Is this really better than Star Citizen?

[BalkanBiker]

I don't want a biased, fanboy answer. I want honesty from people who have played both.

I didn't get into Star Citizen because of its higher asking price, as I know I will probably dump €200+ on it because I'm a sucker for collectibles.
This would cost me 10th of Star Citizen price. It's not about cost but time vs money investment. Regardless what I get, I probably won't play more than 3-5 hours per week and if SpaceBourne 2 is 95% of Star Citizen, then I'll pick SB2.

[GZdar]

Origineel geplaatst door Rap1df1re:

The SC reference is hilarious, Sc is on another level totally, an its hilarious. I find it funny just cause have you really played SC? lol.

Sc is like playing next amazing space ship star system game, this is not terribly bad, but the graphics and ships overall areas are totally different by miles. You think about seamless space travel, not cut scenes etc...

Yet they did do good job for 1 person developer for sure.

I don't get the whole "seamless" thing. Elevators in SC ARE the cut scenes. You can switch debug data on and see it load/unload object counts. The elevator trip can change speed if it's falling behind loading stuff.

If it was really seamless, everything would just dynamically load/unload as you move around all the time. Some of SC is like that, most actual bases are not.

SC IS on an entirely different level, though. I have $1100 or so into SC so far... and I'm mostly okay with that. I look forward to the game SC will eventually be.

However, those guys have HORRIBLE leadership and really bad technical direction. They have islands of extreme skill who just don't (or at least didn't) have the authority to fix anything. I'm a very senior dev who's been coding for over 40 years. My opinion is SC's main problem is that it is very obviously run by the design guys. They're just now MAYBE on the right track long term. They've learned the hard way that they need better core architecture to structure an immense game around... at least I sure hope they've learned that.

Their "Inside Star Citizen" has shed enough light into what they do to make it obvious they used to let the design people run wild with bad engine tools and little oversight. I'm still not sure they have proper adult supervision even now.

[Prowly owly]

Never played SC. But when you have people comparing SB2 with SC, then you know SC went wrong somewhere down the line. Especially when SC has a budget of $500 million+ and 10+ years of development.

Against a SB2 which took 1 person with less than 1% of SC's budget and less time for him to get it to a playable level. If you stop and keep thinking about it, I really would say SB2 is better since it is not a scam. I don't think people really understand how much $500 million is because even World of Warcraft took 5 years and $63 million to develop. Scale WoW up to SC level and you still have a lot of money to spare with the $500 million funding.

So yea, SB2 just wins by principle

[somedude]

Star Citizen is the longest running scam in the gaming industry that's emptied pockets of not one sucker as CR cruises around in his new Yacht in the real world and the sucke... erm, I mean "backers" admire a new shiny toilet in their virtual space mega-yacht they just bought for $500 of real money in-game, so Therefore yes, this is better than Star Citizen since this is already closer to a Release and feature complete and has a small fixed price. It's one guy with clear passion for this kinds of game vs. 100s of "Triple A" coding monkeys and rich moneybags with no scruples or brains

[Dark Exile]

Better, no its an early access game.
More to do and closer to being finished, yes.

SC if you dont mind waiting for while they make things to sell instead of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game.
This if you want to play a game.

[rilzi]

So, short answer? No, but maybe kinda yes. Star Citizen doesn't actually do much, but what it does is pretty amazing. When it works. This is because of the devs compulsive need to have every game system to be as realistic as possible, and every ship and location to have amazing bespoke art in the design. Every ship, every station, every city has had probably thousands of hours of work put into them, and it shows. What SC puts out is beautiful, the FPS is pretty unmatched (when it works lol) due to the systems put in place, and the gameplay loops in general are pretty unique - even the most basic box delivery missions are some of the most satisfying missions I've done in a space sim just because it's a physical box you have to collect and deliver to different locations on different worlds. However once you've played for 10, 15 hours, you've pretty much seen all SC has to offer. Because everything is so exact and has to be modelled realistically, updates are painfully slow, as well as being, well, painful. 3.18 has recently come out and has broken the game for many players for about 3 weeks now.

Spacebourne 2 on the other hand is a much more rounded game, it has a lot more gameplay. The universe is much more filled out, and the updates have been coming thick and fast. There's a lot more to do, the game systems are much more filled out, and it's much less broken. It doesn't have the art, sound, or seamless realism of Star Citizen, but that's probably why it isn't a 500 million dollar 10 year pre alpha project.

