Star Citizen vs. DC Universe Online: A Universe of Exploration or Guided Adventure?

I posted a comparison on these two games to show that MMO's do not have to be repetitive. DCUO is extremely repetitive with so many limitation.

Click the link to see my comparison. https://thoughtfulvoyages.com/2023/08/star-citizen-vs-dc-universe-online-comparison/

Star Citizen went into production around 2011 with plans to release in 2014…it’s 2023 and still in Alpha…still incomplete. It looks like a pretty game, but seems like they should have implemented some more realistic expectations.

They are taking the time to get it right.... and the fact that they are taking so much time shows dedication. And allowing ANYONE to play during even the alpha stage is great as they get constant feedback from the very start. I don't care if they miss their LIVE LAUNCH target dates... or even if they delay new patches. I'd rather wait and have them get it right than to release a buggy game like they did with DCUO in the beginning. And a release date is a target date, yes things come up and they might miss the target, but they keep us informed as to why and what went wrong.. DCUO doesn't do this. Truth is, if DCUO would take more time in designing and planning rather than rushing to hit their release dates just to have to make multiple hotfixes to correct what should have been fixed before launch... Maybe DCUO would be better.

But you’re comparing a game that is still in development to a game that is ~11 years post launch. Being a great, innovative game is vastly different from having a game model that invites a content loop of repeatability like MMOs.

How many hours do you have on DCUO? Do you expect to match or exceed that number on Star Citizen? You said you grinded to get the biggest ship in SC. Now that you have it, what are you grinding for there?

10+ years is taking their time? Is the first dlc going to launch in 2045? I’m sure the dcuo community would accept a 10 year wait lol

Is this game similar to no man’s sky or the upcoming starfield?

Ahah, you're comparing 2 incomparable things

-DCUO is an ARPG MMO, SC is a sandbox MMO.
-DCUO is a licensed game where the devs aren't totally free to develop, they have to do what they're told and what the bosses up there have decided, Star Citizen is an independent studio, they do what they want.

For your information, Starfield is coming out next month and it too took around 10 years to develop, but at least it has the merit of coming out without trying to take advantage of a terrible development option (like early access, for me the biggest scam in the video game industry that's still allowed...) that isn't regulated in order to scandalously swindle its customers into believing that they're participating in a project with their money.

Exactly. This game is post launch and your still so limited on what you can do... so it's overly repetitive and grindy. Unless you pay for replay badges, you can only do 7 things every day, at only 2-3 things once a week. that is very limiting and then to make you spend money to get feats you have to run missions hundreds of times to defeat something or do something 100-300 times.

This game which is still in developement has WAY more avenues of play to reach your goal and you can even do things without aquire a mission to further your goals... And it's only at 3.19.1 of alpha stage. So your saying DCUO can't find a way to incorporate a more variety experience when SC proved it can be done with an MMO.

In the past, the arguement has always been, thats just MMOs are, grindy and repetitive. This was just to point out, no it's not nor does it have to be that way.

No, and I don't know about starfield... but I do like the fact, that the planets in SC seem to be 1:1 scale to your player. And there are no loading screen or transitions from space to planet/moon/station. If you land on a planet and want to walk around the thing, it has been calculated to take you a week to fully run around a moon. And the spacing between planets are acurate. For instance, to fly from a planet on one side of the solarsystem, to another on the far other side, it's 57 million km in measurement. A slow ship with quantum drive might take a good 5-8 minutes to get to that planet in real time... The next solar system which should be out end of this year or early next year if everything goes to plan is 3 times larger with more planets and moons... so when you want to go to another planet, you have to plan your trip out and make sure you have the fuel... so you would have to stop at a station on the way to refuel for the rest of the trip... and again, no loading screen, no transitions, It's all one universe. Starfield has a transitional loading screen between space and planet, and space and station.

What’s the goal of Star Citizen? Is there progression? Do you just grind missions to get money to buy ships? One you have the ships, then what? What keeps people playing and logging in? What is the endgame like?

How long until I run all the different bounty missions and they start to repeat?

How long have you been playing Star Citizen?

Im sorry there's no way to take a comparison like this seriously. DCUO was funded internally whereas Star Citizen was both internally AND crowdfunded and also still isnt a "released" game. Theyve been in Alpha/Beta for 10 years. In Steam Terms, they've been in Early Access. They are also using their own Engine and not something as "outdated" as Epic's Unreal Engine 3. You would have served your time better comparing DCUO to Star Trek Online. Or better yet, DCUO to Star Wars the Old Republic. Both games launched in 2011 and shared similar milestones. Star Citizen compared to Eve, thats a better comparison as well.

