Switched from Star Citizen to Elite (and reasons why)

[Bains]

(note, this is the second time I've tried posting this - I checked already but apologies if there turn out to be two such posts, mods please delete one!)

Hello everyone!

I pledged for ED long ago but my primary interest was star citizen until very recently.

In making this post my intention is not to talk the other project down but rather share with the ED devs as to why I have switched my primary focus to ED from SC, and no - i have nothing to do with the ED crew, I'm just a gamer who has backed both projects but until now was primarily focused on SC.

First and foremost I've arrived at the view that SC, in spite of the fact it has no publisher to answer to, appears to want to keep everybody happy, which I just dont think is possible. Its trying to be fluffly (3rd person view - bouncing off asteroids - PVP sliders etc) and hard science/ more hardcore at the same time. At times it seems like they are a making WOW in space. At other times it aspires to be hardcore. I've reached the stage where I am confident this will lead to a mess that will ultimately leave no one truly happy.

I know its potentially just one small proof point but every single video I see of elite is first person which intuitively tells me a huge amount.

Secondly, the emphasis on hand crafting locations I fear will lead to a small SC universe, rather than the massive one I hear being talked about for ED.

Thirdly I didnt realise this before but ED appears to be just as ambitious in terms of you being a person who can walk out of your ship, do repairs, dock and board other ships, move walk around the space station. Not having this was one of the biggest things putting me off ED before, given the days of you being your ship and not a person who owns your ship are over/not good enough for me. The fact that ED ticks/will tick this box was a massive game changer for me, no pun intended.

Fourth, I'm no developer but everything I hear about the selection of the cry engine and its limitations on the number of people online at any one time worries me. Aka the great star citizen Instancing debate. I get the impression Elite will be massively multiplayer in a way that SC can not be.

Also from what I hear due to the selection of the cry engine things like seemlessly flying down to a world is not the way it will be, rather cut scenes. This for me is totally immersion breaking.

Meanwhile ED appears to be just as beautiful visually.

I'm beginning to think the fact ED crew own their own bespoke engine is a massive point in their favor.

Anyway, I'm sure none of the above are problems for many SC backers and I recognise having two space sims is no bad thing. I'm posting this because I'd like to be able to share my thoughts, which I hope will be of some small interest to the ED devs, and without getting trolled.

Thank you.

 

[Cosmo Bozo]

Agree with most of that. However, both games will have a limit on players in an instance.

 

[CMDR Texas Stu]

I'm sure with both there will be pluses and minuses.
I've glanced the direction of SC but I'm an old fan of Elite and trust they will make the game I want to play. In fact, the guys at Frontier (many of them) will play SC as well. Having both just broadens the skies IMO.
As you said, no game will please everyone. In fact, just about everyone will be able to point at things they do not like (and do like).
Balancing that along with system limitations is a high wire act to be sure!

 

[EidLeWeise]

Also from what I hear due to the selection of the cry engine things like seemlessly flying down to a world is not the way it will be, rather cut scenes. This for me is totally immersion breaking.

As has been said Elite WILL be Instanced as well however one thing that blew my mind away. In Multiplayer there are 2 'zones' we can fly to which are 100km apart. just for a giggle one night myself and someone else on the teamspeak server went to opposite ends of this route. Then we headed from the nav beacon we started at, to the other nav beacon. We were actually able to meet in the middle 50km from anything else.

OK sure in space 100km is nothing, but still I thought that was awesome!

 

[Andrew Sayers]

First and foremost I've arrived at the view that SC, in spite of the fact it has no publisher to answer to, appears to want to keep everybody happy, which I just dont think is possible. Its trying to be fluffly (3rd person view - bouncing off asteroids - PVP sliders etc) and hard science/ more hardcore at the same time. At times it seems like they are a making WOW in space. At other times it aspires to be hardcore. I've reached the stage where I am confident this will lead to a mess that will ultimately leave no one truly happy.

