So I bought Elite: Dangerous

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Yes, we love X games, yes, we can still be moderately optimistic X4 development will be going strong for quite a while and yes, Egosoft has a track record of fixing things at least later down the road: this changes nothing about the state the game shipped in.

I think that very few of us can actually disagree with this - it is also one of my chief complaints about X4. The overall quality of the software product is below the historic par for Egosoft - even now.

Content level wise, I think X4 was not unreasonable at point of release though and personally I believe any complaints about the level of content in X4 are on the most part unjustified. The level of content in previous games is on the most part irrelevant.

[Général Grievous]

it is funny you are talking about ED, because i started it yesterday.

1) Well, what i like the most in ED is the environnement. Each celestian body are very far away, and space is far more realistic than in X4.
2) Ship managment is very complex in ED and it's very interesting

BUT

1) you can't have any employee
2) you can't own any station
3) You can't fly large ships
4) there is less ships in ED than in X4

If we were able to build our own stations and manage our own fleet in ED, it should be the best 4X game ever made...

ED seems to have a very large community, and honestly i don't understand really why...
I'm sure i'll get borred faster in ED than any X-game i played until now.

[zarrazee]

Once they announced the always online switch-a-roo, I walked away and never looked back.

Your loss mate. I've over 2000 hours in Elite and am only playing other games for a change. I could easily play another 2000 - there's so much to do. I was the same with WoW; it was the only game I played for 4 years and all other good releases were ignored.

[Nifhtyeq]

it is funny you are talking about ED, because i started it yesterday.

1) Well, what i like the most in ED is the environnement. Each celestian body are very far away, and space is far more realistic than in X4.
2) Ship managment is very complex in ED and it's very interesting

BUT

1) you can't have any employee
2) you can't own any station
3) You can't fly large ships
4) there is less ships in ED than in X4

If we were able to build our own stations and manage our own fleet in ED, it should be the best 4X game ever made...

ED seems to have a very large community, and honestly i don't understand really why...
I'm sure i'll get borred faster in ED than any X-game i played until now.

Are you not playing X4 because your bored?

[Général Grievous]

it is funny you are talking about ED, because i started it yesterday.

1) Well, what i like the most in ED is the environnement. Each celestian body are very far away, and space is far more realistic than in X4.
2) Ship managment is very complex in ED and it's very interesting

BUT

1) you can't have any employee
2) you can't own any station
3) You can't fly large ships
4) there is less ships in ED than in X4

If we were able to build our own stations and manage our own fleet in ED, it should be the best 4X game ever made...

ED seems to have a very large community, and honestly i don't understand really why...
I'm sure i'll get borred faster in ED than any X-game i played until now.

Are you not playing X4 because your bored?

Yeah, mostly. I discovered all sectors, and after 190h of X4, i'm just waiting in my mothership for modules to be built... Nothing else to de as ennemies are not a threat.
I played 20h with ED, but i'm not bored yet

[Nifhtyeq]

it is funny you are talking about ED, because i started it yesterday.

1) Well, what i like the most in ED is the environnement. Each celestian body are very far away, and space is far more realistic than in X4.
2) Ship managment is very complex in ED and it's very interesting

BUT

1) you can't have any employee
2) you can't own any station
3) You can't fly large ships
4) there is less ships in ED than in X4

If we were able to build our own stations and manage our own fleet in ED, it should be the best 4X game ever made...

ED seems to have a very large community, and honestly i don't understand really why...
I'm sure i'll get borred faster in ED than any X-game i played until now.

Are you not playing X4 because your bored?

Yeah, mostly. I discovered all sectors, and after 190h of X4, i'm just waiting in my mothership for modules to be built... Nothing else to de as ennemies are not a threat.
I played 20h with ED, but i'm not bored yet

I honestly get more bored playing elite then x I feel like elite is always missing factors that make X4 and x games great.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

it is funny you are talking about ED, because i started it yesterday.

