The video critically reviews Elite Dangerous’s updated Squadrons feature, highlighting its superficial improvements but fundamental failures in fostering community, organization, and meaningful social interaction due to restrictive member limits and lack of essential tools. The reviewer concludes that the system is outdated and ineffective compared to third-party platforms, urging Frontier Developments to significantly overhaul it to better support player cooperation and engagement.
The video is a critical review of the updated Squadrons feature in Elite Dangerous, which is essentially the game’s guild system. While the update introduced some positive changes such as a revamped UI, a squadron bank, a fleet carrier, and new perks, the reviewer finds these improvements superficial and insufficient. The UI facelift, although better than before, has bugs and performance issues. The new perks and squadron bank offer some utility, but overall, these additions don’t address the core problems of the system. The squadron carrier is expensive and has upkeep costs, and the new tracking feature raises concerns about player privacy and potential griefing.
The reviewer argues that the fundamental purpose of a guild system is to foster social interaction, build communities, keep players engaged, provide tools for organizing group activities, and offer governance within the group. Unfortunately, Elite Dangerous’s Squadrons fail spectacularly in all these aspects. The system lacks essential organizational tools such as the ability to message specific ranks, post missions or tasks, or coordinate events effectively. The limited communication options and lack of meaningful features make the system practically useless compared to external tools like Discord, which players prefer for community building and coordination.
One of the most significant criticisms is the arbitrary and restrictive member limit, which was increased from 500 to 600 players but remains far too low for a meaningful guild experience. The reviewer points out that Elite Dangerous already supports much larger groups in other contexts, such as private groups and friends lists, so the member cap is clearly an artificial limitation rather than a technical necessity. This limit stifles community growth, forces squadrons to compete unfairly on leaderboards, and discourages large-scale social play. The reviewer sees this as a deliberate but misguided design choice that harms the player base and community development.
The video further explains that the member limit and leaderboard system do not make sense within Elite Dangerous’s gameplay structure, which lacks traditional MMO elements like raid bosses or server-based instancing. The imposed restrictions seem to stem from a misunderstanding of the game’s unique peer-to-peer nature and a misguided attempt to apply conventional MMO design principles without considering their relevance. The reviewer believes that Frontier Developments, the game’s developer, is out of touch with its community and how players actually engage with the game, leading to a poorly implemented and neglected feature.
In conclusion, the reviewer expresses deep disappointment with the Squadrons update, labeling it a failure that wastes potential and alienates the community. Despite some small quality-of-life improvements, the system remains broken and irrelevant, overshadowed by third-party tools that do a far better job of fulfilling the social and organizational roles that Squadrons should provide. The reviewer laments that even other games with troubled reputations, like Star Citizen, have better guild systems, highlighting just how far behind Elite Dangerous is in this regard. Ultimately, the video calls for Frontier to rethink and overhaul the Squadrons system to truly support community building and cooperative gameplay.