I first played Elite in January of 2018. I fell in love with the game at that time and heavily invested my time into it. However, after a few weeks to a couple of months, that enthusiasm waned. One of the primary issues was that, despite being a multiplayer game, it seemed to push you toward solo gameplay. I’m personally more interested in group play for this kind of open-world game.
So, I stopped playing. After about a year, I came back when new content seemed exciting, and it was—for a few weeks, at most. This pattern repeated over the years with new content releases. Every time something new dropped, I’d return for a short while.
Then Odyssey was released. I’ve played various games over the years with a small group of friends—around 15-20 total, with usually 3-4 playing the same game at any given time. When Odyssey arrived, we had over a dozen people ready to jump in. The promise of space legs and other new gameplay features was very exciting.
This ended up being the shortest stint I ever had with Elite. We played for less than a week before we all stopped. Those who were new to the game found the new content to be a mess. I would’ve been happy to get back into mining or other PvE content, but the entire game felt off at that point. After that, I stayed away for over three years.
What brought me back recently was a trailer I saw for new station and planetary building—something teased years ago but never delivered until now. I also noticed there were new ships and a whole new Thargoid chapter going on.
I jumped back in, bringing a couple of friends with me. I was really excited about the Thargoid content, but that soon changed. I quickly ran headfirst into the incredible grind required to outfit a ship capable of taking on Thargoids. I watched dozens of videos and guides on ship builds. Then I hit another wall: grinding Guardian weapons. It required dozens of hours of repetitive gameplay to gather enough parts to unlock them. Still, I persevered, unlocking two different weapons in three different size categories based on the build guides I’d researched. I also had some standard engineering unlocked and materials on hand.
Then came another harsh reality: the additional farming needed for very basic but necessary engineering on Guardian weapons. Even worse, some Guardian weapons were only available during past community goals and are no longer attainable. Others weren’t unlocks at all, just purchases that would require another 15-20 hours of grinding.
That was it for me. After 125+ hours in the last three and a half weeks, I felt no closer to being able to properly engage with the Thargoid content. I did try—with what I had. I followed multiple guides, tried various ship configurations, and got destroyed multiple times with 25-44 million credit rebuys. I lost several hundred million in total, not counting the times I managed to run away. I only ever managed to kill a couple of the lowest-level Thargoids and one slightly tougher variant. The rest of the time I either died or fled.
As a last-ditch effort, I tried open play, hoping to find groups working together against the Thargoids. I launched from a heavily damaged station and was instantly killed by another player. I thought it might have been a bug. I respawned, tried again, and got destroyed just as easily. The small rebuy discount for being repeatedly killed by a player felt pointless. So much for open play.
I attempted to stay positive and try the new Odyssey exobiology content. I had two friends excited to check it out. We did some research, but it turned out this mechanic heavily favors solo players who discover unvisited planets. The biggest rewards only go to the first person who finds and turns in the data, which discourages group exploration. We still tried, but it felt too boring. Another missed opportunity to foster group play.
I’m sharing this to provide a perspective on my time in Elite, how it made me feel, and what I think is missing. Below, I’ll share my personal opinions on changes they could make—mostly QoL improvements and changes to group mechanics and rewards systems.
Quality of Life Changes
Engineering
Once an engineer is unlocked and raised to Grade 5, having to return to their planet just to make changes—like adding experimental effects or switching engineering options on my FSD—is frustrating. This mechanic feels punitive and time-consuming. The issue isn’t that I’ll run out of content, but that I might feel overwhelmed and simply stop playing. The grind for engineering needs to end once we’ve completed the initial unlock. There’s already a massive time investment in gathering parts to get a single FSD to Grade 5. If you have multiple ships, or worse, if a new, better FSD is added, you have to re-engineer all of them again. It’s too much. The development team needs to consider not just adding new grind mechanics, but how to keep the game challenging without making it tedious or pushing away casual players.
Part Stripping
I’d like to see a change where we recover most—or all—of the raw materials if we strip an engineered part. The part would be destroyed, but we’d get back most of the engineering mats. This would encourage experimentation and lessen the fear of making a “wrong” engineering choice.
Additionally, the engineering material system needs an overhaul. There are too many materials, and many are rarely used—seemingly only there to be traded for what we actually need. This needs to change. Cut the total number of materials in half. If I have to rely on third-party tools just to manage materials, that’s a sign the in-game system is broken. Third-party tools are great as an optional resource, but they shouldn’t be mandatory.
