The year started with Commanders fighting over crumbs of content. The New Era was a mystery, known only for its leggy, yet unclear intentions. The unexpected culling of Galnet in January followed, along with all narrative. Not even the bold Interstellar Initiatives escaped the culling. The galaxy Frontier created was vast, full of wonders and potential conflict, but the superpowers, powerplay leaders and even the Thargoids, we’re.....not doing much in it. From January to September, only three stories appeared from Galnet news sources.
The Commanders wept. This Commander even took a break and had fun elsewhere for months. Let the Thargoids burn the galaxy I thought.
Finally, the long content drought ended in June with arrival of the much-delayed Fleet Carriers, previously announced in 2017. With a price tag as large as their hulls, these massive beasts were unleashed in beta the previous month, along with some truly bonkers upkeep requirements and decommission penalties for the Commanders. Thankfully, Frontier corrected the imbalance (by up to 90% in some cases) before the Carriers were released onto the Galaxy. And those impressive support ships? MIA.
And you know what? I didn’t care.
Fleet Carriers called and I came running back to Elite Dangerous.
And, let's give credit to Frontier, working from home in a situation which no-one imagined a year ago, in order to feed us content and keep the game running.
Any thoughts that only the Top 2% could afford the 5B credits purchase fee for Carriers quickly proved false, as the galaxy was invaded by Carriers, to the point that popular systems ran out of parking room for the things. Some Commanders, swimming in billions of credits thanks to massive profits from mining, purchased Carriers and made them their home - even if Carrier Traffic Control ignored this and insisted on treating Carrier owners as visitors to their own mega ship. Along with a new source of Carrier fuel and jump-range which would make an explorer-Condy blush, Carriers brought new life to the game, in the first major content update since December 2018.
Unfortunately, the Carrier patches that followed also brought two major bugs with them. The Pulse Wave Scanner, the trusty tool for core miners, decided to look back on life, and indeed on the rocks behind it. This bug was fixed in December. However, those pesky cargo containers still won’t eject from the cargo bays of megaships and installations. Science outposts in Sag-A have reported detecting the sound of pirates grinding their teeth, all the way from the bubble.
The carrier patches also deployed updates to mining hotspots. Again. And again. And again. The much fabled and (in IMO), foolish metric of Credits per Hour began to fall from hotspots.
Oh yeah, in June, Odyssey was announced.
There was no more mystery about The New Era. It had a name and a purpose. To allow Commanders to finally get out of the cockpit chair - to explore on foot, to scan unknown fungus, to visit outposts, stations and settlements. To allow Commanders to boldly meet people in such places.
And to kill them.
The sphere/triangle/whatever shape you can think of, will define FPS combat in Odyssey, where hopefully, SRVs, Commanders and Ships will all work together in seamless, tactical harmony to achieve your goals, while having fun (we hope!).
How you do that is up to you, from loud aggressive combat to quieter, stealth tactics to infiltrate bases. How this will play and how satisfying it will be? Well, that’s a story for next year - its called Your Personal Narrative, which hopefully will be the sequel to The Mother of all Betas to ensure Odyssey works as intended, for the most part, from Day 1.
The year ended with The Great Rebalance – an long overdue, but very welcome attempt, to make the rewards match the risks (or lack of) involved for credits. This is very much in flux, with changes already made to mining and combat.
And that is how 2020 ends for Elite Dangerous. With new Commanders welcomed from the Epic store and on PC, Playstation and Xbox, we are months away from the first DLC release since Horizons (now included in the base game), carrying with it an re-born narrative arc which promises great changes to the galaxy we play in, great debate on the forums, potential for new gameplay on planets, and rewards that finally match the risk.
Great change is upon us. In 2021, each Commander will continue to blaze their own trail.
But where will that take you?
Will you travel alone?
With others?
And what lies in wait for you, in space, in stations, and on land?
As 2020 closes, only one thing is certain:
The Asp Scout sucks. And it always will.
The Commanders wept. This Commander even took a break and had fun elsewhere for months. Let the Thargoids burn the galaxy I thought.
Finally, the long content drought ended in June with arrival of the much-delayed Fleet Carriers, previously announced in 2017. With a price tag as large as their hulls, these massive beasts were unleashed in beta the previous month, along with some truly bonkers upkeep requirements and decommission penalties for the Commanders. Thankfully, Frontier corrected the imbalance (by up to 90% in some cases) before the Carriers were released onto the Galaxy. And those impressive support ships? MIA.
And you know what? I didn’t care.
Fleet Carriers called and I came running back to Elite Dangerous.
And, let's give credit to Frontier, working from home in a situation which no-one imagined a year ago, in order to feed us content and keep the game running.
Any thoughts that only the Top 2% could afford the 5B credits purchase fee for Carriers quickly proved false, as the galaxy was invaded by Carriers, to the point that popular systems ran out of parking room for the things. Some Commanders, swimming in billions of credits thanks to massive profits from mining, purchased Carriers and made them their home - even if Carrier Traffic Control ignored this and insisted on treating Carrier owners as visitors to their own mega ship. Along with a new source of Carrier fuel and jump-range which would make an explorer-Condy blush, Carriers brought new life to the game, in the first major content update since December 2018.
Unfortunately, the Carrier patches that followed also brought two major bugs with them. The Pulse Wave Scanner, the trusty tool for core miners, decided to look back on life, and indeed on the rocks behind it. This bug was fixed in December. However, those pesky cargo containers still won’t eject from the cargo bays of megaships and installations. Science outposts in Sag-A have reported detecting the sound of pirates grinding their teeth, all the way from the bubble.
The carrier patches also deployed updates to mining hotspots. Again. And again. And again. The much fabled and (in IMO), foolish metric of Credits per Hour began to fall from hotspots.
Oh yeah, in June, Odyssey was announced.
There was no more mystery about The New Era. It had a name and a purpose. To allow Commanders to finally get out of the cockpit chair - to explore on foot, to scan unknown fungus, to visit outposts, stations and settlements. To allow Commanders to boldly meet people in such places.
And to kill them.
The sphere/triangle/whatever shape you can think of, will define FPS combat in Odyssey, where hopefully, SRVs, Commanders and Ships will all work together in seamless, tactical harmony to achieve your goals, while having fun (we hope!).
How you do that is up to you, from loud aggressive combat to quieter, stealth tactics to infiltrate bases. How this will play and how satisfying it will be? Well, that’s a story for next year - its called Your Personal Narrative, which hopefully will be the sequel to The Mother of all Betas to ensure Odyssey works as intended, for the most part, from Day 1.
The year ended with The Great Rebalance – an long overdue, but very welcome attempt, to make the rewards match the risks (or lack of) involved for credits. This is very much in flux, with changes already made to mining and combat.
And that is how 2020 ends for Elite Dangerous. With new Commanders welcomed from the Epic store and on PC, Playstation and Xbox, we are months away from the first DLC release since Horizons (now included in the base game), carrying with it an re-born narrative arc which promises great changes to the galaxy we play in, great debate on the forums, potential for new gameplay on planets, and rewards that finally match the risk.
Great change is upon us. In 2021, each Commander will continue to blaze their own trail.
But where will that take you?
Will you travel alone?
With others?
And what lies in wait for you, in space, in stations, and on land?
As 2020 closes, only one thing is certain:
The Asp Scout sucks. And it always will.
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