Summary:

Intro

With Elite Dangerous: Odyssey and Update 5, a page is now turned for my Elite-esque adventure.

For almost 7 years, Frontier Developments has given me countless adventures in their Space Sim: Hundreds of events with other fantastic pilots, mysteries to resolve with a great & quite scholar community, a whole bunch of gameplay that I’ve done in solo and in groups, and I also had the joy to play the game in its golden age.
Together with other content creators, we were able to build an altar to the glory of those who appreciate the Space Sim genre and its almost limitless freedom, in the great sandbox that is Elite: Dangerous. A huge potential that has shown its limits, and a difficult direction these last few years that has marred the excellence of the game.

I’m not giving up on Elite completely, I’m very proud of what has been accomplished and I will continue to follow the game closely; including participating in new stories.
Creating content, guiding and managing a group of players is something I have always done for over 15 years now and I will continue to do so. It’s a real passion that has turned into a job, something visceral: I need to create, to forge, to support.
After my ‘Spartan’ guild on World of Warcraft Vanilla & Burning Crusade, my The Three Moons guild on Star Wars: The Old Republic and the swtor-guide project, then my Guild Wars 2 experience and the hundreds of gw2-guide articles, and finally a more general adventure on the Gaming Press side, I had then slowly slid towards The Elder Scrolls Online which gave me my first in-house job in video games before launching myself body & soul on Elite: Dangerous. However, I no longer find the pleasure I had for years… and it’s time for me to pass the content creation torch, to turn to another potential project in which I can again throw myself fully in and create new content.

No information about that project, even I don’t know where I want to go yet! I’m very attached to written articles and guides but I have to admit that it has much less visibility with companies that focus almost exclusively on big Press websites or YouTubers… plus my content is mainly in French so it doesn’t help with visibility. I hope you enjoyed my content in English!
We’ll do it all together, I’ll keep you posted on my socials!

For those who wonder « What about your Remlok Industries players group? ». I keep them very close to my heart and for the most part we’ll continue to chat and even play other games together, or even Elite depending on the events! The group will remain in place and we will pay attention to our minor faction, the game events, but it will be much less « hardcore » than before with all the activities we were doing.
And for the Remlok Community, it will obviously stay in place. Everyone is welcome to join the multigaming community (Discord) but note that it is mainly French speaking. We talk about a lot of things that might interest you.

What I’ve done on Elite:

  • 5000h playtime with almost every game styles possible. My biggest playtime with World of Warcraft & Guild Wars 2
  • 1000h+ of work to develop Remlok Industries
  • 1000h+ Twitch Nicou on Elite: Dangerous. My Livestreams will keep going, but it will be less about Elite
  • 500+ articles on RI and GameGuide, 50+ very detailed guides
  • 100+ events for the community with over €500 spent on events for the winners of the major ones
  • And also many initiatives & support
    • Discord Remlok Community and its ~1700 members for Elite (& some other games now)
    • YouTube Channel Odyssey News
    • Galnet Audio FR where I have dubbed in French hundreds of Galnet News
    • The Great Tournaments and the Great Expeditions, even featured three times in the old Elite Newsletter
    • EDRPG-RI Roleplay campaigns
    • The podcasts « The Observatory »
    • Dozens of Live Translations for the French speaking communities
    • I have covered many official events such as the official invitation to the FrontierDev office in 2018, Frontier Expo 2017 as a VIP Founder, Elite Meet 2017, Birmingham Meet 2016, Cologne Meet 2016 and the EGX 2015
    • Translations Galnet News as a support
    • Symbiose Roleplay as a support
    • And other projects
  • A players group called Remlok Industries, fer de lance in Community Initiatives of which I am immensely proud of.

I’m really pleased with everything we’ve been able to do with the original design of Elite: Dangerous as well as the content added to Horizons. The Beyond expansion tried to pick up the pieces, then Odyssey came along and slammed content that is no longer to my taste… or it could be if the game’s vision was currently more interesting, but I’ll discuss that below.

My confidence & trust in Frontier Developments has also entirely eroded over the years, as you’ll read in the Remlok Industries shutdown (Link is Google Trad because I don’t have time to localise it right now).
Too many unfulfilled promises, sketchy communications that don’t use the language of its players very well, non-stop hassles & issues with the game since mid-2018 that have gone to a crescendo, hollow storylines and relentlessly pushed back expectations with « it’s going to be a turning point! », « it’s going to be awesome! », « just wait, it’s going to be a revolution! » and in the end it’s a bore beyond words. Mention should be made though, to the very rare investigations in-game that players have to carry & gather for research and it’s really a lot of fun.

For me, FDev no longer holds Elite as the jewel in their portfolio. They are not really interested in the game anymore… and if an employee read this, they would go « what? no way! we love Elite »… I know, me too… but it’s really the way many many players feel. We are tools used to debug the game and buy weekly skins. I notice some kind of efforts, but to me it is now too late, much like other fantastic content creators that left the boat, are leaving the bot or stayed… to become more angry than ever at the game.

The company was successful too quickly with Elite: Dangerous and was able to build an open, forgiving and (too) kind community with whom to develop excellent relationships. The first Community Manager, Edward Lewis, did a great job of diving into the adventure: He played regularly with the players even off camera, he knew what the community was going through as he lived the adventures himself; including travelling in his spare time to the farthest point in the galaxy (Beagle Point) with the Distant World Expedition and creating multiple initiatives for the community.

Unfortunately, there are blockers and problems in the upper management teams that mean that the development & vision of Elite: Dangerous has not been able to develop properly. Frontier should have done for Odyssey what they did for the base game: forum discussions about the game design to find out what directions players would like to see Odyssey go.

Seeing the amount of money made from the success of the original design, the directors played the greed card of developing multiple additional franchises with their regular paid DLCs: Planet Coaster, Jurassic World Evolution, Planet Zoo… then Jurassic World Evolution 2 and probably soon Planet Coaster 2 which was leaked. There will also be a Warhammer game to come and an additional real-time strategy game.

These last ones add fuel to produce other games as fast as possible: One game published per year, that’s the challenge FDev has set for itself… Unfortunately, such a rapid development to sell a game at full price has its disadvantages, especially with Elite: Dangerous which is their « living » game requiring daily management.

  • This results in games that are not very well developed, and a poor ‘simulation’, which is THE selling point of the company;
  • Game releases requiring multiple patches before the community can comfortably enjoy them;
  • Other FDev titles suffer and their development is slow, which is to the detriment of players.

