Playing Elite Dangerous After Star Citizen
I've played Star Citizen for ~3 years now, and I did legitimately fall in love with it, but over time the bugs and the business practices just really really got to me, and the most recent stuff with their most recent patch was sort of the nail in the coffin for me- I uninstalled and on a whim decided to try ED.
Going in, I had read that the game was boring and dead, that it was basically just a flying sim with no substance, and it's not that those are *inaccurate* assessments, but man compared to playing Star Citizen, where the world still feels bland and dead, *and* it rarely works, Elite Dangerous is incredible. I went in thinking "It literally cannot be worse than Star Citizen, and so far I was right.
Now, granted, even though the games are different, a few years of flying and navigating in SC did prepare me better than most new players so I didn't really get the skill cliff thing, but within about 70 minutes I did a few hauling contracts and bought a new ship, the Adder, so I could play with my friend later today- and it just worked! It literally just worked- I didn't lose my cargo or ship to a stupid bug, I was able to navigate systems and plot my course without error (and honestly way faster than in SC even when SC DOES work) and honestly? It was just fun too, this type of game doesn't bother me because the ideal to me is chilling with my friend doing space trucking while we yap anyway. I had a couple of hiccups- Getting to a planetary outpost was a lot more complicated than I expected, but I still had fun figuring it out.
I haven't done any of the other game loops yet, but honestly I enjoy hauling so much that I probably won't for a while anyway, at least until I feel like I need a change of pace. ED seems like a game to just kind of sit back and enjoy the ride, which is what I like, and from what I've heard the devs seem to be gearing up to add more new stuff so I feel like now might have been a good time to start too!
All in all, I came in with the expectation that this game literally could not be worse than Star Citizen, and in about an hour and a half, I had more fun doing the first like cargo/data contracts and navigating gravity wells and plotting my course through systems to optimize taking multiple contracts, AND managed to buy a new ship. I've had a lot of fun doing complicated org activities in SC, but I've never had as much fun just flying around enjoying the feeling of gliding through deep space, and to me, that makes it more than worth it- Not being able to walk around my ship sucks, but honestly, the trade off for a game that WORKS and makes me think about logistics even a little is more than worth it.