Welcome Bains

I agree with much of what you say, but on the specific point of being all things to all men - the SC team have only just formed, while Frontier have had two decades to normalise around a vision for their game. Chris Roberts' incredible knack for enthusing people doesn't seem to translate into ability to communicate a clear vision, so SC's current lack of focus may just be necessary growing pains for a young team. Apparently Star Citizen's final release has been put back to the end of 2016, which should give them time for a rethink when they get a better idea of what they're trying to achieve.

EDIT: rumours of a delay have been officially quashed, thanks Jenner for the update.

 

[Toumal]

Welcome! Yeah using Cryengine wasn't exactly the perfect technological fit for me as well. I wanted SC to succeed but the hype and almost no visible progress as far as actual game goes (assets however, top notch of course!) made me happy I didn't back SC in the end. Maybe I still will get it one day but right now, just no.

Instancing: I was very wary of that in ED as well. However, considering how massive the galaxy is, and the fact that you will be able to befriend players and have them be prefered in your instance really makes me optimistic about this. I understand and accept that ED is not an MMO, and all that matters is that my friends and I can enter a system and see each other. We won't see ALL other players in that system if it's a core system, but as soon as you get a little further out you may well run the only instance of that system, so it won't be an issue at all. Space is, as described in another thread here in the forums, mindbogglingly big

So anyway, welcome to ED, and let's all wait with bated breath for Alpha 4 and the subsequent beta start!

 

[Memnoch]

I too have some concerns regarding SC but it's not the MP aspect specifically but more to do with the CryEngine's ability to create a convincing space environment that won't be bounded by invisible walls.

 

[Slawkenbergius]

I know its potentially just one small proof point but every single video I see of elite is first person which intuitively tells me a huge amount.

Unsurprisingly, this has been a lively source for debate/arguments! I'm also glad of the approach they've taken.

Welcome to the forums.

 

[Andrew Sayers]

I too have some concerns regarding SC ... to do with the CryEngine's ability to create a convincing space environment that won't be bounded by invisible walls.

Something just clicked in my head. Chris Roberts mentioned in his PAX talk that they're helping CryEngine move over to "double precision". That's geek speak for 64-bit, so the good news is they should be able to move the invisible walls billions of times further away without too much trouble. But it's also geek speak for floating-point maths, so the bad news is the game might break in really weird ways if you travel out to the edges of a system.

Ben Parry (one of the Frontier devs) linked to a technical discussion of the problem some time ago, while emphasising the conclusion that 64-bit integer formats give you sub-micron precision out to the orbit of Pluto. Assuming the Star Citizen guys are aware of this, they shouldn't find it too hard to code a solution that gives them all the benefits with none of the drawbacks.

 

[Toumal]

Something just clicked in my head. Chris Roberts mentioned in his PAX talk that they're helping CryEngine move over to "double precision". That's geek speak for 64-bit, so the good news is they should be able to move the invisible walls billions of times further away without too much trouble. But it's also geek speak for floating-point maths, so the bad news is the game might break in really weird ways if you travel out to the edges of a system.

In my personal experience, the moment you use a single coordinate system you are ultimately limited. There's two extremes at work here: You can have a small play area with good precision, or you can make the game entities smaller, thus giving you a larger play area at the expense of precision. Typical resulting issues are collision detection problems, movement jitter, and so forth.

Luckily there's a nice way to resolve this: Use multiple coordinate systems, and then translate for the "bubble" of your current space. Some people call this a player-centric coordinate system, but whatever you wanna call it, the end result is that you can do with simple floats for what you can see out of the cockpit, but you only work on that level of precision within your bubble.

Of course there's other solutions like multiple interleaved coordinate systems etc. - but the point is, you are never limited to float precision for the actual simulation aspect in the first place.


