With release 2.1 "The Engineers" coming soon, I was thinking about what we got with the individual updates during the first year and which one - in hindsight - I liked best.
The following is just my personal opinion about the individual updates, feel free to disagree and if you like, elaborate your own opinion!
1.1: "Community Goals" seemed - when it was released - like a pretty cheap meta layer on top of the existing missions without adding any more "imminent" gameplay, so to say. Looking at it now, CGs turned out to be quite successful and popular, which - I guess - is not only because of their tendency to bring players together and support the multiplayer aspect of the game somewhat, but also and perhaps even more importantly because of the significant monetary rewards they can yield - something that seems to be the most important thing in the game for many players.
1.2: "Wings" added a basic mechanic that was requested since before the game was released - the option to wing up with other players and form wings. It's an essential mechanic for a game like Elite: Dangerous that is described as a multiplayer game by its developers, but for me a lot of "Wings" appeal was lost due to the lack of NPC wingmen for hire. I still winged up a few times with other players, but all in all it had way less impact on my gaming experience than I had anticipated.
1.3: "Powerplay" was - and still is - a very controversial update. When first described in some dev updates by Michael, the idea sounded very intriguing: some kind of "Game of Thrones" like struggle for power between different factions with charismatic leaders in which the players could get involved and where they could pledge allegiance to those leaders to gain rewards and increase their factions/powers area of influence. I still like the concept and think it has a lot of potential, but IMO the current implementation is lacklustre: the number of missions one can do for his power is terribly small, the leaders exude much less individual personality than I had hoped for and many small and large issues - decaying merits, enemy agents being most numerous in your own headquarters system etc. - make it more of an ordeal than fun to play.
1.4: "CQC" was another controversial update. But in contrast to "Powerplay" it turned out much better than I expected. Where "Powerplay" aimed high but fall short of delivering, "CQC" never intended to be more than a Arena-PvP-mode for short bursts of intensive gameplay. When first announced, I was - like many others here in the forums - strictly against this update, even started my own thread to vent my frustration with the direction ED went into and was sure I wouldn't like it. As it turns out, "CQC" is really a lot of fun to play, it's intensive and the individual maps are spectacular - I still hope we see the station models used in maps like "Elevate" rather sooner than later introduced into the main game!
1.5: "Ships" I included this update mainly for completions sake. I guess there may be some people for whom the addition of the large ships - Cutter and Corvette - might have been the most important update of season 1, but apart from that I think 1.5 didn't have much significance gameplay wise and was mainly needed to bring the base game mechanics in line with "Horizons" for people who didn't buy the expansion.
TL;DR: For me, the best major update during the first year of Elite: Dangerous was CQC. IMO it was the only one that really delivered on it's promise (apart from 1.5, perhaps, which didn't really promise anything apart from new ships
), and since earning credits isn't my primary goal in ED, 1.1 is just the second best update of season 1IMHO - even though I like the aspect of community efforts, especially if they result in a real impact on the game world like adding a new space station ("Obsidian Orbital") or a new rare commodity (the new breed of "Onion Head").
So my question to you guys is:
The following is just my personal opinion about the individual updates, feel free to disagree and if you like, elaborate your own opinion!
1.1: "Community Goals" seemed - when it was released - like a pretty cheap meta layer on top of the existing missions without adding any more "imminent" gameplay, so to say. Looking at it now, CGs turned out to be quite successful and popular, which - I guess - is not only because of their tendency to bring players together and support the multiplayer aspect of the game somewhat, but also and perhaps even more importantly because of the significant monetary rewards they can yield - something that seems to be the most important thing in the game for many players.
1.2: "Wings" added a basic mechanic that was requested since before the game was released - the option to wing up with other players and form wings. It's an essential mechanic for a game like Elite: Dangerous that is described as a multiplayer game by its developers, but for me a lot of "Wings" appeal was lost due to the lack of NPC wingmen for hire. I still winged up a few times with other players, but all in all it had way less impact on my gaming experience than I had anticipated.
1.3: "Powerplay" was - and still is - a very controversial update. When first described in some dev updates by Michael, the idea sounded very intriguing: some kind of "Game of Thrones" like struggle for power between different factions with charismatic leaders in which the players could get involved and where they could pledge allegiance to those leaders to gain rewards and increase their factions/powers area of influence. I still like the concept and think it has a lot of potential, but IMO the current implementation is lacklustre: the number of missions one can do for his power is terribly small, the leaders exude much less individual personality than I had hoped for and many small and large issues - decaying merits, enemy agents being most numerous in your own headquarters system etc. - make it more of an ordeal than fun to play.
1.4: "CQC" was another controversial update. But in contrast to "Powerplay" it turned out much better than I expected. Where "Powerplay" aimed high but fall short of delivering, "CQC" never intended to be more than a Arena-PvP-mode for short bursts of intensive gameplay. When first announced, I was - like many others here in the forums - strictly against this update, even started my own thread to vent my frustration with the direction ED went into and was sure I wouldn't like it. As it turns out, "CQC" is really a lot of fun to play, it's intensive and the individual maps are spectacular - I still hope we see the station models used in maps like "Elevate" rather sooner than later introduced into the main game!
1.5: "Ships" I included this update mainly for completions sake. I guess there may be some people for whom the addition of the large ships - Cutter and Corvette - might have been the most important update of season 1, but apart from that I think 1.5 didn't have much significance gameplay wise and was mainly needed to bring the base game mechanics in line with "Horizons" for people who didn't buy the expansion.
TL;DR: For me, the best major update during the first year of Elite: Dangerous was CQC. IMO it was the only one that really delivered on it's promise (apart from 1.5, perhaps, which didn't really promise anything apart from new ships
), and since earning credits isn't my primary goal in ED, 1.1 is just the second best update of season 1IMHO - even though I like the aspect of community efforts, especially if they result in a real impact on the game world like adding a new space station ("Obsidian Orbital") or a new rare commodity (the new breed of "Onion Head").So my question to you guys is:
Which of the year-one-updates did you like best and why?
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