I understand the boredom of content structure. DCUO has gone through 3 different versions of how content is given. This current structure was indeed the breath of fresh air brought to us by NerdofPrey. Once a new Creative Director is at the helm, we'll see a new shift in content structure possibly.

Star Citizen is a more funded Eve Online.

ah ok I never played eve but I heard good things about it.

I’m surprised to hear/read that. I don’t know anything about Eve Online but the first thing I thought upon seeing they’ve been in development for 10 years and are still in alpha is that clearly no big time VC’s, holding companies, etc in the sector are willing to fund them. Or maybe they are but the development team wants to stay grass roots and be free of corporate ties and the conditions and expectations that come with it. Either way, without significant funding they’ll barely be able to progress fast enough to keep pace with gaming technology advancement. Even if they can outpace tech advancement enough to actually launch, without funding and/or proportionately sizeable revenue stream, they won’t be able to fund live service continual decelopment amd support.

It sounds like a grass roots passion project startup which sounds cool but at the end of the day, money makes the world go ‘round. I imagine the developers aren’t making much of a living off the work they’re doing which means either they’re slumming it and keeping their lives bare bones at minimum viable cost of living or they have a “day” job and are working on the game on the side. Both are feasible for a while but there’s always a breaking point where somethings gotta give. Whether it’s getting serious with a significant other and maybe having a kid or waking up one day and realizing that at 35 your life’s priorities need to be different from when you’re 25 or something along those lines. One way or another, the people developing the game aren’t gonna be able to keep working for peanuts or keep sacrificing their nights and weekends year after year after year. If they can’t get the game off the ground and with viable longterm plan for revenue, it’ll be dead in the water.

Now, where that ties in to the original purpose of the OP is that you can’t really compare a game that has been a commercially viable live service product for twelve years to a “game” that at this point is little more than a concept with zero established commercial viability. Ambitions are great and all but until Star City can launch and stand on it’s own two feet it’s not even comparing apples to oranges but rather apples to greek mythology ambrosia.

Crowdfunding has it’s limits. From the wiki…

“As early as 2015, some Star Citizen backers began requesting refunds from Cloud Imperium Games. According to Polygon, "an internal survey posted on the Star Citizen message boards revealed as many as 25 percent of the game's backers expressing an interest in a process for getting their money back. The survey received 1,173 responses." Initially, refunds were being processed on a case-by-case basis…

…Additional cases regarding Star Citizen refunds have received attention from the media… it was reported that a backer had spent almost three months requesting a US$24,000 refund and had initiated a small claims court case against Cloud Imperium Games. In the same report, a second backer stated they were attempting to receive a US$16,700 refund from the project. The first case was forwarded to the Better Business Bureau.[169]

Following a discussion with the Better Business Bureau, Cloud Imperium Games made changes to their website and further revised their terms of service. Site changes were designed to more clearly communicate the state of the project, define the purchase as a "pledge", and “inform potential buyers there may be product delivery delays and to check the roadmap site before he/she chooses to click the final OK box and provide payment.” The new terms of service opened refund requests to a 14-day "cancellation period", but Cloud Imperium Games claimed that they also maintained a company policy to refund backers within 30 days.[170][171]

In July 2018, a backer initiated a small claims court case against Cloud Imperium Games to refund US$4,496. It was reported that he had "grown disillusioned with the title's numerous delays, broken promises, and changes in scope"…. The same report noted that a Freedom of Information Act request had shown that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission had received 129 complaints concerning Cloud Imperium Games.”

It seems the development studios head has a history of over-promising and under-delivering…

“While working at Origin Systems from 1990 to 1996, Roberts became known for his groundbreaking Wing Commander franchise.[52] After the completion of Starlancer in 1999 by Roberts' studio Digital Anvil, lengthy delays in the production of extensive plans for the game Freelancer led to the company's acquisition by Microsoft and Roberts' exit from the project. Completed under a new lead and numerous staff replacements, the finished game was well received, but criticized for lacking the extensive features Roberts had planned.”

Just FYI...Star Citizen has crowdfunded 560+ million dollars and rising.. Money is not gonna be a problem for this game

Now, do I think it should still be in Alpha after over a decade in development?..No

But when it does get properly released it's going to be an amazing game. It has everything. I'm not going to get into it all here, I don't have the time... but I urge people to look into it

I’m sure people after the first year probably didn’t think it’d be in alpha for an entire decade either.

can you make up your own superheroes in star citizen?