Kinda reminds me of the discussion about Kalman filters in 8-bit flight controllers for multicopters. Some people (erroneously) think that only a 32 bit microcontroller has the precision required for a "precise" filter, when actually Kalman filter is not about precision in the first place, and you can always do the same math using multiple registers, just slower. Still fast enough to make a quadcopter stable like a rock though!

 

[JeffRyan]

Wow... nice meaty introduction thread. Welcome to the forums!

And as many have discussed, I don't think any game will make everyone happy. Elite Dangerous isn't perfect for /me/ but Braben has given it a clear design focus and that will translate into the final game I think.

Even if some of the boxes I want ticked are going to be expansion packs (planetary landings and walking around!)

 

[kenwshmt]

Something just clicked in my head. Chris Roberts mentioned in his PAX talk that they're helping CryEngine move over to "double precision". That's geek speak for 64-bit, so the good news is they should be able to move the invisible walls billions of times further away without too much trouble. But it's also geek speak for floating-point maths, so the bad news is the game might break in really weird ways if you travel out to the edges of a system.
B

We can only hope its breaking is nearly as interesting as a minecraft 'far lands'

Spoiler

 

[Tinman]

As has been said Elite WILL be Instanced as well however one thing that blew my mind away. In Multiplayer there are 2 'zones' we can fly to which are 100km apart. just for a giggle one night myself and someone else on the teamspeak server went to opposite ends of this route. Then we headed from the nav beacon we started at, to the other nav beacon. We were actually able to meet in the middle 50km from anything else.

OK sure in space 100km is nothing, but still I thought that was awesome!

Great to hear! I was hoping someone would test this out! Never got around to do it myself, even if this was the first thing I thought of when I realized you could fly between the two areas.

 

[avow555]

Switching from SC to ED is your choice of course but lets be honest, you will be playing ED this year
The beauty of ED of course is this is THE original space game and although some new folk may find the cobra an odd shape, every single old school player is gonna be drooling with anticipation at the prospect of flying old faithful. ED doesn't need to reinvent itself, we know this Universe and I'm gonna play this one through my next divorce, lol

SC is a new concept from scratch so many balance issues to find there and also rampant I want this and that going on which I personally hope it hasn't out-hyped itself. They are gonna struggle and I think that game is gonna keep slipping it's release date as it seems to have lack of clarity as to where it is going. Maybe a new Wing Commander would have been more apt.

At least for us Commanders, we will be in space soon

 

[Neo-ST]

I too have some concerns regarding SC but it's not the MP aspect specifically but more to do with the CryEngine's ability to create a convincing space environment that won't be bounded by invisible walls.

This guy also mentions something about streaming content in Cryengine, basically getting rid of the loading screens.

 

[Cyborg]

Thats not so bad at all.

Hm...
i am not unhappy if there is a second Game which makes happy those who like it more "WOW-Style".

Thats not so bad at all.
Live and let live, I would say.

 

[INaeem]

Welcome Commander!

Space is not a competition, the cosmos is opportunity and only Elite can do justice to Elite nothing else. Kudos and thank you for supporting Elite.

Take care and Elite!

 

[Bains]

Thank you for the welcome and appreciating where I'm coming from in terms of wanting to share my thoughts.

Some of the replies warrant a touch more clarity on my part.

Agree with most of that. However, both games will have a limit on players in an instance.

Several of you have pointed this out to me. Actually I do appreciate this. But it was after listening to an in depth interview with Braben, and comparing it with all the talk from SC on this subject that it dawned on me that while SC is dealing with a case of how to get around cry engine related limitations to allow for a healthy number of players in a given instance, ED actually sound like they are not operating under such severe limitations.

Quite the reverse, actually ED appear to have the luxury of artificially limiting the number to make sure there aren't too many people in a given instance. Specifically I inferred this from Braben's comment along the lines of not wanted to have 20 people waiting in a que for landing as one of the factors in how many players would be allowed in a given instance.