1) Well, what i like the most in ED is the environnement. Each celestian body are very far away, and space is far more realistic than in X4.
2) Ship managment is very complex in ED and it's very interesting

BUT

1) you can't have any employee
2) you can't own any station
3) You can't fly large ships
4) there is less ships in ED than in X4

If we were able to build our own stations and manage our own fleet in ED, it should be the best 4X game ever made...

I disagree that either X4 or ED should take that tack - they are quite different games with different atmospheres. Trying to amalgam the concepts would be a big mistake IMO.

ED seems to have a very large community, and honestly i don't understand really why...
I'm sure i'll get borred faster in ED than any X-game i played until now.

ED is quite a different game to X4, they both have their good and bad points but ultimately - outside of modded X-games I have far more hours invested in ED than I do in the X-series. The only aspect that keeps the X-series alive is the modding aspect really. ED is a different animal to the X-series - it is far more immersive (partly helped by VR headset support) and is more a simulator than a game. The X-series are enjoyable games but they are just games at the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with that and while I feel VR support (c/f ED's approach) would help to improve immersion the X-series would still be just games (albeit good ones).

Comparing X4 with ED is a bit like comparing Command & Conqueror with Battlefield 1942.

[Tomonor]

1) Well, what i like the most in ED is the environnement. Each celestian body are very far away, and space is far more realistic than in X4.

Is it just me who thinks the representation of scale is absolutely wrong in ED? Planets look like marbles, the engine thrust power of ships makes it look like you are passing balloons instead of full-size planets. The planet trajectory lines don't help here either.

I always thought the sense of scale was off in the X3 games, but Elite Dangerous takes that on a whole new level. Now in X4, planets are represented just right. They are giant compared to you. They don't "move" if you engage your engines. I've managed to get to the other side these two planets in Memory of Profit. It was a really long journey even with both Travel mode and Seta mode on (glitch usage).
Now, we have these fancy catapults called Accelerators. I wish Egosoft had used them more extensively in X4, just like in Rebirth.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

I always thought the sense of scale was off in the X3 games, but Elite Dangerous takes that on a whole new level.

Sense of scale has never felt off to me and if anything it feels about right in Elite Dangerous - it is true 1:1 scale but in most games they do not even attempt to achieve such true representations of scale. Most will typically distort it slightly for one reason or another - in both X4 and ED though they have made a significant effort to maintain a reasonable sense of scale.

And before you raise the ship capacity/cargo capacity card it is worth keeping in mind that the X-series has had the principle of cargo space compression as part of the game lore for some time.

[Falcrack]

I always thought the sense of scale was off in the X3 games, but Elite Dangerous takes that on a whole new level. Now in X4, planets are represented just right. They are giant compared to you. They don't "move" if you engage your engines. I've managed to get to the other side these two planets in Memory of Profit. It was a really long journey even with both Travel mode and Seta mode on (glitch usage).
Now, we have these fancy catapults called Accelerators. I wish Egosoft had used them more extensively in X4, just like in Rebirth.

I agree, I wish we had more sectors in X4 where the long distance superhighways would have us zip past planets and interesting stellar phenomena.

[Général Grievous]

I agree, I wish we had more sectors in X4 where the long distance superhighways would have us zip past planets and interesting stellar phenomena.

Well, the problem in X4 with system accelerators is that it has no sense.
What will you do if you were able to built those highways?

- Make a highway between an earth like planet and the sun, to maximize energy cells production. They never did that.
- Make Highways between an earth like planet and an ore belt
- Make highway between different planets of the system, maybe gaz giant to produce gazes.

By doing this way, you can build big trade lines with specialized production for each sectors.
The economy would be very interesting and soo awesome.
(sun = energy cells, home planet = high tech and agricultural, ore belt = ore, gaz giant = gaz extraction)

This would have soo much sense that I never understand why they never did that.
In X Rebirth we were close to this space organisation, but with X4 it goes nowhere. Highway builders are morons and put it anywhere.

ED is closer to this space organisation, because all stations are built around a planet, but the ecenomy is not representative of this organisation.