So right now, unless you specifically want to play multiplayer, Spacebourne 2 is the better game. In the long run of course Star Citizen will pass it, if it doesn't collapse, but by then Spacebourne 3 or 4 will be out and will probably be far better than Star Citizen anyway.

[Ralathar44]

Origineel geplaatst door BalkanBiker:

I don't want a biased, fanboy answer. I want honesty from people who have played both.

I didn't get into Star Citizen because of its higher asking price, as I know I will probably dump €200+ on it because I'm a sucker for collectibles.
This would cost me 10th of Star Citizen price. It's not about cost but time vs money investment. Regardless what I get, I probably won't play more than 3-5 hours per week and if SpaceBourne 2 is 95% of Star Citizen, then I'll pick SB2.

Based on current content available to both? I'd say definitely. Here are my considerations:


- Spacebourne 2 has better loops, more loops, and more systems. Star citizen has surprisingly few well polished loops. Most are incomplete, very buggy, and their entire offering is actually alot less than Spacebourne 2 objectively since it has no equivalent of things like faction building and diplomacy and exploration and etc.

- Star Citizen is littered with incomplete loops and systems left dead for years. Spacebourne 2 loops are pretty complete and see active development at a far faster rate.

- FPS combat in Star Citizen Sucks. Enemy AI either aimbots you, usually a 1-2 shot, or are stupid enough to run up to and take down with a single melee CQC click. There is no in between. And you can kill 9 braindead AI in a mission and then the last 1 headshots you through a baseball sized opening in your cover from 50ft away for an instant kill.

- Spacebourne 2 3rd person FPS combat is solid. I wouldn't call it amazing, but it's like a slightly less good Mass Effect combat. Which is still pretty fun. And that's miles better than the garbage aimbot lottery of Star Citizen.

- Ship combat in Star Citizen is pretty meh. Your UI literally lies to you and you learn quickly your aiming pip is not actually going to make you land shots most of the time. PVE wise enemy AI often desyncs and teleports or is very annoying to fight doing things like a perfect circle strafe around your ship that normal players are not even capable of. PVP combat is completely unloseable 1 vs 1 unless someone agrees to die. Decent players can always run away. Momentum is too strong and ranges/accuracy too low. Group ship combat vs large amounts of AI (which honestly is pretty fun) is limited to events.

- Spacebourne 2 has a basic ship combat loop of laser weapons for shields and ballistic weapons for hull. Combat is much more arcadey and equipment based. If all your ship components and weapons are level 20 and you face level 23 ships, you're gonna have a rough time. Thankfully its easy to keep up to date and loot is actually pretty compelling.

- Ship variety and weapon variety is actually pretty equal between the two games. Star citizen has a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ more ships and weapons. But the reality is 90% of people use the same 2-3 combat ships and 2-3 weapons because they are just better than everything else. Also the gameplay feel variation between the weapons is pretty minimal with the main difference being ballistic vs laser vs distortion. Ballistic ammo runs out in like 45 seconds but is slightly stronger...so you'll never want to use it for PVE leaving you with the same "x repeaters and x distortion" loadout adapted to every ship. That being said, if you're vulnerable to "I want them all", Star Citizen will have more appeal to you. Most of it's ships are otuclassed by other ships or don't have tehir special features working because those systems are literally not existing in game, but if you get joy out of spending 5,000 hours or $50,000 (not exaggerating, they have a $40,000 ship pack that still doesn't have everything) then Star Citizen has your self destrictive addiction enabled.

- Spacebourne 2 has way lesser ship and weapon options but they feel very distinct and different from each other. Also it has combat drones and Star Citizen has no answer to that.


- Mining is better in Star Citizen, their mining mini-game is actually really nice. BUT, the mining loop as a whole is better in Spacebourne 2 because Star Citizen added refineries (which I thought would be a good idea..until I saw how they did them.) Refineries in Star Citizen run off real world timers so processing a load of ore takes like 3 hours IRL, And your solo mining ship actually cannot transport the refined minerals as they are considered commodity cargo. So you'll need a 2nd ship specifically for transporting commodity cargo. And each mineral only has certain locations in the system that will buy it. So you can end up with 3-5 minuters and then have to spend an hour flying around to different locations in the verse just to make one sale run. It's stupid and it ruined the entire mining loop. Mining is the one thing I used to wholeheartedly praise about that game and they totally ruined it.

