Inevitable Comparisons
CQC vs. Arena Commander
Yep, I went there! With Star Citizen not being a finished game, this is the one direct comparison I can make between the two games. The difficulty here is that I’ve probably logged 100+ hours in Arena Commander and only a few in CQC. Arena Commander in the sense of a PvP/PvE arena tool is also a lot more mature and it shows in the game modes available if not always in the stability of the module (I’m looking at you post GamesCom 2015 Coop event!).
The comparison is a tough one and in a lot of respects it depends on what angle you’re coming at the game from. CQC feels a lot more “gamey” than Arena Commander. The power-ups, the experience points, the unlocking of levels/ships/loadouts and of course the XB1 controller vs. the wealth of control systems available to Star Citizen.
These concepts aren’t entirely lacking from Star Citizen. If you play it, you’re likely familiar with the in game currency of REC (Rental Equipment Credits) which you earn for playing and allows you to rent new equipment for Arena Commander. Everything from the lowliest gun to the mightiest dogfighting ships are available to be rented with REC for zero real world cash, so in a sense, REC is kind of like an experience system where the more you play, the more you unlock. The Star Citizen system just feels like it has more freedom to it since you’re free to change loadout between any of the 24 ships, 30 weapons and 8 shields available provided the ship supports it.
None of this is necessarily a bad thing, it just depends on the kind of experience you’re after. Arena combat in general is a gamey subject. The default controller layout of a combination of 2 buttons to enable Newtonian mode in Elite is a big no no for me. Additionally, the radar system is less intuitive to me than the Arena Commander one. Loadouts in Arena Commander are also only limited by what equipment you have available to you in game.
CQC has 3 ships with 3 levels of loadouts for 9 different unlockable setups with the ability to do some loadout changes once you unlock some of the higher tiers. The REC store (“Electronic Access” as CIG have named it for chuckles) currently has 24 ships, 30 weapons and 8 different shields available in it for players to mix and match. Even if you discount identical hull variants in Arena Commander, you still have 13 different ships available. The Arena Commander experience feels a lot richer, but with that richness comes complexity. Trying to figure out which weapons fit which hard points and which shields work best against ballistics/energy weapons and which your ship has enough power to sustain reasonably etc does not make for a quick pick up and play session to the new user, so in this respect, CQC is probably better suited to console gaming than Arena Commander.
Contents
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
