Exactly one year ago I made 2016 Battle of Space Games: No Man's Sky, Star Citizen, and Elite Dangerous. NMS is more or less finished with development so now we're just down to these two.
Elite Dangerous has traditionally been a very cold and lonely game. This feels great with the vast emptiness of space but not so fun elsewhere. Interaction with NPCs was basically just editing excel spreadsheets. There was no life.
Update 2.2 started changing this. It added new station interiors, personalized comms chatter, and portraits of every NPC you talked to.
2.3 is taking this to the next level by adding a character creator! Instead of being a cookie cutter pilot behind a mask, you are now you.
Your face is plastered around the galaxy and it's now used as your avatar.
2.3 also adds multicrew.
You're not playing the game as a ship anymore; you're playing as a person on the ship. That's a huge step towards making Elite feel like a non empty world.
2.3 also adds some 3rd person camera gameplay.
It allows you to see your full ship for the first time and appreciate all its details. Usually the players forget just how large their ships are. When you only see the cockpit, it feels like you're just a cockpit.
Update 2.3 in general seems to be Elite Dangerous catching up to what Star Citizen has had since the first PU release: a feeling of being alive.
Meanwhile Star Citizen's upcoming patches are:
So which game am I more excited for?
With the last thread, it was pretty much a tie between the two games. I had just purchased both Star Citizen and Elite's Horizon expansion. However, Horizon's love was short lived. I had only played it for ~10 hours yet already was getting uninterested. Star Citizen I played even less, but I had a grin on my face the entire time. Plus it had so many cool features coming.
So back then, Star Citizen had the lead by a bit. As the months went on, that lead grew. Elite disappointed two expansions in a row, and each expansion took twice the expected time to release. Meanwhile Star Citizen had an incredible Gamescom and Citizencon. It was my most hyped game at the time.
But then Star Citizen just kept delaying content over and over. The reason I wrote about it so little in this post is because not much has changed since the other thread. The basic info of all their planned patches has been known for a long time yet the playable game has mostly only received small improvements and a separate FPS module. 3.0 could realistically not be out till 2018 with the way some things are sounding.
Meanwhile Elite Dangerous in only the past few days has reignited my hype. 2.3 reminds me that those devs are serious about making Elite just as good as Star Citizen's long term plans. The "lack of life" was the big thing that personally made the two games feel different and Elite is fixing that.
So right now Elite is the better game to play, but I'm also more hopeful for its state at the end of 2017. Even if SC 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2 all release before the end of the year, it'll still be missing the large game loops that make it more than a sandbox. Update 4.0 is the planned update to bring multiple star systems and that's still far away.
We know much less about the roadmap for Elite, but there are some good things that will probably hit this year. 2.3 enters public beta at the end of the month. It adds character creation, multi crew, a new 3rd person camera, and megaships.
Not much has been revealed about megaships but realistically there will only be 1 in this update, and they'll function exactly like space stations. There's also a secret element of the update that is being hyped as the best thing about 2.3 but I have no idea what that is. Elite update 2.4 will release this summer alongside the PS4 release. It's been teased as a big secret for the past year so we have no idea what it'll add. Probably aliens.
Post 2.4, Elite has no announced updates. However it's all but confirmed there will be some big expansion before the end of the year. Most likely it'll either add landing on atmospheric planets or the ability to walk around ships and EVA. Both have been in development for a long time and both have been teased as of late.
Here are my predictions for the state of each game at the end of 2017.
Star Citizen: 3.0 has released. The planet surfaces look great but there's not much to do on them. The submission system and all that NPC related stuff are not at the state they were planned to be. 3.1 has just released near the end of the year. Squadron 42 still has no release date.
Elite Dangerous: 2.3 released end of March. 2.4 releases in July to coincide with the PS4 release. It adds thargoid homeworlds and thargoid combat. Season 3 is space legs and 3.0 Releases in October. It has walking around your ship, EVA, and walking around on planets.
Looking beyond 2017, Star Citizen has a chance to catch up but unlike before I'm not sure it'll ever pass Elite. Both games have incredibly ambitious development plans yet the Elite devs are just much better at making progress. This roadmap was released for Elite back on Feb 20th, 2016.
So what are your thoughts on 2017 and these two games?
Elite Dangerous has traditionally been a very cold and lonely game. This feels great with the vast emptiness of space but not so fun elsewhere. Interaction with NPCs was basically just editing excel spreadsheets. There was no life.