Yet the gamble seems to be successful on the wallet side, FDev makes millions in profits every year… but have we reached a point where this overly rapid development of half-baked products does not generate more costs to fix? Diminishing the community’s respect for the company at every turn? I think we’re at a pivotal moment for the company and they’re going to have to drastically change development and communications if they want to survive.
Frontier Developments’ goal no longer seems to be to cherish their games and make them masterpieces with dedicated teams. The goal is to develop passable games that will benefit from paying DLCs good enough to make a profit on development. And with that money made, develop new licenses instead of re-investing in what works to keep the community that supported the license going.

I’ve missed the boat with Elite Dangerous: Odyssey, which is no longer supported as a Service.
It has become a casual game where you can teleport to a ship to start a conflict zone and then log out. I used to think of Elite: Dangerous as an MMORPG with its regular updates coupled with story development that brought new gameplays… but that hasn’t been the case for 4 years now…
Or do Frontier feel that they have already lost the simulation battle against Star Citizen, and that developing casual & arcade gameplay will save them in the longer term?

Anyway, I’m thinking out loud: Let’s go for the full review of the game!

Back to Summary

 

Overview

This section is aimed at players who are fairly new to Elite: Dangerous.
I will discuss the main features of the game, its strengths and weaknesses.

What is Elite: Dangerous?

Elite: Dangerous is a space simulation game that focuses on three main game styles: Combat, Trade, Exploration.
You are a pilot, a Commander, who is nobody in the galaxy. It is up to you to make a name for yourself in the galactic community through your actions. Will you be a renowned scientist? A president of a democratic faction? A criminal assassin? A cargo hauler or even a hermit?
Everything is achievable in Elite with the tools available to us, and it will take time to tame the beast.

A few gameplay:

  • Fighter – Bounty Hunter, Assassin, PvP or against the AI…
  • Explorer – Tourism, Photography, Discoveries…
  • Trader – Commodities Hauling, Slaves, Items for your Squadron (Players Group), Smuggling, Trading…
  • Miner – Surface or Core Mining, Resource Extraction Sites Mining, Prospecting…
  • Passengers Carrier – Liner – Part Exploration & Tourism with the VIP passengers, and part Hauler with the economy & business passengers…
  • Pirate – Claim commodities from honest pilots and play as a wooden leg commander…
  • Anti-Xenos Fighter – High level hunt of the aliens Thargoids…
  • Scientisit with the Thargoids and Guardians aliens, but also with the stories from Humans…

When you’re just starting out, there’s so much to do and discover!

The base game (€50 at release) has combined the expansions into a single build and now contains Horizons (€50 at release) and Beyond (free at release). With the contents of this holy trinity, this diamond in the rough, thousands of hours of gameplay are available to you. There are many guides to help you start your adventure, for example here on Remlok Industries. The latest expansion, Odyssey, has been released at 35€.

The base game Elite: Dangerous is at €25 at the moment (€6.24 with the Summer Sale!).

A very affordable price for the amount of playable hours and adventures to be experienced.
You will be able to pilot a starship, a surface reconnaissance vehicle (SRV) as well as own a Fleet Carrier for quite a large lump of Credits. Take to the skies and live the life of a commander in the galaxy of the 34th century (currently 3307).
With a 1:1 scale simulation of the galaxy, join the Milky Way with your little Sidewinder ship and a handful of credits!

Features:

  • Milky Way Galaxy at 1:1 scale, reproduced using extremely accurate scientific data (and some artistic freedom). Yes, you can even visit the solar system;
  • Free gameplay, you can set your own goals to achieve what you want with the game’s tools;
  • About thirty customizable ships with their mandatory internal modules, optional modules, utility modules and weapons;
  • A vehicle, the SRV Scarab, for surface exploration, combat and material collection for the Engineers;
  • A Fleet Carrier for the modest sum of 5 billion credits, to be used as a bank and personal station to be moved where & as desired;
  • Engineers (and their Materials to be exchanged for upgrades) are non-player characters, NPCs, offering you improvements to your ships’ modules in order to push further your play style. For example, you can upgrade the jump range of your FSD module, allowing you to make larger LY jumps to travel faster;
  • Multicrew allows you to have players in your ship so you can drop them as little fighters ships or they can even help you by using your turrets if you have any;
  • BGS, Background Simulation. This is a complex system simulating the game’s factions. There are thousands of factions, usually 7 per star systems. Each of them have allegiance to a superpower or are independent, they have different economies and governments. They are affected by states such as Famine, Economic Boom, Wars and others… All these things influence the systems and generate content like Missions, Scenarios, Activities and Points of Interest for the players;
  • Events & Stories. Every Thursday, the story progresses with a new important news log in-game, it is called Galnet News. On Thursdays, the story often triggers a Community Goal, a sort of huge Mission that all players can participate in to earn rewards and influence the galaxy. There are usually two of these Community Goals(CGs) as two factions compete for different goals.
  • Galnet News also features multiple stories that add more flavour to the game’s Lore to better immerse the players.
  • Powerplay is another system that manages the boundaries of the game’s Powers. Superpowers are the Federation, Empire and Alliance… think of them as unions of systems or a « country ». The Powers would be departments of these countries. It is with these Powers that Powerplay is played, governing their borders, combat zones, related bonuses and other features.
  • The Technology Brokers offer you special modules in exchange for hard-to-find goods & materials.
  • Material Merchants allow us to trade Materials at a given rate, making it easier to get the right Materials for the Engineers and their Mods.
  • Do you own a VR headset? Enjoy one of the best space sims in Virtual Reality!

The recent Odyssey expansion is actually sold for €35.

It adds a new dimension to the game by controlling our commander on foot.
Land and explore distant worlds on-foot, on planets without atmospheres but also now with very light atmospheres.

