Well guess where i am as soon SC is released.
The problem with Elite Dangerous is that it wants to be an single player and an mmo at the same time (and i am NOT talking about the solo mode option here)
For an single player game it simple lacks content, and not more shinys (graphic) but content, story, stations and places you go to beside better prices for palladium or the better gun, it lacks missions beside fetch and deliever, go and kill xyz.
All things who do NOT take an team of 40 developers years to build, such things can be done by an skilled team of two in a few weeks, tops.
Then does Frontier focus too much on the dogfight crowd who does not want to immerse them self into too much detail before shooting at stuff so we have simplified flight model and weapon descriptions, modules where you have to guess and study an wiki because the description text and stats is lacking, and that is immersion too, they do not sell you your mercedes benz advertising that it is three bubbels faster than an subaru.
All things i do not really like right now about Elite Dangerous are things that would not have added time to making it or even would mean shorter time for producing it.
Elite Dangerous would have been more with less. Less shiny, more content, content that is not based on graphics.
Star Citizen is made by an guy who already produced games with CONTENT, so there is hope that it will go over into Star Citizen itself.
What does Elite from its first really have for itself? The first Elite was stunnign because "It could not be done to put that game into an C64" and the following games where brilliant for there sense of reality, flight models, and so on.
But now Elite Dangerous IS arcade, sorry, but it has been so simplified for the benefit of the pvp crowd i play it right now while waiting.
It has a lot of potential but most people here will fight tooth and nail to keep it simple, to reduce its functionality to pvp, like "NO 3rd person view it gives unfair advantage in PvP"
"Nerf big ships i can not kill them with my Viper"
"Nerf freighters they escape me after submitting to interdiction"
"Take the big cargo hold out of the Python and make it faster, it is an fighter not an utility craft " (no it is not, it is an utility craft, always was)
Everything HAS to be modelled to please the PvP crowd, the game, its content aside from PvP is meaningless as long the explosions are big enough and the flight model, the weapon descriptions, the whole structure is so simple an 3 year old with learning diabilities can compute it, and not because the PvP is that dumb but because they do not want to spend the time or the grind to get somwhere, they want to hop into an ship and go blasting at stuff, each other or players who try to play the game itself and not just use it as an Arcade Game (tm).
While Elite 1 came out i was 9, so the level of detail or reality was quite fine, but now i learned two or three things about science and how our universe is put together and the Elite from the 80's is not fine anymore, it has become to simple, but here we are, an stunningly good looking version of Elite 1, nixing all development from Elite Frontier to please the people who want an FPS Elite.
Soooo... I play in solo to waste time until SC comes out and pray that they will NOT make an game for people who want it simple but really put some thought into making it COMPLEX and FUN
And with 3rd person view of my ship so i know how that thing looks like beside the cockpit, in space, in front of Jupiter, thrusters at full.
