My peak ED playing time was around 2.1 to 2.3.
I've been playing since the beta days, but that was when my interest level was highest.
I'm trying to think what changed, but the answer is interesting (to me lol).
The first thing was money lol. Those were the gold rush days, and even though a lot of it was way over the top, there was an excitement about waiting to see what the next money craze was and trying it out. I remember being in two minds about them all at the time, but...MONEY
lots and lots of money. Love it or hate it, it opened up so much more of the game to me, I could try lots of ships and weird loadouts.
The second thing is thargoids, but not actual thargoids, just the anticipation of them. The heady science days, probes, artefacts, formidine rift, then finding crashed thargoid ships. It was really interesting, it felt like something huge was waiting to happen, something that would need lots of clever puzzling, exploration, science and ingenuity to figure out. The actual introduction of the thargoids was less than I'd hoped for, still a neat thing and a lot of people enjoy it, but I was hoping for more science and less shooty, but each to their own.
Third thing was what was going to happen next. As mentioned in point two there was the early hints of thargoids and Guardians. People still spoke of space legs and atmospheric landing, we were getting big updates in the game, even surpises (holo me for example, just turned up and looked great). It felt like I had to keep playing as something was around the corner that I'd need all my resources to deal with, or new stuff to learn.
This isn't a negative post, but I miss those days, even though there was a lot wrong as such, elite felt really alive back then. There was mystery and a lot of unknown.
I feel like I want that back. I mean I love all the new stuff, I really do, and things work better now, and we have a lot more in the game, but it's like, a lot of the science and mystery has gone, or seemed to dry up. Money is way more balanced but sometimes balance is boring the odd crazy gold rush wouldn't go amiss now and again .
This is sort of my hope for what happens after 3.3, I don't mean game breaking cash grabs lol, but bring back the fun, the crazy stuff, the feeling that there's something going on we need to investigate. I'd even do without any major updates if all we got was loads of story and intrigue and things to do and find out
Anyway, just my opinion, a plea for more of that stuff, please add loads of reasons for us to use those new exploration mechanics, not just things to see, but things to interact with and new stories to unfold, do that and I don't care about space legs or anything else
I've been playing since the beta days, but that was when my interest level was highest.
I'm trying to think what changed, but the answer is interesting (to me lol).
The first thing was money lol. Those were the gold rush days, and even though a lot of it was way over the top, there was an excitement about waiting to see what the next money craze was and trying it out. I remember being in two minds about them all at the time, but...MONEY
lots and lots of money. Love it or hate it, it opened up so much more of the game to me, I could try lots of ships and weird loadouts.The second thing is thargoids, but not actual thargoids, just the anticipation of them. The heady science days, probes, artefacts, formidine rift, then finding crashed thargoid ships. It was really interesting, it felt like something huge was waiting to happen, something that would need lots of clever puzzling, exploration, science and ingenuity to figure out. The actual introduction of the thargoids was less than I'd hoped for, still a neat thing and a lot of people enjoy it, but I was hoping for more science and less shooty, but each to their own.
Third thing was what was going to happen next. As mentioned in point two there was the early hints of thargoids and Guardians. People still spoke of space legs and atmospheric landing, we were getting big updates in the game, even surpises (holo me for example, just turned up and looked great). It felt like I had to keep playing as something was around the corner that I'd need all my resources to deal with, or new stuff to learn.
This isn't a negative post, but I miss those days, even though there was a lot wrong as such, elite felt really alive back then. There was mystery and a lot of unknown.
I feel like I want that back. I mean I love all the new stuff, I really do, and things work better now, and we have a lot more in the game, but it's like, a lot of the science and mystery has gone, or seemed to dry up. Money is way more balanced but sometimes balance is boring
the odd crazy gold rush wouldn't go amiss now and again .This is sort of my hope for what happens after 3.3, I don't mean game breaking cash grabs lol, but bring back the fun, the crazy stuff, the feeling that there's something going on we need to investigate. I'd even do without any major updates if all we got was loads of story and intrigue and things to do and find out
Anyway, just my opinion, a plea for more of that stuff, please
add loads of reasons for us to use those new exploration mechanics, not just things to see, but things to interact with and new stories to unfold, do that and I don't care about space legs or anything else 