Features (FAQ, everything about Odyssey) :

  • On-Foot Commander – We can leave our ship to visit planets that were already visitable in SRV but also new planets with very low atmospheres. The stations are also visitable through their Social Hubs, the social places where players and NPCs meet;
    • Suits – The three new ones available all have a torch light, shield, energy, oxygen and two weapon slots: one primary and one secondary. The three suits are as follows and each has a special tool tailored to its gameplay:
      • The Remlok Maverick Suit allows you to specialise in Utility and be Versatile, with an Arc Cutter – laser cutter – as your only tool.
      • There is also the Manticore Dominator Tactical Suit, for combat, allowing the player to have two main weapons instead of one as well as more grenades but also better armour and shields. Keep in mind that the shields will have to be turned on and off manually and will drain energy from our suit.
      • The exploration suit is called the Supratech Artemis Suit and will also be available with its unique Sampling Tool for exobiological sampling and its new dedicated Rank.
      • The Remlok flight suit can be used but has no specialisation.
    • Weapons
      • Ballistic – Improved damage against unshielded targets
        • Karma AR-50, assault rifle
        • Karma C-44, SMG
        • Karma P-15, pistol
      • Thermal – Improved damage against targets with activated shields
        • TK Aphelion, assault rifle
        • TK Eclipse, SMG
        • TK Zenith, pistol
      • Plasma – Absolute damage but low rate of fire
        • Manticore Executioner, Marksman
        • Manticore Intimidator, shotgun
        • Manticore Opressor, assault rifle
        • Manticore Tormentor, pistol
      • Explosives – large blast area but little ammunition
        • Karma L-6, rocket launcher
    • Equipment
      • Medkit for healing
      • Energy cell to recover energy, which decreases more or less quickly depending on the use of the suit and the ‘weather’ conditions
      • E-Breach to hack certain terminals
      • Frag Grenade explosive
      • EMP Grenade anti-shields
      • Energy Projector to project a shield dome and temporarily protect against fire
  • Planets with light atmospheres – While we could take out an SRV on 61% of the planets in the game (planets without atmospheres), Odyssey allows us to visit ~5% more. Depending on the characteristics of the planet, it will then display different shades of atmosphere but it remains very light indeed;
  • Social Hubs – These places in the stations allow us to find missions that can be done on-foot via computers generating missions, but also NPCs offering us missions with negotiable rewards. There are various services depending on what the station offers, such as a Bartender trading Odyssey materials (called Assets), ships and equipment vendors (suits, weapons and equipment), the Apex Interstellar Taxi transporting us in an Adder to wherever we want to go at a maximum range of 100LY, Frontline Solutions offering conflict zones on the surface and its rapid transport in a Vulture, or Vista Genomics to sell your exploration data;
  • Exobiology – With the Artemis suit and its sampling tool, it is possible to scan all new plants and curiosities on the surfaces of new planets. The data allows us to grind the Exobiology rank and earn Credits with this new gameplay;
  • New Engineers – 9 new engineers can upgrade our suits and weapons for Assets, materials found mainly on new surface installations but also Odyssey points of interest such as a cargo ship crash;
  • Bartenders – They act as material merchants for Odyssey; so we can exchange our Assets;
  • Surface Odyssey Bases – Three sizes of Small, Medium and Large facilities with different economies in the game such as Industry, Mining and Agriculture. Several buildings each have their own uses, given NPCs, patrols, guards and BGS states. They are mainly used as bases for Odyssey missions and to collect Assets, the Odyssey materials;
  • And of course the Galnet News stories continue.

Its strengths & weaknesses

Strengths

  • Freedom! Take responsibilities for your actions and do whatever you want;
  • One of the best space simulation combat systems, with flight model following the laws of physics (Newtonian, just in case ^^) with engines & thrusters in all possible directions and a flight assist model to be enabled/disabled at will. Also a Power Plant system distributing energy to a Power Distributor. This energy is then to be balanced in three capacitors Weapons, Systems and Engines. The combat is very dynamic and differs according to the ships and their equipment like their Shields, Armours and Weapons;
  • The audio team is one of the best I know, the sounds and music are incredibly good and of very high quality;
  • Graphics & realism are generally very good and Elite is a screenshot machine thanks to the Cobra engine and Stellar Forge simulation.
  • The best Space Sim currently available in Release;
  • Even very small PC configurations can enjoy the game (except Odyssey at the moment).

Points to be noted

  • A community that used to be tightly knit… but has tended to split since Odyssey due to the rather low quality of the expansion, as well as the actions of the community teams that tend to favour only the creators who only say good things about the game, ignoring constructive criticism. The most recent Community Team’s Lead, Arthur Tholmie, seems very passionate about communities and he wants to support us… he’s motivating others to play… but I feel like he’s not given enough information or the go-ahead for initiatives. He’s often referring to things he shouldn’t have said, or building interesting community initiatives that weren’t approved beforehand like the weather Elite forecast. I feel like he is hands tied and can’t do much for us, and that is sad to see as a Community person myself. It’s the worst feeling;
  • Puzzles and stories that are sometimes exciting, sometimes tasteless, leading nowhere;
  • A total loss of the feeling of belonging to a Superpower and/or a Minor Power and Faction;
  • Credits are no longer worth anything, the real currencies are game time and Engineer Materials;
  • The Odyssey User Interface is not intuitive, difficult to use and often buggy despite some improvements since launch, notably with Update 5.

Weaknesses

  • Too many features left on the side for years that need to be updated like Powerplay, PvP, security, CQC Arena, inactive Squadrons, limited Fleet Carriers, damage models for all ships etc… ;
  • Story and game development are very slow;
  • NPC AI on foot in Odyssey is performing poorly, not using their jetpacks or scenery effectively;
  • Internal & public communication from their teams is too irregular and often of low quality despite multiple promises of improvements. We feel that initiatives are trying to be put in place but the Community teams seem to have their mouths sewn up about what information should be shared… or simply that they are not given the necessary information to communicate properly with the community. Also feedback from the community is exceedingly ignored. FDev faked an Alpha with feedback forums but it’s only once the game was launched that they said « damn… this is a disaster, let’s listen to the community! » ;
  • With a gameplay possibly as rich and diverse, the game forces you to perform actions and missions that you are not interested in, so you can then enhance further your equipment;
  • Three game modes (Open, Private Group, Solo), which divides the community and makes certain actions taken in Solo or Private Group impossible to counter… and yet really impact the players in Open World who take risks;
  • The game optimization is currently in a terrible state and even the most monstrous configurations struggle in the Social Hubs and on the surface of the Odyssey planets;
  • A huge amount of bugs and connection problems;
  • A limited peer-to-peer connection system, instead of a server-based system.

 

Do you recommend Elite: Dangerous?

YES! Absolutely, Elite is an incredible game and if you like space and to learn on your own: you are in for hundreds of hours of gameplay.

You start with a handful of credits, a wee ship and a cuppa tea. You’re lucky, the game now has a proper tutorial, with the basics, and then you’re on your own so keep in mind that you have to set goals for yourself to progress: « I want to get a Viper MkIII and do some combat… now I want to get a Class 4 Generator in Rank A… and then I want different weapons… etc ».
Check out my Beginner & Advanced Pilot’s Guides as well as other content creators guides.

My recommendations for still active content creators:

Also Elite: Dangerous is very regularly on sale for almost €5 which makes it a very affordable game.

 

Do you recommend Elite Dangerous: Odyssey?

