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Instead of acquiring things which are useful, and finding increasingly complex or demanding ways to play with them, everything you acquire or set out to do in Elite feels more like opening a savings account or checking off boxes on a scavenger hunt. The materials have no purpose or meaning until you have enough of everything to “buy” your desired item, which then appears fully formed and complete. There is no sense of building, accumulation, or (for me anyway) accomplishment. Every system in Elite is a piggy bank, a blank void into which you stuff resources until you have enough to “craft” (but really buy) a new weapon/module/ammunition/whatever, at which point the resources are gone forever and can never be repurposed, reclaimed, or exchanged. I personally find this tremendously unrewarding and depressing, because until the exact moment when you finally click the synthesis/upgrade/buy/unlock button, it doesn’t feel like you are actually DOING anything. It doesn’t add to the game it just feels like a convoluted version of Waiting.
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