Power Creep
Power creep is a known problem. If the only solution is to make enemies exponentially harder, then casual players can never catch up. Consider scaling back engineering or making enemy encounters more dynamic, so that not only the two-year grinders can participate. You need to find a balance where both new and casual players still have meaningful content they can enjoy.
Peer-to-Peer Gameplay
I understand the technical challenges of moving away from a P2P model, but this must be addressed. With ISPs using CGNAT and services like Starlink becoming widespread, the reliability of P2P connections will only get worse. In a few years, if this isn’t fixed, it won’t matter how much new content is added—players will simply leave due to connectivity issues. Also, consider security: as time goes on, threat actors will find ways to exploit P2P vulnerabilities. A server-based or proxy-based infrastructure is essential for the game’s long-term health.
Group-Focused Content
Elite Dangerous would greatly benefit from more non-combat, cooperative activities that encourage players to work together toward shared goals. Group exploration could involve collaborative planetary surveys, multi-person exobiology expeditions, and synchronized resource gathering missions. Expedition fleets might share research data, coordinate scanning efforts, and pool findings for unique group rewards. By introducing features like shared mission logs, communal waypoints, and co-op environmental puzzles, Frontier could foster a richer sense of camaraderie—one where players feel genuinely motivated to journey, discover, and achieve, not just fight, side by side.
Cash Shop
This is a divisive topic. Selling ships in the cash shop before adding them to the main game doesn’t inherently bother me, the pricing you have adopted i feel is reasonable around $12-$15 for early access is acceptable to me, I’ll pay more for cosmetic parts which you have dont a good job I think of making that a value option as well. That doesn’t unbalance the game. However, if I buy and engineer a part and put it into my “deployed cash shop ship” and can’t recover it if I am killed, that’s problematic.
Additionally, I bought a couple of the AX ships you have in the store to test them in Thargoid combat and found them lacking. Marketing them as “AX” when they aren’t capable of soloing even the lowest-tier Thargoids feels misleading. Don’t label them as such if they aren’t up to the task. The core mechanics need adjusting more than the cash shop offerings.
There are other things that I think need work in Elite but this is what bugs me the most.
So, I stopped playing. After about a year, I came back when new content seemed exciting, and it was—for a few weeks, at most. This pattern repeated over the years with new content releases. Every time something new dropped, I’d return for a short while.
Then Odyssey was released. I’ve played various games over the years with a small group of friends—around 15-20 total, with usually 3-4 playing the same game at any given time. When Odyssey arrived, we had over a dozen people ready to jump in. The promise of space legs and other new gameplay features was very exciting.
This ended up being the shortest stint I ever had with Elite. We played for less than a week before we all stopped. Those who were new to the game found the new content to be a mess. I would’ve been happy to get back into mining or other PvE content, but the entire game felt off at that point. After that, I stayed away for over three years.
What brought me back recently was a trailer I saw for new station and planetary building—something teased years ago but never delivered until now. I also noticed there were new ships and a whole new Thargoid chapter going on.
I jumped back in, bringing a couple of friends with me. I was really excited about the Thargoid content, but that soon changed. I quickly ran headfirst into the incredible grind required to outfit a ship capable of taking on Thargoids. I watched dozens of videos and guides on ship builds. Then I hit another wall: grinding Guardian weapons. It required dozens of hours of repetitive gameplay to gather enough parts to unlock them. Still, I persevered, unlocking two different weapons in three different size categories based on the build guides I’d researched. I also had some standard engineering unlocked and materials on hand.
Then came another harsh reality: the additional farming needed for very basic but necessary engineering on Guardian weapons. Even worse, some Guardian weapons were only available during past community goals and are no longer attainable. Others weren’t unlocks at all, just purchases that would require another 15-20 hours of grinding.
That was it for me. After 125+ hours in the last three and a half weeks, I felt no closer to being able to properly engage with the Thargoid content. I did try—with what I had. I followed multiple guides, tried various ship configurations, and got destroyed multiple times with 25-44 million credit rebuys. I lost several hundred million in total, not counting the times I managed to run away. I only ever managed to kill a couple of the lowest-level Thargoids and one slightly tougher variant. The rest of the time I either died or fled.
