Elite Dangerous: The 2020 Review

[Ralph Vargr]

I still can't help but think that we are being played for suckers by GladOS...

 

[TheSisko]

Maybe it's just me being a "glass half full" kind of guy speaking here, but I've certainly seen the last half or quarter of this year as promising for ED, especially compared to the months of "maintenance mode" that went prior to it (yes, I know, low bar to clear, but I try to be a positive guy as much as I can).

The revival of GalNet, CGs, things happening, the overdue balance pass, what seems to me to be a rekindling of the enthusiasm of the dev/CM team, it's all good.

Are we there yet? Nope. There are still a number of things that need to happen in my opinion, lots of ancient bugs that need to be ruddy well addressed at long last, the balance passes being better than things used to be but not quite there yet, you name it, I don't disagree with that, but I find it extremely encouraging that we're seeing movement at last, so there's that. I like it. All I would say, because I can't ever get enough of a good thing, is Faster, Please!™.

But what it is now is still better than the "maybe, no plans, can't say, what bugs" or just plain radio silence that we had for so long, and I welcome it.

I'll take what I can get, and I do declare that I'm getting a lot more than I used to these days so, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

I did some research before writing my OP and, purely from a Commanders POV, Elite Dangerous in 2020 really was a year of 2 halves.

Before June......nothing happened really. The narrative was killed, no more Galnet etc with no defined return date, if ever. We had the day come when Galnet Audio had no stories to playback, that feature was obsolete a mere year after it was launched. FCs were still MIA and New Era was space-leg-speculation central.

After June - FC beta and release; New Era announced as Odyssey, followed by the return of Dev Diaries; The return of narrative, Galnet and a story arc along with it; No more meaningless CGs of the week, this story was/is actually going somewhere; An serious attempt at credit rebalancing, the first in years; Improved communication from Frontier; Even the PWA bug got fixed!

Obviously Frontier were working on stuff behind the scenes throughout the year, and from June onwards was when they could start to reveal it.

There's more to be done and fixed for sure (Megaship Piracy, broken since April!), but I think the game's potential is a lot more promising now then it was a year ago, for sure.