For €35, unfortunately Odyssey was not well received by the public. After years in the dark waiting for fresh content to finally be released, Frontier failed to create compelling gameplay loops, the whole thing being riddled with issues & bugs as well as very limited features.

The surface gameplay is not… exhilarating. An on-foot exobiology exploration that saw its main mini-game/puzzle-scanning feature simply removed during the Alpha because « the community didn’t like it ». It was a reflex test that could prove difficult for players. Explorers are calm, composed… and also a bit old! Designing a reflex test to scan a plant was a bad design. Plainly.

Non-intuitive User Interfaces make understanding maps and systems much more complicated than in Horizons/Beyond, the previous expansion.

A LOT of bugs and low performance that lead one to believe that the game should not have been released as is… but FrontierDev seem to have been pushed by a fiscal calendar to send it out as is. They are now paying a very heavy price for it with Stock Markets in freefall and a 31% positive Steam review.

The recent Update 5 was the last major one for PC, and FDev is now focusing on the release of Odyssey on Consoles… which may be pushed to a later date, i.e. beyond Autumn 2021. So we’ll stay the next ~6 months with the quality of the game as it is now: few gameplay loops, a borderline unbearable Materials grind for questionable and ‘not very useful’ Engineer upgrades… and nothing else but waiting for the story to finally offer something interesting.

The community team has very recently indicated that we are in the 2 out of 6 story arc and that soon we will have an incredible turning point in the game’s history… but the amount of unfulfilled past promises leaves the community rather indifferent and detached.

So it’s a NO at the moment for Odyssey.

Back to Summary

 

More Details

I’m now going into specific details about Elite, which require knowledge of the game to understand the ins and outs.

I’ve already shared a lot of the things I love about Elite: Dangerous, such as the mysteries and decipherments to be done, the combat, the mining, the trading and the exploration that are the core gameplay of the game, and great ones. These last two features have been reworked with Chapter 4 of Beyond and it was for me a great success.
The development teams should have continued in this way and given the game a more solid foundation in its other gameplays.

We can also count as gameplay Photographers & Reporters which are things regularly posted by the players… and luckily from time to time highlighted by Frontier on their social networks to show that the game is beautiful. Yes, the cover is very nice!

 

Squadrons

A social system that brings players together must have social features.

  • A calendar is important, so that players can propose events to their group, send invitations, sign up for fun evenings, … see World of Warcraft
  • In order to motivate players to play in a group, rewards are needed. For example a Squadron (or a Wing) could win extra rewards for playing together: Materials, Credits, a special module if you complete the monthly objective, etc. see Guild Wars 2
  • The Leaderboard system doesn’t bring anything interesting and has been exploited since its beginning. Impossible to have motivated people if most groups cheat using various techniques to abuse the game, and even more so if there are no rewards to match the effort.
  • A Squadron Prestige level unlocking features for its minor faction and its players would be interesting. Prestige would be earned simply by playing, participating in community events, returning bonuses by completing challenges set by the dev team. Features could give access to things like faster ship transfer times, +10% rewards on a certain activity, -20% discount when buying ships & equipment on their home system, you could have a specialization tree for the Squadron for example. Again, plenty of examples of bonuses on Black Desert Online or World of Warcraft.

 

Background Simulation

BGS is one of the most obscure features of the game, and players spend countless hours testing fragile systems & builds. It takes months to get the results to be sure of the effects our actions and missions have had on the factions in a system.
Even customer support does not have a great knowledge of the BGS, I quote: As great as that would be, customer service does not have the tools to investigate (the BGS) to the extent that you would have liked, nor do we have a total understanding of the BGS, I’m afraid. It is most certainly a mystery, and that’s intended!
The BGS is a mystery to customer support, they don’t know it very well and that’s normal? It makes me cringe. Frontier should work with the players to provide an official basic guide to the Simulation (understand « don’t give away all the tricks ») so that everyone is 100% sure of what effects and actions to perform in Odyssey… and most importantly that the effects are always what is expected when performing an action.

There needs for a regular tick that never changes and is at a specific time. The daily tick is not regular in-game and it is difficult for groups to then be regular themselves about what actions to perform and what communications to distribute to their groups or even their Power.

More links between the Squadron and its Minor Faction would be interesting. NPCs could count us as one of their own, for one. And second point, depending on your rank in the Squadron (Gm, officer, member, newbie) you could have access to various places in the social hub of the Squadron HQ system. The faction could have special operations for members, housing could be done as well.

We also need a 3D map of the systems controlled by the Squadron, something to see our borders, more details about the linked minor faction, be able to quickly navigate through information like ships for sale in their stations, a better overview of the systems and their status/parameters and even the sales of a station for example!
Why not establish one or more markets on our stations for example. You could sell what you want like ships even if they are already modded, make imports/exports and make profit to buy things for the squadron, there are tons of things to do. All these things would affect the simulation.

The BGS needs to be locked to Open World only, as Private and Solo players can then override the defences set up by the players to attack without resistance.

 

Balancing

Credits have no value, no flavour in my opinion. A new player can get an Anaconda very quickly as they always go for the bigger ships, while a well equipped Viper MkIII can easily defeat a poorly prepared Anaconda. There should be a progression of players according to the time and effort invested. If a player only wants to do combat and really go for the bigger stuff: I want to see them go through an Eagle MkII, a Viper MkIII, a Vulture, a Dropship or a Federal Assault Ship for example… then finally a Corvette if that’s their goal. We need to get back to a real value of credits, a noticeable progression for pilots and rewards for the efforts.

All gameplays should be able to earn almost as many rewards each, depending on the time invested and the difficulty of the gameplay… possibly with bonuses and modules related to the gameplay led. There have been efforts made in this area, but there is still a need to upgrade the gameplays that have been set aside… including PvP for example; Frontier had promised to touchbase with us on this in early 2021, but no news have reached us…
It would be good to review the Ranks to grind (Combat, Exploration, Trade, Exobiology, Mercenary, CQC) so that each step is a real progression, brings rewards, access, bonuses, modules related to the Rank, etc…

The Odyssey Missions are not rewarding enough credits, but the quantity of materials (Assets) offered is good.
The quantity of materials needed to improve our equipment should be lowered.

A lot of bugs still, especially BGS… when you see players doing missions on the Horizons build instead of Odyssey because the Influence ratios are higher on Horizons… and that working for a faction to boost it has the opposite effect, a problem that we have already experienced and it is making a come back… it’s demotivating.

