The biggest problem with ED (IMHO) remains the rebuy scheme if you total your ship and the lack of a hard dock save out in the boonies. If you bite the big one two jumps from home after weeks out in the black, all your progress is gone. I haven't bought X4 yet (a tad pricey) but at least Egosoft games normally allow you to quicksave as you go.
Elite Dangerous or X4: Foundations
- Thread starter Mr G
- Start date
To answer some of the above (I hope):
X4 allows you to progress from lonely ship commander to owner of a corporate empire with bases & the works. It looks more like a business sim in places than a space sim with a lot of action taking place via menus. It is single player with a pseudo-MP mode being added which will enable NPCs from different players' games to meet but not actual players.
Elite Dangerous is much more immersive & more about the commander and their ship. It suffers from grind in some areas but a lot of this problem has been removed with a reworking of the engineering, exploration & mining systems to remove the games addiction to RNG. It is MP & has landing on non-atmospheric planets unlike X4. The base game & Horizons seasons pass gets you Elite Dangerous Seasons 1 - 3, ie Base Game, Horizons & Beyond. Season 4, 'New Era' will be the next paid for expansion.
In a nutshell, get X4 if you want a game that will take you on a journey from small fry to big fish in an isolated world. Get Elite Dangerous if you want to fly a space ship, pretend to be Captain Picard to a growing degree & maybe find other people to do it with. X4 is a largely complete game, Elite Dangerous isn't remotely complete and is aiming to be where Star Citizen is heading but is arguably a functioning product & completely playable product whilst Star Citizen is still very much a tech demo.
Hope that helps
X4 allows you to progress from lonely ship commander to owner of a corporate empire with bases & the works. It looks more like a business sim in places than a space sim with a lot of action taking place via menus. It is single player with a pseudo-MP mode being added which will enable NPCs from different players' games to meet but not actual players.
Elite Dangerous is much more immersive & more about the commander and their ship. It suffers from grind in some areas but a lot of this problem has been removed with a reworking of the engineering, exploration & mining systems to remove the games addiction to RNG. It is MP & has landing on non-atmospheric planets unlike X4. The base game & Horizons seasons pass gets you Elite Dangerous Seasons 1 - 3, ie Base Game, Horizons & Beyond. Season 4, 'New Era' will be the next paid for expansion.
In a nutshell, get X4 if you want a game that will take you on a journey from small fry to big fish in an isolated world. Get Elite Dangerous if you want to fly a space ship, pretend to be Captain Picard to a growing degree & maybe find other people to do it with. X4 is a largely complete game, Elite Dangerous isn't remotely complete and is aiming to be where Star Citizen is heading but is arguably a functioning product & completely playable product whilst Star Citizen is still very much a tech demo.
Hope that helps
Man of Honour
- Joined
- 21 Nov 2004
- Posts
- 46,320
You can’t really compare the two. ED is a spaceship simulator, X4 is an economy simulator with some first person elements. Both difficult to get into, I personally found X4 easier to get into. X4 I find easy going, Elite stresses me out! Both are being actively developed with DLC and free content as seems to be the new model.
Why is a problem ? Its a consequence of the player not paying attention nothing more but your own fault especially if you fly without being able to cover the rebuy.
Completely different style of game, one is fly your own ship + multiplayer and other is fly a ship while trying to micromanage a fleet of ships doing trading, fighting & everything else.
At the moment, out of the two I would pick Elite Dangerous.
I personally bought X4 which made me want to play Elite again (bought in 2015). I like both games for their different styles but have found myself playing Elite more & even bought the Horizons Season Pass.
X4 seems like a game for the future, it's quite expensive at the moment in comparison to Elite and the UI/UX is terrible.
Elite Dangerous still has the problem of getting boring from grind but there are lots of things to do, the new exploration tools are fun & the new mining looks interesting.
Elite still doesn't feel like an MMO in comparison to something like EVE Online.
If they could add MMO aspects it could be amazing but I guess it has been out for 4 years already & they haven't moved into player interaction or trading or alliances/corps, if anything you get punished for co-op of multicrew etc.
At the moment, out of the two I would pick Elite Dangerous.
I personally bought X4 which made me want to play Elite again (bought in 2015). I like both games for their different styles but have found myself playing Elite more & even bought the Horizons Season Pass.
X4 seems like a game for the future, it's quite expensive at the moment in comparison to Elite and the UI/UX is terrible.
Elite Dangerous still has the problem of getting boring from grind but there are lots of things to do, the new exploration tools are fun & the new mining looks interesting.
Elite still doesn't feel like an MMO in comparison to something like EVE Online.
If they could add MMO aspects it could be amazing but I guess it has been out for 4 years already & they haven't moved into player interaction or trading or alliances/corps, if anything you get punished for co-op of multicrew etc.