- Spacebourne 2's mining is very basic and prolly one of the weaker points of the game. Right now its just "find mineral asteroid" and then "look at your laser while you mine for extended amounts of time".



- Bugs/polish wise each game is about just as buggy. But the difference is the impact. In Spacebourne 2 you quicksave often like you're playing skyrim. So you'll rarely lose more than 2-3 minutes even if you crash or die. In Star Citizen if you crash or die you often have to wake up at your hab, travel to the spaceport, claim your ship, wait on the timer or pay to expedite (and sometimes still wait on a timer), enter your ship and fly through the atmosphere, get to space, and then choose something to do again. Your old mission? It poofed the instant you were not on the server....so fark you apparently. So Spacebourne 2 ends up having a way smoother experience.




This prolly sounds very biased in favor of Spacebound 2, but honestly its just the better product. IT SHOULDNT BE. It shouldn't even be close. It baffles me how a 1 dev studio is outcompeting a 600+ million budget 650 employee studio with a 5+ year head start. But this is how it is.

[ZythaR]

Origineel geplaatst door rilzi:

So, short answer? No, but maybe kinda yes. Star Citizen doesn't actually do much, but what it does is pretty amazing. When it works. This is because of the devs compulsive need to have every game system to be as realistic as possible, and every ship and location to have amazing bespoke art in the design. Every ship, every station, every city has had probably thousands of hours of work put into them, and it shows. What SC puts out is beautiful, the FPS is pretty unmatched (when it works lol) due to the systems put in place, and the gameplay loops in general are pretty unique - even the most basic box delivery missions are some of the most satisfying missions I've done in a space sim just because it's a physical box you have to collect and deliver to different locations on different worlds. However once you've played for 10, 15 hours, you've pretty much seen all SC has to offer. Because everything is so exact and has to be modelled realistically, updates are painfully slow, as well as being, well, painful. 3.18 has recently come out and has broken the game for many players for about 3 weeks now.

Spacebourne 2 on the other hand is a much more rounded game, it has a lot more gameplay. The universe is much more filled out, and the updates have been coming thick and fast. There's a lot more to do, the game systems are much more filled out, and it's much less broken. It doesn't have the art, sound, or seamless realism of Star Citizen, but that's probably why it isn't a 500 million dollar 10 year pre alpha project.

So right now, unless you specifically want to play multiplayer, Spacebourne 2 is the better game. In the long run of course Star Citizen will pass it, if it doesn't collapse, but by then Spacebourne 3 or 4 will be out and will probably be far better than Star Citizen anyway.

Yep i agree, and yes just bought the game and im very impressed. SB2 is doing things better as now, and its kinda sad too. This is how gamers like me who spent 1300 $ in ships feel. Yet you find this gem of a game for 20.

The thing is there making there money on team base gameplay online SC IS, where people come to gether and work doing stuff mp. Alot of people in SC are into art work of ships, and are willing to spend money. I think alot of people like myself have pulled away and feel like the scam is real sometimes. There lacking any real systems, and its taking for ever for them to come out with just pyro alone. They have no single player game what so ever, and its been like 10-11 years so. Alot of the community is fustrated with it mostly.

But yes as far as a complete sp game so far this is what alot of people have been looking for. But i did say they did a good job. Gameplay is better than ed for sure. Great work Space Bourne 2!

[Valley Watchman]

Very impressed with the impassioned response and lack of trolls in this thread...

[TyphonCacoplasmus]

Yes. This game actually runs. SC is so far down in the reeds it's not even funny. Sure, the detail of everything in SC is amazing, but that doesn't make a game. It is the epitome of style over substance. For SUBSTANTIALLY less, SB2 is being a game.

When/If SC finally releases as a full product, yeah, it'll quite possibly blow everything out of the water, but that's a big IF. What you'll always see the SC stans glossing over is how you need a god-tier PC to run it. Even just a really-really good PC will lose more frames than all the art-heists in history. SC's new player experience is abysmal. I'm a firm believer that you gotta make that good, but if you want to know anything, you pretty much have to look it up outside the game or get someone to guide you. Meanwhile SB2 has a good onboarding sequence, and is good at letting you know what you can do in it.

IF you've got friends already in SC, AND IF you've got an AMAZING PC, AND IF you don't mind more bugs than a Louisiana swamp, AND IF you can resist/don't mind the constant call of 'micro' transactions, AND IF you don't mind your character/progress being wiped-----nevermind. SC should basically only be played when they do Free-Fly events. Then just wait a few more decades for it to actually release. You'll have plenty of time between now and then to save up for it, until then, just buy SB2 for $20.