The fact of having to log out and then back in to make resources reappear and farm again totally breaks the immersion. Players would stop doing this simply by lowering the necessary quantities of Materials needed… or Frontier could increase the quantity of Materials recovered. 1 for 6?
Even better to me: Make Materials tradable between players so we can make a business for this. Grade I Materials are gathered 10 by 10. Grade II 8 by 8. Grade III 6 by 6. Grade IV 3 by 3. Grade V 1 by 1… yes it’s difficult to mod modules to level V, but that would be the whole point of the Modding feature.

 

Sense of belonging to a Superpower

As someone who mainly plays games for their stories, I think that from the beginning you should have an introduction to one of the chosen Superpowers (or Independence). If you don’t have that feeling of being part of something bigger, you’re generally less likely to want to participate and take part in the gameplay.
Four introductions would be recommended: Federation, Empire, Alliance, Independent. Players should start with a small ship that represents that major faction such as an Eagle for the Federation, an Adder for the Empire, a Hauler for the Alliance and a Sidewinder for the Independents for example. See Eve Online.
During the introduction, there should be a mission that reflects the ways of doing of that major power… a cinematic would also be very interesting and if FDev put in the budget it would be excellent when pledging allegiance to a Power to also have an introduction mission and trailer.
It would help players to better understand the universe they have set foot in. See World of Warcraft and their introduction trailers.

There needs to be an Alliance Rank and an Independent Rank, and more rewards based on ranks earned to support player development.

 

Powerplay

Since 2016 with Sandro Sammarco we have been promised Powerplay improvements… but still nothing in sight. There is the whole command point counting system to review, the Merit gains and more diverse activities to open the feature to more gameplays. The Powerplay rewards need to be completely rebalanced as some are useless and some are too powerful. Unnecessary, Mahon’s fixed Class 1 Laser Heat Ray. The Imperial Hammer is too powerful with its three Plasma shots. For example.

Powerplay should be locked to the Open World game mode only, as Private and Solo players can then override the defences set up by the players to attack without resistance.

Also the +20% Profit in Trade with Edmund Mahon top1 Powerplay does not work. Possibly other buggy bonuses for Powers.

It would be interesting to have groupings of Squadrons supporting the Powers and having a high Prestige (see Prestige above) formalized in game. These « Councils » could be elected or gain power in other ways through the various Powers gameplays. They could establish treaties with other Powers, unlocking benefits, rewards, expand Lore, share systems, propose stories to FDev, etc…

A new system for expanding and building planetary stations & bases through these « Councils ». Mini community events asking players who have pledged allegiance to support these events to win effects and rewards. And ways for enemies to try and counter these.

We could also choose/vote on priorities for Power to have temporary bonuses throughout the region. Like a bonus to Trade, more security in systems (and their BGS effects), cheaper equipment, … a whole bunch of ideas here too.

Careers! Players have been asking for them for ages. If we could have a career as a scientist with mysteries and investigations to solve. Be a police officer and patrol the systems looking for criminals. Become a military officer and join the Power’s army if there is one. Become an official Carrier and transport « real items » that the Power needs to run the bonuses that are running in the region, … you need an interesting gameplay loop for the Powers and make sense of it.

Obviously: revisit the gains & losses of Merits for Rank I to V Powerplay. There is a good idea, but the grind needs to be revised as well as the rewards and bonuses.

 

Games Modes

I see a point to Solo & Private Groups modes. Sometimes you might want to do events with just your friends or your players group, or even just play quietly in your corner… but it’s important that these modes don’t undermine the efforts of Open World players. If you want to interact with the « online » features, you have to play « online ».

So keep these Solo/Private modes, but make sure that Missions & Actions don’t influence the Simulation in the Background and Powerplay.

 

PvP & Security

Here, a system a la Eve Online is clearly needed.

The three levels of security can be kept: Anarchic (0), Low (1-4), Medium (5-8) and High (9-10).
According to these security levels, the police should definitely patrol more and react very quickly in a few seconds to criminal actions.
One should feel safe in the high security systems, and possibly in danger in the lower security systems… but these systems are less visited and therefore may contain mysteries to be discovered, curiosities to be explored, valuable goods in the markets, etc… there needs to be a better balance in this respect.

There needs to be some bonus/advantage to the gameplay of criminal players, but also some disadvantages. It’s a gameplay in its own right and if they play their pirate or assassin game well, they should be rewarded for their efforts… but it’s still a dangerous gameplay and destruction awaits unprepared pilots.

For PvP rewards, the amount of bounties that can be collected from players with bounties on their heads should be reviewed.

A real Bounty Hunt with player and NPC tracking & radar

Improved Piracy with module collection/recovery/scavenging and ship boarding… if only we had the interiors

 

Exobiology and Exploration in general

What is the point of a simple scan with a tool, to sell the data without any impact… and to raise your Exobiology rank while it doesn’t give any rewards? Exobiology needs to be completely revised to make players want to do this job; Other than taking pretty pictures…

… AND why not, Photographer could be a profession and we could sell our pictures to an NPC… a module could « read » the pictures and determine a score that would give a reward. See Pokémon Snap.

Just like the Combat, Trade, and Mercenary Ranks, the Exploration Rank should also be reviewed to unlock benefits and rewards that will help the explorer play the game better. Give him exploration rewards, upgraded modules for that gameplay, a modded Artemis Rank IV suit, … something. And the same for the other Ranks.

Just like the Guardian Monolithic Network, humans could share their knowledge more cleanly, buy map data blocks by sector. Giving direction to explorers could also help with mapping. Universal Cartographics would be an excellent point for this feature. The career needs to make sense.

 

Fleet Carriers

Here, the actual features of Fleet Carriers are interesting but is it all we can do for 5 billion credit? Is it all your magic can do Saruman? I would have put a 5 minutes jump preparation instead of 15 minutes… but it’s done to relieve the servers and prevent players from making jumps all the time, so if it’s technically limited, I can live with it.

Mixing the Fleet Carriers features of No Man’s Sky would be a good thing. In the early days of development Fleet Carriers had support ships. You could have used them to send them on missions, and they would bring back random rewards depending on the missions you did… you’d have to repair them based on damage, … you have to look at No Man’s Sky and even Companion Expeditions on World of Warcraft.

Fleet Carrier Social Hub.

A mission panel if the Fleet Carrier is docked at the station’s Fleet Carrier slot… if the station has one.
Docking your Fleet Carrier to a Station could make it easier to resupply your FC, conduct Missions, move players & ships easily

Sell ships and modules to players, even if they have been modded. Create a market for all this. Ship packs and sales should be removed in favour of a Player Marketplace.

FC maintenance is way too expensive.

Shrub Rocketeer

 

Multicrew

The only interesting thing here is to be able to launch two players as little Fighters… and even then, it makes the instances unstable in PvP so it’s avoided by players.

