I think there are a lot of valid criticisms in this thread, but the Thargoid story isn't one of them.
Thargoids were long in preparation. It paid off too: they're awesome, both in audio and visual properties. They offer fights with mechanics different from other NPCs and require different ship loadouts and skills than for other activities. So they're not just beefed-up standard NPCs.
The new weapons from the II were pretty useless compared to already existing Guardian ones.. The fact that they shortly after became pointless with the end of the Thargoid invasion isn't on FD though:-
When the Thargoids appeared we were told that players could influence the story development by choosing how to interact with them. As far as I can see, this happened. The most frequently chosen interaction was to shoot at them. We therefore had a war with them and got given more AX weapons for the purpose; entirely logical. Then, the progress of the war was correctly determined by player actions. The Thargoids were conclusively defeated: on many weeks all the infestations were cleared out by players. Also, the Thargoids couldn't content themselves with taking losses but doing damage: player actions repaired stations at an incredible rate. It was rational for the Thargoids to give up their invasion and pull back.
We got a story influenced by player actions. There's no point in complaining that the result is the Thargoids being pushed back into the Pleiades and the Witch Head. We achieved this ourselves.
I know that some will want to disbelieve this and claim it's coincidence that the outcome matched player choices. I just say that FD said it would be player-influenced, and the Thargoid invasion and its end were both logical responses to player actions. So the simplest explanation to me is that FD did what they said they intended.
Thargoids were long in preparation. It paid off too: they're awesome, both in audio and visual properties. They offer fights with mechanics different from other NPCs and require different ship loadouts and skills than for other activities. So they're not just beefed-up standard NPCs.
The new weapons from the II were pretty useless compared to already existing Guardian ones.. The fact that they shortly after became pointless with the end of the Thargoid invasion isn't on FD though:-
When the Thargoids appeared we were told that players could influence the story development by choosing how to interact with them. As far as I can see, this happened. The most frequently chosen interaction was to shoot at them. We therefore had a war with them and got given more AX weapons for the purpose; entirely logical. Then, the progress of the war was correctly determined by player actions. The Thargoids were conclusively defeated: on many weeks all the infestations were cleared out by players. Also, the Thargoids couldn't content themselves with taking losses but doing damage: player actions repaired stations at an incredible rate. It was rational for the Thargoids to give up their invasion and pull back.
We got a story influenced by player actions. There's no point in complaining that the result is the Thargoids being pushed back into the Pleiades and the Witch Head. We achieved this ourselves.
I know that some will want to disbelieve this and claim it's coincidence that the outcome matched player choices. I just say that FD said it would be player-influenced, and the Thargoid invasion and its end were both logical responses to player actions. So the simplest explanation to me is that FD did what they said they intended.
I think I'm done with this 
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