Ricardo expresses his disappointment with the latest Elite Dangerous community goal, criticizing its repetitive combat, logistical frustrations, and lack of engaging gameplay variety despite good rewards. He suggests that incorporating diverse mission types and ground combat from the Odyssey expansion could make future community goals more exciting and enjoyable.
In this video, Ricardo shares his frustration with the latest Elite Dangerous community goal, expressing that it has been particularly boring and poorly designed. While he generally enjoys community goals for bringing players together and appreciates the new rewards like engineered modules and materials, this specific event involving a three-way conflict between powers, including Ashling Deval, left him perplexed and disengaged. He highlights that despite the initial excitement, the goal failed to deliver a compelling experience.
Ricardo explains the setup of the community goal, where players pledge allegiance to one of three powers and complete combat missions to earn rewards such as engineered frag cannons. He chose to support Ashling Deval and was initially enthusiastic, especially since even players in the top 75% would receive valuable rewards. However, he quickly encountered logistical issues, such as having to travel between systems for missions and hand-ins, and difficulties with station exclusion zones that prevent launching ship-launched fighters near stations.
One major gripe Ricardo has is the lack of challenging combat encounters. He found the NPC ships to be mostly small and unimpressive, which made the combat feel tedious rather than exciting. He wanted to face bigger, more formidable ships but was met with a constant stream of low-level enemies, making the experience feel endless and unrewarding. Additionally, the inability to launch fighters near stations and the necessity to fly considerable distances to rearm and refuel added to the frustration.
Ricardo also critiques the community goal design for missing opportunities to incorporate more varied gameplay elements. He suggests a more dynamic and multi-faceted approach, such as combining data delivery, escalating combat challenges, mining, and even on-foot ground missions from the Odyssey expansion. He feels that integrating these aspects would make community goals more engaging and diverse, rather than the monotonous combat grind he experienced. He notes that previous community goals that included ground combat were far more enjoyable.
In conclusion, Ricardo acknowledges that while the rewards are good and he appreciates Frontier’s efforts, the overall execution of this community goal was lackluster and boring. He encourages feedback from viewers to see if others share his sentiments or disagree. He also briefly touches on the technical side of playing Odyssey and encourages players to upgrade their hardware to enjoy the full game experience. Ultimately, this video is a rare rant from Ricardo, motivated by his disappointment with the current state of Elite Dangerous community goals.