After only about 4 plays in the Elite: Dangerous game and at least one fatal docking maneuver where Elite wouldn't even recognize that I landed on the correct pad, I decided to heck with it and went for a free 14 day trial account of Eve Online. This is my experience with with Eve and my comments as to why it is inevitably better than Elite.
I'm extremely saddened that the developers for Elite thought that the manual docking, landing, and launching procedures from the original Comodore 64 version of the game were essential to the Elite genre. The least they could've done was provide an option the completely automates the procedure after the request for permission to dock is granted possibly as an in-game purchase, or some awesome item you could acquire, or just make it universally available but have the option to dock, land, and launch the hard way to gain combat bonuses. There are so many ways they could've gone with that instead of adhering to the original horror of manually docking in space as if the computers had something better to do. Which they don't because they don't even help you realize the trade routes any better, you still have to manually acquire data on your remote locations, retrieve the data, collate it into a spread sheet, etc... Eve does both of these so much more better thus allowing you the player more freedom to live the kind of life you want in the universe.
Rest assured I'll be playing both to help further these comparisons, the challenge is ... will my views change on which is the better game?
That said, I've had a look at the promises from Star Citizen made by the same guy that made Wing Commander back in the 90's. That game holds enough promise to blow the socks off both Eve and Elite combined. However, if it too has manual docking, landing and launching, then Eve will be the clear winner once again. We only have about 4 more months to wait before seeing Star Citizen available anywhere.
I am the original author of this video. It was posted on Youtube under my identity "Kreezxil".
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