The problem there was that E:D was a make-or-beak game for Frontier Developments, more than half of it (more than two thirds even) was not crowdfunded but paid for by investors. Therefore they HAD to keep a certain release date, whatever the cost for the game. RSI on the other hand...

Doesn't make any sense yet, Arena Commander (the part for which you are able to earn "credits" and "rent" ships ) is nothing more than in in-universe simulator for dogfights and races.

I am actually running Elite:Dangerous on max detail settings on a geforce 9, with very little slowdown. I do have a rather beefy CPU tho.

If you can't deal with the development phases, don't get involved in testing, wait for the completed game.

Point being, you shouldnt tell people you can earn things in game when you can't actually earn those things in game.

This is like telling everyone that your newborn puppy can fetch your paper for you, but when people ask to see your puppy fetch your paper for you, you tell them, well he can't yet but someday you am…

When they release 1.1, Arena Commander is being renamed Star Citizen. So in Star Citizen 1.1 they are going to add the ability to rent ships with in-game money.

But you can't actually buy any ships to keep, nor have you ever been able to.

THERE IS NO GAME YET! The guys from Star Citizen are letting people play an alpha build from their game.

Do you find playing arena commander worth while?

Actually that is not a given. People should not be misrepresenting the game by telling people they can do things that they can't really do in-game.

If by that you mean flying in formation with your closest friends across a full 1/1 scale reproduction of the entire galaxy, then I guess I will see you there.

Except you can't actually currently do that in-game right now, can you?

All ships can be purchased with ingame currency

Oh look, your wings fell off. How inconvenient.

Although if stuff like this happens in Elite:Dangerous it may work just fine.

but you can't really compare either game to the other at this point

You are not supposed to hunt bounties in high security systems. You are supposed to bring law to the lawless regions of space, i.e. anarchy systems.

SC has all the same planned features, trading, exploring, combat and piracy as ED has. And for some of the functions that ED says it will have in the future, SC already has those working.

Star Citizen has been in development longer then Elite Dangerous, with a higher budget, using a 3rd party engine, and has less actual game to show for it. If you are pinning your hopes on SC being more of anything then ED then I daresay you will be disappointed.

Star Citizen has no economy, no trade, no missions, no exploration, no bounty hunting, no factions, no character progression. It is literally just a deathmatch arena where you fight in the ships you payed real money for.

There is no comparison.

This game is like a way more hardcore version of freelancer.