[Mr. Fibble]

I bought into SC with a starter ship way back when and struggled to find any enjoyment from the flight. Something about a ship capable of ftl travel not having the inertial dampening to prevent greying out also felt like a really odd design choice. Visually flashy but nothing of substance and as it does seem like they've given up on the squadron 42 side of the game I've pretty much given up on ever playing it as that was my main point of interest.

So while I've obviously not played SC in a long time Spacebourne is much more of a game you can sit down and play without requiring a hefty gaming rig to cope with the "realism" fluff that doesn't really benefit play. No internet required and no reliance on other players not behaving like antisocial parasites in order to have fun.

Is there clunk, yes and I've found that a lot of the time reloading a save will poke the game enough to have a mission show up where it should be or make an interaction popup go away. Spelling mistakes galore so if you're an english speaker who gets annoyed by typos then be warned. The AI voices are a bit hit and miss but I think it's better to use them than have a ton of dialogue boxes.

[MyAdventures]

NO, 2 different games. I'm not a combat player so there is more for me in SC than SB2 but I like the direction SB2 is going. I'm terrible at the combat in SB2 so I can only do Mining and Exploration. Mining is good but gets old fast. Rank 1 of Exploration's Mini-Game needs work.

[Ralathar44]

Origineel geplaatst door MyAdventures:

NO, 2 different games. I'm not a combat player so there is more for me in SC than SB2 but I like the direction SB2 is going. I'm terrible at the combat in SB2 so I can only do Mining and Exploration. Mining is good but gets old fast. Rank 1 of Exploration's Mini-Game needs work.

OOF, don't get me wrong I think Star Citizen's mining (not including refining...i hate how they did refining) is pretty good but a completely non-combat Star Citizen experience sucks. I

There is no starting miner ship so either you pony up the $155 for the prospector pledge, plus your dignity, or you have to grind quite alot to get the prospector. Then, because of their refining system, you have to wait real world hours for your ore to refine. AND you have to buy a 2nd ship to haul the commodity cargo. What's worse is that each mineral is only bought at select locations so needing to sell to 3-4 different places for a single cargo full of ore is a thing. And then for space trading its the same way.

And there are no in game tools helping you find where to buy/sell, you have to look up 3rd party sites. Similarly if you want to make more than peanuts mining you need to look up proper mining sites.

I'm a miner and space trucker at heart so I totally feel you on Spacebourne 2. The mining is too basic and boring and proper trading isn't in yet. But Star Citizen really isn't much better.


IMO if you're a non-combat player, X4 is a solid bet. Or Avorion. Both of those are still space sims but you can get away with being a non-combat player and have a far better experience in both of those games. Neither Spacebourne 2 nor Star Citizen is too friendly to non-combat players.

I think Elite Dangerous did mining and trading well too IIRC. Just don't buy the oddessy expansion, it makes the game worse.

[CiZerin]

Origineel geplaatst door Ralathar44:

Origineel geplaatst door BalkanBiker:

I don't want a biased, fanboy answer. I want honesty from people who have played both.

I didn't get into Star Citizen because of its higher asking price, as I know I will probably dump €200+ on it because I'm a sucker for collectibles.
This would cost me 10th of Star Citizen price. It's not about cost but time vs money investment. Regardless what I get, I probably won't play more than 3-5 hours per week and if SpaceBourne 2 is 95% of Star Citizen, then I'll pick SB2.

Based on current content available to both? I'd say definitely. Here are my considerations:


- Spacebourne 2 has better loops, more loops, and more systems. Star citizen has surprisingly few well polished loops. Most are incomplete, very buggy, and their entire offering is actually alot less than Spacebourne 2 objectively since it has no equivalent of things like faction building and diplomacy and exploration and etc.

- Star Citizen is littered with incomplete loops and systems left dead for years. Spacebourne 2 loops are pretty complete and see active development at a far faster rate.

- FPS combat in Star Citizen Sucks. Enemy AI either aimbots you, usually a 1-2 shot, or are stupid enough to run up to and take down with a single melee CQC click. There is no in between. And you can kill 9 braindead AI in a mission and then the last 1 headshots you through a baseball sized opening in your cover from 50ft away for an instant kill.

- Spacebourne 2 3rd person FPS combat is solid. I wouldn't call it amazing, but it's like a slightly less good Mass Effect combat. Which is still pretty fun. And that's miles better than the garbage aimbot lottery of Star Citizen.

