how does start citizen stack up to elite?

Flimley · Apr 19, 2015

I really like the thought of and want a to play a space sim with highly detailed graphics. I'm sure there are countless people who own high end PC's and wish this too. And for that reason I would indeed be very interested in SC.
However, currently for this game is just nowhere near playable yet. I am really tempted to pledge for the basic aurora package though and download once there is a bug free game to play. There are some ingame benefits to pledging at the moment ?? Ship insurance I think and maybe more, don't know. Does anyone know the benefits for early pledging ?

skypine27 · Apr 19, 2015

The benefits to pledging vary from package to package. You will see varying lengths of insurance for one thing. Some will be 2 month, some 2 years, etc. The only time ships have LTI (life time insurance) is when they are very first sold, as concept ships (most recently, the Vanguard).

if you want LTI on a ship after its sale is over, you have to buy it from the grey market:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Starcitizen...selling+nsfw:no&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all

Ive bought about 4 ships from there. Its surprisingly reputable, all 4 of my buys were on the up and up.

Geers · Apr 19, 2015

I'll confess to not being very familiar with ED as a franchise, but SC seems to have done a much better job at lore and universe building. They have lore crates! CRATES! CARGO CRATES! I have a huge list of destinations I want to visit in SC, which all have their own history. A pirate hive built out of spaceship wrecks? Earth 2.0? The most beautiful planet ever? Done! Sold!

Plus SC lets you smuggle fish. actual fish in a fish tank. Not a text box that says "fish".

Iskariot · Apr 19, 2015

Geers said:
I'll confess to not being very familiar with ED as a franchise, but SC seems to have done a much better job at lore and universe building. They have lore crates! CRATES! CARGO CRATES! I have a huge list of destinations I want to visit in SC, which all have their own history. A pirate hive built out of spaceship wrecks? Earth 2.0? The most beautiful planet ever? Done! Sold!

Plus SC lets you smuggle fish. actual fish in a fish tank. Not a text box that says "fish".

A pirate hive built out of spaceship wrecks

That is indeed a cool idea. So you can already visit it, or is it just a paper idea?

Earth 2.0

Very nice. So this is actually in the 'game' already? Or is it just words.

"Plus SC lets you smuggle fish. actual fish in a fish tank."

Great. It would be cool if Elite had something like that, but have you actually smuggled fish in SC already, or is it just concept for now?

What I am trying to say is that there are a lot of cool ideas on paper for Elite too, plus there is already an actual game.
I have no doubt that SC will be fun eventually, but it is a bit too easy to favor their theoretical concepts if you, by your own admittance, have no clue about the theoretical concepts and ideas that exist for Elite.

Elite's immense galaxy is real and present in an actual playable game and it gets better with every update. Just wait until we can enter the atmosphere of planets and put our ships down on inhabited planets, hunt actual alien lifeforms, walk around in settlements and cities etc. etc.

Zetta · Apr 19, 2015

Iskariot said:
That is indeed a cool idea. So you can already visit it, or is it just a paper idea?

Very nice. So this is actually in the 'game' already? Or is it just words.

I find myself agreeing. I remember being excited about the bounty hunter side of things and being able to take prisoners in Star Citizen but when it was covered in more depth it sounded very wishy-washy, "you have an icon that pops up in your inventory" and so on.
They certainly have some neat ideas but how much they're going to realistically be able to implement, regardless of intended depth remains to be seen.

Iskariot · Apr 19, 2015

Beardless said:
If Star Citizen achieves a fraction of what is promised it will kill Ed, not slowly or over time but headshot dead in the water style. For example ED is like the old game doom that everyone knows and loves, simple great gameplay. But star citizen will be like comparing Doom to Skyrim in terms of content and features.

By the time SC is released we will already have all the ED expansion packs and much, much more content. The game will be a very different beast.

tarks382 · Apr 19, 2015

Geers said:
I'll confess to not being very familiar with ED as a franchise, but SC seems to have done a much better job at lore and universe building. They have lore crates! CRATES! CARGO CRATES! I have a huge list of destinations I want to visit in SC, which all have their own history. A pirate hive built out of spaceship wrecks? Earth 2.0? The most beautiful planet ever? Done! Sold!

Plus SC lets you smuggle fish. actual fish in a fish tank. Not a text box that says "fish".

This is both the attraction and the problem with SC. They have lore - interesting, engaging stories about the SC universe and its denizens. And they have fabulous looking ships. I've bought several - at premium cost. I love them but all I can do is look (oh, and I still occasionally fall out of them, out of my hanger and float away into infinite darkness. That can't be right).

And yes, they have a fish tank.

Trouble is... they don't have a game. And 2016 is still a long, long time away.

Roybe · Apr 19, 2015

Honestly different games with different problems being faced by each. Each will only have instances of 32 players...they handle these issues differently, but in the end, it's really the same. SC will use a few tricks to make it appear as if the universe is more cohesive, in all I wish them luck with it.

The flight is night and day between them, ED is simpler and based more on atmospheric flight than SC. Personally, I enjoy ED flight more than SC's. Other players feel differently.

I'm not a fan of multi-game modes being pushed out under one game system. Spore comes to mind. In multi-game modes, everything feels mediocre. Not a fantastic 'X' game, just a mish mosh of mediocre ways to play. In SC, none of the current game modes has had me excited.

Scale of galaxy vs. number of players. This is a big one. With so many players, I am uncertain as to how so few systems will feel like 'space', but more like a day at the beach in summer. I am sure there will be expansion capabilities in the game, e.g. the search for jump points. I am hoping that SC has enough worlds created on launch to allow for expansion very quickly.

