When comparing H1Z1 [Early Access] vs Starbound, the Slant community recommends Starbound for most people. In the question“What are the best survival games on PC?” Starbound is ranked 4th while H1Z1 [Early Access] is ranked 31st. The most important reason people chose Starbound is:
Starbound allows the player to go at their own pace while completing the tutorials. By the end of the tutorials the player will have the skills and equipment to succeed in the game and have fun doing it.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Vehicles
H1Z1 has vehicles in game that can be fixed up to working condition to then use to traverse the landscape. Making travel a whole lot easier, but also making your whereabouts known and an easier target.
Pro Crafting
There is crafting in the game so players can build bases to use as a home and a place to store items away from the rest of the world.
Pro Unpredictable
H1Z1 adds in an element of unpredictability with every encounter of another human player. Whether cooperation or fighting will ensue depends on the individuals playing and could go either way.
Pro Plenty of exploration
Exploration is a key part to H1Z1 as items need to be found to survive (though some gear can be purchased with real money as item drops). Depending on how lucky the individual is in finding the proper guns ammo and food/water makes for how long they are likely to survive.
Pro Informative and well paced tutorials
Starbound allows the player to go at their own pace while completing the tutorials. By the end of the tutorials the player will have the skills and equipment to succeed in the game and have fun doing it.
Pro Incredibly deep gameplay
The exploration, crafting and combat are all both very polished and deep in terms of what you can do, especially compared to other games in the genre. This makes the sandbox very fun to play in as you're never really stuck doing the same thing over and over.
Pro Boss levels
For what is a procedurally generated game, Starbound offers boss levels that once beaten unlock new sectors of space to explore.
Cons
Con Filled with hackers
Due to Sony's inability to properly combat hackers the game has become pointless to play. Hackers can just teleport into anyones base stealing all of their hard earned or purchased items, which being that this is a survival game makes survival pretty much impossible for any length of time.
Con Pay to win
Sadly despite claims from the developers that it would not happen, there are microtransactions for gear, guns and ammo in game. Meaning groups that pool their money and numbers to claim the falling crates will have an unfair advantage over those that do not pay to win.
Con Hard to find loot
Con First few hours can be boring
Initially the player needs to amass enough coal to fuel their ship, which is a bit of a grind.