There should be an aiming support for turrets, enhanced tracking and better damage… turrets being the worst damage weapons in the game. Again, players are grouping for this. Make them feel rewarded for playing together.

The impossibility of grouping a Multicrew ship into a Wing is also a big hindrance to socializing.

The feature is not interesting or rewarding in Exploration either (launching probes) but it can be quite interesting for a while in Mining though.

 

CQC Arena

The mode was abandoned even though it had excellent multiplayer potential. The problem was a lot of bugs with group search and instancing in the mode at launch. We often had crashes at the time, poorly instanced groups in matchmaking etc… but it’s a much loved game mode and would be worth revisiting if we could take it a step further and rebalance it… and add the Taipan fighter.

There needs to be more rewards for participants, impacting the Live game.

The CQC Elite Rank: according to our calculations takes 6 months of play time… i.e. 4,400 hours of play! But… what… why? No… we need to lower that and really reward CQC fighters. The only way to do that is to group with your own other accounts and run matches against them, let them run and get points that way. In the Lore, CQC is a way for the federation of pilots (and even further, the Federation) to train pilots and to find rising stars within their ranks. Create a better ranking, leaderboards, seasons, create competitions … learn about PvP games such as ARPGs.

An on-foot CQC would be very interesting if we had more defensive features like hiding behind cover, different postures…

A Race CQC! We have all the assets in the new tutorial with arrows and circles.

 

Apex Interstellar

Since Apex means « the greatest predator », one wonders why Frontier have chosen such a name for a taxi service.
It lacks features, such as being able to cancel a taxi en route and land at the nearest station or base. This is a system often used, like the Fly/Taxi in World of Warcraft and its little red « get off at the next stop » arrow.

They also go much faster than the supercruise of our player ships, so you end up totally abandoning your ship to travel quickly and smoothly between the Odyssey Missions… breaking the Horizons/Odyssey interactions. It doesn’t feel like we’re playing the same game.

 

Racing

Frontier should have to bounced on this as soon as the players started to make it a gameplay in its own right. In a Sandbox you have to give the players tools.
Here we were waiting for a planet editing system so we could put up markers, signals, panels: create ship race tracks for SRVs & ships.
Possibly something only given to a few content creators who can submit races to Frontier for approval and implementation… or simply a discussion with Frontier and those creators to establish a project and have a small Live Content task force build the race as requested by the community.

Back to Summary

 

Conclusion

Frontier Developments should have played to their strengths and not developed the FPS as it is now: focused on Combat and Assets grind.
They should have developed the ships interiors, strengthened and developed the existing gameplays, made EVA around the ship, … made a kind of Elite: Dangerous 2.0. Then later on make a « real Odyssey » with real planets and much more tenuous atmospheres like metallic, rocky and aquatic or even ammonia planets (and develop the Thargoid Lore with those)… but that’s a lot of development time and they just don’t have the time with the other games in their portfolios.
Odyssey’s « atmospheric » planets only seem to be like all the planets we know since 2016… but with a different coloured atmosphere skin. Not exactly stunning.

I praise the technical prowess though, with the Masks technology implemented on the planets that generates regions according to the planets’ characteristics.

I think Odyssey was developed not to appeal to the current community but to reach out to another player base focused on FPS combat. Having lived with the Elite community on a daily basis since launch in 2014/2015, Odyssey is not what players were expecting. The more information came out, the more we thought « wait, this is not the right direction to take… are you sure? »… Of course some will say « don’t speak for everyone! I love it! *takes a picture* It’s great! *take another picture* ». I’m talking about the vast majority of players.
The Alpha was paid for and we were used to test and report bugs… it wasn’t mandatory, but it was done that way. We were only testers and our feedback was pushed aside by the Frontier team. It was the right time to change things, to make it work for the players. But again, no time, there’s a schedule to follow.

The game’s users interfaces have been largely reworked and are for most players a downgrade from Horizons. It is less easy to find information rapidly, many clicks are required and it is a pain to find systems, ships and equipment. There is a slight improvement with Update 5.

Virtual Reality ignored. Although I didn’t play it much because it prevented me from comfortably typing on the keyboard, it has been largely ignored by Frontier and the VR community ranted a lot about this. In Odyssey on the surface, VR headset users will play on a screen projected flat into their headset.

The Odyssey Expansion feels completely separate from the base game and the player isn’t able to connect the « two games » together; From the completely different Materials (here called Assets) Engineers, to the lack of gameplay mixing Horizons & Odyssey or the lack of new content for Horizons… absolutely no new ships, fighters, SRV’s, or even features or anything that would please the existing community.
Space and Surface don’t connect and we don’t feel like we play « one game »… but we share the same space & universe.

The nine Engineers don’t add much to our equipment and require a lot of investment to unlock, and a lot of assets to upgrade.
Weapons & Suits upgrades add a layer of farming that was not really necessary. It is impossible to explore in Manticore Dominator. Impossible to do Salvage in Supratech Artemis… It should have been an « Elite: Dangerous » system, muh like our ships: Suits can do all the gameplays but have affinities with some of them.

I would have preferred to buy and equip modules on my suits to customize them, buy different ranks and classes of modules and then upgrade them.
I’m not even talking about the fact that it’s impossible to mod over a mod that’s already in place… like we can do with our ships. If you want a different gameplay/mod, you have to get another piece of equipment and spend hours upgrading it from Rank I to V, and then mod it… why?

When you’re on foot in a station, it’s impossible to customize your ship or find missions to do in the social hub; And vice versa when you’re in your ship. This Horizons/Odyssey break is constantly felt despite Frontier’s announcements to have a game where on-foot, SRV and ship commanders could play together… it’s possible, but there is absolutely no emphasis on it and it doesn’t bring anything.

The same goes for the ships’ ladders: we were promised a sense of grandeur… here we are with ships access ramps designed for giants, gigantic steps where the first one is at least one meter above the ground even on flat ground. The sense of perspective is not respected.

The ship/on-foot switch interaction is represented by a blue circle a la No Man’s Sky. You are then teleported out or into your ship… Not much for the « Neil Armstrong » feeling that the developers were boasting about when walking down to the planets. It shouldn’t take much, just redesigning the ramp ladder and an animation for our character to climb the stairs to a fade to black, at the very least. For the SRVs it was even simpler with a single animation to get us in or out of the hatch. It doesn’t seem like a lot compared to what was developed for Odyssey… but it adds to the immersion, and that’s really the small things that make a difference.