I am interested in their ideas for a justice system as there is no place for PvE players to get away from PvP players. They will all be in the same galaxy simultaneously. My understanding is there will be lo sec and hi sec areas and the fines, and relentless AI bounty hunters will remove the idea of unwarranted PvP from the game. Again, I am doubtful, but it could happen.

Geers · Apr 21, 2015

Iskariot said:
What I am trying to say is that there are a lot of cool ideas on paper for Elite too, plus there is already an actual game.
I have no doubt that SC will be fun eventually, but it is a bit too easy to favor their theoretical concepts if you, by your own admittance, have no clue about the theoretical concepts and ideas that exist for Elite.

Elite's immense galaxy is real and present in an actual playable game and it gets better with every update. Just wait until we can enter the atmosphere of planets and put our ships down on inhabited planets, hunt actual alien lifeforms, walk around in settlements and cities etc. etc.

Great generic killjoy response. It's not that I "have no clue about the theoretical concepts and ideas that exist for Elite", I read the newsletter. I'm just saying that I never played the original Elite games, I don't know the full extent of the lore. But Elite Dangerous has done a pretty poor job of introducing new people, the lore doesn't seem to exist anywhere except the wiki pages.

I honestly think the bigger galaxy hurts Elite more than it helps. 400 billion stars sounds good on paper but those are 400 billion soulless husks generated by an algorithm. I'd much prefer the 100 crafted star systems SC is launching with.

I haven't touched Elite in months. Why? Because the entire thing is just a massive grind. I'd really love to go exploring, but to do that effectively I'd need a ridiculous amount of credits and literally every method of getting that money was unbelievably boring. Hopefully the new mission system will change that.

And for the record SC's singleplayer is due to launch in Q4 this year.

xyphic · Apr 21, 2015

Geers said:
I'd much prefer the 100 crafted star systems SC is launching with.

Hate to break it to you, but it won't have 100 hand-crafted star systems. That was the original plan, but at some point the obvious struck and CIG realised that's an impossible task. What we'll get with SC is a bunch of hand-crafted assets bolted together procedurally. I'm sure they'll be beautiful assets, but that's not what the original pitch was.

As to whether SC will actually be fun and not be a grind, we'll have to wait and see. You complain about Elite being grindy, but if you read the original concept and designs, that's not how it came across. SC is exactly the same at the moment: just words, little to show for them. I hope it turns out to be a great game and justifies my backing. But I can't help but feel a little jaded when I see how different it already is from what was pitched.

Geers · Apr 21, 2015

xyphic said:
Hate to break it to you, but it won't have 100 hand-crafted star systems. That was the original plan, but at some point the obvious struck and CIG realised that's an impossible task. What we'll get with SC is a bunch of hand-crafted assets bolted together procedurally. I'm sure they'll be beautiful assets, but that's not what the original pitch was.

I am aware of this.

Neo-ST · Apr 21, 2015

xyphic said:
Hate to break it to you, but it won't have 100 hand-crafted star systems. That was the original plan, but at some point the obvious struck and CIG realised that's an impossible task. What we'll get with SC is a bunch of hand-crafted assets bolted together procedurally. I'm sure they'll be beautiful assets, but that's not what the original pitch was.

Where can I find more info on this?
I didn't know they were backing out from their original stretch goals, is that even legal ?

Geers · Apr 21, 2015

Neo-ST said:
Where can I find more info on this?
I didn't know they were backing out from their original stretch goals, is that even legal ?

I'm pretty sure that was always the plan. Chris Roberts isn't new to the gaming industry, he knows what he's doing.

The Star Citizen Town Hall presentations had a ton of info on stuff like that.

Komemiute · Apr 21, 2015

If it just didn't turn into Pay-2-Win...

- - - Updated - - -

Iskariot said:
By the time SC is released we will already have all the ED expansion packs and much, much more content. The game will be a very different beast.

+1. QFT- I don't think most of those that "finished" Elite: Dangerous understand what's supposed to become.

Geers · Apr 21, 2015

Komemiute said:
If it just didn't turn into Pay-2-Win...

They're going to take down the ship store when the game launches.

Komemiute · Apr 21, 2015

Geers said:
They're going to take down the ship store when the game launches.

Oh they're also going to remove all the ships bought with real money?

MarktJones · Apr 21, 2015

Geers said:
I'd much prefer the 100 crafted star systems SC is launching with.

xyphic said:
Hate to break it to you, but it won't have 100 hand-crafted star systems.

Geers said:
I am aware of this.

Are you a politician?

Geers · Apr 21, 2015

MarktJones said:
Are you a politician?

Poor wording is poor.

And misquoting is misrepresenting and thereby misleading. Don't do that. Are you mass media?

Iskariot · Apr 21, 2015

Geers said:
Great generic killjoy response.

I am not trying to be a killjoy at all.
I just think it is not fair to judge ED by comparing it with the paper concepts of SC.
If you want to compare SC with ED then you should take into account all of ED's paper concepts too and not just the game that we have now.

A big plus for SC might be that it also features a classic goal oriented linear single player campaign. A lot of people, including myself, like that.
Problem is that most likely this sp campaign will be over after 8 hours or so (if that) and after that SC will face the same challenge of filling the game with content as ED is facing now. I hope SC and ED both will find ways to do this.

Jason S · Apr 22, 2015

ED is more Sim like, SC is more game like.

Just my opinion so far, time will tell. So far I prefer ED, but I think it is possible one day I may prefer SC, I just do not know yet.

Both will attract different players that will swear one is the best, but some players may like both.