Update 2.2 started changing this. It added new station interiors, personalized comms chatter, and portraits of every NPC you talked to.
Quote
But as you can see from that screenshot, it's still not that lively.2.3 is taking this to the next level by adding a character creator! Instead of being a cookie cutter pilot behind a mask, you are now you.
Your face is plastered around the galaxy and it's now used as your avatar.
2.3 also adds multicrew.
You're not playing the game as a ship anymore; you're playing as a person on the ship. That's a huge step towards making Elite feel like a non empty world.
2.3 also adds some 3rd person camera gameplay.
Spoiler for Large GIF:
Spoiler for Large GIF:
It allows you to see your full ship for the first time and appreciate all its details. Usually the players forget just how large their ships are. When you only see the cockpit, it feels like you're just a cockpit.
Update 2.3 in general seems to be Elite Dangerous catching up to what Star Citizen has had since the first PU release: a feeling of being alive.
Meanwhile Star Citizen's upcoming patches are:
Quote
The current PU is really fun to be in, but it's missing game elements. The coming patches will mostly focus on making it into a game instead of just a sandbox. In this regard, it's catching up to what Elite had since day 1.So which game am I more excited for?
With the last thread, it was pretty much a tie between the two games. I had just purchased both Star Citizen and Elite's Horizon expansion. However, Horizon's love was short lived. I had only played it for ~10 hours yet already was getting uninterested. Star Citizen I played even less, but I had a grin on my face the entire time. Plus it had so many cool features coming.
So back then, Star Citizen had the lead by a bit. As the months went on, that lead grew. Elite disappointed two expansions in a row, and each expansion took twice the expected time to release. Meanwhile Star Citizen had an incredible Gamescom and Citizencon. It was my most hyped game at the time.
But then Star Citizen just kept delaying content over and over. The reason I wrote about it so little in this post is because not much has changed since the other thread. The basic info of all their planned patches has been known for a long time yet the playable game has mostly only received small improvements and a separate FPS module. 3.0 could realistically not be out till 2018 with the way some things are sounding.
Meanwhile Elite Dangerous in only the past few days has reignited my hype. 2.3 reminds me that those devs are serious about making Elite just as good as Star Citizen's long term plans. The "lack of life" was the big thing that personally made the two games feel different and Elite is fixing that.
So right now Elite is the better game to play, but I'm also more hopeful for its state at the end of 2017. Even if SC 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2 all release before the end of the year, it'll still be missing the large game loops that make it more than a sandbox. Update 4.0 is the planned update to bring multiple star systems and that's still far away.
We know much less about the roadmap for Elite, but there are some good things that will probably hit this year. 2.3 enters public beta at the end of the month. It adds character creation, multi crew, a new 3rd person camera, and megaships.
Not much has been revealed about megaships but realistically there will only be 1 in this update, and they'll function exactly like space stations. There's also a secret element of the update that is being hyped as the best thing about 2.3 but I have no idea what that is. Elite update 2.4 will release this summer alongside the PS4 release. It's been teased as a big secret for the past year so we have no idea what it'll add. Probably aliens.
Post 2.4, Elite has no announced updates. However it's all but confirmed there will be some big expansion before the end of the year. Most likely it'll either add landing on atmospheric planets or the ability to walk around ships and EVA. Both have been in development for a long time and both have been teased as of late.
Here are my predictions for the state of each game at the end of 2017.
Star Citizen: 3.0 has released. The planet surfaces look great but there's not much to do on them. The submission system and all that NPC related stuff are not at the state they were planned to be. 3.1 has just released near the end of the year. Squadron 42 still has no release date.
Elite Dangerous: 2.3 released end of March. 2.4 releases in July to coincide with the PS4 release. It adds thargoid homeworlds and thargoid combat. Season 3 is space legs and 3.0 Releases in October. It has walking around your ship, EVA, and walking around on planets.
Looking beyond 2017, Star Citizen has a chance to catch up but unlike before I'm not sure it'll ever pass Elite. Both games have incredibly ambitious development plans yet the Elite devs are just much better at making progress. This roadmap was released for Elite back on Feb 20th, 2016.
Quote
Things have most definitely been delayed but 2.4 is only about half a year behind schedule. Star Citizen's content is great when it releases but the roadmaps feel made up.So what are your thoughts on 2017 and these two games?