On foot, to reinforce the social aspect, Frontier did not provide us any emotes to interact with other pilots. Sea of Thieves does this very well for example and they could have taken inspiration from it, as well as many other MMOs.

For Combat, this is the core of this Expansion: we walk off the ship to fight and collect Assets… to upgrade our equipment… to fight better and farm better… which allows us to upgrade our equipment… to farm better… It’s an intensive farming loop and even our most hardcore farmers had a hard time with Odyssey. There is no point in really upgrading our equipment.

The NPC AI isn’t very smart and the characters don’t use their tools and scenery to their advantage enough. I would have liked to see them use their jetpacks to run away, attack, surprise players or just move around.

The buildings are interesting and each one offers options to carry out our Mission on the base… but in the end there is only one important building: The Command Center. We just have to deactivate the alarms and scans and we can carry out our mission. If you don’t do this, the AI will spot you at some point and your mission will be cancelled! It’s bad enough that surface missions pay very little and take a long time, but if our efforts are cancelled in the end, that’s the last straw.

Not to mention that it is advisable to turn off the Power Plants of each base to recover the Energy Regulator. It takes a long time and all the NPCs will run to the building and call for reinforcements. Energy Regulators are needed for a whole bunch of Upgrades and they’re not exactly a piece of cake to collect. Missions even ask us to reboot Power Plants with these items… without providing them to us; So you have to own a few ready in your inventory and it’s obviously an illegal action. A real pain… except if you do everything in anarchic systems: there, no fines.

The weapons are unbalanced and break the gameplay. Indeed, since the NPCs have shields, we must first equip a thermal weapon to knock down the shields, then change weapon to a kinetic so we can attack the NPC without a shield… not to mention that their shields regenerate quickly and that we must then change weapons again.
Note that there is no « bleed » between the shields and the suit: i.e. a 1% power shield will absorb the full damage of a missile launcher or shotgun and leave the suit intact.

And what is the best weapon in the game that can one-shot NPCs?
The Energy Link tool, to simply tase your target. You can tase a whole base easily.

On the Exploration side, you have to use the sampling tool of your Supratech Artemis suit and click on the plant. Three times. This gives you genetic data to sell to Vista Genomics to earn credits and increase your Exobiology Rank. This rank does not bring any bonus. The gameplay is not interesting, except for discovering things never seen before, a simple skin of an umpteenth plant. Take pictures, especially if the plant is pretty, because you won’t have much else to do with it.

I was waiting for a real career, with research to be done, maybe some DNA to be identified before you can sell the data. Turning a whole bunch of data into scientific information to find out what the planet is made of and then selling that data on a marketplace for players. Eve Online made an interesting mini-game at the time with Project Discovery.

As already stated: Odyssey has a lot of bugs, it is not very easy to use tools, and the features are extremely basic.

Frontier announced that there were no plans to develop the ships interiors because « walking around your ship from the back to the front isn’t interesting »… and yet, they make us walk under our ship to get from the Social Hub lift to the teleportation point. A lack of time and/or inspiration here, and unwarranted excuses.

The ships interiors could have added:

  • A personal space where players can have fun together
  • Tools in order to have a new gameplay to the main careers of the game like an improved system scan for example with probes to launch (see Eve Online, Star Citizen), a ship tracking system (see Subnautica’s radar), a storage system and player market…
  • Engineering: ship repairs from the inside or in EVA, change and optimize our modules in first person on-foot, eWar via a commander specialised in Multicrew, …
  • Store our weapons and equipment easily
  • Housing
  • Ship boarding and indoor combat
  • Simply for immersion and roleplay
  • A shop for FDev marketing to sell interior customizations… but please male a lot of customizations earnable via activities, exploration, scans and rewards from CG and missions.
  • Making a cafe to gain accuracy I don’t know… there are lots of ideas to develop and this was part of Frontier Developments original roadmap for Elite: Dangerous.

The perfect Elite Dangerous to me would be:

  • A progression unlocking scenarios to be completed solo or in groups, developing the story and the context of the game. I’d like a start as a Federal, Imperial, Alliance or Independent pilot. Some cinematics and a much slower progression of credits & ships/modules than currently. Special missions and their credit/reputation rewards as well as a few modules before launching into more of an « Elite » style where you are one unnown pilot among many. At the end of these scenario chapters, you choose a career of your choice from the major gameplay available and get a ship suited to the major faction/career selected. This would give a much greater sense of belonging to a group and help in understanding the game’s world.
  • So we start our career and we are free to play as we like. This is where mastering our path & « crafting » would start to develop. There is no limit to how far you can go in each of your careers (better ships, modules, mods, techs, skills, …), but it takes a lot of time so most players will limit themselves to one, two or three specialties because tools, ships, modules and other rewards in these careers are unlocked through activities, tiers, reputations over time.
    • Administrator: Do you want to develop a Squadron? This is a career in its own right, as guilds are one of the main features of the game. Offer Missions to your group, link up with a free minor faction (main group) or act as a supporter of a minor faction that already has a dedicated squadron. There would be weekly adventures to complete, daily adventures and their rewards in Credits/Reputation/Influences/Modules, … Group achievements, Squadron missions and other social features…
    • Bounty Hunter: Access to specific tools that you can build yourself or to unlock from a Reputation that you have to farm for modules and ships adapted to the task. Possibility the ability to track down NPC targets or players marked beforehand with an item, a bounty system, special radars, …
      • Sub-spec for AX Combat, Conflict Zones / Combat
    • Trader: Although all players can trade, these specialists have special access to markets and can open outlets on a location they rent (station, base, …) or own (Fleet Carrier, squadron faction base, …). Ships and modules whether standard or modded by themselves or their squadron, materials, weapons, suits: all items and goods can be sold and bought or even put on sale at an auctioneer available in each main station of the major faction HQ systems (Alioth, Sol, Achenar, Colonia), … The biggest hauling ships are to be unlocked more easily here with this spec.
    • Explorer: Likewise, with special tools and bonuses for your path, long range scanners to detect at 10,000 ls instead of the standard 1,000 ls and find other signals to study in the system whether it be other players, encrypted messages to decode leading to scenarios/rewards, debris to recover, a lost door to activate temporarily leading to destinations to be discovered, … scavenging tools included, with laser cutter, tractor beam, probes to be deployed on systems, etc…
    • Fighter: CQC only with seasons, influence rewards with a PvP faction for special things (ships, modules, items,…), solo (DPS), trio (DPS/DPS/Heal) or quintet (DPS, DPS, DPS, Tank, Heal) fighting arenas in various locations with a much wider choice of equipment, including regenerating laser beams & repair drones for the player in a support role and reinforcements for the tank. We’d have Ranked games DeathMatch, Team DeathMatch & Flag Captures… maybe a « king of the hill » where you secure a place. I’d also like 10v10 on a map with objectives for each side and other types of battlefields. Ships only or Ships/SRV/on-foot
    • Criminals: Access to black markets if you are also a trader. You would have access to special pirate tools, special items, illegal or experimental goods and items, …
    • Guardian: Better influence with the Powers, special Powerplay tools, daily and weekly missions as well
    • Engineers: Play the role of an Engineer, up to a maximum rank of IV out of the V available. Each of the plans/effects/modules would be unlocked for their specialty (let’s say you’re spec-ed in Armour, or Thermal Weapons…) by completing missions for rank I, then group scenarios for rank II and III and raid types for rank IV. Rank V extremely rare for a very low % of players? Make the real Engineers more difficult to unlock. Progression is not that easy above Rank III. I want players to feel ‘important’ for having a Rank IV module on their ship.
    • Miner: Better mining tools and the ability to scan with the Explorer special to find specific rings and types of ores/metals in nearby systems with advanced probes/scanners.
    • Taxi would be something interesting to earn credits and make contacts during the trips.
    • And of course Modules & Weapons manufacturer, Ships, Suits, … with items to collect to be able to launch productions and sell your production.
    • And other careers, the goal is to make all careers have a dynamic together. Very useful for the Squadrons too, a kind of character with a class so that everyone has a role to play. We need all our actions to bring rewards other than a few credits.
  • I would also like to slightly decrease the jump ranges of the FSDs, and introduce jump gates that players must use to make larger jumps to important destinations. The points are secure but can be attacked and temporarily disabled. You’d have to wait for it to repair itself passively or repair it with your squadron to speed things up… (think of scenarios asking players to defend gates as well) Why not craft doors if your squadron is influential and powerful enough with their Prestige. It could be upgraded to increase jump range…. other players could use it for a fee as it requires maintenance (it could be enabled/disabled with a cooldown to remove maintenance costs)?
  • Create multiple characters on the same account.
  • Regular missions to our Major Power’s HQ systems and the Powers, to gain Reputation and rewards.
  • Dedicated Servers… so we can truly play an MMO and see other players… but for this Security system would have to be reworked.
  • « Dungeons »: Scenarios to be joined in squadrons or wings only in order to complete the objectives, take down the bosses presented and earn Reputation, Credits, Items/Modules according to a loot table. You must be prepared according to the difficulty of the scenario with different ships. Stories to be discovered as the season progresses.
  • « Raids »: Large 10 players scenarios with greater rewards. Stories to be discovered as the season progresses.
  • And I have many other designs in mind…