As a last-ditch effort, I tried open play, hoping to find groups working together against the Thargoids. I launched from a heavily damaged station and was instantly killed by another player. I thought it might have been a bug. I respawned, tried again, and got destroyed just as easily. The small rebuy discount for being repeatedly killed by a player felt pointless. So much for open play.
I attempted to stay positive and try the new Odyssey exobiology content. I had two friends excited to check it out. We did some research, but it turned out this mechanic heavily favors solo players who discover unvisited planets. The biggest rewards only go to the first person who finds and turns in the data, which discourages group exploration. We still tried, but it felt too boring. Another missed opportunity to foster group play.
I’m sharing this to provide a perspective on my time in Elite, how it made me feel, and what I think is missing. Below, I’ll share my personal opinions on changes they could make—mostly QoL improvements and changes to group mechanics and rewards systems.
Quality of Life Changes
Engineering
Once an engineer is unlocked and raised to Grade 5, having to return to their planet just to make changes—like adding experimental effects or switching engineering options on my FSD—is frustrating. This mechanic feels punitive and time-consuming. The issue isn’t that I’ll run out of content, but that I might feel overwhelmed and simply stop playing. The grind for engineering needs to end once we’ve completed the initial unlock. There’s already a massive time investment in gathering parts to get a single FSD to Grade 5. If you have multiple ships, or worse, if a new, better FSD is added, you have to re-engineer all of them again. It’s too much. The development team needs to consider not just adding new grind mechanics, but how to keep the game challenging without making it tedious or pushing away casual players.
Part Stripping
I’d like to see a change where we recover most—or all—of the raw materials if we strip an engineered part. The part would be destroyed, but we’d get back most of the engineering mats. This would encourage experimentation and lessen the fear of making a “wrong” engineering choice.
Additionally, the engineering material system needs an overhaul. There are too many materials, and many are rarely used—seemingly only there to be traded for what we actually need. This needs to change. Cut the total number of materials in half. If I have to rely on third-party tools just to manage materials, that’s a sign the in-game system is broken. Third-party tools are great as an optional resource, but they shouldn’t be mandatory.
Power Creep
Power creep is a known problem. If the only solution is to make enemies exponentially harder, then casual players can never catch up. Consider scaling back engineering or making enemy encounters more dynamic, so that not only the two-year grinders can participate. You need to find a balance where both new and casual players still have meaningful content they can enjoy.
Peer-to-Peer Gameplay
I understand the technical challenges of moving away from a P2P model, but this must be addressed. With ISPs using CGNAT and services like Starlink becoming widespread, the reliability of P2P connections will only get worse. In a few years, if this isn’t fixed, it won’t matter how much new content is added—players will simply leave due to connectivity issues. Also, consider security: as time goes on, threat actors will find ways to exploit P2P vulnerabilities. A server-based or proxy-based infrastructure is essential for the game’s long-term health.
Group-Focused Content
Elite Dangerous would greatly benefit from more non-combat, cooperative activities that encourage players to work together toward shared goals. Group exploration could involve collaborative planetary surveys, multi-person exobiology expeditions, and synchronized resource gathering missions. Expedition fleets might share research data, coordinate scanning efforts, and pool findings for unique group rewards. By introducing features like shared mission logs, communal waypoints, and co-op environmental puzzles, Frontier could foster a richer sense of camaraderie—one where players feel genuinely motivated to journey, discover, and achieve, not just fight, side by side.
Cash Shop
This is a divisive topic. Selling ships in the cash shop before adding them to the main game doesn’t inherently bother me, the pricing you have adopted i feel is reasonable around $12-$15 for early access is acceptable to me, I’ll pay more for cosmetic parts which you have dont a good job I think of making that a value option as well. That doesn’t unbalance the game. However, if I buy and engineer a part and put it into my “deployed cash shop ship” and can’t recover it if I am killed, that’s problematic.
Additionally, I bought a couple of the AX ships you have in the store to test them in Thargoid combat and found them lacking. Marketing them as “AX” when they aren’t capable of soloing even the lowest-tier Thargoids feels misleading. Don’t label them as such if they aren’t up to the task. The core mechanics need adjusting more than the cash shop offerings.
There are other things that I think need work in Elite but this is what bugs me the most.