This is the video interview I got this from:
(https://games.yahoo.com/video/interview-elite-dangerouss-david-braben-211040547.html)

Welcome Bains

I agree with much of what you say, but on the specific point of being all things to all men - the SC team have only just formed, while Frontier have had two decades to normalise around a vision for their game. Chris Roberts' incredible knack for enthusing people doesn't seem to translate into ability to communicate a clear vision, so SC's current lack of focus may just be necessary growing pains for a young team. Apparently Star Citizen's final release has been put back to the end of 2016, which should give them time for a rethink when they get a better idea of what they're trying to achieve.


EDIT: rumours of a delay have been officially quashed, thanks Jenner for the update.

I appreciate your point and I agree with you on the clarity you hear from the ED team. but I also find the comments generous in that they ignore the never ending marketing speak that characterises all SC comms. One of the most refreshing things about the interview I referenced above, indeed so much of the ED comms, is the lack of spin.

Furthermore, I think you may underestimate the cleverness of the SC team while missing what the real source is of this "lack of clarity". And if I have criticisms they stem from this: I think there is a design philosophy but one which is more ruthlessly about business rather than making real the claim that they are engaged in "making the game they always wanted to play" - which they are in fact completely empowered to do by the backers, and therefore, given this is less palatable, it necessarily remains submerged and detectable only if you read between the lines and disregard the spin - at which point it becomes quite obvious when pointed out.

I think it goes like this: In the same way that world of tanks is all about tanks, SC is all about ships. From a business point of view it is a great model. Sell ships like a car dealer sells cars, including add ons, variants, upgrades, leather seats. Hence the cryengine to allow for the most polygons/highest fidelity ships, never mind all the other down stream issues to do with the fact this isnt a natural choice for a massively multiplayer game. Hence the pricing, including life time insurance, never mind this has generated a completely unlevel playing field for those who will come later, also hence being continually caught out on questions relating to so many other considerations other than ships, and hence being happy to accommodate any and all compromises, no matter how unholy, in order to try to keep everyone happy on all those other considerations, because they are in fact secondary from the baseline "world of spaceships" premise.

But of course none of this they can admit because, good god, how can you say you've out published the publisher and are making "world of space ships" when all along you've been saying you're making the space faring game you always wanted to play from the get go, and in spite of the fact you were free to do this, or indeed this promise is what drew so many in.

In contrast when I heard Braben speak in that interview he talks about identifying what the primary challenges are for an intersteller space faring game and then addressing those. No endless ship ***** (<ryhms with ship-rorn), no spin, dare I say it no cringworthy razzmatazz, but just a well thought out holistic take on putting together this type of game. I'm in.

Switching from SC to ED is your choice of course but lets be honest, you will be playing ED this year
....
At least for us Commanders, we will be in space soon

Honestly, just to be clear, the fact that ED is coming out before, or indeed SC is/may continue to slip has nothing to do with it. I'm 43 and have already waited close to 30 years. I really dont care if I have to wait a little longer, especially these days when you can feel part of it even before it's released. The real issue is what limited spare time I have I want to commit to the right game for me, and moreover not be conned into buying mutton dressed up as lamb. i.e flying around million polygon ships, costing up to a $1000 dollars, in 3rd person view using a gamepad, all the while boxed by invisible barriers into small relatively empty instances making up a universe with less systems than the London underground has tube stations. When finally grasped as such, the mind boggles that this can be anyone's idea of the space faring game they always wanted to play.

I'll leave it at that because I've done what I didnt want to do, which is to get into a bit of a rant. And my stated objective was to share my thoughts for the benefit of the ED team as to why I'm moving my chips over here from there, which I think I've done with little room for confusion.

 

[Sir.Tj]

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[Frank]

That's a great introductory post Bains. I enjoyed reading it. Chris Roberts has set himself the task of building the greatest space game ever, and he has the skill, drive, and backing to accomplish this ambition.

But Elite will be better.