- Ship combat in Star Citizen is pretty meh. Your UI literally lies to you and you learn quickly your aiming pip is not actually going to make you land shots most of the time. PVE wise enemy AI often desyncs and teleports or is very annoying to fight doing things like a perfect circle strafe around your ship that normal players are not even capable of. PVP combat is completely unloseable 1 vs 1 unless someone agrees to die. Decent players can always run away. Momentum is too strong and ranges/accuracy too low. Group ship combat vs large amounts of AI (which honestly is pretty fun) is limited to events.

- Spacebourne 2 has a basic ship combat loop of laser weapons for shields and ballistic weapons for hull. Combat is much more arcadey and equipment based. If all your ship components and weapons are level 20 and you face level 23 ships, you're gonna have a rough time. Thankfully its easy to keep up to date and loot is actually pretty compelling.

- Ship variety and weapon variety is actually pretty equal between the two games. Star citizen has a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ more ships and weapons. But the reality is 90% of people use the same 2-3 combat ships and 2-3 weapons because they are just better than everything else. Also the gameplay feel variation between the weapons is pretty minimal with the main difference being ballistic vs laser vs distortion. Ballistic ammo runs out in like 45 seconds but is slightly stronger...so you'll never want to use it for PVE leaving you with the same "x repeaters and x distortion" loadout adapted to every ship. That being said, if you're vulnerable to "I want them all", Star Citizen will have more appeal to you. Most of it's ships are otuclassed by other ships or don't have tehir special features working because those systems are literally not existing in game, but if you get joy out of spending 5,000 hours or $50,000 (not exaggerating, they have a $40,000 ship pack that still doesn't have everything) then Star Citizen has your self destrictive addiction enabled.

- Spacebourne 2 has way lesser ship and weapon options but they feel very distinct and different from each other. Also it has combat drones and Star Citizen has no answer to that.


- Mining is better in Star Citizen, their mining mini-game is actually really nice. BUT, the mining loop as a whole is better in Spacebourne 2 because Star Citizen added refineries (which I thought would be a good idea..until I saw how they did them.) Refineries in Star Citizen run off real world timers so processing a load of ore takes like 3 hours IRL, And your solo mining ship actually cannot transport the refined minerals as they are considered commodity cargo. So you'll need a 2nd ship specifically for transporting commodity cargo. And each mineral only has certain locations in the system that will buy it. So you can end up with 3-5 minuters and then have to spend an hour flying around to different locations in the verse just to make one sale run. It's stupid and it ruined the entire mining loop. Mining is the one thing I used to wholeheartedly praise about that game and they totally ruined it.

- Spacebourne 2's mining is very basic and prolly one of the weaker points of the game. Right now its just "find mineral asteroid" and then "look at your laser while you mine for extended amounts of time".



- Bugs/polish wise each game is about just as buggy. But the difference is the impact. In Spacebourne 2 you quicksave often like you're playing skyrim. So you'll rarely lose more than 2-3 minutes even if you crash or die. In Star Citizen if you crash or die you often have to wake up at your hab, travel to the spaceport, claim your ship, wait on the timer or pay to expedite (and sometimes still wait on a timer), enter your ship and fly through the atmosphere, get to space, and then choose something to do again. Your old mission? It poofed the instant you were not on the server....so fark you apparently. So Spacebourne 2 ends up having a way smoother experience.




This prolly sounds very biased in favor of Spacebound 2, but honestly its just the better product. IT SHOULDNT BE. It shouldn't even be close. It baffles me how a 1 dev studio is outcompeting a 600+ million budget 650 employee studio with a 5+ year head start. But this is how it is.

I agree with everything, but would want to point one thing in favor to SC. Immersive level in SC is just on the next level, specialy in compare with SB.

[grindleader]

Why would you ask other people if this is better than ANY other game? You will get all kinds of opinions, but guess what? Only YOU can decide what you like, I wouldn't leave that choice up to others to decide for me if I was you.

[Kunari]

Origineel geplaatst door grindleader:

Why would you ask other people if this is better than ANY other game? You will get all kinds of opinions, but guess what? Only YOU can decide what you like, I wouldn't leave that choice up to others to decide for me if I was you.

Right?! Star Citizen is a MP game by design where SB2 is singleplayer. Sure they share the same general SciFi genre and themes but that's where it ends. Both are fun games but I don't think SC will ever release and gave up on it awhile back.