[ezra-r]

The ships in ED look like they
were designed by a child.

with this start is hard to take anything afterwards seriously.

This kind of self-sufficient dismissive attitude disregarding the amount of work made by dozens of people, just like that..."designed by a child". So cheap.

[Buzz2005]

never played ED but reading this thread I find it very odd that a game where you are glued to the ship and its all about the ships, has less ships then x4

but then some even say worse design then x4, weird

[Kadatherion]

never played ED but reading this thread I find it very odd that a game where you are glued to the ship and its all about the ships, has less ships then x4

but then some even say worse design then x4, weird

I'll explain: ED is based on games that came out in the '80 and in the first half of the '90s. Then they died, ED came out TWENTY YEARS after the last Elite game, as a revival. Even after all those years, ED stayed faithful to the original ship designs: they were modernized, of course, but on the conceptual level many are still fairly close to those designs from 30 years ago. Which is AWESOME, and is the single best thing about the whole ED project. However, this means that some of these designs feel a bit too "simple" in shape to those who weren't there 20 years ago: I mean, there's ships that were simple trapezoids who had to be converted to today's graphics... while still having to remain sort of simple trapezoids. It's understandable and not for everyone, this is why some people don't like ED's ships (can't blame them, it's really just a generational thing), but it's been a work of love, and for all the promises that ED failed to keep, this has not been a failure at all.

On the other hand, Egosoft between X3 and Rebirth had some of the best, most inspired spaceship designs ever seen in a videogame. Very characteristic, race coded, some models were downright breathtaking and imposing (even when ugly as sin they made sense). And in a finger snap they threw it all away, reinventing the wheel and, unfortunately, failing hard, giving us space dildoes and bricks. It's as if Star Trek decided to forego the iconic, super successful Federation ship design code (the frontal disc section and two tubular main engines, in a slightly different configuration between models, or a bit sleeker in the angles the newer the series is) and give them completely different designs, for no reason, without even an in-universe explanation. A suicide by definition, even if the new conceptual designs weren't ugly (as X4 ones unfortunately are). Egosoft, for whatever reason (they lost their designers? The landing platform modules constrained them?) did just that: they shot themselves in the face.

[Artean]

ED and X4 share some similarities - they are both space games (duh...) and puts some emphasis on simulation at the expense of being 'gamey'. ED has a great emphasis on simulating ship behavior and a realistically sized universe; X4 puts a great deal in simulating a fictional universe with dynamic factions and an industrial economy.

IMO both are great games worthy for any space game geek to explore. In a mainstreamed PC game market, we are lucky to have them both alive and developing. I'm all for supporting Frontier and Egosoft.

[steholliday]

I'v bought both.

I played Elite in '84 & bought the ED game on launch day (some 4 1/2) years ago & continued to play it, to this day.

I've played most of the X series from donkey's years ago too. I've enjoyed both franchises.

I bought X4 just b4 launch day, while waiting for the final chapter of the ED Beyond series update last December.

X4 felt like the earlier series, but had continual CTD's which put me off a bit.

Funny really, since Frontier updated the Beyond series in December, not only did I buy a 2nd ED account, but I've not loaded up & played X4 since that day.

Both games are in different niches, in fact ED could be vastly improved by introducing X4's type of station building mechanics.

Hope to return to X4 someday, but atm I'm considering buying No Man's Sky, which says it all.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

I agree, I wish we had more sectors in X4 where the long distance superhighways would have us zip past planets and interesting stellar phenomena.

Well, the problem in X4 with system accelerators is that it has no sense.
What will you do if you were able to built those highways?

- Make a highway between an earth like planet and the sun, to maximize energy cells production. They never did that.
- Make Highways between an earth like planet and an ore belt
- Make highway between different planets of the system, maybe gaz giant to produce gazes.

In X3:TC/AP, that is pretty much what the Terrans had done with-in their own solar system. The same could be said of X-Rebirth.

