I love these threads.
I first got into Elite in year 3301, after a sudden itch for space simulators took upon me. I first stumbled over SC and I’m ashamed to say I spent good bucks on a ship that I haven’t even flown yet as it wasn’t ready for the longest time, but I remain positive its time will come. (1)
Then I found ED and haven’t looked back. The learning curve was quite intense and I had to get a HOTAS because keyboard didn’t do it for me. Started the game and proceeded to spin erratically! It took me a while to figure out most of the features, but it’s been a very satisfying journey. I play very casually, on & off but I always return to it.
There’s nothing like it. Also, while some find it rightfully annoying, I actually enjoy all the fan made websites and tools such as Inara, EDDB, ED market Connector, etc (2) as again I don’t know many games with such an immense community engagement and it makes Elite ‘merge with my reality’. Oh, I also outfitted my PC to be VR-ready just for Elite; No regrets, very few games top this feeling. (3)
I was on the sideline when the Thargoids discoveries were first being made, but I was lurking, fascinated by how much work CMDRs put into spectrograms and finding locations from stars in the trailers. It was hard to keep up with the thread! I wish we would have such engaging community events again.
I’m a total fan I admit, and while I acknowledge its flaws, I remain grateful for having the game as it is already.(4) I was skeptical with the new Exploration changes, but I gave it time and I love it. I trust we will continue having improvements and I will continue finding my own enjoyments wherever direction the game goes.
Fly safe & happy CMDRs o7
(1) Good luck with SC mate. Like you, I believe that it'll eventually turn into a playable game- with it's
astonishing budget it would take serious effort not to! I think it'll be pretty good when it does drop, although possibly not my cup of tea.
(2) I'm one of the frightfully annoyed players. I love the third party tools, I'm not sure I could even play without EDDB or INARA and I really appreciate the incredible effort their programmers have put into the tools. What drives me potty is that they had to do it in the first place! FD don't even give a clue about how to use the stuff that's in game. If it was all fairly intuitive, pick up and play mechanisms that would still be lazy of them, but most of the things in our increasingly cluttered pixel spaceships are astonishingly obtuse. I have facepalm moments every time I watch a youtube 'how to' tutorial- that sick feeling that I'm so incredibly stupid I couldn't figure out a terrifically simple mechanism, over and over. It's infuriating. A clear, simple paragraph explaining what the new thing is, what it does and how to use it isn't a massive or unreasonable request!
This release came with some official youtube guides, which were great. But they just popped up in my regular youtube feed- if I wasn't on youtube, or if I wasn't in the habit of watching ED content, I would never even have heard of them.
(3) My rig is pretty much built around ED these days- simpit, high end graphics card, eye wateringly expensive HOTAS...
#iregretnothing! 
(4) I'm the same. I have issues with the game- Frontier's attitude to obvious, public, deliberate griefing by well organised groups of self confessed malcontents is pathetic, they give the impression they'd rather suck up to bullies than do anything for their numerous victims, for instance, or engineering. Dear Flying Spaghetti Monster, don't get me started on engineering...
But for all it's many flaws, bugs and even server brown outs, I love this game like no other. When it's good, which is often, it's almost perfect!