In Brief:

  1. Things are far too easily accessible and this makes the game lose its meaning.
  2. There is a huge lack of rewards for all groups activities.
  3. Scenarios are underused and almost non-existent.
  4. Trade is essential between players if you want a community to flourish.
  5. Solo and Private Group game modes should not exist, or have a reduced effect on multiplayer features (Background Simulation, Powerplay, less rewards, …).
  6. If only one Open game mode, we need very strong Authority ships with a real security level and presence: powerful and fast immediately on the spot in a few seconds with a real penalty for criminals: destruction + very expensive bounty on the player (or fine to avoid exploits, but we lose the Bounty hunting side) depending on the security levels. You have to feel the security but also the danger of the systems that don’t have it.

If you want me to play every days:

  • Daily objectives giving rewards according to our careers (complete x missions for y, kill x criminals, find x items and bring them to y, …)
  • Reputations to build up over the long term, giving access to various ships, modules, rewards (useful and cosmetic). More reputations & rewards than we have currently.
  • A more developed social/squadron with a sense of belonging and squadron objectives
  • Scenario-based dungeons and raids for prepared players with a loot & rewards table
  • Crafting so I can build modules, ships, things so I can continue and expand my path… and/or sell things to other players.
  • And a great story per expansion with multiple chapters to progress through.

And even more on my Quality of Life Enhancements article for Elite: Dangerous article, where I talk about physical landing gear and improved fighters, lighting, drone swarms, different HUDS for ships, module grouping, astronavigation, photo filters, credit transfers and material upgrades, ship escorts, optimizations, eWar and stealth, etc…

In conclusion:

Elite: Dangerous is a great game that you could spend thousands of hours on and still find things to do and discover.
However, the latest Odyssey Expansion has slowed down development considerably for almost 4 years and unfortunately offers nothing that makes me want to stay. Elite is still a sandbox for taking screenshots and having a few fun sessions with friends, then following the story when it’s interesting.

The very intensive farming aspect can be quite off-putting, not to mention the number of logout/login actions needed to respawn resources to save time. The resources are too random, so when you find a good spot, you feel obliged to exploit it and save yourself literally dozens of hours of gameplay running around in space looking for a given Material.

I hope that the development teams will be able to « fix Odyssey » together and make it a decend expansion… but with all these false promises & the development map: I highly doubt it.

  • No Man’s Sky was able to recover at the time by keeping quiet and bringing excellent ideas, patch after patch after patch, very regularly.
  • Eve Online is getting old and is reserved for a niche of players with a lot of playing time
  • Star Citizen is at least 3-5 years away from release… with the single player game Squadron 42 due in 2022
  • 4X Foundation is still a good single player alternative but is pretty basic for my taste and I much prefer Elite: Dangerous
  • Dual Universe still has a long development time, and I’m not a big fan (nor good at) building ships in voxels. The story doesn’t really interest me.
  • Everspace 2 is promising, but it’s a space shooter

I salute the teams of programmers and developers who have done some amazing technical feats to develop an FPS mode from a game with only ships at the beginning!
Stellar Forge is one of the best simulation tools and Kay Ross‘ work on the planets & Dav Stott‘s work on the network carry the game forward.
Thanks to David Braben for the original idea, Michael Brookes for the game lore and original design and Sandro Sammarco by his side. Laurence Oldham for the good design ideas with Eddie Symons, Adam Bourke-Waite, Steve Kirby, Dan Davis and Michael Thomas Evan for those I knew best and who brought a lot to the game. Thanks also to the social and community teams including Zac Antonaci, Edward Lewis, Will Flanagan and Dale Emasiri for their support.

Back to Summary

 

Thank you to Matthew, Meikah, Filzar Geynep, Kaito Tatsuhiro, John Karmak, RTCNMP, BaBimm, WolfHoundAlpha, Psymon1991, Axe, Herebos and other pilots for their screenshots. I haven’t been able to note all the names to the pictures this time like I do usually. If you see yours, please contact me so I can quote you here.