In the context of X4, the situation is a bit more straight forward in some ways and complex in others. What we have is a universe that already had a partly-space based society and was heavily dependent on jump gate technology. What they have done as a result of the gate shutdown is essentially try to replicate the end effect with highways/accelerators. The time between the gates shutting down and the gates reconnecting again was not really long enough for the kind of socio-technological evolution that you are referring to since there are already existing approaches in play AND true genuine change takes time and investment.

If we were talking about a day Zero technology for a fledgling space based society then what you are suggesting would make sense but that it not the case in X-Universe lore. The main priority of the X-universe would have been to reconnect their existing colonies/stations and recover from the consequences of the gate shutdown.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

never played ED but reading this thread I find it very odd that a game where you are glued to the ship and its all about the ships, has less ships then x4

There is more to ED than just the ships and technically you are not glued to them in ED - currently there are SRVs and SLFs plus there are plans for space-legs at some point (probably when/if FD have FP content worth introducing space-legs for).

X4 is more about the player building fleets of ships thus the variety and complexity is focused around that. ED is more focused around piloting individual ships than X4 is thus a lesser variety would not be that unrealistic.

In actual fact, if you look at the ACTUAL variety in the models in X4 and the variety in the models in ED, the latter possibly has equal if not greater variety on balance. A lot of X4 ships are copy-and-pastes/kit-bashes of each other in part or in whole.

but then some even say worse design then x4, weird

Aesthetics are a matter of opinion not fact, but IMO overall I prefer the ship designs in ED to those in X4 in the main - there are some exceptions to this but they are exceptions.

[EDIT]I should add that personally, I have no real issues with the ship designs in either product.[/EDIT]

[Falcrack]

The ships in ED look like they
were designed by a child.

with this start is hard to take anything afterwards seriously.

This kind of self-sufficient dismissive attitude disregarding the amount of work made by dozens of people, just like that..."designed by a child". So cheap.

This is of course subjective. I think the ships in E:D look good, for the most part.

[Kadatherion]

In the context of X4, the situation is a bit more straight forward in some ways and complex in others. What we have is a universe that already had a partly-space based society and was heavily dependent on jump gate technology. What they have done as a result of the gate shutdown is essentially try to replicate the end effect with highways/accelerators. The time between the gates shutting down and the gates reconnecting again was not really long enough for the kind of socio-technological evolution that you are referring to since there are already existing approaches in play AND true genuine change takes time and investment.

If we were talking about a day Zero technology for a fledgling space based society then what you are suggesting would make sense but that it not the case in X-Universe lore. The main priority of the X-universe would have been to reconnect their existing colonies/stations and recover from the consequences of the gate shutdown.

You do have a point, but... let's be real, there's no such logic behind the actual game development decision about how the highways are implemented. If there was such a logic, then we also wouldn't have most of the races COMPLETELY change their cultural style in ship design. Doesn't matter if we like or not like the new designs, such huge difference (think the Teladi, from hulking, budget friendly flying scraps of metal to flying mushrooms or space dildoes) isn't something that develops to such extremes, in a culture, in just a few decades. Just like we still make cars that look pretty much just as they looked 50 or even 100 years ago: they are sleeker, sure, with softer angles and so on, but the basic concept (which, of course, comes from functionality, just as the Teladi spaceship concept did) is the same and still perfectly recognizable.

We have highways as they are because they were thought to be the best solution for good gameplay. I dare say they don't only make relatively little sense "in-universe" (even though your point still stands and is very valid), they also make little sense for good gameplay, because the concepts mentioned by Général Grievous would also make gameplay much better. For instance, because that would not only feel more "cohesive", but it would also organize the sectors in a way that would let the player see much more varied views of the backgrounds, the planets and so on, that in X4 are much less unique and distinctive compared to Rebirth and, to an extent, even X3. X4 highways only serve the purpose to allow you to travel faster over the same direct path you'd travel anyway, nothing else. It can be called QoL, sure, but it could have been much more, if paired with the currently virtually unused "limitless" sector sizes.