. Even then, they might kill you anyway once you pay it. If someone's determined to find you, they will. You have to react to danger long before it appears. Paranoia is a very healthy thing in EvE. If you're the one doing the attacking, you can't simply just log out or dock to be safe. There's a timer and you get to run the gauntlet until it expires. Some people do it quite well. Others end up as a killmail for the umpeenth time. EvE greatly rewards boldness. It also brutally punishes stupidity.
I've played both (and I'm still actively playing EvE) and am under no delusions as to which is more complex, rich in content, and intense when it comes to combat. ED has potential but it will *never* hold a candle to EvE, let alone the greatest sci-fi games given it's current state. ED's hampered constantly by "too little, too late." I hope they can reverse that trend, but I believe SC will be out before planetary environments, ship interiors and the like. At that point, it'll be "too little, too late." The multiplayer in ED is... hopeless. Deny it all you like but that's the absolute honest truth. For a 2015 game, it's beyond abyssmal.
Exploration is the one major thing that's really successful in ED. The problem here is that in SC you can explore and sell lucrative data to other ship captains so they can personally exploit the system while no one else can. Then you can turn around and sell that info to a pirate gang so they can prey upon that system because they have exclusivity. Can I do that in ED? I wish. I'm not going to speculate too much about ED vs SC. I try not to watch any SC related stuff. I want the large majority to be a big surprise so I can have a complete nerdgasm when it's released. I know many people over on the SC forums from various games in the past, but try as I might I can't draw them over to here due to.... lack of content.
That doesn't mean I don't like ED or think it's a great game, because that's not true. I just tire of the comparisons, especially from people who haven't played EvE, or haven't played it in years. ED by any standard is a shell of a game (which is evident in pretty much any review of the game good or bad). To compare it to the most involved sci-fi game of all time and to believe it's on par is simply absurd.
